17 Facts About Philip Toynbee

Theodore Philip Toynbee was a British writer and communist.

Philip Toynbee wrote experimental novels, and distinctive verse novels, one of which was an epic called Pantaloon, a work in several volumes, only some of which are published.

Philip Toynbee wrote memoirs of the 1930s, and reviews and literary criticism, the latter mainly via his employment with The Observer newspaper.

Philip Toynbee was born in Oxford; his father was the historian Arnold J Toynbee, and his mother was Rosalind Murray.

Philip Toynbee was educated at Rugby School, where he became rebellious, reacting against the public school system.

Philip Toynbee later wrote a memoir of Romilly, and Jasper Ridley, entitled Friends Apart.

Philip Toynbee was influenced by bookshop owner and would-be encourager of the young radical element, David Archer, whom he met through David Gascoyne.

Philip Toynbee visited Spain at the end of 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War, in a student delegation.

Philip Toynbee was said to have been beaten up by Mosley's Blackshirts at a fascist meeting.

Philip Toynbee had become increasingly concerned about ecological matters and this, along with his own ideological temperament, led him to the decision to set up a self-sufficient farming community.

Philip Toynbee's depression was sometimes immobilising and prevented him from enjoying his day-to-day life and work, and the regularity of his book reviews was sometimes interrupted as he struggled with the depression and the treatment he insisted on receiving for it against the advice of his general practitioner and consultant: electroconvulsive therapy.

Philip Toynbee finally got the go-ahead for the treatment in 1977; he received it in Bristol that summer.

Philip Toynbee was urged to stop drinking alcohol and occasionally managed short periods of abstinence.

Philip Toynbee was as a whole capable of self-discipline, but needed to want his objectives with intense singular-mindedness in order to achieve them.

Philip Toynbee married twice: in 1939, to Anne Powell, daughter of Lt-Col George Powell, and in 1950, Sally Smith.

Philip Toynbee was later to be found, with Benedict Nicolson, in the Wednesday Club consisting of raffish male writers, artists and journalists.

Philip Toynbee died at his home in St Briavels, Gloucestershire, with most of his family at his bedside.