John Masefield
John Edward Masefield OM (1 June 1878 - 12 May 1967) was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate from 1930 until 1967. Among his best known works are the children’s novels The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, and the poems The Everlasting Mercy and 'Sea-Fever'. After an unhappy education at the King’s School in Warwick, where he was a boarder between 1888 and 1891, he left to board HMS Conway, both to train for a life at sea and to break his addiction to reading, of which his aunt thought little. While he was on the ship he listened to the stories told about sea lore, and decided that he was to become a writer and story-teller himself.
