Henry Williamson Henry William Williamson ( 1 December 1895 – 13 August 1977 ) was an English naturalist , farmer and prolific author known for his natural and social history novels . He won the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 with his book " Tarka the Otter " . Biography . Henry Williamson was born in Brockley , southeast London , and attended Colfe ' s School . The then semi - rural location provided easy access to the Kent countryside , and he developed a deep love of nature throughout his childhood . In January 1914 he enlisted in the London Rifle Brigade and , after World War I was declared , he was mobilised on 5 August . He was commissioned into the Machine Gun Corps , was promoted Lieutenant and , from 1917 , was attached to the Bedfordshire Regiment . The Christmas truce of 1914 affected him greatly . He became disgusted with the pointlessness of the war and was angry at the greed and bigotry he saw as causing it . He became determined that Germany and Britain should never go to war again . He told of his war experiences in " The Wet Flanders Plain " ( 1929 ) , " The Patriot ' s Progress " ( 1930 ) and in many of his books in the semi - autobiographical 15 - book series " A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight " ( 1951 - 1969 ) . After the war , he read Richard Jefferies ' book " The Story of My Heart " . This inspired him to begin writing seriously . In 1921 , he moved to Georgeham , Devon , living in a small cottage . He married Ida Loetitia Hibbert in 1925 . Together they had six children . In 1927 Williamson published his most acclaimed book , " Tarka the Otter " . The book won the Hawthornden Prize . It also sparked a long - running friendship with T . E . Lawrence . In 1935 , Henry Williamson visited the National Socialist Congress at Nuremberg and was greatly impressed , particularly with the Hitler Youth movement , whose healthy outlook on life he compared with the sickly youth of the London slums . He had a " well - known belief that Hitler was essentially a good man who wanted only to build a new and better Germany . " He subsequently joined Oswald Mosley ' s British Union of Fascists in 1937 . In 1936 he bought a farm in Stiffkey , Norfolk . " The Story of a Norfolk Farm " ( 1941 ) is his account of his first years of farming here . At the start of World War II Williamson was briefly held under Defence Regulation 18B for his political views , but was released after only a weekend in police custody . Visiting London in January 1944 , he observed with satisfaction that the ugliness and immorality represented by its financial and banking sector had been " relieved a little by a catharsis of high explosive " and somewhat " purified by fire . " And , " in " The Gale of the World " , the last book of his " Chronicle " , published in 1969 , Williamson has his main character Phillip Maddison question the moral and legal validity of the Nuremberg Trials " . After the war the family left the farm . In 1946 Williamson went to live alone at Ox ' s Cross , Georgeham in North Devon , where he built a small house in which to write . In 1947 Henry and Loetitia divorced . Williamson fell in love with a young teacher , Christine Duffield and they were married in 1949 . He began to write his series of fifteen novels collectively known as " A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight " . In 1950 , the year his only child by this marriage Harry Williamson was born , he edited a collection of poems and short stories by James Farrar , a promising young poet who had died , at the age of 20 , in the Second World War . From 1951 - 1969 Williamson produced almost one novel a year , while contributing regularly to the " Sunday Express " and " The European " , a magazine edited by Diana Mosley . This put great strain on his marriage and , in 1968 , he and his wife were divorced after years of separation . In 1974 he began working on a script for a film treatment of Tarka the Otter . but it was not regarded as suitable to film , being 400 , 000 words long . Filming went on , unknown to him , and the film , narrated by Peter Ustinov , was released in 1979 . On his eightieth birthday he hoped for some honour from the British government . After a general anaesthetic for a minor operation , his health failed catastrophically . One day he was walking and chopping wood , the next day he was unrecognisable and had forgotten who his family were . Suffering from senile dementia , he died on the very day the death of Tarka was being filmed , and was buried in the churchyard of Georgeham . The Henry Williamson Society was founded in 1980 .