| Description | The archive includes extensive research and planning notes for novels; manuscript and typescript drafts; notes for talks; book reviews and press clippings; correspondence, including with publishers, literary agents, schools, charities, and fans; photographs; and a small number of personal papers. Although the archive includes one item dated 1915, the main date range for this archive is 1960s to 2012. This archive comprises predominantly papers, but also includes four hardback and nine paperback copies of Thompson's novels, as well as one CD-ROM and one floppy disc.
A detailed box list is available on request. |
| AdminHistory | Ernest Victor Thompson was born on 14 July 1931 in London to Ernest Arthur Thompson and Victoria Elizabeth (née Harrup) Thompson. He was educated at Burford Grammar School in Oxfordshire but left at the age of 16 to join the Royal Navy, where he served around the world, including in Hong Kong, Japan and Korea. Between 1956 and 1977, Thompson held a variety of roles. He served as a police officer with the Bristol Constabulary, worked as a security investigator for BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation), and later became Chief Security Officer for the Department of Civil Aviation in Rhodesia. He also held positions as Chief of Security at the Mayfair Hotel in London and as a civil servant at Devonport Naval Dockyard.
In 1970, he moved to Cornwall to pursue a career in writing. His first book, 'Chase the Wind', was published in 1977. Thompson specialised in historical novels, many of them set in Cornwall, and became a prolific author, writing over 40 novels and selling more than five million copies worldwide. In 2002, he was inducted as a Bard of Gorsedh Kernow (the Cornish Gorsedh) and was given the bardic name "Creftor Geryow", meaning “Craftsman of Words". He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to literature and the community in Cornwall.
E.V. Thompson married Elizabeth Spiller in 1952, with whom he had two daughters. They divorced in 1972. He married Celia Burton in 1972, with whom he had two sons. Thompson died on 19 July 2012 at his home in Launceston, Cornwall aged 81. |