Les Harrop
Les Harrop (born 1948), is an English and Australian writer, editor, and teacher. Background Born at either Darwen or Blackpool (sources differ) in the English northwest, Harrop grew up speaking East Lancashire dialect in a working-class household on the edge of the Pennines. He was the middle one of three brothers. His father was a kilnsman and artisan tilemaker whose family had been numerous about Mottram-in-Longdendale for centuries; and his mother was a mill girl who however was intellectually ambitious and eloquent in her detestation of the weaving shed. Her forebears had come over to Lancashire from Limerick in the Hungry Forties. The father served as a stoker below decks in the Royal Navy throughout the Second War; he was present in the successful pursuit of the Bismarck and afterwards on supply convoys to Murmansk and Archangel. He is said to have been torpedoed twice and to have returned from the war an altered man. It seems he was not welcomed back by his socially conscious wife. The marriage struggled on but Harrop's parents separated for good in 1956 when the boy was eight. He hardly saw his much-loved father thereafter, and when they did meet again the circumstances were