Editing Raymond Postgate

{{Short description|English socialist, writer, editor and historian (1896–1971)}}
{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}
{{Infobox writer
|name=Raymond Postgate
|image=Raymond_Postgate.jpg
|caption=Postgate in April 1970
|birth_date= 6 November 1896
|birth_place=[[Cambridge]], England
|death_date= {{death date and age|1971|3|29|1896|11|6|df=y}}
|death_place=[[Canterbury]], [[Kent]], England
|occupation={{flatlist|
* Writer
* journalist
* editor
}}
|parents=[[John Percival Postgate]] and Edith Allen 
|relatives=<br>[[Oliver Postgate]] <small>(son)</small><br>[[John Postgate (microbiologist)|John Postgate]] <small>(son)</small><br>[[Margaret Cole]] <small>(sister)</small>
|genre=
|language=English
}}

'''Raymond William Postgate''' (6 November 1896&nbsp;– 29 March 1971) was an English socialist, writer, journalist and editor, social historian, [[mystery fiction|mystery novelist]], and gourmet who founded the ''[[Good Food Guide]]''.  He was a member of the [[Postgate family]].

==Biography==

===Early life===

Raymond Postgate was born in [[Cambridge]], England, the eldest son of [[John Percival Postgate]] and Edith Allen. He was educated at [[St John's College, Oxford]], where, despite being sent down for a period because of his pacifism, he gained a First in [[Honour Moderations]] in 1917.

Postgate sought exemption from World War I [[military service]] as a [[conscientious objector]] on [[socialist]] grounds, but was allowed only non-combatant service in the army, which he refused to accept. Arrested by the civil police, he was brought before Oxford [[Magistrates' Court]], which handed him over to the Army. Transferred to [[Cowley Barracks]], Oxford,<ref name="b&y">Brock and Young, p. 209.</ref> for forcible enlistment in the [[Non-Combatant Corps]], he was within five days found medically unfit for service and discharged.<ref>''The Friend'', 5 May 1916, 12 May 1916.</ref> Fearful of a possible further attempt at conscription, he went "[[wiktionary:on the run|on the run]]" for a period. While he was in Army hands, his sister [[Margaret Cole|Margaret]] campaigned on his behalf, in the process meeting the socialist writer and economist [[G. D. H. Cole]], whom she subsequently married. In 1918 Postgate married [[Daisy Lansbury]], daughter of the journalist and [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] politician [[George Lansbury]], and was barred from the family home by his [[Tory]] father.<ref>Postgate & Postgate, pp. 41–65.</ref>

===Communist period===

From 1918, Postgate worked as a journalist on the ''[[Daily Herald (UK newspaper)|Daily Herald]]'', then edited by his father-in-law, Lansbury. In 1920, Postgate published ''Bolshevik Theory'', a book brought to [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]]’s attention by [[H. G. Wells]]. Impressed with the analysis therein, Lenin sent a signed photograph to Postgate, which he kept for the rest of his life.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Mulholland|first=Marc|date=2016|title=How to Make a Revolution: The Historical and Political Writings of Raymond Postgate Postgate|url=https://www.academia.edu/30067214|journal=Socialist History|volume=49|pages=107}}</ref> A founding member of the British [[Communist Party of Great Britain|Communist Party]] (CPGB) in 1920, Postgate left the ''Herald'' to join his colleague [[Francis Meynell]] on the staff of the party's first weekly newspaper, ''The Communist''. Postgate soon became its editor and was briefly a major propagandist for the communist cause, but he left the party after falling out with its leadership in 1922, when the [[Communist International]] insisted that British communists follow the Moscow line. As such, he was one of Britain's first left-wing former communists, and the party came to treat him as an archetypal [[bourgeois]] intellectual renegade. He remained a key player in left journalism, however, returning to the ''Herald'', then joining Lansbury on ''Lansbury's Labour Weekly'' in 1925–1927.<ref>Postgate & Postgate, pp. 107–115.</ref>

===Later career===

[[File:Stella Bowen, Raymond Postgate.jpg|thumb|Raymond Postgate, by [[Stella Bowen]], 1934. [[National Gallery of Victoria]], [[Melbourne]]]]
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Postgate published biographies of [[John Wilkes]] and [[Robert Emmet]] and his first novel, ''[[No Epitaph]]'' (1932), and worked as an editor for the ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]''.<ref>Postgate & Postgate, pp. 140–164.</ref> In 1932, he visited the Soviet Union with a [[Fabian Society|Fabian]] delegation and contributed to the collection ''Twelve Studies in Soviet Russia''.<ref>Postgate & Postgate, pp. 171–174.</ref> Later in the 1930s, he co-authored with his brother-in-law G. D. H. Cole ''The Common People'', a social history of Britain from the mid-18th century.

