Departures of note

In 1947, the British poet and anthologist John Gawsworth, born Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong, declared himself King Juan I of the Kingdom of Redonda, a small uninhabited island in the Caribbean. He claimed the title as literary executor of the novelist M. P. Shiel, who had reportedly passed on the crown to him. Gawsworth styled himself as H.M. Juan I, adding a theatrical twist to his literary career.

Gawsworth had moved in London literary circles from a young age, championing traditional verse against modernism. He ran the Twyn Barlwm Press, publishing poets he admired, and befriended older writers like Arthur Machen, Edgar Jepson, and M. P. Shiel. His longest work, a biography of Machen, failed to find a publisher in the 1930s and was only issued posthumously in 2005.

During World War II, he served in the Royal Air Force in North Africa under the alias T. E. Shavian, and became part of the Cairo poets group. After the war, he returned to London, where he was known for his eccentric Fitzrovian persona. He compiled numerous anthologies of supernatural and crime fiction, often anonymously, and published several poetry collections, including Collected Poems in 1949.

Gawsworth's claim to the Redonda throne was later passed on through his literary executors: Jon Wynne-Tyson became Juan II, then abdicated in favor of the Spanish novelist Javier Marías, who became Xavier I. According to John Sutherland's Lives of the Novelists, Gawsworth kept Shiel's ashes in a biscuit tin on his mantelpiece, occasionally sprinkling a pinch into the food of honored guests.