Journalist and author, born in Coventry on 10 July 1891, where his family attended Clarendon Park Methodist Church. After two unhappy years at The Leys School, he joined the editorial staff of Chapman and Hall in 1910 and went on to become a prolific literary journalist. Besides many essays, he wrote books on Masefield (1932) and Cowper (1935; revised edition, 1949) and an autobiography in 1946. Paddington to Seagood (1947) celebrates his enthusiasm for model railways. He died on 14 January 1978.
His son David founded the publishing firm of David & Charles, housed in parts of the Newton Abbot railway buildings and specialising at first in books on canals, railways etc. In 2000 it was taken over by the American firm F&W Publications.