Peter Wildeblood

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Peter Wildeblood (19 May 1923 - 14 November 1999) was a British-Canadian journalist, novelist, playwright, and gay rights campaigner.

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[edit] Early life

Peter Wildeblood's father was an engineer in the Indian Public Works Department. His mother was the daughter of a sheep-rancher in the Argentine. The family moved to London in 1926 when Peter Wildeblood was three. He was brought up in a small Elizabethan cottage on the edge of Ashdown Forest, Sussex where he developed a strong interest in nature.

He was sent to a preparatory boarding school at the age of seven. At thirteen, he won a scholarship to Radley College, a public school near Oxford. He was subjected to bullying and his time at school was very unhappy. Peter left school at the age of eighteen and went to Trinity College, Oxford on scholarship. He spent ten days in his college, but became both disenchanted and ill.

Upon his departure from Trinity College, and despite health concerns, Peter volunteered for aircrew duties in the RAF. He was initially billeted for training in St John's Wood. Completion of basic training found Wildeblood posted to Southern Rhodesia (later to become Zimbabwe) for flight training. However, he exhibited poor flying skills and moved into meteorology. While visiting remote airfields in Rhodesia, a local witch doctor gave him the name 'Shinganga wa Mfula' or 'Wizard of the Rain'. During the war, he had a number of intimate experiences with women. These relationships were brief and unsatisfactory to Wildeblood. He was beginning to think of himself as a homosexual.

In November 1945, Peter returned to Trinity College. During this time, he often spent weekends in London and acquired many gay friends. He completed his degree at the age of 24 and was awarded second class honours.

[edit] Working Life

Wildeblood found it difficult to get employment. He eventually took a job as a waiter in a London hotel at £5 a week. Peter soon began freelance writing. He sold an article to Vogue, one to Printer's Pie, and two to Punch. He wrote a play about the groundnuts scheme in Northern Rhodesia entitled 'Primrose and the Peanuts', that was put on one evening at the Playhouse Theatre. It also ran for two weeks at the Bedford Theatre in Camden Town. Despite positive reviews, it was not moved to the West End. Additionally, Peter also adapted, with Kenneth Tynan, Cold Comfort Farm, for the Haymarket Theatre.

He started a job as a reporter for the Daily Mail, in its district office in Leeds, for £6 a week. After a time, an article of his was printed on the front page. He persuaded the editor to employ him in the London office, located on Fleet Street. For the next five years, Peter had a number of jobs at the newspaper. He served as beat reporter, gossip columnist, Festival of Britain correspondent, assistant drama critic, Buckingham Palace reporter, and Coronation columnist. He covered the Craig and Bentley shooting at Croydon, and the East Coast floods, and he interviewed Tallulah Bankhead. In August 1953, he became the acting diplomatic correspondent for the Daily Mail.

[edit] Controversy & Prison

He met Edward Montagu (also known as Lord Montagu of Beaulieu), who was three years younger, through a publicity agent where he had a job of getting paragraphs about various products and places into the press.

Peter Wildeblood met the 23-year-old Eddie McNally in Piccadilly Circus. He was a corporal in the RAF who worked in a hospital in Ely, Cambridgeshire. Although Eddie McNally was not Peter Wildeblood's type they developed a relationship over time. In the summer of 1952 they arranged to go on holiday together at Edward Montagu's beach hut in Dorset. John Reynolds, who was also an airman and a friend of Eddie McNally also joined them. This became the subject of The Montagu/Pitt-Rivers/Wildeblood Case which went to trial in 1954.

On Saturday, 9th. January 1954 Peter Wildeblood was arrested at his home in Canonbury, Islington, and his house was searched. He was charged with conspiring with Edward Montagu and Michael Pitt-Rivers to incite Eddie McNally and John Reynolds to commit indecent acts. The police tipped off the press and the story was headlined in all the Sunday newspapers the next day. Eddie McNally and John Reynolds became witnesses for the prosecution. Kenneth Tynan stood bail for Peter Wildeblood.

