Eric Whelpton

Whelpton was the son of the Revd George Whelpton, minister of Trinity Methodist Church, Abingdon-on-Thames, Berkshire. From Abingdon School 1906-1909[2][3] and the Leys School, Cambridge, he entered Hertford College, Oxford in 1913.

Whelpton taught at Christ Church Cathedral School. At the University of Oxford, Whelpton became a close friend of Dorothy Sayers;[4] upon him she perhaps based the character of Lord Peter Wimsey. Whelpton later taught French at King's College School, London, and was reader in comparative education at King's College London (1931–42). Following the death of her husband, Dorothy Sayers acted as Whelpton's literary secretary. During World War II, Whelpton worked as a BBC news correspondent in France and, as recounted in his travel book, The Balearics:Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza, he was told by a Swiss correspondent that he was on the Gestapo blacklist.[5]

His last two books, The Making of a European (1974) and The Making of an Englishman (1977), are largely autobiographical. From 1943 he was married to the artist and travel writer Barbara Crocker who illustrated a number of his books.[6]

• The Book of Dublin (1948)
• The Intimate Charm of Kensington (1948)
• Paris To-Day, with a gazetteer of places of interest and entertainment (Rockliff, 1950)
• By Italian Shores (1950)
• The Balearics: Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza (Robert Hale, 1952)
• Springtime at St. Hilaire (Museum Press, 1953)
• Dalmatia (1954)
• The Road to Nice (1955)
• Summer at San Martino (with Barbara Whelpton; Hutchinson, 1956)
• Grand Tour of Italy (1956)
• Calabria and the Aeolian Islands (1957)
• Paris Cavalcade (1959)
• Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica (with Barbara Whelpton; Robert Hale,1960)
• Greece & the Islands (1961)
• Southern Spain (with Chapters on the Algarve) (1964)
• A Concise History of Italy (1965)
• Florence and Tuscany (1965)
• Venice and North-Eastern Italy (1965)
• Normandy and Brittany (holiday guides) (1965)
• Eric Whelpton's Gastronomic Guide to Unknown France (1966)
• Paris (1967)
• Rome (1968)
• The Italian Lakes & Dolomites (Collins holiday guides) (1969)
• The Fall, the Reign and the Eclipse of Rome: History of Europe, 476-1530 (1970)
• The Austrians (How They Live & Work) (1970)
• AA Road Book of France (with gazetteer, itineraries, maps and town plans) (foreword, 1970)
• The Making of a European (1974)
• The Making of an Englishman (1977)

List of Old Abingdonians