John William Warburton Beckett, 1894-1964

The collection consists of books, journals and some documents formerly belonging to the politician John Beckett, together with research materials assembled by his son, the journalist Francis Beckett, during the writing of his biography of his father The Rebel Who Lost His Cause, published in 1999. This book makes clear that most of John Beckett's correspondence and other documents then extant were lost at the time of his arrest in May 1940, although his unpublished autobiography 'After my fashion', which covers the period 1918 to 1938, is in the University of Sheffield Library (MS 188).

John [William] Warburton Beckett (1894-1964), a maverick figure of British politics, was active in the decades between the Wars and immediately following the Second World War. He was born in Hammersmith, London on 11 October 1894, son of a master draper, and his wife (who came from a Jewish family). He was educated at an elementary school and then won a scholarship to the Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a draper, about which time his father's business collapsed. John Beckett taught himself advertising and journalism through correspondence courses and night school, and had begun working in these professions when war was declared on 4 August 1914 - he enlisted on the same day. Experiences in the Great War affected him profoundly: before the war a Conservative and a militarist, he moved into left-wing politics following discharge from the Army in 1916 or 1917 due to ill-health. In 1918 he married his first wife.

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