Denys Val Baker

His mother was Dilys Eames, who was from Anglesey in North Wales and had played harp at the National Eisteddfod of 1901.

He grew up in Sussex and eventually lived with his parents in Surbiton, then in Surrey, now in Greater London.

Val Baker was always proud of being of Celtic ancestry; he considered himself to be more Welsh than English, and this was an influence in his writings.

Denys Val Baker (24 October 1917 – 6 July 1984) was a Welsh writer, specialising in short stories, novels, and autobiography.

He was also known for his activities as an editor, and promotion of the arts in Cornwall.

Born Denys Baker in Poppleton, York, North Riding of Yorkshire on 24 October 1917 where

his father, the Welsh-born Valentine Henry Baker, was stationed as a pilot instructor during World War I.

He was particularly drawn to the short story format, which was very popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and he would send stories to many magazines.

Thanks to his father’s contacts with the

Harmsworth family, Val Baker managed to get a job as a reporter on the Derby Evening Telegraph, one of the Harmsworth family’s regional titles, and stayed there for three years.

After that he moved to London where he worked as a jobbing journalist on various trade papers.

He was by now beginning to supplement his income through freelance journalism and sales of short stories to the many literary magazines that were popular in the days before television.

A lifelong pacifist and vegetarian, he registered as a conscientious objector in June 1939, prior to World War II, and volunteered to join a group of some 200 COs sailing to Jersey in May 1940 to work on the tomato and potato harvests.

The impending German invasion of the Channel Islands led to the return of half of the COs, including Val Baker.

He became secretary of a pacifist community, Youth House, in Camden Town.

and carried out rescue work in London during the Blitz.

Val Baker showed an interest in writing from when a young man.

Val Baker started publishing his own quarterly magazine Opus, (later to be renamed Voices) in the early 1940s, which featured stories, poems and reviews by his contemporaries- many of whom went on to be well-known writers.

He had by this time legally changed his surname to Val Baker in honour of his father, who had died in a flying accident in September 1942.

In 1943 he produced the first of his annual Little Reviews Anthologies through Allen & Unwin, which presented the best of that year's output from the country’s many literary magazines.

There were also a series of anthologies of short stories by British and international writers.

As a writer of fiction his career really started with Selected Stories, which was a little stapled paperback issued in 1944.

This was quickly followed by Worlds Without End, a hardback published in 1945, and then his first novel The White Rock in the same year.

The latter was also published in US and the Netherlands.

A second novel The More We Are Together soon followed and then a third The Widening Mirror in 1949.

Val Baker was also increasing his output of short stories, many of which were not only published in magazines, but also read on the

BBC’s Morning Story programme.

Over the years, he had well over 100 stories read on BBC radio.

While continuing to write short stories, he also launched the publication The Cornish Review in 1949.

The Cornish Review featured poems, short stories, articles, art and book reviews.

This quarterly magazine lasted three years and ten issues.

Val Baker had always been enchanted by Cornwall, and he eventually moved there firstly to Penzance, Sennen and St Hilary eventually to St.Ives in 1956.

This change was to mark a new era in his writing career.

In 1959 he published the acclaimed Britain's Art Colony by the Sea about the artistic community of Cornwall, and particularly based around St. Ives.

Val Baker lived in various places in Cornwall as his family kept growing.

The family life in Corwall was to provide the basis for many autobiographical, humorous books.

The first of which, The Sea’s in The Kitchen, was published in 1962 by Phoenix House and was to be his best selling book since the 1940s.

This was soon followed by The Door is Always Open in 1963 and eventually by another twenty four.

In 1966 Val Baker revived the Review with much the same mixture, this time it lasted for twenty six issues until it folded in 1974.

An Index to "The Cornish Review" by Phoebe Proctor was published by the Institute of Cornish Studies in 1978; "The Cornish Review" magazine: an illustrated bibliography by Tim Scott was published by Cornish Connections / Hare's Ear ISBN 0-9515686-2-0.