To serve them all my days

Mr. Delderfield's main character is a schoolmaster who survives the carnage of the Western Front to become a teacher at a remote English public school, gradually maturing from a shell-shocked veteran scarcely older than his charges into a headmaster whose influence touches and changes the lives of hundreds of boys who pass through his care.

R. F. Delderfield was born in South London in 1912. On leaving school he joined the Exmouth Chronicle newspaper as a junior reporter, where he went on to become Editor. From there he began to write stage plays and then became a highly successful novelist, renowned for brilliantly portraying slices of English life. With the publication of his first saga, A HORSEMAN RIDING BY, he became one of Britain's most popular authors. Many of his bestselling novels were later adapted for television. He died in 1972.