Raymond Postgate
| Raymond Postgate | |
|---|---|
| Born | Raymond William Postgate November 6, 1896 Cambridge, England, United Kingdom |
| Died | March 29, 1971 (aged 74) Canterbury, England, UK |
| Occupation | Writer, journalist, editor |
| Language | English |
| Relatives |
John Percival Postgate (father) Edith Allen (mother) Margaret Cole (sister) |
Raymond William Postgate (6 November 1896 – 29 March 1971) was an English socialist, author, journalist and editor, social historian, mystery novelist and gourmet, who founded the Good Food Guide. He was a member of the Postgate family.
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.
Postgate sought exemption from World War I military service as a conscientious objector on socialist grounds, but his case was dismissed. He was offered only non-combatant service in the army, which he refused. Forcibly conscripted, he spent five days in Oxford Prison before being transferred to Cowley Barracks, Oxford. There he was found medically unfit for service and discharged. Fearful of any possible further attempt at conscription he went "" for a period. While he was in custody, his sister Margaret campaigned on his behalf, in the process meeting the socialist writer and economist G. D. H. Cole, whom she subsequently married. In 1918 Postgate married Daisy Lansbury, daughter of the Labour Party journalist and politician George Lansbury, and was barred from the family home by his Tory father.
From 1918 Postgate worked as a journalist on the Daily Herald, then edited by his father-in-law, Lansbury. A founding member of the British Communist Party in 1920, Postgate left the Herald to join his colleague Francis Meynell on the staff of the CP's first weekly, The Communist. 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. As such, he was one of Britain's first left-wing former communists, and the party came to treat him as an archetypal bourgeois intellectual renegade. He remained a key player in left journalism, however, returning to the Herald, then joining Lansbury on Lansbury's Labour Weekly in 1925–1927.
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