Nigel Heseltine (1916-95)


Life
b. 3 July 1916, London; son of the composer Peter Warlock [Philip Arnold Heseltine] - prob. not with his wife Puma; raised by foster-parents in his first year and afterwards by Warlock’s mother and stepfather in Wales; birth registered in 1930; grad. TCD and London School of Economics; visited Budapest and m. [Princess] Natalia Borisovna Galitzine [or Galitzina] (b.1920), 1938 [aetat. 23]; spent war years in Ireland; associated with Shelagh Richards and the Olympia Th. Co.;
 
wrote two plays and trans. Buchner’s Wozzek; contrib. to John Lehmann’s New Writing (Penguin 1946); trans. poems of Dafuydd Ap Gwilym (Selected Poems, 1944); m. Jean le Brocquy [née Stoney], lately divorced from Louis le Brocquy, 1948, with whom a son, Peter; Heseltine issued a poetry collection, The Four-Walled Dream (1941); also fiction, Tales of the Squirearchy (June 1946), and a novel, The Mysterious Pregnancy (1953);
 
issued travel works including From Libyan Sands to Chad (1959) and Madagascar (1971); he worked for the Food and Agricultural Organization chiefly in Africa [1950-65]; appointed Under-Secretary in charge of Development Planning in Zambia, 1965; appt. economic advisor to the President of Madagascar, 1968; his son with Jean Stoney grad. TCD and became an oncologist in California.

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Works
Poetry
  • Violent Rain: a Poem [Companionate of the Independent Poets (London), No. 1] (The Latin Press 1938), 1p.; pink hand-made paper].
  • The Four-Walled Dream: Poems (The Fortune Press [1941]), 52pp.
  • trans., Dafydd ap Gwilym: Selected Poems (Dublin: Cuala Press 1944), 44pp. [280 copies], and Do. [rep.] (Banbury: Piers Press 1968), 62pp.
Fiction
  • Tales of the Squirearchy (Druid Press 1946), 115pp. [Contents: “Cam-Vaughan's shoot”; “The life and the burial”; “Eve of Something will be Done in a Week”; “Milk of Human Kindness”; “Data on the Squirearchy”; “Gothic Halls”; “Boring Story”; “Skirt in Long Strips”; “The Word Burning”; “Lord a-leaping”; “Rich Relations”; “Constable’s Ruin”; “The Soldier’s Return”].
  • The Mysterious Pregnancy: A Novel (London: Gollancz 1953), 222pp; Do. [New English Library] (London: J. M. Dent 1964), 160pp. and Do. in USA as Inconstant Lady (1953).
Travel
  • Scarred Background: A Journey Through Albania (London: L. Dickson 1938), 234pp., ill. [9 lvs. of pls., maps].
  • From Libyan Sands to Chad [An Account of the Author’s Third Journey Across the Sahara] (London: Museum Press 1959), 208pp.
  • Remaking Africa, with a foreword by Thomas Balogh (London: Museum Press [1961]), 159pp., ill. [maps]
    • .
  • Madagascar (London: Pall Mall Press 1971), x, 334pp.; and Do. [Praeger Library of African Affairs] (Praegar 1971), x, 344pp. [contents].
Memoir
  • Capriol for Mother: A Memoir of Philip Heseltine [Peter Warlock] (London: Thames 1992), 176pp., ill. [16pp. pls.]
Miscellaneous
  • ‘Break Away if you Can’, in The Penguin New Writing, ed. John Lehmann (London: 1946), pp.9-19 [with biographical note].
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Bibliographical details
Madagascar (Praegar 1971), x+334pp. CONTENTS: Introduction; 1. The Land; 2. The People: Origins to 1800; 3. The Society; 4. State and Politics: 1800-1896; 5. State and Politics: 1896-1960; 6. State and Politics since Independence; 7. The Economy; 8. Development Prospects; Statistical Appendix; Notes and References; Bibliography; Index.

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Criticism
Almanac: Welsh Writing in English - A Yearbook of Critical Essays, 11 (2006-07) incls. M. Wynn Thomas, ‘“A Grand Harlequinade”: The Border Writing of Nigel Heseltine’ and Rhian Davies, ‘Scarred Background: Nigel Heseltine (1916-1995): A Biographical Introduction and a Bibliography’.

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References
Wikipedia cites Rhian Davies, ‘Scarred Background: Nigel Heseltine (1916-1995): A Biographical Introduction and a Bibliography’, in Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, 11 (2006-07) [online].

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Notes
William the Conk: Heseltine’s first wife, Natalia Borisovna Galitzine (b.1920) was descended via the Hapsburgs and Romanovs from William I of England (William the Conqueror). See William I website > Germany [online; accessed 27.02.2010].

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