S. J. Simon

Simon Jacoblivitch Skidelsky (; 4 July 1904 – 27 July 1948), also known as S. J. "Skid" Simon, Seca Jascha Skidelsky, and Simon Jasha Skidelsky, was a British journalist, fiction writer and bridge player. From 1937 until his death, he collaborated with Caryl Brahms on a series of comic novels and short stories, mostly with a background of ballet or of English history. As a bridge expert, he was jointly responsible for developing the Acol system of bidding.

Life and works

Simon was born in Harbin, Manchuria. A member of a Russian-Jewish merchant family from Vladivostok, he left Russia when he was young. He had at least three brothers, Boris, Grigory and Mikhail. Simon's nephew is economic historian Robert Skidelsky, Boris' son. He became a British citizen in February 1931.

Fiction

From 1937 to 1950, Brahms and Simon collaborated on a series of comic novels, eleven published by Michael Joseph. The first was A Bullet in the Ballet, which introduced the phlegmatic Inspector Adam Quill and the eccentric members of Vladimir Stroganoff's ballet company. The book originated in what Simon supposed to be a momentary fantasy on the part of Brahms; she was enjoying deputising for the leading ballet critic Arnold Haskell, and over coffee she and Simon dreamt up an impromptu ballet murder mystery with Haskell as the victim. They developed this idea into a novel in which the Ballet Stroganoff is stalked by a murderer. The sexual entanglements, both straight and gay, of the members of the Ballet Stroganoff are depicted with a cheerful matter-of-factness unusual in the 1930s. Murray commented, "True, a certain number of the laughs are invited for a moral subject that people used not to mention with such spade-like explicitness, if at all." In the 1980s, Michael Billington praised the writing: "a power of language of which Wodehouse would not have been ashamed. As a description of a domineering Russian mother put down by her ballerina daughter, you could hardly better: 'She backed away like a defeated steamroller.'"

The book was a best-seller in the UK, and was published in an American edition by Doubleday. The authors followed up their success with a sequel, Casino for Sale (1938), featuring all the survivors from the first novel and bringing to the fore Stroganoff's rival impresario, the rich and vulgar Lord Buttonhooke. It was published in the US as Murder à la Stroganoff. A third Stroganoff novel, Envoy on Excursion (1940) was a comic spy-thriller, with Quill now working for British intelligence.

In 1940, Brahms and Simon published the first of what they called "backstairs history", producing their own highly unreliable comic retellings of English history. Don't, Mr. Disraeli! is a Victorian Romeo and Juliet story, with affairs of the feuding middle-class Clutterwick and Shuttleforth families interspersed with 19th-century vignettes ("At the Savage Club the atmosphere is tense. Gilbert and Sullivan have fallen out again.") and anachronistic intruders from the 20th century, including Harpo Marx, John Gielgud and Albert Einstein. In The Observer, Frank Swinnerton wrote, "They turn the Victorian age into phantasmagoria, dodging with the greatest possible nimbleness from the private to the public, skipping among historic scenes, which they often deride, and personal jokes and puns, and telling a ridiculous story while they communicate a preposterous – yet strangely suggestive – impression of nineteenth-century life."

Brahms and Simon depict Shakespeare dithering over the spelling of his signature. To follow their Victorian book, Brahms and Simon went back to Elizabethan times, with No Bed for Bacon (1941). Unlike the earlier work, the narrative and allusions are confined to the age in which the book is set. The plot concerns a young woman who disguises herself as a boy to gain membership of Richard Burbage's, and more particularly William Shakespeare's, theatrical company (a device later employed by Tom Stoppard as the central plot of his 1999 screenplay Shakespeare in Love). Reviewing the book in the Shakespeare Quarterly, Ernest Brennecke wrote:

Brahms and Simon made radio dramatisations of Don't, Mr. Disraeli! (1943) and A Bullet in the Ballet (1945); Brahms later adapted Trottie True for radio (1955). Brahms and Simon co-wrote the screenplay for the 1948 film One Night With You, Their Tudor novel, No Bed for Bacon, was dramatised for the theatre after Simon's death by Brahms and the young Ned Sherrin, with music by Malcolm Williamson and staged in 1959.

Bridge At the same time as his collaboration with Brahms, Simon (always known as 'Skid' in the bridge world) became celebrated as a bridge player, competing in the European Team Championship in 1939 and winning the inaugural event under European Bridge League administration in 1948, a month before his death. Its sequel, Cut for Partners (1950), and a book on the principles of Acol, Design for Bidding (1949), were published posthumously. He was bridge correspondent of The Observer, the London Evening News and Punch.

In 2012, the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) named Simon number 48 of the 52 most influential people during the 75-year lifetime of the organisation for writing Why You Lose at Bridge and co-inventing the Acol bidding system.

Personal life and last years

In 1943, Simon married Carmel Withers (19 July 1908 – 17 July 1949), a silver medalist in the Women Teams event of the 1948 European Bridge League championships. He died suddenly in London at the age of 44. at her inquest the verdict was suicide. She wrote fiction using the pen name Kathleen Mary Carmel.

Simon left two bridge books in manuscript, which were posthumously published in 1949 and 1950. Caryl Brahms edited and completed their one unpublished joint work of fiction, also published in 1950.

Publications

On bridge 1945 1949 1950

Collaborations with Caryl Brahms 1937 1938 Published in America as 1939 1940 1940 1941 1944 1945 Published in America as 1946 1947 1950