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 Helsinki, 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.

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.