Hugh Falkus

Hugh Falkus (born 15 May 1917), Cheam, Surrey, England – (d. 30 March 1996, Cumbria), was a British writer, film maker, World War II pilot and angler. In an extremely varied career, he is perhaps best known for his seminal books on angling, particularly salmon and sea trout fishing; however, he was also a noted film-maker and broadcaster for the BBC.

Hugh Edward Lance Falkus was born during a World War I zeppelin raid to James Falkus, a Surrey bank manager, and his wife Alice Maud. James retired early to a boat, first on the Essex marshes and then in Devon, upon which Hugh was sent to Culford School in Suffolk. According to his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Hugh caught his first fish when he was four, learned to shoot when he was six, and was an expert helmsman by the age of fifteen. By eighteen he had learned to fly and at twenty he became a pilot in the RAF.

On 11 July 1939 he married Doris Marjorie, and they had two sets of twins (three sons and a daughter). The youngest son died in infancy.

Suggested by the title of his biography by Chris Newton, "A Life on the Edge" [http://www.medlarpress.com/7878-Hugh-Falkus--A-Life-on-the-Edge.html] , Falkus could be a restless and iconoclastic figure. He could be intolerant yet generous, egotistical yet loyal, outspoken yet compassionate. He was a headstrong pilot who had many brushes with death, partly because of his aerobatics in all types of plane, including bombers. By 1940 he was flying Spitfires and, on one sortie to intercept enemy bombers, crash-landed in France having run out of fuel. He was captured by the Germans and avoided execution but for the intervention of an English-educated Wehrmacht major-general. He was sent on to prison camps in Poland and Germany from which he made numerous attempts to escape, working on thirteen tunnels including the famous wooden horse tunnel. Falkus finally broke out and reached England ten days before the war ended.

By the late 1940s Falkus was making documentary films for cinema and television, including the acclaimed "Drake's Island" (1950). He also gave broadcasts for the BBC, where he developed friendships with Dylan Thomas and Louis MacNeice, and met his second wife, Diana Jane Vaughan, whom he married on 22 December 1950.

Five months later, Falkus, with his wife and a crew, was shooting "Shark Island" (1951) near Achill Island off the west coast of Ireland when his boat hit a rock and went down. He collected floating objects for his wife and crewmen to hold on to while they swam for help, but only Falkus survived. He went on to finish the film, which again was received with international acclaim, and donated the proceeds of it to the dependants of the lost crew.

On 18 July 1952 he married Lady Margaret Frances Anne Muntz, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1958, and on 15 November that year Falkus (who was now living under Raven Crag in the Esk Valley) married again, to Kathleen Armstrong.

Falkus made several films for the BBC's natural history unit and narrated many programmes, including all forty episodes of Jacques Cousteau's "Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau". In the 1960s he collaborated with Niko Tinbergen, the Nobel prize-winning specialist in animal behaviour, on a series of wildlife films, including "The Riddle of the Rook" (1972) and "Signals for Survival" (1969), which won the Italia prize in that year and the American Blue Ribbon in 1971. "The Gull Watchers", "The Sign Readers", "The Beachcombers", "The Riddle of the Rook" (shown at the Venice Film Festival in 1972), and "The Tender Trap" (awarded a certificate of merit by the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1975) followed. Two highly personal films, "Salmo the Leaper" (1977) and the semi-autobiographical "Self-Portrait of a Happy Man" (1976) were highly successful. In 1982, Falkus was awarded the Cherry Kearton medal by the Royal Geographical Society for his wildlife work.

He was also a highly successful author. "Nature Detective" (1978) was a highly regarded study of animal tracks and signs, and "The Stolen Years" (1965; 2nd edn, 1979) gave a vivid account of his early life.

Hugh Falkus was "an inspiration to generations of anglers". His seminal works, "Salmon Fishing" "and Sea Trout Fishing", still in print after more than half a century, "firmly established him as the father of modern sea trout fishing". Through years of dedicated study Falkus concluded that sea trout fed mostly at night in the sea, and devised a series of strategies to trigger similar responses in rivers. His book, "Sea Trout Fishing" (1962, 1975) revolutionized sea trout fishing. He also co-authored "Fresh Water Fishing" (1975), which has become the standard work on the subject and had run through nine editions by 1987. His "Salmon Fishing" (1984) was regarded from its publication as the authority on the subject. His "Speycasting: A New Technique" (1994) described an advanced method of casting for salmon, and was another best-seller.

In his final years Falkus suffered from cancer. He died of bronchopneumonia at Cragg Cottage on 30 March 1996. He was survived by his fourth wife, Kathleen, by two children from his first marriage—Malcolm, a professor of economic history in Australia, and a daughter who became a nun at Stanbrook Abbey. His eldest son Christopher, a publisher, died in 1995.

A new biography, "Hugh Falkus: A Life on the Edge," written by Chris Newton, was published in December 2007 by Medlar Press.