Claud Gordon Glover (7 June 1908 – 1 March 1975) was a British writer, particularly for radio, as well as some novels.

Early life

Glover was born in Edinburgh in 1908, the son of William Gordon Glover (1879-1945), an engineer,^[1] and his wife Florence Edith (née Hardie) (1878-1956). His grandfather, Thomas Craigie Glover, was an Indian railway contractor.^[2] An aunt, Ann Liston Glover, married Lt-Gen Sir Frederick McCracken.

Career

Glover was a BBC radio producer and presenter.^[3] One of his last radio broadcasts was an episode of The Countryside in Summer, broadcast in 1974.^[4]

He wrote articles for The Country Gentleman magazine under the pen name of Julian Grey.^[3] He wrote short stories and articles for various publications, including the Australian Woman's Mirror,^[5] Lilliput,^[6][7] the Radio Times,^[8] and the Wireless Weekly.^[9]

His first two novels were published by Geoffrey Bles, a London publisher with a reputation for spotting new talent. His son, Julian, described him as a "drunken journalist … hopeless with women".^[10]

Works

• Cocktails at Six, (1934: Geoffrey Bles)^[11]
• Week-End in Town, (1934: Geoffrey Bles)^[12]
• Bolero. A novel, (1936: Cassell & Co)^[13]
• Family Gathering. A novel, (1937: Cassell & Co)^[14]
• Parish pump (by C. Gordon Glover as Julian Grey), (1975: Roundtree Press)^[15]
• Tom Forrest's country calendar (compiled by Charles Lefeaux from the original material written for The Archers by C. Gordon Glover and Phil Drabble), (1978: BBC)^[16]

Personal life

Glover married the journalist and radio presenter Honor Wyatt (1910–98) in 1931^[17] at St Peter's Church, Cranley Gardens.^[18] Before the Spanish Civil War, they lived in Spain for a while, where they befriended the poet Robert Graves and his lover Laura Riding.^[19] They had two children, Prue and the actor Julian. They separated in 1939; Glover then had a brief relationship with Honor's friend, the future novelist Barbara Pym, in 1942 which he broke off abruptly and which traumatised Pym.^[8] It prompted Pym to join the Wrens^[20] and, when Glover died in 1975, she burnt her diary for 1942.^[21]

He married, secondly, in 1946 the children's author Modwena Margaret Sedgwick (1916–96),^[22][23] who had previously been married to John Allen, at the time an actor but subsequently a noted theatre administrator.^[24]

He died in 1975, aged 66.^[25]

References