Kenneth Allsop

Kenneth Allsop (29 January 1920 – 23 May 1973) was a British broadcaster, author and naturalist.

Early life

Allsop was born on 29 January 1920 in Holbeck, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire.^[1]

He was married in

In 1958 he wrote an account of 1950s British literature, The Angry Decade,[4] at the end of which he remarked that: "In this technologically triumphant age, when the rockets begin to scream up towards the moon but the human mind seems at an even greater distance, anger has a limited use. Love has a wider application, and it is that which needs describing wherever it can be found so that we may all recognise it and learn its use."

Allsop was a regular reporter for the

He was an obvious choice as a guest in the first series of the long-running naturalist radio programme Sounds Natural on BBC Radio 4 on 24 May 1971.^{[citation needed]}

Death and legacy

The

The Kenneth Allsop Memorial Trust, a registered charity,[6] was launched in 1973 with an appeal for funds, at first intending to acquire and conserve Eggardon Hill in Dorset.^[7] Instead, in 1976 the trust bought the island of Steep Holm in the Bristol Channel for £10,000, and runs it as a nature reserve.^[8] The Sunday Times instituted a Kenneth Allsop Memorial Essay Competition, which took place annually until 1986.^[9] The Allsop Gallery, an exhibition space in Bridport Arts Centre, Dorset, is named after him.^[10]

List of works

• The Sun Himself Must Die (1949)
• Silver Flame (1950)
• The Daybreak Edition (1951)
• The Last Voyages of the Mayflower (1955)
• The Angry Decade (1958)
• Rare Bird (1959)
• Question of Obscenity (1960) (with Robert Pitman)
• The Bootleggers (1961)
• Adventure Lit Their Star (1949) (the 1950 winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize)
• Scan (collected journalism) 1965
• Strip Jack Naked (1972)
• Harriet Beecher Stowe (1971)
• Hard Travellin': The Hobo and his History (1967)
• In the Country (1973 and 2013)
• Letters to his Daughter (1974)
• One and All: Two Years in the Chilterns (1991)

References

1. 'Keeping The Barbarians At Bay: The Last Years Of Kenneth Allsop, Green Pioneer' by David Wilkinson (2013)