Cardiff – born Howard Spring (1889 – 1965) became a world famous novelist in the 1920s and is most remembered for ‘My Son, My Son!’ (1937) and ‘Fame Is the Spur’ (1940).

Spring became an office errand boy in Cardiff Docks before working as a messenger at the offices of the South Wales Daily News.  Determined to become a reporter, he taught himself shorthand and took evening classes at University College, Cardiff in English, French, Latin, History and Mathematics. He was appointed a reporter before joining the ‘Yorkshire Observer’ and then the ‘Manchester Guardian’, where his career was interrupted by conscription when he served in the Army Service Corps as a shorthand typist. 

In 1931, Lord Beaverbrook appointed him book reviewer on the ‘London Evening Standard’.  His first book was published in 1932 and by 1939, able to support himself with his writing, Spring moved to Mylor in 1939 and then, in 1947, to Falmouth.  He became particularly prolific in the post-war years publishing eight more novels and three volumes of autobiography.