A. G. Macdonell
Encyclopedia
Archibald Gordon Macdonell (3 November 1895 – 16 January 1941) was a Scottish
writer, journalist and broadcaster, whose most famous work is the gently satirical novel England, Their England
(1933).
, AG Macdonell considered himself to be a Scotsman
more than anything else. His father was a physician
, and he was educated at Winchester
where he was excelled academically and at sports, representing the school at association football and golf
. During World War I
, he served for two years as a lieutenant
of the Royal Field Artillery
before being invalided out of the army, possibly because of shell shock
. (Lieutenant Cameron, the protagonist of England, Their England is sent home for the same reason.) The war had a profound effect on him, as it did with so many of his generation. Afterwards he spent two years in eastern Europe, firstly on the reconstruction of Poland
, and then on famine relief in Russia
. In 1922 he joined the League of Nations
where he spent five years. During 1923 and 1924 he unsuccessfully contested Lincoln
as the Liberal candidate.
Macdonell made his living as a journalist
in London
, principally writing stage reviews for the London Mercury
. In 1933, he became famous with the publication of England, Their England. The book gained considerable critical and popular acclaim, and won the James Tait Black Award that year.
Today, Macdonell is remembered mostly for this one book. It is regarded as one of the classics of English humour and is much-loved by readers for its evocation of England
between the wars. It is particularly cherished by devotees of cricket
for its famous description of the village cricket match.
Although the rest of his books have been largely forgotten, several of them earned accolades during his lifetime. Among these are the novels How Like An Angel (1934) and The Autobiography of a Cad (1938). (The latter was reissued in the UK in 2001 in Prion Humour Classics
.) Macdonell also wrote six mystery novels under the name 'Neil Gordon', one of them in collaboration with Milward Kennedy
.
Macdonell was also a connoisseur of military history
, and wrote a historical study called Napoleon and his Marshals (1934).
Macdonell wrote a number of plays for the theatre. These were mostly comedies, with titles like What Next, Baby? Or Shall I Go To Tanganyika, and were performed on the London stage. He also engaged in amateur
theatrics himself, at least in the early part of his career. A review of an amateur production in Thursley
, printed in the Times
newspaper in January 1930, notes that he played his role with "immense gusto" which was "vastly to the taste of the audience". Macdonell also wrote "The crew of the Anaconda" in 1940, a Boys Own ripping yarn type tale.
Macdonell was a regular contributor to The Observer
, and was also a well-known broadcaster for the BBC Empire Service. Politically, he was a supporter of the Liberal Party
. He was a keen sportsman and a first-rate golfer, representing the Old Wykehamists on a number of occasions.
He died suddenly in Oxford
in 1941 at the relatively young age of 45. In his obituary, the Times called him "one of the leaders of the younger school of satirical novelists". He was buried at Wolvercote Cemetery
in Oxford.
in a hotel in London the previous January. His second wife was a Viennese
lady whose family was associated with the banking firm of Warburg-Schiff and who had fled to England just before the Anschluss
.
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
writer, journalist and broadcaster, whose most famous work is the gently satirical novel England, Their England
England, Their England
England, Their England is an affectionately satirical comic novel of 1920s English urban and rural society by the Scottish writer A. G. Macdonell. It is particularly famed for its portrayal of village cricket.-Social satire:...
(1933).
Life and work
Born in Poona, IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, AG Macdonell considered himself to be a Scotsman
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
more than anything else. His father was a physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, and he was educated at Winchester
Winchester College
Winchester College is an independent school for boys in the British public school tradition, situated in Winchester, Hampshire, the former capital of England. It has existed in its present location for over 600 years and claims the longest unbroken history of any school in England...
where he was excelled academically and at sports, representing the school at association football and golf
Golf
Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, he served for two years as a lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
of the Royal Field Artillery
Royal Field Artillery
The Royal Field Artillery of the British Army provided artillery support for the British Army. It came into being when the Royal Artillery was divided on 1 July 1899, it was reamalgamated back into the Royal Artillery in 1924....
before being invalided out of the army, possibly because of shell shock
Shell Shock
Shell Shock, also known as 82nd Marines Attack was a 1964 film by B-movie director John Hayes. The film takes place in Italy during World War II, and tells the story of a sergeant with his group of soldiers....
