JUST who was Redditch's Lionel Britton - celebrity, playwright and author of the novel Hunger and Love?

Dr Tony Shaw, 51, a former teacher from Nottingham, is writing a critical biography of the man and has been trying to find out.

He said: "I came across Lionel Britton by chance when I found his novel in a second hand bookshop and since then I've become transfixed by him.

"I first started working on him because of the sheer bizarreness of his work and his life. I've studyed him for five years, including three I spent on a PhD, and scarcely any biographical information is available. Since the mid-1930s his name has been almost forgotten."

Lionel Erskine Nimmo Britton was born on November 4, 1887 in Astwood Bank.

After living in Paris and Bournemouth he returned to Redditch in 1894, after his father died, to live with his maternal grandparents.

He attended St Stephen's School but after a few years was told he had learned everything the school could teach him, so moved to London, finding work as an errand boy before working as a shop assistant for a bookseller.

In the early 1920s Lionel found a post with the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, where he worked for six years, while working on his novel.

He left his advertising job in favour of writing, and while living in Saville Street met Sinead Acheson, a woman with whom he lived intermittently during the 30s and 40s.

Before Hunger and Love was even published, Lionel had written first drafts of his three published plays.

Brain was published in 1930 and with it came what was to be his short-lived fame and great demand.

George Orwell called him a very important working-class writer, and his influence can be found in several of Orwell's books.

There were also many articles and stories about him in newspapers and magazines and much attention was given to his second play, Spacetime Inn.

Having made only a modest profit from Hunger and Love, Brain and Spacetime Inn, he refused to give any promotion to his third play, Animal Ideas, and it was never performed.

He later wrote several more plays, philosophical works and dramatized several novels.

Dr Shaw said: "He was very lucky to publish his first novel, because he wouldn't allow any publishers to cut even a comma of his work. It is probably unique in being the only first novel ever published without alterations."

In 1954 he suffered multiple injuries in a car accident from which he was very fortunate to survive.

From then on, Lionel spent his last years as a virtual recluse in Margate before dying of a heart attack in 1971.

Dr Shaw added: "He an highly unusual man because he neither smoked nor drank any alcohol, never wore a tie, wore plimsolls and shorts most of the time. As he got older he became disillusioned with world politics, publishers and with people in general but continued writing until his death."

For more information, visit http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com.