By Kerry Bolton
This mini biography was first published in the now out of print book “Thinkers of the Right” Roy Campbell was born in October 1902 in the Natal District of South Africa. His wife inspired his first poem whilst the couple lived in Wales. It was called The Flaming Terrapin. T.E. Lawrence was so impressed that he took the poem to the firm of Johnathan Cape for publication. For a while Roy Campbell lived in France and later in Spain. He was in the latter country when the civil war was raging. He was to experience at first hand the mass murder of the priests and nuns and the destruction of the churches. In 1936 he met Oswald Mosley and from then until after the war his poetry was to to be found in “BUF Quarterly” and the Union Movement magazine “The European”. He converted to Catholicism. His epic saga, Flowering Rifle is a detailed explanation of his poetical credo, to Spain’s faith and martyrdom and also a condemnation of British intelligentsia of which he says: “sides automatically with the Dog against the man, the Jew against the Christian, black against white, the servant against the master, the criminal against the judge.”