writing, he lived at 19 Northgate, BECCLES. A plaque commemorates his stay there from
1954 to 1964. He also compiled the first Times crossword, although he protested that he
had no knowledge of the subject, and went on compiling them for the next fifty years. He is
buried in BARSHAM churchyard, just on the Suffolk side of the Waveney.
16
Another writer of country life and more than 40 novels was DOREEN WALLACE (1897-
1989). She lived and farmed at WORTHAM MANOR, and was an active campaigner
against Church tithes. There is a memorial to the ‘tithes wars’ in the village.
17
The old rectory at WORTHAM (next to the new one) was the home for 50 years from 1827
of the rector, RICHARD COBBOLD (1797-1877). He wrote The History of Margaret
Catchpole, the story based on the life of a girl in service with his mother. Her lover was a
smuggler, and she stole a horse for him. She was caught and imprisoned, but escaped, only
to be recaptured and deported in 1801. The book was very popular in its time and has
become something of a Suffolk legend. W
18 r
i
GEORGE ORWELL (the alias of Eric Blair, 1903-1950) who took his name from the
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e
Suffolk river and is remembered especially for his political satires Animal Farm and
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Nineteen Eighty Four, lived at Montague House, High Street, SOUTHWOLD, during the
W
thirties. His novel The Clergyman’s Daughter is partially set in the town. There is a plaque
on the house commemorating this.
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o
19

L
NEIL BELL (1887-1964) was born in SOUTHWOLD and lived at RENDHAM, where he
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wrote more than thirty novels and five books of short stories. The story of generations of his
e
boatbuilding family is told in Bredon and Sons. He set two historical novels in the BURY
d

ST EDMUNDS area – Abbot’s Heel and Simon Dale.
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n
20

S
A contemporary who was equally popular as a novelist was ROBERT GREENWOOD (1897-
u
f
1981). He lived at FELIXSTOWE, and is especially remembered for his ‘Bunting’ novels.
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o
The first of them, Mr Bunting Goes to War, was made into a film, ‘Salute John Citizen’. l
k
21
A remarkable, eccentric figure and old-fashioned Communist, A L (LESLIE) MORTON
(1903-1987) was born in Suffolk and later lived in the twelfth-century chapel on LEISTON
COMMON. He was an accomplished critic, served with T S Eliot on The Criterion, and
wrote a scholarly study of Blake’s prophetic books called The Everlasting Gospel. Among
his other works are The People’s History of England and The English Utopia.
22
PAUL JENNINGS (1918-1989), the humorist, moved from London first to East Bergholt
and then to 25 High Street, Orford. The creator of Resistentialism (in which ‘Things are
Against Us’) and Gyrovagueness, and author of The Golden Oddlies and Next to Oddliness
collections of his columns and articles, The Times described him as ‘the most consistently
original comic of our century’. His method was to start with the very familiar and then spin an
illogical and brilliantly subversive parody around it. Resistentialism was his response to the
Existentialism philosophy of Sartre and others. Jennings is buried in the churchyard at Orford.
23
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