Philip O'Connor
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__NOTOC__ __NOTOC__ Philip Marie Constant Bancroft O'Connor (8 September 1916 – 29 May 1998) was a British writer and
surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...
poet, who also painted. He was one of the 'Wheatsheaf writers' of 1930s
Fitzrovia Fitzrovia ( ) is a district of central London, England, near the West End. Its eastern part is in the London Borough of Camden, and the western in the City of Westminster. It has its roots in the Manor of Tottenham Court, and was urbanised in ...
(who took their name from a pub).


Early life

In his ''Memoirs of a Public Baby'' (1958,
Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Margaret S ...
) O'Connor wrote about his early life, which was "shrouded in a good deal of mystery and make-believe". According to O'Connor, his father, Bernard, was an Oxford-educated surgeon of sophisticated tastes, descended from the last High King of Ireland; he allegedly died early in the First World War whilst serving in the Navy. Notwithstanding O'Connor's account, "neither the Admiralty, Oxford University nor the various doctors' registers are able to authenticate" what he wrote. Per O'Connor's account, his mother considered his father "riff-raff" and "a cad". O'Connor gave her name as Winifred Xavier Rodyke-Thompson, of an Irish Roman Catholic family; she claimed her grandfather had been born into the Spring Rice family headed by Baron Monteagle of Brandon, later changing his name. During O'Connor's childhood, his mother founded the Somerset Cigarette Agency and secured a government contract to produce inferior cigarettes for supply to soldiers. In 1934 he was a close friend in London with the author
Laurie Lee Laurence Edward Alan Lee, (26 June 1914 – 13 May 1997) was an English poet, novelist and screenwriter, who was brought up in the small village of Slad in Gloucestershire. His most notable work is the autobiographical trilogy '' Cider w ...
, who mentions him in his book '' As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning'' (chapter 2, pages 6–7).


Career

''Memoirs of a Public Baby'' was followed by ''The Lower View'' (1960), ''Living in Croesor'' (1962) and ''Vagrancy'' (1963). He was a heavy drinker and (at the very least) massively eccentric, living a mainly parasitic life. In his own words, he "bathed in life and dried imselfon the typewriter". In 1963, O'Connor interviewed an acquaintance,
Quentin Crisp Quentin Crisp (born Denis Charles Pratt;  – ) was an English raconteur, whose work in the public eye included a memoir of his life and various media appearances. Before becoming well known, he was an artist's model, hence the title of h ...
, for the
BBC Third Programme The BBC Third Programme was a national radio station produced and broadcast from 1946 until 1967, when it was replaced by BBC Radio 3. It first went on the air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces ...
. A publisher who happened to hear the broadcast was impressed by Crisp's performance, and as an indirect result of O'Connor's interview, Crisp ended up writing '' The Naked Civil Servant''.Andrew Barrow,
A peculiarly outrageous act to follow
, ''
The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...
'', 11 September 2002, retrieved by the Wayback Machine on 2 March 2010.


Personal life

He fathered "an unknown number of attractive and intelligent children", including Philip, Max, Sarah, Peter, John, Allaye, Patric, Rachel, Maxim and Félix, referenced in his obituary in ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''.Andrew Barrow
"Obituary: Philip O'Connor"
''The Independent'', 2 June 1998.
His first wife, married in 1941, was lawyer's daughter Jean Mary Hore, who was sent to a mental hospital after an attempt on her husband's life; she lived until 1997, having been confined for over fifty years. Jean was also the unrequited love of Paul Potts, who wrote about her in ''Dante Called You Beatrice'' (1960). In 1963 O'Connor married secondly (Anne) Nicolle Gaillard-d'Andel; ''Memoirs of a Public Baby'' is dedicated to
Anna Wing Anna Wing (30 October 1914 – 7 July 2013) was a British actress who had a long career in television and theatre, known for portraying the role of Beale family matriarch Lou Beale in the BBC soap opera ''EastEnders''. Early life Wing was bor ...
, the actress and his third partner with whom he had a son, Jon, an education consultant and former teacher. O'Connor met the American heiress Panna Grady in 1967 and later settled with her in the Gard, in France, until his death in 1998. They never married. Two sons, Maxim and Félix, were born from their union.


Works


Books

* ''Memoirs of a Public Baby'' (1958). * ''The Lower View'' (1960). * ''Steiner's Tour'' (1960). * ''Living in Croesor'' (1962). * ''Vagrancy'' (1963). * ''Selected Poems 1936/1966'' (1968) * ''Arias of Water'' (1978-1980)


Radio

* ''He Who Refrains'' (1959).BBC Third Programme Radio Scripts
/ref> * ''A Morality'' (1959). * ''Anathema'' (1962). * ''Success'' (1967), conversations with
Philip Toynbee Theodore Philip Toynbee (25 June 1916 – 15 June 1981) was a British writer and communist. He wrote experimental novels, and distinctive verse novels, one of which was an epic called ''Pantaloon'', a work in several volumes, only some of whi ...
, Sir
Michael Redgrave Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave (20 March 1908 – 21 March 1985) was an English actor and filmmaker. Beginning his career in theatre, he first appeared in the West End in 1937. He made his film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's ''The Lady Vanishes'' ...
,
Malcolm Muggeridge Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge (24 March 1903 – 14 November 1990) was a conservative British journalist and satirist. His father, H. T. Muggeridge, was a socialist politician and one of the early Labour Party Members of Parliament (for Romford, i ...
and
John Berger John Peter Berger ( ; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism '' Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to t ...
.


Biography

* Andrew Barrow, ''Quentin and Philip'' (2002), Macmillan, 559 pages, . Dual biography of
Quentin Crisp Quentin Crisp (born Denis Charles Pratt;  – ) was an English raconteur, whose work in the public eye included a memoir of his life and various media appearances. Before becoming well known, he was an artist's model, hence the title of h ...
and his friend Philip O'Connor.


References


External links

* Robert McG. Thomas Jr
"Philip O'Connor, 81, Acerbic Memoirist, Dies"
''The New York Times'', 4 June 1998. *Archival Material at {{DEFAULTSORT:Oconnor, Philip 1916 births 1998 deaths British radio personalities People from Leighton Buzzard 20th-century British poets British male poets 20th-century British male writers