Biography
Gillian Clarke is the co-author and co-editor of three books, the most recent being The Handkerchief Tree. This is the second volume of a Journal covering the years 1948 to 1983 and kept by her father, the late Frederick Grice.
Though born in the north-east, Gillian grew up in Worcester, was a student in London, Oxford and Liverpool and has taught in a range of secondary schools from inner-city Liverpool to Wycombe Abbey, where she was Head of German from 1985 to 1999. For eighteen years she served as a magistrate on the Oxford Bench in the Adult and Youth Courts.
She had a parallel life closely associated with her husband Colin’s professional life as a human geographer. This began in 1964 when Colin obtained a grant from The Research Institute for the Study of Man in New York to undertake a study among the Indian population of Trinidad – with Gillian as research assistant. Their collaboration during this extraordinarily stimulating period of fieldwork prepared the ground for their post-retirement enterprises. Although never again professionally involved in Colin’s academic work, Gillian accompanied him on many of his research trips to the Caribbean, Mexico and latterly Europe.
Gillian and Colin have a son, a daughter and three grandchildren. They live in a village in Oxfordshire, where they enjoy being involved in the local community.
In retirement, Gillian and Colin have jointly produced three books:
Post-Colonial Trinidad: An Ethnographic Journal (2010)
War’s Nomads: A Mobile Radar Unit in Pursuit of Rommel During the Western Desert Campaign, 1942-43 (2015)
The Handkerchief Tree: The Journal of Frederick Grice, 1946-83 (2021)
Gillian Clarke on editing Fred Grice’s diaries and journals →
