Susan Miles
Susan Miles
‘Susan Miles’ was born Ursula Wyllie in 1887 in India, where her father was a colonel in the army; her mother was the daughter of the first Bishop of Rangoon and her uncle was the Newlyn School painter William Titcomb. Educated at school in Highgate and at London University, in 1909 she married William Roberts, fourteen years her senior, Rector of St George’s, Bloomsbury from 1917-38. Her poetry was published in numerous periodicals and in 1920 the ‘charming rhymes’ of her 1918 collection Dunch were praised in Harold Monro’s Some Contemporary Poets. Three more collections of verse appeared in the 1920s, and two novels in 1934 and 1942. After her husband’s death she wrote his biography, Portrait of a Parson (1955). Lettice Delmer, a novel in verse, appeared in 1958. ‘Its simplicities are at a profound level. The theme is a great one and the characters are superb,’ wrote Storm Jameson. Ursula Roberts died in 1975.