Arthur "Archie" Hill (3 May 1928 – 1986[1]) was a writer, broadcaster and photographer who came from the English Black Country, a region which provided the central theme for his work.
[1] Hill was born and raised close to Kinver, near Stourbridge, on the edge of the Black Country, the eldest but one of eleven children.
These circumstances led to Hill leading a troubled childhood and turning for comfort and guidance and friendship to friends of his father called Konk and Pope Tolley who taught him a great deal about life and country lore.
In prison he met the physicist and spy, Klaus Fuchs who introduced him to classical music and the arts generally; this meeting played a large part in Hill's subsequent development.
His newspaper experience led him to becoming a freelance writer, specialising in radio scripts and also writing one story for the popular BBC TV police drama, Z-Cars.
[3] His major breakthrough as a writer came in 1973 with the publication of his first book, A Cage of Shadows, dealing with his life until the time when he stopped living rough.
It sets out, in unsparing detail, the family problems caused by his father's abusive behavior as well as Hill's own difficulties in early life.
It also provides a harsh account of his experiences in a mental hospital, in prison and sleeping rough in London, before ending on a more optimistic note as he finds a new resolve to live a more settled life.
[5] As in A Cage of Shadows, the book provides autobiographical stories from Hill's youth, though now told with a slightly mellower and more humorous tone as he realises that, notwithstanding the poverty of the depression, there were still 'some golden chapters of childhood; that not all my memories were dark and bleak'.
He recounts three months he spent in 1976 living off the land on a remote country estate, making use of his poaching skills to kill animals for food.
He speculates that only great artists like Beethoven have reached the metaphorical second meadow and resolves to strive to find the equivalent places in his life.