Thomas Thompson (writer)

He worked as an errand runner and then as a printer's apprentice, gaining a silver medal for book-binding in 1898 from the Skinners’ Company.

Thomas Thompson's early years in Bury's Victorian slums are described in his autobiography, Lancashire for Me.

Further discussion of Thompson's escape from slum and mill is provided in Rose's book on British working class intellectuals.

[1] Thompson drifted into writing at an early age, with articles on the countryside for his local newspaper, and a piece in the Sunday Chronicle.

He wrote a wartime series for the forces called Tom, Dick and Harry, and was a regular contributor of short stories to the Radio Times.

[11] His series, Under the Barber’s Pole, broadcast on the Home Service between 1947 and 1952, comprised dialect stories set in the fictional Lancashire village of Owlerbarrow, with Wilfred Pickles in the lead role.

[13] Wilfred Pickles later said of him that he was a writer “who captured life with all the accuracy and none of the flatness of a photograph, the brilliant and modest man of letters who was as unaffected as he was sincere.”[14] His obituary in The Guardian reminded readers that he was a born writer, with an inspiration that was “nearer to genius than to talent.”[15] (all published by George Allen and Unwin) Thomas Thompson's stories and articles have also appeared in a number of anthologies, including: