FURTHER PRAISE FOR Fault Lines
The son of a very wealthy and highly assimilated Jewish woman from Central Europe and a famous English literary intellectual whose homosexuality his wife never allowed herself to admit, David Pryce-Jones, now grown into a distinguished literary intellectual in his own right, has an extraordinary story to tell, and he tells it in endlessly fascinating detail.
NORMAN PODHORETZ
former longtime editor of Commentary and author of several memoirs, including Making It and Ex-Friends
One of the most passionate and beguiling books on inheritance since Gosse’s Father and Son. This is a story of a family of almost unimaginable wealth and privilege, of an extraordinary life lived across literary and political worlds, and of a century backlit by war and trauma. It has a candour, a humour and a fierce intelligence that make it a powerful and remarkable book.
EDMUND DE WAAL
author of The Hare With Amber Eyes
Fault Lines
David Pryce-Jones
Copyright © 2015 by David Pryce-Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Criterion Books, 900 Broadway, Suite 602, New York, NY 10003.
First American edition published in 2015 by Criterion Books, an activity of the Foundation for Cultural Review, Inc., a nonprofit, tax exempt corporation.
Criterion Books website: www.newcriterion.com/books
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Pryce-Jones, David, 1936–
Fault lines / David Pryce-Jones.
pages; cm
Summary: “Born in Vienna in 1936, David Pryce-Jones is the son of the well-known writer and editor of the Times Literary Supplement Alan Pryce-Jones and Therese “Poppy” Fould-Springer. He grew up in a cosmopolitan mix of industrialists, bankers, soldiers, and playboys on both sides of a family, embodying the fault lines of the title: “not quite Jewish and not quite Christian, not quite Austrian and not quite French or English, not quite heterosexual and not quite homosexual, socially conventional but not quite secure.” Graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford, David Pryce-Jones served as Literary Editor of the Financial Times and the Spectator, a war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, and Senior Editor of National Review. Fault Lines – a memoir that spans Europe, America, and the Middle East and encompasses figures ranging from Somerset Maugham to Svetlana Stalin to Elie de Rothschild – has the storytelling power of Pryce-Jones’s numerous novels and non-fiction books, and is perceptive and poignant testimony to the fortunes and misfortunes of the present age” – Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-9859052-9-3 (softcover : acid-free paper)
1. Pryce-Jones, David, 1936– 2. Authors, English—20th century—Biography. I. Title.
PR6066.R88Z46 2015
823′.914—dc23
[B]
2015034142
CONTENTS
EIGHT · Mr Pryce and Mrs Jones
SIXTEEN · One’s Rothschild Cousins
TWENTY · Middle East and Middle West