In the trial which took place in March 1954, Peter Wildeblood became one of the first men in Britain to declare publicly that he was a homosexual. On 24 March he was found guilty of conspiring to incite acts of gross indecency and he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was first sent to Winchester prison, but after five weeks he was transferred to Wormwood Scrubs in London. He had been admitted to hospital prior to going to prison and he was considered a suicide risk. He found prison terrible, with its squalor, and the lack of any attempt to prepare prisoners for outside life. While in prison he was visited by Frank Pakenham (Lord Pakenham, later known as Lord Longford). After completing 12 months of his sentence he was released in March 1955. On leaving prison Frank Pakenham met him in his car with his daughter Antonia. Patrick Thursfield, Peter Wildeblood's loyal college friend, also met him in his car.

After his release from prison he gave evidence to the Wolfenden Committee and to the House of Lords, and became a campaigner for homosexual law reform.

[edit] After Prison

He described his background and the history of the events upto 1955 in a book titled Against the Law. His three main points were that homosexuality between consenting adults in private ought not to be against the law, that prison only encourages homosexuality, and that in the squalor of Wormwood Scrubs there was no attempt at rehabilitation. While writing this he bought a small drinking club in Berwick Street, Soho, which attracted a mixture of types on the fringes of society. This provided material for his fictional autobiography about the club A Way Of Life.

His novel West End People was produced as the musical The Crooked Mile at Cambridge and then became hugely successful in the West End after it opened at the Cambridge Theatre, London on 19 September 1959. The score was by Peter Greenwell and starred Elisabeth Welch and also launched the career of Millicent Martin. (Peter Greenwell later became Noël Coward's accompanist.) Peter Wildeblood's second collaboration with Peter Greenwell was on The House of Cards, (1963) which was not so well received but was much appreciated by Andrew Lloyd Webber; his wife Sarah Brightman recorded one of its numbers, If I Ever Fall in Love. In October 1963 the Public Relations agent, Eric Braun, arranged a publicity stunt for The House of Cards. He chose a member of the cast, Janette Miller (later Heffernan) who was a pretty 18-year-old playing the small part which involved seducing the leading man. She was asked to accompany Russ Conway on a journey to London Airport in a Rolls Royce so that they could be seen and photographed together by newspaper reporters to scotch rumours that Russ Conway was gay. In return The House of Cards received a lot of publicity.

A third collaboration between Peter Wildeblood and Peter Greenwell was on the musical The People's Jack, based on the life of John Wilkes. This was televised in 1969.

Not expecting to be able to go back into journalism Peter Wildeblood continued to write novels, plays and television scripts. In 1969 he joined the staff of Granada television and worked as a television producer. In the early 1970s he accepted an offer from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and went to live in Toronto and became a Canadian citizen. For 16 years he wrote and produced a number of successful series.

[edit] Retirement

When he retired he went to live in a wooden Edwardian cottage in Victoria, British Columbia which had a view over the Juan de Fuca Straights to the Olympic Mountains above Seattle. Here he resumed his childhood interest in nature.

In June 1994 he had a stroke which left him speechless and quadraplegic. He learnt to communicate via a computer using movements of his chin. He died at the age of 76. Shortly after his death, Against the Law was republished with an introduction by journalist Matthew Parris in 2000.

[edit] Wildeblood's Work & Credits

  • Primrose and the Peanuts, 1946, as theatre playwright.
  • Against the Law, 1955, as writer, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 189 pages.
  • A Way Of Life, 1956, as writer, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 191 pages.
  • The Main Chance, 1957, as novelist.
  • West End People, 1958, as novelist.
  • The Crooked Mile, 1959, (music by Peter Greenwell), as musical story and lyrics writer.
  • The Younger Generation, 1961, as television producer for 11 plays.
  • The House of Cards, 1963, (music by Peter Greenwell), as musical story and lyrics writer.
  • The People's Jack, (music by Peter Greenwell), as musical story and lyrics writer.
  • The Duke Ellington Show, 1963, as television producer.
  • Victoria Regina, 1964, as television producer.
  • It Only Seems Like Yesterday, 1965, as television producer.
  • Six Shades of Black, 1965, as television writer and producer.
  • Blackmail, 1966, as television producer and occasional writer.
  • Rogues Gallery, 1968-9, as television producer and occasional writer.
  • Conception of Murder, 1970, as television executive producer and occasional writer.
  • Stables Theatre, 1970, as television writer of The People's Jack.
  • Confession, 1970, as television writer of Death of a Ladies' Man.
  • Victorian Scandals, 1976, as television producer.
  • Tales of the Klondike, 1983, as television story editor.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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