Geraint Goodwin

Who was Geraint Goodwin?

Arthur Geraint Goodwin was a Welsh novelist and short story writer. He was born in the village of Llanllwchaearn, on the outskirts of Newtown, Montgomeryshire, the son of Richard Goodwin and Mary Jane Goodwin. His father died when he was eight and his mother married the almost twenty years younger Frank Humphreys when he was twelve. This was both his mother's third and Humpreys' second marriage. Goodwin apparently got on well with his stepfather and Frank Humphreys' and his mother's love of the out-of-doors, especially fishing and rough shooting, were to be an important influence on him. He attended Tywyn County School as a boarder from age thirteen and when he left school initially worked on The Montgomeryshire Express. Then in 1923 he moved to London to work in a News Agency and later as a reporter for The Daily Sketch. Goodwin's stepfather had two sons, around Goodwin's age, who had become journalists.

In 1930 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent several months in a sanitorium. Then in October, 1932 he married a fellow journalist from Yorkshire, Rhoda Storey. Out of his experience of TB came his first novel, the autobiographical Call Back Yesterday.