Alan Pryce-Jones
Lt-Col. Alan Payan Pryce-Jones TD (18 November 1908 – 22 January 2000) was a British book critic, author, journalist and Liberal Party politician. He was notably Editor of the Times Literary Supplement from 1948 to 1959.
Background
Pryce-Jones was the son of Henry Morris Pryce-Jones, CB, CVO, DSO, MC and Marion Vere Payan Dawnay. He was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford.[1] In 1934 he married Therese "Poppy" Fould-Springer (1908-February 1953).[2] Therese was a daughter of Baron Eugène Fould-Springer, a French-born banker who was a cousin of Achille Fould, and Marie-Cecile or Mitzi Springer, later Mrs Frank Wooster or Mary Wooster,[3] whose father was the industrialist Baron Gustav Springer (1842–1920).[4][5][6][7][8] She also had a brother, Baron Max Fould-Springer (1906–1999), and two sisters Helene Propper de Callejón (1907–1997), wife of Spanish diplomat Eduardo Propper de Callejón and grandmother of actress Helena Bonham Carter, and Baroness Liliane de Rothschild (1916–2003).[9] They had one son, the author David Pryce-Jones. In 1968 he married Mrs Mary Jean Kempner Thorne.[1]
Professional career
Pryce-Jones was Assistant Editor, The London Mercury, 1928–32. He served in the War of 1939–45, in France, Italy and Austria. He was Editor, Times Literary Supplement, 1948–59, Book critic for the New York Herald Tribune, 1963–66, the World Journal Tribune, 1967–68, Newsday, 1969–71, Theatre Critic for Theatre Arts from 1963. He was Director, Old Vic Trust, 1950–61, He was a Member Council, Royal College of Music, 1956–61, Program Associate, The Humanities and Arts Program, Ford Foundation, NY, 1961–63.[1]
Political career
Pryce-Jones joined the Liberal Party in 1937 in response to the party's stance against Nazi Germany fashioned by party leader Sir Archibald Sinclair and supported by Winston Churchill who he admired. He became Vice-President of the St Marylebone Liberal Association and not long after he was adopted as Prospective Liberal Parliamentary Candidate for Louth in Lincolnshire, in succession to Margaret Wintringham.[10] who had been adopted as candidate at Gainsborough. However, his political career was cut short by the outbreak of the Second World War.
He was a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, 1950–61.[1]
Publications
- The Spring Journey, 1931
- People in the South, 1932
- Beethoven, 1933
- 27 Poems, 1935
- Private Opinion, 1936
- Nelson, an opera, 1954
- Vanity Fair, a musical play, (with Robin Miller and Julian Slade) 1962
- The Bonus of Laughter (autobiography), 1987
References
- ^ a b c d ‘PRYCE-JONES, Alan Payan’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2015; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014 ; online edn, April 2014 accessed 2 February 2015
- ^ The year of death is from the Pryce Jones papers at Yale and other sources. Burke's Peerage 103rd edition (1963) apparently gives the year wrongly as 1952, unless the error is in the transfer to online data. The Fould Springer genealogical notes by Anne Yamey (below) incorrectly give her date of death as 1997.
- ^ According to the New York Social Diary, Wooster had been a lover of her husband and had lived with them in a troika before Eugène died. The widow and the bereaved lover then married; he lived until 1953. The story, well known to their circle, was not revealed publicly until her British son-in-law Alan Pryce Jones wrote about it in his memoirs. See also another story on how the Fould-Springers met Wooster
- ^ "Baroness Elie de Rothschild". Telegraph. 20 February 2003. Retrieved 8 February 2008.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ "CARTER TOO JEWISH FOR JEWISH ROLE". ContactMusic. 24 October 2006. Retrieved 13 July 2007.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ Weisbach, Rachel (2006). "Barmitzvah joy for Helena". SomethingJewish. Retrieved 13 July 2007.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ Costa, Maddy (3 November 2006). "'It's all gone widescreen'". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 13 July 2007.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ Obituary: Baroness Elie de Rothschild. Independent, The (London)
- ^ Anne Yamey. Springer family: DANIEL and The FOULD-SPRINGER family. Retrieved 28 February 2008. The title was granted by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.
- ^ The Bonus of Laughter by Alan Pryce-Jones