Walter Frederick Morris (31 May 1892 – 1969) was an English novelist, best known for his mystery novel, ''
Bretherton'' (1929), set in
World War I.
Life
Morris was born in
Norwich. He attended
Norwich Grammar School and then went up to
Saint Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he studied history.
[David Morris, "The Life of Walter Frederick Morris", afterword to W. F. Morris, ''Pagan'', Casemate, Oxford, 2017, pp. 315–16.] He served with the
8th Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment during World War I, initially as an
infantryman, but he was soon commissioned as a temporary officer. He reached the rank of
major
Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...
by the age of 27, and was awarded the
Military Cross. At the end of the war he was in command of the Cycle Battalion of the XIII Army Corps.
[
While serving in the occupation army of the Rhineland in 1919 he met Lewine Corney, and they married later that year.][ He took up teaching in 1920, first in Jersey, then from 1925 at St Benedict's Priory in ]Ealing
Ealing () is a district in West London, England, west of Charing Cross in the London Borough of Ealing. Ealing is the administrative centre of the borough and is identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan.
Ealing was histor ...
, London.[
Morris began writing novels in 1925. He served in World War II as the captain of a searchlight unit in Norfolk. After the war he worked for British Industrial Films Limited, still living in Ealing with his wife. After she died in 1965 he returned to Norwich to live with his two unmarried sisters. He died in 1969.][
]
''Bretherton''
Critic A.C. Ward praised ''Bretherton'' as "an adventure-mystery war-novel with an admirably ingenious and leak-proof plot. This book combines a brilliant exercise of creative imagination with a remarkable ability to reproduce, vividly, first-hand experiences, and there is one brief battle-scene…which is memorable." (''The Nineteen-Twenties, Literature and Ideas in the Post-War Decade'', 1930, pp 163–4). Spy novelist Eric Ambler named the book as one of his top five spy stories (in the Afterword to the 1952 edition of his ''Epitaph for a Spy'').
List of works
*''Veteran Youth'' (as Corney Morris, c1927 Hodder & Stoughton)
*'' The British Empire'' (1927)
*'' Bretherton: Khaki or Field Grey?'' (1929 Geoffrey Bles) Published in United States as ''G.B'' (1929 Dodd, Mead)
*'' Behind the Lines'' (1930 Geoffrey Bles). Published in United States as ''The Strange Case of Gunner Rawley'' (1930 Dodd, Mead)
*''Pagan'' (1931 Geoffrey Bles)''The Tablet'', 24 October 1931, p 10
Accessed 19 August 2015
*''The Hold-up'' (1933 Geoffrey Bles)
*''Something to His Advantage'' (1935 Geoffrey Bles)
*''Goring's First Case'' (as Peter Kippax, 1936 Michael Joseph)
*''No Turning Back'' (1937 Michael Joseph)
*''The Channel Mystery'' (1939)
References
Amazon entry
External links
"My Grandfather the WWI Novelist" by David Morris
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morris, W. F.
English crime fiction writers
1969 deaths
1892 births
People educated at Norwich School
Alumni of St Catharine's College, Cambridge
20th-century English novelists