Ronald Frederick Delderfield (12 February 1912 – 24 June 1972) was a popular English novelist and dramatist, many of whose works have been adapted for television and are still widely read.
He was born in Bermondsey, London in 1912 to William James Delderfield (c. 1873–1956). His father worked for a meat wholesaler in Smithfield Market, and was also the first Liberal to be elected to Bermondsey Council. William supported women's suffrage and the B...
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Ronald Frederick Delderfield (12 February 1912 – 24 June 1972) was a popular English novelist and dramatist, many of whose works have been adapted for television and are still widely read.
He was born in Bermondsey, London in 1912 to William James Delderfield (c. 1873–1956). His father worked for a meat wholesaler in Smithfield Market, and was also the first Liberal to be elected to Bermondsey Council. William supported women's suffrage and the Boer cause in the Boer War, and was a firm supporter of Temperance and, until he allied himself with the Conservatives, David Lloyd-George. From 1918 to 1923, the family lived at Addiscombe, near Croydon, Surrey, later clearly influential on The Avenue novels.
Delderfield attended an infant school in Bermondsey, then a "seedy and pretentious" small private school -- "seventy boys and four underpaid ushers, presided over by a jovial gentleman who wore blue serge". He then went to a council school, which he hated but which provided him with the...
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