Claude Napier

Claude Gerald Napier-Clavering (1869-1938) was an English translator of the Scandinavian languages. He was the father of actor Alan Napier.
Napier-Clavering was the son of Reverend John Warren Napier-Clavering. After having emigrated to Canada but returned home sick, Napier decided to become a student at the Birmingham School of Art, and joined the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft around 1894 as a metalworker specialized in silver jewellery. In 1897 he married Millicent Kenrick and by 1898 his father-in-law, William Kenrick, had become chairman of the board of directors of the guild. This led to Napier-Clavering finding himself by 1899 being the first paid managing director of the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft.
In the 1920s Napier started translating Scandinavian literature, often in collaboration with his daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Sprigge, who had married his son Mark in 1921 and lived in Sweden for a few years. In 1937 Napier translated Hjalmar Bergman's novel Grandma and our Lord under the English title Thy Rod and Thy Staff. After receiving permission from Stina Lindberg, the author’s widow, Napier with his son Alan Napier dramatized and adapted the novel for the stage. Lindberg must have been impressed since she decided to buy the performing rights in Scandinavia and Germany for the dramatization and translate it back to Swedish herself. The play received it’s world premiere in Vienna in 1940 and has been performed in Sweden many times.
Other translations into English by Claude Napier include Sigurd Hoels Sinners in Summertime, Kristmann Gudmundsson's Morning of Life, Nis Petersen's Spilt Milk (with Elizabeth Sprigge), Hjalmar Bergman's The Head of the Firm (with Elizabeth Sprigge), August Strindberg's The Bond, Sven Hedins Riddles of the Gobi Desert and Henning Haslund-Christensens Tents in Mongolia.
Translations
* Kings, Churchills and statemen : a foreigner's view, by Knut Hagberg; translated by Elizabeth Sprigge; Claude Napier. London : John Lane ; New York : Dodd, Mead and Co.,
* The Street of the Sandalmakers, by Nis Petersen, translated by Elizabeth Sprigge & Claude Napier. Lovat Dickson: London,
* Tents in Mongolia (Yabonah): Adventures and Experiences Among the Nomads of Central Asia, by Henning Haslund-Christensen; translated by Elizabeth Springe; Claude Napier. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., (later also reprinted under the title In Secret Mongolia)
* Men and Gods in Mongolia (Zayagan), by Henning Haslund-Christensen; translated by Elizabeth Sprigge; Claude Napier. New York: E.P. Dutton & co.,
* Zest for life, by Johan Wøller, translated by Claude Napier. New York: A.A. Knopf,

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