Howard Spring
Encyclopedia
Howard Spring was a Welsh
author
.
He began his writing career as a journalist
, but from 1934 produced a series of best-selling novel
s, the most successful of which was Fame is the Spur (1940), which has been both a major film
, starring Michael Redgrave
, and a BBC television series
(1982), starring Tim Piggott-Smith and David Hayman
.
, the son of a poor jobbing gardener. Spring was forced to leave school at the age of twelve, when his father died, to start work as an errand boy. He later became an office boy at a firm of chartered accountants in Cardiff Docks and then a messenger at the offices of the South Wales Daily News. Spring was keen to train as a reporter, and he spent his leisure time learning shorthand and taking evening classes at Cardiff University
, where he studied English, French, Latin, mathematics and history. He graduated to be a reporter on both the morning and evening editions of the South Wales Daily News.
In 1911 he joined the Yorkshire Observer in Bradford before moving in 1915 to the Manchester Guardian, but was there only a few months until he was called up for the Army Service Corps as a shorthand typist.
After the war, he returned to the Guardian, where he worked as a reporter. C. P. Scott
, the editor, apparently regarded Spring's reporting skills highly; he wrote of Spring that: “Nobody does a better ‘descriptive’ or a better condensation of a difficult address”.
In 1931, after reporting on a political meeting at which Lord Beaverbrook was the speaker, Beaverbrook was so impressed by Spring‘s piece that he arranged for Spring to be offered a post with the Evening Standard in London, as a book reviewer. Spring described the offer as “irresistible”, and the appointment proved very successful.
At the same time, Spring was developing his ambitions as a writer; his first book, Darkie and Co., came out in 1932, followed by his first novel, Shabby Tiger, which was set in Manchester, in 1934. Shabby Tiger was filmed as a TV series in 1973 for Granada Television
, and starred John Nolan
as Nick and Prunella Gee
as Anna, with Sharon Maughan
making her TV debut as the glamorous and ambitious Rachel Rosing. A sequel
, Rachel Rosing, followed.
His first major success came with My Son, My Son! (originally titled O Absalom), which was very successful in America and was filmed
in 1940. It was adapted for television by the BBC in 1977.
In 1939 Spring moved to Mylor in Cornwall
(his wife Marion's father had a house at St Mawes
) to become a full-time writer. In 1940, his best-known work, Fame is the Spur, the story of a Labour leader's rise to power, was published. During the war years Spring wrote two other novels, Hard Facts (1944) and Dunkerley's (1946).
In 1947 Spring and his wife moved to Falmouth
, The White Cottage in Fenwick Road, and in the post-war period, he published, There is No Armour (1948), The Houses in Between (1951), A Sunset Touch (1953), These Lovers Fled Away (1955), Time and the Hour (1957), All Day Long (1959) and I Met a Lady (1961). Spring also produced three volumes of autobiography: Heaven Lies About Us, A Fragment of Infancy (1939); In the Meantime (1942); and And Another Thing (1946), later published in one volume as The Autobiography of Howard Spring (1972). His last book was Winds of the Day (1964).
During this period Spring served eight years as President of the prestigious Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society
as well as being a Director of the Falmouth School of Art
and President of the Cornish Drama League. The latter was well known for producing plays at the open-air Minack Theatre
on the cliffs near Land's End.
Spring was a popular and successful writer, who combined a wide understanding of human character with technical skill as a novelist. His method of composition was painstaking and professional; each morning he would shut himself in his room and write one thousand words, steadily building up to novels of around one hundred and fifty thousand words. He rarely made major alterations to his writings.
Howard Spring died of a stroke.
In 1967, his wife Marion Howard Spring wrote an affectionate story of their life together called 'Howard' which was published by Collins. A. L. Rowse
wrote the foreword.
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
.
He began his writing career as a journalist
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
, but from 1934 produced a series of best-selling novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s, the most successful of which was Fame is the Spur (1940), which has been both a major film
Fame is the Spur (film)
Fame is the Spur is a 1947 British drama film directed by Roy Boulting. It stars Michael Redgrave, Rosamund John, Bernard Miles, David Tomlinson, Maurice Denham and Kenneth Griffith. A British politician rises to power, abandoning on the way his radical views for more conservative ones...
, starring Michael Redgrave
Michael Redgrave
Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave, CBE was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author.-Youth and education:...
, and a BBC television series
Fame is the Spur (TV series)
Fame is the Spur is a British television series which first aired on the BBC in 1982 . It was based on the novel Fame is the Spur by Howard Spring. It depicts a socialist politician who betrays his early beliefs as he grows older, and was believed to be based upon the Labour Prime Minister Ramsay...
(1982), starring Tim Piggott-Smith and David Hayman
David Hayman
David Hayman is a Scottish film and television actor and director, best known for his role as DCS Mike Walker in ITV drama Trial and Retribution. He also a prominent supporter of the SNP's call for Scottish independence....
.
Biography
Howard Spring was born in CardiffCardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
, the son of a poor jobbing gardener. Spring was forced to leave school at the age of twelve, when his father died, to start work as an errand boy. He later became an office boy at a firm of chartered accountants in Cardiff Docks and then a messenger at the offices of the South Wales Daily News. Spring was keen to train as a reporter, and he spent his leisure time learning shorthand and taking evening classes at Cardiff University
Cardiff University
Cardiff University is a leading research university located in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It received its Royal charter in 1883 and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. The university is consistently recognised as providing high quality research-based...
, where he studied English, French, Latin, mathematics and history. He graduated to be a reporter on both the morning and evening editions of the South Wales Daily News.
