Art Cockerill obituary

Art Cockerill, who has died aged 87, was a soldier, engineer, author, librettist, publisher and occasional contributor to Guardian Weekly.

Born in Blidworth, Northamptonshire, he was the fourth of 10 children, all of whom would later feature in his semi-fictional family saga Lay Gently on the Coals (2011). His father, John, was variously a soldier, manual worker and entertainer; his mother, Margaret, let rooms to theatricals - Art remembered John Mills as a lodger. He entered the Duke of York's Royal Military School, in Dover, Kent, in 1939. A proud "Dukie", he went on to write the school's bicentenary history, The Charity of Mars (2002).