Charles Patrick Ranke Graves (1 December 1899 – 20 February 1971) was a British journalist, travel writer and novelist. He came from a large and creative literary family. Among his nine siblings were the writers Robert Graves and Philip Graves.
Early life
He was born at Red Branch House, Wimbledon, England, on 1 December 1899. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves (born in Dublin, 22 July 1846) who worked in the Home Office before becoming a senior inspector of schools. Graves senior also wrote poems and ballads and was a noted folklorist. His second wife, and the mother of five of his children, including Charles, was Amalie (Amy) Elizabeth Sophie (or Sophia) von Ranke, the daughter of a professor of medicine at the University of Munich.
Charles Graves attended Rokeby Preparatory School. He followed in his brother Robert's footsteps to Capthorne, and then, in 1913, to Charterhouse. His part-German heritage caused problems at school and harassment from fellow students during World War I.
He left Charterhouse in March 1918 and enlisted in the Royal Fusiliers. He was still undergoing officer training when the war came to an end.
He enrolled at St John's College, Oxford where he studied English. Always interested in sport, he became the captain of the golf team and played cricket and ice hockey.
He undertook additional instruction outside the university. In 1920, he became the first student to enroll in the London School of Journalism, founded that year by Sir Max Pemberton. He became the assistant editor of the student magazine The Isis. He later served as the editor, during which time its circulation increased from 1,200 to over 3,000. He also became the Oxford correspondent for the Daily Express.
Journalism
He started full-time work for the Daily Express in 1921. Later he worked for the Evening News, Sunday Express, Daily Mail, Daily Graphic, Sunday Chronicle, Sunday Dispatch and many other newspapers, magazines and periodicals, often as a freelance contributor. He was at various times a theatre reviewer, crime reporter, sports writer, war correspondent, travel writer and gossip columnist.
His work as a gossip columnist required regular attendance at theatre first nights, balls, parties, nightclubs, prize fights, race meetings and travel overseas to attend similar events in mainland Europe. He would often travel, at the expense of his newspaper, to Dinard, La Baule-Escoublac, Biarritz, Cannes, Deauville, Le Touquet, Venice and other resorts of the rich and famous in the 1920s and 1930s and write of who and what he saw and heard there. This brought him into contact with celebrities, politicians, sportsmen, royalty and business leaders, some of whom became friends. His literary friends included George Bernard Shaw, P. G. Wodehouse, Somerset Maugham and Rudyard Kipling. Some of them wrote introductions to his books.
Beatrice Lillie, Gertrude Lawrence, Owen Nares, and Fred and Adele Astaire were some of his friends in show business. Other associates were cartoonist Tom Webster, dancer Irene Castle and writer Michael Arlen.
Among his scoops in journalism was to break the news that Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon had become engaged to the Duke of York, the future King George VI.
He went to and reported on the dances and parties attended by the Bright young things, a group of Bohemian young aristocrats and upper-class socialites in London in the 1920s, and he sometimes took part in their pranks. He was a regular at Quaglino's, the Embassy Club, Ciro's, the Café de Paris, the Kit Kat, the Hambone Club and other nightclubs and restaurants, all of which was used in his reportage of Café Society.
When he became the news editor on the Sunday Express it brought him into more regular contact with senior newspapermen like Beverley Baxter, Lord Kemsley, Lord Camrose and Lord Beaverbrook.
One of his side projects was to ghost-write a memoir by Richard Speaight, society and court photographer, that was serialised in the Daily Express in 1926. This, and some of his other special projects, were syndicated to newspapers in other English speaking countries.
He believed his social column should be all about entertainment. He seldom mentioned politics, even in the late 1930s when war was looming. Instead, he tried to distract readers with amusing stories about sporting events and other leisure activities.
A shortage of newsprint during the war saw newspapers shrink in size and gossip columns almost disappear. As the 1940s progressed he gradually turned from journalism to the writing of commissioned histories and travel books.