Postgate edited the left-wing monthly ''Fact'' from 1937 to 1939, which featured a monograph on a different subject in each issue.<ref name="cp">Polsgrove, pp. 148–149.</ref> ''Fact'' published material by several well-known left-wing writers, including [[Ernest Hemingway]]'s reports on the [[Spanish Civil War]],<ref>Hanneman, p. 54.</ref> [[C. L. R. James]]'s 1938 "A History of Negro Revolt"<ref name="cp" /> and [[Storm Jameson]]'s essay "Documents".<ref>Brewster, p. 279.</ref> Postgate then edited the socialist weekly ''[[Tribune (magazine)|Tribune]]'' from early 1940 until the end of 1941.<ref>Postgate & Postgate, pp. 195–200.</ref> ''Tribune'' had previously been a pro-Soviet publication: however, the Soviet [[fellow traveller]]s at ''Tribune'' were either dismissed, or, in Postgate's words "left soon after in dislike of me".<ref>Jones, pp. 48–49.</ref>  Under Postgate's editorship, ''Tribune'' would express "critical support" for the [[Churchill war ministry|Churchill government]] and condemn the Communist Party.<ref>Calder, p. 79.</ref>

Postgate's [[anti-fascism]] led him to move away from his earlier pacifism. Postgate supported the [[Second World War]] and joined the [[Home Guard (United Kingdom)|Home Guard]] near his home in Finchley, London.<ref name="b&y">Brock and Young, p. 209.</ref><ref>Postgate & Postgate, pp. 213–215.</ref> In 1942, he obtained a post as a temporary civil servant in the wartime Board of Trade, concerned with the control of rationed supplies, and he remained in the Service for eight years.<ref>Postgate & Postgate, pp. 243–254.</ref> He continued his left-wing writings, and his question-and-answer pamphlet "Why You Should Be A Socialist", widely distributed among the returning military as the war ended, probably contributed significantly to the Labour Party's post-war landslide victory.

In the post-war period, Postgate continued to be critical of Russia under [[Stalin]], viewing its direction as an abandonment of socialist ideals.<ref>"...Lenin's Russia was not Stalin's: the present (1951) regime bears no more resemblance to what Lansbury saw than did the Empire of Bonaparte and Fouche to the France of the Convention, and far less than Cromwell's dictatorship did to the Commonwealth of 1649". Postgate, p. 202 (1951).</ref><ref>Blythe, p. 243.</ref>

Always interested in food and wine, after World War II, Postgate wrote a regular column on the poor state of British gastronomy for the pocket magazine ''[[Lilliput (magazine)|Lilliput]]''. In these, inspired by the example of a French travel guide called ''Le Club des Sans Club'', he invited readers to send him reports on eating places throughout the UK, which he would collate and publish. The response was overwhelming, and Postgate's notional  "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Food", as he had called it, developed into the ''[[Good Food Guide]]'', becoming independent of ''Lilliput'' and its successor, ''The Leader''. The ''Guide''{{'}}s first issue came out in 1951; it accepted no advertisements and still relied on volunteers to visit and report on UK restaurants.<ref>Postgate & Postgate, pp. 265–269.</ref> As well as democratising ordinary eating out, Postgate sought to demystify the aura surrounding wine, and the flowery language widely used to describe wine flavours. His "A Plain Man's Guide To Wine" undoubtedly did much to make Britain more of a wine-drinking nation.<ref>Postgate & Postgate, pp. 274–279.</ref> In 1965, Postgate wrote an article in ''[[Holiday (magazine)|Holiday]]'' magazine in which he warned readers against [[Babycham]], which "looks like champagne and is served in champagne glasses [but] is made of pears". The company sued for libel, but Postgate was acquitted, and was awarded costs. His distinctly amateur writings on both food and wine, though highly influential in Britain in their time, did not endear him to professionals in the catering and wine trades, who avoided referring to him; however, his activities were much appreciated in France, where in 1951 he had been made the first British "[[Saint-Émilion|Peer of the Jurade of St Emilion]]".<ref>Postgate & Postgate, pp. 282–285.</ref>

He continued to work as a journalist, mainly on the Co-operative movement's Sunday paper, ''[[Reynolds' News]]'', and during the 1950s and 1960s published several historical works and a biography of his father-in-law entitled ''The Life of George Lansbury''.

Postgate wrote several mystery novels that drew on his socialist beliefs to set crime, detection and punishment in a broader social and economic context. His most famous novel is ''[[Verdict of Twelve]]'' (1940), his other novels include ''Somebody at the Door'' (1943) and ''The Ledger Is Kept'' (1953). (His sister and brother-in-law, the Coles, also became a successful mystery-writing duo.) After the death of [[H. G. Wells]], Postgate edited some revisions of the two-volume ''[[The Outline of History|Outline of History]]'' that Wells had first published in 1920.

