Trevor Ramsey Villiers Blakemore (13 October 1879 – 8 July 1953) was an English poet and author.
Born in Chislehurst, Kent, Blakemore was the son of Ramsey Blakemore, a merchant, of St Leonards-on-Sea,[1] and Anna Maria Elizabeth Baynes, who had married at Wimbledon in 1867.[2] He had an older sister, Ethel Agnes Annette, born about 1872.[3] His father died in 1891.
He was educated at Hurst Court School, Hastings, Wellington College, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he was admitted on 1 October 1897 and graduated BA in 1900.[1][3]
Apart from his work as a poet, Blakemore was the author of a biography of the painter Herbert Schmalz, published in 1911.[4]
In the 1920s, Blakemore spent part of his life on Sark in the Channel Islands, and much of his poetry was inspired by the island.[5][6]
In the 1930s, Blakemore was a member of the selection committee of the Right Book Club, with Anthony Ludovici, Norman Thwaites, Collinson Owen, and W. A. Foyle.[7][8]
In 1955, after Blakemore’s death, Poems by Trevor Blakemore was published by Neville Spearman, edited by Robert Gittings and Ann Blakemore, with a foreword by Sir Compton Mackenzie.[6]
In 1911, Blakemore was living in Devonshire Terrace, Lancaster Gate, London W2, with his widowed mother, an older sister, and three servants.[3] His mother died in 1928, and his sister in 1947.[9]
In 1947, Blakemore married Ann Florence May Driver,[10] whom he had known since 1932.[11] At the time of his death, in 1953, they were living at 4, Devonshire Terrace, where he died. He left a personal estate valued at £62,728,[12] equivalent to £1,827,109 in 2021.
In his introduction to Poems by Trevor Blakemore , Compton Mackenzie said:
Trevor Blakemore had as great a capacity for enjoying himself as any man I have met. Good wine, good food, good company, good books, a fine day in Spring, a Summer swim – all simple enough pleasures, but for him every one was the peak attainable by man. Enthusiasm can be tiresome; the enthusiasm of Trevor Blakemore was infectious. He bubbled like champagne.[6]
In the 1958 New Year Honours, Blakemore's widow was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to the musical education of children.[13]