Philip O'Connor
| Philip O'Connor | |
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| Born | Philip Marie Constant Bancroft O'Connor 8 September 1916 Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, England |
| Died | 29 May 1998 (aged 81) Fontarèches, France |
| Occupation | Poet, writer, radio host |
| Notable works | Memoirs of a Public Baby |
| Partner | Anna Wing (1953–1960) |
| Children | Jon Wing-O'Connor |
Philip O'Connor (8 September 1916 – 29 May 1998) was an English writer and surrealist poet, who also painted. He was one of the "Wheatsheaf writers" of 1930s Fitzrovia (who took their name from the pub The Wheatsheaf). He married six times and fathered at least eight children.
The son of a well-educated Irish father he never knew and a woman of mixed Irish and Burmese ancestry whose exceeded her reach, he was born in Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire and taken to France, where his mother abandoned him at the age of four, in the care of a woman, Madame Tillieux, who ran a pâtisserie in the seaside resort of Wimereux near Boulogne.
Two years later, his mother returned to claim him and was met with violent protests. This heartbreaking scene later became the subject of a BBC radio play and Wimereux, its wide white beaches and the warmth of its well-ordered teashop, was to haunt O'Connor for many years afterwards. "Memories of twilight in Wimereux return home in a glass of wine," he wrote later. His mother took him back to England and then, after setting up housekeeping in a Soho cellar, abandoned him again, this time, he recounted, to the care of a one-legged bachelor civil servant who wore a size 13 boot, and who lived in a small wooden hut on Box Hill, near Dorking in Surrey. In due course, O'Connor attended the nearby Dorking High School, reading the entire works of Charles Dickens before the age of 14 but otherwise proving a difficult student, ill at ease with his fellow pupils. Leaving school at 17, O'Connor plunged into the bohemian life in the artistic quarter of London known as Fitzrovia, declaiming doggerel at bars frequented by Dylan Thomas and others, giving impassioned, if not always comprehensible, speeches at Hyde Park Corner.
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