Scannell, Vernon

(1922- )

   Born at Spilsby, Lincolnshire, he was brought up principally in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, and left school at 14. During World War II he served in the Gordon Highlanders in France and in Africa, and took part in the Normandy Landings. He was wounded, imprisoned for desertion and in 1945 he again deserted and was sent to a mental hospital. He wrote about these experiences in an Argument of Kings (1987). He worked as a boxer, was a schoolteacher from 1945 to 1946, studied English literature at Leeds University from 1946 to 1947, and is now a freelance writer, poet and broadcaster. He was awarded a South Arts Writer's Fellowship (19751976) and was awarded a civil pension in 1981. His first volume of poetry, Graves and Resurrections, was published in 1948. Since then he has published six novels and his three-part autobiography: The Tiger and the Rose (1971); Proper Gentleman (1977); and Drums of Morning - Growing Up in the Thirties (1992). Some of his poems: "Act of Love," "Bayonet Training," "Moods of Rain," "Protest Poem," "Six Reasons for Drinking," "The Great War," "Walking Wounded," "Words and Monsters."

   Sources: A Book of Nature Poems. William Cole, ed. Viking Press, 1969. Erotic Poetry: The Lyrics, Ballads, Idylls, and Epics of Love - Classical to Contemporary. William Cole, ed. Random House, 1963. Not Without Glory: Poets of the Second World War. Vernon Scannell. Routledge Falmer, 1976. P.E.N. New Poetry I. Robert Nye, ed. Quartet Books, 1986. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Faber Book of War Poetry. Kenneth Baker, ed. Faber and Faber, 1996. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Who's Who. London: A & C Black, 2005. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).