John Wyndham was born in Warwickshire on 10 July 1903. He was grandly christened John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Benyon Harris, and known by the shortened John Benyon Harris for most of his life. His parents George Benyon Harris and Gertrude Parkes divorced early in John’s life, which was a rare and shameful event in Edwardian Britain. Despite the scandal and resulting estrangement from his father, John enjoyed a happy, comfortable childhood. He was especially content at his last school, Bedales in Hampshire, a progressive fee-paying institute. John Harris' first 'published' story Vivisection was written in 1919, and featured in the Bedales school magazine.
John began to write short Science Ficition stories, chiefly wrote for American magazines, in the 1920’s after unrewarding stints in farming, law, and advertising. Wyndham had two unsuccessful Sci-Fi novels published under his pre-war nom-de-plume John Benyon; Planer Plane (or Stowaway to Mars) and The Secret People, and also wrote the detective yarns Foul Play Suspected, and Love in Time.
During the Second World War Wyndham worked in the Army’s propaganda department, before joining the Royal Signal Corps. In 1944 he served in The Normandy Invasion as a cipher operator, attaining the modest rank of corporal. Shortly after the conflict, his younger brother Vivian Benyon Harris (1906-1987), an actor by trade, achieved moderate literary success with Trouble at Hanard and a further three books. Vivian had only written on the advice of his brother, and though the two were close, there must have been a touch of jealousy spurring John on. His brother Vivian was later happy to admit that John was the more accomplished novelist, and was immensely proud him.
Wyndham decided to take Science Fiction in a new direction. His ‘Logical Fantasy’ creations were alien in the true sense of the word; unfamiliar but not necessarily extraterrestrial. Wyndham also set most of his books in sedate English settings, thus magnifying the catastrophic events. The years of literary obscurity ended in 1951 with the publication of The Day of the Triffids. In 1963 John married retired school teacher Grace Wilson, who he had been secretly romancing for three decades (see Cosy Clichés and The Trouble with Lichen). They moved from London to Hampshire close to Bedales School, but Wyndham’s health swiftly declined after suffering a stroke. He died on 11 March 1969.
‘My life has been practically devoid of interest to anyone but myself - though I have quite enjoyed it, of course, in those moments when I did not seem to have been sent to occupy a largely lunatic world.’ John Wyndham.