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Alan John Ross, (May 6, 1922 – February 14, 2001), was a British poet, writer and editor. He was born in Calcutta, India, where he spent the first seven years of his life. When he was sent to be educated in Falmouth, England, Ross spoke better Hindustani than English.

During his first two years in the Royal Navy, Ross served on several destroyers escorting supply ships to the Soviet Union. On 30 December 1942 Ross was almost killed whilst serving aboard HMS Onslow (G17), the leading destroyer in a convoy assigned to fend off a strong flotilla of German capital ships intent on annihilating the arctic convoy JW51B, at the Battle of the Barents Sea. He was trapped in the ship's hold, rapidly flooding, when he was rescued. This moment was immortalised in his poem "J.W.51B a convoy".

After he was demobilised in 1946 Ross decided not to resume his studies at Oxford but instead tried his hand at journalism. In 1946 his first poetry collection The Derelict Day was published, it contained poems he had written whilst in the Navy. The following year the publisher John Lehmann funded Ross and the artist John Minton to travel to Corsica to produce the travel book Time Was Away.
--Wikipedia