Humphrey Carpenter (1946–2005,) fully Humphrey William Bouverie Carpenter, was an English writer, editor, biographer, and broadcaster known for his often-mischievous exuberance. His output was assorted—from conducting radio interviews to producing children’s theater, writing scathing book reviews to playing various musical instruments.
Born and educated at Oxford, Carpenter worked as a broadcaster and producer for the BBC. His biographies of JRR Tolkien (1977) and W H Auden (1981,) as well as The Inklings: CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends (1979; a pro-Christian, anti-modernism intellectual circle at Oxford,) are models of the genre.
Carpenter also wrote biographies of Ezra Pound, Evelyn Waugh, Benjamin Britten, Robert Runcie, Dennis Potter, and Spike Milligan, as well as histories of BBC Radio 3, Oxford University Dramatic Society, the post-war British satire movement, and Angry Young Men: A Literary Comedy of the 1950s (2002.)
For children, Carpenter penned the Mr. Majeika series (1984–2006,) founded the children’s theatre group Mushy Peas, and co-edited The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature (1984.) His amateur jazz band specializing in music of the 1920s and ’30s, Vile Bodies (s.1983,) was resident at the Ritz Hotel in London for many years.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Humphrey Carpenter
Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.
—Humphrey Carpenter
Topics: Books, Autobiography
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