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Stanley Price
Born: August 12th, 1931
Died: February 28th, 2019
The playwright, novelist and screenwriter Stanley Price, who has died aged 87, was English by birth but always considered himself to be Irish, especially on sporting occasions when green jerseys are worn, and particularly on international rugby days.
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His father was an Irish Jew, but Stanley was born in Stamford Hill in north London. He spent some of the war years with his maternal grandparents in Kenilworth Square, Rathgar, and in their rented villa close to the Joyce Tower in Sandycove. He attended various schools in Dublin, including Wesley College, where he played rugby, the game he loved more than any other.
During his time at Cambridge University, studying history, the anti-establishment Price wrote revues for Footlights and befriended Jonathan Miller, Nick Tomalin and Frederic Raphael.
In 1956, he sailed from England to find work in New York, and landed a job as a reporter on Life magazine, an auspicious break into, first, journalism and then full-time writing, which became his chosen career for the next six decades. When he told his father, a doctor, that he wanted to become a writer, his father replied, “Grand, but be a doctor first. Think of Chekhov, Conan Doyle and Somerset Maugham.” Stanley did not heed that advice.
Hemingway and Coward
For three years he was Life’s showbusiness correspondent, writing stories about Marilyn Monroe, Jacques Tati and a diverting piece on the filming of Our Man in Havana in Cuba in 1959 where he met Ernest Hemingway and Noel Coward.
On his return to England in 1960, now married to Judy (they were fellow-students in Cambridge), he worked as a freelance editor for Town Magazine, as a reporter and columnist on the Sunday Telegraph and as a feature writer for the Observer. Between 1961 and 1966, four of his satirical novels were written and published and he began writing film scripts, including Arabesque, starring Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren; Gold, with Roger Moore and Susannah York; and Shout at the Devil, featuring Lee Marvin and Roger Moore.
In the 1970s, Stanley Price wrote plays for the theatre and television, principally comedies performed in the West End. Over the years his scripts were delivered on screen and stage by such actors as Miranda Richardson, Penelope Keith, Antony Sher, Diana Rigg, Ian Richardson and Richard Briers.
Stanley Price pursued his craft to the end. From 2002 he wrote regularly for the Oldie and, in the same year, his memoir, Somewhere to Hang My Hat: An Irish-Jewish Journey, was published in Dublin.
Joyce and Svevo
The capstone of a fruitful and versatile writing life was published when he was in his mid-80s. James Joyce and Italo Svevo: The Story of a Friendship is a wonderfully narrated account of the relationship of these two writers who lived through the major political and cultural upheavals of the early 20th century. They met in Trieste in 1907 when Joyce was Svevo’s teacher at a Berlitz school. Svevo helped Joyce to stay solvent and became the inspiration for Leopold Bloom. When Ulysses was published in 1922, its success enabled Joyce to help Svevo find a publisher for his own comic masterpiece, The Confessions of Zeno. Price’s book won warm praise from Jan Morris (who herself has written about Trieste) and Philip Hensher, who chose the book as one of the finest published in 2016.
Stanley Price was spry in physique and intelligence and, like all enterprisingjournalists, habitually on the lookout for an absorbing story. He wrote with insight and elegance and, importantly, for the common reader. Philip Hensher described his book on Joyce and Svevo’s friendship as “enchanting . . . full of a novelist’s skill in evoking character and entirely convincing in its reading of events”.
Stanley Price is survived by his wife Judy, son Munro and brother Ashley.