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Richard Alexander Usborne (16 May 1910 – 21 March 2006) was a journalist, advertising executive, schoolmaster and author. After the publication of his book ''Wodehouse at Work'' in 1961 he became regarded as the leading authority on the works of

P. G. Wodehouse Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeve ...

. He published or contributed to nine more books on the subject. He adapted eight Wodehouse novels and several other of the author's works for broadcast on

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

radio between 1979 and 1996.

Biography

Early years

Richard Usborne was born on 16 May 1910 at

Simla Shimla (; ; also known as Simla, the official name until 1972) is the capital and the largest city of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. In 1864, Shimla was declared as the summer capital of British India. After independence, th ...

, in

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

, the son of Charles Frederick Usborne, a member of the

Indian Civil Service The Indian Civil Service (ICS), officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was the higher civil service of the British Empire in India during British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947. Its members ruled over more than 300 million p ...

, and his wife Janet Muriel, ''née'' Lefroy."Usborne, Richard Alexander"
''Who's Who''. Retrieved 28 January 2021 He was educated in England at

Summer Fields Summer Fields is a fee-paying boys' independent day and boarding preparatory school in Summertown, Oxford. It was originally called Summerfield and used to have a subsidiary school, Summerfields, St Leonards-on-Sea (known as "Summers mi"). H ...

Preparatory school, Charterhouse School and then

Balliol College Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

, Oxford, where he was a prominent sportsman, competing in

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

and

squash rackets Squash is a racket-and-ball sport played by two or four players in a four-walled court with a small, hollow, rubber ball. The players alternate in striking the ball with their rackets onto the playable surfaces of the four walls of the court. Th ...

. He graduated BA ( Literae humaniores) in 1932. Usborne failed to enter the Indian Civil Service because of a heart murmur,Richard Usborne
''The Daily Telegraph'', 22 March 2006. Retrieved 28 January 2021. and became a schoolmaster for a while.
''The Independent'', 1 April 2006. Retrieved 29 January 2021 From 1933 to 1936 he worked in advertising agencies, and in 1936, together with three friends, he invested in a listings magazine, ''London Week'', later called ''What's On''. As part-owner and editor, Usborne came up with the novel idea of a restaurant column. When he described a West End restaurant, the Dieu Donné, as the sort of place where you would say nothing if you saw your wife because she would want to know why you were there too, the owner of the restaurant successful sued for libel. Usborne abandoned publishing and moved back into advertising, working for the large London Press Exchange. In 1938 he married Monica, daughter of Archibald Stuart MacArthur of Wagon Mound, New Mexico; they had one son and one daughter.

Second World War and later life

From the outbreak of war in 1939 until 1941 Usborne worked for the BBC Monitoring Service. In 1941 he was recruited by the

Special Operations Executive The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its pu ...

and began work in

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

, spreading pro-Allied propaganda. He was later recalled home and spent the remainder of the war working for the

Political Warfare Executive During World War II, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was a British clandestine body created to produce and disseminate both white and black propaganda, with the aim of damaging enemy morale and sustaining the morale of countries occupied ...

. He left the army with the rank of major. In 1946–1948 he had a regular slot as a broadcaster on BBC radio, reviewing books, mostly fiction."Richard Usborne"
BBC Genome. Retrieved 30 January 2021 In 1948 Usborne became assistant editor of the '' Strand Magazine'', then edited by Macdonald Hastings. The ''Strand'' was known for first publishing the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle and later the stories of

. Usborne was remembered for giving "warm, cheerful and avuncular encouragement to young and inexperienced budding writers". By the late 1940s the magazine was suffering from falling circulation and rising costs; the final issue was published in March 1950. Usborne then worked on the '' Leader Magazine'' before returning to teaching as a master at St Paul's School, where, one pupil recalled, he "taught my youthful generation how to read poetry, to learn to love it and even to write it". His final career move took him back to advertising; he became a director of the advertising company Graham and Gillies, where he remained until he retired in 1970. From 1974 to 1981 he was a Custodian for the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

. After the death of his wife in 1986 Usborne became a Brother (a resident pensioner) at the

London Charterhouse The London Charterhouse is a historic complex of buildings in Farringdon, London, dating back to the 14th century. It occupies land to the north of Charterhouse Square, and lies within the London Borough of Islington. It was originally built ( ...

."Richard Usborne", ''The Times'', 22 March 2006, p. 72 He died in London on 21 March 2006, aged 95.

Literary career

''Punch''

In addition to his day-jobs, Usborne wrote verse and prose for various publications, including ''

Punch Punch commonly refers to: * Punch (combat), a strike made using the hand closed into a fist * Punch (drink), a wide assortment of drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice Punch may also refer to: Places * Pun ...

'', ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' and ''

The Times Literary Supplement ''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp. History The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication ...

