Reed, Douglas
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1895-1976) UK author, in South Africa from 1947, initially best known for controversial political/cultural studies like Insanity Fair (1938); the essays on World War Two assembled in All Our Tomorrows (coll 1942) culminate in a vision of Hermann Goering in 1979. In his sf novel, The Next Horizon (1945; vt Yeoman's Progress 1946), an Everyman figure and his family experience the twentieth century up to the end of the War, at which point they decide that Communism and Zionism were destroying white civilization (see Paranoia), and emigrate to South Africa in 1950.
In his later years, Reed became a Holocaust denier and argued, reprehensibly, that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1905; trans 1920 chap) was an authentic portrait of a Jewish "world-conspiracy". His posthumous reputation has been "rescued" by online reviewers who share his opinions. [JC]
David Launcelot Reed
born London: 11 March 1895
died Durban, South Africa: 26 August 1976
works (selected)
- All Our Tomorrows (London: Jonathan Cape, 1942) [nonfiction: coll: hb/]
- The Next Horizon (London: Jonathan Cape, 1945) [hb/nonpictorial]
- Yeoman's Progress (Indianapolis, Indiana: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1946) [vt of the above: hb/]
links
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