Peter Quennell

Sir Peter Courtney Quennell CBE (9 March 1905 – 27 October 1993) was an English biographer, literary historian, editor, essayist, poet, and critic.

After World War I the Quennells wrote a popular series of illustrated children’s books, A History of Everyday Things in England (four volumes, 1918–1934).

[4] At Oxford he forged some lasting literary friendships, including with Robert Graves, and made some enemies (Evelyn Waugh).

[2] Other literary biographies followed, including the Four Portraits of 1945 (studies of Boswell, Gibbon, Sterne, and Wilkes), and full length works on Byron (three volumes, 1934, 1935, 1941), Pope (1949), Ruskin (1949), Hogarth (1955), Shakespeare (1963), Proust (1971) and Samuel Johnson (1972).

"[2] He married five times: to Nancy Marianne (1928), Marcelle Marie José (1935), Joyce Frances Glur (1938), Sonia Geraldine Leon (1956, daughter Sarah), and Joan Marilyn Peek (1967, son Alexander).