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David Pryce-Jones

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Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:BLP sources Template:Infobox person David Eugene Henry Pryce-Jones Template:Post-nominals (born 15 February 1936) is a British conservative author, historian and political commentator.

Early lifeEdit

Pryce-Jones was born on 15 February 1936, in Vienna, Austria.<ref>Ellen Doon. "Alan Pryce-Jones Papers", Yale, New Haven, Connecticut. May 2003. Retrieved 28 February 2008.</ref> He was educated at Eton and earned a degree in history at Magdalen College, Oxford. While at Oxford in 1957, he was runner-up for the Newdigate Prize. <ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

He is the son of writer Alan Payan Pryce-Jones (1908–2000) by his first wife (married 1934), Therese "Poppy" Fould-Springer (1914–1953) of the Fould family.<ref>The year of death is from the Pryce Jones papers at Yale and other sources. Burke's Peerage 103rd edition (1963) Template:Webarchive 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.</ref> Therese was a daughter of Baron Eugène Fould-Springer, a French-born banker who was a cousin of Achille Fould, and Marie-Cecile or Mitzi Springer, later Mrs Frank Wooster or Mary Wooster,<ref>According to the New York Social Diary Template:Webarchive, Wooster had been a lover of her husband and had lived with them in a troika before Eugène died. The widow and the bereaved lover then married; he lived until 1953. The story, well known to their circle, was not revealed publicly until her British son-in-law Alan Pryce Jones wrote about it in his memoirs. See also another story on how the Fould-Springers met Wooster</ref> whose father was the industrialist Baron Gustav Springer (1842–1920) son of Baron Max Springer.<ref name="telegraph2">Template:Cite newsTemplate:Dead linkTemplate:Cbignore</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="guardi1">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Obituary: Baroness Elie de Rothschild. Independent, The (London)</ref> She also had a brother, Baron Max Fould-Springer (1906–1999), and two sisters Helene Propper de Callejón (1907–1997), wife of Spanish diplomat Eduardo Propper de Callejón and grandmother of actress Helena Bonham Carter, and Baroness Liliane de Rothschild (1916–2003).<ref>Anne Yamey. Springer family: DANIEL and The FOULD-SPRINGER family Template:Webarchive. Retrieved 28 February 2008. The title was granted by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.</ref>

His parents married in 1934 in Vienna, where Pryce-Jones was born. His mother's Jewish background made it unwise to remain in Vienna and the family moved to England at the end of 1937.<ref>Ellen Doon. "Alan Pryce-Jones Papers", Yale, New Haven, Connecticut. May 2003. Retrieved 8 November 2021</ref> In 1940, a four-year-old Pryce-Jones was stranded with his nanny in Dieppe, Normandy and was rescued from the invading German army by his mother's brother-in-law Eduardo Propper de Callejón.<ref>Jenni Frazer. Ibid</ref> He acknowledged his uncle-by-marriage's efforts in saving his own life when Propper de Callejón retired from Spanish diplomatic service.Template:Citation needed

Pryce-Jones is a first cousin of Elena Propper de Callejón, wife of late banker Raymond Bonham Carter and mother of actress Helena Bonham Carter. Another cousin is Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild, only son of the better known Baron Élie de Rothschild.Template:Citation needed

CareerEdit

Pryce-Jones did his National Service in the Coldstream Guards, in which he was commissioned in 1955, promoted lieutenant in 1956, and served in the British Army of the Rhine. In 1956, Pryce-Jones lectured the men under his command about the necessity of the Suez War, but admits that he did not believe what he was saying.<ref name="Gellner pages 34-36">Gellner, Ernest "Up From Imperialism" pp. 34–36 from The New Republic, Volume 200, Number 21, Issue #3, 879, 22 May 1989 p. 34</ref> At the time, he believed that the Islamic world would soon progress after decolonization, and was disappointed when this did not happen.<ref name="Gellner pages 34-36"/> He has worked as a journalist and author. He was literary editor at the Financial Times 1959–61, and The Spectator from 1961 to 1963.Template:Citation needed

Pryce-Jones is a senior editor at National Review magazine. He also contributes to The New Criterion and Commentary, and for Benador Associates. He often writes about the contemporary events and the history of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and intelligence matters.Template:Citation needed

