Richard Hughes Biography and List of Works

British playwright, poet, short story writer, and novelist, born in Wales, vice president of the Welsh National Theatre from 1924 to 36. Hughes's play DANGER for BBC in 1924 was the first or one of the first written especially for the radio. Hughes wrote only four novels in his lifetime. Among his best known works are A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA (1929), a classic story of childhood, and IN HAZARD (1938), an allegorical novel, set on a board cargo ship, where men are first threatened by a hurricane, then by fears of a mutiny.

'Has there ever been a revolution which didn't end in less freedom? Because, has there ever been a revolution which wasn't essentially just one more desperate wriggle by mankind to escape from freedom.'
(from The Fox in the Attic, 1961)

Richard Hughes was born in Weybridge, Surrey, of Welsh ancestry, as the son of Arthur and Louisa Grace (Warren) Hughes. He educated at Charterhouse and Oriel College, Oxford, where he met W.B.Yeats, A.E.Coppard, T.E.Lawrence and Robert Graves. While still at Oxford, Hughes published a volume of poems, GIPSY NIGHT AND OTHER POEMS (1922). After graduating in 1922 he helped to found the Portmadoc (Caernarvonshire) Players. In the same year, his one-act play, THE SISTER'S TRAGEDY, was produced in London at the Royal Court Theatre. Hughes's first published article, an answer to Alec Waugh's book The Loom of Youth, appeared in Spectator in 1917. Hughes's first ambition was to be a dramatist. He was commissioned by the BBC to write the first original radio play, DANGER, produced by Nigel Playfair in 1924.

Before settling in 1934 in Laugharne, Wales, Hughes travelled widely in the United States and the Caribbean during the inter-war years, and contributed to literary journals. His travels are reflected in his book of short stories, IN THE LAP OF ATLAS (1979). In Jamaica, Hughes visited after his most famous novel, High Wind in Jamaica. 1932 he married the painter Frances Bazley; they had five children. For a while Hughes lives in Norfork, although he eventually returned to Wales. In 1932 appeared his children's book entitled THE SPIDER'S PALACE.

In Hazard starts in an atmosphere of security, in which the author explains how modern technology has taken away the terrors of the sea. But nature destroys the false peace and the author enters into the individual thoughts of the entire crew to create a cohesive literary pattern. As in Conrad, the focus in on the moral questions that are tested in extreme conditions. After In Hazard Hughes published no more novels for twenty-three years.

Hughes lectured on literature at the University of London, was active in Welsh church affairs, and travelled frequently in Greece and Morocco. During World War II Hughes served in the Admiralty, and then worked as a teacher and a book reviewer. He collaborated with the historian J.D. Scott on a section of the Official History of the War dealing with war production.

From mid-1940s until the mid-1950s Hughes wrote film scripts for Ealing Studios. His post-war works include non-fiction, children's books and THE FOX IN THE ATTIC (1961), which was planned to start a possibly four volume series, 'The Human Predicament', dealing with upper-class English and Germans between the world wars. Opening in Wales just after the WW I, it mingles real and fictional characters, both German and British, ending with Hitler's Munich putch. The central character is a young Welshman who becomes aware of the true drift of events in Germany. The second part, THE WOODEN SHEPHERDESS, appeared in 1973, and ends with the murder of Röhm. The third part was left unfinished.

Hughes was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and an honorary member of both the National Institute and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was made a member of the Order of the British Empire in 1946. Most of his later years Hughes lived at Mor Edrin enar Talsarnau in North Wales. Hughes died on April 28, 1976.

High Wind in Jamaica (1929) - An unsentimental view of childhood, dealing with the relation of innocence and evil, and the fallibility of human justice. - During a voyage to England seven English schoolchildren are kidnapped by Captain Johnsen and his crew of pirates. In panic one of the children, Emily, kills a Dutch captain, who was also captured. They eventually reach England where they are welcomed as heroes and heroines. Emily's hysterical recollection of the murder is mistakenly used to indict the pirates. - Adapted for the screen in 1965, with the highly unlikely ending in which the chief pirate allows himself to be executed for a murder committed by Emily. Hughes's unconventional and unsentimental treatment of childhood in the novel is said to have ended the Victorian myth of innocence, and paved way for works such as William Golding's Lord of the Flies.

For further reading: Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, ed. by Steven S. Serafin (1999, vol. 2); The Art of Richard Hughes: A Study of the Novels by Paul Morgan (1993, paperback);Richard Hughes by R. Poole (1986); Richard Hughes by Richard Perceval Graves (1984); Richard Hughes by P. Thomas (1973); Unofficial Selves by P. Swinden (1973)

ed.: Oxford Poetry, (1921)
IN THE LAP OF ATLAS, (1979)
FICTION AS TRUTH, (1983)