Francis King

Francis Henry King (born 1923) is a British novelist and short story writer, and a poet.

He was born in Adelboden, Switzerland and brought up in India. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford. During World War II he was a conscientious objector, and left Oxford to work on the land. After completing his degree in 1949 he worked for the British Council; he was posted around Europe, and then in Kyoto. He resigned to write full time in 1964.

He came out as a homosexual in the 1970s; in "Yesterday Came Suddenly" (1993), after his longterm partner had died from AIDS in 1988, he described the relationship. He suffered a stroke in 2005.

He is a past winner of the W. Somerset Maugham Prize for his novel "The Dividing Stream" (1951) and has also won the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Prize. A President Emeritus of International PEN and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he is a recipient of the honour Commander of the British Empire, awarded by Queen Elizabeth II.

Works

*"To the Dark Tower" (1946) novel
*"Never Again" (1948) novel
*"An Air That Kills" (1948) novel
*"The Dividing Stream" (1951) novel, 1952 Somerset Maugham Award
*"Rod of Incantation" (1952) poems
*"The Dark Glasses" (1954) novel
*"The Firewalkers: a Memoir" (1956) as Frank Caudwell
*"The Man on the Rock" (1957) novel
*"The Widow" (1957) novel
*"The Custom House" (1961) novel
*"The Japanese Umbrella and Other Stories" (1964) short stories
*"The Last Pleasure Gardens" (1965)
*"The Waves Behind the Boat" (1967) novel
*"Robert de Montesquiou" by Philippe Julian (1967) translator with John Haylock
*"The Brighton Belle and other stories" (1968)
*"The Domestic Animal" (1970) novel
*"Flights" (1973)
*"A Game of Patience" (1974)
*"The Needle" (1975)
*"E.M. Forster and his World" (1978) A biography of the author of A Passage to India and Howards End
*"Act of Darkness" (1983)
*"Voices in an Empty Room" (1984)
*"Visiting Cards" (1990)
*"Punishments" (1989)
*"The Ant Colony" (1992)
*"Yesterday Came Suddenly" (1993) autobiography
*"The Nick of Time" (2002) (novel)
*"The Sunlight on the Garden" (2006) (short stories)
*"With My Little Eye" (2007) (novel)

References

*"Friends and Friendship" (1974) Kay Dick