Brian Inglis

Brian Inglis (31 July 1916-11 February 1993) was a British journalist, historian and television presenter. He was born in Dublin, Ireland and retained an interest in Irish history and politics. He was best known to people in Britain as the presenter of All Our Yesterdays, a television review of events exactly 25 years previously, as seen in newsreels, newspaper articles etc. He also presented the weekly review of newspapers known as What the Papers Say.

He joined the staff of The Spectator in 1954, and became editor in 1959, soon afterwards hiring the young Bernard Levin to write for the magazine. He continued as editor until 1962.

He also had interests in the paranormal, and alternatives to institutionalised medicine.

Inglis' friend and colleague Bill Grundy died on 9 February 1993. Inglis had just finished writing Grundy's obituary when he, too, died.

Early life and education

Brian Inglis was born into an affluent family in the closed society of Malahide, Co. Dublin. He was a grandson of J. R. Blood and thus a likely descendant of Thomas Blood, stealer of the Crown Jewels. He found the life he was born into oppressive in its obsession with custom, style, privilege, and ostracism.

He attended the Shrewsbury School, Trinity College, Dublin, and Magdalen College, Oxford. After service in the RAF during World War 2, he studied for a PhD in History at Trinity College, Dublin. His thesis was the basis for his first book, Freedom of the Press in Ireland (1954).

Adult life

He married Ruth Woodeson, the writer, in 1958, and they had one son, later separating. In 1962 he published his first memoir West Briton (a contemptuous reference to the Anglo-Irish upper classes in Ireland). He was a founding member of the British-Irish Association, which became the British Association for Irish Studies.

In 1975 he wrote and narrated a unique sound archive of World War 2 for record label Cameo Classics, entitled "Sounds of All Our Yesterdays". It was researched by his close friend Bill Grundy, a Producer of the Granada TV series "All Our Yesterdays", which Brian had presented for 10 years.

His interest in the paranormal began while working at the Spectator. In 1978 he published Natural and Supernatural. With Arthur Koestler he co-founded the KIB Foundation which supports research into paranormal phenomena. He was a consultant on the 1981 Thames Television programme Mind Over Matter.

He published his final memoir, Downstart in 1990. The title is taken from Bernard Shaw, and is a play on the word Upstart, as in one who pretends to a higher station in life than is merited. Both Inglis and Shaw wished to start at the bottom, having been born higher up.

Selected bibliography

"Roger Casement" (1993) ISBN 0141391278 - about the Irish diplomat and revolutionary.
"The Opium Wars" (1976) ISBN 0340193905 - concerning the eponymous conflicts
"Downstart, the Autobiography of Brian Inglis" (1990) ISBN 0701133902

List of works

Taken from Princess Grace Irish Library entry.

Freedom of the Press in Ireland ^* (London: Faber & Faber 1954).
Irish Double-Thought, in The Spectator, 188 (7 March 1952), p.289;
Smuggled Culture, The Spectator, 188 (28 November 1952), p.726;
The Story of Ireland (London: Faber 1956);
Moran of the Leader, in Castleknock Chronicle (1956) of Thomas Davis Lecture;
Moran of the Leader and Ryan of the Irish Peasant, in The Shaping of Modern Ireland, Conor Cruise O'Brien, ed., (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1960);
Fringe Medicine (pub. 1964)
Roger Casement (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1973)
West Briton (London: Faber and Faber 1962; rep. 1989)
Natural and Supernatural (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1978);
Downstart: The Autobiography of Brian Inglis (London: Chatto & Windus 1990), 298pp.

Quotes

On the Irish Famine: If the British chose not to consider Ireland part of Britain, when such an emergency arose, they could hardly complain if the Irish did likewise. (The Story of Ireland, p.140)
To punish drug takers is like a drunk striking the bleary face it sees in the mirror. (Postscript, The Forbidden Game: A Social History of Drugs (1975))

External links