Kyril Bonfiglioli was an English art-dealer, magazine editor and comic novelist. His eccentric and witty Mortdecai novels have attained cult status since his death.
Biography
Bonfiglioli was born in Eastbourne on the south coast of England to an Italo-Slovene father, Emmanuel Bonfiglioli, and English mother, Dorothy née Pallett. His mother and brother died in an air raid when he was 14. Having served in the British Army from 1947 to 1954, and been widowed, he applied to Balliol College, Oxford, where he took his degree. After his divorce from his second wife he lived in Silverdale in Lancashire, then Jersey and Ireland. He edited Science Fantasy magazine for a period from 1964 to 1966, appointed by David Warburton of Roberts and Vinter Ltd.; and the successor Impulse for its first few issues in 1966 before handing the reins to Harry Harrison. He died in Jersey of cirrhosis in 1985, having had five children. He described himself as "an accomplished fencer, a fair shot with most weapons and a serial marrier of beautiful women... abstemious in all things except drink, food, tobacco and talking... and loved and respected by all who knew him slightly."
Charlie Mortdecai novels
Bonfiglioli wrote four books featuring Charlie Mortdecai, three of which were published in his lifetime, and one posthumously as completed by the satirist and literary mimic Craig Brown. Charlie Mortdecai is the fictional art dealeranti-hero of the series. His character resembles, among other things, an amoral Bertie Wooster with occasional psychopathic tendencies. His Mortdecai comic-thriller trilogy won critical plaudits back in the 1970s and early 1980s. The dry satire and black humour of the books were favourably reviewed by The New Yorker and others. The books are still in print and have been translated into several languages. Don't Point That Thing At Me was awarded the 1973 CWA New Blood Dagger for the bestcrime novel by a hitherto unpublished writer. Bonfiglioli's style and narrative technique have been favourably compared to those of P. G. Wodehouse. Mortdecai and his manservant Jock Strapp bear a fun-house mirror relation to Wodehouse's Wooster and Jeeves. The author makes a nod to this comparison by having Mortdecai reference Wodehouse in the novels. Actors Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are among those who are fans of his work. Hugh Laurie praised "the excellent Kyril Bonfigliolo" in the afternotes of his book The Gun Seller. The three original books, published out of chronological order:
