Richard Plunket Greene

Richard George Hubert Plunket Greene (1 July 1901 – 25 March 1978) was an English racing motorist, a jazz musician and author. He was also a member of the British socialite group known by the tabloid press of the 1920s as 'The Bright Young Things.'

Biography Richard George Hubert Plunket Greene was born on 1 July 1901, the son of Harry Plunket Greene, an Irish baritone who was most famous in the formal concert and oratorio repertoire, and Gwendolen Maud Parry, the daughter of Hubert Parry, English composer, teacher and historian of music. His grandmother, Louisa Lelias (Lilias) Plunket, was an author as well (Bound by a spell, or The Hunted Witch of the Forest, 1885). Waugh described him as "a piratical in appearance, sometimes wearing ear-rings, a good man in a boat, a heavy smoker of dark, strong tobacco, tinged, as were his siblings, with melancholy, but also infused with a succession of wild, obsessive enthusiasms. He brought to the purchase of a pipe or a necktie the concentration of a collector. During the next few years I saw him become a connoisseur of wine, a racing motorist, an exponent of the latest jazz, the author of a detective novel". Also at Oxford, Richard Plunket Greene made friends with Anthony Powell. He was also friend with Rosa Lewis.

In the 1920s, he was a school-master at Aston Clinton School. He introduced Waugh to the school’s headmaster, Albert Edward Bredan-Crawford. For a short period he was a business partner of sports-car designer Archibald Frazer-Nash.

On 21 December 1926, Evelyn Waugh was best man at Richard Plunket Greene's wedding to Elizabeth Frances Russell (1899-1979), first cousin once removed of Bertrand Russell. Her aunts were Flora Russell and Diana Russell and her great-grandmother was Diana Russell, Duchess of Bedford. Patrick Balfour, 3rd Baron Kinross was a guest at the wedding. They had one son Alexander Plunket Greene (1932-1990), who married fashion designer Mary Quant. In 1934, they wrote Eleven-Thirty Till Twelve, a detective novel set in London Society.

Richard Plunket Greene died in 1978 in Falmer, England, and is buried at St Andrew Churchyard, Hurstbourne Priors, Hampshire, near his father and his brother David. When Harman Grisewood, who wanted to write a biography of Gwendolen Maud, Plunket Greene's mother, wrote to Alexander Plunket Greene, this latter told him that his father destroyed everything to do with the family, all correspondence included.