Gordon Neil Stewart

Gordon Neil Stewart
Born	(1912-06-25)25 June 1912 Melbourne, Australia
Died	15 February 1999(1999-02-15) (aged 86) Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation	Writer
Genre	History, biography, fiction
Spouses	Pamela Hansford Johnson ​ ​ (m. 1936; div. 1949)​ Doreen Ellen Coulling ​ ​ (m. 1950)​
Children	3
Relatives	Eric Lubbock, 4th Baron Avebury (son-in-law)

Gordon Neil Stewart (25 June 1912 – 15 February 1999) was an Australian writer.[1][2] [3] [4] [5]

Early life

Stewart was born in Melbourne into a wealthy Australian family with pastoral interests in the Bathurst district of New South Wales. He was a great-grandson of Major General William Stewart (1769–1854) Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales from 1825 to 1827.[6] Stewart received a spasmodic education at The Scots College, Sydney due to his parents' frequent travels, but developed a love of reading from long holidays spent in the library of his uncle's house (Abercrombie House) in Bathurst.[7] The family moved to Paris when Stewart was in his late teens, where he attended an English language school and then studied art.

Career

With other members of his family now based in England, Stewart settled in London where he worked from time to time as a journalist and became involved in radical politics. He mixed in literary circles and met Pamela Hansford Johnson and Dylan Thomas. He is said to have been banished from the poetry circle of Victor Neuburg, a former associate of occultist Aleister Crowley, for making jokes about 'yogis and bogeys'.[8]

In 1936, he married Pamela Hansford Johnson (1s 1941, 1d 1944), with whom he collaborated on two thrillers under the name Nap Lombard. When the Second World War broke out he joined the British army and served as an officer in the artillery in India and Burma. After his divorce from Pamela Hansford Johnson, Stewart married Doreen Ellen Coulling in 1950 (1d 1952).

In 1953, he published The Cloak and Dollar War, the first book to be written about the Central Intelligence Agency, described by intelligence scholar Richard J. Aldrich as a revelatory text.[9]

Later years

Stewart returned to Australia in 1955 and worked in Sydney as a journalist for the mining and construction industry. He retired to Bathurst in 1983, where he died on 15 February 1999.

Bibliography

Fiction

• Tidy Death (1940, Cassell and Co.) as Nap Lombard with Pamela Hansford Johnson
• Murder's a Swine (1943, Hutchinson) as Nap Lombard with Pamela Hansford Johnson
• House of Bondage (1975, Australasian Book Society) ISBN 978-0-909916-67-1
• The Place of Gold (2020, Harry Stewart, Canberra) ISBN 9780648492832 The place of gold.

Biography

• Blanqui (1939, Victor Gollancz)
• Convict rebel: Ralph Entwistle in "Rebels and Radicals" Edited by Eric Fry (1983, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney) ISBN 978-0-86861-285-0.
• The Claimant: a story of Australia, Scotland and England (2019, Harry Stewart, Canberra) ISBN 9780648492818 The Claimant: a story of Australia, Scotland and England.

History

• The Fight for the Charter (1937, Chapman and Hall)
• The Cloak and Dollar War (1953, Lawrence and Wishart)

Politics

• Background to new Hungary (1950, Fore publications, London) as Neil Stewart
• Journey to Hungary (1950, Hungarian news and Information Service, London) as Neil Stewart

Edited book

• Australian Stories of Horror and Suspense from the Early Days (1978, Australasian Book Society) ISBN 978-0-909916-86-2.

References

1. Who's Who of Australian Writers. D. W. Thorpe 1995 2nd edition. 822 pages ISBN 1-875589-20-1, page 650.
2. "Biographies relating to collections of personal papers, correspondence and Australian literary manuscripts. Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Sydney Library". Archived from the original on 18 February 2010. Retrieved 13 December 2010.
3. "Austlit".
4. "National Library of Australia".
5. "Goodreads".
6. Barker, Theo. "Stewart, William (1769–1854)". Cultural Advice. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University – via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
7. A Boy and his Reading 1917-1921. Gordon Neil Stewart Overland 125 (1991) pages 10-15
8. The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg. Jean Overton Fuller (W.H.Allen, 1965) page 271
9. CIA History as a Cold War Battleground. The Forgotten First Wave of Agency Narratives by Richard J Aldrich, Chapter 1 of Intelligence Studies in Britain and the US: Historiography since 1945. Editors C J Moran and C J Murphy. (Edinburgh University Press, 2013). ISBN 9780748646272. Pages 23-25, 40.