In his 1989 book The Closed Circle, Pryce-Jones examined what he considered to be the reasons for the backward state of the Arab world.<ref name="Gellner pages 34-36"/> A review described the book as more of an "indictment" than an examination of the Arab world.<ref name="Gellner pages 34-36"/> In Pryce-Jones's opinion, the root cause of Arab backwardness is the tribal nature of Arab political life, which reduces all politics to war of rival families struggling mercilessly for power.<ref name="Gellner pages 34-36"/> As such, Pryce-Jones's view is that power in Arab politics consists of a network of client–patron relations between powerful and less powerful families and clans.<ref name="ReferenceA">Gellner, Ernest "Up From Imperialism" pp. 34–36 from The New Republic, Volume 200, Number 21, Issue #3, 879, 22 May 1989 p. 35</ref> Pryce-Jones considers as an additional retarding factor in Arab society the influence of Islam, which hinders efforts to build a Western style society where the family and clan are not the dominant political unit.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Pryce-Jones argues that Islamic fundamentalism is a means of attempting to mobilize the masses behind the dominant clans.<ref>Gellner, Ernest "Up From Imperialism" pp. 34–36 from The New Republic, Volume 200, Number 21, Issue #3, 879, 22 May 1989 p. 36</ref>

In his book, Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews, he has accused the French government of being anti-Semitic and pro-Arab, and of consistently siding against Israel in the hope of winning the favour of the Islamic world.Template:Sfn The book's premise has been likened to Bat Ye'or's Eurabia theory,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> which has been praised by Pryce-Jones as "prophetic".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The American diplomat Philip H. Gordon gave a highly unfavorable review of Betrayal in Foreign Affairs, describing the book as a French-bashing "polemic" disguised as a work of history.Template:Sfn Gordon accused Pryce-Jones of hypocrisy, noting that he took successive French governments to task for supporting Middle Eastern dictators like President Saddam Hussein of Iraq while failing to note that both the United States and the United Kingdom have also supported Middle Eastern dictators.Template:Sfn Gordon wrote that Pryce-Jones's claim that French President Jacques Chirac was guilty of "perfidy" towards the West by opposing the Iraq War in 2003 was unfair, writing in 2007 that much of what happened in Iraq since 2003 appeared to justify Chirac's predictions of a debacle if the United States invaded.Template:Sfn

Pryce-Jones wrote a biography, Evelyn Waugh and His World (1973). It was rather notorious for digging up conflict among the married Mitford siblings, with Pamela accusing Jessica of revealing private correspondence concerning their sister the Duchess of Devonshire. The 1976 biography Unity Mitford: A Quest followed, despite alleged efforts by some of Unity Mitford's sisters to prevent Pryce-Jones from doing his research and publishing the book.<ref>David Pryce-Jones, ‘You are always close to me’: Unity Mitford’s souvenirs of Hitler,The Spectator Australia, 28 March 2015.</ref>

Personal lifeEdit

He married Clarissa Caccia, daughter of diplomat Harold Caccia, Baron Caccia, in 1959.Template:Citation needed They have three surviving children, (one deceased, Sonia: 1970–1972), Jessica, Candida and Adam, and live in London.Template:Citation needed Jessica is married to the BBC journalist David Shukman.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

BibliographyEdit

NovelsEdit

  • Inheritance (1992)
  • The Afternoon Sun (1986) Template:ISBN
  • Shirley’s Guild (1979)
  • The England Commune (1975)
  • Running Away (1971)
  • The Stranger’s View (1967)
  • Quondam (1965)
  • The Sands of Summer (1963)
  • Owls & Satyrs (1961)

Non-fictionEdit

  • Signatures (Encounter Books, 2020)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • Fault Lines (2015)<ref name=":0" />
  • Treason of the Heart. From Thomas Paine to Kim Philby (2011) Encounter Books, Template:ISBN
  • Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews (2006) Template:ISBN
  • A Very Elegant Coup, (2003), a review of the book All the Shah's Men
  • The Strange Death of the Soviet Empire (1995) Template:ISBN
  • The War that Never Was: The Fall of the Soviet Empire 1985–1991 (1995) Template:ISBN
  • You Can't be Too Careful (1992)
  • The Closed Circle (1989)
  • Cyril Connolly: Journal & Memoir (1983) Template:ISBN
  • Paris in the Third Reich (1981)
  • Vienna (1978)
  • Unity Mitford (1976)
  • Evelyn Waugh & his world (1973)
  • The Face of Defeat (1972)
  • The Hungarian Revolution (1969)
  • Next Generation: Travels in Israel (1965)
  • Graham Greene (1963)

ReferencesEdit

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SourcesEdit

External linksEdit

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