Tom Pocock

Thomas Allcot Guy Pocock, writing under the name Tom Pocock, (18 August 1925, London - 7 May 2007, London) was an English biographer, war correspondent, journalist and naval historian.

Life

He was the son of the novelist and educationist Guy Pocock, and attended Westminster School and Cheltenham College. He joined the Royal Navy in 1943, being present at D-Day and then serving as naval "minder" to war correspondents covering the Battle of Normandy. Falling ill, by the end of 1944 he was demobbed, and became a war correspondent at only 19 years old. He spent four years with the Hulton Press current affairs magazine group, being one of the first journalists to see Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and learning his trade from Alan Moorehead (later becoming his biographer). He then moved on to be a feature-writer and then Naval Correspondent on the Daily Mail, and then (in 1952) Naval Correspondent of The Times.

He was a foreign correspondent and special writer for the Daily Express from 1956 to 1959, then from 1959 was feature writer, Defence Correspondent, war correspondent and finally Travel Editor on the Evening Standard. He married Penny Casson in 1969 (they had two daughters). He won the Mountbatten Maritime Prize in 2004.

Works

*"Nelson and his world", 1967, his first book, written on his return from reporting the Aden Emergency
*"Stopping Napoleon"
*"The Terror Before Trafalgar"
*"Captain Marryat"
*"Nelson's Women"
*"Battle for Empire: The Very First World War 1756-63"
*"A Thirst for Glory, The Life of Admiral Sir Sidney Smith"
*"Horatio Nelson", runner-up for the Whitbread Biography Award of 1987.
*"Rider Haggard and the Lost Empire"
*"Sailor King: The Life of King William IV"
*"Alan Moorehead"
*"1945: The Dawn Came Up Like Thunder"

External links

*cite news|first=Dan|last=van der Vat|title=Obituary|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/may/14/pressandpublishing.booksobituaries|work=The Guardian|date=14 May 2007|accessdate=2008-04-03
*cite news|title=Obituary|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/10/db1001.xml|work=The Telegraph|date=10 May 2007|accessdate=2008-04-03
*cite news|title=Obituary|url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1763554.ece|work=The Times|date=9 May 2007|accessdate=2008-04-03
*cite news|first=Pieter|last=van der Merwe|title=Obituary|url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/tom-pocock-451885.html|work=The Independent|date=6 June 2007|accessdate=2008-04-03
* [http://www.andrewlownie.co.uk/books/pocock.tom/index.shtml List of his books]