MORRIS, Ronald 1930-

PERSONAL: Born August 17, 1930, in Dublin, Ireland; son of William (a clerk) and Jane (a dressmaker; maiden name, McRonald) Morris; married Jean Floyd Lewis (a librarian), October 31, 1963; children: Louise Diana. Education: Nottingham University, M.Ed., 1974.

ADDRESSES: Home—6 Midhurst Close, Beeston, Notts NG9 5FR, England. Offıce—Local Education Authority, County Hall, Q. Bridgford, Notts NG9 5FQ, England.

CAREER: Agriculturalist, S. Rhodesia, Land Development Officer, 1956-59; British Petroleum, company representative, 1959-62; Local Education Authority, Nottingham, England, tutorial class teacher, 1965—. Military service: British and Irish Merchant Navy, deck officer, 1947-53.

WRITINGS:

The Captain's Lady, Hogarth Press (London, England), 1985.

Contributor of short stories and articles to various papers and journals.

SIDELIGHTS: Ronald Morris is a schoolmaster in Nottingham, England. Morris told CA: I attended the Training Ship Mercury, a nautical school for boys near Southampton, England, from September 1945 to February 1947. The ostensible Capt. Superintendent was C. B. Fry, described by an obituarist when he died at eighty-four in 1956 as 'perhaps one of the most variously gifted Englishmen that ever lived.' The school was run not by him, but by his wife, Beatrice. A spartan regime that bordered on naked cruelty left me deeply scarred. In 1978, as a schoolmaster fellow commoner at Girton College, Cambridge, I researched her life. The book The Captain's Lady is the result of that research.

The Captain's Lady was listed in the Financial Times and Sunday Times as one of the books of the year. William Boyd, of the Times Literary Supplement, called this story "fascinating and extraordinary" and applauded Morris's "resolution to unearth what he could about this extraordinary woman must be applauded, not only for the intrinsic fascination of the story but also for the exemplary tact and limpid execution of its telling."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times Literary Supplement, August 2, 1985, William Boyd, "Amazon into Martinet," p. 845.*