Terence de Vere White (Herbert Terence de Vere White) Biography

Irish novelist, journalist, and man of letters, born in Dublin of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother, educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was literary editor of The Irish Times from 1962 to 1977, to which he also contributed reviews regularly over many years. He wrote several works of Irish biography (including The Parents of Oscar Wilde, 1967; Tom Moore, 1977) and social history, including notably the autobiographical A Fretful Midge (1957), which contains portraits of Gogarty, Chesterton, George Egerton, Jack Yeats, and others. He published volumes of short stories and novels, many of them comedies of Anglo-Irish and Irish manners, including Tara (1967), The Distance and the Dark (1973), The Radish Memoirs (1974), Johnnie Cross (1983), which caused a furore amongst feminists by its irreverent portrayal of the marriage of George Eliot, and Chat Show (1987). A Leaf from the Yellow Book (1958) is a memoir, with diary extracts and correspondence, of Mary Chavelita Dunne (George Egerton), known to him as ‘Aunt Chavvy’. He was married to Victoria Glendinning, the biographer and novelist.