Brownjohn, Alan Charles

(1931- )

   Poet, novelist and critic born in London and educated at Brockley County School and Merton College, Oxford, where he read modern history. Brownjohn worked as a schoolteacher between 1957 and 1965 and lectured at Battersea College of Education and South Bank Polytechnic until he left to become a full-time freelance writer in 1979. He has lectured in poetry and creative writing and is a regular broadcaster, reviewer and contributor to journals, including the Times Literary Supplement, Encounter and the Sunday Times. He has served on the Arts Council literature panel, was a Labor councilor and a candidate for Parliament. His work is mainly in collections; his first, The Railings, was published in 1961. One of his collections for children, Brownjohn's Beast, was published in 1970. His poem "Ruse" evokes happy memories of the children's game "hide and seek." Some of his other poems: "Cat," "Class Incident from Graves," "Cure," "Elephant," "In a Convent Garden," "In This City," "Ostrich," "Pitman's Common Sense Arithmetic, 1917," "Seven Activities for a Young Child," "The Train."

   Sources: Alan Brownjohn (An Interview) (http://lidiavianu.esential.ro/alan_brownjohn.htm). British Council Arts (http://www.contemporarywriters.com). Cat Will Rhyme with Hat: A Book of Poems. Jean Chapman, ed. Scribner's, 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 New Oxford Book of Children's Verse. Neil Philip, ed. Oxford University Press, 1996. The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse. Philip Larkin, ed. Oxford University Press, 1973. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Oxford Treasury of Children's Poems. Michael Harrison and Christopher Stuart-Clark, eds. Oxford University Press, 1988. Who's Who. London: A & C Black, 2005.