Roy Lewis

Ernest Michael Roy Lewis (6 November 1913 – 9 October 1996) was an English writer, a novelist of alternative histories and a small-press printer.

Early life and education Although born in Felixstowe, Lewis was brought up in Birmingham and educated at King Edward's School. After studying at University College, Oxford, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1934, he went on to study at the London School of Economics.

Career He began his career as an economist but, after serving as an editor on the journal The Statist, he became interested in journalism. He took a sabbatical in 1938 to travel to Australia and India.

Beginning in July 1939, he collaborated with Randal Heymanson to produce a newsletter called Vital News that they distributed confidentially to British and American government policymakers and bankers until December 1941.

From 1943 to 1946, he worked for the Peking Syndicate, a firm specialising in investments in China, but left to work as a journalist for the weekly Scope during 1946-8. Between 1952-61 he served as Washington, D.C. correspondent for The Economist, then settled full-time in England in 1961, where he became a feature writer for The Times, remaining with the newspaper until he retired in 1971.

In 1957, he had founded the Keepsake Press, initially to hand-print family ephemera. He soon began serious, though small-scale, production and by the time infirmity forced him to discontinue in 1990 he had brought out over a hundred titles.

Fiction The majority of the books that Lewis wrote or edited, often jointly, were non-fiction and closely related to his journalism. However, he is best known for his 1960 novel The Evolution Man, which went through six editions under a number of titles. This comic fiction purports to be a first-hand account by the son of the first man to discover fire. To prevent further "advances", the family takes matters in hand, leading to a conclusion given away by the book's eventual subtitle, "How I ate my father". Though the book was marketed as science fiction, Lewis demurred that his true intention was to write "something between a parable and a fantasy". Much later, the story line of the 2015 film Animal Kingdom: Let's Go Ape was loosely based on the book. )

Continuing authorship into old age, Lewis published a second novel in 1990, The Extraordinary Reign of King Ludd: An Historical Tease, which took as its preliminary premise that Queen Victoria abdicated in 1849, following the triumph of International Socialism in Europe. Its tendency is reflected by the alternative titles given its French and Italian translations, "The True History of the Last Socialist King". Two other fictions followed, A Walk with Mr Gladstone (1991) and Cock of the Walk: A Mid-Victorian Rumpus (1995), both provocative reinterpretations of that era

Another speculative departure was provided by his one-man play, Shakespeare Speaks (Keepsake Press, 1989) in which the author expresses his indignation at the unauthorised publication of his sonnets and explains their real concealed story. The play was performed in the following year at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Personal life Lewis married Christine Tew in 1939, after returning to England from abroad, and with her had two daughters. He died in London on 9 October 1996.