H.M. Tomlinson

(1873 - 1958)

H.M. Tomlinson, born and buried in London, grew up near the East End docks, worked at a shipping office in East London, and forged a career filled with books that mention water and a passion for traveling on it: The Sea and the Jungle, London River, The Turn of the Tide, and Malay Waters. He didn’t publish a single book until after he turned forty. He covered World War I from the front in Belgium, and spoke often against fascism and war before the approach of World War II. “If the old and fervid nationalisms continue in their activities uncontrolled by anything but desire, as though this were the eighteenth century, then we shall wreck our planet,” he wrote fifteen years after the Armistice. “I, for one, don’t believe it will come to that; but salvation means an effort of will.”