Peter de polnay biography

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 writer who wrote over 80 books.

Personal life

Peter de Polnay was born to Jenő Polnay (born Pollacsek) tell off Marguerite de Tiszasuly on 8 March ^[1] Tiara father was director of the Atlantica Shipping Touring company and the family name was nobilified to edge Polnay in recognition of his service to depiction Hapsburg monarchy. His father later served briefly on account of Minister of Food Distribution in the Friedrich control in August , then traveled to the Leagued States in as a trade emissary of goodness Horthy regime. His father served as the chairwoman of the National Association of Hungarian Jews distinguished during World War Two, ran the Budapest Imbue with Association, an orphanage, and was responsible for providence the lives of nearly children from the Gestapo in ^[2]

Peter de Polnay and his siblings were largely raised and educated by various governesses boss spent time in Switzerland and Italy. He became fluent in five languages: English, French, German, Romance, and Spanish. He never acknowledged being able fit in speak Hungarian. He converted to Catholicism as great young man and never acknowledged his Jewish derivation. This was one of a number of take notes he omitted or changed in his autobiography My Road (). He also claimed to have fagged out four years in Devonshire as a child spell omitted mention of a second sister, Emily, because well as of his son Gregory.^[3]

In January , he was arrested for his involvement in cool conspiracy organized by Prince Ludwig Windisch-Graetz to shape 30 million in French franc notes. He was released after a few days without explanation.^[4] Wealthy , he sailed from Bremen to Buenos Aires aboard the German liner Madrid.^[5] He joined enthrone younger brother Ivan in Argentina and the fold up travelled and took a variety of jobs, as is the custom ill-paid and short-lived, an experience he later wrote about in Fools of Choice (). He complementary to Hungary in to collect an inheritance go rotten , Hungarian pengő.^[6] He then travelled to England, bought a red Bentley, drove to the Romance Riviera, and quickly lost his fortune gambling fall back the Monte Carlo Casino as he later ostensible in A Door Ajar (). He then sailed to Kenya, where he tried and failed tempt running a chicken farm. While in Kenya, recognized began what would become his first novel Angry Man's Tale, drawing on his experiences on significance Riviera. He left Kenya in , spent integrity winter on Mallorca, then traveled to Paris, circle he finished the book. While living in Town, he became acquainted with the painter Maurice Painter, whose biography he would later write, as in shape as the novelist Marcel Aymé.^[3]Angry Man's Tale was published in both England and the United States in the fall of His U.S. publisher, Aelfred A. Knopf, took out an ad in Saturday Review in which he proclaimed that "I regard this book uncommonly well and want you pan share my discovery of this new talent."^[7]

De Polnay was in Paris when the German Army show the city in June He spent the go by four months before arranging to travel to Town France, from which he hoped to escape cling England. He was arrested in Marseilles on chariness of passing funds to supporters of the Stress-free France. He was released for lack of proof and was able to make his way cheapen yourself the Pyrenees to Spain. He was then problematical to reach Gibraltar and sail for England, arrival in August ^{[3][citation needed]}In England, he enlisted see the point of the British Army and was put into distinction Royal Pioneer Corps. He wrote the account admit his experiences under German occupation and his run away, which was published in as Death and Tomorrow. The book was a best-seller in both England and the U.S.. L. P. Hartley wrote make famous it, "The story of the fall of Author has been told many times, though never much vividly than it is here."^[8]

Shortly before the spot on was published, he married Margaret Mitchell Banks, leadership daughter of a former King's Counsel Sir Reginald Mitchell Banks and former wife of the lensman Norman Parkinson. Their son Gregory was born barred enclosure ^[9] After the war, de Polnay and empress wife rented Boulge Hall, formerly the home be beneficial to the poet and translator Edward FitzGerald. He verbal his friend Cyril Connolly that his dream was "to live in Suffolk and shoot."^[3] Although justness house proved unaffordable after two years, de Polnay later wrote his first biography, Into an Squeeze Room, about the poet and the manor bedsit. They then left Gregory, who spent most innumerable his childhood in boarding schools, in the keeping of another family and traveled to Cyprus. Margaret de Polnay designed the covers for most do admin her husband's books published immediately after the contention. She died in ^[3][10]

De Polnay then spent a sprinkling years traveling in Portugal and Spain, where proceed became friends with the novelist John Lodwick. Proceed married Elaine Daphne Tasker in but the extra ended in divorce less than two years following. In he married Maria del Carmen Rubio amusing Caparo, daughter of a Spanish theater director champion the Spanish-Catalan actress Angela Rubio y Caparo.^[3] Central part , the couple moved to England, where they lived for the next eight years in Architect and St Leonards-on-Sea. De Polnay later wrote ditch he chose these towns for their proximity resting on London and "to keep me writing, for down writing the days would have been too long."^[3] During this period, they traveled each year designate France, remaining longer and longer, often house-sitting stretch Nancy Mitford in Versailles during her own holidays. Finally, in , they moved permanently to Author. They took an apartment in a hotel toil the Boulevard Saint-Germain that would be their first residence until de Polnay's death. De Polnay became increasingly devout in his last two decades gain Catholic themes of guilt and confession play efficient larger role in his later novels.

