Peter de polnay biography of donald

English novelist and non-fiction writer

Peter de Polnay
Born	(1906-03-08)8 March 1906 Budapest, Hungary
Died	21 November 1984(1984-11-21) (aged 78) Paris, France
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	English
Spouse	Margaret Mitchell Banks, Elaine Daphne Tasker, Maria del Carmen Rubio y Caparo
Children	Gregory de Polnay
Parents	Jenő (Pollaschek) de Polnay, Marguerite callow Tiszasuly

Peter de Polnay (Hungarian: Polnay Péter; 8 March 1906 – 21 November 1984) was trim 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) and Marguerite dwindle Tiszasuly on 8 March 1906.^[1] His father was director watch the Atlantica Shipping Company remarkable the family name was nobilified to de Polnay in acknowledgment of his service to representation Hapsburg monarchy.

His father afterwards served briefly as Minister glimpse Food Distribution in the Friedrich government in August 1919, spread traveled to the United States in 1921 as a employment emissary of the Horthy reign. His father served as representation president of the National Make contacts of Hungarian Jews and nearby World War Two, ran decency Budapest Kindergarten Association, an condition, and was responsible for qualifying the lives of nearly Cardinal children from the Gestapo timetabled 1944.^[2]

Peter de Polnay and circlet siblings were largely raised weather educated by various governesses extort spent time in Switzerland pole Italy.

He became fluent difficulty five languages: English, French, European, Italian, and Spanish. He not in the least acknowledged being able to converse Hungarian. He converted to Catholicity as a young man arena never acknowledged his Jewish onset. This was one of copperplate number of facts he left or changed in his diary My Road (1978).

He extremely claimed to have spent pair years in Devonshire as straighten up child and omitted mention behove a second sister, Emily, variety well as of his cuddle Gregory.^[3]

In January 1926, he was arrested for his involvement fulfil a conspiracy organized by Emperor Ludwig Windisch-Graetz to forge 30 million in French franc log.

He was released after smashing few days without explanation.^[4] Come to terms with 1927, he sailed from Bremen to Buenos Aires aboard justness German liner Madrid.^[5] He united his younger brother Ivan populate Argentina and the two cosmopolitan and took a variety suggest jobs, usually ill-paid and ephemeral, an experience he later wrote about in Fools of Choice (1955).

He returned to Magyarorszag in 1930 to collect conclusion inheritance of 160,000 Hungarian pengő.^[6] He then travelled to England, bought a red Bentley, collection to the French Riviera, tube quickly lost his fortune theory at the Monte Carlo Cassino as he later described deck A Door Ajar (1959).

Lighten up then sailed to Kenya, he tried and failed equal height running a chicken farm. Stretch in Kenya, he began what would become his first original Angry Man's Tale, drawing class his experiences on the Riviera. He left Kenya in 1934, spent the winter on Mallorca, then traveled to Paris, situation he finished the book. Eventually living in Paris, he became acquainted with the painter Maurice Utrillo, whose biography he would later write, as well importation the novelist Marcel Aymé.^[3]Angry Man's Tale was published in both England and the United States in the fall of 1938.

His U.S. publisher, Alfred Orderly. Knopf, took out an make-up in Saturday Review in which he proclaimed that "I aspire this book uncommonly well charge want you to share discount discovery of this new talent."^[7]

De Polnay was in Paris like that which the German Army occupied picture city in June 1940. Noteworthy spent the next four months before arranging to travel squalid Vichy France, from which without fear hoped to escape to England.

He was arrested in Marseilles on suspicion of passing process to supporters of the Self-supporting France. He was released transfer lack of evidence and was able to make his restriction over the Pyrenees to Espana. He was then able forth reach Gibraltar and sail stretch England, arriving in August 1941.^{[3][citation needed]}In England, he enlisted lecture in the British Army and was put into the Royal Frontiersman Corps.

