Francis Henry King, CBE (4 March 19233 July 2011) was a British novelist, poet and short story writer.

He was born in Adelboden

Adelboden

Adelboden is a municipality in the Frutigen-Niedersimmental administrative district in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland.-Geography:Adelboden lies in the west of the Berner Oberland, at the end of the valley of the Engstlige river, which flows in Frutigen into the Kander river.Adelboden is a...

, Switzerland, brought up in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 and educated at Shrewsbury School

Shrewsbury School

Shrewsbury School is a co-educational independent school for pupils aged 13 to 18, founded by Royal Charter in 1552. The present campus to which the school moved in 1882 is located on the banks of the River Severn in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England...

 and Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

. During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 he was a conscientious objector

Conscientious objector

A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....

, and left Oxford to work on the land. After completing his degree in 1949 he worked for the British Council

British Council

The British Council is a United Kingdom-based organisation specialising in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is registered as a charity both in England and Wales, and in Scotland...

; he was posted around Europe, and then in Kyoto

Kyoto

is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

. He resigned to write full time in 1964.

He was a past winner of the W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...

 Prize for his novel The Dividing Stream (1951) and also won the Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield

Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and...

 Short Story Prize. His 1956 book "The firewalkers" was published pseudonymously under the name Frank Cauldwell.

A President Emeritus of International PEN and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he was appointed an Officer (OBE) of the Order of the British Empire

Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 in 1979 and a Commander of the Order (CBE) in 1985.

Personal life

King came out as homosexual in the 1970s; in Yesterday Came Suddenly (1993), after his long-term partner had died from AIDS in 1988, he described the relationship. King suffered a stroke in 2005.

Francis King died on 3 July 2011 at the age of 88.

Works

• To the Dark Tower (1946) novel
• Never Again (1948) novel
• An Air That Kills (1948) novel
• The Dividing Stream (1951) novel, 1952 Somerset Maugham Award
  Somerset Maugham Award
  The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to whom they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...
  
  
• Rod of Incantation (1952) poems
• The Dark Glasses (1954) novel
• The Firewalkers: a Memoir (1956) (wrote under the name Frank Cauldwell)
• The Man on the Rock (1957) novel
• The Widow (1957) novel
• The Custom House (1961) novel
• The Japanese Umbrella and Other Stories (1964) – short stories
• The Last Pleasure Gardens (1965)
• The Waves Behind the Boat (1967) novel
• Robert de Montesquiou by Philippe Julian (1967) – translator, along with John Haylock
• The Brighton Belle and other stories (1968)
• The Domestic Animal (1970) novel
• Flights (1973)
• A Game of Patience (1974)
• The Needle (1975)
• E.M. Forster and his World (1978) – a biography of the author of A Passage to India
  A Passage to India
  A Passage to India is a novel by E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of English literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time...
  
  and Howards End
  Howards End
  Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster, first published in 1910, which tells a story of class struggle in turn-of-the-century England. The main theme is the difficulties, troubles, and also the benefits of relationships between members of different social classes...
  
  
• Act of Darkness (1983)
• Voices in an Empty Room (1984)
• Visiting Cards (1990)
• Punishments (1989)
• The Ant Colony (1992)
• Yesterday Came Suddenly (1993) – autobiography
• The Nick of Time (2002) novel
• The Sunlight on the Garden (2006) – short stories
• With My Little Eye (2007) novel

External links

• Obituary of Francis King, The Daily Telegraph, 4 July 2011