Wall of Fame - Literature

This is our first list of regional authors both contemporary and past that could comprise the entries for the Wall of Fame. Thanks are due to Carl Chinn the Historical Consultant for the regional Wall of Fame.

William Shakespeare
J. R. R. Tolkien
D. H. Lawrence
Philip Larkin (Warwickshire poet)
Wilfred Owen (poet killed 1916)
Walter Brierley (Means Test Man Derbyshire)
Walter Allen (All in a Lifetime, born Aston)
John Hampson (Birmingham inter-wars novelist)
Edith Pargeter (novelist Shropshire)
William Shenstone (Halesowen Poet)
Meera Syall (contemporary novelist)
Henry Treece (historical novelists for children. Wednesbury)
P. G. Wodehouse (Shropshire)
Stanley Weyman (Shropshire historical romance novels)
Izaak Walton (fishing)
Sir Philip Sidney (16th century poet)
David Christie Murray (Cap O' Nails West Bromwich)
Washington Irving (wrote Rip Van Winkle in Brum)
Francis Brett Young (novelist Halesowen)
Jerome K. Jerome (Walsall)
A. E. Houseman
William Langland (Medieval. The Vision of Piers Plowman)
Arnold Bennett
David Lodge(contemporary novelist
Jonathan Coe(contemporary novelist
Jim Crace (contemporary novelist
Rupert Brooke (Rugby)
Judith Cutler (crime)
Elizabeth Brett
Roshan Doug (contemporary poet)
Roi Kwabena (contemporary poet)
Benjamin Zephaniah (contemporary poet)
David Edgar (playwright)
George Eliot (19th century novelist Nuneaton)
John Farnol (hence Farnol Road Yardley romantic fiction)
Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (19th century novelist Wolverhampton)
William Hazlitt (critic and essayist)
Meg Hutchinson (contemporary romantic fiction Black Country)
Kathleen Dayus (Birmingham working class)
William Hutton (history of Brum etc)
Catherine Hutton (William's daughter and well known writer herself)

Why are babies born young?

Why are babies born young? This sounds like an odd question. People would say "of course babies are born young". However, this goes to the core of the question of human (or animal) development. Why is it that as time passes people develop initially through puberty and then for women through menopause and more generally getting diseases such as sarcopenia, osteoporosis, diabetes and cancer, but most of the time babies start showing no signs of this. Lots of research into this has happened over the years and now I think it is clear why this is. It raises some interesting questions. Biological youth is about how well a cell functions. Cells that are old in a biological sense don't work that well. One of the ways in which cells stop working is they fail to produce the full range of proteins. Generally the proteins that are produced from longer genes stop being produced. The reason for this relates to how the Genes work (the Genome). Because the genome is not gettin...

Jonathan Calder said…

No Mary Webb?

OK so she's unreadable, but there were coaches going round Shropshire in the 1930s with "Mary Webb Country" on the front.

1:58 pm

Peter Black said…

Owen was killed in 1918.

2:20 pm

And what is D H Lawrence doing in a West Midlands list?

3:08 pm

Bob Piper said…

Should a 'Wall of Fame' consist of everyone who has ever lived in the region and had something published? If so, it seems totally spurious.

4:06 pm