Terence Kilmartin

Terence Kilmartin CBE (10 January 1922 – 17 August 1991) was an Irish translator who served as the literary editor of The Observer between 1952 and 1986. The most well-known and popular of his translations is his 1981 revision of C. K. Scott-Moncrieff's rendering of Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust.

Kilmartin was born on 10 January 1922 in the Irish Free State. Moving to England as a child, he was educated at Xaverian College in Mayfield, East Sussex. His limited knowledge of French developed when, at the age of 17, he was recruited to teach English to a French family's children.

During the Second World War, Kilmartin served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), as he was medically unfit for the armed forces. He earned medals for his service, as a result of his 1944 parachute jump into France.

His first post after the war was as a radio journalist, before he joined the staff of The Observer in 1949. Initially, he worked in the foreign affairs office of the newspaper, becoming assistant literary editor in 1950 and literary editor in 1952. During this time, Kilmartin also began translation work of French literature, starting with the major works of Henri de Montherlant: The Bachelors, The Girls, The Boys, and Chaos and Night. He also translated works by Malraux and Sagan. It was he who performed the first revision of the Scott Moncrieff translation of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.

Kilmartin compiled a comprehensive Reader's Guide to the Remembrance of Things Past (1983). The Guide comprises four separate indices: an index of characters in the Remembrance; an index of actual persons; an index of places; and an index of themes. The reader is thus enabled to locate almost any reference, e.g. Berlioz, or The Arabian Nights, or Madame Verdurin in any particular scene or setting, or Versailles. The volume and page numbers are keyed to the 3-volume Remembrance of Things Past of 1981, translated by Scott Moncrieff and revised by Kilmartin himself. They do not apply, of course, to other editions of the Remembrance or the Search for Lost Time, as it is now frequently called.

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