Francis Brett Young Biography

British novelist and poet, born in Worcestershire, educated at Birmingham University. Young's early novels include Deep Sea (1914), The Dark Tower (1915), The Iron Age (1916), and The Young Physician (1919). During the First World War he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in East Africa, as a result of which his health was seriously impaired; during convalescence he wrote Marching on Tanga (1917), a war-memoir, The Crescent Moon (1918), and Poems 1916–1918 (1919). After the war he settled for a time in Anacapri, Italy, where he wrote many of his popular West Midland novels, including The Black Diamond (1921), The Red Knight (1921), Portrait of Clare (1927; James Tait Black Memorial Prize), and My Brother Jonathan (1928). One of his best novels, Dr Bradley Remembers (1938), was based on the experiences of his father who, like himself, was a physician. He also wrote two historical novels about South Africa, They Seek a Country (1937) and The City of Gold (1939), and a historical epic in verse, The Island (1944), which ends with the Battle of Britain.