Joan Davids / Joan Hewitt

Joan Davids (b. Hampstead, London, 23 November 1912; d. reg. Windsor, Berkshire, July-Sep. 1981)

Little is known of Joan Evelyn Davids. One entry in a writer's directory (1977) lists her as a writer and portraitist. She married Arthur F. Hewitt in Hemel Hemsptead in late 1948.  So far as I know, she published only two books.

The first, under her maiden name Joan Davids, was The Glastonbury Adventure (London:  Peter Lunn, 1946). It is set up like a book of the type that Alan Garner would write a few decades later. A bunch of (annoying) children become involved in the mythic legends of Glastonbury, and most of the book is seemingly just that, if on the light side, until the final chapter throws a curve ball, making the book into something on the lines of a ghost story, with an unexpected and disappointing final twist (in the final line) that undermines any interpretation.

Under her married name, as Joan Hewitt, she published one additional novel, A Pity Beyond Telling (1956). It is a story of eccentric characters and love in a country village called Broone.

Copies of both books are held in the Robert Aickman Collection at Bowling Green State University, in Bowling Green, Ohio.  The Glastonbury Adventure is inscribed by the author to Aickman.  One suspects that she was a client of the Richard Marsh Agency, the literary agency run by Aickman and his wife, and that they secured publishers for the two books. 

The writer's directory listing for Hewitt notes two further items: "The Grandfather Clock," as by Joan Davids, was read by May E. Jenkin on the BBC Children's Hour on 23 May 1950;  and a second item, possibly unpublished, is given as "Unfinished Portrait of a Royal Nanny" (Royal Archives). 

Tom Ingram

Tom Ingram (b. Spaxton, England, 26 July 1924; d. reg. Bath, England, January 2007)

Thomas Henry Ingram was the son of John Markham Ingram, an officer in the armed forces, and his wife Grace Williams.  He served in the Royal Artillery of the British Army from 1942-45, and was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (B.A. 1948; M.A. 1957).  He worked for a few years as a teacher, and for several subsequent years as a researcher and writer, before lecturing in the United States for the Netherlands Office of Overseas Students in 1957-58, and as an instructor (1958-60) and assistant professor of English (1964-65) at Long Island University. Returning to England he held positions at the City of Bath Technical College (1960-64; 1965-67) and the British Polytechnic, West England College of Art (from 1967).  He married Marie Robbins-Vona in April 1958; they had three children, two daughters and one son.

All his books are published as by “Tom Ingram.” His first, Bells in England (1954), is nonfiction, and it includes two appendices written for the book by Robert Aickman, on Henry Irving in “The Bells” (five pages) and “The Bells of Bealings House” (also five pages). With Douglas Newton he compiled Hymns as Poetry (1955), and Banns of Marriage (1955) was his first novel.

Ingram turned to writing juveniles in the 1970s, and the first of these, The Hungry Cloud (1971; retitled Garranane in the 1972 U.S. edition), is a compelling fantasy (with excellent illustrations by Bill Geldart) of an evil lady named Fenrir who can destroy a person by drawing a likeness, threatening Kai and his sister Flor as well as their entire kingdom. It was followed by two other juveniles, The Night Rider (1975), a time-slip fantasy, and The Outcasts (1977), where in response to murderous attacks by eagles on a village, three people are driven away. 

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Walter Reginald Latham

Walter Reginald Latham (b. reg. Driffield, Yorkshire East Riding, 13 September 1902; d. reg. Hastings and Rother, East Sussex, Oct.-Dec. 1988)

Walter Reginald Latham, known familiarly as Reg, self-published his collaborative first book, a small gathering of poems titled Verses and Cuts (1934), as by Reg. Latham and Walter E. Spradbery.  During the early years of the Second World War, he wrote more poetry, including some translations of André Gide, as well as a cache of nonsense verse, with Violet Ethel Palmer (1906-2002), who was apparently his common-law wife.  (There is no public record of their marriage, but there is a notice in The London Gazette for 3 September 1943 that natural-born British subject Violet Ethel Palmer would henceforth use the name of Violet Ethel Latham, beginning three weeks after the publication of the notice.) 

Around 1944 a bunch of the poems came into the hands of Robert Aickman, then working with his wife as literary agents. One long poem, “Liza Lottie Leopold”, was accepted by The Nineteenth Century and After, and appeared in their January 1945 issue.  A collection of eleven of the (longish) poems was published as Latham’s Nonsense Verses by Constable in September 1948. The volume had been accepted by Michael Sadleir at Constable with the understanding that they were all by Latham, but as publication neared Latham insisted that his wife should be named as co-author. From the standpoint of publicity, Constable felt they could promote one Latham as a new Edward Lear, but not a husband-and-wife team, and their interest in the book lessened. In the end, only Walter Reginald Latham’s name appears in the book, and only on the copyright page, not the title page.

The published volume had many humorous line-drawings by “Victoria”, the working name of Victoria Davidson (1915-1999), who was born Lilli Ursula Barbara Commichau in Bavaria, and who married Erich Victor in 1935, the same year they both emigrated to England.  They were known familiarly as Victor and Victoria—hence her working name.  They separated during the Second World War, and in 1949 she married her second husband, Dr. Hans Davidson (1913-1980). Victoria’s illustrations were staples in Lilliput and The Picture Post for nearly twenty years, and appeared in many other English and German magazines.

Latham’s Nonsense Verses was not a publishing success, and though there are references to a later published book of Latham’s poems, I have not been able to confirm it.

The first page of a poem