Galsworthy Close

The greater part of the post war Brake Farm and Chaucer Way estates have street names that owe their origins to celebrated British writers. The principal thoroughfares, Chaucer Way and Shakespeare Road are of course named after two of the country's literary giants but that is to take nothing away from the others, including the man who turned down a knighthood in 1918 - John Galsworthy.

Educated at Harrow and oxfrod University, he qualified as a barrister in 1890 (aged 23). However he had no financial need to practice and instead took to travelling, visiting America, Russia and the orient. On his journeying he met and befriended Joseph Conrad encouraging him to finish his first novel (note there is also a Conrad Road in the estate). At that stage Galsworthy had not yet established himself as a writer and it was not until 1904 that he had his first book published - The Island Pharisees.

The body of work Galsworthy is undoubtedly best known for started to appear in 1906 with the publication of The Man of Property - a work that was to immortalize the fictional character Soames Forsyte. Two more novels and several shorter stories were to appear between then and 1921 about the Forsytes and although he produced many other works it is this Forsyte Saga for which he is best remembered.

A man with a strong sense of social justice, Galsworthy eventually accepted the Order of Merit in 1929 and in 1932, the year before his death, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

EH 19 July 1997