Sir John Edward Nourse Heygate, 4th Baronet (19 April 1903 – 18 March 1976), was a Northern Irish journalist and novelist.
He is chiefly remembered for his liaison with Evelyn Gardner, which began in 1929, when she was married to Evelyn Waugh. He is portrayed as "John Beaver" in Waugh's A Handful of Dust,What to read when you're... tempted by infidelity, Justine Picardie, The Daily Telegraph 3 October 2008 as "Maltravers" in Anthony Powell's Agents and Patients and as "Sir Piers Tofield" in Henry Williamson's Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight.
Background Heygate was the son of Arthur Heygate, an Eton College housemaster and the third son of the second Heygate baronet, and Frances née Harvey. He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1926 he went to Heidelberg as a trainee for the Foreign Office. He subsequently got a job as an assistant news editor at the BBC.I am also a camera: John Heygate and Talking Picture Geoff Brown, Film History, vol 20, 2008
In the late 1920s Heygate was on the fringes of the group of socialites known as the "Bright Young People" and was friends with the author Anthony Powell.The life of Evelyn Waugh: a critical biography, Douglas Lane Patey, 1998 In 1929 divorce proceedings began between Evelyn Waugh and the Honourable Evelyn Gardner (a daughter of the 1st Baron Burghclere). Heygate was cited and hence was forced to resign from the BBC. (This scandal is said to be one reason why the BBC's first director general, Lord Reith, took a firm line against any of his staff being involved in a divorce.) In 1930 he married Gardner.Evelyn Waugh, A. P. Herbert and Divorce Reform, Tony Lurcock, Evelyn Waugh Newsletter And Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2, Autumn 2004
In 1932 he joined the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation and worked in collaboration with the German UFA film company at their Babelsberg Studio near Berlin. Of staunch right-wing views, he was present at the 1935 Nuremberg Rally in the company of his friend the writer Henry Williamson. In neighbouring seats were Unity Mitford, Diana Mitford and Dr. Frank Buchman.Unity Mitford: an enquiry into her life and the frivolity of evil, p. 121. David Pryce-Jones 1977
Heygate and Gardner were divorced in 1936. In February of the same year, he remarried, to the Gaumont-British actress Gwyneth Lloyd (of the Lloyds Bank familyObituary: Gwyneth Lloyd Richard Heygate and Alison Donaldson The Independent 13 May 1994). They subsequently moved to Sussex. They had two sons, George and Richard, both of whom eventually inherited the Heygate baronetcy.Biographies, Bart and Bounder.com
Despite his political sympathies he served as a bombardier in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War. He wrote the book These Germans, published in 1940.
He succeeded his uncle as baronet on 14 January 1940. Heygate and Lloyd divorced in 1947. He married again in 1951, to Dora Harvey. She died in 1968. By the 1970s he was living alone in Bellarena,Exhibitions Irish Arts Review (1984–1987), Vol. 1, No. 2 (Summer, 1984), p. 55] County Londonderry.Obituary: Evelyn Nightingale, Marie-Jaqueline Lancaster, The Independent, 5 April 1994
In 1976 Heygate committed suicide by shooting himself. He was 72.
Works
Books His books comprise:Copac Decent Fellows (1930), a public school novel. White Angel (1934) Talking Picture (Jonathan Cape, 1934), a semi-autobiographical novel dealing with experiences in Weimar Berlin, similar to Christopher Isherwood's I Am a Camera. Motor TrampMG Motor Tramp , David Landers, Classic Motor Monthly, February 1995 (Jonathan Cape, 1935), a factual account of tours in an MG motor car, including a visit to Nazi Germany. A House for Joanna (1937). A tale of life on the Sussex coast.Book details, A House for Joanna Church Street Books, AbeBooks These Germans: An estimate of their character seen in flashes from the drama, 1918–1939 (1940) Love and Death (1943) Kurumba (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1949). Described as: A raffish, intelligent tale of a soldier and his native mistress, set in the imaginary Kurumba, somewhere on the Indian sub-continent, during the second world war.Book details, Kurumba, Charles Cox Rare Books, AbeBooks
Screenplays Heygate is creditedInternet Movie Database as a co-writer on the following films, made in Germany and starring Lilian Harvey: The Only Girl (Ich und die Kaiserin) (1934) Black Roses (Schwarze Rosen) (1935)
References