Derek Stanley Savage pacifist poet and critic, usually published as "D.S.Savage". He was General Secretary of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship

Anglican Pacifist Fellowship

The Anglican Pacifist Fellowship is a body of people within the Anglican Communion who reject war as a means of solving international disputes, and believe that peace and justice should be sought through non-violent means .-Origins and early history:...

 

Life

Savage was born in Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

 and brought up in Cheshunt

Cheshunt

Cheshunt is a town in Hertfordshire, England with a population of around 52,000 according to the United Kingdom's 2001 Census. It is a dormitory town and part of the Greater London Urban Area and London commuter belt served by Cheshunt railway station...

. He went to Hertford

Hertford

Hertford is the county town of Hertfordshire, England, and is also a civil parish in the East Hertfordshire district of the county. Forming a civil parish, the 2001 census put the population of Hertford at about 24,180. Recent estimates are that it is now around 28,000...

 Grammar School and the Latymer School

The Latymer School

The Latymer School is a selective, mixed grammar school in Edmonton, north London, England.- Examination procedures :Approximately 180 pupils are admitted to Year 7 annually. Places are awarded on the basis of competitive examination, though 20 are reserved for students with exceptional musical...

, Edmonton

Edmonton

Edmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta and is the province's second-largest city. Edmonton is located on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Capital Region, which is surrounded by the central region of the province.The city and its census...

 and then a commercial college. He became a convinced Christian Pacifist

Christian pacifism

Christian pacifism is the theological and ethical position that any form of violence is incompatible with the Christian faith. Christian pacifists state that Jesus himself was a pacifist who taught and practiced pacifism, and that his followers must do likewise.There have been various notable...

.

In 1938 he married Constance Kiernan. They had six children.

In the Second World War a tribunal accepted his conscientious objection to conscription

Conscription

Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...

.

In 1947 the family moved to Cornwall, initially to a dilapidated cottage in the Heligan Woods and then into the village of Mevagissey

Mevagissey

Mevagissey is a village, fishing port and civil parish in Cornwall, United Kingdom. The village is situated approximately five miles south of St Austell....

. Savage died in 2007, aged 90.

Writing and literary activities

According to Trevor Tolley, Derek Savage was associated with the following "leftist" writers in the 1940s: George Woodcock

George Woodcock

George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...

, Alex Comfort

Alex Comfort

Alexander Comfort, MB BChir, PhD, DSc was a medical professional, gerontologist, anarchist, pacifist, conscientious objector and writer, best known for The Joy of Sex, which played a part in what is often called the sexual revolution...

, J F Hendry, Norman McCaig, Derek Stanford

Derek Stanford

Derek Stanford FRSL was a British writer, known as a biographer, essayist and poet. He was educated at Upper Latymer School, Hammersmith, London.As a conscientious objector during World War II he served in the Non-combatant Corps...

. In Cornwall his associates included Louis Adeane, Dick Kitto, Mary Lee Settle

Mary Lee Settle

Mary Lee Settle was an American writer and winner of the National Book Award for her 1978 novel Blood Tie...

, W S Graham, Nessie Dunsmuir, Frank Baker

Frank Baker (author)

Frank Baker was an English author, actor, musician and television scriptwriter.Baker was born in London in 1908 and was educated at Wincester Cathedral School. He worked for five years in his father's marine insurance business in the City of London, before leaving to work for a year at the School...

, Lionel Miskin and Bernie Moss.

He contributed many articles, reviews and poems to magazines such as Twentieth Century Verse, Life and letters today and The Phoenix, of which he became European Editor, in succession to Henry Miller

Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...

. From Mevagissey he contributed many book reviews for The Spectator

The Spectator

The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...

and Time and Tide

Time and Tide (magazine)

Time and Tide was a British weekly political and literary review magazine founded by Margaret, Lady Rhondda in 1920. It started out as a supporter of left wing and feminist causes and the mouthpiece of the feminist Six Point Group. It later moved to the right along with the views of its owner...

.

His 1944 book The Personal Principle: Studies in modern poetry gave his strong views on contemporary poetry.

His controversial critical book The Withered Branch (1950) attacked the twentieth century novels of Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

, E M Forster, Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

, Margiad Evans

Margiad Evans

Margiad Evans was the pseudonym of Peggy Eileen Whistler , a poet, novelist and illustrator with a lifelong identification with the Welsh border country.-Life and works:...

, Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...

 and James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

.

Books

• The Autumn World. [Poems. With a black and white portrait by Richard Seddon], Fortune Press, 1939
• Don Quixote, and other poems, London, Right review, 1939.
• A Time to mourn. Poems, 1934-1943. London, Routledge (New Poets series. no. 12). 1943
• The Personal Principle: Studies in modern poetry, London, Routledge, 1944.
• Hamlet & the Pirates: An exercise in literary detection, London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1950
• The Withered Branch: Six studies in the modern novel. London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1950.
• The cottager’s companion, London, Peter Davies, 1975. ISBN 0432141103 and paperback edition, Mayflower, 1980. ISBN 0583128505.
• Self-Sufficient Country Living, New York, St Martins Press, 1978, ISBN 0312712480 (US edition of The Cottager's companion).
• And also much cattle : scenario for four voices, London Brentham Press, 1975. ISBN 0950345954 and, 1993 Harleston : Brynmill Press. ISBN 0907839576. (Broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 4 November 1956 ).
• Winter offering : selected poems 1934-1953, Gringley-on-the-Hill, S. Yorks. : Brynmill, c1990. ISBN 0907839517. Edition of 190 copies.

Contributions to books and magazines

This section is incomplete

• Now Magazine, Autumn 1940 - Tribunal Statement
• "Testament of a Conscientious Objector". In: Simmons, Clifford, The Objectors, Isle of Man, Times Press, 1965. pp. 82–122.

Lyrics of musical works by John Douglas Turner

• Dirtying My Thing, c 1970
• Your Mother Thinks I’m a Hoodlum, c 1970