Ursula Askham Fanthorpe (1929-2009) gained a first class honours degree in English Language and Literature at Oxford University. She then became a teacher, working for 16 years at Cheltenham Ladies' College, a leading English Independent school, ultimately becoming head of the English department.
Fanthorpe left teaching to work as a clerk at a Bristol hospital, which specialised in neurological conditions and damage to the brain, spine and nervous system. It was around this time, in 1974, that Fanthorpe began writing poetry seriously. She was responsible for keeping patients' records and used some of the material from these as inspiration for her poems. She was interested in how hospitals could ‘reduce’ people and their experiences to a few notes, known as ‘case histories’.
She started to write for publication quite late (her first volume Side Effects was published in 1978). Her work is characterised by compassion; she was sympathetic to the ‘underdog’. Fanthorpe produced several more volumes up to her death at the age of 79.
