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Overview

Date of Birth:

16 September 1938, London, England, UK more

Filmography

Jump to filmography as: Director, Writer

Director:

"The Wednesday Play" (2 episodes, 1964-1966)
- Ape and Essence (1966) TV episode
- Catch as Catch Can (1964) TV episode
"Moonstrike" (3 episodes, 1963)
- The Canary (1963) TV episode
- The Escape (1963) TV episode
- The Expert (1963) TV episode

Writer:

Little Sir Nicholas (1990) (TV) (adaptation)
What a Way to Run a Revolution (1986) (TV) (lyrics)
You're a Big Boy Now (1966) (novel)
"Play of the Month" (1 episode, 1966)
- Gordon of Khartoum (1966) TV episode (adaptation)

Additional Details

Genres:

Drama | War

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http://www.davidbenedictus.co.uk/
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He also edited Winnie the Pooh. He is god.
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David Benedictus

Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, 2007/08

David Benedictus was educated at Eton, Balliol College, Oxford and the State University of Iowa; his first job was as a tutor to the Rothschilds. His first novel was The Fourth of June, which he also adapted for the stage (St Martin's Theatre). His second novel, You're a Big Boy Now, was filmed in New York by Coppola. Dropping Names is his latest book; published in 2005, it is a collection of memoirs. In between he has written some 25 books equally divided between fiction and non-fiction.

David worked for the BBC as a reporter on Radio Newsreel, then as story editor and director on the Wednesday Play. He has presented Kaledioscope and served as a panellist on a dozen Any Questions programmes. He later initiated Something Understood for Radio 4, and became Editor of Readings for BBC Radio (1989-1995). He is currently producing music programmes for Radio 2, including a series on film music. For Channel 4, he was a commissioning editor for drama and commissioned numerous series including Porterhouse Blue and The Manageress.

He was antiques correspondent for the Evening Standard, a tour guide for Original London Walks and has worked as an arts critic for many newspapers and magazines. He dramatised Little Sir Nicholas for BBC television. Occasional acting has included playing a dead aristocrat on Channel 4 last November.

For the last 19 years, he has been writing and publishing Uncle Ernie's System, (38 editions), a guide to horse-racing. He has taught at numerous drama schools, and more recently at Putney High School, Menorah School, Burnt Oak, and Corpus Christi, Oxford. Divorced with four children, his hobbies include piano playing (inept), chess playing (not so bad) and croquet (social).

Email:

david@davidbenedictus.com

Website: http://www.davidbenedictus.com

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Extract from latest novel:

In these EXTRACTS from Dropping Names, David recalls his time as tutor to the Rothschilds in 1960.

... Why Miriam Lane (nee Rothschild) made contact with me remains a mystery. But in some respects I was suitable for her tutorial purposes, being marginally Jewish and undeniably an Oxford graduate. She telephoned me and asked me to present myself at Elsfield Manor House, north of Oxford, and separated from the dreaming spires by the M40, no respecter of Rothschilds or Oxford graduates. John Buchan had lived in the house once, and it was still infected with a kind of surreptitious and lowering gloom.

Awaiting me there was Wilfred De’Ath, the excumbent tutor, who either wanted the job no longer or was no longer wanted. The children (of whom more anon) told me that Wilfred was keen on the gin, which many are, and had been working on a novel, which many do, and I was. Wilfred was to claim that he had left the completed masterpiece on a French railway train, and had never recovered it, though there were those of us who remained sceptical. The children also guyed Wilfred mercilessly in his absence by rubbing their ribs vigorously which was what they claimed he did (he rubbed his, that is, not theirs). I was puzzled. Surely neither gin, nor rib-rubbing, was a dismissable offence, if he had been dismissed. Another contender for the post of tutor was Auberon Waugh (also writing novels); since he was not appointed I could only conclude that he was not Jewish – not even marginally.

Miriam was a tall handsome woman with a beaming, though rather vague smile, the sort of smile one might bestow on the world in general rather than on anyone in particular. Beatific not specific. I always picture her standing in a flowing cotton robe and Wellington boots at the top of the imposing Elsfield staircase, looking benevolently down at us, before retiring to the study in which she wrote her learned essays and books. Like her uncle at Tring, she was a biologist, but unlike him had specialised in parasites, publishing a best-selling book called “Fleas, Flukes and Liver Cuckoos”. She was the sort of woman who would never have published anything which was not a best-seller, however improbable the subject. She had never been university educated but by the end of her long and useful life she was the recipient of eight honorary doctorates. She had also played squash and cricket for England.

