Philip Toynbee

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Theodore Philip Toynbee (June 25, 1916 - June 15, 1981) was a British writer and journalist. He wrote experimental novels, and distinctive verse novels, one of which was an epic called 'Pantaloon', a work in several volumes, only some of which are published. He also wrote memoirs of the 1930s, and reviews and literary criticism, the latter mainly via his employment with the Observer newspaper.

He was born in Oxford; his father was the historian Arnold J. Toynbee, and his maternal grandfather Gilbert Murray. He was educated at Rugby School, where he became rebellious, reacting against the public school system. Inspired by the example of Esmond Romilly, later a friend, he ran away, returned shortly and was expelled. He later wrote a memoir of Romilly, and Jasper Ridley (1913-1944), entitled 'Friends Apart'. Through Romilly, Toynbee met Jessica Mitford, who became a close friend after Esmond died in WWII. He was also influenced by bookshop owner and would-be encourager of the young radical element, David Archer, who he met through David Gascoyne.

At Christ Church College, Oxford in the late 1930s he became the first communist president of the Oxford Union, at the height of its success and social acceptability. He visited Spain at the end of 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War, in a student delegation. On a less dignified note (although he may not necessarily have considered it so) he was said to have been beaten up by Mosley's Blackshirts at a fascist meeting.

In 1938/9 he edited the Birmingham Town Crier.

He married twice: in 1939, Anne Powell and in 1950, Sally Smith. In the early 1940s Philip and Anne lived a bohemian life in London's Fitzrovia, and Philip was drinking heavily. At that time they knew Lucian Freud, Donald Maclean and Robert Kee, Henrietta Moraes and others from David Tennant's Gargoyle Club in Soho. In 1945 they moved to the Isle of Wight, for a fresh start. They had two children, the second being the journalist Polly Toynbee. Anne later married Richard Wollheim shortly after divorcing Philip in 1950. As a foreign correspondent with The Observer, Philip then travelled to Tel Aviv, where he met Sally, who was a secretary for the American Embassy there.

During the 1950s he continued to work for The Observer, and was one of the more prominent intellectual figures in British life (perhaps to be compared with Edmund Wilson in the United States, for example).

In the early to mid-1970s, Philip underwwent a personal crisis, slowly entering into a period of deep depression. He had become increasingly concerned about ecological matters and this, along with his own idealogical temperament,took him into the controversial decision to initiate a self-sufficient farming community. His family and friends thought this decision to be close to insane, considering as they did his privacy and routine-loving nature. The community quickly became a commune when Philip, Sally and their youngest daughter moved out, into a large cottage nearby. Nonetheless Philip and Sally continued to have a great deal of contact with the communards, and along with both spouses' active alcoholism, it frequently caused considerable tension in their marriage.

Philip's depression was sometimes immobilising and prevented him from enjoying his day-to-day life and work, and the regularity of his book reviews was sometimes interrupted as he struggled with the depression and the treatment he insisted on receiving for it - against the advice of his GP and consultant- namely, ECT (electro-convulsive therapy). He finally got the go-ahead for the treatment, which he received in Bristol in the summer of 1977.

The two books which followed the ECT consisted of the journal writings which Philip decided to edit and send off for publication. These largely revolved around his search for some kind of spiritual meaning. It could be said that this arose out of his wish to find some purpose for the deep misery of his worst depression. He was strongly urged to stop drinking alcohol and occasionally managed short periods of abstinence. Yet he never really wanted long-term abstinence enough to make any real success of this. He was as a whole capable of great self-discipline, but needed to want his objectives with intense singular-mindedness in order to achieve them.

The two journal books were entitled 'Part of a Journey' (covering 1977 to 1979) and 'End of a Journey' (1979 to 1981). They were very well thought of by a number of readers, some of whom were already interested in matters spiritual, self-searching and vaguely Christian. For them and others, his best writing style shone throughout those pages, with its ready humility and gentle self-mockery.

He died of cancer at his home in St Briavels,Gloucestershire, with most of his family (he had five children altogether) at his bedside.

[edit] Works

A school in private (1941)
The Barricades (1943)
Prothalamium: A Cycle Of The Holy Graal (1947)
Tea with Mrs. Goodman (1947)
The Garden to the Sea (1953)
The Fearful Choice: a debate on nuclear policy (1958)
Pantaloon or the Valediction (1961) verse novel
Underdogs: Anguish and Anxiety, Eighteen Men and Women Write Their Own Case-Histories (1962) editor
Comparing Notes: A Dialogue Across a Generation (1963) with Arnold J. Toynbee
Thanatos, a Modern Symposium at which Nine Characters Argue at Quarles (1963) with Maurice Richardson
Two Brothers: the fifth day of the Valediction of Pantaloon (1964) Pantaloon verse novel
A Learned City: the sixth day of the valediction of pantaloon (1966) Pantaloon verse novel
Views from a Lake: the seventh day of the Valediction of Pantaloon (1968) Pantaloon verse novel
Age of the Spirit: Religion as Experience (1973)
Distant Drum: Reflections on the Spanish Civil War (1976) editor
A Memoir of Esmond Romilly and Jasper Ridley in the thirties (1980)
Part of a Journey: An Autobiographical Journal, 1977-79 (1981)
End of a Journey An Autobiographical Journal 1979-81 (1982)
Towards the Holy Spirit: A Tract for the Times (1982)