Terence Greer

Terence Greer (24 September 1929, Surbiton – 5 July 2020, Vancouver) was an illustrator, playwright and scriptwriter who thrived in the cultural ferment of post-WW2 London. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Arts, he became known for his illustrations for The Radio Times and other outlets, his covers for Penguin Books, and his plays.

Early life and education Greer was born in Surbiton, Surrey, UK, and educated in private schools in Kew and Richmond. His mother took him often to the cinema, which he credits as a strong visual influence: "Being plunged into the world of James Cagney and the 30s American dreamworld strongly affected the way I saw things."

After leaving school in 1947, he did his National Service in the Royal Air Force. After 1949, he studied at Saint Martin's School of Art, Twickenham School of Art, and, for three years, at the Royal Academy of Arts. "Terence Greer, Playwright, outside Gare St. Lazare, Paris, 1952", is held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Career

Illustration In 1953, his portfolio admitted him to the roster of the Saxon Artists Agency, a prestigious agency for professional illustrators, run by Barbara Thompson and Cara Strong. His illustrations appeared in a variety of publications, including The Listener, The Economist, New Society, and The Radio Times. Another contemporary, John Vernon Lord, commented that The Radio Times, a weekly, had so many readers "that it was like getting your work into the Tate gallery." Greer's illustrations appeared in two exhibitions, "The Art of the Radio Times" at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1981-82 and "Artists of the Radio Times" at The Ashmolean Museum in 2002.

He is probably best known for his striking cover illustrations for Penguin Books, including for novels by Muriel Spark and Iris Murdoch. Underwood also praised Greer's technical skill: "The original was done in Indian ink on blotting paper--a technique which clearly demands great sureness of touch and intention." In a related article, Tracy Prince recounts how it was built with Greer's collaboration.

Play- and Scriptwriting As magazines replaced illustrations with photographs, he moved to writing plays. His first play, Ripper!, was staged in 1973 at the Half Moon Theatre in its first home, a former Whitechapel synagogue. Ripper! was musical version of the Jack the Ripper story, which was performed in a music hall setting a few hundred yards from the scene of one of the actual murders in 1888.

Other plays were performed at the Bush Theatre in Shepherd's Bush (Nobody Knew They Were There, 1975), the Mountview Theatre, now in the Mountview Academy, in Crouch End (The Lay Figure, 1975) and the Young Vic (Ballroom, 1978).

Later life After a period in Australia, where he continued to write, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia in 1993 with his wife, Sneja Gunew, who became a professor at the University of Victoria. She moved to a professorship at the University of British Columbia in 1995. He died in Vancouver in 2020.

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