Raymond Postgate

Raymond Postgate was born in Cambridge in 1896, the eldest son of the classical scholar Professor J.P. Postgate. He was educated at St. John's College, Oxford. During the First World War he was a conscientious objector and was jailed for two weeks in 1916. He married Daisy Lansbury, the daughter of George Lansbury, pacifist and leader of the Labour Party. His career in journalism started in 1918 and he worked for several Left-wing periodicals. He was also Departmental Editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica for its 1929 edition.He was greatly interested in food and wine and wrote The Plain Man's Guide to Wine (1951). He founded and ran the Good Food Club, as well as editing its Good Food Guide. In recognition of his work on this subject the Medieval Jurade of St. Emilion made him a Peer in 1951. Postgate wrote and edited many books, ranging from biographies, detective stories, a novel and short stories to histories of the workers and trade unionism and a number of sociological and political works. He also edited and translated classical texts such as Perviglium Veneris (1924) and The Agamemnon of Aeschylus (1969). His other books include Revolution from 1789 to 1906 (edited, 1920), A Short History of the British Workers (1926), No Epitaph (1932), Karl Marx (1933), The Common People 1746-1938 (written in collaboration with his brother-in-law G.D.H. Cole, 1939), Verdict of Twelve (1940), The Life of George Lansbury (1951) and The Ledger is Kept (1953).His son was Oliver Postgate, the popular creator of many classic British television programmes for children.