Cecil Roberts


Edric Cecil Mornington Roberts was an English journalist, poet, dramatist and novelist.
Roberts was born and grew up in Nottingham and worked as a journalist on the Liverpool Post during World War I, first as literary editor and then as a war correspondent. From 1920 for five years he edited the Nottingham Journal. In 1922 he stood for Parliament for the Liberal Party. In the 1930s he reviewed books for The Sphere.
During World War II Roberts worked for Lord Halifax, who was British Ambassador to the United States.
Despite his prolific output as a writer, and the popularity of his works during his lifetime, he is now almost wholly forgotten. His novels have been described having thin plots and cardboard characters, padded out with travel writing.

Personal life

Roberts was highly ambitious. He stated that on his coming of age he drew up a list of aims for his next fifteen years. It included: fame; a solid career as a novelist; being a member of Parliament; a country house and London pied-a-terre; and to be married with two sons and a daughter. Some of these goals were certainly achieved, although not the latter. In private he was proud of claiming to having been a lover of Laurence Olivier, Ivor Novello, Baron Gottfried von Cramm, Somerset Maugham, and Prince George, Duke of Kent. However, his multi-volume autobiography is studiously discreet, Roberts writing "I don't want any succès de scandale", and that he was "nauseated by the striptease school of writers".
In later life his creative industry remained impressive, but he also garnered a reputation as a name dropping bore; one writer characterising him as "an irascible old fart". According to one obituary, his most notable personal characteristic was "a magnetic egocentricity. It was said of him that, fascinated always by himself and his doings, he succeeded uncannily in conveying that fascination to others, even against their will... Robert's life often appeared to resemble a 20th century grand tour, strewn with places in the sun, grand seigneurs and charming hostesses, in which he was the fastidious literary pilgrim."
He donated his papers to Churchill College, Cambridge in 1975.

Works

=The "Pilgrim Cottage" books
=The "Inside Europe" novels