title: Ronald Bottrall
text: # Ronald Bottrall
  
  (Francis James) Ronald Bottrall OBE, (2 September 1906, Camborne, Cornwall – 25 June 1989) was a Cornish poet. He was praised highly by F.R. Leavis, Anthony Burgess and Martin Seymour-Smith, and deprecated by Ian Hamilton and Martin Amis.
  
  Bottrall was educated at Redruth Grammar School and at Pembroke College, Cambridge.
  
  ## Career
  
  * Lector in English, University of Helsingfors, Finland, 1929–31
  * Commonwealth fund fellowship, Princeton University, USA, 1931–33
  * Johore Professor of English Language and Literature, Raffles College, Singapore, 1933–37
  * Assistant Director, British Institute, Florence, Italy, 1937–38
  * Secretary, SOAS, 1939–45
  * Air Ministry: Temporary Administrative Officer, 1940; Priority Officer, 1941
  * British Council Representative: in Sweden, 1941; in Italy, 1945; in Brazil, 1954; in Greece, 1957; in Japan (and Cultural Counsellor, HM Embassy, Tokyo), 1959
  * Controller of Education, British Council, 1950–54
  * Chief, Fellowships and Training Branch, Food and Agriculture Organization, 1963–65.
  
  ## Honours and awards
  
  * OBE, 1949.
  * Coronation Medal, 1953
  * Syracuse International Poetry Prize, 1954
  * Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, 1955
  * Knight of St. John, 1972
  * Grande Ufficiale dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, 1973
  * Knight Commander, Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Malta, 1977
  
  ## Personal life
  
  He was the father of Anthony Bottrall, the diplomat, expert in developmental agriculture and politician.
  
  ## Publications
  
  ### Poetry
  
  * The Loosening and other Poems, 1931
  * Festivals of Fire, 1934
  * The Turning Path, 1939
  * Farewell and Welcome, 1945
  * Selected Poems, 1946
  * The Palisades of Fear, 1949
  * Adam Unparadised, 1954
  * Collected Poems, 1961
  * Day and Night, 1974
  * Poems 1955–73, 1974
  * Reflections on the Nile, 1980
  * Against a Setting Sun, 1983
  
  ### Other
  
  * (with Gunnar Ekelöf) T.S. Eliot: Dikter i Urval, 1942
  * (with Margaret Bottrall) The Zephyr Book of English Verse, 1945
  * (with Margaret Bottrall) Collected English Verse, 1946
  * Rome (Art Centres of the World), 1968.
  