John Sleigh Pudney (19 January 1909 – 10 November 1977) was a British journalist and writer. He was known for short stories, poetry, non-fiction and children's fiction (including the Hartwarp books).
He was born in at Langley Marish and educated at Gresham's School, Holt, where he was a friend of W. H. Auden, leaving school at the age of sixteen in 1925. He later lived in Buckinghamshire.
After leaving school, Pudney worked for an estate agent, for the BBC and for the News Chronicle newspaper. In the 1930s he moved on from journalism and poetry to publishing novels and collections of short stories. In 1940, during World War II, Pudney was commissioned into the Royal Air Force as an intelligence officer and as a member of the Air Ministry's Creative Writer's Unit.
It was while he was serving as squadron intelligence officer at St Eval in Cornwall that Pudney wrote one of the best-known poems of the war. For Johnny evoked popular fellow-feeling in the London of 1941. Written during an air raid, it was published first in the Daily Chronicle, and featured significantly in the film The Way to the Stars.
Do not despair/For Johnny-head-in-air;/He sleeps as sound/As Johnny underground.Fetch out no shroud/For Johnny-in-the-cloud;/And keep your tears/For him in after years.Better by far/For Johnny-the-bright-star,/To keep your head,/And see his children fed.
In the UK General Election of July 1945, Pudney stood as the Labour Party candidate for Sevenoaks, polling 14,947 votes, or 36 per cent.
After the war he continued to write and worked as an editor and as a director of magazines and publishing companies. He was with the News Review from 1948 to 1950, Evans Brothers, Ltd. (1950-1953), and Putnam & Co. Ltd (1953-1963). In 1953 he wrote the documentary ' Elizabeth is Queen' that received a BAFTA award.
Between 1949 and 1963 he edited an annual anthology called Pick of Today's Short Stories.
Pudney was the only son of Henry William Pudney and Mabel Sleigh Pudney. In 1943, he married Crystal Herbert, the daughter of A. P. Herbert, the Independent Member of Parliament. They had two daughters and a son, but were divorced. In 1955 he married his second wife, Monica Forbes Curtis.
