Harold Heslop (1 October 1898 – 10 November 1983) was an English writer, left-wing political activist, and coalminer, from near Bishop Auckland, County Durham.
Heslop attended King James I Academy on a scholarship until he was thirteen, when the family moved to Boulby on the north Yorkshire coast.
Because his new home was too far from the nearest grammar school, Heslop began working underground at Boulby ironstone mine, where his father was now the manager.
[1] In 1923, he won a scholarship to study at the Central Labour College, a British higher education institution supported by trade unions, in London which he attended from 1924 to 1926.
Heslop's political activity included working for the British Communist Party's general secretary, Harry Pollitt against Ramsay MacDonald for the Seaham division of Durham in the 1929 election.
[1] During the war the Heslops evacuated to Taunton in Somerset, where he worked on his most successful novel in Britain, The Earth Beneath which was published in 1946 and sold 9000 copies.
[15] Over ten years after his death, Heslop's autobiography Out of the Old Earth was published, which has been described, as a "rich recollections of childhood in the coalfield, [and] portraits of his family [along with a] fine descriptions of working life above and below ground".
[16] On 27 March 1926 Harold Heslop married Phyllis Hannah Varndell, a clerk at Selfridges whose family was active in left-wing politics.