Denys Val Baker’s literary output was quite prodigious. Most people knew that he was a well established author but few appreciated the extent of his achievement.

In his lifetime, he published 14 novels, 26 autobiographies, 23 short story collections, 18 books on general subjects, 41 edited collections of other writer’s work and several hundred short stories.

He was a writer from the very start. Born in 1917 of Welsh parentage, his father was Valentine Baker the noted flight pioneer who taught Amy Johnson to fly. (Valentine Baker was later killed in a flying accident while testing a Martin-Baker Fighter in 1942. His partner, James Martin, went on to design the first ejector seat for jet-engined aircraft.)

Denys Val Baker began work as a junior reporter on several regional newspapers and worked briefly in Fleet Street where he learned many of the basic skills of the writer’s trade. On the outbreak of war he became a conscientious objector (he had been vegetarian since the mid-thirties and was to remain so until his death) and worked with various pacifist groups in London doing voluntary work during the blitz.

In 1941 he began editing Opus, a quarterly literary magazine and it was to this particular literary form that he dedicated much of his energy and skill over the coming years. There followed other editorial stints with Voices, Writing Today, Modern Short Stories and International Short Stories, all of which featured work by such developing writers as Alex Comfort, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Taylor, Rayner Heppenstall, William Sampson, Anais Nin, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Krishnamurti and Henry Miller.

First Novels, 1945 saw the publication of Worlds Without End, a collection of Val Baker’s own short stories followed soon after by his first novel, The White Rock, while the end of the forties saw two more novels, The Widening Mirror, and The More We Are Together, a humorous account of community life.

From Des Hannigan’s Obituary of Denys in Peninsula Voice, Penzance August 1984.

We’ve reorganized the distribution of book and publishing assets at Syntagma Media, so that what was “Publishing Corner” has now been moved over here.

The reason for this is that the three book blogs will not be active until just prior to their publication — people tire of hearing about a book for months before it’s published. Because these sites are not updated regularly, they lower the average traffic metrics of the whole of the network.

So, I’ve decided to separate them off to this quiet corner, where they can be themselves without jeopardizing the advertising revenues of the main network.