Admired by literary luminaries as diverse as William Burroughs and Edith Sitwell, Welch, author of Maiden Voyage, was only thirty-three at his death in 1948. An Old Boy of Repton and Goldsmiths' College, he had a memorably idiosyncratic personality and never lost his feeling of being excluded from society in general, perhaps because of his early childhood in China and, as he became aware later in life, his homosexuality. But the fact that he was able to rise above severe physical infirmities inflicted by a tragic road accident when he was twenty to create some memorable writing and artwork, demonstrates that he also possessed a remarkable strength of character."