J. K. Stanford

John Keith Stanford OBE MC (1892-1971) was a British writer of the mid 20th century.

He was educated at Rugby School and St. John's College, Oxford. He was commissioned into the Suffolk Regiment in 1915 and was attached to the Tank Corps from 1917. He ended the First World War with the rank of Captain. In 1939 he was commissioned Lieutenant in the National Defence Companies. In 1940 he transferred to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. He retired in 1945 with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

Between the wars he was in the Indian Civil Service, for much of the time in Burma. He wrote 27 books, and was a regular contributor to "The Field", "Shooting Times", "Ibis", the journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, and other magazines. He was for a period Vice-President of the British Ornithologists' Union (BOU).

Many of his books are about country sports (hunting and shooting), ornithology, or British colonial life between the wars.

List of works

(dates from Bodleian Library catalogue)
*"The Twelfth" (1944, rev. 1964 as "The Twelfth and After: being the life and death of George Hysteron-Proteron")
*"Far Ridges: a record of travel in north-eastern Burma 1938-9" (1946)
*"The Awl-Birds" (1949)
*"Guns Wanted" (1949)
*"Bledgrave Hall" (1950)
*"Reverie of a Qu'Hai, & other Stories" (1951)
*"Last Chukker" (1951)
*"No Sportsman at All" (1952)
*"House of Edward Stanford Ltd. 1852-1952", by Lt Col J. K. Stanford and E. G. Godfrey (1952)
*"Full Moon at Sweatenham: a nightmare" (1953)
*"A Bewilderment of Birds" (1954)
*"British Friesians: A History of the Breed" (1956)
*"Fox Me: the story of a cub" (1958)
*"Jimmy Bundobust" (1958)
*"Death of a Vulpicide" (1960)
*"Ladies in the Sun: the Memsahibs' India, 1790-1860" (1962)
*"Broken Lanterns" (1962)
*"And Some in Horses" (1965)
*"Tail of an Army" (1966)
*"A Keeper's Country" (1968, re-issued 1989)
*"The Complex Gun" (1968)
*"Partridge Shooting"

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