David Selbourne

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David Maurice Selbourne (born June 4, 1937 in London ) is a British writer , journalist, publicist , and former playwright . He publishes on political, historical (especially the history of ideas ) and philosophical topics. He has lived in Italy since the late 1980s.

Life

David Selbourne is the son of the doctor Hugh Selbourne and Sulamith, b. Amiel. He and two younger sisters grew up in Dukinfield , a town in Tameside , where his father mainly treated poor working class patients. Hugh Selbourne, the descendant of a tailor's assistant himself from a poor background, was a dominant, intransigent man and fell out with his son. David Selbourne later portrayed him several times, both in his play The Two-Backed Beast (1969) and in his book A Doctor's Life: The Diaries of Hugh Selbourne (1989).

David Selbourne attended Manchester Grammar School and then studied law at Balliol College of University of Oxford , where in 1958 a Bachelor gained Accounts (Honors). He was admitted to the bar the following year and was a member of the Inner Temple Bar Association in London . Ultimately, however, he did not practice this profession, but worked as a freelance journalist and author on political and historical topics. He has written for The Times , Sunday Times , Sunday Telegraph, and Daily Telegraph , among others . From 1963 to 1965 he taught as a lecturer at Aston University . He then worked for twenty years as a political tutor at Ruskin College . At that time he developed socialist views, but did not join any party.

In 1975 Selbourne toured China during the Cultural Revolution . In the same year he came to India for the first time under an agreement between the British and Indian governments . On his return he reported critically in a series of articles in The Guardian and a book published in 1977 about the state of emergency declared there . Thereafter, Selbourne continued to visit India regularly for academic interest.

In 1986, Selbourne quit the union-affiliated Ruskin College in dispute after publishing a critical report in the Times on corruption in Liverpool's politics , which was on strike by the unions at the time.

David Selbourne has been married to the teacher Hazel Savage since 1963. The marriage resulted in a daughter and his son Raphael Selbourne, who is also a writer.

He later left Oxford with his wife and moved to near Urbino , Italy.

plant

David Selbourne first wrote a number of stage plays that were played in various theaters. He made his debut with The Play of William Cooper and Edmund Dew-Nevett , which is about a naive man who would like to be an artist and seek happiness but instead run into corruption. It premiered on January 25, 1968 at the Northcott Theater in Exeter , directed by Robin Phillips. The British magazine The Stage described the performance as "real triumph". Like some of Selbourn's later pieces, it was subsequently published by Methuen in London.

The play Dorabella (premiered in 1969 at the Traverse Theater ) portrays an old maid who falls in love with her hairdresser's boyfriend. In the one-act play Samson , which was performed at the Soho Theater in London in 1971, twelve short scenes depict a boy trying to distance himself from his father. John Russell Brown, professor emeritus for theater and drama, described Selbourne's stage plays as "intellectual plays", which are based on precise knowledge of connections, but on the other hand are implemented with "sensual awareness" and thus bring a high degree of confrontation to the stage.

In addition to plays, Selbourne also wrote several non-fiction books. Following his travels to China and India, he published reflections on the situation there in An Eye to China (1975) and An Eye to India: The Unmasking of a Tyranny (1977). According to India Today , An Eye to India was the largest ever criticism of the state of emergency in India from 1975–1977 . An Eye to China , on the other hand, was classified in the book review published there as the work of an overly uncritical Mao supporter.

Selbourne, who had attended rehearsals for the 1970 performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Peter Brook at the Royal Shakespeare Theater , describes this experience in the 1982 book The Making of a Midsummer Night's Dream . In it, he tries less to reconstruct the rehearsal process and to analyze the artistic practices associated with it, but rather concentrates on his impressions as an outsider.

Selbourne's philosophical treatise, The Principle of Duty (1993), received wide coverage from the British public and media . In it he addresses the obligations of citizens towards the society in which they live (as well as vice versa) and recommends reflecting on them instead of just claiming their rights. The book was received mostly benevolently, the Times dedicated three editorials to it and published excerpts from them. But there were also critical reactions, as The Independent described it as “dull stuff” (Eng. “Boring stuff”). It was stated several times that the timing of the publication was well chosen, since it meets the need for political and social reforms.

In 1997 he published an alleged travel diary of a Jewish merchant on the Silk Road from the 13th century, Jacob of Ancona: The City of Light. The hidden Journal of the Man who entered China four years before Marco Polo . His absurd claim about the origin of the source is consistently mistaken for a marketing ploy and a fool of the public. However, one of the newspapers for which he occasionally writes on the country's current domestic policy, the British Daily Telegraph , has a top commentator named "Matthew d'Ancona".

