Simon Barker, Professor of English Literature at Chichester University, the speaker at the February meeting, painted a verbal picture of John Galsworthy, a complex and very talented writer.
He is best known for the ‘Forsyte Saga’, a series of novels written over a period of many years, which brought his work back into prominence when it was televised in the late 1960s.
Although not matching ‘Forsyte’ in popularity, Galsworthy wrote over 70 books on many subjects, as well as 20 plays and 3 collections of poetry. His writing covered a wide spectrum of interests including philanthropy, social reform and animal welfare.
He travelled widely and in 1893 met Joseph Conrad; they became lifelong friends and fellow travellers. Rejected for war service due to poor eyesight, he and his wife Ada went to France to nurse the wounded.
In 1932, a year before his death, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. For the last seven years of his life he lived at Bury, a village near Arundel, West Sussex.