Nicholas John Hancock (1933 - 2021)

Born 1 Aug 1933 in Stocklands, Aldwick, Sussex, England

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 11 Feb 2021 at age 87 in Olomouc, Olomoucký kraj, Czechia

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Paul Hancock [send private message]

Biography

Nicholas Hancock was born near Aldwick, Sussex, England on 1 August 1933. He spent most of his youth in rural Wiltshire at Greenways School, which was owned by his parents. From his 17th to 19th year he was a gaucho on a ranch in Uruguay. After his National Service, he worked, among other things, on a farm, in a shoulder pad factory and on a seiner on the North Sea before studying at the Sorbonne in 1954-55. He taught in various schools while studying foreign languages. He married Joan Marland in 1965 and they emigrated to Canada where he became head teacher in Harrington Harbour, a remote village on the Lower North Shore of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. After having three sons, they moved to Trois-Rivières, Quebec, where Nicholas taught in a high school and obtained his MA. He and Joan divorced in 1985 and he returned to England in 1988, settling in Liverpool and becoming a full-time writer. In 1989 his novel La Béatification was published in French Canada. He also published Choses tristes (1998), a collection of French poetry, Window for a Monad (1999), a collection of English poems, and Daniel and Miriam (2004), a novel. He spent much of 1990-91 on an epic cycling trip through Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, being in Petra for the outbreak of the Gulf War and meeting his future second wife in a Prague pastry shop; he published an account of his adventures in Travels of a Donkey (2013).

Nicholas and Pavla retired to live in Olomouc, Czech Republic. He died there, aged 88, on 11 February 2021 after contracting COVID-19.

Sources

• Family papers of Paul Hancock
• http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nicholas-Hancock/e/B0034P5ALC/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
• "England and Wales Birth Registration Index, 1837-2008," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVQ4-B35G : accessed 18 October 2015), Nicholas J Hancock, 1933; from "England & Wales Births, 1837-2006," database, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : 2012); citing Birth Registration, Westhampnett, Sussex, England, citing General Register Office, Southport, England.
• Births. The Times (London, England), Thursday, Aug 03, 1933; pg. 1.
• "England and Wales Marriage Registration Index, 1837-2005," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV69-8NKW : 8 October 2014), Nicholas J Hancock and null, 1965; from “England & Wales Marriages, 1837-2005,” database, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : 2012); citing 1965, quarter 3, vol. 10D, p. 563, Liverpool North, Lancashire, England, General Register Office, Southport, England.