AUTHOR

Verner Courtenay Bickley

Literature & Fiction
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Verner Bickley, MBE, PhD, was born in England and educated at Altrincham Grammar School, the University of Cardiff and the University of London. After naval service in South Asia, he was appointed an Education Officer for the Singapore Government, teaching English and Physical Education at the leading secondary school, Raffles Institution, before taking up a teacher-training post. Later, he held senior positions in Burma, Indonesia and Japan as a British Council Officer; in Hawaii as Director of the East-West Centre's Culture Learning Institute and in Saudi Arabia as Head of Language Training for Saudi Arabian Airlines. Verner Bickley has had extensive radio and television experience with the BBC Far Eastern Station, NHK Tokyo, Radio Republik Indonesia and Radio Singapore. He is the author of over twenty textbooks and articles on international education, language and culture. He founded a series of international conferences on applied linguistics in Hong Kong and earlier supported the founding of an annual film conference in Hawaii. He has shared his wife's work in bringing back from the shadows the life and contributions of Frederick Stewart, founder of the Hong Kong Government Education Service. An enthusiastic actor, Verner Bickley has played Shylock in "A Merchant of Venice", John of Gaunt in "Richard II", "A" in "Village Wooing", the prisoner in "Dock Brief", Duncan, the Porter and Old Seward in one production of "Macbeth" and Macduff in another production of "the Scottish play". He has had small film parts in "City of Glass" with Leon Lai, "Bodyguard from Beijing" with Jet Li and "Thunderbolt" with Jackie Chan. He has recorded the complete text of his wife's work, "The Golden Needle: The Biography of Frederick Stewart (1836-1889)", available on CD. From 1983 to 1992, Verner Bickley served in Hong Kong as an Assistant Director of Education and Director of the Government's Institute of Language in Education. He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong and Chairman of the English-Speaking Union, Hong Kong. Finding himself ineligible to enter for most writing competitions for one reason or another and wishing to encourage other writers particularly those who may be in a similar position, he has co-founded (with his wife, Gillian Bickley) the Proverse Prize for Unpublished Writing. This is open to all over eighteen, irrespective of place of residence, nationality, gender, age or publishing status. The first volume of his Autobiography, "Footfalls Echo in the Memory", is released in December 2009.
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