Alaric Jacob - Writing and Journalism

Writing and Journalism

While in France Jacob started writing, returning to England after the General Strike. When he was seventeen his first play was produced at Plymouth where he started his career as a journalist on the Western Morning News. His second play The Compleat Cynic was produced at Plymouth in the following year. In 1930, at the age of twenty-one, he published his first novel Seventeen a fictionalised account of his school days in Canterbury. By then he had become a close friend of Margot Asquith, forty years his senior, who was to become his mentor and a decisive literary influence. At her house he met editors as well as important figures. She introduced him to Sir Roderick Jones, the head of Reuters, and at the age of 21 he was offered a position as diplomatic correspondent for Reuters in London.

During his time in London, with his charm and wit, Jacob moved in high social and intellectual circles. He wrote a play in which the hero was a communist and as a result decided to read Das Capital. In 1934, he married Iris Morley, daughter of Lieut-Col Chartres Morley. She was a historical novelist and journalist for The Observer and the Yorkshire Post. This was at the time of the depression and the hunger marches and these stirred up socialist sentiments in the couple. He felt a rapport with the marchers, and concluded that Marx was about 90% right. In 1936 the Jacob's went to Washington where as a foreign correspondent he was a regular and close contact with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Jacob's stayed in Washington until the outbreak of the World War II, when they returned to London.