Norman Ellison


Norman F. Ellison was an English radio presenter and author who made radio programmes about nature and the countryside for the BBC's Children's Hour, under the pseudonym Nomad the Naturalist, and wrote on the same subjects both as Nomad and in his own name.
Born in Liverpool in 1893, he signed up as a private in the 1/6th Battalion, King's Liverpool Regiment, at the outbreak of World War I, and served in the trenches in Belgium. He saw action on The Somme and at Flanders but was discharged in 1917 suffering from trench foot. His war diaries were published in 1997.
In later life, he lived at West Kirby, on the Wirral Peninsula, Cheshire. He and Eric Hosking would watch birds together at Hilbre Island. Six of his books were illustrated by his friend Charles Tunnicliffe.