Novelist Leslie Poles Hartley was born on 30th December 1895 in Whittlesey, to Harry and Mary Elizabeth Hartley. He was an author, most famous for his novel The Go-Between which was published in 1953 and turned into a film in 1971.
Hartley did not live in Whittlesey for long before his family moved to the impressive mansion Fletton Towers in Peterborough. The building had been built in the first few years of Queen Victoria's reign and made a large and comfortable home, and a good location for Leslie and his two sisters Enid and Annie to start their education with a governess.
Sadly, Leslie did not enjoy his childhood at Fletton Tower and stated in a letter to his friend Lord David Cecil that 'I always felt at Fletton like I had done something wrong, particularly in the north wing.' However, he did start his literary career in the house, penning his first short story at the age of 11. He soon escaped to attend boarding schools including Harrow, before attending Baliol College, Oxford, where he studied Modern History.
He began his literary career in his 20's but he was not able to find success until his 50's, his full time work and social life taking precedence. However, his trilogy on the characters Eustace and Hilda earned him great respect and opened the door for The Go-Between to be well-received too. The Go-Between, famous for it's first line 'The past is a different country: they do things differently there', was not just published in England, but in America, several European countries and even Japan. It drew on memories of Hartley's childhood at Fletton Towers in the long hot summer of 1900 'the first time the weather made a mark on my memory' as was claimed in the 2002 edition of the book, edited by Colm Toibin. It also went on to win the Heinemann Foundation Prize of the Royal Society of Literature in 1954. Hartley was awarded a CBE in 1956.
Hartley identified as a gay man, but at a time when homosexuality was still illegal (it was legalised in England in 1967) he kept his personal life private. There was some suggestion that his friend Lord David Cecil (of Hatfield House, not Burghley) was his lover. One of his later novels, The Harness Room, was known by Hartley as his 'homosexual novel'. Several photographs of Hartley are accessible in the National Portrait Gallery and can be found in their online database, including pictures of Hartley and Cecil together.
In the years before his death he was living in a flat in exclusive Rutland Gate, Knightsbridge. On his death, on the 13th December 1972, he left an estate totalling over £470,000, which was a very considerable sum at the time.
References:
L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between, Introduction by C. Toibin (New York Review Books, 2002) http://www.nybooks.com/media/d...
L. P. Hartley, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..
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