G. F. Green
British writer

George Frederick Green (1911–1977), was a British writer of novels and short stories.
Biography
The son of the owner of an iron foundry, Green was born in Derbyshire. He was educated at Wells House preparatory school in Malvern, Repton School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read English. During the 1930s he briefly tutored the young son of the publisher Jonathan Cape, but devoted most of his time to writing short stories about working-class life in the industrial North. These were published in most of the leading publications of the period, frequently anthologised, and collected in the 1948 volume Land Without Heroes. Called up in 1940 (he was anti-war but did not become a conscientious objector to spare his mother's feelings), he was posted to what was then Ceylon, where he edited a magazine for the Ceylonese forces titled Veera Lanka, which was published in both Sinhalese and Tamil. The job was not onerous, and he devoted his time to 'verandahism', a term he invented to describe hours passed on his private verandah, drinking, smoking, taking benzedrine and having sex with the locals. In 1944 he was caught in flagrante with a Sinhalese rickshaw-puller: he was court-martialled, cashiered and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. He served the first months in an old colonial jail on the island, during which time he kept a diary. This became the basis of an article entitled "Military Detention", which was published in 1947 under the pseudonym 'Lieut.
“G. F. Green” enters the record as british writer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Green, British and writer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“G. F. Green” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Green, British and writer provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5512228. VIAF identifies the subject as 30840608. The Library of Congress control number is n80089754. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911, 1977, 1948 and 1940.
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This entry incorporates text from “G. F. Green” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.