''. In a 1941 ''Punch'' article, "Not in the South", he propounded what later became known as the "Canterbury Block", a ploy for upstaging experts. This was subsequently incorporated by Stephen Potter in '' Lifemanship'' (1950). Usborne continued to write for ''Punch'' during the succeeding decades; his final contribution was a 90th-birthday tribute to

, published in October 1971.

''Clubland Heroes''

In 1952 Usborne wrote his first book ''Clubland Heroes'', published in 1953 with revised editions in 1975 and 1983. This work sought to reappraise the adventure stories of the British authors

Dornford Yates Cecil William Mercer (7 August 1885 – 5 March 1960), known by his pen name Dornford Yates, was an English writer and novelist whose novels and short stories, some humorous (the ''Berry'' books), some thrillers (the ''Chandos'' books), were be ...

Sapper A sapper, also called a pioneer or combat engineer, is a combatant or soldier who performs a variety of military engineering duties, such as breaching fortifications, demolitions, bridge-building, laying or clearing minefields, preparing ...

, and John Buchan. Usborne had first read the stories during childhood illnesses, but had retained an affection for them into adulthood. Despite this, he was not blind to the flaws in these authors' works, describing female characters as "cardboard" and noting that McNeile was "wonderfully forgetful", with characters dead in one book, but being alive in the next. ''Clubland Heroes'' was well received.

E. V. Knox Edmund George Valpy Knox (10 May 1881 – 2 January 1971) was a poet and satirist who wrote under the pseudonym Evoe. He was editor of ''Punch'' 1932–1949, having been a regular contributor in verse and prose for many years. Life Knox was ...

praised "the delightfully satirical way" in which Usborne summed up the characters and exploits of the heroes,

Philip Toynbee Theodore Philip Toynbee (25 June 1916 – 15 June 1981) was a British writer and communist. He wrote experimental novels, and distinctive verse novels, one of which was an epic called ''Pantaloon'', a work in several volumes, only some of whi ...

called the book "a ''jeu d'esprit'' that will give great pleasure … a fine piece of gentle but sustained irony", and ''Punch'' found it "enjoyable and absorbing to read besides being penetrating criticism".

Wodehouse

''Clubland Heroes'' brought Usborne to the attention of P. G. Wodehouse, who liked the book so much that he approved the suggestion that Usborne should write a study of his books, in time for his 80th birthday in 1961. Work began in 1958. The result was ''Wodehouse at Work'' (1961). Wodehouse cooperated with Usborne in the preparation of the book, although their contact was almost entirely by correspondence – rather more correspondence than Wodehouse found congenial.McCrum, pp. 399–400 They met only once, when Usborne visited Wodehouse and his wife Ethel at their home on Long Island, New York, in 1971 (the year in which Wodehouse reached the age of ninety).Usborne (1978), p. 11 Although Wodehouse praised the book when it was published, he found its author – whom he called "a certain learned Usborne" – too inclined to bring in biographical details rather than concentrating on the works as agreed. He was horrified at a proposed chapter dealing with his broadcasts from Berlin in 1941, and it did not appear in the finished book. When he received Usborne's draft he removed and destroyed a 20,000-word chapter on the subject. Even so far as study of his books was concerned, he found it unsettling to have his fiction subjected to extensive critical analysis. He thought Usborne paid too much attention to the school stories from Wodehouse's very early career, when, in his words, "I was hardly articulate". In 1973 Usborne contributed to ''Homage to P. G. Wodehouse'', a tribute edited by Thelma Cazalet-Keir, sister-in-law of Wodehouse's late stepdaughter Leonora. After Wodehouse's death in 1975 Usborne revised ''Wodehouse at Work'' to take account of the twelve new Wodehouse books that had appeared since 1961. ''Wodehouse at Work to the End'' was published in 1976. It consists, like its predecessor, of ten main sections – an introductory biographical chapter setting Wodehouse and his works in context, and chapters on the school stories;

Psmith Rupert Psmith (or Ronald Eustace Psmith, as he is called in the last of the four books in which he appears) is a recurring fictional character in several novels by British author P. G. Wodehouse, being one of Wodehouse's best-loved characters. ...

; Ukridge; Lord Emsworth and Blandings;

Uncle Fred Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, 5th Earl of Ickenham, commonly known as Uncle Fred, is a fictional character who appears in comedic short stories and novels written by P. G. Wodehouse between 1935 and 1961. An energetic and mischievous ol ...

; the light novels; the short stories;

Bertie Wooster Bertram Wilberforce Wooster is a fictional character in the comedic Jeeves stories created by British author P. G. Wodehouse. An amiable English gentleman and one of the "idle rich", Bertie appears alongside his valet, Jeeves, whose intelligenc ...

; and

Jeeves Jeeves (born Reginald Jeeves, nicknamed Reggie) is a fictional character in a series of comedic short stories and novels by English author P. G. Wodehouse. Jeeves is the highly competent valet of a wealthy and idle young Londoner named Berti ...

