Winston Graham

Winston Mawdsley Graham OBE (30 June 1908 – 10 July 2003) was an English novelist best known for the Poldark series of historical novels set in Cornwall. Graham's father, Albert Grime, was a prosperous tea importer and grocer. His second son, Winston, was born at 66 Langdale Road, Victoria Park, Manchester on 30 June 1908, at 8 a.m. As a child, Winston contracted pneumonia and on medical advice was educated at a local day school, rather than Manchester Grammar School which his father had in mind for him.

When he was 17 years old, Winston moved to Perranporth, Cornwall. He had wanted to be a writer from an early age, and following the death of his father, who had previously been incapacitated by a stroke, he was supported by his mother while he wrote novels at home in longhand and attempted to get them published.

During his youth Graham was a keen tennis player and recorded in his diaries how many sets he played each day. He lived in Perranporth from 1925 until 1959, and briefly in the south of France during 1960, then settled in East Sussex. He was Chairman of the Society of Authors and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1983 was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

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