- Richard Usborne
Richard Alexander Usborne (
16 May 1910 –21 March 2006 ), or simply Dick Usborne, was a journalist and author. He is widely regarded as the leading scholar of the life and works of British comic writerP. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975).Background and career
In 1910, Richard Usborne was born on
16 May in the Punjab, in BritishIndia , the son of a civil servant. He was educated inEngland atSummer Fields , Charterhouse andBalliol College , Oxford.After failing to enter the Indian Civil Service because of a heart murmur"Daily Telegraph" 2006, op. cit. (he lived to ninety-five), Usborne worked for many years in advertising and journalism.
In 1938, Usborne married Monica Stuart MacArthur, originally from
New Mexico . She died in 1986. They had a son and a daughter."The Independent",22 March 2006 "The Times",22 March 2006 During the
Second World War , he served in the Middle East for theSpecial Operations Executive and was later in thePolitical Warfare Executive .In 1948, Usborne became assistant editor of the "
Strand Magazine ", then edited byMacdonald Hastings (which had published, from 1891, the short stories ofArthur Conan Doyle , creator ofSherlock Holmes , and, from 1910, those ofP. G. Wodehouse ). When the "Strand" closed in 1950, Usborne wrote for a number of other newspapers and journals, including "Punch" magazine, "The Guardian ", "The Times " of London, and the "Times Literary Supplement ".In 2006, Richard Usborne died on
21 March . The day after, he was eulogized in the British press.Published works
P. G. Wodehouse
Usborne's various published works about Wodehouse included:
* "Wodehouse at Work" (1961), a wide-ranging study of
Jeeves ,Bertie Wooster ,Psmith ,Ukridge ,Lord Emsworth and other Wodehousian characters;
* "Wodehouse at Work to the End" (1976), the revised edition after Wodehouse's death in 1975;
* "Vintage Wodehouse" (1977), ananthology which, among many other items, included extracts from some of the broadcasts that Wodehouse made fromBerlin in 1941 after his release from internment by the Germans during the Second World War;
* "Wodehouse Nuggets" (1983), a collection of Wodehouse quotations and vignettes, with illustrations from the "Strand Magazine"; and
* "Plum Sauce" (2002) (whose title derived from Wodehouse's nickname), an illustrated companion that drew on much of Usborne's earlier material.In 1973, Usborne contributed to "Homage to P. G. Wodehouse", a tribute edited by
Thelma Cazalet-Keir (1899-1989), a former ConservativeMember of Parliament , who was sister-in-law of Wodehouse's late stepdaughter Leonora. He also annotated Wodehouse's final, unfinished novel, which was published as "Sunset at Blandings " in 1977, noting that "if the going had remained good "Sunset at Blandings" might, under another title, have been ready for Christmas 1976".Usborne, Richard (1977). "Work in Progress" in "Sunset at Blandings""Wodehouse at Work to the End" and "Plum Sauce" contained diverting appendices about translations of Wodehouse into French. Examples of such vocabulary included "pourvu de galette" ("oofy"), "déchiqueter" ("to tear limb from limb"), and "l'horrible drame de Steeple Bumpleigh" ("the Steeple Bumpleigh horror").
"Clubland Heroes"
Usborne was also a devotee of
Dornford Yates , 'Sapper', andJohn Buchan ,upper middle class novelists whose works he had first read during childhood illnesses.. He published a study of their work, "Clubland Heroes", in 1953. Yates (pseudonym of Major William Mercer), who, as the only survivor of the trio, was living inSouthern Rhodesia (nowZimbabwe ), evidently resented Usborne's interest and wrote to him, through solicitors, that "never has the whip been laid to my back".Usborne and Wodehouse
Wodehouse once referred to "a certain learned Usborne" in a conversation with journalist and broadcaster
Alistair Cooke .Usborne 1976, op. cit. Wodehouse cooperated with Usborne in the latter's preparation of "Wodehouse at Work", although he destroyed a draft chapter on his controversial wartime activities, of which Usborne had not retained a copy, and this never appeared.McCrum, Robert (2004). "Wodehouse: A Life" Their contact was almost entirely by correspondence and they met only once, when Usborne visited Wodehouse and his wife Ethel at their home onLong Island , New York, in 1971 (the year that Wodehouse reached the age of ninety).References
;
Primary sources consulted* Usborne, Richard (1976). "Wodehouse at Work to the End".
;
Secondary sources consulted* "Daily Telegraph" (
22 March 2006 ).; Endnotes
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