She ran the household as a minor member of European royalty might a small principality, recognising and condescending to those she might meet, and making sure that they were provided for. Even a gipsy woman coming to the door and claiming to be the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, was invited into the kitchen and given tea. (She told me to beware of a woman named Mary, and I have always done so, although I have no way of knowing what might have happened to me if I had not).We were not too well provided for, however, being paid £8 a week all found, and what we found for lunch was not a lot. In the evenings we ate formally and decently – also hungrily. She died while I was compiling the final draft of this book. I wish I had been able to send her a copy.

I was welcomed on my first day at Elsfield (November 28^th 1960) by Mrs Jacques, the house-keeper, who introduced me to Mr Jacques, the chauffeur of the Bentley, then to the secretary and then to the Finnish maid. We sat down to ‘a very light midday snack’ of soup, partridge, crisps, yellow beans, green beans, carrots, cheese, fruit and coffee.

Miriam, so I was told, had got married to a handsome Hungarian airman, whom she had spied when gliding like the lady with the lamp through the wards - for Elsfield had been turned into a hospital during the war. That was George. He had been given the surname of Lane because it approximated to his patronymic. He had fathered a couple of children with Miriam before falling in love (this was the unsupported gossip) with the actress Ann Todd, who had been working fifty miles or so to the west at Stratford. When I met George he gave us two long lectures on fly-fishing and grouse. I found him arrogant.

The Lane offspring were Rosie, who was to become one of the founders of Spare Rib, Charles, whom I was to teach, and Charlotte, but there were always others on site. They were in descending order, Jane, who was buxom and studying opera and would get married to a vintner, and Benny, her brother, unkindly referred to as the Dwarf. Jane and Benny had been the offspring of one Herr Fischer, a German, who being either Jewish or broke or both, had been unable to cope. Miriam had not only brought to England a number of German children who were at risk from the Nazis but had stood as sponsor to many others. Last and, one has to add, least, was Josie, a local girl. Josie had been adopted as a “twin” for eight-year-old Charlotte, but could not compete with her new sibling, being lumpish where Charlotte was spectacularly beautiful. When Josie was hauled over the coals for cheating in class in an attempt to keep up with Charlotte, my heart bled for her.

Charlotte was skinny with brilliant red hair and translucent skin, “like to a lighted alabaster vase”. She lived close to the edge and was undergoing psychiatric treatment from a series of Men In London.

There were animals too. In the sitting room a clammy, sharp-toothed thing was apt to attach itself to your neck when you were least expecting it. That was one of the bush babies. There were also three dogs, four cats and two squirrels.

My interview with Miriam had been unlike other job interviews. The formal part of it was over quite rapidly, and I was sent off to play table-tennis with 12-year-old Charlie, who was to be got through his public school entrance examination, although there was little doubt that he could manage that with one hand tied behind his back. Charlie was to become one of the youngest Fellows of All Souls, and at the age of eight had published an article, entitled The Sweaty Socks Experiment, in the influential journal, Nature. Charles beat me, but only just. Then I had to bowl at him in the cricket net erected in the gloomy garden of that sepulchral house.

My first meeting with the clan was at lunch after my interview and sporting initiations. The meal was not unlike one of those fabled civil service weekends when your every move is being watched to see whether you know the proper use of the fish-knife, or how to talk to a butler. I remember two games they played with me (as with every prospective tutor or governess). One was to tell a long and meandering anecdote and see how long it was before the victim realised that there neither was, nor ever would be, a point to it all. The other was to shake your hand with the thumb folded into the palm, muttering the while: “Pardon the wart”. Life with the Rothschilds was endlessly competitive; and it was made very clear that they were expected to win, while you ought really to come a creditable second.

... Miriam in a gown even more flowing than usual and very much the salonniere, played hostess to prominent politicians, but always took care to brief me in advance about their sexual and financial peccadillos. It certainly made the dinners more stimulating when the ministers were sounding off about this or that policy to recall what they had been up to with this or that unsuitable actor or actress. Many of Miriam’s stories about British Jewry (one prominent scion apparently lay on the doormat and barked like a dog when visitors came to call) were worth the retelling. If I believed that Miriam exaggerated for effect, the Profumo affair, shortly to break onto the front pages, indicated otherwise.

