Church became a respected journalist and reviewer,[4] and wrote extensively on country matters.[1] His first poetry appeared in Robert Blatchford's Clarion, and he contributed verse to periodicals for the rest of his life.
His first post as a literary editor was with the New Leader, organ of the Independent Labour Party. He was director of the Oxford Festival of Spoken Poetry during the 1930s. His much-anthologised World War I poem "Mud" first appeared in Life and Letters, January 1935.
The first volume of Church's autobiography, Over the Bridge (1955), was awarded the Sunday Times Prize for Literature while the novelist Howard Spring described it as "the loveliest autobiography written in our time," pointing out that the writer had "found life full of enchantment, and how not the least of its enchantments was its challenge." The second volume, The Golden Sovereign, appeared in 1957. That year Church was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
