100 years of Dick King-Smith
On the 27th of March 2022 it will be 100 years since the birth of Ronald Gordon King-Smith. You may know him by his nickname of Dick King-Smith.
Dick was born in Bitton, Gloucestershire. He was the eldest of two boys.
As a child Dick would be caring for his large collection of pets or out and about with his brother Tony looking for an adventure with their friends.
As Dick was leaving school, his father gave him the choice of going on to Cambridge or going to an agricultural college. Although as his father knew Dick was keen on animals, there was no real doubt as to which would be chosen.
In 1940 Dick started an apprenticeship at Tytherington Farm in the Wylye Valley in Wiltshire. He was paid £1 per week. The work was back breaking and despite an incident where a two pronged pitchfork ended up going through his leg, Dick loved farming.
In 1941 at the age of 19 Dick enlisted as a recruit in the Grenadier Guards. He served in the war including the Salerno Landings in Italy and was on long voyages including the cape of good hope, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean coast of Africa.
In 1944 Dick was injured and was sent home to recover from his injuries. This marked the end of his military career.
Once he had recovered from his injuries Dick, along with his wife Myrle, tried his hand at farming again. Although farming was not a successful as he had planned, he still had a great love for animals.
Leaving the farming life, Dick became a teacher.
For the first four years he taught eight year olds. His hopelessness with maths led the headmistress to allow him to teach infants, whose mathematical needs were not as advanced.
Dick worked as a teacher for seven years and came to the conclusion:
‘I love children . . . They were the nice thing about teaching. I wasn’t mad keen on some of the adults, but the children were great. I like their lack of self-consciousness and their curiosity.’
It was while he was teaching that Dick wrote his first children’s book The Fox Busters. It would be another two years before it would be published.
In the early 80’s Dick started his career as a children’s television presenter on a Sunday morning programme called Rub-A-Dub-Tub along with his wire-haired miniature Dachshund, Dodo , making over 50 episodes of the show.
Dick would go on to also do other TV programmes such as Pob’s Programme and Tumbledown Farm.
Dick’s TV career anded in 1989, when Dick was 67.
Dick's greatest success as a writer was when he successfully published his first children’s book in 1978 at the age of 56. Although this was not his first writing to be published. He had been writing for much longer.
Individual poems were published in The Field in the 1950s and 1960s, and Punch published Alphabeasts, a collection of poems about animals, as a centre-page spread, with illustrations by Quentin Blake. It was later published as a book in 1990.
Even when he was not writing, Dick made up ditties and songs about his everyday activities, which he sang around the house as he did them.
Dick died 4th January 2011 aged 88 year’s old. He was survived by his second wife Zona, 3 children, 14 grandchildren, 4 great-grandchildren and 1 great-great grandchild.
