An award-winning author and poet, whose last published book chronicled his life growing up in a Norfolk village during the 1930s, has died a few weeks short of his 99th birthday.
John Loveday spent his boyhood in Old Buckenham, near Attleborough, and always felt a special relationship with the village and the friends and characters he knew from his youth.
His 2019 memoir, The Boy from Rod Alley, attracted much interest and acclaim.
In an EDP review published at the time, journalist Derek James said: “If any book deserves to be read it is this one. Parts are sad, parts are funny and forthright... None of it is boring.”
John Charles Loveday was born into a well-known agricultural engineering family in Old Buckenham on April 21, 1926 – on the same day as the late Queen Elizabeth.
In 2006, he and his wife, Evelyn – the daughter of a former farm manager at Gaymer’s cider works in Attleborough – were among those invited to Buckingham Palace to join Her Majesty for an 80th birthday lunch.
The Loveday home at Rod Alley Row was the centrepiece of his book and had famous visitors almost a century apart.
The eminent 19th century scientist Michael Faraday called there when the Sandemanian Church - of which he was an elder - had one of its few places of worship on adjacent land.
And in the 1940s, Hollywood actor James Stewart - who was serving as operations officer at an American airbase in the village - visited to thank Mr Loveday’s father, Tom, for his efforts to save aircrew trapped inside a Liberator bomber that had crashed on take-off.
Mr Loveday went to school in Old Buckenham before attending Diss Grammar School in the early years of the Second World War.
Towards the end of the war, after National Service in the army, he trained as a teacher in London.
He began his career back in Norfolk at Carleton Rode and Roydon Primary Schools before taking a position at Tasburgh Hall Hostel for boys with special educational needs. He later taught at another school for boys with behavioural problems where he and Evelyn and their young family lived in two rooms alongside the school community.
His interest in education was especially guided by the works and thoughts of A. S. Neill, founder of the Summerhill School in Suffolk, with a philosophy of pupil freedom and community self-governance.
His career took him to schools in Suffolk and Hertfordshire, finishing as head of Whitchurch Primary School in Berkshire. He and his wife lived in their retirement at Tilehurst, near Reading.
Mr Loveday’s passion for writing and painting was very much inspired by the Norfolk environment in which he grew up, alongside his boyhood fascination for the “wild west” of America.
He wrote poems about family members and characters in Old Buckenham and painted village scenes, one of which was later used as the cover picture for his book.
In the early 1990s, he won the David Higham and McKitterick prizes and was runner-up for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for his novel Halo. He also won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain's best children’s book prize in 1997 for another story set in the American west, Goodbye Buffalo Sky.
In the 1970s, he wrote a successful play for BBC television You’ve Been a Long Time, Alfred. Screened in BBC2’s Thirty-Minute Theatre series, it later went to Fringe.
Mr Loveday was a former vice chairman of the Norfolk Poetry Society. As well as collections of his own poems, he had an anthology of poetry published, to which many successful contemporary poets contributed.
He retained his creative spirit throughout his life and, in recent years, wrote the lyrics for the song Nothing Stays Special, for which musician and songwriter Jan S Robinson - bass guitarist for the group Marmalade - produced and published it.
Following the death of his wife, after a marriage lasting 67 years, Mr Loveday’s final few years were spent in a nursing home. The couple had three children, seven grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
His daughter, Sharon, said: "Dad had a marvellous life and simply ran out of steam at the end. He was much loved and will be sadly missed by his family and many friends, including those in the literary world."
Teacher, musician and reviewer, Tom Deveson, put into words how John’s life was characterised by his writing. He said: "I received such warm and vivid impressions through the printed page - his care for children, for language, for the imagination, for precious places, for the continuity and fragility of life, for the adventures of the mind and the hidden depths of the spirit."
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