Kathleen Shirley Toulson ( Dixon; 20 May 192423 September 2018) was an English writer, poet, journalist and local politician.
1944
She attended Prior's Field School and worked with the Auxiliary Territorial Service during World War II and married Norman Toulson, an army lieutenant, in 1944: they divorced in 1951.
She then studied English at Birkbeck, University of London, and worked at Foyles bookshop before becoming a journalist.
1950
As a poet she was a member of The Group, an informal group of poets who met in London from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s.
1960
In 1960 she married poet Alan Brownjohn; they divorced in 1969.
1962
In 1962 she and her husband Alan Brownjohn were elected as Labour councillors in the Wandsworth London Borough Council.
1963
Her work was included in the group's 1963 anthology A Group Anthology.
1973
Her 1973 short story 'Playground of England', appearing in the Welsh journal Planet, satirized the objectification of Wales as a tourist destination by English second home owners.
1977
Starting in 1977 with her book The Drovers’ Roads of Wales, Toulson was the author of several books on the subject of walking routes used by farmers moving livestock from Wales to England.
1986
She contributed a profile of the novelist Christine Brooke-Rose for a 1986 reference publication.
