When he died in 1955, John Hampson's obituary in the Times of London said that he was "the author of the well-known novel Saturday Night at the Greyhound" and

the grandson of Mr. Mercer Hampson Simpson, sometime manager of the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, and he spent most of his life in the Midlands, in his early years as an employee in the catering trade. This experience he put to good use not only in Saturday Night at the Greyhound . . . but also in Care of "the Grand" and The English at Table. . . . the only novel he wrote after the last war was A Bag of Stones.

As the obituary indicates, Hampson was, and is, remembered principally for his first novel, Saturday Night at the Greyhound (1931). The details of his life are obscure: there is no entry on him in the Dictionary of National Biography or in any post-World War II...