Francis King

Francis Henry King, CBE (4 March 1923 – 3 July 2011) was a British novelist, poet and short story writer. He worked for the British Council for 25 years, with positions in Europe and Japan. For 25 years he was a chief book reviewer for the Sunday Telegraph, and for 10 years its theatre critic.

He was born on 4 March 1923 in Adelboden, Switzerland to a father in the civil service, brought up in India and sent back to England when his father was dying. As a boy, he was shunted around among aunts and uncles.

He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford. During World War II he was a conscientious objector, and left Oxford to work on the land.

After completing his degree in 1949, he worked for the British Council. His positions with them took him to Italy, Salonika and finally Kyoto. In 1964 he resigned to write full-time, by when he had already published nine novels, as well as poetry and a memoir.

He won the W. Somerset Maugham Prize for his novel The Dividing Stream (1951) and also won the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Prize. In 2000, he was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature".

His 1956 book The Firewalkers was published pseudonymously under the name Frank Cauldwell.

From 1986 to 1989 he was President of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers and oldest human rights organisation. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was appointed an Officer (OBE) of the Order of the British Empire in 1979 and a Commander of the Order (CBE) in 1985.

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