Chiswick Timeline of Writers & Books: A Quick Guide
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“Only connect” wrote EM Forster in Howards End and that could be the motto of the Chiswick Timeline of Writers and Books. For over 20 years, Forster lived in Chiswick (where he is celebrated with a blue plaque) and he is featured on our Writers Trail and our Writers Tales pages, where there are links and anecdotes shedding light on some of the better-known authors on the Timeline.
On this page, we feature around 60 more Writers’ Lives from the Chiswick Timeline of Writers and Books. See also Writers’ Lives – A-L. These pages are currently being re-ordered – please bear with us during these changes.
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Chiswick Writers Research Group (CWRG)
The entries have been written by members of the Chiswick Writers Research Group, brought together by the Brentford & Chiswick Local History Society. Its members are: Francis Ames-Lewis, Val Bott, Meg Clarke, Hazel Dakers, Diana Oppé and James Wisdom – and we are very grateful to them.
They are happy to respond to any queries. As with all history, they say, the entries are only provisional – they may spark more details or alterations, which they will be happy to hear about and incorporate into revised entries. Please address comments and queries to admin@chiswickbookfestival.net.
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Some longer entries are continued on the Writers’ Lives – Extended page. Click READ MORE where indicated.
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Jessie Macgregor (1847-1919)
Artist, teacher of art history and writer. Grew up in an artistic family in Hammersmith, trained first at the Liverpool Drawing Academy founded by her grandfather, then at the Royal Academy School, winner of the Royal Academy Gold Medal at the Summer Exhibition of 1879. Her first book,in verse and with her own illusrations, was Xmas Eve at Romney Hall (1902). Her book, Gardens of Celebrities and Celebrated Gardens in and around London (1918) includes descriptions, watercolours and drawings of Chiswick House, Hogarth’s House and Walpole House. She lived at 15 Bath Road in Bedford Park in 1913, when she was first working on the works which appeared later in the book, but seems to have spent her last years with her brother and his family at Stamford Brook House.
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Virginia Makins (b. 1939) Journalist and writer specialising in education. Long-term Chiswick resident living in W4. She married David Shapiro in 1972. The Invisible Children – Nipping Failure in the Bud with Simon Ricey was published in 1997 and Not Just a Nursery – Multi-Agency Early Year in Action in the same year. She worked as features editor and deputy editor for the Times Educational Supplement and was chair of the Chiswick School Governors in the 1980s.
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José Manser. Journalist specialising in design and architecture. She has contributed to many publications including the Times, Guardian and Independent, and was the editor of RIBA Interiors for many years. Her late husband Michael was an architect as are their two children, and she lives in Chiswick. Planning your Kitchen (with Michael Manser; 1976) The Logical Art of Furniture (with Rodney Kinsman; 1992); The Joseph Shops, London 1979-88 (1991); Mary Fedden and Julian Trevelyan: Life and Art by the River Thames (2012); Hugh Casson: A Biography (2000).
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Steve Marriott (1947-1991)
Musician and songwriter, frontman of The Small Faces, and other bands.
Lived at 10 Eyot Green W4 (also see Des Lynam) from 1968-1970. Whilst living there he penned Lazy Sunday, referencing his neighbours who complained about the noise emanating from enormous Wharfedale speakers in the small living room. It is a track on the album Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake. (sources; Daily Mail property article 2011, Wapping Wharf; An Interview with Jenny Marriott)
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Robin Lapthorn Marris (1924 – 2012), economist and academic. Fellow of King’s College Cambridge (1951 – 1976); Professor of Economics, Birkbeck, University of London (1981 – 1987). Economic advisor to the Labour Party in 1950s and 1960s; worked on problems of national and global poverty and macro-economic policy. The Economic Theory of Managerial Capitalism (1964; revised 1998); Reconstructing Keynesian Economics with Imperfect Competition (1991); How to Save the Underclass (1996); Ending Poverty (1999). Lingard House, Chiswick Mall, W4 (1981 – 2012)
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Ralph Miliband (1924-1994) Born in Belgium, to Polish Jewish emigres, Ralph Miliband (born Adolphe Miliband) and his father, Samuel, escaped to London ahead of the Germans in 1940. In Chiswick they worked removing furniture from bombed houses and Ralph studied at Acton College. From 1943 he served for 3 years in the Belgian section of the Royal Navy. In the 1950’s he was associated with the “New Left”. Miliband both studied, under Harold Laski whose works he had first read in Chiswick Library, and taught at LSE before moving to Leeds University as Professor of Politics 1972-78. He claimed to be a democratic Marxist whose best-known works included: Parliamentary Socialism (1961); The State in Capitalist Society (1969) and The Capitalist Democracy in Britain (1982). He was founding editor of The Socialist Register and father of two recently leading figures in the Labour Party. Address unknown
See: Chiswick Library and Ralph Miliband.
