David Pryce-Jones

David Eugene Henry Pryce-Jones (15 February 1936 – 17 November 2025) was a British conservative author, historian and political commentator.

Early life Pryce-Jones was born in Meidling, Vienna, Austria, on 15 February 1936. He was educated at Eton and earned a degree in history at Magdalen College, Oxford. While at Oxford in 1957, he was runner-up for the Newdigate Prize.

He was the son of writer Alan Payan Pryce-Jones (1908–2000) by his first wife (married 1934), Therese "Poppy" Fould-Springer (1914–1953) of the Fould family. Therese was a daughter of Baron Eugène Fould-Springer, a French-born banker who was a cousin of Achille Fould, and Marie-Cecile or Mitzi Springer, later Mrs Frank Wooster or Mary Wooster, whose father was the industrialist Baron Gustav Springer (1842–1920), son of Baron Max Springer. She also had a brother, Baron Max Fould-Springer (1906–1999), and two sisters Helene Propper de Callejón (1907–1997), wife of Spanish diplomat Eduardo Propper de Callejón and grandmother of actress Helena Bonham Carter, and Baroness Liliane de Rothschild (1916–2003).

His parents married in 1934 in Vienna, where Pryce-Jones was born at his grandfather's home. In 1940, a four-year-old Pryce-Jones was stranded with his nanny in Dieppe, Normandy, and was rescued from the invading German army by his mother's brother-in-law Eduardo Propper de Callejón. He acknowledged his uncle-by-marriage's efforts in saving his own life when Propper de Callejón retired from Spanish diplomatic service. He was reunited with his parents in England in 1941. At the time, he believed that the Islamic world would soon progress after decolonization, and was disappointed when this did not happen. which has been praised by Pryce-Jones as "prophetic". The American diplomat Philip H. Gordon gave a highly unfavorable review of Betrayal in Foreign Affairs, describing the book as a French-bashing "polemic" disguised as a work of history. Gordon accused Pryce-Jones of hypocrisy, noting that he took successive French governments to task for supporting Middle Eastern dictators like President Saddam Hussein of Iraq while failing to note that both the United States and the United Kingdom have also supported Middle Eastern dictators. Gordon wrote that Pryce-Jones's claim that French President Jacques Chirac was guilty of "perfidy" towards the West by opposing the Iraq War in 2003 was unfair, writing in 2007 that much of what happened in Iraq since 2003 appeared to justify Chirac's predictions of a debacle if the United States invaded.

Pryce-Jones wrote a biography, Evelyn Waugh and His World (1973). It was rather notorious for digging up conflict among the married Mitford siblings, with Pamela accusing Jessica of revealing private correspondence concerning their sister the Duchess of Devonshire. The 1976 biography Unity Mitford: A Quest followed, despite alleged efforts by some of Unity Mitford's sisters to prevent Pryce-Jones from doing his research and publishing the book.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1980.

Personal life and death Pryce-Jones married Clarissa Caccia, daughter of diplomat Harold Caccia, Baron Caccia, in 1959.

He gave a comprehensive recorded interview about his life – his childhood escape from the Nazis, his friendships with Isaac Bashevis Singer, Arthur Koestler, Stalin’s daughter Svetlana, John Gross and others, in conversation with his friend Tom Gross during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Pryce-Jones died at home from kidney failure on 17 November 2025, at the age of 89.