Andrew James Hamilton Lownie FRHistS (born November 1961) is a British biographer and literary agent. [1] [2] [3]
Andrew James Hamilton Lownie FRHistS (born November 1961) is a British biographer and literary agent. [1] [2] [3]
His father was judge Ralph Hamilton Lownie of Largo (1924-2007). He was educated at Westminster School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, and was President of the Cambridge Union in Easter term 1984. [4] He has a master's degree and doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. [5] His doctoral thesis (2019) was titled "Stalin's Englishman: the lives of Guy Burgess: biography in intelligence history" and discussed his own 2015 book on Burgess. [6]
Lownie founded his eponymous literary agency in 1988. It specialises in non-fiction, representing some 200 authors, and is reported to have "regularly been the top selling agent in the world." [7] He founded, and is President of, The Biographers' Club, [8] a group "committed to supporting, promoting and connecting biographers at all levels." [9]
Lownie has written biographies of writer John Buchan, [10] spy Guy Burgess [11] [12] and Lord Mountbatten and his wife Edwina. [13] While researching for his book on the Mountbattens, Lownie found himself blocked by the Cabinet Office and University of Southampton, despite public money being used in 2011 to acquire their archive to "ensure public access". [14] [15] [16]
In 2021, Lownie published The Traitor King, a biography, based on fresh sources, of the Duke of Windsor. The former Edward VIII is alleged by Lownie to have been a Nazi sympathiser who gave aid and comfort to his country’s enemies before and during the Second World War. [17]
Lownie also wrote a literary guide to Edinburgh, [18] and has edited several volumes of John Buchan's works.
Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, commonly known as Lord Mountbatten, was a British statesman, naval officer, colonial administrator and close relative of the British royal family. He was born in the United Kingdom to the prominent Battenberg family. He was a maternal uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and a second cousin of King George VI. He joined the Royal Navy during the First World War and was appointed Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command, in the Second World War. He later served as the last Viceroy of India and briefly as the first Governor-General of the Dominion of India.
The British royal family comprises King Charles III and his close relations. There is no strict legal or formal definition of who is or is not a member, although the Royal Household has issued different lists outlining who is a part of the royal family. Members often support the monarch in undertaking public engagements, and pursue charitable work and interests. Members of the royal family are regarded as British and world cultural icons.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. As such, he was the consort of the British monarch from his wife's accession on 6 February 1952 until his death in 2021, making him the longest-serving royal consort in history.
Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh is a member of the British royal family. He is the youngest child of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and the youngest sibling of King Charles III. He was born 3rd in the line of succession to the British throne and is now 14th.
Mountbatten-Windsor is the personal surname used by some of the male-line descendants of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Under a declaration made in Privy Council in 1960, the name Mountbatten-Windsor applies to male-line descendants of Queen Elizabeth II without royal styles and titles. Individuals with royal styles do not usually use a surname, but some descendants of the Queen with royal styles have used Mountbatten-Windsor when a surname was required.
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the Cold War and was active from the 1930s until at least the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly, from the 1950s onwards.
The Anglo-German Fellowship was a membership organisation that existed from 1935 to 1939, and aimed to encourage friendly relations between the United Kingdom and Germany. It was sometimes perceived as being allied to Nazism. Previous groups in Britain with the same aims had been wound up when Adolf Hitler came to power.
Anthony Frederick Blunt, styled Sir Anthony Blunt from 1956 to November 1979, was a leading British art historian and Soviet spy.
The House of Mountbatten is a British dynasty that originated as a British branch of the German princely Battenberg family. The name was adopted on 14 July 1917, three days before the British royal family changed its name from "Saxe-Coburg and Gotha" to "Windsor", by members of the Battenberg family residing in the United Kingdom, due to rising anti-German sentiment among the British public during World War I. The name is a direct Anglicisation of the German Battenberg, the name of a small town in Hesse. The titles of count and later prince of Battenberg had been granted in the mid-19th century to a morganatic branch of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt, itself a cadet branch of the House of Hesse.
Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess was a British diplomat and Soviet double agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 1951 to the Soviet Union, with his fellow spy Donald Maclean, led to a serious breach in Anglo-United States intelligence co-operation, and caused long-lasting disruption and demoralisation in Britain's foreign and diplomatic services.
The Battenberg family is a non-dynastic cadet branch of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt, which ruled the Grand Duchy of Hesse until 1918. The first member was Julia Hauke, whose brother-in-law Grand Duke Louis III of Hesse created her Countess of Battenberg in 1851, with the style of Illustrious Highness (H.Ill.H.), at the time of her morganatic marriage to Grand Duke Louis's brother Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine. The name of the title refers to the town of Battenberg in Hesse. In 1858, the countess' title was elevated to Princess of Battenberg, with the style of Serene Highness (H.S.H.).
Operation Unthinkable was the name given to two related possible future war plans developed by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee against the USSR during 1945. The plans were never implemented. The creation of the plans was ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in May 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces' Joint Planning Staff in May 1945 at the end of World War II in Europe.
Cantab was a magazine produced by students at the University of Cambridge for nearly a decade between 1981 and 1990. It was unusual among British student magazines in being completely independent of student unions. Cantab operations were self-financed, initially through copy sales and advertising, later through advertising alone. The magazine's name, Cantab, is derived from the Latin name for Cambridge and is also short for Cantabrigiensis, the post nominal suffix indicating a degree from the University of Cambridge.
The Château de la Croë is a large detached villa situated in eight hectares of grounds on the Cap d'Antibes peninsula of the French Riviera, in the Alpes-Maritimes department of Southern France. The classical-style château was designed by architect Armand-Albert Rateau and built in 1927 for Sir Pomeroy Burton, general manager of Associated Newspapers.
John Evans Hunter was an American-born, BAFTA-nominated screenwriter in the British film industry. The son of actress Millicent Evans and producer/director Ernest J. Carpenter, Hunter was born in New York on 23 August 1911. He later claimed to be the illegitimate son of Douglas Fairbanks. His parents divorced in 1917 and his mother married director T. Hayes Hunter in Los Angeles in 1919. He graduated from Hollywood High School in 1927 and the family moved to England, where Hunter attended Trinity College, Cambridge. At Trinity, he was a member of the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club and an editor of the college paper.
F. A. Simpson was an Anglican priest, historian and a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
The Runagates Club is a 1928 collection of short stories by the Scottish author John Buchan. The collection consists of twelve tales presented as reminiscences of members of The Runagates Club, a London dining society. Several of the stories are recounted by recurrent characters in Buchan’s fiction, including Richard Hannay, Sandy Arbuthnot, John Palliser-Yeates, Charles Lamancha, and Edward Leithen.
Yola Letellier was a French socialite and the wife of a newspaper owner.
Stalin's Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess is a biography of the Soviet spy Guy Burgess by historian Andrew Lownie.
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