Robert Payne (author)

Early life Payne was born on 4 December 1911, at Saltash, Cornwall. He was the son of Stephen Payne, an English naval architect, and Mireille Louise Antonia (Dorey) Payne, originally from France. He was educated at St. Paul's School in London, the Diocesan College at Rondebosch and the University of Cape Town in South Africa, the universities of Liverpool and Munich, and the Sorbonne. Career As a young man Payne worked as a shipwright in England and then at the Singapore Naval Base, where he transferred to Army Intelligence. He worked in China between 1941 and 1946, as cultural attaché to the British Embassy In 1946, Payne met and interviewed Mao Zedong in Yenan, providing background for his 1950 work Mao Tse-tung: Ruler of Red China. During the interview, Mao correctly predicted that it would take only a year and half for the Communist forces to conquer China after the armistice with Chiang Kai-shek and his followers was broken. Payne moved to the United States in 1946 and from 1949-54 was Professor of English and author in residence at Alabama College, Montevallo. He became a US citizen in 1953 and settled in New York City in 1954, devoting himself to writing and shifting his focus in part from novels and poetry to biography. He was chairman of the Translation Committee of PEN International, and in 1976 co-founded the Translation Center at Columbia University. He edited The Russian Library series for Washington Square Press. He died in Bermuda on 18 February 1983. Marriages Payne married Rose Hsiung, daughter of Hsiung Hse-ling, a former prime minister of China, in 1942. They divorced in 1951. He married Sheila Lalwani in 1981. ==Writing==

Early writing by Payne included two novels, The War in the Marshes and The Mountain and the Stars. He also reported for newspapers on the Spanish Civil War and from China on the war with Japan. While in China he also wrote autobiographical works, historical novels, and worked on The White Pony, a compilation of Chinese poetry. including novels, histories and biographies. He was best known for the biographies, which included studies of Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, Dostoyevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Chiang Kai-shek, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Sun Yat-sen, André Malraux, Shakespeare, Alexander the Great, the White Rajahs of Sarawak and General George C. Marshall. Payne also dined and had long conversations with Mao Zedong in 1946. As a novelist, Payne used the pseudonyms Richard Cargoe, John Anthony Devon, Howard Horne, Valentin Tikhonov, and Robert Young. He also performed translations into English from many languages, including works by Pasternak and Kierkegaard. Critical reaction Payne was described in 1947 as "a poet and a believer in the permanent power of beauty", and as a "young English author whose versatility and prolific output have astonished the literary world". The New York Times in 1950 called him "the most versatile writer of the year". Orville Prescott, book reviewer for the New York Times, claimed that "No man alive can write more beautiful prose than Robert Payne." The American critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote that the effect of this approach was "interesting and terrifying". The historian Alan Bullock commented that Payne's focus on Hitler's personal life resulted in a good account of Hitler's earlier years, but proved less productive for his later life when he "becomes absorbed in politics". The Biography Book recognised the "narrative and imaginative power" of Payne's account, while stating that "it incorporates speculation as fact". One example of this was the book's acceptance of claims by Bridget Dowling (Hitler's sister-in-law) and others that Hitler had spent time in Liverpool before 1914, a claim later - and, in view of Payne's personal meeting in Munich with Hitler in 1937, albeit speculatively - described as "conclusively disproved". Payne was said to be "a firm adherent to the conspiracy theory of politics" and among biographies of Lenin, Payne's book was described as "the easiest to read ... also the easiest to forget". The Los Angeles Times commented on the Leonardo biography that "Payne makes a persuasive case ... The biography is ... a rendering of respect and admiration for the man." ==Bibliography==