Peter Vansittart

Peter Vansittart OBE (27 August 1920 – 4 October 2008) was a prolific English novelist. He also wrote historical studies, memoirs, and stories for children and edited several anthologies and the WWI letters of John Masefield. Vansittart was elected in 1985 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2008 received an OBE.

Quotes

• By about 1900 BC, successive Bronze Age invaders, notably from Spain, were ousting Stone Age rulers and bringing Britain into the Mediterranean trade orbit. Sophisticated engineers erected Avebury, the three Stonehenges, the 20,000 barrows and smaller stone circles signalling to a sky thick with gods.
  • Worlds and Underworlds: Anglo-European History Through the Centuries. Owen. 1974. p. 9. ISBN 9780720604528.  (316 pages; 1st part of quote; last part of quote)

• War was justified, especially if the foe was weakly armed, and, preferably, coloured. Beautiful women asserted themselves through romantic bitchiness (which left men very stricken or very bored), through espionage, leading to sudden death in exotic circumstances, or through hunting: 'Gad, George, she keeps her seat like a man, damme, she does.'
  • Paths from a White Horse: A Writer's Memoir (illustrated ed.). London: Quartet Books. 1985. p. 70. ISBN 9780704324572.  (282 pages; 1st part of quote; last part of quote)

Quotes about Peter Vansittart

• Peter Vansittart, who has died aged 88, was a master of the historical novel and a writer of outstanding talent. He wrote more than 40 books, which also encompassed anthologies, works on literature and social history. As he was the first to concede, the reading public could be slow to enjoy his novels. He put this down to his “obsession with language and speculation at the expense of narrative, however much I relish narrative in others”. Nonetheless, he was admired by critics and fellow authors. To Francis King, he was “a master of description”, and to Nina Bawden, “a carefully accurate historian [and] a splendidly imaginative writer of fiction”.
  • Peter Owen, (9 Oct 2008) "Obituary. Peter Vansittart, Historical novelist admired as a 'master of description'". The Guardian.

External links

• (10 October 2008) "Obituary. Peter Vansittart, Gifted historical novelist whose rejection of the romantic tradition pleased the critics more than his public". The Telegraph.
• Grimes, William, (October 15, 2008) "Obituary. Peter Vansittart, Prolific Writer of Historical Fiction, Is Dead at 88". THe New York Times.