follows a red herring—or more precisely a trout! But even when most discursive he is good company... He brings both freshness and penetration of observation to the Cotswold scene, where as much as anywhere on our island, the works of Nature and man are one. In addition to his work with Gwynn, Beddington also illustrated Anthony Crossley's The Floating Line for Salmon and Sea Trout (1939). At this point, he began to branch out into writing as well as painting after being encouraged by Gwynn to pursue writing as a career. He began working for Country Life as a columnist and wrote and illustrated the children's book The Adventures of Thomas Trout (1939). In 1955 he published To Be a Fisherman; a work about the experiences of being an angler. In 1957 his children's novel, The Pigeon and the Boy, was published by Geoffrey Bles. The work tells the story of a boy from a small English village who is taught how to train racing pigeons by his father. He grows up and becomes a young soldier in the British Army in France during World War II. He uses his talent with pigeons from his childhood to aid in the war against the Nazis; ultimately using his own pigeon to send a critical message across the English Channel. His third and final book, Pindar: a dog to remember (1975), was described by James Fergusson in The Independent as "a remarkably unselfconscious biography of a yellow labrador". He also published two volumes of poetry. Personal life and death Beddington served in the British Army during World War II, specializing in anti-aircraft work. He was discharged after being injured, after which he worked for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. He was involved with national policy making with Britain's Salmon & Trout Association and was a chairman of the Fisheries Committee's Hampshire River Board. In 1952 he married Anna Griffith with whom he had two daughters. The couple divorced after seven years of marriage, and he married a second time in 1961 to Diana Dobson with whom he had another daughter. Beddington died on 31 May 1995 at the age of 84 in Salisbury, Wiltshire. References External links 1910 births 1995 deaths 20th-century British painters Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Oxford Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art British children's writers 20th-century British journalists 20th-century British novelists British male painters 20th-century