Timothy Finn’s father, with characteristic exuberance, responded to the outbreak of World War Two by buying a dilapidated Georgian house set in the rolling pastureland of south Leicestershire. Here, in the village which he re-names ‘Knapworth’, Timothy and his two brothers grew up in ‘the happiest possible environment from which to make one’s way in the world.’
Timothy read History at Oxford University and was among the last generation to be conscripted for National Service, which he spent defending the realm on Offa’s Dyke –an area which he returns to in his humorous novel ‘Three Men not in a Boat’.
In the 1960s, frustrated by years of living in a village without a pub, he started researching his ground-breaking ‘Pub Games of England’ in which he identified and catalogued over forty traditional inn games from Shove ha’penny and Quoits to Knurr and Spell and Devil among the Tailors. The book opened up an area of social history previously unexplored and remains the definitive book on the subject.
Following this first literary success his family, having heard his wartime reminiscences once too often, urged him to ‘go away and write them down.’ The result was two captivating memoirs of English rural life during World War Two as seen through the eyes of a small boy, Knapworth at War and Knapworth Fights On, both published by Duckworth.
With an urgent need to pay the mortgage during a short period of unemployment Timothy persuaded Duckworth to commission a third book, Three Men (not) in a Boat which was written in six weeks. Though in the running for the prize for fastest written work of literature it is beaten by Noel Cowards’s record of three days to write Hay Fever.
In collaboration with the composer Simon Brown, Timothy Finn has written three full-length musicals, commissioned by King’s College School in Cambridge where they had their first performances. The ’45, The Laughing Cavalier and The Road to Bath, reflect Timothy’s enthusiasm for eighteenth century history and Simon Brown’s equal enthusiasm for the eighteenth century style of music.
Aside from his literary activities Timothy has been a leading charity fundraising consultant for over twenty five years, with charity clients ranging from major national organisations to the smallest local church.
As a former Oxford University captain of fencing he claims to be an expert swordsman and, despite practising for forty years, is a rather clumsy lute player. He is married to the business journalist and garden writer Widget Finn. They have a daughter and two sons, and have lived for over twenty years in a sixteenth century Suffolk farmhouse which they have almost finished restoring.