User:GMWWemyss

GMW Wemyss is the author of the Village Tales  series of novels (Cross and Poppy  and the imminently forthcoming Evensong); a poet and critic, co-annotator and co-editor of cherished critical editions of Kipling’s Mowgli stories and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows;  an historian ( ’37: the year of portent; The Confidence of the House: May 1940;  the forthcoming The Crisis: July 1914;  and When That Great Ship Went Down: the legal and political repercussions of the loss of RMS Titanic, an acclaimed centenary history of the US and UK Titanic  enquiries, praised by James Delingpole, then of the Daily Telegraph  (UK), and by Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, Paris Contributing Columnist, The Sunday Telegraph  (UK)); and a beloved West Country essayist ( Sensible Places: Essays on place, time, & countryside ). Interests: Cricket. Hunting, shooting, and angling. Beagling. Squash. Polo (No. 4). Real ale, real cider, real perry, wine. Rural pursuits. Steam railways. Draught horses. Bristol motorcars. Classics; history, geography, agriculture, archæology, sociology, anthropology, politics, philosophy, classical liberal economics. Parish matters; campanology. Heraldry. Fit and likely lads. Music, largely the Baroque and the corpus of English classical music, with an emphasis upon choral works. Memberships: (under his proper name) Various local and regional historical societies; various learned societies in the disciplines of politics, economics, and history; various hunts; the RSPB; the Royal Agricultural Society of England; the Rare Breeds Survival Trust; CAMRA; the British Beekeeper’s Association; the Countryside Alliance; the British Deer Society; the British Horse Society; the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings; the British Association for Shooting and Conservation; the Conservative Party; the Henry Jackson Society; the Prayer Book Society; his Regimental Association; the Campaign for Christ Church (Oxon); &c. Mr Wemyss, having an appallingly ramified extended family, has spent a goodish amount of time in numerous places, including Mid Yell, Dallas, Turriff, Montrose, Elgin, Crosby (one of the Edenic ones), Repton, Romsley, Earls Barton, Staunton, Pylle, Westbury, Wilcot, Little Cheverell, Pennington, Mount Pleasant, and a rather nice urban bolthole not a million miles from Long Acre. In that context, it is worth noting that his mother was a classically trained contralto. He himself studied violin and composition, and sang basso at university and in various parish choirs. Fortunately, for all his æsthetic interests, he was never debagged and tossed into Mercury Pond, due to the protective colouration of tweeds and an interest in field sports. He was educated at a small school near Slough and at a cathedral near to the old Morris factory.