Bevis Hillier

Bevis Hillier (born March 28, 1940 in Redhill ) is a British art historian , non-fiction author and journalist . He was best known for his work on the Art Deco style and his biography of the poet John Betjeman .

Life

Career

Bevis Hillier grew up in Redhill. His parents were Jack Ronald Hillier, an expert in Japanese art , and his wife, Mary Louise (née Palmer), an expert in wax dolls and automata . He attended the Grammar School in Reigate and Magdalen College in Oxford , where he won the Gladstone Memorial Prize for History in 1961 . From 1963 he worked as a journalist for the daily newspaper The Times , until 1968 in the editorial office, from 1970 to 1984 as an antiques correspondent and from 1981 to 1984 as deputy literary editor. From 1984 to 1988 he was co-editor of the Los Angeles Times . He then worked as a reviewer for The Spectator magazine . Hillier has been a member of the Royal Society of Literature since 1997 .

In 1968 Hillier's book Art Deco of the 20s and 30s was published , the first standard work on the hitherto little-described style of Art Deco , which until then was known as Art Moderne (the term Art Moderne has since been used in the English language for the later streamlined style of Art Deco used in the 1930s, streamlined modernity ). Hillier's use of the term Art Deco solidified the expression as a defining concept of style. In 1971, Hillier curated a major art deco exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art that further raised public awareness of the style. In 1969 he published Cartoons and Caricatures , a study of caricatures from the 13th to the late 20th centuries. He also wrote books on ceramics and posters as well as The Style of the Century from 1983, an overview of the various art styles of the 20th century from Art Nouveau to Psychedelia and Pop Art to Punk . Hillier's main work is the authorized biography of the British poet John Betjeman , which took him 25 years to complete. The three volumes were published in 1988, 2002 and 2004. For Betjeman's centenary, a one-volume short version was published in 2006.

The Betjeman letter fraud

AN Wilson, known for his critical biographies, novels and popular history works, published a biography of Betjeman in August 2006, competing with Hillier's. An article in The Sunday Times revealed that Wilson's biography contained a hoax letter allegedly written by Betjeman. The letter had been sent to Wilson by Eve de Harben , whose name had an anagram of the expression Ever been? (Have you ever been tricked?) In addition, the first letters of each sentence, beginning with the second sentence, resulted in the acrostic A. N. Wilson is a shit. (AN Wilson is a bastard). Hillier was considered a suspect for this forgery. He initially denied the allegations, but soon admitted that he had written the letter, citing his annoyance over Wilson's negative review of the second volume of his Betjeman biography and the pre-publication of Wilson's own biography as a motive.

Publications (selection)

• Art Deco of the 20s and 30s. Studio Vista / Dutton Picturebacks, 1968, ISBN 978-0-289-27788-1 .
• The Decorative Arts of the Forties and Fifties: Austerity / Binge. Clarkson N. Potter Publishers, 1975, ISBN 0-517-51850-3 .
• Bevis Hillier's Pocket Guide to Antiques. Mitchell Beazley, 1981, ISBN 0-85533-317-0 .
• John Betjeman: A Life in Pictures. John Murray, 1984, ISBN 0-7195-4181-6 .
• Young Betjeman. John Murray, 1988, ISBN 0-7195-4531-5 .
• John Betjeman: New Fame, New Love, 1934-1958. John Murray, 2002, ISBN 0-7195-5002-5 .
• Betjeman: The Bonus of Laughter. John Murray, 2004, ISBN 0-7195-6495-6 .
• The Virgin's Baby: The Battle of the Ampthill Succession. Hopcyn Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-9572977-6-0 .
• A laughing cavalier. ( Memento of December 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) In: The Spectator of October 4, 2008, pp. 32-34.

Web links

• Hillier, Bevis 1940– . In: encyclopedia.com
• Books by Bevis Hillier. In: biblio.com

Individual evidence

1. ^ Writers' Directory, 1980–1982. Macmillan Press, 1979, p. 571.
2. ^ The International Who's Who. 63rd Edition, Europa Publications, 2000, p. 687.
3. ↑ Bevis Hillier b. 1940. In: Royal Society of Literature
4. ^ David Warren Dooley: The Geographic Diffusion of Art Deco Architecture in Delaware. University of Delaware , 1999, p. 4. Quotation: The term "Art Deco," however, was not known during that time period, but coined only in 1968 by Bevis Hillier in his definitive book titled Art Deco: the Style of the 1920s and 1930s (Gebhard, 1996: 2) .
5. ↑ Richard Brooks: Betjeman love letter is horrid hoax. ( Memento of March 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: The Sunday Times of August 27, 2006.
6. ↑ Richard Brooks: ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Betjeman biographer confesses to literary hoax. ) In: The Sunday Times, September 3, 2006.
7. ↑ Oliver Marre: Pendennis. In: The Observer of January 20, 2008.