The Reading Room Press

derek severn

The first publication from the Press in 2004 was A Letter to Edmund Gosse by Forrest Reid. In my commentary I quote extensively from a review by Derek Severn.

At the time, other than the date, I have kept no details of the origin of the article and can only acknowledge him as I do in the preliminaries. Twenty years later, on a late sunlit October afternoon, I'm at the fifth of six towers,  St Michael, Kingham, to ring  bells as part of day's jaunt. Wandering in the churchyard listening to my friends' Grandsire Triples I spot a headstone which looks interestingly different from the rest.

My erstwhile binder Chris Hicks, together with his wife Karen, do some genealogical digging and come up with the address where this Derek Severn was living when he died.. This nudges the memory of the incumbent vicar who recalls taking the funeral service. He sends me a copy of the brother's eulogy from which I learn that, not only did he fly Wellington bombers, he later wrote occasional articles of literary criticism. Surely my Derek Severn. The Internet twenty years on now tell me that the article I had preserved came from The Independent, 6th February 1993, Off the Shelf: in Belfast with Peter's Friends: Derek Severn on Peter Waring,  a fine but unappreciated work by the novelist  Forrest Reid (1938).

 "For my part I think Derek Severn got it right". To have rediscovered this discerning writer has been both a delightful and moving experience. Serendipity indeed.