R.R. Armstrong

RALPH RICHARD ARMSTRONG (1903 - 1986)

Armstrong was born the son of a blacksmith in Walbottle. He left school at 13 to work in a foundry as a greaser, labourer and eventually crane-driver. Armstrong had gone to sea after WWI and between 1919-1937, worked his way up from deckhand to radio operator. After a period ashore, pursuing various trades, the stories began. The first of Armstrong's books about the North East, The Mystery of Obadiah (1943) is the least impressive, a boy's adventure set in Tynedale. Thias Stringer, the hero of his next novel is here only 13, but already showing qualities of leadership. Sabotage at the Forge (1946) draws on the author's own working life in a Tyneside steel-works (possibly Armstrong's) and is probably the best example in children's literature of a boy's life within a complex industrial environment. Though the heat dirt and monotony of work is not glossed over, the excitement of a large enterprise is there too, and at times the writing attains a pitch of lyrical intensity. As well as being an engrossing story of a boy coping with a job and finding his route to maturity, the story is also a valuable and memorable record of the North East industrial heritage.

His notable 1948 book Sea Change reflects his nautical experience and shows a boy coming to maturity aboard a ship voyaging from Liverpool to the West Indies. This won him the Carnegie Medal, the highest award in children's literature. His biography of Grace Darling The Maid and the Myth is a brutally honest account of what happened, viewed from the perspective of a professional seaman. Most of his later stories are about the sea - Danger Rock for example, which won the New York Herald Tribune prize. The Whinstone Drift (1951), however, has a convincing coal-mining background and is set in a Northumberland valley, and shows him to have no rivals in evoking this milieu - with the possible exception of Frederick Grice with his stories of the Durham coalfield. Armstrong's work is both realistic and mentally challenging. Characters and their relationships within the community can be quite complex and ambivalent. The Mutineers (1968) shows boys on a desert island and may be seen as a plausible reply to Golding's famously pessimistic The Lord of the Flies.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
RALPH RICHARD ARMSTRONG (1903 - 1986) Armstrong was born the son of a blacksmith in Walbottle. He left school at 13 to work in a foundry as a greaser, labourer and eventually crane-driver. Armstrong had gone to sea after WWI and between 1919-1937, worked his way up from deckhand to radio operator. After a period ashore, pursuing various trades, the stories began. The first of Armstrong's books about the North East, The Mystery of Obadiah (1943) is the least impressive, a boy's adventure set in Tynedale. Thias Stringer, the hero of his next novel is here only 13, but already showing qualities of leadership. Sabotage at the Forge (1946) draws on the author's own working life in a Tyneside steel-works (possibly Armstrong's) and is probably the best example in children's literature of a boy's life within a complex industrial environment. Though the heat dirt and monotony of work is not glossed over, the excitement of a large enterprise is there too, and at times the writing attains a pitch of lyrical intensity. As well as being an engrossing story of a boy coping with a job and finding his route to maturity, the story is also a valuable and memorable record of the North East industrial heritage. His notable 1948 book Sea Change reflects his nautical experience and shows a boy coming to maturity aboard a ship voyaging from Liverpool to the West Indies. This won him the Carnegie Medal, the highest award in children's literature. His biography of Grace Darling The Maid and the Myth is a brutally honest account of what happened, viewed from the perspective of a professional seaman. Most of his later stories are about the sea - Danger Rock for example, which won the New York Herald Tribune prize. The Whinstone Drift (1951), however, has a convincing coal-mining background and is set in a Northumberland valley, and shows him to have no rivals in evoking this milieu - with the possible exception of Frederick Grice with his stories of the Durham coalfield. Armstrong's work is both realistic and mentally challenging. Characters and their relationships within the community can be quite complex and ambivalent. The Mutineers (1968) shows boys on a desert island and may be seen as a plausible reply to Golding's famously pessimistic The Lord of the Flies.
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