Wallace Southam

Thomas Wallace Southam (11 October 190014 May 1990) was an executive in the oil industry and an amateur composer. He composed art songs, including some jazz settings of classic and contemporary poetry, and began publishing and recording them during the 1960s. Southam worked with Lawrence Durrell and the London publisher and bookseller Bernard Stone, among others. Southam made his living as a businessman, and from the 1920s was working in China for the Asiatic Petroleum Company a joint venture between the Shell and Royal Dutch oil companies. He married Anna Christabel Gair in Fuzhou (then known as Foochow) in 1931.They were in Athens from the late 1930s, where Southam became associated with the British Council. Wartime and film work While in Athens Southam became friendly with Lawrence Durrell, and after Durrell’s daughter Penelope was born on 4 June 1940, the Southams opened up their house to Lawrence and his wife Nancy Myers for a few weeks while Nancy was recuperating. Southam and Durrell met up again in London in the late 1960s, working together on a musical (with both words and music by Durrell) called Ulysses Come Back. Wartime exploits between the Shetland Islands and Norway