With the book The Losing Battle with Islam (2005) Selbourne caused a sensation. In it he comments on the development of Islam from 1947 to the present, with an emphasis on the 1990s. The book is critical of Islam and deals, among other things, with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie . According to Selbourne, unlike his earlier works, he had problems finding a publisher, as many dismissed it as too critical.

Stage plays

  • The Play of William Cooper and Edmund Dew-Nevett , 1968
  • The Two-Backed Beast , 1969
  • Dorabella , 1970
  • Samson , 1971
  • Alison Mary Fagan , 1971
  • The Damned , 1971
  • Class Play , 1973
  • Three Class Plays , 1973
  • What's Acting? and Think of a Story, Quickly! , 1977
  • A Woman's Trial , 1982

Other publications (selection)

  • An Eye to China. Black Liberator Press, London 1975, ISBN 0-905050-00-2 .
  • An Eye to India: The Unmasking of a Tyranny. Penguin, New York 1977, ISBN 0-14-022026-7 .
  • Through the Indian Looking-Glass: Selected Articles on India 1976-1980. Zed Press, London 1982, ISBN 0-86232-091-7 .
  • The Making of a Midsummer Night's Dream: an Eye-Witness Account of Peter Brook's Production from First Rehearsal to First Night. Methuen, London 1982, ISBN 0-413-53230-5 .
  • Against Socialist Illusion: A Radical Argument. Macmillan, London 1984, ISBN 0-333-37094-5 .
  • Left Behind: Journeys into British Politics. Jonathan Cape, London 1987, ISBN 0-224-02370-5 .
  • A Doctor's Life: The Diaries of Hugh Selbourne MD, 1960-63. Jonathan Cape, London 1989, ISBN 0-224-02369-1 .
  • Death of the Dark Hero: Eastern Europe, 1987-90. Jonathan Cape, London 1990, ISBN 0-224-02792-1 .
  • The Spirit of the Age. Sinclair-Stevenson, London 1993, ISBN 1-85619-204-0 .
  • The Principle of Duty: an Essay on the Foundations of the Civic Order. Sinclair-Stevenson, London 1993, ISBN 1-85619-474-4 .
  • The City of Light. Little, Brown, London 1997, ISBN 0-316-63968-0 .
    • City of light: a medieval trader reports on his trip to China (1270–1273). Translated from the English by Peter A. Schmidt. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1998, ISBN 3-7857-0942-0 .
  • The Losing Battle with Islam. Prometheus Books, Amherst 2005, ISBN 1-59102-362-9 .
  • Free Society in Crisis: A History of Our Times. Prometheus Books, Amherst 2019, ISBN 978-1-63388-530-1 .

Scholarships and Awards

  • 1975: Aneurin Bevan Memorial Fellowship
  • 1979: Southern Arts Association Award
  • 1979: Indian Council of Social Science Research Award
  • 1980: Social Science Research Council Award
  • 1986: Periodical Publishers Association Award

literature

  • Alexander Alon: Pious Jews, easy girls. Controversial text from the 13th century. How authentic are travel reports from the Silk Road ? under construction 7/8, July – Aug. 2010, p. 13 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Selbourne, David Maurice. In Who's who & Who was who. Black. doi : 10.1093 / ww / 9780199540884.013.U44995
  2. ↑ a b c d e Laurence Marks: Profile: Citizen with attitude: Laurence Marks on the abrasive writer who wants us to worry about our duties not our rights. In: The Independent . June 26, 1994. Retrieved November 10, 2018.
  3. ^ A b John Russell Brown: Selbourne, David. In: Katrin Ann Berney (Ed.): Contemporary British dramatists. St. James, London 1994, ISBN 1-55862-213-6 .
  4. ↑ a b Sumit Mitra: One of the things I refuse to be is an honorary Indian: David Selbourne. In: India Today . November 26, 2013. Retrieved November 10, 2018.
  5. ↑ Interview with Raphael Selbourne. viewfromheremagazine.com. Retrieved November 10, 2018.
  6. ↑ Michael Quinn: Obituary: Robin Phillips. In: The Stage. September 23, 2015. Accessed November 10, 2018.
  7. ↑ Mira Sinha: Book review: An Eye to China by David Selbourne. In: India Today March 31, 1979. Retrieved November 10, 2018.
  8. ↑ Annemarie Matzke : Work at the theater: A discourse history of rehearsal. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 1-306-99889-1 , p. 112.
  9. ^ Andrew Alderson: Terrified publishers won't print truth about Islam, says author. In: The Telegraph . July 25, 2004. Retrieved November 10, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Selbourne, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Selbourne, David Maurice (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer, publicist, journalist and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH London