He was also the plaintiff in a celebrated literary libel case in the 1930s and a decorated soldier and airman who saw service in both the First and Second World Wars.
[4] Hodgkinson's maternal grandfather was Richard Philpott, who played for Victoria in the inaugural first-class cricket match in Australia, but lived most of his life in England.
[7] Hodgkinson did not play for Somerset in 1908 or 1909, but returned for four games in 1910 and in his first match of the season, against Gloucestershire he made the highest score of his career.
[8] Coming in with Somerset at 134 for six wickets, he hit 99 before his partner for a last-wicket stand of 68, Jack White, was out, leaving him a run short of a century.
Hodgkinson's Royal Air Force record held in The National Archives indicates that although in the First World War his "home" was at Wookey, he was also at this stage a "settler" in British East Africa.
[16] Hand-written notes in his record from 1918 state that he has "extensive knowledge of Central Africa and South Somaliland and the Swahili language" and said that he was a "fit GS (flying) with a strong recommendation for duty in a warm climate".
The plot traced the activities of a large number of people within a fictionalised small Somerset town where there is a struggle between a charismatic and mystical leader John Geard, and the local landowner, Philip Crow, whose ownership and entrepreneurial exploitation of mining at the Wookey Hole caves is a counterpoint to the folk mysticism of Geard and the activities of anarchists and revolutionaries within the town.
Though the plot is clearly fantastical, Powys ingenuously blended real places and people into the novel and Hodgkinson successfully sued for libel on the basis that the person, the character and the activities of the capitalist Philip Crow were based on him.