the Battle of the Barents Sea. He was ordered to take a turn controlling a fire below in the forward part of the ship and, to save the main body of the ship in the event of an explosion, sealed in for half an hour with a hose, armpit-deep in water, the bodies of two gun crews washing against him. The incident is vividly described in both his poem "J.W.51B a convoy" and his first volume of memoirs. Journalistic career After he was demobilised in 1946 Ross decided not to resume his studies at Oxford, but instead to try his hand at journalism. In 1946 his first poetry collection The Derelict Day was published; it contained poems he had written whilst in the Navy. The following year the publisher John Lehmann funded him and the artist John Minton to travel to Corsica to produce the travel book Time Was Away. Ross became a sports writer for The Observer in 1950, and became the paper's cricket correspondent in 1953, the same year his son was born. Throughout the 1950s he was a regular contributor to Lehmann's The London Magazine, before taking over as the title's editor in 1961. He edited the monthly magazine under the trimmed title London Magazine until his death; during this period it was transformed from an academic literary review to a far more cutting-edge review of the arts. Poetry Ross came to prominence as a poet with poems inspired by his experience during the Second World War. He was one of the few poets who wrote poems in English about naval warfare during that war. Personal life In 1949 Ross married Jennifer Fry, the only child of Sir Geoffrey Fry, 1st Baronet, of the Fry family who founded the chocolate company. Bibliography Time Was Away: a Notebook in Corsica (John Lehmann, 1948) – travel, memoir The Bandit on the Billiard Table; a Journey through Sardinia (Derek Verschoyle, 1954) – travel The Onion Man (Hamish Hamilton, 1959) – children's book, illus. by Raymond Briggs Danger on Glass Island (Hamish Hamilton, 1960) – children's book, illus. Raymond Briggs The Wreck of Moni (Alan Ross, 1965) – children's book, illus. Raymond Briggs A Castle in Sicily (Alan Ross, 1966) – children's book, illus. Toni Patten Blindfold Games (Collins Harvill, 1986) – autobiography Coastwise Lights (Collins Harvill, 1988) – autobiography Winter Sea: War, Journeys, Writers (Harvill Press, 1997) – travel, memoir