S E Turner Popular Books

S E Turner Biography & Facts

Ernest Sackville Turner (17 November 1909 – 6 July 2006) was an English freelance journalist and writer who wrote 20 published books, including Boys Will Be Boys (Michael Joseph, 1948), The Phoney War on the Home Front (St. Martin's Press, 1961), and What The Butler Saw (Penguin, 1962), and contributing to the Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, and regularly to the English satirical weekly magazine Punch (the latter for more than 50 years). Early life and education E. S. Turner was born in the Wavertree Garden suburb of Liverpool in the North West of England on 17 November 1909. His father, Frederick William Turner, "a churchgoer and a teetotaller, [and] a desk-man in the Post Office Engineering Department in Liverpool," was a descendant of Sir Barnard Turner, an Alderman and sheriff in London who commanded troops attempting to curb looting in the 1780 Gordon Riots in 1780, but who later died penniless less than a month into Parliament's assembly, after his election in 1784. Turner's mother, Bertha Pixton Norbury, was an amateur portrait and landscape painter, and oversaw a home "built for a class… [her son E.S. thought] extinct, that of ‘meritorious artisans’", with a "family bookcase... weighted with the massed works of Swedenborg… and a ‘splendid’ volume called The Bible in Pitman's Shorthand." Turner's first school was in Shrewsbury, where he is said to have been "a good pupil", winning "a few prizes" and enjoying "memorising passages of Macaulay's Lays." He went on to Orme Boys' School in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and "[a]lthough he had the reserved, courteous and erudite air of an Oxbridge don", Turner never went on to attend university. At the age of 17 his father presented him with "an ancient typewriter [purchased] for a fiver from a passing lorry", supporting his desire to write. Career Early career Turner published his first piece in the Dundee Courier in 1927. He applied for a "day job" with the Glasgow Evening Times that same year, where he became "a sharp eye… and in time a sharp voice." There, he progressed from "office junior to the sub-editors' bench and then became one of the paper's cub reporters… and [later] was made editor of the paper's Diary." Stating this another way, Jonathan Sale of The Guardian described it as his"work[ing] his way up from copy boy to subeditor, reporter and gossip column editor." At the Evening Times, he recalled "the staggered newspapers, four mornings and three evenings, all receptive to freelance contributions" and that the "subs... were a profane lot" that "knew their jobs." A perk of the Evening Times work was to be allowed travel on the maiden voyage of the RMS Queen Mary in May 1936, from Southampton, England to New York city in the U.S.—"About a hundred reporters", he [said] "each of us desperate to find a stowaway"—one of a series of ocean voyages which he wrote about. Such travels contributed to two later pseudonymous Rupert Lang novels, and to a final London Review of Books (LRB) piece written with his first hand information on ocean liners. After the 1936 voyages, he spent "some months" working at Glasgow Evening Citizen and then at the Scottish Daily Express. At the Daily Express, a fellow sub was prominent British journalist James Cameron, who he described as "a good friend, a brilliant reporter." In this period between the wars, he added voyages on liners flying under the flags of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, as well as of the Anchor Line, from Glasgow, and did a motor tour in "swastika-hung" Germany in a Morgan three-wheeled automobile. Turner moved toward the decision to go freelance over these years, formally doing so in 1938. War years After the onset of war in 1939, he continued to write for various publications, even after he joined the Royal Artillery in 1941. He was able to contribute during his spare time in the Army, being based in the UK throughout the hostilities. At one point, whilst he was on leave, his anti-aircraft unit actually saw action when they shot down a German bomber. Realising his writing talents, the Army 'top brass' decided to put him to work in a more appropriate area – helping to set up and publish Soldier, the magazine of the British Army. This contributed to his promotion to the rank of major in 1946, coinciding with his appointment as Literary editor of the magazine. He held this title even after 'demob', until 1957. Middle years In 1948 Michael Joseph's publishing firm issued his first book, Boys Will Be Boys: The Story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton, et al. – usually truncated to Boys Will Be Boys. This was an in-depth examination of the "Boys' Weekly" genré, also known as 'story papers', 'penny dreadfuls' or 'bloods' (due to the violent nature of the prose). He carried out research for the book, ploughing through numerous back-numbers of the various publications. For his second book, however, he changed direction completely, producing the 1950 non-fiction work Roads to Ruin: A Shocking History of Social Progress, which was a forthright insight into the British class system, and the resistance of the upper class to significant change. The politician Tony Benn often quoted passages from the book in the House of Commons to illustrate points he was trying to make, and especially in 1992, during one particular debate on foxhunting. Turner was also quoted by another politician, Gerald Kaufman, during a 1996 debate on homosexuality in the Armed Forces. During the 1950s, as a now permanent freelance writer, Turner contributed regularly to Punch Magazine, the leading satirical magazine with the accent on humour and pastiche. This source of income enabled him to concentrate more on writing books. Turner's literary flexibility was illustrated when he wrote a Betjeman-style pastiche for the Royal wedding of The Princess Anne and Mark Phillips on 14 November 1973, subsequently quoted in an obituary by Miles Kington in 2006. In all, some 19 works by Turner were published in book form during his most productive period, including two novels under the pseudonym of "Rupert Lang." Late career E. S. Turner contributed many pieces in his later years to publications such as the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books. At the age of 89, he published "Unholy Pursuits", which took as its subject the incidence of Anglican clergymen working anonymously as journalists (a profession considered well beneath them at the time). Its 1998 release coincided with him being dropped by his regular publishers. His final article was published posthumously in the magazine "The Oldie" in September 2006. Turner died in London on 6 July 2006. Critical appraisal Appraisal in retrospect looks at Turner's dedication to freelance writing—Jonathan Sale referred to him as "the patron saint of freelancing"—and has focused on his energy, productivity, the scope of his writing, and on its inherent humanity. Andrew O'Hagan, in his 1998 LRB ret.... Discover the S E Turner popular books. Find the top 100 most popular S E Turner books.