(Francis James) Ronald Bottrall OBE, (2 September 1906, Camborne, Cornwall – 25 June 1989) was a Cornish poet. He was praised highly by F.R. Leavis, Anthony Burgess and Martin Seymour-Smith, and deprecated by Ian Hamilton and Martin Amis.

Bottrall was educated at Redruth Grammar School and at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Career

• Lector in English, University of Helsingfors, Finland, 1929–31
• Commonwealth fund fellowship, Princeton University, USA, 1931–33 [1]
• Johore Professor of English Language and Literature, Raffles College, Singapore, 1933–37
• Assistant Director, British Institute, Florence, Italy, 1937–38
• Secretary, SOAS, 1939–45
• Air Ministry: Temporary Administrative Officer, 1940; Priority Officer, 1941
• British Council Representative: in Sweden, 1941; in Italy, 1945; in Brazil, 1954; in Greece, 1957; in Japan (and Cultural Counsellor, HM Embassy, Tokyo), 1959
• Controller of Education, British Council, 1950–54
• Chief, Fellowships and Training Branch, Food and Agriculture Organization, 1963–65.

Honours and awards

• OBE, 1949.
• Coronation Medal, 1953
• Syracuse International Poetry Prize, 1954
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, 1955
• Knight of St. John, 1972
• Grande Ufficiale dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, 1973
• Knight Commander, Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Malta, 1977

Personal life

He was the father of Anthony Bottrall, the diplomat, expert in developmental agriculture and politician.^[1]

Publications

Poetry

• The Loosening and other Poems, 1931
• Festivals of Fire, 1934
• The Turning Path, 1939
• Farewell and Welcome, 1945
• Selected Poems, 1946
• The Palisades of Fear, 1949
• Adam Unparadised, 1954
• Collected Poems, 1961
• Day and Night, 1974
• Poems 1955–73, 1974
• Reflections on the Nile, 1980
• Against a Setting Sun, 1983

Other

• (with Gunnar Ekelöf) T.S. Eliot: Dikter i Urval, 1942
• (with Margaret Bottrall) The Zephyr Book of English Verse, 1945
• (with Margaret Bottrall) Collected English Verse, 1946
• Rome (Art Centres of the World), 1968.