The house was furnished for comfort rather than aesthetics, although there were marvellous pictures on the walls, a Modigliani, a Picasso and an Augustus John in the small dining room, and Miriam reserved for herself the task of arranging in vases the flowers which were delivered daily by the local florist. These would remain in the sink in the utilities room, unless and until Miriam appeared. As often as not they remained dying or dessiccated; those who might have removed them being too scared of Miriamic displeasure. There were few signs of ostentatious wealth – in this respect the English branch are the intellectuals, the French the hedonists – although one of my jobs was to drive into Oxford to buy books at Blackwells, but never paper-backs. If at times I thought that the family was mad, Miriam was there before me. She once confessed to me: “Of course we’re quite mad, but most great families are mad after three generations so we’ve really done pretty well”.

During the winter the family decamped for three months to Wengen, where the English branch had one chalet, the French another. On arrival Miriam’s immediate concern was to set mousetraps throughout the building, so that when we left three months later she could check what parasites might have accumulated on the dead mice. Classes were secondary to skiing, and to ensure that the children acquired the necessary skills to compete in the formidable competitions run by the very portentous and English-run Downhill Only Club, two Olympic skiers were taken on exclusively for the winter to be on tap as and when required. They often were not required, and the tutor was able to benefit from long afternoons on the slopes with one-to-one tuition from these talented Olympians. I was entered for the Novices Cup, and finished a long way last of thirteen. However at the awards ceremony I was awarded the trophy – quite the biggest and grandest on offer – because the other twelve had all been disqualified for not having read the small print. I was not popular with the members of the Downhill Only Club, although the Rothschilds cackled.

On the slopes I could not begin to keep up with Charles (it was my clear duty to do so). I was also keeping an eye on Charlotte who announced one day that she might just kill herself by skiing at speed into the high tension electrical cables. I doubted whether she really meant to, and I also doubted whether this was a feasible way of suiciding, but I could scarcely ignore the threat. To be responsible for the frying of a Rothschild heir would disastrously affect one’s career prospects.

... but Miriam could be surprisingly supportive. I was living in a nearby chalet, and one morning the landlady complained to her that I had been entertaining a girl in my room until the early hours. Miriam was furious with her and insisted on removing me to another chalet forthwith where they would not be so intrusive.

We used to meet the French Rothschilds over dinner in one or other of the chalets. This family too lacked a dominant male, although David, the Baron, was my age and Peter, the Vicomte, David’s cousin, not much younger. Peter’s sister had a languid beauty which was distracting. In charge was Baroness Alix, whose charm and Parisian elegance was a contrast to Miriam’s earthiness. But Alix had had to flee occupied France and set up home in the Bronx, arriving, as the story was told to me, with only what she stood up in. I was sceptical.

I spent most time with David and upon hearing that I intended to hitch-hike back to Britain via Paris, he made me promise to contact him when I arrived in the capital. It wasn’t necessary, since we met by chance at the Grand Guignol, a tiny theatre where one- act plays of gory and erotic melodrama were acted out. I received an invitation to an “informal lunch” at 21, Avenue Foch. Informal it may have been by David’s standards, but I recall a white-gloved footman behind each chair, and as course followed course, wine followed wine and ‘my’ footman whispered into my ear (since I alone could not be expected to know about such things) the name of each wine; good wines from the Rothschild vineyards. At the end of the meal I told David that it was now my treat. Would he suggest a suitable venue since his knowledge of Paris was so much greater than mine? A modest but fashionable boite on the right bank was chosen, the food excellent, the ambience seductive, although I was slightly exercised that no prices were marked on the carte. When the bill arrived my worst fears were realised – even cashing all my remaining travellers cheques would fall short of what was required. Nothing for it but to confess to David. He smiled with the easy charm of the ineffably rich, and passed under the table to me a healthily fat wad of banknotes. As I stammered my thanks, he raised a dismissive hand and said: “That’s what the Rothschilds are for.”

I have seen David several times since, in the pages of the socialite magazines, in the distance as he leads a steaming colt into the unsaddling enclosure at Longchamps, but I have never repaid him. Nor forgotten. Any day now …

Soon after we arrived back at Elsfield, Miriam told me that she and Alix were off to Israel for the Eichmann trial, and would require me to come too. My first job would be to accompany Benny on the flight to Tel Aviv, since he was 17 and at Winchester, where the term did not end until after the others would have left. We travelled first class which had one disastrous result. Benny was offered free champagne and drank a good deal of it. His euphoria at term being over, the rarified atmosphere – cabins were not as pressurised then as now – and my lack of natural authority resulted in his becoming volatile. Part of my journal entry for March 29^th describes what happened next:

And the muddle at the passport check at Lod Airport! They hadn’t given us the forms. And it’s hard to tell whether the building’s going up or coming down. And an old man pushes Benny and Benny calls him a bastard and smirks horribly at his wife and calls her a bitch. And the old man takes Benny by the neck and almost throttles him. ‘No husband can stand by and hear his wife called that.’ And I quite agree.

