Today, ten facts about Novelist and playwright John Galsworthy (Forsyte Saga) who was born on this date in 1867.
He was born in Kingston Hill in Surrey at the family home, then known as Parkfield and now known as Galsworthy House.
His father, another John, was a solicitor descended from a Devonshire farming family. His mother, Blanche, was 20 years younger than her husband and believed herself to be of a higher social class than him. Hence John and his three siblings got on much better with their father. Galsworthy said in 1919, "I was so truly and deeply fond of him that I seemed not to have a fair share of love left to give to my mother".
He was home schooled by a governess until he was nine and then went to a prep school in Bournemouth and then to Harrow where he excelled at Football and was captain of the house team. A schoolmate described him as "one of the best football players and runners there have ever been at Harrow... a beautiful dribbler and full of pluck".
He went to New College, Oxford to read law and was a member of the Oxford University Dramatic Society.
On graduation he followed the wishes of his father and was called to the bar in the Easter term of 1890. His heart wasn’t really in his work as a barrister, though. Still, he got some foreign trips out of it as his father would arrange them for John and his brother. The stated purpose would be to inspect family holdings in Canada or learn about maritime law although it might have been to give the brothers a chance to see something of the world or to help John get over a failed love affair.
He carried on a secret affair with his cousin’s wife, Ada. Ada and the cousin were already living separate lives, but John wanted to save his father from the consequences of a scandal. Ada encouraged John to pursue his writing. When John’s father died, the cousin divorced Ada and she married John.
Another secret John kept from his father was his budding career as a writer. He self published his first book, a collection of short stories, called From the Four Winds, under the name John Sinjon in 1897. This was followed by a novel, Jocelyn, the following year. Galsworthy didn’t rate either of these works very highly and saw them as learning the craft. In fact, he dismissed From the Four Winds as "that dreadful little book".
Galsworthy wrote 20 novels; 28 completed plays; five collections of short stories; three volumes of poetry; eleven volumes of essays and sketches; and occasional stories and pamphlets, newspaper articles, unpublished essays and sketches. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932 and was only the second English author to receive the award.
His plays usually had a social message of some kind. Themes included the struggle of workers against exploitation, the use of solitary confinement in prisons, the repression of women, jingoism and the politics and morality of war.
Although appalled at the concept of war, he was nevertheless keen to do something for the war effort as he thought it right to defend Belgium against German invasion. He was too old to serve in the military but he did give money to war charities and eventually trained as a masseur and went to France as a volunteer, to give therapy to injured soldiers in Martouret, near Valence. Ada went with him and helped in the hospital laundry.
The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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