Battersea's literary connections

Battersea is a London district on the south side of the River Thames. It is generally regarded as being socially inferior to Chelsea, on the opposite bank, but more upmarket than the adjoining districts of Clapham and Balham.

It is renowned for the massive brick pile of long-disused Battersea Power Station (now being redeveloped) but also for the large open space of Battersea Park and the Royal College of Art.

Battersea’s literary connections include:

G A Henty (1832-1902). He was a popular writer of adventure stories in the 19^th century but is little read today. He served in the Crimean War and became a newspaper war correspondent. These experiences gave his many novels a sense of realism that those of other writers lacked, but his strong support for the British Empire made his work totally unsuitable for reading in a less imperialist age. He lived in Lavender Gardens.

The poet Edward Thomas (1878-1917) was educated at Battersea Grammar School and he and his wife lived in lodgings in Shelgate Road for a short time in 1900. His only novel, “The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans” (1913) was partly set in the area. He was one of a number of war poets who did not return from the trenches.

The novelist Paul Bailey (born 1937) was born and brought up in Battersea.

However, the best-known literary Battersea resident has to be Graham Greene (1904-91), who lived in Albert Palace Gardens from 1926 to 1931. He was working as a sub-editor on The Times and just beginning his career as a novelist, although his best work was still a long way down the line.

A much greater writer than any of these was William Blake (1757-1827), whose Battersea connection was that he was married at Battersea Parish Church in 1782 due to his wife being the daughter of a local market gardener.

© John Welford