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Eighty years ago, John Steinbeck’s best-known novel, the extraordinary The Grapes of Wrath was published, which told of the flight and plight, of the hundreds of thousands of families, mainly small farmers, who fled to a better life in California. This life, however,...

The Forgotten Wife – Presentation about Gwyn Conger Steinbeck – San Jose University, May 2019 Hello, may I introduce myself.  My name is Bruce Lawson.  I am a semi-retired businessman from Montgomery, a small former county town/seat in Powys, Mid Wales, about half the...

Gwyn Conger found John Steinbeck impossible to live with and divorced him – he never forgave her. His behaviour was not unusual amongst famous writers. The London Times revealed last week how Victorian reformer and writing superstar, Charles Dickens, tired of his...

John Steinbeck probably met Chaplin in August 1938 and records Chaplin visiting him that summer as he laboured on The Grapes of Wrath.  Chaplin, according to Parini, arrived unannounced in a black limousine, driven by a uniformed chauffeur. Subsequently, the two men...

Just finished re-reading The Moon is Down, Steinbeck’s novella of the reaction of a small town’s population, in northern Europe perhaps, when they are occupied by unnamed invaders – undoubtedly based on a German army, but never specifically so described.  This could...

John Steinbeck, American writer of over twenty major works and Nobel Prize winner, died at his New York home fifty years ago on December 20th 1968, the day before mid-winter.  He was 66 and had been in declining health for several years. One of his last books was The...

 “I believe in and will fight for the right of the individual to function as an individual without pressure from any direction. I am unalterably opposed to any interference with the creative mind. It may be wrong but out of it have come the only rights we know.  I am...

Gwyn Conger Steinbeck was the second wife of John Steinbeck, master story-teller and Nobel Prize winner.  She was born 25th October 1916.  She met Steinbeck in late 1938 or early 1939, when she was just 22.  At a border crossing to Mexico in March 1944, she said she...

John Steinbeck (1902-1968) was, with Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald, among the small handful of American literary giants of the twentieth century; the author of such classic novels as Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row and East of...

  If you write a book, you have to have something to say. Long after we are gone, John Steinbeck will be studied and his works read. His genius as a writer is undisputed, but what of the man? I do not know of anyone who has discovered the real key to him, but...

John Steinbeck (1902 -1968), supreme writer and storyteller, got millions, who had never before read fiction, to read his novels and magazine pieces – stories of ordinary characters told in a home-spun way.  Despite his critics, Steinbeck’s books still sell in tens of...

Douglas G Brown 1939-1997 Douglas Brown was born and educated in Enfield near London in England.  After receiving a degree in journalism from the University of London, he joined the Royal Air Force and was eventually assigned as Secretary to the Consul General of the...

Coming soon, articles of interest concerning the book 'My Life with John Steinbeck'.