T. P. Cameron Wilson

Theodore Percival Cameron Wilson (April 25, 1888 - March 23, 1918), was an English poet and novelist of World War I, best known for his poem "Magpies in Picardy".

Wilson was born in Paignton, Devon, one of the six children of a vicar and a grandson of the novelist Thomas Percival Wilson, also a clergyman. The youngest brother, became a successful actor, and one sister, Marjorie, was a published poet.

Wilson preferred to be known as "Jim" rather than by any of his given forenames. He went to Oxford in 1907 as a non-collegiate student, and left without a degree in about 1910 to become a teacher at a preparatory school. His first novel, "The Friendly Enemy", was published in 1913. Before the First World War broke out, he spent much of his leisure time at the Poetry Bookshop in London, where he got to know Harold Monro.

In August 1914 he joined the armed forces, and the following year he obtained a commission in the Sherwood Foresters. He reached the Western Front in February 1916. He was killed at Hermies in France two years later, as a Captain, and his collected poems were published by Monro in 1919.

Further reading

*"T P Cameron Wilson" by Merryn Williams (Cecil Woolf, 2006)