My friend John Loveday, who has died aged 98, was a schoolteacher with a parallel existence as a novelist and writer of poetry.
He first gained prominence as a writer when his play You’ve Been a Long Time, Alfred was screened on BBC Two as part of its Thirty-Minute Theatre drama series in 1972.
Twenty years later his novel Halo won the David Higham and McKitterick prizes and was runner-up for the Commonwealth Writers’ prize (Eurasian section). Set in the old west of America, the story follows a group of travellers heading west to start new lives in Oregon.
John also won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain best children’s book award in 1997 for Goodbye Buffalo Sky, the tale of an orphan boy living in a settlement on the Northern Plains who witnesses the killing of a friend and sets off into high adventure across the plains in search of the murderer.
Many years later his colourful childhood memoir, The Boy from Rod Alley, was published in 2019 when he was 93, and an anthology of his poems, The Boy With the Old Guitar, was released just before his death. His previous collections of poetry were Over the Bridge (1981), From the Old Foundry, The Agricultural Engineer (both 1982) and Particular Sunlights (1986).
John was born in the village of Old Buckenham, Norfolk, to Thomas, an engineer, and Kathleen (nee Whitehand), who was a housekeeper before her marriage. He went to Diss grammar school and after a year’s teacher training in London began his career at Carleton Rode primary school, Norwich, in 1948. From 1957 until 1961, he taught special needs students at Epping House, a residential school in the village of Epping Green, Essex.
He married Evelyn Houchin, who was also a special needs teacher, in 1953. John eventually became head teacher of Whitchurch primary school in Berkshire, living in Tilehurst, near Reading, and staying in that post until his retirement in 1984.
Once he had stopped full-time work he was able to devote more time to another of his loves, painting. For some time he was also vice-chair of the Poetry Society, and he kept up his writing, of course, into old age. In 2019 he provided the lyrics for Nothing Stays Special, a song written and released by Jan S Robinson, bass guitarist with the band Marmalade.
Evelyn died in 2020. John is survived by a daughter, Sharon, and son, Julian, seven grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Marina, predeceased him.
