Derek Stanley Savage (6 March 1917 – 14 October 2007) was a

pacifist Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaign ...

poet and critic.Most of the information in this article is from the Guardian obituary, cited above. The list of publications is from the British Library and Cornwall County Library catalogues. He was General Secretary of the

Anglican Pacifist Fellowship The Anglican Pacifist Fellowship (APF) is a body of people within the Anglican Communion who reject war as a means of solving international disputes, and believe that peace and justice should be sought through non-violent means. Beliefs In 2015, ...

, 1960–62.

Life

Savage was born in

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

and brought up in

Cheshunt Cheshunt ( ) is a town in Hertfordshire, England, north of London on the River Lea and Lee Navigation. It contains a section of the Lee Valley Park, including much of the River Lee Country Park. To the north lies Broxbourne and Wormley, Hertfor ...

. He went to Hertford Grammar School and

the Latymer School The Latymer School is a selective, Coeducation, mixed grammar school in Edmonton, London, Edmonton, London, England, established in 1624 by Edward Latymer. According to league tables, Latymer is one of the top state-schools in the country. Histo ...

, Edmonton and then a commercial college. He became a convinced

Christian Pacifist Christian pacifism is the theological and ethical position according to which pacifism and non-violence have both a scriptural and rational basis for Christians, and affirms that any form of violence is incompatible with the Christian faith. Chri ...

. In 1938 he married Constance Kiernan. They had six children. In the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

a tribunal accepted his

conscientious objection A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to objecti ...

conscription Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day un ...

. In a letter written in 1942, he informed George Orwell that Hitler required "not condemnation, but understanding". In 1947 the family moved to Cornwall, initially to a dilapidated cottage in the Heligan Woods and then into the village of

Mevagissey Mevagissey (; kw, Lannvorek) is a village, fishing port and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.

. Savage died in 2007, aged 90.

Writing and literary activities

According to Trevor Tolley,''The Poetry of the Forties in Britain''
by A. Trevor Tolley, Manchester University Press, 1985, , Chapter 4: Keeping Left, pp.55–65 Derek Savage was associated with the following "leftist" writers in the 1940s:

George Woodcock George Woodcock (; May 8, 1912 – January 28, 1995) was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, a philosopher, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet and published several volumes of travel wri ...

Alex Comfort Alexander Comfort (10 February 1920 – 26 March 2000) was a British scientist and physician known best for his nonfiction sex manual, ''The Joy of Sex'' (1972). He was an author of both fiction and nonfiction, as well as a gerontologist ...

J. F. Hendry James Findlay Hendry (12 September 1912 – 17 December 1986) was a Scottish poet known also as an editor and writer. He was born in Glasgow, and read Modern Languages at the University of Glasgow. During World War II he served in the Royal Arti ...

, Norman McCaig, Derek Stanford. In Cornwall his associates included Louis Adeane,

Dick Kitto Dick, Dicks, or Dick's may refer to: Media * ''Dicks'' (album), a 2004 album by Fila Brazillia * Dicks (band), a musical group * ''Dick'' (film), a 1999 American comedy film * "Dick" (song), a 2019 song by Starboi3 featuring Doja Cat Names ...

Mary Lee Settle Mary Lee Settle (July 29, 1918 – September 27, 2005) was an American writer. She won the 1978 National Book Award for her novel '' Blood Tie''.''Blood_Tie''(1977)._This_novel,_which_received_the_National_Book_Award_in_1978,_deals_with_America ...

, W. S. Graham,

Nessie Dunsmuir NESSIE (New European Schemes for Signatures, Integrity and Encryption) was a European research project funded from 2000 to 2003 to identify secure cryptographic primitives. The project was comparable to the NIST AES process and the Japanese Gov ...

Frank Baker John Franklin "Home Run" Baker (March 13, 1886 – June 28, 1963) was an American professional baseball player. A third baseman, Baker played in Major League Baseball from 1908 to 1922 for the Philadelphia Athletics and New York Yankees. Althoug ...

, Lionel Miskin and Bernie Moss. He contributed many articles, reviews and poems to magazines such as ''Twentieth Century Verse'', ''Life and letters today'' and '' The Phoenix'', of which he became European Editor, in succession to

Henry Miller Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical ref ...

. From Mevagissey he contributed many book reviews for ''

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...

'' and '' Time and Tide''. His 1944 book ''The Personal Principle: Studies in modern poetry'' gave his strong views on contemporary poetry. His controversial critical book ''The Withered Branch'' (1950) attacked the twentieth-century novels of

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...

E. M. Forster Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author, best known for his novels, particularly ''A Room with a View'' (1908), ''Howards End'' (1910), and ''A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous short stori ...

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

Margiad Evans Margiad Evans was the pseudonym of Peggy Eileen Whistler (17 March 1909 – 17 March 1958), an English poet, novelist and illustrator with a lifelong identification with the Welsh border country.Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan: 'Williams , Peggy Eileen a ...

Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley ...

and

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

. His last book of poetry, ''Winter offering: selected poems 1934–1953'', was issued by the Leavisite Brynmill Press in 1990.

Publications

Books

* ''The Autumn World''. oems. With a black and white portrait by Richard Seddon Fortune Press, 1939 * ''Don Quixote, and other poems'', London, Right review, 1939. * ''A Time to mourn. Poems, 1934–1943''. London, Routledge (New Poets series. no. 12). 1943 * ''The Personal Principle: Studies in modern poetry'', London, Routledge, 1944. * ''Hamlet & the Pirates: An exercise in literary detection'', London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1950 * ''The Withered Branch: Six studies in the modern novel''. London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1950. * ''The cottager's companion'', London, Peter Davies, 1975. and paperback edition, Mayflower, 1980. . * ''Self-Sufficient Country Living'', New York, St Martins Press, 1978, (US edition of ''The Cottager's companion''). * ''And also much cattle : scenario for four voices'', London Brentham Press, 1975. and, 1993 Harleston : Brynmill Press. . (Broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 4 November 1956 ). * ''Winter offering : selected poems 1934–1953'', Gringley-on-the-Hill, S. Yorks. : Brynmill, c1990. . Edition of 190 copies.

Contributions to books and magazines

* ''Now'' Magazine, Autumn 1940 – Tribunal Statement * "Testament of a Conscientious Objector". In: Simmons, Clifford, ''The Objectors'', Isle of Man, Times Press, 1965. pp. 82–122.

Lyrics of musical works by John Douglas Turner

* ''Dirtying My Thing'', c 1970 * ''Your Mother Thinks I’m a Hoodlum'', c 1970 The British Library catalogue identifies the author of these scores, John Douglas Turner, with the author of *''Book of Thomas the Contender, from Codex II of the Cairo gnostic library from Nag Hammadi (CG II, 7), the Coptic text, with translation and commentary'': 1975 *''Gnosticism and later platonism'' (Conference proceedings) *''The Nag Hammadi library after fifty years: proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature commemoration'', ed John D. Turner and Anne McGuire'': 1997 *''Platonisms: ancient, modern, and postmodern'', ed Kevin Corrigan and John D. Turner: 2007

References

''Guardian'' obituary of Derek Savage by Alison Oldham, with personal comment by Stephen Pike: ''The Guardian'', 21 November 2007, available online.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Savage, Derek 1917 births 2007 deaths English Christian pacifists Anglican pacifists British conscientious objectors English literary critics Literary critics of English People from Cheshunt