Jean Findlay was born in Edinburgh. She studied Law and French at Edinburgh University and Theatre under Tadeusz Kantor in Kracow, Poland. She co-founded an award winning theatre company and wrote and produced plays which toured to London, Berlin, Bonn, Rotterdam, Dublin, Glasgow and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. She spent years in London writing drama and book reviews for the Scotsman, and has written for the Independent, Time Out and the Guardian. She now lives in Edinburgh with her husband and three children. She is the great-great-niece of CK Scott Moncrieff.
Interview with Jean Findlay about Chasing Time
Bibliography:
Chasing Lost Time – the life of CK Scott Moncrieff, Soldier, Spy and Translator - Chatto and Windus 2014, Vintage paperback 2015.
ANT the collected short stories, war serials and selected poems of CK Scott Moncrieff,edited by Jean Findlay – Scotland Street Press 2015
"Three Plays" by Jean Findlay. Scotland Street Press 2015.
C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s celebrated translation of Proust’s A La Recherche du Temps Perdu was first published in 1922 and was a work which would exhaust and consume the translator, leading to his early death at the age of just forty. Joseph Conrad told him, ‘I was more interested and fascinated by your rendering than by Proust’s creation’: some literary figures even felt it was an improvement on the original.
From the outside an enigma, Scott Moncrieff left a trail of writings that describe a man expert at living a paradoxical life: fervent Catholic convert and homosexual, gregarious party-goer and deeply lonely, interwar spy in Mussolini’s Italy and public man of letters – a man for whom honour was the most abiding principle. He was a decorated war hero, and his letters home are an unusually light take on day-to-day life on the front. Described as ‘offensively brave’, he was severely injured in 1917 and, convalescing in London, became a lynchpin of literary society – friends with Robert Graves and Noel Coward, enemies with Siegfried Sassoon and in love with Wilfred Owen.
Written by Scott Moncrieff’s great-great-niece, Jean Findlay, with exclusive access to the family archive,Chasing Lost Time is a portrait of a man hurled into war, through an era when the world was changing fast and forever, who brought us the greatest epic of time and memory that has ever been written.
Pitch to Publishers & Festival Organisers:
Chasing Lost Time has something for everyone: Proustians, Religious people, World War 1 enthusiasts, spy story, those interested in the literary world of the early 20th century, translators, and those who just love a good life story. Extensive reviews in UK and US
A first-rate, playful, moving biography
- The Times
Elegant and even-handed biography
- Wall Street Journal
In a hugely readable and well researched biography, Findlay paints a triple portrait of her ancestor – as a devoted family man, homosexual Catholic and cultivated spy – who turns out to be a far more engaging and fascinating subject than one would ever have imagined
- Scotsman
The final revelation of Findlay’s book is that Moncrieff was far from the perfect Proustian of our imagination. Moncrieff is a lot more fun to be around than his careful sentences might suggest
- The New Yorker
A fascinating read
- The Economist
Passionate, risk-taking, aesthetically conservative: a compendious biography of Proust's great interpreter reveals the paradoxes of his varied career
- Guardian
Jean Findlay... has at last given us a full portrait of this admirable man
- New York Review of Books
Findlay assembles a fascinating man from a strange collection of fragments with style, fittingly enough, and wit
- Herald Scotland
Eager, conscientious, affectionate… Endearingly old-fashioned in its family piety, protective partisanship and unembellished decency… A work that murmurs and sidles in a self-effacing tone… A likeable, informative and poignant book that Findlay is uniquely suited to have written
- Literary Review
There is a tenderness with which [Findlay] cherishes even the most inconsequential events… Fitting tribute
- Daily Telegraph
Awards & Prizes: Hyam Wingate Award, Authors Foundation Award.
Literary Festival Appearances:
UK: Edinburgh International Book Festival 2014, Wigtown Book Festival 2014, Words on the Water 2015,
US: Boston Atheneum 2015, City of New York University Graduate Centre – May 2015, Albertine Bookshop, 5th Ave, New York, May 2015
Invited Jaipur Literary Festival 2016
Facebook: Jean Findlay Fraser
Contact email: jean[findlay9@]icloud.com (remove brackets before emailing)
Contact telephone: 07733164142
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