It is interesting how John Boynton Priestley (13 Sept 1894 – 14 Aug 1984) an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster, whose works I have admired/enjoyed, has become “a voice of our times”.
Writes Benedict Nightingale in The Times: “Whether Priestley was writing tragedies, comedies or a mix of both, he was scathing about hypocrisy, pomposity, callousness, selfishness, cynicism, idleness and avarice.
“When the title character of An Inspector Calls accuses a rich, smug family of complicity in the suicide of a poor girl, his targets are as universal as those of a medieval morality play, even if they’re transposed to the northern town he variously called Brumley and Burnanley.
“But when he’s attacking what he saw as the neurotically obsessive greed of money-men interested only in making yet more money, as he did again and again, he seems topical too: which may be why he’s so firmly back on the theatrical map.
“It would be nice to see a revival of Priestley’s cheerfully scurrilous Laburnum Grove, in which a boring suburbanite is revealed as a master forger, who mildly explains that he’s helping the country through economic depression by remedying the ‘unhappy fact there isn’t enough money in circulation’. Change his name from Redfern to Brown, and he’d be a new Labour hero.
“Priestley wasn’t a subtle writer. His characters are often attitudes, sometimes even caricatures. He ruefully mocked his own dialogue as ‘that familiar flat idiom’.
“Yet his work is impressively various. There’s the thriller Dangerous Corner and the ‘tragic farce’ Bees on a Boat Deck, in which representatives of big business, communism, fascism, pure science and hedonism assemble on a doomed ship symbolising England.” More here…
“During World War II, he was a regular broadcaster on the BBC. The Postscript broadcast on Sunday night, through 1940 and again in 1941, drew peak audiences of 16 million; only Churchill was more popular with listeners. But his talks were cancelled.
“It was thought that this was the effect of complaints from Churchill that they were too left-wing; however, Priestley’s son has recently revealed in a talk on the latest book being published about his father’s life that it was in fact Churchill’s Cabinet that brought about the cancellation by supplying negative reports on the broadcasts to Churchill.
“He was a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958.” More here…
Priestley refused both a knighthood and a peerage, but he accepted the Order of Merit in 1977. (See here…)
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.