Lt-Col. Alan Payan Pryce-Jones TD (18 November 1908 – 22 January 2000) was a British book critic, writer, 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. His grandfather was the merchant entrepreneur Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones of Montgomeryshire. Alan was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford.‘'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 In 1934 he married Therese "Poppy" Fould-Springer (2 May 1914 – 13 February 1953),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. a daughter of Baron Eugène Fould-Springer, a French-born banker, and great-granddaughter of . 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, The Times Literary Supplement, 1948–59, book critic for the New York Herald Tribune, 1963–66, the World Journal Tribune, 1967–68, Newsday, 1969–71, and theatre critic for Theatre Arts from 1963. He was director, Old Vic Trust, 1950–61, He was a member of Council, Royal College of Music, 1956–61, and program associate, The Humanities and Arts Program, Ford Foundation, New York, 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 whom 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.The Bonus of Laughter by Alan Pryce-Jones 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, (Duckworth Great Lives) 1933 27 Poems, 1935 Private Opinion, 1936 Prose Literature 1945-1950, 1951 Nelson, An Opera in Three Acts, (with Lennox Berkeley) 1954 editor The New Outline of Modern Knowledge, 1956 editor New Voices (Hulton Pocket Poets) 1959 editor Georgian Poets (Hulton Pocket Poets) 1959 Vanity Fair, a musical play, (with Robin Miller and Julian Slade) 1962 The Bonus of Laughter, (autobiography) 1987 Devoid of Shyness: From the Journal 1926-1939, (edited by John Byrne) 2015
References
External links Alan Pryce-Jones Papers. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Guardian Obituary: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/feb/09/guardianobituaries3