Showell Styles

Frank Showell Styles (14 March 1908 – 19 February 2005) was an English writer and mountaineer.

Biography

Showell Styles was born in Four Oaks, Birmingham and educated at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School in nearby Sutton Coldfield. His father Alfred Thomas Styles was also born in Four Oaks, in 1882.[1] Known to his friends as 'Pip', Showell Styles' childhood was spent in the hills of North Wales where he became an avid mountaineer and explorer. During the Second World War, Styles joined the Royal Navy and was posted in the Mediterranean, but even there he walked and climbed as much as he could. As reported in his obituary by the daily post, in the early 1950s Showell Styles led several expeditions in the Himalayas and Arctic. He also climbed in the Pyrenees and Alps.[2]

An aspiring writer, Styles already had articles published in Punch, before setting out to make his living as an author. His first novel, Traitor's Mountain, was a murder mystery set on and around Tryfan in Wales. He became a prolific writer with over 160 books published for children as well as adults. In addition to historic naval adventure fiction such as the Midshipman Quinn and Lieutenant Michael Fitton series set during the Napoleonic Wars, and non-fiction works on mountains and such as The Mountaineer's Weekend Book, he wrote detective fiction under the pseudonym of Glyn Carr, and humorous pieces as C.L. Inker.

Works

Children's books

  • First Up Everest (1969), illustrated by Raymond Briggs, LCCN 69-10377
  • Marty's Mountain (1973), illus. Malcolm Hargreaves
  • Welsh Tales for Children (1974), retold by Styles, illus. Bernadette Watts[3]

Anthologies edited

  • Men and Mountaineering: An Anthology of Writings by Climbers (1968), LCCN 78-369018

Fiction

Non-fiction

References
  1. "Search Results for England & Wales Births 1837-2006".
  2. Live, North Wales (23 February 2005). "Prolific author Showell Styles dies, aged 96". North Wales Live. Retrieved 10 April 2022.
  3. Welsh tales for children, Gelert Press, 1974. Library catalogue record OCLC 34021497. WorldCat. Retrieved 29 May 2022.
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