et pour faire bonne mesure, un an plus tard, la nécro de De-La-Noy
Obituary
Michael De-la-Noy
Mercurial writer at the centre of an Anglican dispute about sexual tolerance
Jonathan Fryer
Fri 16 Aug 2002 02.16 CEST
The writer, journalist and erstwhile ecclesiastical official Michael De-la-Noy, who has died aged 68 of cancer following a stroke, was a box of fireworks who could explode entertainingly at the most inappropriate moments. The author of more than 20 books between 1971 and last year, he never achieved critical acclaim because he was far more interested in gossip than in scholarship. But he won the admiration and affection of a wide circle of friends - and even of some enemies.
His one real commercial success was a book about Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (The Queen Behind The Throne, 1994). She was, in many ways, the perfect subject for him. The interface between the establishment and the gay demi-monde was De-la-Noy's home territory, and he relished the intrigue of her role in the Charles- Diana saga.
Other books, such as his intimate life of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey (Michael Ramsey: A Portrait, 1990), brought him a degree of notoriety. He also wrote a biography of Elgar (1983), The Honours System (1985) and Eddy: The Life Of Edward Sackville-West (1988).
Born in Hessle, Yorkshire, Michael attended Bedford school. This was not an entirely happy experience, and he ran away at the age of 13 - though this did not prevent him from accepting a commission to write the school's official history in 1999. He was in the Western desert doing national service on the day that the Queen was crowned in 1953, and fainted on parade, "but only because the colour sergeant was so beautiful," he said.
By this time, he had happily embraced his homosexual orientation, and, being a singularly handsome young man, he had little difficulty making conquests. He retained his lithe figure, though not his looks, for the rest of his life.
After uninspiring junior journalistic stints on the Bedfordshire Times and the Brighton and Hove Herald, in 1961 Michael went to work for Tim Beaumont, the radical Anglican who inherited a fortune and was made a life peer, using both opportunities to promote liberal and, later, green causes, mainly through sponsoring publications such as Prism, of which Michael was assistant editor.
In 1967, Michael became press secretary to Archbishop Ramsey, a post that involved long, hectic days and some foreign travel. On one visit to Bermuda, he had to sort out a kerfuffle over the appointment of a new bishop. But his greatest achievement on that trip, or so he claimed, was to get off with the governor general's driver.
Ramsey was a man of liberal disposition, but even he blanched at some of his press secretary's actions. The axe fell in 1970, following a sympathetic article Michael wrote for New Society and Forum magazines about a bisexual, transvestite colonel living in Earls Court. Michael subsequently suffered a nervous breakdown, and always maintained that he had been pushed out of Lambeth Palace by a cabal of jealous employees.
Convinced that there was nothing distinguished about the legacy of his family name of Walker, he had, by this time, hyphenated his middle name to De-la-Noy, and adopted it as a nom de plume. When, years later, a friend mischievously circulated the entirely false rumour that his real name was Delaney, he was apoplectic. To add insult to injury, another friend then gave him the nickname "Shelagh", after the author of A Taste Of Honey.
Teasing Michael was irresistible; if the jibe struck home, he would flush bright scarlet and splutter. But he could give as good as he got. His personal letters were often masterpieces of genuine fury, mock vituperation and outrageous flights of fancy, sometimes involving adopted alter egos - a favourite was a depraved Bedford school pupil, MY Balls, 4th form. In his letters, he would sweetly attribute public honours to fellow writers, though he invariably got the genders mixed up.
This all meant that De-la-Noy could be huge fun, but there was another, much darker, side to his personality. From time to time, he would sink into depression, and feel that he had done nothing with his life. In vain, one would argue that, in his work on, for example, the much-neglected writer Denton Welch in 1984, he had made a real contribution to English literature.
Throughout all this, and during Michael's final illness, his rock was his partner of more than 30 years, Bruce Hodson, in Northamptonshire, to whom he would return each weekend, from London or Hove - or from wherever he had been firing off his rockets during the week.
Michael De-la-Noy (Walker), writer, born April 3 1934; died August 12 2002
.
