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Acknowledgments
My thanks to the participants at the ICBH Cold War conference in September 2003 for their comments on an earlier draft of a slightly different paper. Thanks also to Tony Shaw for his organizational and editing skills.
Notes
1. See CitationWaters 209–26; Woolf, quoted in Brome 133. Wartime Minister of Information, Duff Cooper, described Priestley as ‘a second rate novelist’ in 1940. Quoted in Nicholas 247–66. For a more recent revision of these negative views, see CitationBaxendale 87–111. See also Priestley's own views on his ‘middlebrow’ public image in The Guardian 14 Sept. 1974: 10.
2. See also, J.B. Priestley to Edward Davison, 17 Mar. 1936 (Folder 1, J.B. Priestley, Correspondence of Edward Davison, 1922–70, Beinecke Library, Yale University).
3. For details of Priestley's work in film, see Day 265–67.
4. For Hollywood's impact on provincial theatre, see English Journey 197. Hollywood's influence over young film-goers was satirized in various novels, including Priestley Let the People Sing 84. See also, Priestley to Davison, 10 Feb. 1938 (Folder 2, Davison Correspondence).
5. See also Priestley to Cass Canfield, 29 Apr. 1941 (Box 1, File 1, J.B. Priestley Archive, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin); Priestley to Hugh Walpole, 12 May 1941 (Letters to Hugh Walpole, Folder 2, J.B. Priestley Archive).
6. On the popularity of the Postscripts see, CitationBriggs The History of Broadcasting 210–11. For later views of the reasoning behind Priestley's removal, see Brome 249–52, and the more critical, Nicholas 254–66.
7. See Our Russian Allies (1941) and Britain at Bay (1940).
8. Priestley to Davison, 20 Oct. 1944 (Folder 2, Davison Correspondence).
9. For Priestley's Liberal Socialism, see Midnight on the Desert 128–43. He made clear his specific opposition to communism on various occasions. See, for example, Priestley English Journey 299–303.
10. Priestley to Davison, 16 Sept. 1946 (Folder 2, Davison Correspondence).
11. ‘The Labour government is so unimaginative’, he complained, ‘they're letting it get dreary.’ Priestley to Davison, 16 Sept. 1946 (Folder 2, Davison Correspondence).
12. CitationPriestley had already given Hollywood something of a roasting in his finest novel Bright Day, in which the screenwriter Gregory Dawson, disillusioned by his time in Hollywood, looks back at his Bradford upbringing. See, for example, 205.
13. Sunday Pictorial 23 Jan. 1949: 5.
14. Tribune 28 Jan. 1949: 1–3.
15. Clement Atlee to Priestley, 17 Jan. 1950 (Box 2 Folder-Recipient A-C, J.B. Priestley Archive). See Priestley to Davison, 1 May 1951 on disillusion with Labour (Folder 3, Davison Correspondence).
16. Sunday Pictorial 6 Feb. 1949: 6.
17. On the political relationship between Labour revisionists and America, see CitationFielding.
18. Priestley's experiences in 1930s America are explored at length in Midnight and Rain Upon Godshill 65–166. See also Fagge.
19. Priestley to Davison, 26 Dec. 1953 (Folder 3, Davison Correspondence). See also Priestley to Davison, 10 May 1956 (Folder 4, Davison Correspondence) and Hugh Gaitskell to Priestley, 25 June 1956 (Box 2 Folder-Recipient H-I, J.B. Priestley Archive).
20. Originally published in New Statesman 26 Sept. 1953: 342, it was reprinted with other New Statesman columns in Thoughts in the Wilderness.
21. See Priestley to Peter Davison, 11 May 1971, where he attacked writers who are coming up with ideas he had a long time ago: ‘I'm getting rather tired of chaps telling me at solemn length what, if they'd done any reading, I'd told them briefly and not without wit, some years ago: you know, Consumer man, Admass etc. …’ (Folder 6, Davison Correspondence).
22. Priestley to Davison, 1 May 1954 (Folder 3, Davison Correspondence).
23. See Rebecca West to Priestley, 22 June 1955 (Box 2 Folder-Recipient W-Z, J.B. Priestley Archive). CitationDulcie Gray has recalled in her biography of Priestley that she mistakenly invited West and Priestley to dinner, and the latter refused to even acknowledge the former's presence (Gray 44).
24. New Statesman 2 Nov. 1957: 554–56.
25. Priestley to Davison, 30 Jan. 1958 (Folder 6, Davison Correspondence).
26. Priestley to Davison, 10 May 1958 (Folder 6, Davison Correspondence).