Vera Bax, Filson Young, Stanley North, and their sons - and Clifford Bax whom she married but without issue



My grandmother, Vera Bax, lived in a world both upper class and bohemian, though of her three husbands one was working clas.

Vera lost two sons in the Second World War and her poems about them have recently been republished in anthologies. Read the story of her life, about her sons - and her poetry.

The poet and painter Vera Bax was married three times before she was fifty, and in the first 40 years of the last century. First, to Stanley Kennedy North, Keeper of the King’s paintings, art restorer and illustrator, and my grandfather, by whom she had one son, my father Paul.

Second, to the writer, broadcaster and journalist Filson Young (he was always known to intimates only by the first part of his surname), by whom she had Billy and Richard. Read here the introduction to a forthcoming biography, RDN's account of FY's importance and a timeline of his hugely productive career.

And third, to Clifford Bax, the writer brother of composer Arnold Bax.