About Diana Crampton

Diana Crampton was born in Bromley, Kent and grew up in south London, attending Eltham Hill School for Girls.

After attending University In Leeds, and gaining a BA Hons in Modern Languages (French and Italian) she set off to be governess to a family of Oromo orphans in Asela, Ethiopia. This entailed teaching all subjects, and even explaining the nature of the stars in the skies.

When the children left to go to Tanzania, where they entered the International School in Moshi, Diana stayed in Addis Ababa and became secretary in the Antiquities Administration, later Ministry of Culture. With the revolution, things became tricky for everyone, and Diana left to study what she had seen in the form of a Postgraduate Diploma in Development Studies, politics, sociology and economics. 

The Diploma eventually led to a Ph.D on Language and Social Structure in Kenya, with a 14 month period of field research. This focused on the tourist industry, for which Diana coined the neologism “hedonocracy”, the search for continuous pleasure. The work also looked at language use, and the notable capacity for uneducated street children to learn multiple languages and function in a multilingual environment. She studied how people express themselves in multiple languages, switching comfortably between one and another language.

On completion of the Ph.D Diana responded to an urge to fulfil a dream, that of living in Italy, the site of early travels, and the home of her Triestine mother. Here she taught English at the Istituto di Filosofia Germanica  of Trieste University, directed by the great writer Claudio Magris (author of Danube, known to the British public). Here she undertook a series of translations of philosophy texts by Paolo Facchi and Maurizio Ferraris.

After having two children, she returned to the UK, where, after a period of mental instability, she started writing in a Creative Writing Class, drafting a novel called Testing Taragon, in revision, and a collection of short stories. 

Eventually she started a collaboration with the magazine Kent Life which continues to this day, where she is
arts writer.

Publishes Home – How I learnt not to run away, Conrad Press, 2020 where the notion of flight includes not just those travels but also losing one’s mind …. And learning how to get it back.

Currently working on a volume talking of life with a Fragile X boy, the vicissitudes and complications.