Patrick Skene Catling, the English author, journalist and critic, has died, aged 100.
Best known for his debut, The Chocolate Touch (1952), which inspired the long-running John Midas children’s series, he wrote 12 novels, three works of nonfiction and nine books for children. His final book, the novel Murder Becomes Electra: A Love Story, was published by Somerville Press in 2017.
Born in London on St Valentine’s Day, 1925, he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force then worked as a staff journalist at The Baltimore Sun and the Guardian in London. His first wife, Susan Barnes Watson, was the daughter of his editor at the Baltimore Sun. After their divorce, she married the Labour Politican Tony Crosland.
The title of his memoir, Better Than Working (Liberties Press, 2006), a hymn to a vanished era in British and American journalism, was inspired by the advice of his father, a Reuters jounrlaist, that writing was “better than working”. His career took him all over the world. He interviewed Louis Armstrong and James Baldwin and became a close friend of P.G. Wodehouse.
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He moved to Ireland in 1971, first to Castle Leslie in Co Monaghan before settling in west Cork the following year on the advice of his friend and fellow writer, Wolf Mankowitz, who lived nearby.
Up until his 90s, he was a regular reviewer for The Irish Times as well as several British newspapers and magazines. His last, in 2018, was of JP Donleavy’s The Ginger Man Letters, edited by Bill Dunn.
Skene Catling died on January 9th in St Joseph’s hospital in Bantry, west Cork. His home was in Reenacoppul nearby. He is survived by his partner of 50 years, Diana Laing, and four children from his two marriages, Sheila, Ellen, Charlotte and Desmond. He will be cremated in Cork city in a private ceremony and a memorial service is planned for later this year.
