Maurice Denton Welch was born on 27 March 1915 at Shanghai in China. He was the youngest of the four sons of Arthur Joseph Welch and Rosalind Welch, an American Christian Scientist. The maternal and paternal sides of the Welch family had for many years been engaged in commercial ventures in China, and the Welch boys were raised in comfort. The family’s lifestyle was typical of the English ruling class in the late Edwardian period. A child who at the age of seven could pronounce that: ‘a flea would despise the amount of lemonade I’ve got, Mother’ was never going to be ordinary, and Denton’s experiences in China made their contribution. In 1924, Welch was enrolled in a school in Kensington, and then in 1926-1929, attended St Michael’s, a prep school in Uckfield, Sussex. While he was in school, his mother, with whom he was especially close, died in March 1927. That event had a profound effect on her son. In 1929 Denton was sent to the public school Repton in Derbyshire, where he was bullied by Roald Dahl and he dealt with the situation by running away. He then studied painting at Goldsmith’s School of Art in south London, with the intention of becoming a painter, among his teachers was the printmaker and graphic designer Edward Bawden. At first he lived in a house where his brother Bill was also rooming, and then he moved into a house near Greenwich Park, where the landlady was Evelyn Sinclair, who became a life-long friend. Two years later, on 9 June 1935 the careless driver of a car ran Welch down on a suburban road in Surrey, as he walked his bicycle. While he avoided paralysis, his spine was fractured, and for a few months he was paralysed from the chest down. He was able to learn to walk again, but with difficulty. For the rest of his life, he suffered from recurrent kidney and bladder infections, which would cause frequent severe headaches. After the accident, Welch first spent time at National Hospital, and then in the Southcourt Nursing Home at Broadstairs, Kent. After his discharge from the nursing home at Broadstairs in 1936, Welch moved with his housekeeper Evelyn Sinclair to Tonbridge in Kent, to be close to his doctor, John Easton. In retirement, Welch continued to paint and draw and had his first exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1941. The Leger Gallery and Redfern Gallery also exhibited his works. He also embarked upon a career as a writer. His short stories and novels are crowded with eccentric dowager aunts, and over-furnished with horsehair sofas and exquisitely constructed doll’s houses. With the exception of the two novels Maiden Voyage (1943) and In Youth Is Pleasure (1944) and a volume of short stories, Brave and Cruel (1946), Welch’s other works were published posthumously: A Voice Through a Cloud (1950), considered by many his best novel; Journals (1952), an account of his travels I Left My Grandfather’s House (1958), which was a rough draft; and Denton Welch – Selections from His Published Works (1963), which contains a notable introduction by Jocelyn Brooke. Welch’s journals paint a vivid, unforgettable picture of Britain in the thirties and forties. In them, he is frank about his homosexuality, although it appears to have given him little pleasure. Welch’s arrival as a novelist during 1943 was followed by his introduction to Eric Oliver, who soon became his friend and life partner. William S Burroughs cited Denton Welch as the writer who most influenced his own work and dedicated his novel The Place of Dead Roads to him. Denton Welch succumbed to the various illnesses caused by his accident on at the age of 33 on 30 December 1948, at Middle Orchard Cottage, Crouch, Kent.  Welch’s self portrait may be found in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London. His Harvest (c.1940) was presented to the Tate by Betty Swanwick in 1987. The Denton Welch Art Collection at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas includes 36 of Welch’s oil paintings, seven watercolour paintings, 26 drawings (pencil, ink, and/or watercolour), and two sketchbooks. Most of the works are still lifes and landscapes, many executed in a surrealist style. There are also a few portraits, including three self portraits, two portraits of Evelyn Sinclair, a portrait of his brother Bill and pictures of unidentified subjects. Among the drawings are also designs for the title page and a decorative border for Maiden Voyage. One of the sketchbooks was created during Welch’s hospital stay in 1935.