John was born in Hull in 1939. He was the deputy leader of the South Yorkshire County Council, the chair of Sheffield's Crucible and Lyceum Theatres and vice-chair of the Yorkshire and Humberside Sports Council. In retirement he has written twenty books and a number of poems. He lives in Sheffield.
‘Billy’ was something of a school treasure, but when I was in his history class in the fifties, he was well past his best. He had gone straight from his school’s sixth form in Bradford to serve on the Western Front and was badly gassed: an experience that left him with a permanent, persistent cough. […]
Referees come in many shapes and sizes. Here, John Cornwell recalls three splendid Yorkshire examples. The first refereed on a bike… As a sixth former at a county schoolboys’ trial match, I got talking with a boy from one of the better known boarding schools. When he discovered that I came from the East Riding […]