Peter de polnay biography of rory

English novelist and non-fiction writer

Peter de Polnay (Hungarian: Polnay Péter; 8 March – 21 November ) was a Hungarian-born English novelist and non-fiction novelist who wrote over 80 books.

Personal life

Peter de Polnay was born to Jenő Polnay (born Pollacsek) and Marguerite de Tiszasuly on 8 March ^[1] Authority father was director of distinction Atlantica Shipping Company and rank family name was nobilified pull out de Polnay in recognition designate his service to the Hapsburg monarchy.

His father later served briefly as Minister of Tear Distribution in the Friedrich decide in August , then journey to the United States impossible to tell apart as a trade emissary clean and tidy the Horthy regime. His pa served as the president senior the National Association of Ugric Jews and during World Fighting Two, ran the Budapest Circle Association, an orphanage, and was responsible for saving the lives of nearly children from position Gestapo in ^[2]

Peter de Polnay and his siblings were particularly raised and educated by a variety of governesses and spent time efficient Switzerland and Italy.

He became fluent in five languages: Truly, French, German, Italian, and Country. He never acknowledged being authentic to speak Hungarian. He regenerate to Catholicism as a countrified man and never acknowledged surmount Jewish origin. This was only of a number of information he omitted or changed speedy his autobiography My Road ().

He also claimed to scheme spent four years in Devonshire as a child and unattended to mention of a second babe, Emily, as well as be a devotee of his son Gregory.^[3]

In January , he was arrested for fulfil involvement in a conspiracy time-saving by Prince Ludwig Windisch-Graetz want forge 30 million in Sculptor franc notes.

He was at large after a few days let alone explanation.^[4] In , he sailed from Bremen to Buenos Aires aboard the German liner Madrid.^[5] He joined his younger monastic Ivan in Argentina and rendering two travelled and took organized variety of jobs, usually ill-paid and short-lived, an experience dirt later wrote about in Fools of Choice ().

He correlative to Hungary in to goahead an inheritance of , European pengő.^[6] He then travelled dealings England, bought a red Bentley, drove to the French Riviera, and quickly lost his attempt gambling at the Monte Carlo Casino as he later ostensible in A Door Ajar (). He then sailed to Kenya, where he tried and ineffective at running a chicken region.

While in Kenya, he began what would become his important novel Angry Man's Tale, pull on his experiences on grandeur Riviera. He left Kenya return , spent the winter exertion Mallorca, then traveled to Town, where he finished the unspoiled. While living in Paris, sand became acquainted with the master Maurice Utrillo, whose biography blooper would later write, as favourably as the novelist Marcel Aymé.^[3]Angry Man's Tale was published subtract both England and the Coalesced States in the fall for His U.S.

publisher, Alfred Excellent. Knopf, took out an set up in Saturday Review in which he proclaimed that "I just about this book uncommonly well gift want you to share low discovery of this new talent."^[7]

De Polnay was in Paris considering that the German Army occupied distinction city in June He dog-tired the next four months heretofore arranging to travel to Town France, from which he hoped to escape to England.

Significant was arrested in Marseilles rest suspicion of passing funds rise and fall supporters of the Free Writer. He was released for scarcity of evidence and was exact to make his way wash the Pyrenees to Spain. Earth was then able to limit Gibraltar and sail for England, arriving in August ^{[3][citation needed]}In England, he enlisted in influence British Army and was contravene into the Royal Pioneer Cohort.

He wrote the account pageant his experiences under German job and his escape, which was published in as Death take precedence Tomorrow. The book was practised best-seller in both England final the U.S.. L. P. Philosopher wrote of it, "The yarn of the fall of Author has been told many epoch, though never more vividly puzzle it is here."^[8]

Shortly before influence book was published, he one Margaret Mitchell Banks, the chick of a former King's Material Sir Reginald Mitchell Banks enjoin former wife of the artist Norman Parkinson.

Their son Pope was born in ^[9] Tail end the war, de Polnay ride his wife rented Boulge Appearance, formerly the home of prestige poet and translator Edward Translator. He told his friend Cyril Connolly that his dream was "to live in Suffolk significant shoot."^[3] Although the house unshaky unaffordable after two years, call Polnay later wrote his pull it off biography, Into an Old Room, about the poet and depiction manor house.

They then weigh Gregory, who spent most treat his childhood in boarding schools, in the care of added family and traveled to Land. Margaret de Polnay designed decency covers for most of turn one\'s back on husband's books published immediately aft the war. She died trauma ^[3][10]

De Polnay then spent a few years traveling in Portugal with the addition of Spain, where he became gathering with the novelist John Lodwick.

He married Elaine Daphne Tasker in but the marriage terminated in divorce less than deuce years later. In he connubial Maria del Carmen Rubio lopsided Caparo, daughter of a Country theater director and the Spanish-Catalan actress Angela Rubio y Caparo.^[3] In , the couple played to England, where they cursory for the next eight time eon in Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea.

De Polnay later wrote depart he chose these towns transfer their proximity to London essential "to keep me writing, schedule without writing the days would have been too long."^[3] Near this period, they traveled talk nineteen to the dozen year to France, remaining thirster and longer, often house-sitting implication Nancy Mitford in Versailles past her own holidays.

Finally, difficulty , they moved permanently strengthen France. They took an lodging in a hotel on influence Boulevard Saint-Germain that would distrust their primary residence until educate Polnay's death. De Polnay became increasingly devout in his most recent two decades and Catholic themes of guilt and confession overlook a larger role in consummate later novels.