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David Benedictus was educated at Eton, Balliol College, Oxford and the State University of Iowa; his first job was as a tutor to the Rothschilds. His first novel was The Fourth of June, which he also adapted for the stage (St Martin's Theatre). His second novel, You're a Big Boy Now, was filmed in New York by Coppola. Dropping Names is his latest book; published in 2005, it is a collection of memoirs. In between he has written some 25 books equally divided between fiction and non-fiction.

David worked for the BBC as a reporter on Radio Newsreel, then as story editor and director on the Wednesday Play. He has presented Kaledioscope and served as a panellist on a dozen Any Questions programmes. He later initiated Something Understood for Radio 4, and became Editor of Readings for BBC Radio (1989-1995). He is currently producing music programmes for Radio 2, including a series on film music. For Channel 4, he was a commissioning editor for drama and commissioned numerous series including Porterhouse Blue and The Manageress.

He was antiques correspondent for the Evening Standard, a tour guide for Original London Walks and has worked as an arts critic for many newspapers and magazines. He dramatised Little Sir Nicholas for BBC television. Occasional acting has included playing a dead aristocrat on Channel 4 last November.

For the last 19 years, he has been writing and publishing Uncle Ernie's System, (38 editions), a guide to horse-racing. He has taught at numerous drama schools, and more recently at Putney High School, Menorah School, Burnt Oak, and Corpus Christi, Oxford. Divorced with four children, his hobbies include piano playing (inept), chess playing (not so bad) and croquet (social).

Email: david@davidbenedictus.com
Website: http://www.davidbenedictus.com
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David Benedictus has been almost everywhere and done almost everything. In this irreverent memoir we get his tumultuous life at Eton, his weird job as a tutor to the Rothschilds, the world of BBC drama inthe great days of the Wednesday Play, filming in New York with Coppola, working in the explosion of fringe theatre in the sixties, assistant to Trevor Nunn at the RSC, commissioning editor making movies at Channel 4, and running the Book At Bedtime for BBC Radio. He interviewed Judy Garland, and attended an academic orgy in San Francisco. He chatted up the Rolling Stones, whom he had failed to recognise, and gave a party for Tom Jones's first golden disc. Paul McCartney came to his party and chatted up his auntie. He was a tour-guide in London, and the director of the first Amnesty Celebrity concerts.

He directed almost every actor of note, from Gielgud to the prickly Berkoff, from O'Toole to Ralph Fiennes, and his dog was responsible for Judi Dench getting married. He had his portrait painted by John Bratby, who mistakenly thought him 'one of the great thinkers of the 20th Century' and sat between Susan George and Olivia Newton-John at the cinema. This is a book with something to entertain and enrage just about everybody. Its final controversial chapter deals with the last two years during which he has been teaching drama to the posh girls at Putney High School.

“Dropping Names” the brand new autobiography: Contents

Staying Alive (Stone House 1946-1951)

Reading For Pleasure

Surviving The Cut (Eton 1946-1956)

Gilding The Lily (Oxford 1956-1959)

Waving The Flag (Iowa 1959-1960)

Falling On My Feet (Rothschilds 1961-1962)

Settling Scores (Writing A Best Seller 1961-1962)

Making Waves (BBC 1962-1965)

Shooting Movies (with Coppola in New York 1965)

Telling It Like It Is (Politics and Any Questions)

Flirting With Disaster (Theatrical Moments)

Campaigning (Amnesty International 1965 onwards)

Beavering Away (Sex in the Sixties)

Handing It On (Writer in Residence)

Putting It About (Bristol 1968-1969)

Reviewing The Situation (Journalism)

Having It Both Ways (Being Jewish)

Putting On A Show (with the RSC 1970)

Being Married (1971 onwards)

Tipping Winners (Uncle Ernie 1977 onwards)

Making Sweet Music (Producing for radio)

Strutting Their Stuff (Olivier and other Gods)

Breaking With Tradition (Channel Four 1984-1986)

Working The System (BBC 1989-1995)

En Passant (Chess)

Canvassing Opinions (Painters and Painting)

Acting Up A Storm (An acting career?)

Making Enemies

Sharing It (Teaching 2000 – onwards)

Tuesday, July 8, 2008