Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator

(Paperback)

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The first ever biography of the man who made Proust a legend, his celebrated translator, C.K. Scott Moncrieff C. K. Scott Moncrieff's celebrated translation of Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu was first published in 1922 and was a work which would exhaust and consume the translator, leading to his early death at the age of just forty. Joseph Conrad told him, 'I was more interested and fascinated by your rendering than by Proust's creation'- some literary figures even felt it was an improvement on the original. From the outside an enigma, Scott Moncrieff left a trail of writings that describe a man expert at living a paradoxical life- fervent Catholic convert and homosexual, gregarious party-goer and deeply lonely, interwar spy in Mussolini's Italy and public man of letters - a man for whom honour was the most abiding principle. He was a decorated war hero, and his letters home are an unusually light take on day-to-day life on the front. Described as 'offensively brave', he was severely injured in 1917 and, convalescing in London, became a lynchpin of literary society - friends with Robert Graves and Noel Coward, enemies with Siegfried Sassoon and in love with Wilfred Owen. Written by Scott Moncrieff's great-great-niece, Jean Findlay, with exclusive access to the family archive, Chasing Lost Time is a portrait of a man hurled into war, through an era when the world was changing fast and forever, who brought us the greatest epic of time and memory that has ever been written.

Reviews

A first-rate, playful, moving biography -- Roger Lewis * The Times *
Elegant and even-handed biography * Wall Street Journal *
In a hugely readable and well researched biography, Findlay paints a triple portrait of her ancestor as a devoted family man, homosexual Catholic and cultivated spy who turns out to be a far more engaging and fascinating subject than one would ever have imagined -- David Robinson * Scotsman *
The final revelation of Findlays book is that Moncrieff was far from the perfect Proustian of our imagination. Moncrieff is a lot more fun to be around than his careful sentences might suggest -- Adam Gopnik * The New Yorker *
A fascinating read * The Economist *

Author Bio

Jean Findlay was born in Edinburgh and studied Law and French at Edinburgh University, then theatre in Cracow with Tadeusz Kantor. She ran a theatre company, writing and producing plays in Berlin, Bonn, Dublin, Rotterdam, and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. She has written for the Scotsman, the Independent, Time Out and Performance magazine and lives in Edinburgh with her husband and three children. She is the great-great-niece of C K Scott Moncrieff.