Tom driberg biography

  • Thomas Edward Neil Driberg, Baron Bradwell (– 12 August ) was a British journalist, politician, High Anglican churchman and possible Soviet.
  • The flamboyant and active homosexual Tom Driberg led an adventurous life.
  • Thomas Edward Neil Driberg, Baron Bradwell was a British journalist, politician, High Anglican churchman and possible Soviet spy, who served as a Member of Parliament from to , and again from to

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    Tom Driberg

    British journalist, politician and churchman

    "Driberg" redirects here. For the British anthropologist, see Jack Herbert Driberg.

    Thomas Edward Neil Driberg, Baron Bradwell (22 May – 12 August ) was a British reporter, politician, High Anglican churchman and possible Soviet spy, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from to , and again from to A member of the Communist Party of Great Britain for more than twenty years, he was first elected to parliament as an Independent and joined the Labour Party in He never held any ministerial office, but rose to senior positions within the Labour Party and was a popular and influential figure in left-wing politics for many years.

    The son of a retired colonial officer, Driberg was educated at Lancing and Christ Church, Oxford. After leaving the university without a degree, he attempted to establish himself as a poet before joining the Daily Express as a reporter, later becoming a columnist. In he began the "William Hi

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    The Soul of Indiscretion: Tom Driberg, poet, philanderer, legislator and outlaw – His Life and Indiscretions

    Francis Wheen’s brilliantly comic portrait of one of the 20th-century’s great characters, Tom Driberg: wit, parliamentarian, serial cottager, alleged communist spy and friend to the Kray brothers.

    There are few people for whom marriage was so ill-suited yet well attended: at Tom Driberg’s were cabinet ministers and mobsters, Betjeman and Waugh, but it was Osbert Lancaster who commemorated the sheer extraordinariness of the occasion, and with it celebrated the social life of Driberg, and an era of Englishness now passed into history when the Brideshead generation sang the ‘Red Flag’:

    Friends of yours and friends of mine, Friends we always thought were dead
    Friends who toe the party line, Friends we know are off their head
    Labour friends who’re gratified Girl-friends, boy-friends, friends ambiguous
    At being allowed to kiss the bride. Coloured friends from the Antiguas
    Artist

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    Ruling Passions

    June 6,
    Fascinating . Yes it’s a murky , candid and slightly seedy (in places ) book and would have been viewed as salacious in its time (more so than today) , but I couldn’t put it down for some reason .

    I knew very little about Driberg but he featured heavily in a book called ‘Stalin’s Englishman’ which covered the life of the spy Guy Burgess. Driberg came over as quite a shadowy , background figure, a possible double agent and arch manipulator. After finishing that book , his name cropped up again , first in a documentary I watched about the Labour Party, and then later, in a podcast series I was following. I decided to find out more about him and when I discovered he had written a partial memoir I decided to take a look.

    It’s a shame he didn’t complete the full memoir as it comes to an abrupt stop , presumably because of his illness and subsequent death. The writing is good , it’s engaging and at times both gossipy and matter of fact. He made no attempt to h
  • tom driberg biography