(William) Alan Rook OBE (1909–1990) was a British Cairo poet and edited the 1936 issue of New Oxford Poetry.
[1][2] In the Second World War Rook served as a Lieutenant anti-aircraft gunner with the 6th A.A. Division of the Royal Artillery.
After evacuation at Dunkirk he served in searchlight operations with an anti-aircraft unit, defending the East End of London during the Blitz.
His traditional approach in poetry, and his stern themes of 'life and death in struggle', must have contributed to the neglect and near-forgetting of his work amid the changed intellectual tastes of the 1970s and 80s.
The vineyard produced its first 100gc marketable crop in 1969, and the wine made there was a white Burgundy type and sold under Rook's "Lincolnshire Imperial" brand.
[8] A photograph of the rear of his earlier residence at Wootton Lodge shows that he had had a vineyard on the slopes there.
[9][self-published source] In 1950 his success in the Midlands wine trade meant that he could purchase and live at the 17th-century Grade I listed Wootton Lodge, near Ellastone in north Staffordshire.