Derek Parker

Parker was born in Looe, Cornwall on 27 May 1932. He was educated at Fowey Grammar School (1941–49). Parker worked as reporter with The Cornishman (Penzance) (1949–55) then as drama critic with The Western Morning News (Plymouth) (1956–58).^[2] In 1958 he worked as an interviewer and announcer at TWW Cardiff, and subsequently for forty years as a freelance radio broadcaster, compiling and introducing many programmes both for domestic radio and for the BBC World Service.^[3] He was editor of The Poetry Review (1966–70)^[4] and of The Author^[5] (1984-2002). He was a Fellow of the Society of Authors.^[6]

In 2003, Parker and his wife moved to Sydney, before returning to the United Kingdom in 2022. He died from a short illness on 2 January 2025, at the age of 92.^[7]

In the early 1980s, "William Blatchford" claimed to have located the Memoirs of Cora Pearl, which he said had been published in 1890, after Pearl's death. Supposedly an earlier version of the book published in 1886, this volume purported to date back to an earlier date, perhaps even as early 1873. Decidedly more frank and sexually explicit than the 1886 memoirs, their idiomatic English – expressive of a provincial, unsophisticated use of the language – convinced many of the work's authenticity when the memoirs were published by Granada under the title Grand Horizontal, The Erotic Memoirs of a Passionate Life. However, Blatchford turned out to be a pseudonym adopted by the real author of the 'memoirs', Derek Parker, a former chairman of the Society of Authors, who later admitted that he had hoaxed Granada.^[8][9]