. Between the chapters are pages of "Images" – Usborne's favourite comic images from Wodehouse's stories. As with the 1961 edition, reviews were excellent. ''

'' called it a classic, and commented: Usborne published five more books focusing on Wodehouse. ''Vintage Wodehouse'' (1977) is an anthology which, among many other items, includes extracts from some of the Berlin broadcasts. ''Wodehouse Nuggets'' (1983) is a collection of Wodehouse quotations and vignettes, with illustrations from the ''Strand Magazine''. ''The Penguin Wodehouse Companion'' (1988) includes a biography, synopses of all the novels and pen-portraits of the major characters. ''After Hours with P. G. Wodehouse'' (1991) is another anthology of the author's writings. ''Plum Sauce'' (2002) is an illustrated companion that draws on much of Usborne's earlier material. Reviewing it, ''

The Philadelphia Inquirer ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper's circulation is the largest in both the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region of Southeastern Pennsy ...

'' called Usborne "the world's leading Wodehouse expert" and recommended readers to "grab" the book. Usborne annotated Wodehouse's final, unfinished novel, which was published as ''

Sunset at Blandings ''Sunset at Blandings'' is an unfinished novel by P. G. Wodehouse published in the United Kingdom by Chatto & Windus, London, on 17 November 1977 and in the United States by Simon & Schuster, New York, 19 September 1978.McIlvaine, E., Sherby, L ...

'' in 1977, noting that "if the going had remained good ''Sunset at Blandings'' might, under another title, have been ready for Christmas 1976". The text of an address given by Usborne at the opening of the P. G. Wodehouse Corner in the library of

Dulwich College Dulwich College is a 2–19 Independent school (United Kingdom), independent, Day school, day and boarding school for Single-sex education, boys in Dulwich, London, England. As a Public school (United Kingdom), public school, it began as the Col ...

in October 1977 was published as ''Dr Sir Pelham Wodehouse, Old Boy'' in 1978. In 1983 Usborne was one of the contributors to ''Three Talks and a Few Words at a Festive Occasion'', which contains the texts of talks on Wodehouse given by Usborne,

Malcolm Muggeridge Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge (24 March 1903 – 14 November 1990) was an English journalist and satirist. His father, H. T. Muggeridge, was a socialist politician and one of the early Labour Party Members of Parliament (for Romford, in Essex). In ...

and

William Douglas-Home William Douglas Home (3 June 1912 – 28 September 1992) was a British dramatist and politician. Early life Douglas-Home (he later dropped the hyphen from his surname) was the third son of Charles Douglas-Home, 13th Earl of Home, and Lady Lili ...

in April 1982. ''Wodehouse at Work to the End'' and ''Plum Sauce'' contain appendices about translations of Wodehouse into French. Examples of such vocabulary included ''pourvu de galette'' ("oofy"), ''déchiqueter'' ("to tear limb from limb"), and ''l'horrible drame de Steeple Bumpleigh'' ("the Steeple Bumpleigh horror"). Between 1979 and 1996 Usborne adapted some of Wodehouse's stories for broadcast on

...
Radio, beginning with a serialisation of ''

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit ''Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit'' is a comic novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 15 October 1954 by Herbert Jenkins, London and in the United States on 23 February 1955 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, under t ...

'' (1979), starring

Michael Hordern Sir Michael Murray Hordern Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE (3 October 19112 May 1995)Morley, Sheridan"Hordern, Michael Murray (1911–1995)" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, online e ...

as Jeeves and

Richard Briers Richard David Briers (14 January 1934 – 17 February 2013) was an English actor whose five-decade career encompassed film, radio, stage and television. Briers first came to prominence as George Starling in ''Marriage Lines'' (1961–66), but ...

as Bertie Wooster; in 1985 Usborne's adaptations of seven Blandings short stories were broadcast and in 1987 he adapted the novel ''Summer Lightning'', followed by ''Heavy Weather (Wodehouse novel), Heavy Weather'' (1988), ''Pigs Have Wings'' (1989) and ''Galahad at Blandings'' starring Richard Vernon as Lord Emsworth and Ian Carmichael as Galahad Threepwood. Usborne's last radio dramatisation was ''Uncle Dynamite'' (1996) starring Briers as Lord Ickenham. Usborne also prepared abridgements for single narrator of ''The Luck of the Bodkins'' (1981), ''Bring On the Girls!'' (1981) and ''Quick Service'' (1994).

Other

Usborne's only non-Wodehouse book after the publication of ''Wodehouse at Work'' was ''A Century of Summer Fields'' (1964), "a collection of tributes, reminiscences and other items, by old boys, masters, friends and critics" (including a poem by C. Day Lewis) edited by Usborne at the request of the governors of the school. ''The Times'' called it "a model for prep school memoirs". Usborne contributed introductions to new editions of works by Dornford Yates (1984) and Sapper (2001)."Richard Usborne"
British Library. Retrieved 30 January 2021

Notes, references and sources

Notes

References

Sources

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Usborne, Richard 1910 births 2006 deaths Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford British male journalists People educated at Charterhouse School People educated at Summer Fields School British people in colonial India