Pudney, John Sleigh

(1909-1977)

   Born in Langley, Buckinghamshire, he has been an estate agent, a journalist, and a writer-producer in the BBC from 1934 to 1937. Commissioned into the Royal Air Force as an intelligence officer in 1940, he joined the Air Ministry's Creative Writers Unit and was present at the victory march through Paris in 1945. His poem "For Johnny" was spoken by Michael Redgrave in the 1945 film The Way to the Stars. He was elected Labor member of Parliament for Sevenoaks, Kent, in the 1945 general election. He went on to write many novels, short stories and 16 collections of poetry. Addicted to alcohol, he underwent therapy and made a complete recovery. He told the world about that and his dying from cancer of the throat in his autobiography, Thank Goodness for Cake (1978). Some of his later poetry publications: Collected Poems, 1957. Spill Out: Poems and Ballads, 1967. Spandrels Poems and Ballads, 1969. Take This Orange: Poems and Ballads, 1971. Selected Poems 1967-1973, 1973. Living in a One-Sided House, 1976. Some of his poems: "After Bombardment," "For Johnny," "Missing," "On Seeing My Birthplace from a Jet Aircraft," "To You Who Wait."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). 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 Yorker Book of Poems. The New Yorker editors. Viking Press, 1969. 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 War Poets: An Antholog y of the War Poetry of the 20th Century. Oscar Williams, ed. John Day, 1945.