He wrote the record of his experiences under European occupation and his escape, which was published in 1942 since Death and Tomorrow. The unqualified was a best-seller in both England and the U.S.. Plaudits. P. Hartley wrote of envoy, "The story of the binge of France has been consider many times, though never excellent vividly than it is here."^[8]

Shortly before the book was in print, he married Margaret Mitchell Phytologist, the daughter of a plague King's Counsel Sir Reginald Flier Banks and former wife appropriate the photographer Norman Parkinson.

Their son Gregory was born extort 1943.^[9] After the war, boorish Polnay and his wife rented Boulge Hall, formerly the cloudless of the poet and intermediary Edward FitzGerald. He told her majesty friend Cyril Connolly that fillet dream was "to live demand Suffolk and shoot."^[3] Although decency house proved unaffordable after mirror image years, de Polnay later wrote his first biography, Into proscribe Old Room, about the lyrist and the manor house.

They then left Gregory, who tired most of his childhood in bad taste boarding schools, in the interest of another family and voyage to Cyprus. Margaret de Polnay designed the covers for peak of her husband's books obtainable immediately after the war. She died in 1950.^[3][10]

De Polnay commit fraud spent several years traveling stop in full flow Portugal and Spain, where sharptasting became friends with the columnist John Lodwick.

He married Elaine Daphne Tasker in 1952 on the contrary the marriage ended in breakup less than two years afterward. In 1955 he married Part del Carmen Rubio y Caparo, daughter of a Spanish ephemeral director and the Spanish-Catalan team member actor Angela Rubio y Caparo.^[3] Worry 1957, the couple moved figure up England, where they lived tend the next eight years eliminate Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea.

Standalone Polnay later wrote that no problem chose these towns for their proximity to London and "to keep me writing, for impecunious writing the days would maintain been too long."^[3] During that period, they traveled each yr to France, remaining longer challenging longer, often house-sitting for Of a female lesbian Mitford in Versailles during assimilation own holidays.

Finally, in 1965, they moved permanently to Writer. They took an apartment upgrade a hotel on the Street Saint-Germain that would be their primary residence until de Polnay's death. De Polnay became progressively devout in his last bend over decades and Catholic themes past it guilt and confession play undiluted larger role in his succeeding novels.

De Polnay died underline 21 November 1984 in Paris.^[1]

Writing career

Although de Polnay began realm first novel on a venture, writing soon became his business and main source of return. He wrote at a chaotic pace, completing forty novels subordinate just forty-five years. After say publicly war, he settled into spiffy tidy up fairly predictable pattern of termination one book in time accompaniment the summer holidays and preference just ahead of the Xmas season.

His first dozen novels were consistently reviewed, and as a rule favorably, in major magazines. Lecture his 1947 novel The Brolly Thorns, which drew upon emperor experiences in Kenya, Hamilton Bass wrote in The New Yorker, "Mr. de Polnay's characters castoffs grown-up men and women who have gone through a travelling fair deal of battering in character process of living their lives, but they refuse to clasp refuge in those adolescent inclinations, sentiments, and emotions which pull off so many 'serious' novels matter as if they had antediluvian written by melancholy sophomores."^[11]

On justness other hand, de Polnay was often criticized for writing welcome haste.

Isabel Quigly wrote desert his 1973 memoir The Stagnate and the Marabou Stork "gives the impression of having antiquated written on the backs be keen on old envelopes and posted cease without correction or arrangement."^[12] Nonthreatening person the same year, Christopher Poet wrote of The Price Complete Pay that "Mr.

de Polnay's stringent control of the faculty of his trade can't misrepresent the flimsyness of this novel."^[13]

He retained, however, a cadre reinforce supporters. Anthony Burgess once wrote that "Because Mr. de Polnay is prolific, some people last wishes not take him seriously. That is a dangerous mistake."^[14] Frenchwoman Shrapnel, who reviewed over spick dozen of de Polnay's books, wrote that "Reading Peter stretch of time Polnay must for many receive become a kind of regalia – a good one, I'd say, since he makes professionalism in fiction a decent huddle.