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David Miller (1966 -2016)
Born in Edinburgh, educated Canterbury and Cambridge, lived with his wife, Kate Colquhoun, in Chiswick. Director of literary agency Rogers, Coleridge and White. An authority on Joseph Conrad. First novel, ‘Today’, Atlantic Books, 2011
Sources: end papers of ‘Today’, obituary in ‘The Bookseller’ 30 Dec 2016
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Josias [Joe] Miller (1683/4 – 1738).
Comic actor, joker and epigrammatist. Joe Miller’s Jests, or The Wits Vade-Mecum; first edition ed. J. Mottley (a.k.a. Elijah Jenkins). London 1739. Miller lived for many years probably at Vernon Cottage on Strand-on-the-Green, W4, where he died in August 1738.
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Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847) Irish barrister and politician – leader of the late C18th and C19th movement for catholic emancipation and an independent Ireland. Daniel O’Connell stayed in Chiswick Mall boarding house, in what became known as Walpole House during his time as a law student in London in the 1790s. It was not until 1835 onwards that his political thoughts and speeches were published, in part years after his death.
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Robert Oulds (b. 1976) Politician and military historian. Director of the Bruges Group, a think tank based in London. He published Everything you wanted to know about the EU – But were afraid to ask 2013, Montgomery and the First War On Terror (2013) and Knife Edge: Montgomery and the Battle of the Bulge (2013). A long-term Chiswick resident, Oulds has been both standard bearer and treasurer for the Chiswick branch of the Royal British Legion and a councillor (Cons) for the Homefields ward in Chiswick for a number of years. http://www.chiswickw4.com/default.asp?section=info&page=montybook001.htm
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Joseph Paxton (1803–1865), MP for Coventry (1854–1865), knighted 1851. Gardener, architect and garden designer, publisher and editor. A Pocket Botanical Dictionary, comprising the names, history, and culture of all plants known in Britain . . . (1840; revised ed. 1868); The Flower Garden (1850). Editor of The Horticultural Register (from 1831), The Magazine of Botany (from 1834), and (with John Lindley, Charles Wentworth Dilke and William Bradbury) The Gardeners’ Chronicle (from 1841). Lived in Chiswick 1823 – 1826.
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Susan Penhaligon (b. 1949) Born in Manila, Susan Penhaligon grew up in Cornwall and went to school in Bristol. David Penhaligon, former Liberal MP, was a cousin. A well-known TV and Rep actress of her generation she wrote a novel in 2008, For the Love of Angel, set in Cornwall in the 1880s. She lived in Chiswick during the 1970’s, prior to that in Acton, and in more recent years on a Dutch barge not far from Chiswick.
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Mark Edward Perugini (1876-1948) Born in Chelsea in 1876, Mark Edward Perugini was an editor and author whose publications included a Pageant of the Ballet Plays for Dancers and the Omnibus Box. His father, Edward Charles Perugini was a comedian and his mother, Florence an actress. His uncle was married to Catherine Dickens, one of the daughters of Charles Dickens. Mark Edward married Violet Mary Tennick in April 1913 in Hanover, Jamaica but was widowed and married for a second time to a dancer and teacher of dance, Irene Mawer. In 1918 he served in the RNVS. Perugini died in his home of about a year in Cheltenham. In 1891 he was living with his widowed mother and two siblings at 62 Woodstock Rd, Chiswick. In 1911, single, Perugini was living at 75 Shaftesbury Road, Ravenscourt Park W.
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Andrew Phelan (1923-2013) lived at 17 Hartington Road, Grove Park. Born in Ireland, called to the Bar in England and was a Circuit Judge in London for 21 years. Kept a 32-foot Westerly Fulmar, Sarakiniko, in Portsmouth from 1985. Author of The Law for Small Boats (1965), Ireland from the Sea (1998), both a sailing guide and a tourist/local history guide, covering the entire Irish coastline, and containing information on local history and lore, and Turning Tides: A Voyage Around the Irish Sea (2003), an investigation into the world of pirates, smugglers, naval heroes, invaders, slaves and other fascinating and strange true stories of the Irish Sea.
