A Complete State of Death

John Edmund Gardner was a British novelist. He was born in the village of Seaton Delaval in Northumberland as the son of a clergyman. He briefly attended Cottham’s Preparatory School in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1931, and after the family had moved to Wantage in Berkshire in 1933, King Alfred’s School 1934–1943. He joined the Home Guard at the start of the Second World War and in 1943 the Royal Marines. He left the army four years later as his father wanted him to read theology. He earned his BA at St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1950 and completed his degree at Oxford. Gardner was ordained into the Anglican Church in 1953.