Cornish poet, schoolmaster and writer. Simplicity and directness, associations with folklore, especially when linked to his native Cornwall.

Intensely original. Many consider him to be, as Betjeman was, a man working outside of the dominant trends of the poetry of his day.

Prize-winning poet, playwright and children`s author Charles Causley was born in Launceston, Cornwall, on 24 August 1917, and was educated at Launceston College and Peterborough Training College. 

He began writing plays in the 1930s including Runaway (1936) and The Conquering Hero (1937), and served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, an experience he wrote about in Hands to Dance: Short Stories (1951), a collection of short stories, and in his first two collections of poetry, Farewell, Aggie Weston (1951) and Survivor`s Leave (1953). Union Street: Poems (1957) included poems from both collections and was published with an introduction by the writer Edith Sitwell. 

After the war he trained to be a teacher, teaching at the grammar school in Launceston, and became literary editor of two BBC radio magazines, `Apollo in the West` and `Signature` (1953-6). In 1954 and 1966 he was awarded Travel Scholarships by the Society of Authors. He served on the Poetry Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain from 1962-6 and was awarded the Queen`s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1967. He later won a Cholmondeley Award (1971) and the Ingersoll/T. S. Eliot Award (1990). In 2000 he was awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize.

Other poetry books by Charles Causley include the collections Johnny Alleluia: Poems (1961), Underneath the Water (1968), Secret Destinations (1984), and A Field of Vision (1988), as well as poetry written for children including Figgie Hobbin: Poems for Children (1970), Jack the Treacle Eater (1987), winner of the Kurt Maschler Award, and The Young Man of Cury and Other Poems (1991). He is also editor of, and contributor to, numerous poetry anthologies and wrote the librettos to William Mathias` opera Jonah, and Phyllis Tate`s St Martha and the Dragon.

Charles Causley was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1958, and a CBE in 1986.