Shane Leslie: Sublime Failure

Shane Leslie (1885-1971) – diplomat; man of letters (novelist, biographer, poet, historian, pamphleteer); Irish, Anglo-Irish and half-American aristocrat; religious devotee; first cousin of Winston Churchill, Irish nationalist, British subject. Using new archival material Otto Rauchbauer of the University of Vienna provides a scholarly context for understanding and appreciating this neglected writer, observer and witness of his turbulent times.

Third baronet of Glaslough, born at Castle Leslie, County Monaghan, old Etonian and graduate of King’s College, Cambridge; a familiar of Tolstoy’s whom he met in 1907 and doyen of New York where as a reader for Scribner’s he discovered Scott Fitzgerald; founder member of the Irish Academy of Letters, Catholic convert and proto-Republican, Leslie straddled many worlds and was a bellwether of Irish and English politics.

As an Irish patriot with allegiances to the Crown, Shane Leslie struggled throughout his life to reconcile his various national and cultural identities. His abortive political career deserves renewed attention.

Including twenty-four illustrations and fifty annotated letters, this book redraws the prevailing picture of the man and presents a fascinating portrait of an age.