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Novelist's Newark link

Asked to name Newark's most outstanding connection with the world of literature, most of us would probably think of the poet Lord Byron.

His ancestral home was at Newstead Abbey and his first poems were printed in a shop in Newark Market Place.

In more recent times, however, Newark can claim connections with one of this century's most popular and successful novelists, Warwick Deeping (1877 - 1950).

Warwick Deeping - christened George Warwick Deeping - was a relation of the Warwick family of Newark who founded Warwicks and Richardsons brewery on Northgate.

His most popular book, Sorrell and Son published in 1925, is still a favourite today, and in the 1980s was the subject of a successful television adaptation on ITV.

In all, between the end of the first world war and his death in 1950, Warwick Deeping wrote more than 60 bestselling novels, many of which were translated and sold abroad as well as forming the basis for a number of films.

It has been said that, in an age when the printed word was the dominant entertainment medium, Warwick Deeping was at the top of the popular novelist tree.

He enjoyed the kind of international star status we generally associate today with entertainers or media personalities.

Fans became such a nuisance at his home in Weybridge, Surrey, that he was obliged to erect a 20ft high trellis fence to keep them out.

In recent years the appreciation of Warwick Deeping's work has moved into a new sphere by attracting the attention of academics.

In Sheffield, for instance, Mrs Mary Grover is currently working towards a Ph.D. entitled: Construction the Middle Brow Reader with reference to the novels of Warwick Deeping.

In the early Seventies a German academic, Ingrid Watschke, produced her doctoral thesis entitled: Das Bild des Englischen Menschen in Romanen George Warwick Deeping. (The portrait of the English Gentleman in the novels of Warwick Deeping).

Dr Wotschke now lives in Magdeburg, Germany, and has kindly supplied the photograph for this week's article.

The family connection between Warwick Deeping and the Warwick brewing family may be traced back to the early 19th Century when, in 1809, William Warwick (1794-1838), a native of Pickering in Yorkshire arrived in Newark.

He came to work as a clerk in the Handley bank on Northgate (later Castlegate) and in May 1816 married Mary Deeping, daughter of a noted local 'surgeon' from Hawton.

William and Mary had six sons and six daughters, their second son, Richard, becoming head of Handleys brewery and subsequently founder of the Warwick and Richardsons empire.

It was William and Mary's eldest son, William Rollinson Warwick (1817-1892), however, from whom the family's literary connections derives.

William Rollinson Warwick did not enter the brewing trade, but made his career as a medical practitioner in Southend. He married Ann Miller of Great Wakering in Essex and fathered two sons and six daughters.

The second daughter was named Marianne, and it was she who re-affirmed the Warwick connection with the name of Deeping when she married George Davidson Deeping, a Southend doctor and JP.

They had two children, a daughter and a son, the latter being christened George Warwick Deeping, the future novelist. George Warwick Deeping was born at Southend in 1877, and after attending the Merchant Taylors' School and Trinity College Cambridge, followed in his father's footsteps to train as a doctor.

He studied at the Middlesex Hospital and practised as a country doctor for a year before joining the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1915.

For the rest of the first world war he served in Gallipoli, Egypt and France attaining the rank of Major. Before the war he had published a small number of novels and the modest success which they had achieved encouraged him to leave medicine and make literature his principal occupation.

It was a decision which was to prove entirely sound. An almost unbroken string of bestselling novels followed, among which may be listed: Old Pybus (1928), Doomsday (1927) and Kitty (1928).

Perhaps not surprisingly Deeping drew much inspiration from his immediate surroundings in Weybridge, but was certainly not averse to drawing on his Newark ancestry as well - albeit sometimes presenting them in a less than flattering light.

In Valour (1918) he hints at his family's brewing background when the hero's father is disdainfully referred to as a Midlands maltster.

In Sincerity (1912), it is possible that the fictional town of Navestock with its narrow red brick yards, market square and old inns is based on Newark.

Warwick Deeping is certainly known to have visited his family in Newark from time to time, particularly his uncle, William Arthur Warwick, who, prior to 1928 lived at Balderton Hall.

Warwick Deeping died at his country home, Eastlands, in Weybridge on April 20, 1950.

Assessing his work during his lifetime, the critic Elmer Davis noted: "The world teems and overflows with art authors; Mr Deeping is something rarer and perhaps more significant, the producer of books to which several thousand people came back in grateful relief after sampling the products of the art authors."

Warwick Deeping's novels still have much to recommend them to modern readers, and a special collection of some of his best is now available for loan through Newark Library.

ABOVE: George Warwick Deeping (1877-1950), one of the most popular novelists of the early 20th Century and a relative of the Warwick brewing family of Newark.

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