Writer and artist, born Maurice Denton Welch in Shanghai, China. He was educated at St Michael’s, Uckfield, and at Repton, then for four years was at Goldsmiths’ College School of Art, a period described in detail in his first published book, Maiden Voyage, 1943. He was knocked off his bicycle in 1935 by a motorist, was seriously injured and remained an invalid. This interrupted his artistic career, but he gradually established a name as a writer with such books as In Youth is Pleasure, 1945, Brave and Cruel, 1948, and A Voice Through a Cloud, 1950. The Denton Welch Journals were published in 1952. Welch writes with a painter’s eye for detail. His pictures, shown at Leicester Galleries and elsewhere, were also detailed, having strong decorative and Neo-Romantic elements.