David Walker

Vocation

Scottish Canadian novelist. in 1931, he was commissioned in the Black Watch regiment, serving with the foreign battalion in India and Sudan (1932–38) and in Canada (1938–39) as aide-de-camp to Governor-General Lord Tweedsmuir, the novelist John Buchan. Captured by the Germans at St. Valery in June 1940, he spent nearly 5 years in prisoner of war camps, escaping 3 times, on each occasion reaching the outside only to be recaptured. While interned at Colditz Castle, he began to write poetry. In 1948 he emigrated to Canada. He enjoyed a long and successful career which included the publication of approximately 100 short stories and 20 books. His novels The Pillar, about a prisoner of war camp, and Digby, a Scottish highlands story, won the Governor General's award for fiction for 1952 and 1953 respectively. Several of his books, including Geordie, made into a motion picture in 1955, were set in his native Scotland, while Mallabec and Pirate Rock were set in his adopted home province of New Brunswick. Link to Wikipedia