1. Vernon Scannell was at one time a professional boxer, and wrote novels about the sport of boxing.
23 Facts About Vernon Scannell
1. 2.
Vernon Scannell's father had fought in World War I, and came to make a living as a commercial photographer.
3.
Vernon Scannell left school at the age of 14 to work as a clerk in an insurance office.
4.
Vernon Scannell had been winning boxing titles at school and had been a keen reader from a very early age, although not properly attached to poetry until about 15 years old, when he picked up a Walter de la Mare poem and was "instantly and permanently hooked".
5.
Vernon Scannell frequently read both the poetry of Thomas Hardy and the thrillers of Edgar Wallace.
6.
Vernon Scannell enlisted in the army "as a lark" in 1940, shortly after war was declared.
7.
Vernon Scannell joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and two years later was transferred to the Gordon Highlanders, a part of the 51st Highland Division.
8.
Vernon Scannell fought at El Alamein and across the western desert during the Eighth Army's drive to reach Tunisia.
9.
Vernon Scannell was caught and court-martialled for deserting a forward area.
10.
Vernon Scannell's war ended when he was shot in both legs while on night patrol near Caen.
11.
Vernon Scannell was shipped back to a military hospital at Winwick in Lancashire before being sent to a convalescent depot.
12.
Vernon Scannell had always very much disliked army life, finding nothing in his temperament that fitted him for the part of a soldier.
13.
Vernon Scannell spent two years on the run, earning his living with jobs in the theatre, professional boxing bouts, and tutoring and coaching, all the while teaching himself by reading everything he could.
14.
Vernon Scannell was boxing for Leeds University, winning the Northern Universities Championships at three weights.
15.
Housman said that "the business of poetry is to harmonise the sadness of the universe" and Vernon Scannell quoted this with approval.
16.
Vernon Scannell was awarded a Writing Fellowship in 1975 as Resident Poet in Berinsfield, Oxfordshire, an experience he recounts in A Proper Gentleman and later, in 1979 he spent a term as Poet in Residence at the King's School, Canterbury.
17.
Vernon Scannell married the painter Josephine Higson, who survives him, along with four of their six children.
18.
Vernon Scannell received the Heinemann Award for Literature in 1961 for an early poetry volume, The Masks of Love, and the Cholmondeley Award for poetry in 1974.
19.
Vernon Scannell was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1960 and granted a Civil List pension in recognition of his services to literature in 1981.
20.
Vernon Scannell received a special award from the Wilfred Owen Association "in recognition of his contribution to war poetry".
21.
Vernon Scannell is the author of a memoir, The Tiger and the Rose.
22.
Vernon Scannell argues that its depictions of reactions to a black boxer illustrate the diversity of racial attitudes, including outright racism, better than contemporary sociological studies where private assumptions and thoughts were hidden.
23.
Vernon Scannell spent the final years of his life living in Otley, West Yorkshire, where he died at his home at the age of 85 after a long illness.