Francis King


Francis Henry King was a British novelist, poet and short story writer. He worked for the British Council for 15 years, with positions in Europe and Japan. For 25 years he was a chief book reviewer for the Sunday Telegraph, and for 10 years its theatre critic.

Early life and Council career

He was born on 4 March 1923 in Adelboden, Switzerland, to a father in the civil service, brought up in India and sent back to England when his father was dying. As a boy, he was shunted around among aunts and uncles.
He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford. During World War II he was a conscientious objector, and left Oxford to work on the land.
After completing his degree in 1949, he worked for the British Council. His positions with them took him to Italy, Salonika and finally Kyoto. Whilst he was in Greece he met the uninhibited writer Anne Cumming who was also working for the British Council. She enjoyed observing his homosexual adventures. In 1964 he resigned to write full-time, by when he had already published nine novels, as well as poetry and a memoir.

Literary career

He won the W. Somerset Maugham Prize for his novel The Dividing Stream and also won the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Prize. In 2000, he was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature".
His 1956 book The Firewalkers was published pseudonymously under the name Frank Cauldwell.
From 1986 to 1989 he was President of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers and oldest human rights organisation. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1979 and a Commander of the Order in 1985. In 2003, his novel The Nick of Time was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize.

Personal life

King came out as homosexual in the 1970s. After his long-term partner had died from AIDS in 1988, he described their relationship in Yesterday Came Suddenly. King suffered a stroke in 2005.

Death

Francis King died on 3 July 2011 at the age of 88.

Works

In 2008 Valancourt Books, a speciality small press, began reprinting many of Francis King's works. As of 2014 six of his titles have been reprinted: