Tweed, Thomas F
Entry updated 28 October 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1890-1940) UK soldier, publisher and author, in active service during World War One, political advisor to David Lloyd George (1863-1945) from 1927 until his death. This relationship, and his affair with Lloyd George's then mistress (and eventual wife) Frances Stevenson (1888-1972) both figure, transposed to America, in his first Scientific Romance, the Near-Future Rinehard: A Melodrama of the Nineteen-Thirties (1933; vt Gabriel Over the White House: A Novel of the Presidency 1933), filmed as Gabriel Over the White House (1933) directed by Gregory La Cava. The Lloyd-George-like American President Hammond, after a car crash, begins to transform society, and providentially destroys a Japanese war fleet through the use of air power, but – after recovering his old conventional personality – dies before he can dismantle the new world order (see Pax Aeronautica). In the film version, Hammond swiftly becomes a dictator, ruthlessly suppressing opposition and demilitarizing the planet (except for America); but then dies in the nick of time Blind Mouths (1934; vt Destiny's Man 1935) less interestingly posits the collapse of a world to come. Both books are written with smooth gravity. [JC]
Thomas Frederic Tweed
born Liverpool, England: 11 May 1890
died Hendon, Middlesex [now London]: 30 April 1940
works
- Rinehard: A Melodrama of the Nineteen-Thirties (London: Arthur Barker, 1933) [hb/uncredited]
- Gabriel Over the White House: A Novel of the Presidency (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1933) [vt of the above: hb/]
- Blind Mouths (London: Arthur Barker, 1934) [hb/]
- Destiny's Man (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1935) [vt of the above: hb/]
links
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