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William Phillimore Watts Phillimore (1853 – 19130)
Born in Nottingham, died in Newton Abbot, buried in Bridgnorth. No evidence of his living in Chiswick traced, but he made a significant contribution to its history. With W H Whitear began publishing articles in the Chiswick Times in 1896. Phillimore & Whitear’s Chiswick: An Illustrated Quarterly Magazine devoted to the History & Antiquities of the Parish, followed, published at The Chiswick Times and by the authors at 124 Chancery Lane.
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Erin Pizzey (b.1939)
Campaigner for victims of domestic violence. Established (1971) Chiswick Women’s Aid refuges, first in Belmont Terrace, later in Chiswick High Road. This became Refuge, national charity, for women and children, against domestic violence (1993). Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear (1974, Penguin and TV documentary). Many conflicts with Hounslow Council – squatting, overcrowding, money. Has published 21 books (8 non-fiction,13 fiction). Lived then in Goldhawk Road. Left UK in 1981; now in Twickenham.
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Giles William Playfair (1910-1996 )
Author. Son of Sir Nigel Playfair (1874-1934, Director of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith) who lived at Said House, Chiswick Mall W4 from 1931-1934. From 1964-1980 Giles Playfair resided at 2 Ramillies Road, W4. He was a critic of the death penalty and a campaigner for prison reform, publishing The Punitive Obsession: An Unvarnished History Of The English Prison System in 1971 and Crime in our Century in 1977, amongst others. Notably wrote Keane, Paradoxical Genius, a biography of Edmund Keane published in 1939. He died in Paris and is buried in the Cimetiere de Montmartre
(sources; B&CLHS Gill Clegg’s History web pages, MABPP)
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Stephen Potter (1900- 1969)
Author. At Riverside House, 2 Chiswick Mall, 1928 – 1939. The Young Man (1929), D H Lawrence: A First Study (1930), Coleridge (1933), Minnow Among Tritons (1934), Coleridge and S.T.C (1935), The Muse in Chains: a Study in Education (1937). Teacher of English Literature, Birkbeck 1926 to 1937; Producer at the BBC 1937, transferred to Manchester 1939.
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Diana Pullein-Thompson (1925-2015 )
Author & horsewoman. Lived at 35 Esmond Road, Chiswick, W4 (? between 1980 – 1993 (husband, Dennis Farr, was director of The Courtauld Institute for these years). She began writing in her teens, often with her sisters Christine and Josephine, and was the author of 30 pony books – “ripping yarns, full of adventure, in which plucky young heroines overcome daunting challenges and turn feeble nags into champions’. Published during her time in Chiswick were The Pony Seekers (1981), Black Piper (1982), A Pony Found (1983) and Dear Pup (1988). She also wrote 3 books as Diana Farr. (sources; Companydirector check website, Guardian obituary, Mainly about Bedford Park People)
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Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), novelist, poet and travel writer. The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789); A Sicilian Romance (1790); The Romance of the Forest (1791); The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794); The Italian (1797); Gaston de Blondeville (1826). Non-fiction: A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 (1795); the Collected Edition of her poems (1816). Her uncle Thomas Bentley (1730 – 1780), business partner to Josiah Wedgwood, was buried in St Nicholas, Chiswick.
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Michael Redgrave (1908 – 1985);
CBE (1952), KBE (1959), actor. In My Mind’s Eye: an Autobiography (1983). He lived at Bedford House, Chiswick Mall, W4 2PJ (1945 – 1954).
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Corin Redgrave (1939 – 2010),
Actor. Michael Redgrave – My Father (1995); Blunt Speaking (2012). He lived at Bedford House, Chiswick Mall, W4 2PJ (1945 – 1954)
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Lynn Redgrave (1943 – 2010).
OBE (2008?), actor and writer. Diet for Life: How I Lost Weight and Learned to Stay Slim (1992); Shakespeare for my Father (1993); Journal: A Mother and Daughter’s Recovery from Breast Cancer (2003; with Annabel Clark). She lived at Bedford House, Chiswick Mall, W4 2PJ (1945 – 1954)
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Vanessa Redgrave (born 1937)
CBE (1967), actor. Vanessa Redgrave. An Autobiography, New York (Random House) 1991. She lived at Bedford House, Chiswick Mall, W4 2PJ (1945 – 1954)
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Goronwy Rees (1909-1979)
Journalist, academic and writer. Lived at 5 Strand-on-the -Green and later in Bedford Park from 1975 until his death in 1979. Goronwy Rees worked as a journalist for The Guardian and The Spectator. A Marxist academic during the 1930s, Rees was friendly with Guy Burgess during this time and was probably recruited as a Soviet agent. From 1946-1949 he worked for MI6. Goronwy Rees wrote 10 books, including 2 autobiographies, A Bundle of Sensations and A Chapter of Accidents. (sources; WWW on Strand on the Green, Looking for Mr Nobody: The Secret Life of Goronwy Rees by Jenny Rees)
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Samuel Richardson (1689 – 1761)
Novelist and printer. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740); Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady (1748); The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753). From 1736 to 1738 Richardson rented a tenement near to Corney House, Sutton Court, Chiswick.
