John Charles Grant
Poet and airman who joined Durham University Officer Training Corps
Born on the 10th of April 1898 he was the son of James and Jane Grant (nee Hume). They lived initially at 39, Bondgate Within and then at 10, Stott Street, Alnwick. His father James Charles Grant, who was originally from Aberdeenshire, was the editor of the Alnwick Guardian, a Liberal supporting newspaper which was a rival to the Conservative supporting Alnwick Gazette. James was secretary to the Alnwick Liberal Association, and his wife Jane was secretary of the Alnwick Women’s Liberal Association.
SCHOOLING
He attended the Alnwick Borough School and then in 1910 enrolled at the Duke’s School, Alnwick. He was academically successful and, in 1914, he passed the Oxford Senior Local Examination. He was also a competent pianist, as one of his poems, “Piano Boy at Morning Prayers”, describes playing the piano in assembly on his last day at school.
He left school in July 1914 and one of his poems deals with this occasion. He then spent two years at Armstrong College, Newcastle before Officer Training with Durham University Officer Training Corps (again one of his poems refers to this period). In the 1918 absent voters register he is listed as a 2nd Lieutenant in the RAF.
WORK
After the war he worked as a Civil Servant in London (I think in the Home Office) and lived in Hertfordshire. One of his poems concerns seeing Queen Alexandra’s funeral (1926) through his office window.
His father James died in 1920 in Alnwick, and his mother, Jane, in 1943 in Lesbury.
John Charles Grant died in 1973.
HIS PUBLISHED WORKS INCLUDE:
“The Back to Backs” (1930) Chatto and Windus
From The Guardian 27.7.2012
If a criticism of much rural writing is the way it softens the reality of living off the land with idealised images of a pastoral paradise, this dynamic is sometimes reversed in industrial writing. JC Grant’s The Back-to-Backs (1930) was billed by its publisher as a “brutal and ruthlessly honest” depiction of life in a northern pit village. However, the work attracted criticism from the Northumberland Miners’ Association (“Bad as conditions … are, miners have never in history lived under the conditions he depicts”), and Grant was forced to admit that his overwrought descriptions were a literary device: “Of course I exaggerated”, he retorted, by way of justification.
The Back to Backs was one of 150 works featured in the British Library exhibition “Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands” in 2012
This was his only novel.
He also published several volumes of POETRY;
“The Rook Shoot” (1928)
“Northumbrian Nocturne” (1940)
“The Flitting” (1955)
“Plough and Coble” (1967)
“Keeper of the Lodge” (1969)
“The Preacher on the Moor” (1970)
In 1951 he was one of the 10 prize winning poets in the Festival of Britain poetry competition and his winning entries were published, along with those of the other winners, by Penguin books.
Civil Parish: Durham Castle and Precincts
Birth date: 1898-Apr-10
Death date: 1973
Armed force/civilian: Army
Residence: 39 Bondgate Within, Alnwick
10 Stott Street, Alnwick
Education: Alnwick Borough School
Duke’s School, Alnwick
Armstrong College, Newcastle
Military service:
Durham University Officer Training Corps
Royal Naval Air Service: joined up 3 November 1916
2nd Lieutenant in the RAF (Absent Voters' Lists, 1918)
Gender: Male
Contributed by Michael Grant, Bailiffgate Museum and Gallery, Alnwick
