Leslie Paul

Leslie Paul (1905-1985) was an Anglo-Irish writer and founder of the Woodcraft Folk.

Life

Born in Dublin in April 1905, Leslie Paul grew up in South East London. After the World War I he became deeply involved with scouting and related youth movements.

After a dispute with the Kibbo Kift leadership, mainly John Hargrave in 1925, some south London co-operative groups challenged Hargrave's authoritarian tendencies. The dispute was over his refusal to recognise a local group called "The Brockleything". The result was a split, and a group broke away from the Kindred, to form the still active Woodcraft Folk.

Works

In 1951 he wrote an autobiography called "Angry Young Man". The title became the catch phrase angry young men subsequently used to describe a generation of British writers, including Kingsley Amis, Colin Wilson and (over-broadly) applied to authors of the "kitchen sink dramas".

References

*W. H. Saumarez Smith, ‘Paul, Leslie Allen (1905–1985)’, rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004