===Death and legacy===

Raymond Postgate died aged 74, on 29 March 1971; his wife Daisy committed suicide a month later.<ref>Postgate & Postgate, pp. 340–346.</ref>

Postgate's younger son, [[Oliver Postgate]], also a conscientious objector though in World War II, became a leading creator of [[children's television show|children's television programmes]] in the UK including ''[[Bagpuss]]'', ''[[Ivor the Engine]]'' and ''[[The Clangers]]''. Oliver's brother was the microbiologist and writer [[John Postgate (microbiologist)|John Postgate]] [[Fellow of the Royal Society|FRS]].

==Selected bibliography==
* ''The Workers’ International'' (1920)
* ''That Devil Wilkes'' (1929)
* ''Dear Robert Emmet'' (1932)
* ''England Goes to Press'' (1937)
* ''Verdict of Twelve'' (1940)
* ''Somebody at the Door'' (1942)
* ''The Good Food Guide''
* ''The Life of George Lansbury'' (1951)
* ''The Ledger is Kept'' (1958)
* ''Story of the Year, 1798'' (1969)

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

== References ==
*''Oxford Chronicle'', 10 March 1916.
*''The Friend'', 5 May & 12 May 1916.
*''Law Reports'', 30 October, 2 November, 4 November 1965, ''The Times Digital Archive''
*[[Angus Calder|Calder, Angus]] (1991). ''The Myth of the Blitz''. London: [[Jonathan Cape]]. p.&nbsp;79. {{ISBN|0-224-02258-X}}.
* Raymond Postgate, ''Life of George Lansbury''. London: [[Longmans, Green]], 1951.
* [[Ronald Blythe]], ''The Age of Illusion; England in the Twenties and Thirties, 1919–1940''. Boston: [[Houghton Mifflin]], 1964.  
*John & Mary Postgate, ''A Stomach For Dissent: The Life Of Raymond Postgate''. Keele University Press, 1994.
*Marc Mulholland, "How to Make a Revolution: The Historical and Political Writings of Raymond Postgate" in ''Socialist History'' (49), 2016, pp.&nbsp;92–116.
* Audre Hanneman, ''Ernest Hemingway. Supplement to Ernest Hemingway: A Comprehensive Bibliography''. [[Princeton University Press]], 2015. {{ISBN|1400869382}}.
* Dorothy Brewster, ''East-West Passage'', London: [[Allen and Unwin]], 1954.
* [[Peter Brock (historian)|Peter Brock]] and Nigel Young, ''Pacifism in the Twentieth Century''. New York: [[Syracuse University Press]], 1999 {{ISBN|0815681259}} 
* Carol Polsgrove, ''Ending British Rule in Africa : writers in a common cause''. Manchester: [[Manchester University Press]]. {{ISBN|9780719077678}} 
* Bill Jones, ''The Russia Complex: The British Labour Party and the Soviet Union''. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977. {{ISBN|0719006961}}

==External links==
* [http://www.marxists.org/archive/postgate/index.htm R. W. Postgate Archive]. Marxists Internet Archive
* [http://archives.lse.ac.uk/TreeBrowse.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&field=RefNo&key=POSTGATE Catalogue of the Postgate papers held at LSE Archives]
* [https://modernistarchives.com/person/raymond-postgate Correspondence in the Modernist Archives Publishing Project]. Letters sent and received by Postgate as European representative for [[Alfred A. Knopf]] publishers
* [https://petersfraserdunlop.com/clients/raymond-postgate/ Raymond Poostgate] at Peters Fraser & Dunlop (PFD).

{{s-start}}
{{s-media}}
{{succession box|title=Editor of ''[[Workers' Weekly (UK)|The Communist]]''|years=1921&ndash;1922|before=[[Francis Meynell]]|after=[[Thomas A. Jackson]]}}
{{succession box
  | title  = Editor of ''[[Tribune (magazine)|Tribune]]''
  | years  = 1940–1941
  | before = [[H. J. Hartshorn]]
  | after  = [[Aneurin Bevan]] and [[Jon Kimche]]
}}
{{s-end}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Postgate, Raymond}}
[[Category:1896 births]]
[[Category:1971 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century British historians]]
[[Category:20th-century English novelists]]
[[Category:Alumni of St John's College, Oxford]]
[[Category:Communist Party of Great Britain members]]
[[Category:English anti-fascists]]
[[Category:English biographers]]
[[Category:English conscientious objectors]]
[[Category:English male biographers]]
[[Category:English male journalists]]
[[Category:English male novelists]]
[[Category:English mystery writers]]
[[Category:English socialists]]
[[Category:Members of the Fabian Society]]
[[Category:People from Cambridge]]
[[Category:Writers of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction]]
[[Category:Postgate family|Raymond]]