WEST, Anthony

(1914-1987)

   UK writer, in the USA for much of his life, son of H.G. WELLS and Rebecca West (1892-1983). His H.G. Wells: Aspects of a Life (1984), published just after his mother's death, was widely understood as an act of retribution aimed mainly at her - he was an illegitimate child and was raised eccentrically - and only secondarily at Wells. His first novel, On a Dark Night (1949 UK; vt The Vintage 1950 US), is an afterlife fantasy describing a suicide's questings through space and time for the meaning of life. Another Kind (1951 UK) is a NEAR FUTURE story with love in the foreground and a UK civil war filling the scene.

   JC