Brian Inglis

Brian Inglis (31 July 1916 – 11 February 1993) was a British journalist, historian and television presenter. He was born in Dublin, Ireland and retained an interest in Irish history and politics.He was best known to people in Britain as the presenter of "All Our Yesterdays", a television review of events exactly 25 years previously, as seen in newsreels, newspaper articles etc. He also presented the weekly review of newspapers known as "What the Papers Say".

He joined the staff of "The Spectator" in 1954, and became editor in 1959, soon afterwards hiring the young Bernard Levin to write for the magazine. He continued as editor until 1962.

He also had interests in the paranormal, and alternatives to institutionalised medicine.

Inglis' friend and colleague Bill Grundy died on 9 February 1993. Inglis had just finished writing Grundy's obituary when he, too, died.

Early life and education

Brian Inglis was born into an affluent family in the closed society of Malahide, Co. Dublin. He was a grandson of J. R. Blood and thus a likely descendant of Thomas Blood, stealer of the Crown Jewels. He found the life he was born into oppressive in its obsession with custom, style, privilege, and ostracism. Since the people around him were regarded as English invaders by the local Irish, and as Irish by society in England proper, he felt alienated from, or was rejected by, everyone to whom he might claim a connection.

He attended the Dragon School in Oxford, Shrewsbury School, Trinity College, Dublin, and Magdalen College, Oxford. After service in the RAF during World War 2, he studied for a PhD in History at Trinity College, Dublin. His thesis was the basis for his first book, "Freedom of the Press in Ireland" (1954).

Adult life

He married Ruth Woodeson, the writer, in 1958, and they had one son, later separating. In 1962 he published his first memoir "West Briton" (an antiquated reference to the Anglo-Irish upper classes in Ireland, from whose cultural influence Inglis never entirely escaped). He was a founding member of the British-Irish Association, which became the British Association for Irish Studies.

In 1975 he wrote and narrated a unique sound archive of World War 2 for record label Cameo Classics, entitled "Sounds of All Our Yesterdays". It was researched by his close friend Bill Grundy, a Producer of the Granada TV series "All Our Yesterdays", which Brian had presented for 10 years.

His interest in the paranormal began while working at the Spectator. In 1978 he published "Natural and Supernatural". With Arthur Koestler he co-founded the KIB Foundation which supported research into paranormal phenomena. He published a work on people who enter trance states ("Trance: A Natural History of Altered States of Mind") and his last work, written as a tribute to Koestler and the Koestler Foundation, dealt with a subject dear to his late friend's heart. It was entitled "Coincidence: A Matter of Chance or Synchronicity?"He was a consultant on the 1981 Thames Television programme "Mind Over Matter".

He published his final memoir, "Downstart" in 1990. The title is taken from Bernard Shaw, and is a play on the word "Upstart", as in one who pretends to a higher station in life than is merited.

elected bibliography

* "Roger Casement" (1993) ISBN 0-14-139127-8, about the Irish diplomat and revolutionary.
* "The Opium Wars" (1976) ISBN 0-340-19390-5, concerning the eponymous conflicts
* "Downstart, the Autobiography of Brian Inglis" (1990) ISBN 0-7011-3390-2

List of works

*"Freedom of the Press in Ireland" [IHS] (London: Faber & Faber 1954).
*"Irish Double-Thought", in "The Spectator", 188 (7 March 1952), p.289;
*"Smuggled Culture", "The Spectator", 188 (28 November 1952), p.726;
*"The Story of Ireland" (London: Faber 1956);
*"Moran of the Leader", in "Castleknock Chronicle" (1956) [text of Thomas Davis Lecture] ;
*"Moran of the Leader and Ryan of the Irish Peasant", in "The Shaping of Modern Ireland", Conor Cruise O'Brien, ed., (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1960);
*"West Briton" (London: Faber and Faber 1962)
*"Fringe Medicine" (London: Faber and Faber 1964)
*"Roger Casement" (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1973)
*"Natural and Supernatural" (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1978)
*"The Diseases of Civilisation" (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1981)
*"The Paranormal: An Encyclopedia of Psychic Phenomena" (London: Paladin 1986)
*"The Power Of Dreams" (London: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1987)
*with Ruth West: "The Unknown Guest" (London: Chatto and Windus 1987)
*"Trance: A Natural History of Altered States of Mind" (London: Paladin 1989) ISBN 0-586-08933-0
*"Coincidence: a Matter of Chance - or Synchronicity? (London: Hutchinson 1990)
*"Downstart: The Autobiography of Brian Inglis" (London: Chatto & Windus 1990)

Quotes

*On the Irish Famine: "If the British chose not to consider Ireland part of Britain, when such an emergency arose, they could hardly complain if the Irish did likewise." ("The Story of Ireland", p.140)
*"To punish drug takers is like a drunk striking the bleary face it sees in the mirror." ("Postscript," The Forbidden Game: A Social History of Drugs (1975))

External links

* [http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/i/Inglis,B/life.htm Entry at the Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco]