Peter Elstob
| Peter Elstob | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
22 December 1915 London |
| Died | 21 July 2002 (aged 86) London |
Peter Frederick Egerton Elstob was a British soldier, adventurer, novelist, military historian and entrepreneur. In his writing he is best known for his lightly-fictionalized novel Warriors For the Working Day (1960) and his military history of the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler's Last Offensive (1971). He joined the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War, and later served in the Royal Tank Regiment in World War II, in which service he was promoted to sergeant and was Mentioned in Dispatches. He joined International PEN in 1962 and served first as general secretary and later as vice-president for seven years during the 1970s, rescuing the organisation from financial failure; he also secured the future of the Arts Theatre Club in London in 1946. He prospered as an entrepreneur with a facial product called Yeast Pac, with several partners. In his obituary in The Guardian newspaper, Elstob was said to be
...one of those people born in the wrong century. With his charm and audacity, his passion for travel, and his love of risk-taking and financial gambles, he would have been more at home in the reign of Elizabeth I.
Peter Elstob was born in London, UK on 22 December 1915, in the midst of WW I. His father, Frederick, was a chartered accountant whose work drew him and his family first to Calcutta and then to the United States in the immediate aftermath of the war. The family struggled in the US because Frederick's credentials as a CA were not recognised there. Peter attended school in New York and New Jersey, graduating from Summit High School in 1934. Although he remained proudly British, he retained an American accent to the end of his life.
Following high school, Elstob began a series of escapades that showed his signature taste for adventure and unconventionality:
Then, for no particular reason – except, perhaps, his life-long antagonism to authority – he ran away from home and signed on as a ship's bellboy. In Rio de Janeiro, he jumped ship, found a job and got engaged to the boss's daughter. His father tracked him down and persuaded him to go to the University of Michigan, but Elstob failed his freshman's year and got into trouble with the police. He was then sent to England with instructions to join the army. A letter of introduction to a friend of his father's led to a short service commission in the RAF.
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Wikipedia