37 Facts About Arthur Bryant

Arthur Bryant's books included studies of Samuel Pepys, accounts of English eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history, and a life of George V Whilst his scholarly reputation has declined somewhat since his death, he continues to be read and to be the subject of detailed historical studies.

Arthur Bryant moved in high government circles, where his works were influential, being the favourite historian of three prime ministers: Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, and Harold Wilson.

Arthur Bryant hated modern commercial and financial capitalism, he emphasised duty over rights, and he equated democracy with the consent of "fools" and "knaves".

Arthur Bryant was the son of Sir Francis Morgan Bryant, who was the chief clerk to the Prince of Wales, and wife, Margaret Edmunds.

Arthur Bryant grew up in a house bordering the Buckingham Palace gardens near the Royal Mews.

Arthur Bryant attended school at Pelham House, Sandgate, and Harrow School where his younger brother the Rev Philip Henry Bryant later became an assistant Master.

Arthur Bryant was for a time the only British subject formally attached to the American Expeditionary Forces' Air Service, to one of its detachments that had arrived in England for training for frontline service.

Arthur Bryant started work at a school operated by the London County Council, where he developed a strong sense of social justice and became convinced that education would be an effective way of uniting the people.

Arthur Bryant became a barrister at the Inner Temple in 1923, but left later that year to take the headmaster position of the Cambridge School of Arts, Crafts, and Technology, becoming the youngest headmaster in England.

Arthur Bryant organised the Cambridge Pageant in 1924 and the Oxford Pageant in 1926.

Arthur Bryant served as an advisor at the Bonar Law College at Ashridge in Hertfordshire.

Arthur Bryant was a Tory, and edited the Ashridge Journal for the Tory think-tank.

Arthur Bryant wrote works on Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain.

Arthur Bryant helped found the National Book Association, and its subsidiary, the Right Book Club, as an alternative to the Left Book Club.

In January 1939, the National Book Club published a new English edition of Mein Kampf, for which Arthur Bryant wrote a foreword praising Hitler and comparing him to Benjamin Disraeli.

Arthur Bryant's next book was a three-volume biography of Samuel Pepys, completed in 1938 and regarded as "one of the great historical biographies in the language" by John Kenyon.

Arthur Bryant was a frequent contributor to London papers and magazines, and scripted radio broadcasts relating to his historical interests, as well as radio plays for the BBC.

Arthur Bryant published a collection of scripts in his book The National Character.

Arthur Bryant was editor of the Ashridge Journal and president of the Ashridge Dining Club.

Unfinished Victory was a book which Bryant had published in January 1940; it dealt with recent German history, and explained sympathetically how Germany had rebuilt herself after World War I Bryant asserted that certain German Jews had benefited from the economic crises and controlled the national wealth, and although he criticised the destruction of Jewish shops and synagogues, he declared that the Third Reich might produce "a newer and happier Germany in the future".

Arthur Bryant realised his mistake in proposing a compromise and tried to buy up unsold copies.

Arthur Bryant married again, in 1941, to Anne Elaine Brooke, daughter of Bertram Willes Dayrell Brooke, one of the White Rajahs of Sarawak.

Arthur Bryant's single major work in the decade was a two-volume collection of Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke's diaries with additional commentary, The Turn of the Tide and The Triumph in the West.

Arthur Bryant retained a large readership and was guest-of-honour at the Conservative Monday Club's 1966 annual dinner.

Arthur Bryant spoke on "The Preservation of our National Character".

Arthur Bryant was knighted in 1954 and appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1967.

Arthur Bryant died after a brief illness at the age of 85 at Salisbury in the county of Wiltshire on 22 January 1985.

Arthur Bryant was cremated, with his ashes being entombed in Salisbury Cathedral.

Arthur Bryant wrote over forty books overall, which collectively sold over two million copies.

Arthur Bryant was a frequent lecturer, speaking at many of the leading cities and schools in Great Britain, as well as in the United States and fourteen European countries.

Arthur Bryant found Bryant's book [on Charles II] convincing and, equally exciting for Trevelyan, beautifully written.

Roberts claimed that Arthur Bryant remained in indirect contact with the Nazis in early 1940, after the outbreak of World War II, and that these ties had been requested by the Foreign Secretary.

Arthur Bryant wrote far better than nearly all professional historians.

Arthur Bryant was in fact a Nazi sympathiser and fascist fellow-traveller, who only narrowly escaped internment as a potential traitor in 1940.

Arthur Bryant was, incidentally, a supreme toady, fraudulent scholar and humbug.

Roberts's polemical essay, prompted by the opening of archive material on Arthur Bryant, has been followed by Julia Stapleton's full academic study.

Arthur Bryant was aware of the liabilities of writing fast-moving, grand, rather literary narratives.