Leo Walmsley


Leo Walmsley was an English writer.
He was born at 7 Clifton Place, Shipley in the county of West Yorkshire in 1892. Two years later, his family moved to Robin Hood's Bay on the coast of present-day North Yorkshire, where he was schooled at the old Wesleyan chapel and the Scarborough Municipal School. He was the son of the painter Ulric Walmsley. In 1912 the young Leo secured the post of curator-caretaker of the Robin Hood's Bay Marine Laboratory at five shillings a week.
During World War I he served as an observer with the Royal Flying Corps in East Africa, was mentioned in dispatches four times and was awarded the Military Cross. After a plane crash he was sent home, and eventually pursued a literary career. He settled at Pont Pill near Polruan in Cornwall, where he became friendly with the writer Daphne du Maurier.
He was married three times. He married Elsie Susanna Preston in 1919, divorcing her in 1932. Then, in 1933, he married Margaret Bell Little, divorcing her around 1946. His final marriage was to Stephanie Gubbins, in 1955.
Many of his books are mainly autobiographical, the best known being his Bramblewick series set in Robin Hood's Bay: Foreigners, Three Fevers, Phantom Lobster and Sally Lunn, the second of which was filmed as Turn of the Tide.
He died in Fowey, Cornwall, on 8 June 1966. The house he lived in at 21 Passage Street was named Bramblewick after his book series.

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