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Peter Fleming
Peter A Biography
- GenresBiography
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
16 people want to read
About the author
Duff Hart-Davis
38 books8 followersPeter Duff Hart-Davis, generally known as Duff Hart-Davis was a British biographer, naturalist and journalist, who wrote for The Independent. He was married to Phyllida Barstow and had one son and one daughter, the journalist Alice Hart-Davis. He lived at Owlpen, in Gloucestershire.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 11, 2024
FIRST IMPRESSIONS: I’m only 50 pages in, but I can honestly say this is the best biography of Peter Fleming out there, because it’s the only bio out there – which is a shame, because Fleming is as interesting a character (if not moreso) than his younger brother Ian.* The book is only available in the original 1974 hardcover, or this 1984 paperback reprint by Oxford Lives.**
The book is enjoyable but a bit of a vanity project. Duff Hart-Davis is the son of Fleming’s apparent “best friend” Rupert Hart-Davis, which is likely true as Fleming later became the author’s godfather. This connection obviously gave the author access to a wealth of personal stories and obscure details – all of which he includes in the book, (by page 50, Peter has only just left Eton and is about to begin at Oxford). There is also a quaint “Britishness” to the book – lots of references to unfamiliar public school terms and traditions, (for example, I can only assume after multiple usages that “leader” means “article,” such as a “newspaper leader”), which makes sense, since Fleming is little known outside Britain other than to a handful of adventure weirdos like myself. Interestingly, each odd numbered page has its own unique title – such as “1926 Captain of the Oppidans Aet.19,” “1938 Merrimoles Aet. 31,” etc. – and it took me a while on Google to learn that “aet” is an abbreviation of the Latin “aetatis,” meaning “at the age of,” which I found pretty interesting in a timey-wimey sort of way.
I'm just now getting to the start of "the good part," so the book should get even more interesting. But after years of being a solid fan of Fleming's own writings, it's nice to already learn that he wasn't a jerk in real life.
* * *
UPDATE: Halfway through now, and bumping up to 5 stars, at least at this point. Fleming has already been through Brazil, Mongolia and Tartary, and written his most famous travel books. So the story is entering uncharted territory for me now, as I really have no idea what he did during the years between his sudden fame as an upstart explorer/writer/reporter in the mid-1930's to the amateur but senior historian of the late '50's.
* * *
FINAL: Okay, got the answer to my above question on what else Fleming did besides have (and perfectly write about) some awesome adventures in his 20's and write some fascinating and surprisingly funny history, (notably the trilogy of Invasion 1940, The Seige of Peking, and Bayonets to Lhasa) in his 50's, and it is...pretty much nothing. Yes, he had some interesting and hair-raising wartime experiences in Norway, Greece and Burma; but otherwise (and I'm reluctant to reduce all of World War II to an "otherwise"), he actually accomplished very little of note between 1936 and 1957. He tended his estate Nettlebed; he wrote amusing fluff columns and theatre reviews for The Times; he shot a helluva lot of birds. In 1957 he suddenly came alive again for an impressive third act by writing the above-mentioned histories, writing them all in a five year spurt of inspiration. But then from 1962 until his death in 1971, just another unproductive period of increasing eccentricity and fustiness.
A shame, really. Such promise so early on; but many of the same characteristics that made him such a funny and precocious young man combined to make him a slightly out-of-touch "literary squire" (aka, old fart) for pretty much the second half of his life. So pretty much what I knew about Fleming before reading this book is all I really needed to know about him overall. Yet while ultimately a little disappointing both as a subject and as literature, I'm glad I read the book, as I've now answered all the questions I'd ever had on Fleming's life, (even if some of those answers were not what I'd been hoping for).
* The only other partial bio I’ve ever seen on Fleming is a chapter in Kenneth Wimmel’s excellent (but largely unknown) 1997 The Alluring Target: In Search of the Secrets of Central Asia, which coincidentally also includes chapters on Francis Younghusband and Roy Chapman Andrews – two of my other all-time favorite explorers. (Alluring Target is available on Amazon for under $10 - just sayin'.)