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William Percy Roe FRICS FAI (1919 – 2017)
Surveyor and partner in Tyser Greenwood & Co. 14 Alwyn Avenue W4. Glimpses of Chiswick’s Place in History (1990), Glimpses of World War II (1991), Glimpses of Chiswick’s Development (1999). William Roe was born in Chiswick, served in the 3rd Survey Regiment, Royal Artillery, in the Middle East and then in Italy, and was a prominent member of the Methodist Church in Sutton Court Road. He also illustrated his three books, and his Christmas cards were always Chiswick scenes. He was Vice-Chairman of the Brentford and Chiswick Local History Society from 1995 to 2008.
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Sir Francis Ronalds (1788-1873)
Scientist, inventor and pioneering electrical engineer, created the first working telegraph over a substantial distance in 1816. Lived with his mother in Chiswick Lane, then at what became Kelmscott House (home of the Morris family) where he laid out a 8 miles of telegraph wire insulated in glass tubes surround by pitch. Papers on electricity in Tilloch’s ‘Philosophical Magazine’ 1814, 1815; Descriptions of an Electrical Telegraph & of some other Electrical Apparatus London (1823)
Sources: Oxford DNB, B F Ronalds: ‘Sir Francis Ronalds, Father of the Electric Telegraph’ (2016)
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Christine Shaw (dates not known)
Local historian. The Rebuilding of Chiswick Vicarage 1657-8 (London, BCLHS, 1982). Lived at Morton House, Chiswick Mall, 1953 – ca.1990. While researching the history of Morton House, Christine Shaw came upon the almost unbroken series of Ratebooks and Churchwarden’s Accounts, dating from 1621, in the archives of St Nicholas Church, Chiswick.
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Mel Smith (1952–2013)
Born to Ken and Vera Smith who ran her family’s greengrocery shop in Quick Road, Chiswick, London. They converted it to a bookmakers and made enough money to move to a semi-detached house. Mel was educated at Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith and at New College, Oxford where he studied experimental psychology. He left and in 1963 became assistant director at the Royal Court Theatre in London.
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Fritz Spiegl (1926- 2003 )
Musician, Journalist, Broadcaster & Writer.
Lodged at 52 Strand on the Green, with Mrs Audrey Tower, whilst studying at The Royal College of Music, 1944-1946. Joined The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra as principal flautist. Wrote the Z Cars tv theme. Books include A small Book of Grave Humour (1971), Keep Taking The Tabloids. What The Papers Say and How They Say It (1983) and An Illustrated Everyday History of Liverpool and Merseyside (1998)
(sources; Telegraph/Guardian obituaries, B&CLHS Journal – Who Was Who on Strand on the Green by Judges & Knight)
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Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (1847-1900)
Painter and Art Critic and first cousin and close friend of journalist and novelist Robert Louis Stevenson.
Books: Engraving (1886); Peter Paul Rubens (1898);The Devils of Notre Dame (1895); The Art of Velasquez (1895); Velasquez (1898); Essay on Raeburn (1900)
Born in Edinburgh, he later lived at 41 Oxford Road Chiswick where he died.
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Don Taylor (1936 – 2003)
Playwright and director for stage, TV and radio. Stage plays: Grounds for Marriage (1967), The Roses of Eyam(1970), Daughters of Venice (1991; for Chiswick Youth Theatre (CYT)), Women of Athens (1993; for CYT). TV drama: The Exorcism (1972), A Last Visitor for Mr Hugh Peter (1981), and many others. Memoir: Days of Vision (1990). He lived at 33 Airedale Avenue, W4 2NV, from about 1970 to about 1995.
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Jonathan Dryden Taylor (b.1973)
Writer for TV; actor. That Mitchell and Webb Look (2006); 10 Things I Hate about… (2012); The Golden Rules of TV (2012). He lived at 33 Airedale Avenue, W4 2NV, from 1973 to about 1995.
