23/09/2025
Smokestack is very sorry to report the death of John Lucas, who has died of cancer, aged 87.
John was a poet, novelist, critic, essayist and literary historian, Professor Emeritus at the Universities of Loughborough and Nottingham Trent and the founder-editor of Shoestring Press.
He was the author of studies of Dickens, Clare, Browning, Bennett, Crabbe and Gurney, several books on English poetry, eight novels and a series of memoirs – Next Year Will Be Better, Closing Time at the Oak, The Moon Looks Down on Them All and 92 Acharnon Street (which won the Dolman Best Travel Book Award), as well as A Brief History of Whistling (with Allan Chatburn).
John’s translation of Egils Saga is an Everyman Modern Classic. and The Awkward Squad: Rebels in English Cricket was shortlisted for the Cricket Writers’ Best Book of the Year.
His books of poetry included About Nottingham, Studying Grosz on the Bus, Flying to Romania, One for the Piano, On the Track, A World Perhaps, The Long and the Short of It and Portable Property. Smokestack published Flute Music in 2006.