In 1911 he joined the Yorkshire Observer in Bradford before moving in 1915 to the Manchester Guardian, but was there only a few months until he was called up for the Army Service Corps as a shorthand typist.
After the war, he returned to the Guardian, where he worked as a reporter. C. P. Scott
C. P. Scott
Charles Prestwich Scott was a British journalist, publisher and politician. Born in Bath, Somerset, he was the editor of the Manchester Guardian from 1872 until 1929 and its owner from 1907 until his death...
, the editor, apparently regarded Spring's reporting skills highly; he wrote of Spring that: “Nobody does a better ‘descriptive’ or a better condensation of a difficult address”.
In 1931, after reporting on a political meeting at which Lord Beaverbrook was the speaker, Beaverbrook was so impressed by Spring‘s piece that he arranged for Spring to be offered a post with the Evening Standard in London, as a book reviewer. Spring described the offer as “irresistible”, and the appointment proved very successful.
At the same time, Spring was developing his ambitions as a writer; his first book, Darkie and Co., came out in 1932, followed by his first novel, Shabby Tiger, which was set in Manchester, in 1934. Shabby Tiger was filmed as a TV series in 1973 for Granada Television
Granada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
, and starred John Nolan
John Nolan
John Thomas Nolan is the lead singer/guitarist of Straylight Run and the guitarist/co-vocalist of Taking Back Sunday. Nolan left Taking Back Sunday in 2003 and during March 2010 rejoined Taking Back Sunday with Shaun Cooper, who left during his first run with the band, reforming the Tell All Your...
as Nick and Prunella Gee
Prunella Gee
Prunella Gee is an English actress.She studied at the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art where she won the Spotlight Award for Best Actress...
as Anna, with Sharon Maughan
Sharon Maughan
Sharon Maughan is a British actress.-Life and career:Maughan was born in Kirkby, Liverpool, one of five siblings in an Irish Catholic family...
making her TV debut as the glamorous and ambitious Rachel Rosing. A sequel
Sequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
, Rachel Rosing, followed.
His first major success came with My Son, My Son! (originally titled O Absalom), which was very successful in America and was filmed
My Son, My Son!
My Son, My Son! is a 1940 drama film based on a novel by the same name written by Howard Spring and directed by Charles Vidor. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction by John DuCasse Schulze.-Cast:* Madeleine Carroll - Livia Vaynol...
in 1940. It was adapted for television by the BBC in 1977.
In 1939 Spring moved to Mylor in Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
(his wife Marion's father had a house at St Mawes
St Mawes
St Mawes is a small town opposite Falmouth, on the Roseland Peninsula on the south coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It lies on the east bank of the Carrick Roads, a large waterway created after the Ice Age from an ancient valley which flooded as the melt waters caused the sea level to...
) to become a full-time writer. In 1940, his best-known work, Fame is the Spur, the story of a Labour leader's rise to power, was published. During the war years Spring wrote two other novels, Hard Facts (1944) and Dunkerley's (1946).
In 1947 Spring and his wife moved to Falmouth
Falmouth, Cornwall
Falmouth is a town, civil parish and port on the River Fal on the south coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It has a total resident population of 21,635.Falmouth is the terminus of the A39, which begins some 200 miles away in Bath, Somerset....
, The White Cottage in Fenwick Road, and in the post-war period, he published, There is No Armour (1948), The Houses in Between (1951), A Sunset Touch (1953), These Lovers Fled Away (1955), Time and the Hour (1957), All Day Long (1959) and I Met a Lady (1961). Spring also produced three volumes of autobiography: Heaven Lies About Us, A Fragment of Infancy (1939); In the Meantime (1942); and And Another Thing (1946), later published in one volume as The Autobiography of Howard Spring (1972). His last book was Winds of the Day (1964).
During this period Spring served eight years as President of the prestigious Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society
Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society
The Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society is an educational, cultural and scientific charity, based in Falmouth, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The Society exists to promote innovation in the arts and sciences...
as well as being a Director of the Falmouth School of Art
University College Falmouth
University College Falmouth is a British university college in Falmouth, Cornwall. Founded in 1902, it had previously been the Falmouth School of Art and then Falmouth College of Arts until it received taught degree-awarding powers in March 2005...
and President of the Cornish Drama League. The latter was well known for producing plays at the open-air Minack Theatre
Minack Theatre
The Minack Theatre is an open-air theatre, constructed above a gully with a rocky granite outcrop jutting into the sea...
on the cliffs near Land's End.
Spring was a popular and successful writer, who combined a wide understanding of human character with technical skill as a novelist. His method of composition was painstaking and professional; each morning he would shut himself in his room and write one thousand words, steadily building up to novels of around one hundred and fifty thousand words. He rarely made major alterations to his writings.
Howard Spring died of a stroke.
In 1967, his wife Marion Howard Spring wrote an affectionate story of their life together called 'Howard' which was published by Collins. A. L. Rowse
A. L. Rowse
Alfred Leslie Rowse, CH, FBA , known professionally as A. L. Rowse and to friends and family as Leslie, was a British historian from Cornwall. He is perhaps best known for his work on Elizabethan England and his poetry about Cornwall. He was also a Shakespearean scholar and biographer...
wrote the foreword.
See also
- The Queen's Book of the Red CrossThe Queen's Book of the Red CrossThe Queen's Book of the Red Cross was published in November 1939 in afundraising effort to aid the Red Cross during World War II.The book was sponsored by Queen Elizabeth, and itscontents were contributed by fifty British authors and artists....