The prolific novelist, playwright, journalist, composer - and many other things including political activist - Beverley Nichols was born on September 9th 1898, so he shares a ninth day of the ninth month birthday with this blog.
His four childen's books that feature the witch Miss Smith are the main reason for his appearance here, but there is a little more to say about him to mark the occasion.
I am still wondering where Beverley Nichols got his ideas about witches and evil from. I also wonder why The Wickedest Witch in the World (1971) was written so long after the Woodland Trilogy – there is a gap of 21 years.
There is a story called Super Witch: A Story for Children of all Ages in his unpublished papers; it is dated circa 1971.
We will probably never know why he returned to writing about witches at this time.
Beverley Nichols wrote a series of books about his houses and gardens.
I learned recently that his book Down the Garden Path was the inspiration for Sellar & Yeatman's Garden Rubbish.
These books, which are all very good reads and are now what he is best remembered for, were illustrated by the great decorative artist Rex Whistler.
Beverley Nichols's writing style has been variously described as whimsical, arch, quaint and twee. This may apply to his house, garden and children's books but not to some of his political writings. His book Verdict on India (1944), which was written as propaganda to discredit the Indian National Congress, is said to have influenced Winston Churchill's views.
Nichols was a fascist sympathiser in the 1930s; he must have later changed his views:
“Congress is the only 100 per cent, full blooded, uncompromising example of undiluted Fascism in the modern world … Just as every Nazi is a superman, so every Brahmin is ‘Bhudeva’, which means ‘God on earth’. And Congress is, of course, a predominantly Brahmin organisation ... The resemblances between Gandhi and Hitler are, of course, legion.”
Beverley Nichols is said to have had a sad life in some ways.
This chilling quotation from a book of articles speaks for itself:
“You can't bruise a plant and feel aggrieved because it grows up stunted or deformed or "odd." The slightest twist or wound, in it infancy, grows and swells, till in the end the plant is an ugly wretched thing that you have to throw onto the rubbish heap.
From Yours Sincerely (1949)
Beverley Nichols was not rejected by society: he was one of the Bright Young Things - aristocrats, socialites and celebrities of the day who partied hard in the 1920s – but maybe he hid what he felt was his real self and felt much pain deep down inside.
Beverley Nichols moved in elite circles from an early age. He wrote six autobiographies; they contain accounts of other key cultural figures he met. The first, Twenty-Five (1926), mentions an encounter that he had with Winston Churchill.
Beverley Nichols is wearing pale trousers and sitting next to Winston Churchill here:
