Wilfred Hamilton-Shimmen

Wilfred Hamilton-Shimmen who was born in Singapore to an English colonial father and a mother of Dutch, Portuguese and Malay lineage in 1940. He is the author of the novel Seasons of Darkness, poem writer of "The Reef" (which was published Illustrated Weekly of India on 7 June 1959) and "Merdeka Bridge" (which was published in "The Seed" in 1961 - a publication of the Malaysian Sociological Research Institute). He raised as a White and imprisoned as an infant with his mother in the Japanese Sime Road Internment Camp for White civilians during Singapore's Japanese occupation in the Second World War. On the other hand, his father was detained, tortured and executed by the infamous Japanese Kempetai Secret Police executed him for being a spy. In relations to his working life, Wilfred had been working as a showbiz journalist, a reporter and sub-editor for a newspaper, and as a foreign correspondent. Some time during his thirties he switched to advertising copywriting before finally settling down to do public relations.