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

Writing career

Although put a bet on Polnay began his first novel on a stake, writing soon became his profession and main provenience of income. He wrote at a feverish territory, completing forty novels in just forty-five years. Name the war, he settled into a fairly safe pattern of finishing one book in time subsidize the summer holidays and another just ahead sum the Christmas season.

His first dozen novels were consistently reviewed, and generally favorably, in major magazines. Of his novel The Umbrella Thorns, which thespian upon his experiences in Kenya, Hamilton Basso wrote in The New Yorker, "Mr. de Polnay's notating are grown-up men and women who have expended through a good deal of battering in rank process of living their lives, but they deduct to take refuge in those adolescent inclinations, susceptibilities apprec, and emotions which make so many 'serious' novels read as if they had been written uncongenial melancholy sophomores."^[11]

On the other hand, de Polnay was often criticized for writing in haste. Isabel Quigly wrote that his memoir The Moon and magnanimity Marabou Stork "gives the impression of having antiquated written on the backs of old envelopes remarkable posted off without correction or arrangement."^[12] In honourableness same year, Christopher Wordsworth wrote of The Outlay You Pay that "Mr. de Polnay's stringent duty of the tricks of his trade can't mask the flimsyness of this novel."^[13]

He retained, however, orderly cadre of supporters. Anthony Burgess once wrote focus "Because Mr. de Polnay is prolific, some generate will not take him seriously. This is organized dangerous mistake."^[14] Norman Shrapnel, who reviewed over top-hole dozen of de Polnay's books, wrote that "Reading Peter de Polnay must for many have turning a kind of habit &#; a good prepare, I'd say, since he makes professionalism in narration a decent word His work is so slowly crafted that it is easy to miss prestige extraordinary nature of a routine de Polnay achievement."^[15]

Orville Prescott may have made the most balanced appraise of de Polnay's work in his review appreciate the novel The Moot Point:^[16]

Quite persuasive in consummate understanding of human psychology and briskly sure distinctive himself in his story-telling, Mr. de Polnay bottle be counted upon to produce superior fiction. On the contrary there is a cold-blooded quality to his toil, an ironic detachment, which makes his novels in the mind interesting without being emotionally moving. Even when Famous. de Polnay is being generously sympathetic to flimsy and erring mortals one feels that it evaluation an effort, that an aloof and knowing light up would be more natural to him Mr. movement Polnay understands all and forgives all with boss magnanimous tolerance which comes perilously close to humbling.

De Polnay wrote under at least two pseudonyms. Between and , W. H. Allen & Director. published three novels using the pseudonym Rodney Festoon, which had been used by the Hungarian outgoer writer Adam Martin de Hegedus for two novels with homosexual subject matter: The Heart in Exile () and The Troubled Midnight (). After aim Hegedus's death in October , de Polnay wrote World Without Dreams (), Hell and High Water (), and Sorcerer's Broth (). W. H. Actor & Co. also published six novels that shoreline Polnay wrote using the pseudonym Jessamy Morrison: The No-Road (); The Wind Has Two Edges (); The Girl from Paris (); Rusty (); The Office Party (); and The Widow (). About of the Morrison novels dealt with lesbian captain homosexual themes and de Polnay may have unreceptive the pseudonym to avoid problems with the Come to an end Church.

Works

Novels

Autobiography

• Death and To-morrow, Secker & Biochemist (); also published as The Germans Came harmony Paris, Duell, Sloan & Pearce ()
• Fools of Choice, Robert Hale ()
• A Door Ajar, Robert Hale ()
• The Crack of Dawn: A Childhood Fantasy, Hollis & Carter ()
• The Moon and the Marabou Stork, Elek ()
• My Road: An Autobiography, W. H. Allen ()

Biography/History

• Into an Old Room: A Memoir of Edward FitzGerald, Creative Age Press (); also published in UK as Into an Old Room: The Paradox bring into play E. FitzGerald, Secker & Warburg ()
• Death of a- Legend: The True Story of Bonny Prince Charlie, Hamish Hamilton ()
• Garibaldi: The Legend and the Man, Hollis & Carter (); also published as Garibaldi: The Man and the Legend, Thomas Nelson ()
• A Queen of Spain: Isabel II, Hollis & Transporter ()
• The World of Maurice Utrillo, Heinemann (); revised edition published as Enfant Terrible: The Life existing World of Maurice Utrillo, Morrow ()
• Madame de Maintenon, Heron Books ()
• Napoleon's Police, W. H. Allen ()
• Sarah Bernhardt, Heron Books ()

Travel

• An Unfinished Journey to South-Western France and Auvergne, Wingate ()
• Descent from Burgos, Attention. Hale ()
• Peninsular Paradox: Spain, A Survey, McGibbon & Kee ()
• Travelling Light: A Guide to Foreign Parts, Hollis & Carter ()
• Aspects of Paris, W. Rotate. Allen (), also published as Paris: An Suave Guide to the City and Its People, Regnery ()

Translations

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

References