James Pope-Hennessy

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James Pope-Hennessy
Born November 20, 1916
London, England
Died January 25, 1974 (aged 57)
London, England
Occupation Writer
Known for Queen Mary, Sins Of The Fathers, Anthony Trollope

James Pope Hennessy CVO (20th November 1916 to 25th January 1974) was a British biographer and travel writer.

[edit] Life

Richard James Arthur Pope-Hennessy was born in London on the 20th November 1916, the younger son of Ladislaus Herbert Richard Pope-Hennessy and his wife, Una Constance Pope-Hennessy who was the daughter of Arthur Birch, Lieutenant-Governor of Ceylon. James, as he was generally known, came from a close knit Catholic family and was educated at Downside School and at Balliol College, Oxford but generally showed a lack of interest in education and did not enjoy his time at Oxford.[1]

Due largely to his mother's influence, he formed the ambition of becoming a writer and left Oxford in 1937 without completing his degree, and went to work for the Catholic publishers Sheed and Ward, as an editorial assistant. Whilst working at the company's offices in Paternoster Row in London he worked on his first book, London Fabric (1939), for which he was awarded the Hawthornden Prize.[2] He left the publishers in 1938 when his mother found him a job as private secretary to Hubert Young, the Governor of Trinidad. Although his time abroad provided the material for his later West Indian Summer (1943), he disliked both the West Indies and the atmosphere of Government House.[3] The outbreak of World War II gave him the excuse to return to Britain, where he enlisted as a private in an anti-aircraft battery under the command of Sir Victor Cazalet. After rising through the ranks, he was transferred to military intelligence, given a commission and spent the latter part of the war as a member of the British army staff at Washington.

Pope-Hennessy enjoyed his time in America and made many friends there.[4] After the end of the war he wrote on account of his experiences in America and set out to become a full time writer. On his return to London in 1945 he shared a flat with the British intelligence officer Guy Burgess, who later defected to the Soviet Union. He had a brief spell as the literary editor of The Spectator between 1947 and 1949 before he decided to travel to France and write Aspects of Provence which was published in 1952.

He eventually established himself as one of the leading biographers of his time; his first effort in this direction being a two volume biography of Monckton Milnes which appeared in 1949 under the titles The Years of Promise and The Flight of Youth . This was followed by further biographies of the Earl of Crewe and of (Queen) Mary of Teck, for which he was rewarded by being created a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1960. He then wrote a life of his grandfather, the colonial governor John Pope Hennessy under the title Verandah, followed by an account of the Atlantic slave traffickers, Sins of the Fathers (1967).

In 1970, he took out Irish citizenship and went to live at Banagher in County Offaly,[5] where he took rooms at The Shannon Hotel, and during the next few years produced respectable biographies of both Anthony Trollope and Robert Louis Stevenson. The latter was published posthumously and without revision in 1974.[6] He became a popular figure in Banagher, evidenced by the fact that he was asked to adjudicate at a local beauty pageant and the horse fair, the oldest in Ireland.[7][8] On being given a large advance he returned to London in 1974 to begin work on his next subject, Noël Coward.

Despite being a successful professional biographer, Pope-Hennessy was careless with money and suffered a regular series of financial crises and often relied on the goodwill of friends to get by.[9] He became an alcoholic and a frequenter of back-street bars and shady pubs where he mixed with the wrong crowd. He was eventually beaten up by a gang of youths and later died of his injuries at the St. Charles Hospital in Kensington on the 25th January 1974, and was later buried at Kensal Green Cemetery.[10]

[edit] Bibliography

  • London Fabric, (1939)
  • History Under Fire - 52 Photographs of Air Raid Damage to London Buildings, 1940-41. With Cecil Beaton, (1941)
  • West Indian Summer, (1943)
  • America is an Atmosphere, (1947)
  • The Years of Promise, (1950)
  • 'Beautiful London. 103 Photographs by Helmut Gernsheim. Foreword, (1950)
  • The Flight of Youth, (1951)
  • Aspects of Provence, (1952)
  • The Baths of Absolom, (1953)
  • The Houses of Parliament. Photographed by Hans Wild. Introduction, (1953)
  • Lord Crewe, the Likeness of a Liberal, (1955)
  • Queen Mary, (1959)
  • Queen Victoria at Windsor and Balmoral, (1959)
  • Verandah, (1964)
  • Sins of the Fathers, (1967)
  • Half-Crown Colony: A Hong Kong Notebook, (1969)
  • Anthony Trollope, (1971)
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, (1974)
  • A Lonely Business - A Self Portrait of James Pope-Hennessy, (1981). Edited by Peter Quennell.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Quennell, P., Introduction to A Lonely Business - A Self-Portrait of James Pope-Hennessy, 1981, p. xv.
  2. ^ Hawthornden Prize Winners
  3. ^ Quennell, p. xv.
  4. ^ Quennell, p. xv.
  5. ^ Introducing Offaly
  6. ^ Quennell, p.xiv.
  7. ^ Quennell, p.xviii.
  8. ^ Banagher
  9. ^ Quennell, p.xviii.
  10. ^ Notable personalities at Kensal Green Cemetery.