McGowan, Ronald

Ronald McGowan was born more years ago than he cares to remember in what is now the city of Sunderland, in northeast England, but then was the largest shipbuilding town in the world. He attended the local grammar school, turned down a scholarship to Cambridge University because of the conditions imposed, and did a Classics degree at Durham University instead. He had to abandon a Ph.D. course at Yale University because of abject poverty and the sheer necessity of earning a living somehow. After failing to do so for two years as a teacher, he took refuge in the Civil Service, where he spent near...