VERNON SCANNELLVernon Scannell, who died on 17 November, 2007, aged 85, was one of Britain’s most important yet underrated Second World War poets.An extrovert by nature, he listed his interests as ‘drink, boxing, learning French [and] loathing Tories and New Labour.’ But Mr Scannell’s good humour masked painful memories of D-Day and fighting in the Middle East that motivated his poetry.Although his work was predominantly based on his wartime experiences, Mr Scannell also drew on his time as a successful boxer in poems such as ‘The Loving Game’.He once said he was fascinated by "lives". In a career lasting almost 50 years, this fascination inspired around 30 poetry collections, eight novels and several volumes of autobiography.John Vernon Bain was born in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, on 23 January 1922. He spent his early years in County Roscommon but went to school in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, where he discovered a secret passion for literature and wrote his own adventure stories. He endured a difficult childhood, suffering at the hands of hisfather, who ran a photography shop.He left school at 14. After failing to get into the RAF, Mr Scannell joined the Gordon Highlanders in 1940 and served in the Middle East where he deserted and was given a suspended sentence. He was wounded during the D-day landings, and deserted again in 1945, returning to England where he changed his name to Scannell, partly as a disguise but also "as an act of symbolic dissociation" from his abusive father.He found work as a semi-professional middleweight boxer, before turning back to his first love of writing and sought to recommence his schooling. In 1947, he was caught by the Army and imprisoned in a psychiatric facility before an English professor at Leeds University, Bonamy Dobrée, recognised Mr Scannell’s talents and secured him a place on the course.After university, Scannell worked as a prep school teacher and then embarked on his career as a freelancer writer. He wrote novels to subsidise his real vocation as a poet, but by the 1950s he had established himself as a poet in journals such as The Spectator and The London Magazine.Mr Scannell wrote prolifically, and attracted critical attention with his powerful 1965 collection ‘Walking Wounded’, where his raw and moving exploration of military memories placed him as one of the best poets of the conflict.Over the next two decades, he received increasing recognition as a skilled and important poet, and his popular live performances brought his work to an even wider audience. He also wrote poems for younger readers, was a regular poetry reviewer for Ambit magazine and The Sunday Telegraph, and chronicled his interesting life in several volumes of autobiography.Mr Scannell married Josephine Higson in 1954. They had six children, but one disabled son died very young, as Scannell described in ‘The Tiger and the Rose’, and another was killed in a motorbike accident.Vernon Scannell died at home in Otley, West Yorkshire. He had been suffering for some time from throat cancer, emphysema and other illnesses. Despite being bedridden for many months, he had continued working right until the end, with two short collections published in the final year of his life.Although Mr Scannell was not as well known as he deserved to be, his talent was recognised by his colleagues and critics. He was given the Heinemann Award for Literature in 1961 and the Cholmondeley Poetry Prize in 1974. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1960.In 1981, he was also granted a civil list pension in recognition of his services to literature.Most significantly, The Wilfred Owen Association gave him a special award "in recognition of his contribution to war poetry".In one of his most poignant poems, Missing Things, Scannell says: "I'm very old and breathless, tired and lame/ and soon I'll be no more to anyone/ than the slowly fading trochee of my name/ and shadow of my presence ...” But there is no doubt that his name will live on in his poems, which are not only well crafted literary works but important reminders of what veterans like Mr Scannell endured.
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