Ronald Bottrall
# Ronald Bottrall

(Francis James) Ronald Bottrall OBE, (2 September 1906, Camborne, Cornwall – 25 June 1989) was a Cornish poet. He was praised highly by F.R. Leavis, Anthony Burgess and Martin Seymour-Smith, and deprecated by Ian Hamilton and Martin Amis.

Bottrall was educated at Redruth Grammar School and at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

## Career

* Lector in English, University of Helsingfors, Finland, 1929–31
* Commonwealth fund fellowship, Princeton University, USA, 1931–33
* Johore Professor of English Language and Literature, Raffles College, Singapore, 1933–37
* Assistant Director, British Institute, Florence, Italy, 1937–38
* Secretary, SOAS, 1939–45
* Air Ministry: Temporary Administrative Officer, 1940; Priority Officer, 1941
* British Council Representative: in Sweden, 1941; in Italy, 1945; in Brazil, 1954; in Greece, 1957; in Japan (and Cultural Counsellor, HM Embassy, Tokyo), 1959
* Controller of Education, British Council, 1950–54
* Chief, Fellowships and Training Branch, Food and Agriculture Organization, 1963–65.

## Honours and awards

* OBE, 1949.
* Coronation Medal, 1953
* Syracuse International Poetry Prize, 1954
* Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, 1955
* Knight of St. John, 1972
* Grande Ufficiale dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, 1973
* Knight Commander, Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Malta, 1977

## Personal life

He was the father of Anthony Bottrall, the diplomat, expert in developmental agriculture and politician.

## Publications

### Poetry

* The Loosening and other Poems, 1931
* Festivals of Fire, 1934
* The Turning Path, 1939
* Farewell and Welcome, 1945
* Selected Poems, 1946
* The Palisades of Fear, 1949
* Adam Unparadised, 1954
* Collected Poems, 1961
* Day and Night, 1974
* Poems 1955–73, 1974
* Reflections on the Nile, 1980
* Against a Setting Sun, 1983

### Other

* (with Gunnar Ekelöf) T.S. Eliot: Dikter i Urval, 1942
* (with Margaret Bottrall) The Zephyr Book of English Verse, 1945
* (with Margaret Bottrall) Collected English Verse, 1946
* Rome (Art Centres of the World), 1968.