** In the mid-1980’s, Oxford University Press also produced a number of high-end reprints of classic histories including Younghusband’s India and Tibet and The Heart of a Continent, as well as Reginald Johnston’s Twilight in the Forbidden City. However, they seemed to have gotten out of that side of the business some time ago, and are now focused more on academic and reference publishing, much the shame.
The book is enjoyable but a bit of a vanity project. Duff Hart-Davis is the son of Fleming’s apparent “best friend” Rupert Hart-Davis, which is likely true as Fleming later became the author’s godfather. This connection obviously gave the author access to a wealth of personal stories and obscure details – all of which he includes in the book, (by page 50, Peter has only just left Eton and is about to begin at Oxford). There is also a quaint “Britishness” to the book – lots of references to unfamiliar public school terms and traditions, (for example, I can only assume after multiple usages that “leader” means “article,” such as a “newspaper leader”), which makes sense, since Fleming is little known outside Britain other than to a handful of adventure weirdos like myself. Interestingly, each odd numbered page has its own unique title – such as “1926 Captain of the Oppidans Aet.19,” “1938 Merrimoles Aet. 31,” etc. – and it took me a while on Google to learn that “aet” is an abbreviation of the Latin “aetatis,” meaning “at the age of,” which I found pretty interesting in a timey-wimey sort of way.
I'm just now getting to the start of "the good part," so the book should get even more interesting. But after years of being a solid fan of Fleming's own writings, it's nice to already learn that he wasn't a jerk in real life.
* * *
UPDATE: Halfway through now, and bumping up to 5 stars, at least at this point. Fleming has already been through Brazil, Mongolia and Tartary, and written his most famous travel books. So the story is entering uncharted territory for me now, as I really have no idea what he did during the years between his sudden fame as an upstart explorer/writer/reporter in the mid-1930's to the amateur but senior historian of the late '50's.
* * *
FINAL: Okay, got the answer to my above question on what else Fleming did besides have (and perfectly write about) some awesome adventures in his 20's and write some fascinating and surprisingly funny history, (notably the trilogy of Invasion 1940, The Seige of Peking, and Bayonets to Lhasa) in his 50's, and it is...pretty much nothing. Yes, he had some interesting and hair-raising wartime experiences in Norway, Greece and Burma; but otherwise (and I'm reluctant to reduce all of World War II to an "otherwise"), he actually accomplished very little of note between 1936 and 1957. He tended his estate Nettlebed; he wrote amusing fluff columns and theatre reviews for The Times; he shot a helluva lot of birds. In 1957 he suddenly came alive again for an impressive third act by writing the above-mentioned histories, writing them all in a five year spurt of inspiration. But then from 1962 until his death in 1971, just another unproductive period of increasing eccentricity and fustiness.
A shame, really. Such promise so early on; but many of the same characteristics that made him such a funny and precocious young man combined to make him a slightly out-of-touch "literary squire" (aka, old fart) for pretty much the second half of his life. So pretty much what I knew about Fleming before reading this book is all I really needed to know about him overall. Yet while ultimately a little disappointing both as a subject and as literature, I'm glad I read the book, as I've now answered all the questions I'd ever had on Fleming's life, (even if some of those answers were not what I'd been hoping for).
* The only other partial bio I’ve ever seen on Fleming is a chapter in Kenneth Wimmel’s excellent (but largely unknown) 1997 The Alluring Target: In Search of the Secrets of Central Asia, which coincidentally also includes chapters on Francis Younghusband and Roy Chapman Andrews – two of my other all-time favorite explorers. (Alluring Target is available on Amazon for under $10 - just sayin'.)
** In the mid-1980’s, Oxford University Press also produced a number of high-end reprints of classic histories including Younghusband’s India and Tibet and The Heart of a Continent, as well as Reginald Johnston’s Twilight in the Forbidden City. However, they seemed to have gotten out of that side of the business some time ago, and are now focused more on academic and reference publishing, much the shame.
July 6, 2020
Comprehensive and well written, but evidently circumscribed by the author's close personal relationship with the subject.
August 28, 2019
You probably need to be a fan of Fleming’s travel writing to get the full effect of this biography, but as one such fan (his News from Tartary is my favourite book ever) it was well worth reading to learn more about the person behind these classics.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews