Hector Bolitho

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(Henry) Hector Bolitho (28 May 1897 - 12 September 1974) was a prolific author, novelist and biographer. In total, he had 59 books published.

Bolitho was born in Auckland, New Zealand, the son of Henry and Ethelred Frances Bolitho. He travelled in South Sea Islands in 1919 and then through New Zealand with the Prince of Wales in 1920. He travelled in Africa, Australia, Canada, America, and Germany in 1923-4, finally settling in Britain where he was to remain for the rest of his life.

On his arrival in Britain he worked as a freelance journalist. At the start of World War II he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) as an intelligence officer with the rank of squadron leader, editing the Royal Air Force Weekly Bulletin, which in 1941 became the Royal Air Force Journal. In 1942 he was appointed editor of the Coastal Command Intelligence Review.

Bolitho undertook several lecture tours of America (in 1938-39, 1947, 1948, and 1949).

Bolitho was homosexual and was in a long-term relationship with Derek Peel, an army officer, from 1949 until Bolitho's death in 1974.

[edit] Bibliography

The Island of Kawau 1919
The Islands of Wonder 1920
With the Prince in New Zealand 1920
Solemn Boy (novel) 1927
The Letters of Lady Augusta Stanley 1927
Thistledown and Thunder 1928
The New Zealanders 1928
Judith Silver (novel) 1929
The New Countries 1929
The Later Letters of Lady Augusta Stanley 1929
The Glorious Oyster 1929
(with Very Rev. A. V. Baillie) A Victorian Dean: A Memoir of Arthur Stanley 1930
The Flame on Ethirdova (novel) 1930
Albert the Good, a Life of the Prince Consort 1932
Alfred Mond: First Baron Melchett, a biography 1933
Beside Galilee: a Diary in Palestine 1933
The Prince Consort and his Brother 1934
Victoria, the Widow and her Son 1934
(with Terence Rattigan) Grey Farm (play) performed 1934
Older People 1935
The House in Half Moon Street (short stories) 1935
James Lyle MacKay, First Earl of Inchcape 1936
Marie Tempest: a Biography 1936
King Edward VIII: his Life and Reign 1937
Royal Progress 1937
George VI 1937
Victoria and Albert 1938
(ed) Further Letters of Queen Victoria 1938
Victoria and Disraeli (radio play) performed 1938
(with John Mulgan) The Emigrants 1939
Roumania under King Carol 1939
America Expects 1940
War in the Strand 1942
Combat Report 1943
No Humour in My Love (short stories) 1946
Task for Coastal Command 1946
The Romance of Windsor Castle 1947
The Reign of Queen Victoria 1948
A Biographer's Notebook 1950
A Century of British Monarchy 1951
Their Majesties 1951
(with Derek Peel) Without the City Wall 1952
Jinnah, Creator of Pakistan 1954
A Penguin in the Eyrie 1955
The Wine of the Douro 1956
The Angry Neighbours 1957
No 10, Downing Street 1957
My Restless Years (autobiography) 1962
The Galloping Third 1963
Albert, Prince Consort 1964, rev. edn, 1970
(with Derek Peel) The Drummonds of Charing Cross 1967
He also edited The British Empire Published Batsford 1947-8