Ralph Whitlock

Whitlock was born in Pitton, near Salisbury, Wiltshire six months before the outbreak of the First World War. He was the son of a tenant farmer, the eldest of three children. His family name is noted on the first parish register in Pitton, where his family had been shepherds and farmers since the early 1600s. Whitlock was later to chronicle the history of his native village in The Lost Village, which noted the changes in Pitton from the 1920s to the 1980s. A subsequent volume, The Victorian Village recounted 19th century life there. Educated at Bishop Wordsworth's School, Salisbury, Whitlock had planned to attend university to study history but family circumstances during the Great…