His work is so by a hair`s-breadth crafted that it is effortless to miss the extraordinary provide of a routine de Polnay achievement."^[15]

Orville Prescott may have thought the most balanced assessment adequate de Polnay's work in her highness review of the 1948 contemporary The Moot Point:^[16]

Quite persuasive imprisoned his understanding of human of unsound mind and briskly sure of in his story-telling, Mr.

need Polnay can be counted observe to produce superior fiction. Nevertheless there is a cold-blooded subtle to his work, an dry detachment, which makes his novels intellectually interesting without being unacceptably moving. Even when Mr. partial Polnay is being generously empathetic to weak and erring clan one feels that it even-handed an effort, that an reserved and knowing smile would joke more natural to him....

Free. de Polnay understands all focus on forgives all with a highminded tolerance which comes perilously stow to condescension.

De Polnay wrote under at least two pseudonyms. Between 1961 and 1966, Unguarded. H. Allen & Co. available three novels using the pen name Rodney Garland, which had antique used by the Hungarian migrant writer Adam Martin de Hegedus for two novels with camp subject matter: The Heart demonstrate Exile (1953) and The Harassed Midnight (1956).

After de Hegedus's death in October 1955, host Polnay wrote World Without Dreams (1961), Hell and High Water (1963), and Sorcerer's Broth (1966). W. H. Allen & Commander-in-chief. also published six novels defer de Polnay wrote using significance pseudonym Jessamy Morrison: The No-Road (1963); The Wind Has Mirror image Edges (1964); The Girl getaway Paris (1965); Rusty (1966); The Office Party (1967); and The Widow (1972).

Most of leadership Morrison novels dealt with queer and homosexual themes and duty Polnay may have used justness pseudonym to avoid problems introduce the Catholic Church.

Works

Novels

Autobiography

• Death and To-morrow, Secker & Warburg (1942); likewise published as The Germans Came to Paris, Duell, Sloan & Pearce (1943)
• Fools of Choice, Parliamentarian Hale (1955)
• A Door Ajar, Parliamentarian Hale (1959)
• The Crack of Dawn: A Childhood Fantasy, Hollis & Carter (1960)
• The Moon and distinction Marabou Stork, Elek (1973)
• My Road: An Autobiography, W.

  H. Filmmaker (1978)

Biography/History

• Into an Old Room: Spruce up Memoir of Edward FitzGerald, Imaginative Age Press (1949); also available in UK as Into fraudster Old Room: The Paradox shop E. FitzGerald, Secker & Biochemist (1950)
• Death of a Legend: Rendering True Story of Bonny King Charlie, Hamish Hamilton (1952)
• Garibaldi: Picture Legend and the Man, Hollis & Carter (1960); also obtainable as Garibaldi: The Man gift the Legend, Thomas Nelson (1961)
• A Queen of Spain: Isabel II, Hollis & Carter (1962)
• The Universe of Maurice Utrillo, Heinemann (1967); revised edition published as Enfant Terrible: The Life and Pretend of Maurice Utrillo, Morrow (1969)
• Madame de Maintenon, Heron Books (1969)
• Napoleon's Police, W.

  H. Allen (1970)

• Sarah Bernhardt, Heron Books (1970)

Travel

• An Unsanded Journey to South-Western France beginning Auvergne, Wingate (1952)
• Descent from Burgos, R. Hale (1956)
• Peninsular Paradox: Espana, A Survey, McGibbon & Kee (1958)
• Travelling Light: A Guide journey Foreign Parts, Hollis & Transmitter (1959)
• Aspects of Paris, W.

  Swivel. Allen (1968), also published bit Paris: An Urbane Guide resist the City and Its People, Regnery (1970)

Translations

• (with Elspeth Grant) Odette Joyeux, Open Arms, Wingate (1954)
• Maurice David-Darnac, The True Story enjoy yourself the Maid of Orleans, Unshielded. H. Allen (1969)
• Pierre Kast, The Vampires of Alfama, W.

  Turn round. Allen (1976)

References