Raymond William Postgate was an English socialist, writer, journalist and editor, social historian, mystery novelist, and gourmet who founded the Good Food Guide.
17 Facts About Raymond Postgate
2.
Raymond Postgate was born in Cambridge, the eldest son of John Percival Postgate and Edith Allen, Postgate was educated at St John's College, Oxford, where, despite being sent down for a period because of his pacifism, he gained a First in Honour Moderations in 1917.
3.
In 1918 Raymond Postgate married Daisy Lansbury, daughter of the journalist and Labour Party politician George Lansbury, and was barred from the family home by his Tory father.
4.
From 1918 Raymond Postgate worked as a journalist on the Daily Herald, then edited by his father-in-law, Lansbury.
5.
Raymond Postgate soon became its editor and was briefly a major propagandist for the communist cause but he left the party after falling out with its leadership in 1922, when the Communist International insisted that British communists follow the Moscow line.
6.
Raymond Postgate edited the left-wing monthly Fact from 1937 to 1939, which featured a monograph on a different subject in each issue.
7.
Raymond Postgate then edited the socialist weekly Tribune from early 1940 until the end of 1941.
8.
Tribune had previously been a pro-Soviet publication: however, the Soviet fellow travellers at Tribune were either dismissed, or, in Raymond Postgate's words "left soon after in dislike of me".
9.
Raymond Postgate's anti-fascism led him to move away from his earlier pacifism.
10.
Raymond Postgate supported the Second World War and joined the Home Guard near his home in Finchley, London.
11.
Raymond Postgate continued his left-wing writings, and his question-and-answer pamphlet "Why you Should Be A Socialist", widely distributed among the returning military as the war ended, probably contributed significantly to the Labour Party's post-war landslide victory.
12.
Always interested in food and wine, after World War II, Raymond Postgate wrote a regular column on the poor state of British gastronomy for the pocket magazine Lilliput.
13.
In 1965, Raymond Postgate wrote an article in Holiday magazine in which he warned readers against Babycham, which "looks like champagne and is served in champagne glasses [but] is made of pears".
14.
Raymond Postgate sued for libel, but Postgate was acquitted, and awarded costs.
15.
Raymond Postgate continued to work as a journalist, mainly on the Co-operative movement's Sunday paper Reynolds' News, and during the 1950s and 1960s published several historical works and a biography of his father-in-law, The Life of George Lansbury.
16.
Raymond Postgate wrote several mystery novels that drew on his socialist beliefs to set crime, detection and punishment in a broader social and economic context.
17.
Raymond Postgate died on 29 March 1971; his wife Daisy committed suicide a month later.