Personal Life
Priestley had a deep love of classical music, and in 1941 he played an important part in organising and supporting a fund-raising campaign on behalf of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which was struggling to establish itself as a self-governing body after the withdrawal of Sir Thomas Beecham. In 1949 the opera The Olympians by Arthur Bliss, to a libretto by Priestley, was premiered.
Priestley snubbed the chance to become a lord in 1965 and investiture as a Companion of Honour in 1969. But he did become a member of the Order of Merit in 1977. He also served as a British delegate to UNESCO conferences. He was honoured by both the Universities of Birmingham and Bradford and the city of Bradford granted him Freedom of the City in 1973.
He married three times. In 1921 he married Emily "Pat" Tempest, a music-loving Bradford librarian. Two daughters were born, one in 1923 and one in 1924, but in 1925 his wife died of cancer. In September 1926, he married Jane Wyndham-Lewis (ex-wife of the original 'Beachcomber' D. B. Wyndham-Lewis, no relation to the artist Wyndham Lewis); they had two daughters and one son. In 1953, he divorced his second wife and married the archaeologist and writer Jacquetta Hawkes, his collaborator on the play Dragon's Mouth.
Read more about this topic: J. B. Priestley
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, personal and/or life:
“A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“It has no share in the leadership of thought: it does not even reflect its current. It does not create beauty: it apes fashion. It does not produce personal skill: our actors and actresses, with the exception of a few persons with natural gifts and graces, mostly miscultivated or half-cultivated, are simply the middle-class section of the residuum.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)