Henry Williamson

Henry William Williamson (1 December 1895 – 13 August 1977) was an English writer who wrote novels concerned with wildlife, English social history, ruralism and the First World War. He was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 for his book Tarka the Otter. He was born in London, and brought up in a semi-rural area where he developed his love of nature, and nature writing. He fought in the First World War and, having witnessed the Christmas truce and the devastation of trench warfare, he developed first a pacifist ideology, then fascist sympathies. He moved to Devon after the Second World War and took up farming and writing; he wrote many other novels. He married twice. He died in a hospice in Ealing in 1977, and was buried in North Devon. Early years Henry Williamson was born in Brockley in south-east London to bank clerk William Leopold Williamson (1865-1946) and Gertrude Eliza (1867-1936; née Leaver). In early childhood his family moved to Ladywell, and he received a grammar school education at Colfe's School. The then semi-rural location provided easy access to the Kent countryside, and he developed a deep love of nature throughout his childhood. First World War On 22 January 1914, Williamson volunteered as a rifleman with the 5th (City of London) 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.