ABSTRACT
John Arden was born on 26 October 1930, of traditional English yeoman stock. His ancestors may be traceable to the Norman Conquest or even earlier, and there is some evidence that he was related to the family of Shakespeare’s mother. His nearer ancestors came from Beverley in Yorkshire, and the nineteenth-century Ardens were pillars of the Conservative Party. The Ardens lived in a neat terraced house in Guest Road, Barnsley. When war was declared in 1939, his parents, fearing that Barnsley might be a target for German bombers, decided to take him away from St Mary’s and send him to a boarding school. Arden, who appreciated the fact that the teachers were young and interested, was made a prefect in his final year.
