May, Derwent (James) 1930-

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MAY, Derwent (James) 1930-

PERSONAL:

Born April 19, 1930, in Eastbourne, England; son of Herbert and Nellie (Newton) May; married Jolanta Sypniewska, September 22, 1961; children: Orlando James, Miranda Izabella. Education: Lincoln College, Oxford, B.A., 1952, M.A., 1956. Hobbies and other interests: Birdwatching, opera.

ADDRESSES:

Home—201 Albany St., London NW1 4AB, England. Office—The Times, 1 Pennington St., London E1, England.

CAREER:

Writer. Continental Daily Mail, Paris, France, drama critic, 1952-53; University of Indonesia, Djakarta, lecturer in English, 1955-58; lecturer in English at University of Lodz and University of Warsaw in Poland, 1959-63; Times Literary Supplement, London, England, leader-writer and poetry editor, 1963-65; Listener, London, literary editor, 1965-86; Sunday Telegraph, London, literary and arts editor, 1986-89; European, London, literary and arts editor, 1990-91; Times, London, European arts editor, 1992—. Member of literature advisory panel, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1967-70.

MEMBER:

Beefsteak Club, Garrick Club.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Booker Prize jury member, 1978; Hawthornden Prize committee member, 1987.

WRITINGS:

The Professionals (novel), Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1964, David White (New York, NY), 1968.

Dear Parson (novel), Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1969.

(Compiler) European Novels of the Sixties, National Book League (London, England), 1972.

The Laughter in Djakarta (novel), Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1973.

A Revenger's Comedy (novel), Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1979.

Proust, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1983.

The Times Nature Diary, illustrated by Richard Blake, Robson (London, England), 1983.

Hannah Arendt, Penguin (New York, NY), 1986.

The New Times Nature Diary, Robson Books/Parkwest (London, England), 1995.

Critical Times: The History of the Times Literary Supplement, HarperCollins (London, England), 2001.

Also author of Feather Reports, 1996. Contributor of critical articles to Essays in Criticism. Contributor to periodicals, including Times Literary Supplement.

EDITOR

(With James Price) Oxford Poetry 1952, Basil Blackwell (London, England), 1952.

Good Talk: An Anthology from BBC Radio, Gollancz (London, England), 1968, Taplinger (New York, NY), 1969.

Good Talk, 2, Gollancz (London, England), 1969, Taplinger (New York, NY), 1970.

British and Commonwealth Novels of the Sixties, National Book League (London, England), 1970.

The Music of What Happens: Poems from the Listener 1965-1980, BBC Publications (London, England), 1981.

SIDELIGHTS:

British journalism has produced a number of respected cultural publications over the years—Spectator, Listener, and the Sunday Times among them—but holding a place of special esteem in many readers' minds is the venerable Times Literary Supplement, the book-review offshoot of the London Times newspaper. As the Times Literary Supplement prepared to mark its centennial in 2002, Derwent May published Critical Times: The History of the Times Literary Supplement. May, an arts journalist with several publications to his credit, served at the Times Literary Supplement in the early 1960s, well into its reign as "the Bible of British intellectuals," as a Contemporary Review writer put it.

Though the Times Literary Supplement is widely seen today in both the United Kingdom and the United States, during its earlier years the paper's "circulation and focus of interest were predominantly on the English library tradition, not even the American," stated William Rees-Mogg of Spectator. The Times Literary Supplement featured lengthy articles by anonymous writers (bylines began appearing only since the 1970s). "Many of the most interesting contributors were never employed by the TLS," Rees-Mogg added. May's study "is therefore a cultural history that goes much wider than the magazine itself."

The Times Literary Supplement was born a year after the death of Queen Victoria; in the paper's charter, according to Atlantic Monthly reviewer Benjamin Schwarz, founding editor Bruce Richmond wrote that the publication was meant "to occupy 'the same position of authority in its narrower sphere as that of The Times in its wider sphere.'" So the TLS was designed less for scholars and more for the average person, its role "like that of an educated reader, helping other such readers to find the books that were most worth reading," as May described it. Among the characters populating Critical Times are editors, contributors, academics, and "one villain, E. H. Carr, the Stalinist," wrote Rees-Mogg. "He had pernicious influence in the post-war years on The Times and on the TLS."

May employs the style of classic TLS writing in his own book: The author "makes use of 'alas' and much use of 'perhaps'," said New Statesman reviewer Karl Miller. "He has a touch of the old-fashioned man of letters, and an affection for the paper as it once was. People are said to be 'from relatively modest backgrounds.' That means that they did not go to a public [private] school—to Eton, Winchester and on to New College, Oxford, or Old College somewhere else. A. L. Rowse is referred to as 'the historian from a working-class family,' even though he spent his adult life in an old college, in the fair courts of privilege." Library Journal contributor Susan Colowick praised May for "enlivening the rigorously researched text with insightful character sketches" and more.

A review of Critical Times inevitably made it to the pages of the Times Literary Supplement itself. A full-page article by Joseph Epstein (who identified himself as "the ideal reader for the TLS, which I have been reading for roughly thirty-five years") cited May's work as "an excellent and honourable book, alert alike to the TLS's weaknesses and strengths and filled with information both significant and charming about the inner workings of the paper." Epstein noted that the author "read through millions of words in order to set out, in a way that somehow eludes tedium, nearly a century of TLS opinion on literature, politics and other subjects, and has done so in an even-handed manner, accompanied by a sly but never obtrusive wit." In Epstein's summation, Critical Times "casts a cool light on the history of literary reputation and the ephermerality of ideas. Look on this work, ye intellectuals and artists, and despair."