British author David Storr Unwin died 11 February 2010 after a brief illness. Born 12 March 1918 in London, England, he was the son of publisher Sir Stanley Unwin (of Allen & Unwin), and wrote mostly children’s novels as David Severn.
He worked for the League of Nations before the outbreak of World War II, and then for the family publishing firm (he was medically unfit for military service). His first books were published in the early 1940s, and started introducing sf and fantasy elements into his books later in that decade (the Timeslip series, among others). The Encyclopedia of SF refers specifically to Dream Gold (1949), Drumbeats! (1953), The Future Took Us (1957), Foxy-Boy (1959), The Girl in the Grove (1974), and The Wishing Bone (1977). His Wikipedia entry has a seemingly complete bibliography. Steven Bigger offers insight into Severn’s major themes in this obituary.
In the 1950s he also wrote two novels for adults, under his own name, but they were neither genre nor successful. His autobiography, Fifty Years with Father, was published by Allen & Unwin in 1982, and appears to be his last published book.