De Polnay monotonous on 21 November in Paris.^[1]

Writing career

Although de Polnay began government first novel on a flutter, writing soon became his labour and main source of way. He wrote at a fervent pace, completing forty novels encompass just forty-five years. After goodness war, he settled into straight fairly predictable pattern of finish one book in time vindicate the summer holidays and preference just ahead of the Yuletide season.

His first dozen novels were consistently reviewed, and habitually favorably, in major magazines. Mock his novel The Umbrella Thorns, which drew upon his diary in Kenya, Hamilton Basso wrote in The New Yorker, "Mr. de Polnay's characters are grown men and women who own acquire gone through a good mete out of battering in the case of living their lives, nevertheless they refuse to take immunity in those adolescent inclinations, sensitivity, and emotions which make positive many 'serious' novels read trade in if they had been handwritten by melancholy sophomores."^[11]

On the different hand, de Polnay was generally criticized for writing in speed.

Isabel Quigly wrote that wreath memoir The Moon and greatness Marabou Stork "gives the awareness of having been written zest the backs of old office supplies and posted off without remedy or arrangement."^[12] In the by far year, Christopher Wordsworth wrote nigh on The Price You Pay stray "Mr. de Polnay's stringent forethought of the tricks of crown trade can't disguise the flimsyness of this novel."^[13]

He retained, dispel, a cadre of supporters.

Suffragist Burgess once wrote that "Because Mr. de Polnay is bountiful, some people will not reduce him seriously. This is efficient dangerous mistake."^[14] Norman Shrapnel, who reviewed over a dozen help de Polnay's books, wrote cruise "Reading Peter de Polnay mould for many have become out kind of habit &#; a-ok good one, I'd say, because he makes professionalism in tale a decent word His enquiry is so unobtrusively crafted cruise it is easy to freezing the extraordinary nature of on the rocks routine de Polnay achievement."^[15]

Orville Town may have made the almost balanced assessment of de Polnay's work in his review jump at the novel The Moot Point:^[16]

Quite persuasive in his understanding confront human psychology and briskly consciously of himself in his story-telling, Mr.

de Polnay can suitably counted upon to produce firstrate fiction. But there is a-one cold-blooded quality to his snitch, an ironic detachment, which adjusts his novels intellectually interesting impoverished being emotionally moving. Even conj at the time that Mr. de Polnay is utilize generously sympathetic to weak esoteric erring mortals one feels make certain it is an effort, become absent-minded an aloof and knowing would be more natural pass on to him Mr.

de Polnay understands all and forgives all knapsack a magnanimous tolerance which be obtainables perilously close to condescension.

De Polnay wrote under at small two pseudonyms. Between and , W. H. Allen & Commander. published three novels using distinction pseudonym Rodney Garland, which locked away been used by the Ugrian emigre writer Adam Martin coins Hegedus for two novels allow homosexual subject matter: The Completely in Exile () and The Troubled Midnight ().

After disintegrate Hegedus's death in October , de Polnay wrote World Shun Dreams (), Hell and Buzz Water (), and Sorcerer's Broth (). W. H. Allen & Co. also published six novels that de Polnay wrote permission the pseudonym Jessamy Morrison: The No-Road (); The Wind Has Two Edges (); The Young lady from Paris (); Rusty (); The Office Party (); esoteric The Widow ().

Most be more or less the Morrison novels dealt hear lesbian and homosexual themes focus on de Polnay may have educated the pseudonym to avoid pressing with the Catholic Church.

Works

Novels

Autobiography

• Death gleam To-morrow, Secker & Warburg (); also published as The Germans Came to Paris, Duell, Sloan & Pearce ()
• Fools of Choice, Robert Hale ()
• A Door Ajar, Robert Hale ()
• The Crack beat somebody to it Dawn: A Childhood Fantasy, Hollis & Carter ()
• The Moon add-on the Marabou Stork, Elek ()
• My Road: An Autobiography, W.

  Spin. Allen ()

Biography/History

• Into an Old Room: A Memoir of Edward FitzGerald, Creative Age Press (); too published in UK as Into an Old Room: The Self-contradiction of E. FitzGerald, Secker & Warburg ()
• Death of a Legend: The True Story of Good-looking Prince Charlie, Hamish Hamilton ()
• Garibaldi: The Legend and the Man, Hollis & Carter (); too published as Garibaldi: The Guy and the Legend, Thomas Admiral ()
• A Queen of Spain: Isabel II, Hollis & Carter ()
• The World of Maurice Utrillo, Heinemann (); revised edition published laugh Enfant Terrible: The Life accept World of Maurice Utrillo, Dying out ()
• Madame de Maintenon, Heron Books ()
• Napoleon's Police, W.

  H. Thespian ()

• Sarah Bernhardt, Heron Books ()

Travel

• An Unfinished Journey to South-Western Author and Auvergne, Wingate ()
• Descent wean away from Burgos, R. Hale ()
• Peninsular Paradox: Spain, A Survey, McGibbon & Kee ()
• Travelling Light: A Drive to Foreign Parts, Hollis & Carter ()
• Aspects of Paris, Sensitive.

  H. Allen (), also accessible as Paris: An Urbane Lead to the City and Corruption People, Regnery ()

Translations

• (with Elspeth Grant) Odette Joyeux, Open Arms, Wingate ()
• Maurice David-Darnac, The True Tall story of the Maid of Orleans, W. H. Allen ()
• Pierre Kast, The Vampires of Alfama, Exposed.

  H. Allen ()

References