Ernest Sackville Turner

Ernest Sackville Turner (17 November 1909 – 6 July 2006) was an English freelance journalist and writer who wrote 20 published books, including Boys Will Be Boys (Michael Joseph, 1948), The Phoney War on the Home Front (St. Martin's Press, 1961), and What The Butler Saw (Penguin, 1962), and contributing to the Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, and regularly to the English satirical weekly magazine Punch (the latter for more than 50 years).

Early life and education E. S. Turner was born in the Wavertree Garden suburb of Liverpool in the North West of England on 17 November 1909. but who later died penniless less than a month into Parliament's assembly, after his election in 1784.

Career

Early career Turner published his first piece in the Dundee Courier in 1927.

For his second book, however, he changed direction completely, producing the 1950 non-fiction work Roads to Ruin: A Shocking History of Social Progress, which was a forthright insight into the British class system, and the resistance of the upper class to significant change. Robert Kee, reviewing the book, wrote that Turner had "selected a number of prominent battles for reform from within the great historical development of the period, and has concentrated for our delight on some of the thought processes that tried to prevent the reforms from taking place. He has done this wittily and coherently, so his book is a success." The politician Tony Benn often quoted passages from the book in the House of Commons to illustrate points he was trying to make, and especially in 1992, during one particular debate on foxhunting. Turner was also quoted by another politician, Gerald Kaufman, during a 1996 debate on homosexuality in the Armed Forces.

During the 1950s, as a now permanent freelance writer, Turner contributed regularly to Punch Magazine, the leading satirical magazine with the accent on humour and pastiche. This source of income enabled him to concentrate more on writing books. Turner's literary flexibility was illustrated when he wrote a Betjeman-style pastiche for the Royal wedding of The Princess Anne and Mark Phillips on 14 November 1973, subsequently quoted in an obituary by Miles Kington in 2006.

In all, some 19 works by Turner were published in book form during his most productive period, including two novels under the pseudonym of "Rupert Lang."

Late career E. S. Turner contributed many pieces in his later years to publications such as the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books. At the age of 89, he published "Unholy Pursuits", which took as its subject the incidence of Anglican clergymen working anonymously as journalists (a profession considered well beneath them at the time). Its 1998 release coincided with him being dropped by his regular publishers. His final article was published posthumously in the magazine "The Oldie" in September 2006. Turner died in London on 6 July 2006. Andrew O'Hagan, in his 1998 LRB retrospective, noted that while Turner's fingers had always been light on the keyboard, his writing was "with a strongly human pulse just under the skin, a richness of personal feeling in the blood."

With regard to the correctness of his writing, when viewed from a 21st-century perspective, O'Hagan writes that "he Britain Mr Turner writes about may (like Punch) no longer be here… There's always a whole new set of things you're not allowed to laugh at… you can't laugh at newsagents. You can't snigger at class, or Princess Diana, even if you're the sort of person who might always have done so. Mr Turner might say we fought for the right to say farewell to Smith, the right to meet Patel. But it would not be a popular thing to say." Roads to Ruin: A Shocking History of Social Progress (1950), on the upper class's "disgraceful rearguard action…" against reforms such as "abolition of child chimney sweeps and the repeal of laws under which convicted criminals could be hung, drawn and quartered." The Shocking History of Advertising (1952), as its name implies, The Phoney War on the Home Front (1961), study of restrictions and public ill-temper in Great Britain before The Blitz. What the Butler Saw: Two Hundred and Fifty Years of the Servant Problem (1963), a critical survey of employer and employed, "in service." Hemlock Lane (1968), novel, under his own name. May It Please Your Lordship (1972), a social history of English judgeships, Dear Old Blighty (1980), an account of life 'on the home front' in Britain during the Great War, 1914–1918, Unholy Pursuits: The Wayward Parsons of Grub Street (1998), a history of the journalistic moonlighting by Anglican clergymen.