35 Facts About Henry Williamson

Henry William Williamson was an English writer who wrote novels concerned with wildlife, English social history and ruralism.

Henry Williamson was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 for his book Tarka the Otter.

Henry Williamson was born in London, and brought up in a semi-rural area where he developed his love of nature, and nature writing.

Henry Williamson fought in World War I and, having witnessed the Christmas truce and the devastation of trench warfare, he developed first a pacifist ideology, then fascist sympathies.

Henry Williamson moved to Devon after World War II and took up farming and writing; he wrote many other novels.

Henry Williamson died in a hospice in Ealing in 1977, and was buried in North Devon.

Henry Williamson was born in Brockley in south-east London to bank clerk William Leopold Williamson and Gertrude Eliza.

On 22 January 1914, Williamson volunteered as a rifleman with the 5th Battalion of the London Regiment, part of the British Army's Territorial Force, and was mobilised when war was declared upon Imperial Germany on 5 August 1914.

Henry Williamson volunteered to specialise in machine-gun warfare, and in January 1916, joined No 208 Machine Gun Company of the Machine Gun Corps at Belton Park, Grantham.

Henry Williamson rejoined No 208 MGC and in February 1917 departed Britain with it for the Western Front, the unit taking the field with the 62nd Division.

Henry Williamson acted as his company's transport officer and, in June 1917, he was gassed while transporting ammunition up to the front line.

Henry Williamson was returned to the UK, spending the next few months in military convalescent hospitals.

Henry Williamson then applied for a transfer to the Indian Army, which was granted, but the war was ending and the order was cancelled.

Henry Williamson spent a year afterwards on administrative duties demobilising soldiers from military camps on the south east coast of England, and was discharged from the army himself on 19 September 1919.

Henry Williamson became disgusted with what he considered to be the pointlessness of the war, blaming its causation on greed and bigotry.

Henry Williamson became determined that Germany and Britain should never go to war again.

Henry Williamson was powerfully influenced by the camaraderie that he had experienced in the trenches, and what he saw as the bonds of kinship that existed between the ordinary British and German soldiers.

Henry Williamson told of his war experiences in The Wet Flanders Plain, The Patriot's Progress and in many of his books in the semi-autobiographical 15-book series A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight.

Henry Williamson married Ida Loetitia Hibbert in 1925; they had six children.

In 1927 Henry Williamson published his most acclaimed book, Tarka the Otter; it won him the Hawthornden Prize in 1928, and made him enough money to pay for the wooden hut near Georgeham where he wrote many of his later books, often sitting alone there for 15 hours a day.

Lawrence died in May 1935 shortly after receiving a telegram from Henry Williamson, which has sparked some conspiracy theories.

In 1935, Henry Williamson visited the National Socialist German Workers Party Congress at Nuremberg and was greatly impressed, particularly with the Hitler Youth movement, which he viewed as having a healthy outlook on life compared with the London slums.

At the start of the Second World War, Henry Williamson was briefly held under Defence Regulation 18B for his political views.

Henry Williamson initially retained a close relationship with Mosley in the immediate aftermath of the war, but when he brought Mosley as his guest to the Savage Club, the former BUF leader was asked to leave.

Henry Williamson refused Mosley's request to join the newly established Union Movement and indeed, his suggestion to Mosley that he should instead join him in abandoning politics altogether led to the two men falling out.

Nonetheless, Henry Williamson would write for the Mosleys' theoretical journal The European.

Henry Williamson continued to express admiration after the war for aspects of Nazi Germany.

In 1946 Henry Williamson went to live alone at Ox's Cross, Georgeham in North Devon, where he built a small house in which to write.

Henry Williamson fell in love with a young teacher, Christine Duffield, and they were married in 1949.

Henry Williamson began to write his series of fifteen novels collectively known as A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight.

In 1950, the year his only child by this marriage Harry Henry Williamson was born, he edited a collection of poems and short stories by James Farrar, a promising young poet who had died, at the age of 20, in the Second World War.

From 1951 to 1969 Henry Williamson produced almost one novel a year while contributing regularly to the Sunday Express and The European magazine, edited by Diana Mosley.

Henry Williamson contributed a number of reviews and articles to The Sunday Times.

Henry Williamson died there on 13 August 1977, by coincidence on the day that the death scene of Tarka was being filmed.

Henry Williamson's body was buried in the graveyard of St George's Church, Georgeham, North Devon.