About

This blog is created from articles written by my great grandfather George C. Miller, recounting his experiences of the First World War.

About the Author:

George Calvert Miller was born at 122 Haslingden Road, Blackburn in May 1897, being educated at the Public Higher Grade School with a view to a clerical career. The outbreak of the First World War cut short a period of employment in the Blackburn Corporation Gas Department, and May 1915 found him enlisting in the Royal Field Artillery. He saw service on the Western Front at the Somme, Ypres, and St. Quentin, where he was wounded during the retreat of March 1918. After convalescence, he was appointed Gunnery Instructor at Preston Park, Brighton.

On demobilisation, he joined his father’s heavy haulage business, but this was wound up in the slump of 1930. After some ventures in the printing trade, including the launching of a short-lived weekly newspaper, the Colne and Nelson Advertiser, George Miller became a Civil Servant until his retirement in November 1963. During his public service career, he won the Vansittart Prize for a first novel in a competition organised by the Civil Service Authors Society. The novel was a historical romance set in Britain during the Roman occupation. The background research stimulated an interest in local history, the first fruit of which was a History of Hoghton Tower published in 1948 after several years work in the County Record Office. Over the next few years, four books on the history of Blackburn were published, as well as several pamphlets and numerous articles in the Evening Telegraph and especially the Blackburn Times, to which George Miller contributed for over 30 years.

In addition he was a keen member of the Lancashire Authors’ Association, winning the Pomfret Cup for Lancashire Dialect Prose in four consecutive years, from 1954-1957. This interest in dialect eventually resulted in over 500 short stories for the Lancashire Evening Post and St. Helen’s Reporter.

After his retirement he took up a post as Honorary Curator of Rufford Old Hall, which he held for almost ten years.

He married Miss Mary Elizabeth Bolton in May 1922. She died in October 1975. There were two children, John Percival a retired Master Mariner, who died in 2002 leaving four children, and James Stanley a retired Librarian, who died in 2008. George Miller died in August 1981.