John Hampson (novelist)

John Hampson
Portrait of John Hampson by Howard Coster
Born	(1901-03-26)26 March 1901 Handsworth, Birmingham
Died	26 December 1955(1955-12-26) (aged 54)
Nationality	English

John Frederick Norman Hampson Simpson (26 March 1901 – 26 December 1955), who wrote as John Hampson, was an English novelist.

Best known for his 1931 novel Saturday Night at the Greyhound - an unexpected success for the Hogarth Press - he was a member of the Birmingham Group of working class authors which included Walter Allen, Leslie Halward, Walter Brierley and Peter Chamberlain. His elder brother was the motorcycle racer, Jimmy Simpson (James Hampson-Simpson).

Hampson was born in Handsworth in Birmingham, the fifth of eight children of a prosperous and prominent family who had made their money in brewing and the theatre. The collapse of the family business in 1907 left them in financial difficulties, however, and they moved to Leicester where Hampson's parents found work in a variety of less prestigious occupations. Unable to complete his formal education due to ill health, Hampson worked in a munitions factory during World War I and spent the following years working in a variety of jobs in Nottingham and Derbyshire, including working as a waiter, a chef and a billiard-marker, and running a pub with his sister. A conviction for shoplifting books saw him serve a prison term in Wormwood Scrubs.