Travel writer Roderic Fenwick Owen’s memoir goes to Sphere

Sphere, part of the Little, Brown Book Group, has acquired 20th century travel writer and biographer Roderic Fenwick Owen’s memoir, Oh, What A Lovely Century.

Owen was a travel writer who lived from 1921 to 2011. He attended Oxford and Eton and survived many life-threatening jobs during World War Two to become a travel writer, says the publisher. His adventures took him from the Arctic to Australia, America to Russia and he married a Polynesian princess whilst beachcombing in Tahiti; but when a trip to 1950s New York opened his eyes to the fact he was more attracted to men than women, he was forced to continue his quest for his soulmate under threat of danger, at a time when the police were prosecuting and imprisoning more gay men than ever before, including some of his friends, says the publisher. 

The memoir, written as diaries before Owen's death, is billled as "a through-the-keyhole story of love, sex, war, tragedy, high society and adventure that traverses the breadth of 20th century planet earth." It will follow his life and career through some of the biggest moments of 20th century history, including experiencing Nazi Germany first-hand in 1939 (he arrived home days before war broke out); becoming court poet to the ruler of Abu Dhabi when the oil that would transform the region was discovered; and being part of significant conversations in the Pentagon during the Cold War.

Emily Barrett, editorial director, acquired world rights including dramatisation direct from Owen's literary estate. The memiors will be published on 5th August 2021, 100 years after Owen's birth. 

Barrett commented: "Finding Roddy’s memoirs was like finding treasure. Reading it for the first time was a Tiger-King-esque experience, because I didn’t think the next page could find a juicier direction – but it always did. I adored Anne Glenconner’s Lady in Waiting (and really admire Hodder’s successful publishing of it); this book is for those hundreds of thousands of readers desperate for more extraordinary life stories from the upper crust. Oh, What a Lovely Century even begins very similarly to Lady in Waiting; Anne and Roddy both being upper class children, they had similar upbringings. But Roddy, being eleven years older than Anne, had just reached adulthood during the Second World War and his many different experiences of it (from working in the ambulance service; being an air raid shelter warden during the Blitz; a nurse to those recovering from Dunkirk; and then serving in the RAF in North Africa and Italy) sets the tone for the rest of the book. Roddy had insatiable curiosity and energy; he wanted to go everywhere, meet everyone and try everything (and I mean everything). The result is that Oh, What a Lovely Century is a complete slice of 20th Century Planet Earth, featuring plenty of royalty, politicians and celebrities, but also ordinary people of all races, genders and backgrounds. 

"As publishers we often describe memoirs as ‘unflinchingly honest’. Roddy’s book gives a whole new meaning to that phrase. He only wanted them published for a wider audience after he and his generation had died – so that he could comfortably expose every detail he’d so meticulously recorded in diaries since he was a child without causing embarrassment to himself or his friends. But he was also desperate to tell the truth, having had to keep so much of it out of his writing for so long to suit society’s sensibilities and – with regards his homosexuality – the law. The result is an evocatively written, bare-all account of one man’s exciting journey through the highs and lows of the 20th century that reads more like fiction than fiction itself."