Introduction
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. In 1934 he married Therese "Poppy" Fould-Springer (1908-February 1953), a daughter of Baron Eugène Fould-Springer, a French-born banker. In 1968 he married Mrs Mary Jean Kempner Thorne.
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.
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. 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.
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