. (Lieutenant Cameron, the protagonist of England, Their England is sent home for the same reason.) The war had a profound effect on him, as it did with so many of his generation. Afterwards he spent two years in eastern Europe, firstly on the reconstruction of Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, and then on famine relief in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. In 1922 he joined the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
where he spent five years. During 1923 and 1924 he unsuccessfully contested Lincoln
Lincoln, Lincolnshire
Lincoln is a cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England.The non-metropolitan district of Lincoln has a population of 85,595; the 2001 census gave the entire area of Lincoln a population of 120,779....
as the Liberal candidate.
Macdonell made his living as a journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, principally writing stage reviews for the London Mercury
London Mercury
The London Mercury was the name of several periodicals published in London from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. The earliest was a newspaper that appeared during the Exclusion Bill crisis; it lasted only 56 issues...
. In 1933, he became famous with the publication of England, Their England. The book gained considerable critical and popular acclaim, and won the James Tait Black Award that year.
Today, Macdonell is remembered mostly for this one book. It is regarded as one of the classics of English humour and is much-loved by readers for its evocation of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
between the wars. It is particularly cherished by devotees of cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
for its famous description of the village cricket match.
Although the rest of his books have been largely forgotten, several of them earned accolades during his lifetime. Among these are the novels How Like An Angel (1934) and The Autobiography of a Cad (1938). (The latter was reissued in the UK in 2001 in Prion Humour Classics
Prion Humour Classics
Prion Humour Classics are a series of small-format hardback novels published by Prion Books in the UK....
.) Macdonell also wrote six mystery novels under the name 'Neil Gordon', one of them in collaboration with Milward Kennedy
Milward Kennedy
Milward Rodon Kennedy Burge was an English civil servant, journalist, crime writer and literary critic. He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. He served with British Military Intelligence in World War I and then worked for the International Labor Office and the Egyptian...
.
Macdonell was also a connoisseur of military history
Military history
Military history is a humanities discipline within the scope of general historical recording of armed conflict in the history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, their cultures, economies and changing intra and international relationships....
, and wrote a historical study called Napoleon and his Marshals (1934).
Macdonell wrote a number of plays for the theatre. These were mostly comedies, with titles like What Next, Baby? Or Shall I Go To Tanganyika, and were performed on the London stage. He also engaged in amateur
Amateur
An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without pay and often without formal training....
theatrics himself, at least in the early part of his career. A review of an amateur production in Thursley
Thursley
Thursley is a small village in Surrey. It lies just west of the A3 running between Milford and Hindhead. Neighbouring villages include Rushmoor, Bowlhead Green and Brook. Thursley is in south-west Surrey, in south-east England...
, printed in the Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
newspaper in January 1930, notes that he played his role with "immense gusto" which was "vastly to the taste of the audience". Macdonell also wrote "The crew of the Anaconda" in 1940, a Boys Own ripping yarn type tale.
Macdonell was a regular contributor to The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, and was also a well-known broadcaster for the BBC Empire Service. Politically, he was a supporter of the Liberal Party
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
. He was a keen sportsman and a first-rate golfer, representing the Old Wykehamists on a number of occasions.
He died suddenly in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
in 1941 at the relatively young age of 45. In his obituary, the Times called him "one of the leaders of the younger school of satirical novelists". He was buried at Wolvercote Cemetery
Wolvercote Cemetery
Wolvercote Cemetery is a cemetery close to the north Oxford suburb of Wolvercote, England, off the Banbury Road. Unusually, this single cemetery is divided into areas to accommodate graves of the Jewish and Muslim communities, as well as all categories of Christians. Many Russians, Poles and other...
in Oxford.
Marriages
Macdonell was married twice. His first marriage lasted from 1926 to 1937, and gave him his only child Jenny. In July 1937, his wife Mona sued for divorce. According to the suit, Macdonell had committed adulteryAdultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
in a hotel in London the previous January. His second wife was a Viennese
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
lady whose family was associated with the banking firm of Warburg-Schiff and who had fled to England just before the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
.