Henry Hector Bolitho (28 May 1897 – 12 September 1974) was a New Zealand writer, novelist and biographer, who had 59 books published. Widely travelled, he spent most of his career in England.
Biography Hector Bolitho was born and educated in Auckland, New Zealand, the son of Henry and Ethelred Frances Bolitho. He travelled in the South Sea Islands in 1919 and then through New Zealand with the Prince of Wales in 1920.
Bolitho lived in Sydney from 1921 to 1923, where he became editor of the Shakespearean Quarterly and literary editor and drama critic of the Evening News in Sydney.
He also travelled in Africa, Canada, America, and Germany in 1923-4, finally settling in Britain where he was to remain for the rest of his life.
On his arrival in Britain he worked as a freelance journalist; in 1927 he also provided a glowing introduction to (former journalist of the Evening News and future crime writer) Max Murray's first book, a sea voyage called The World's Back Doors (Jonathan Cape, 1927), the sixty-first book in Jonathan Cape's Traveller's Library series.
At the start of World War II he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) as an intelligence officer with the rank of squadron leader, editing the Royal Air Force Weekly Bulletin, which in 1941 became the Royal Air Force Journal. In 1942 he was appointed editor of the Coastal Command Intelligence Review.
Bolitho undertook several lecture tours of America (in 1938–39, 1947, 1948, and 1949) and he also revisited Australia in later years. Bolitho was contracted by the Government of Pakistan to write a biography of Jinnah. The project became complicated as access to the archives was restricted and the government required changes to the draft prior to publication. The book was published to mixed reviews in 1954. Nevertheless the book has been widely cited.
In his forties, Bolitho shared his life and his home with John Simpson. Hector described John as his ‘secretary’, which was then a common euphemism for gay partner. Simpson later died and his long-term partner was Derek Peel, an army officer. They met in 1949 and were together until Bolitho's death in 1974.
Bolitho is referenced in fictional form as "Hector Bolithiero" in the Denton Welch short story "Brave and Cruel".
The name Bolitho is of Cornish origin.
Bibliography
The Island of Kawau: A Record, Descriptive and Historical, 1919 , 1919 The Islands of Wonder, 1920 With the Prince in New Zealand, 1920 Solemn Boy (novel), 1927 The Letters of Lady Augusta Stanley (editor, with The Dean of Windsor), 1927 Thistledown and Thunder: A Higgledy-Piggledy Diary of New Zealand, The South Seas, Australia, Port Said, Italy, Canada and New York, 1928 The New Zealanders, 1928 Judith Silver (novel), 1929 The New Countries, 1929 The Later Letters of Lady Augusta Stanley (editor with The Dean of Windsor), 1929 The Glorious Oyster, 1929 A Very Early Victorian Christmas (privately published edition of 300 copies), 1929 A Victorian Dean: A Memoir of Arthur Stanley (with Very Rev. A. V. Baillie), 1930 The Flame on Ethirdova (novel), 1930 Albert the Good: A Life of the Prince Consort, 1932 Alfred Mond: First Baron Melchett. A Biography, 1933 Beside Galilee: A Diary in Palestine, 1933 The Prince Consort and his Brother, 1934 Victoria, the Widow and her Son, 1934 Grey Farm (play; with Terence Rattigan), performed 1934 Twelve Jews, 1935 https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WT19340404.2.107?end_date=31-12-1934&items_per_page=10&query=Bolitho+Banks&snippet=true&start_date=01-01-1934 Older People, 1935 The House in Half Moon Street (short stories), 1935 James Lyle MacKay, First Earl of Inchcape, 1936 Marie Tempest. A Biography, 1936 King Edward VIII: His Life and Reign, 1937 Royal Progress: 1837-1937, 1937 George VI, 1937 Victoria and Albert, 1938 Further Letters of Queen Victoria (editor), 1938 Victoria and Disraeli (radio play), performed 1938 The Emigrants (with John Mulgan), 1939 Roumania under King Carol, 1939 America Expects, 1940 War in the Strand, 1942 Combat Report: The Story of a Fighter Pilot, 1943 republished as Finest of the Few: The Story of Battle of Britain Fighter Pilot John Simpson, 2010 A Batsford Century: The Record of a Hundred Years of Publishing and Bookselling, 1843-1943 (editor), 1943 No Humour in My Love (short stories), 1946 Task for Coastal Command, 1946 The Romance of Windsor Castle, 1947 Thirty Years, 1947 The British Empire (editor), 1947–48 The Reign of Queen Victoria, 1948 A Biographer's Notebook, 1950 A Century of British Monarchy, 1951 Their Majesties, 1951 Without the City Wall: An Adventure in London Street-Names, North of the River (with Derek Peel), 1952 The Coronation Book of Queen Elizabeth II (chapter entitled The New Elizabethans), 1953 Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan, 1954 A Penguin in the Eyrie: An R.A.F. Diary 1939-1945, 1955 The Wine of the Douro, 1956 The Angry Neighbours, 1957 No 10, Downing Street, 1957 "Gilbert Harding in Brighton"; Gilbert Harding by his Friends, (ed. S. Grenfell), 1961 My Restless Years (autobiography), 1962 A Summer in Germany: A Diary, 1963 The Galloping Third: The Story of The 3rd The King's Own Hussars, 1963 Albert, Prince Consort 1964, rev. edn, 1970 The Drummonds of Charing Cross (with Derek Peel), 1967
References Michael Thornton, ‘Bolitho, (Henry) Hector (1897–1974)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 4 May 2014
Biographies Fairgray, Joyce (2009). Windsor Reserve to Windsor Castle: Hector Bolitho 1897–1974. North Shore City, N.Z.: Devonport Library Associates. . .
External links
Dictionary of National Biography Hector Bolitho at Dunedin Public Library website World War I New Zealand Army military personnel file