It gives me great pleasure to welcome Lucinda Neall to the blog today. Lucinda is the daughter of Michael MccGwire who was a midshipman in 1942 and served on the H.M.S Rodney during Operation Pedestal. He later went on to have a distinguished career as an academic after serving in the Royal Navy. Lucinda is a…
Category: Malta convoys
Captain Thomas Sydney Horn, OBE, Master of the Sydney Star 5 May 1899 – June 1971
Thomas Horn as a young man I have recently returned from a writing retreat at Anam Cara in Ireland, where I had the chance to share some of the poems from Convoy. I came back to find an email from Thomas Horn’s grand daughter, Moya. She had read the Convoy blog posts about the men…
Sergeant William John Lazell, Royal Artillery– 26 October 1920 – 28th February 1980
Thus far with these biographical sketches I’ve introduced you to my taid, my mother, a couple of RAF pilots and the captain of a merchant ship so now it is the turn of the army. Whilst doing the research for Convoy I was fortunate enough to make contact with Paul Lazell who owns a splendid…
Convoy – the tour continues
With thanks to Lindsay Stanberry-Flynn and Rebecca Gethin who have been asking me thoughtful and thought-provoking questions about how the book came together and featuring Convoy on their blogs. Lindsay’s blog Rebecca Gethin Featured-writers
Lieutenant Commander Roger Percival Hill, DSO, DSC – 22 June 1910 – 5 May 2001
I could simply suggest that in order to find out about Roger Hill you go away and read Destroyer Captain: memoirs of the war at sea 1942-45. This covers his time in command of the destroyers Ledbury, Greville and Jervis and he says in the introduction “As far as I know, and memory can play…
Convoy
Officially today was the day of publication for Convoy and so the book is going out into the world on a tide of good will. It and I have our supporters and cheerleaders and I’m particularly grateful to Jan Fortune of Cinnamon Press who believed in the book from its earliest stages I am mindful…
Thomas Francis Neil, DFC*, AFC, AE
Tom Neil had already fought in the Battle of Britain when he was posted to Malta in the summer of 1941. He is well known for his books on his wartime experiences; Gun Button to Fire, Onward to Malta, Questions of Guilt (short stories), Flight into Darkness (short stories). His most recent book is Silver…
Captain Thomas Sydney Horn, Merchant Seaman, OBE, 5 May 1899 – June 1971
A brief word of explanation about these biographical sketches. These will mostly be about the things I found out about these men for which there wasn’t room in Convoy. They do all feature in the poems but there is so much more to tell about their lives. Each one of them could do with a…
Percy Belgrave “Laddie” Lucas, RAF Pilot, CBE, DSO and Bar, DFC, (2 September 1915 – 20 March 1998)
Laddie Lucas lived a full life, as a champion golfer, an MP, a businessman and a writer as his volumes of autobiography attest. However I am principally concerned in this post with the time he spent on Malta during 1942 as an RAF pilot and from June as squadron leader with 249 squadron. Laddie arrived…
James Honeybill, Merchant Seaman – 8th March 1903 – 12th March 1993
Earlier in the year I promised to provide some biographical details about the men who are in the poems in Convoy. The only place to start is with my grandfather, Jim, taid as I called him (Welsh for grandfather). He was a merchant seaman all his life and first went to sea in 1919 at…