MORTON, J(ohn Cameron Audrieu) B(ingham Michael)

(1893-1979)

   UK writer primarily known as Beachcomber, a house name of which he had sole use for half a century, and under which he wrote a comic column for the London Daily Express 1924-75. He specialized in long, serialized fantastical spoof narratives whose protagonists were themselves hyperbolic comic types, this material being re-sorted in several collections from Mr Thake (coll 1929) to Beachcomber: The Works of J.B. Morton (coll 1974; vt The Bumper Beachcomber) ed Richard Ingrams. Of hisactual novels, Drink Up, Gentlemen (1930), a near-future SATIRE on English mores after the fashion of his mentor Hilaire BELLOC, is sf. The borderline Skylighters (1934) mocks a new religion. 1933 and Still Going Wrong (coll 1932) assembles verse satires, and The Death of the Dragon:New Fairy Tales (coll 1934) assembles fantasies.

   JC