Derwent May
Man of letters whose interests included ornithology and art and who thrived in bohemian company
DERWENT MAY, who has died aged 90, was a man of letters of exceptional learning and amiability, equally at home as an appreciator of people, books, pictures, flowers and birds.
Peregrine Worsthorne, who in 1986, on becoming editor of The Sunday Telegraph, appointed May literary and arts editor (while the latter continued contributing his Nature Notes columns to The Times), later recalled: “For years I had been meeting him and his enchanting wife Yolanta at Margot Walmsley’s incomparable salon … Endlessly intriguing … was the contrast between Derwent’s meek and mild manner and the steely toughness of his taste.”
May had a remarkable ability to hold strong opinions while remaining charitable towards, and amused by, those who disagreed with him.
He understood that the life of the mind thrives in convivial, even raffish, surroundings, and for many years he and Yolanta entertained with bohemian flair a distinguished circle of writers, musicians, artists and scholars at their house in Albany Street, on the eastern side of Regent’s Park.
Here one might find oneself sitting next to the writer V S Pritchett, the conductor Jane Glover, the scholars William and Shirley Letwin, the editor of The Times Literary Supplement Arthur Crook, the Provost of University College, London, Noel Annan, or the novelist Beryl Bainbridge.
Towards the end of one celebrated dinner, which May loved to recall, Beryl Bainbridge, sitting between Crook and Annan, fell fast asleep with her head in Crook’s lap and her feet on Annan’s, while the party carried on around her.
The following day she happened to meet Crook in Camden Town, and far from feeling abashed, told him: “Arthur, you’re a very messy eater. I had a lot of your pudding in my hair.”
Derwent James May was born at Eastbourne on April 19 1930. His father, Herbert May, had stood unsuccessfully at Maldon in Essex as Liberal candidate in the general election of 1929, at which time he was described as acting “in a managerial capacity for a firm owning multiple shops”. He afterwards left his wife, Nellie (née Newton), and supported himself as a professional gambler.
May was educated at Strode’s School, Egham, where he became lifelong friends with the zoologist Aubrey Manning, and at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he wrote poetry and made his first excursions into journalism. He did National Service as a gunner in the Royal Horse Artillery, with whom he deployed to Egypt, where he was able to indulge his passion for ornithology.
After a short spell as theatre and film critic for the Continental Daily Mail in Paris, May obtained a post as English lecturer at the University of Indonesia, followed by a job with the British Council as lecturer in English literature at the Universities of Warsaw and Lodz.
Here he met Yolanta Sypniewska, whom he married in 1961 after she had graduated.
On returning to the United Kingdom in 1963, May was taken on by The Times Literary Supplement as leader writer, and two years later was appointed literary editor of The Listener, the BBC’S magazine, a position he held for more than two decades.
As an editor May combined passion with fairness. He knew everyone in literary London, had an infallible eye for obscure but gifted poets, and was loved also by the least important members of his own staff, to many of whom he gave unobtrusive help.
After several years at The Sunday Telegraph he had a spell at The European. He served as a judge of the Booker and Hawthornden Prizes.
His books included four novels, critical studies of Marcel Proust and Hannah Arendt, and a delightful volume of poems entitled Wondering About Many Women. He was literary consultant to the London Magazine, composed the London Letter for the Hudson Review, and for more than half a century was to be seen at every art exhibition of any consequence in London and beyond.
He took a close but irreverent interest in modern painters, recently remarking that “to my mind Picasso, in his greatest years, was essentially a comic artist.” Despite possessing poor eyesight, he had a genius for identifying birds, and was the author for almost 40 years of the Nature Notes in The Times.
May himself resembled some benign and smallish bird, a wren perhaps, unshowy but distinctive.
Lucinda Lambton, married since 1991 to Worsthorne, once happened to overhear May say as he telephoned over a Nature Note: “The bumblebee is looking particularly merry today.” In her words, “who but a sweetheart could have said that?”
May was game for just about anything. When a friend presented a show on hospital radio, he accepted her invitation to go along and do his imitation of the nightingale’s song. In gratitude for the loan of a house in Suffolk, he climbed aboard a motorised mower and set off in high spirits and at high speed to cut the grass, despite never having driven a car.
He took a serious interest in claret and would split multiple-case lots which he and a friend bought at auction. He always found time for lunch, had a number of favourite restaurants, and was a familiar figure at the Beefsteak, Garrick and Academy clubs.
He is survived by his wife Yolanta, along with their son Orlando and daughter Miranda.
A little over a month before his death, May had a fall and was admitted to hospital. On hearing, a few days before he died, that one of his visitors had been fortunate enough to go for a walk in Christ Church Meadow, Oxford, he asked whether the jonquils were in bloom.
Derwent May, born April 19 1930, died September 26 2020