Rex Tremlett

Horace Rex Tremlett (8 June 1903 – 1986) was a British-South African mining engineer and journalist.

Portrait of Rex Tremlett; from the reverse of Road to Ophir (1961).

Biography

Early life and education

Horace Rex Tremlett was born on 8 June 1903, the son of Horace Samuel Tremlett (1858–1941), an English mining engineer who helped develop the city of Johannesburg, and Jane Robinson Brunton (1875–1948), a fiction writer known under the pen name Mrs. Horace Tremlett.[1] Her best-known book, With the Tin Gods (1914), is an account of her experience in Africa as she accompanied her husband on a journey from Lagos to Niger, and into Nigeria until 1912.[2][3][4]

Tremlett studied at Berkhamsted School, Hertfordshire, where he was a schoolmate of journalist A. K. Chesterton and politician Ben Greene,[5] then attended Camborne School of Mines in Cornwall.[6] At the age of 16 he began to search for gold in Nyasaland, journeying across Central Africa until 1928.[7] Tremlett worked as a mining engineer and a journalist in Johannesburg, then moved back to England.[8][9]

Fascist activist

In the early 1930s, Tremlett was a member of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), serving as Oswald Mosley's deputy director of publications and as the editor of BUF's newspapers Fascist Week and The Blackshirt. After several meetings together, Tremlett convinced A. K. Chesterton to join the party in November 1933.[7][9] In 1934 he resigned from the BUF with 'The National' and the 'New January Club' splinter group.[10]

In 1945 Tremlett attended the founding meeting of the National Front along with Chesterton. According to his personal MI5 file, however, he appeared to "have moderated his views" by the 1950s, and Tremlett's file, which had been opened in February 1934, was not updated after April 1957.[10]

Later life

In 1949 Tremlett was the subject of the black-and-white 3m27s-long BBC television documentary Cornish Farmer Turns Tin Miner, which tells his story as he was reworking an old mine on his farm near St Austell, Cornwall, during the post-WWII recovery period.[11] In the 1950s he renewed with journalism and became involved with BBC television, mainly on farming programs.

Tremlett published his autobiography in three parts: Easy Going (1940), the story of his experiences with various cultures on three continents,[12] Road to Ophir (1956), the story of his past life as a mining engineer in Africa,[8] and Gold in the Morning Sun (1983), which he subtitled "travels and adventures of a new West Australian".[13]

Tremlett was a regular contributor to MANAS Journal and a friend of E.F. Schumacher.[14][15]

References
  1. The Star - Today! Magazine. Wednesday July 25, 1984.
  2. Mrs Horace Tremlett (1915). With the Tin Gods. J. Lane. ISBN 978-1331432531.
  3. "Review of With the Tin Gods. [A Woman's Adventures in Northern Nigeria]". Bulletin of the American Geographical Society. 47 (6): 456. 1915. doi:10.2307/201514. JSTOR 201514.
  4. Callaway, Helen. (1986). Gender, Culture and Empire : European Women in Colonial Nigeria. Palgrave Macmillan Limited. pp. 5, 74. ISBN 978-1-349-18307-4. OCLC 1084449245.
  5. LeCras, Luke (2019). A.K. Chesterton and the Evolution of Britain's Extreme Right, 1933-1973. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-79232-8.
  6. Tremlett, Rex (1956). Road to Ophir. Hutchinson. p. 13.
  7. Baker, David (1996). Ideology of Obsession: A.K.Chesterton and British Fascism. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 124. ISBN 9781860640735.
  8. "Manas". MANAS Journal. 27: 2. 1976.
  9. Macklin, Graham (2020). Failed Führers: A History of Britain's Extreme Right. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-44880-8.
  10. Horace Rex TREMLETT. KV 2/3328. The National Archives.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  11. "BBC - Nation on Film - Tin mining - Cradle of industrial revolution". BBC Adactio. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  12. "Rex Tremlett". The Spectator. 165: 553. 1940.
  13. Tremlett, Rex (1983). Gold in the morning sun : travels and adventures of a new West Australian. R. Tremlett; distributed by Pickwick Books. ISBN 978-0-9590325-0-5.
  14. http://www.manasjournal.org/pdf_library/VolumeXXXVI_1983/XXXVI-21.pdf
  15. http://www.manasjournal.org/pdf_library/VolumeXXXIX_1986/XXXIX-51.pdf
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