People like B.S. Johnson

Bryan Stanley William Johnson (5 February 1933 – 13 November 1973) was an English experimental novelist, poet and literary critic. He also produced television programmes and made films.

Johnson was born into a working-class family, the only child of a bookseller's stock-keeper, Stanley Wilfred Johnson (1908–1973), and a waitress-cum-barmaid, Emily Jane (1908–1971, née Lambird), of Hammersmith, London. During the Second World War they moved to nearby Barnes.

Johnson was evacuated from London twice during the war. Having been educated at Flora Gardens Primary School, Hammersmith, he and his mother were moved to Chobham, Surrey in 1939 for two years, and he attended the village school. After a brief return to Hammersmith, he was sent alone in 1941 to High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, where he attended a local school. Having failed the eleven plus examination, he was unable to enter Latymer School at Hammersmith and spent the last year of the war at Highfields Secondary Modern School. On his return home, he attended Barnes County Secondary Modern School, before "passing some sort of simple examination" allowing him to transfer to Kingston Day Commercial School, where "they taught me shorthand, typing, and bookkeeping. Useful."