Works
Payne had more than 110 books published, including novels, histories and biographies. He was best known for the biographies, which included studies of Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Chiang Kai-shek, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Sun Yat-sen, André Malraux, William Shakespeare, Alexander the Great, the White Rajahs of Sarawak and George C. Marshall.
As a novelist, Payne used the pseudonyms Richard Cargoe, John Anthony Devon, Howard Horne, Valentin Tikhonov, and Robert Young. For his biographies, he wrote under the name "Robert Payne." In 1954, he published a pastiche novella, The Deluge, as Leonardo da Vinci; the book was mostly Payne's writing, incorporating "fragmentary da Vinci notes."
One of Payne's better-known works is The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (1973). This biography is now perceived to be tremendously flawed. It is widely acknowledged that Payne uncritically accepted unreliable sources -- including Bridget Dowling (Hitler's sister-in-law) for a completely fictional year spent in Liverpool, England. However at this time, Dowling's claims regarding this non-existent visit had been under-researched, and even the well-known Hitler biographer Alan Bullock was unaware that they were false.
Read more about this topic: Pierre Stephen Robert Payne
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“Only the more uncompromising of the mystics still seek for knowledge in a silent land of absolute intuition, where the intellect finally lays down its conceptual tools, and rests from its pragmatic labors, while its works do not follow it, but are simply forgotten, and are as if they never had been.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)
“Audible prayer can never do the works of spiritual understanding, which regenerates; but silent prayer, watchfulness, and devout obedience enable us to follow Jesus’ example. Long prayers, superstition, and creeds clip the strong pinions of love, and clothe religion in human forms. Whatever materializes worship hinders man’s spiritual growth and keeps him from demonstrating his power over error.”
—Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910)