Timothy went to St. Clare preparatory school in Walmer, Kent, where John Magee, the author of "High Flight" was a contemporary and Henry Bentinck became a friend.

[2] Leaving school to start work as an articled clerk in the Town Clerk's office in Wandsworth, he divided his evenings between work as a resident volunteer at the Crown and Manor Club,[3] a Winchester College Settlement in Hoxton, East London and entertainment in Fitzrovia, where he earned money for drinks by "conjuring", a talent which earned him the right of entry into the exclusive Magic Circle.

From January to July 1941, at the height of the Blitz, he worked as a full-time ARP warden, and then he began his ATA training at White Waltham in August 1941.

[17] In 2004 the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography took a first step in establishing a literary canon of World War 2 poets by including nine: Keith Douglas, Sidney Keyes, Alun Lewis, Gavin Ewart, Roy Fuller, John Pudney, Henry Reed, Frank Thompson and Corsellis.

In 2012, Helen Goethals's The Unassuming Sky: The Life and Poetry of Timothy Corsellis [21] made available for the first time a hundred of his poems, arranged to bring out their "unique literary and historical interest".

[26] When I was a civilian I hoped high Dreamt my future cartwheels in the sky Almost forgot to arm myself Against the boredom and the inefficiency The petty injustice and the everlasting grudges The sacrifice is greater than I ever expected.

Distorted corpse once breathed slum air Lived in the grey dust where it died; Is it for this that bending we strived And fought in other's blood and other's sorrow To reach these wretched mangled remains?

Sometimes we pray to be hardened and callous But God turns a deaf ear And we know hate and sorrow, Intimately And we do not mind dying tomorrow.