Ivor Brown

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Ivor John Carnegie Brown (1891–1974) was a British journalist. He was born in Penang, Malaya, the younger of two sons of Scottish parents. He wrote and illustrated his first book at age five and wrote nearly eighty books during his life.

Brown attended Balliol College, Oxford and graduated with double degrees in Classics and Literae Humaniores. He spent two days as a civil servant in the Home Office in 1913 before realising he was unsuited for the job. He conscientiously objected to World War I. He married theatre director Irene Hentschel in 1916. Initially a left-winger, he became politically and culturally more conservative as he grew older.

Brown wrote for The Manchester Guardian from 1919 to 1935, for the London Saturday Review from 1923 to 1930, for The Observer (of which he was the editor from 1942 to 1948) from 1929 to 1954, and for Punch from 1940 to 1942. His writing included editorials and sports criticism but drama criticism was his speciality. His published books include Dickens in His Time, Shakespeare, Shakespeare in His Time, How Shakespeare Spent the Day, The Way of My World, Chosen Words, Shaw in His Time, and The Women in Shakespeare's Life.

Preceded by James Louis Garvin

Editor of The Observer 1942 - 1948

Succeeded by David Astor