| 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 full 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 (nee Harrup) Thompson. He left the Burford Grammar School in Oxfordshire at the age of 16 to join the Royal Navy, serving around the world, including Hong Kong, Japan and Korea. From 1956 to 1977, Thompson worked in a variety of jobs, including as a police officer for the Bristol constabulary, a security investigator for BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation), the chief security officer for the Department of Civil Aviation in Rhodesia, as chief of security at the Mayfair Hotel in London, and as a Civil Servant in Devonport naval dockyard. In 1970, he moved to Cornwall to pursue a writing career. His first book, 'Chase the Wind', was published in 1977 and was voted as best historical novel of the year. Thompson specialised in historical novels, many of them set in Cornwall, and wrote more than 40 novels, selling more than five million copies worldwide. 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. He was also the Bard of the Cornish Gorsedd. 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. |