Vincent Brome was an English editor and journalist, who gradually established himself as a man of letters. He was a respected and prolific author of novels, plays, radio and television scripts, and articles, but he was best known for his biographies.
Background
Vincent Brome was born on the 14th of July, 1910 in London, United Kingdom, the youngest of five children. He had a difficult relationship with his parents. His puritanical father, a former naval officer, was head of the legal department in a canning company.
Education
Vincent Brome was educated at Streatham Grammar School and Elleston School. During school years his greatest achievement was an adventure story for the school magazine: two instalments of The Sign Of The Golden Cross were published but his teacher did not believe that Vincent could have written the story himself and accused him of plagiarism.
Career
Brome’s first job, at 15, was in a tea-broker's office in the City. He soon abandoned that uncongenial world, and home, for Bloomsbury, where he remained for the rest of his life. From a room in Bernard Street, off Russell Square, he began his writing life. His diary paragraphs began to appear in newspapers, while his short stories were finally accepted by Harry Leggett, editor of Twenty Story magazine. In 1936 Vincent's first book was published, an anthology called My Favourite Quotation.
However, fiction did not bring in a great deal of income, so he wrote articles for various newspapers and magazines, was a feature writer for the London Daily Chronicle in the early 1930s, and took editorial jobs, including as an assistant editor for Medical World in the middle 1940s and as editor of Menu. During the early 1940s he also wrote feature articles for England's Ministry of Information. He was a drama critic for the Listener in 1961-62.
During the second world war, he worked for the ministry of information after being rejected as unfit for active duty. After the war, while moving in leftwing circles, Vincent worked for Michael Young (later Lord Young of Dartington) in the publications and research department of the Labour party at Transport House.
By the late 1940s and early 1950s Brome was enjoying success as a biographer, writing such books as Clement Attlee in 1949, H. G. Wells in 1951, and Aneurin Bevan: A Biography in 1953. He wrote about Freud in 1967 and Jung in 1978, Frank Harris in 1959 and Havelock Ellis in 1981.
Setting up an office in the North Library of the British Museum, he would spend much of his life there, producing over three dozen novels and many other books besides. His first novel “The Last Surrender” was written in 1954, followed by “Sometimes At Night” in 1959. Among his novels are “Acquaintance With Grief” in 1961, “Revolution” in 1969, “The Surgeon” in 1967, “The Embassy” in 1972, the last two were international bestsellers.
Vincent also wrote plays, such as “Men at Large” in 1967, which was produced in Edinburgh, and released a variety of nonfiction, including “The International Brigades: Spain, 1936-39” in 1965 and “Reverse Your Verdict: A Collection of Private Prosecutions” in 1971.
Membership
Brome was a member of British Library Advisory Committee from 1975 until 1982. He was a member of the Savile Club, where on Tuesday evenings he would join with friends in ferocious discussions and arguments on literary and scientific matters.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Biographer Vincent Brome has been working in the museum almost daily for more than half a century, and he still looks as though he's just about to be 60: the museum air must have preserved him". - Margaret Drabble (writing a farewell in the Guardian to the old reading room).
Connections
Vincent never married, but practised what he called serial monogamy, forming deep relationships with women, some of whom lived with him.