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Chief Superintendent Arthur Thorp (b 1900) A policeman who rose through the ranks to the top of the Metropolitan Police, set up the Fraud Squad and retired after 33 years to spend time on his sea-going cabin cruiser. He published his memoir Calling Scotland Yard: Being the Casebook of Chief Superintendent Arthur Thorp in 1954.
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Dr John Todhunter (1839-1916)
Born Dublin 1839, where he studied medicine and three times won the Vice-Chancellor’s prize for English Verse. Poet, playwright and literary critic, as well as a doctor of medicine and an occasional painter and composer, he spent periods in Vienna and Paris before practising medicine in Dublin. Became a Professor of English Literature there in 1870, then resigned to travel. He settled in Bedford Park, first in Bath Road and then at “Orchardcroft”, The Orchard and was a member of the Calumet Club.
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Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1853 – 1917), actor, director and theatre manager. KBE (1909). An Essay on the Imaginative Faculty (1893); Thoughts and Afterthoughts (1913); Nothing Matters (1917). He lived at Walpole House, Chiswick Mall, W4 between 1904 and 1909.
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Thomas Harrington Tuke (1826-1888)
Physician. Lived in Chiswick as a child, his father was the superintendent of, and Thomas later ran the Manor House Private Lunatic Asylum in Chiswick, from 1837-1888.
Tuke specialised in the treatment of the insane with non-restraint methods. He wrote medical papers but no books found. (sources; B&CLHS, Wellcome Library, census and electoral register records)
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Martin Wainwright (b. 1950) Journalist and writer. Lived at 35 Speldhurst Road, W4 1979 to late ‘84, then 67 Burlington Lane, W4 until September 1987, when the family moved to Leeds. Married Penny Cartledge 1979 (See separate entry). He worked for The Guardian for 37 years, including 17 as the paper’s northern correspondent. He retired from The Guardian in 2013. He has written several books on northern or countryside topics, including a biography of the unrelated Alfred Wainwright – Wainwright: The Man Who Loved the Lakes (2007) and a guide to the Coast to Coast Walk (revised 2010). Other books include True North: In praise of England’s better half (2009) and Morris Minor; the Biography: sixty years of Britain’s favourite car (also 2010). He writes a blog about moths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Wainwright#Selected_publications
martinsmoths.blogspot.com
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Oliver Wainwright (b. 1984) Journalist and photographer. Architect and design correspondent of The Guardian. Published Inside North Korea with Julius Wiedeman in 2018. Son of Martin and Penny Wainwright (See separate entries). Spent early childhood in Chiswick.
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Tom Wainwright (b. 1982) Journalist and author. Has worked for The Economist in various guises from 2007 onwards. Currently media editor. Narconomics – How to Run a Drug Cartel, based on his three years as The Economist’s Central America correspondent-2016. Son of Martin and Penny Wainwright (See separate entries). Spent early childhood in Chiswick.
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James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903)
Painter and etcher. His Ten O’clock Lecture (1885) is a manifesto of his belief in ‘art for art’s sake’. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890) incorporated his pamphlet Whistler v. Ruskin: Art and Art Critics (1878). Whistler never lived or worked in Chiswick, but he was buried in 1903 in Chiswick Old Burial Ground.
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Henry White (b. 1978) Comedy writer, working in television, online, and most recently in children’s fiction. Publications: Little Badman and the Invasion of the Killer Aunties with Humza Arshad (2019) and Little Badman and the Time-travelling Teacher of Doom (2020), again with Humza Arshad. Lived in Chiswick as a child. Now living in W4. https://henry-white.weebly.com/
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Christopher Wilk (b.1954) Curator and furniture historian. At Victoria & Albert Museum since 1988, Chief Curator since 1996. Publications include Thonet: 150 Years of Furniture (1980); Marcel Breuer: Furniture and Interiors (MoMA 1981); Frank Lloyd Wright: the Kaufmann Office (V&A 1993); Modernism: Designing a New World (V&A 2006); Plywood: a material story (V&A 2017). Already on web pages but no residence in Chiswick identified.
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Lewis Pinhorn Wood (1848-1918) Landscape artist. Lived at 51 Homefield Road, W4 around 1901, moving by 1910 to Sussex. In 1890, aged 41 and with a young family of four, he wrote a story for children entitled “Harry Goodchild’s Day Dream: A Tale”. The 28-page book was published by George Stoneman. The monthly magazine The Coming Day reviewed it as “A childish but rather pretty story about two children who were gifted with wings to enable them to fly for once to the moon”.