Henry Williamson was born in December 1895 and died in August 1977. The last great visionary of his generation, he was both loved and misunderstood and his writing by turns famous and neglected. His huge literary output fell into several groups. Apart from his well-loved animal narratives he wrote direct accounts of his own life in rural Norfolk and Devon, numerous short stories and two semi-autobiographical groups of novels - The Flax Dream and A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, of which the last volume, The Gale of the World appeared in 1969. His last book, The Scandaroon, the tale of a pigeon, was published in 1972.