Kyril bonfiglioli biography for kids

Imagine a politically incorrect combination of Bertie Wooster, Falstaff and Raffles, and you get an idea of Kyril Bonfiglioli's fictional hero.

The author was born to an English mother and Italian-Slovenian antiquarian book-selling father in Eastbourne in 1928. After 15 years as an art dealer in Oxford, an experience that clearly provided the background for his books, he became the editor of small science-fiction magazines, although his own writings show little interest in that direction. Other seeming biographical information about Bonfiglioli – that he was an expert swordsman, a good shot and a teetotaller, for example – is entirely wrong. Luckily, we now have his second wife's biography, The Mortdecai ABC , to thank for the facts.

Before his first book, Don't Point That Thing at Me , has even started, Bonfiglioli warns, "This is not an autobiographical novel. It is about some other portly, dissolute, immoral and middle-aged art dealer." In fact, the first line is: "When you burn an old carved and gilt picture frame it makes a muted hissing noise in the grate – a sort of genteel fooh – and the gold leaf tints the flames a wonderful peacock blue-green." This is his cowardly dandy art thief Charlie Mortdecai speaking before fencing a Goya. Mortdecai is a delicious creation who, accompanied by his thuggish sidekick Jock, outrages the art-world dullards of the 1970s as he heads towards comeuppance and a disgraceful cliffhanger of an ending.

Mortdecai returned (with no explanation for the precipitous season-end interim) in After You With the Pistol , Something Nasty in the Woodshed and three-quarters of The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery , which was published posthumously, having been finished by the literary mimic Craig Brown, a forgery act Bonfiglioli would surely have adored. His only other work is the hilarious All the Tea in China , which features a scurrilous Dutch ancestor of Mortdecai's.

Everyone agrees that

Born

May 29, 1928

Died

March 03, 1985

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Humor, Mystery & Thrillers

Influences

P. G. Wodehouse

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

Adopted name of Cyril Emmanuel George Bonfiglioli (1928-1985), UK son of Italo-Slovene and English parents, at various times a book dealer, art dealer, editor of Science Fantasy, and author. In the last capacity he is best known for the Charlie Mortdecai black-comedy thrillers beginning with Don't Point That Thing at Me (1973), which despite a few parodic swipes at Ian Fleming's James Bond do not venture into sf territory and are not listed below. The film Mortdecai (2015), directed by David Koepp, is loosely based on these tales of Antihero Mortdecai, described in the opening volume as not a self-portrait but "some other portly, dissolute, immoral and middle-aged art-dealer."

Bonfiglioli's fiction debut was "Blast Off" (June/July 1964 Science Fantasy #65 anonymous; vt "Blastoff" credited to Bonfiglioli in England Swings SF, anth 1968, ed Judith Merril), his only sf story, written to fill a gap in the magazine and originally billed as a translation from the Finnish. His editorial reign at Science Fantasy ran from issue #65 (June/July 1964) to the last under that name, #81 (February 1966), continuing through the five issues renamed Impulse (March-July 1966) and the first two as SF Impulse (August-September 1966), after which Harry Harrison took over for the five remaining issues of SF Impulse (October 1966-February 1967). Bonfiglioli's "discoveries", the authors whose first stories he published, include Thom Keyes, Christopher Priest, Keith Roberts (with two simultaneous appearances), Josephine Saxton and Brian Stableford.

The Mortdecai ABC: A Bonfiglioli Reader (coll/anth 2001), edited and extensively annotated by his second wife Margaret Bonfiglioli, assembles witty novel and nonfiction extracts together with biographical reminiscences within a thematic alphabetical framework. Also included are the perceptive and sometimes provocative editorials from Science Fantasy and Impulse,

About[]

Kyril Bonfiglioli (born Cyril Emmanuel George Bonfiglioli; 29 May 1928 – 3 March 1985) was an English art-dealer, actor, science fiction editor, champion swordsman, and comic novelist.

Writing Career[]

He wrote four books featuring Charlie Mortdecai, three of which were published in his lifetime, and one posthumously as completed by the satirist and literary mimic Craig Brown. Charlie Mortdecai is the fictional art dealer anti-hero of the series. His character resembles, among other things, an amoral Bertie Wooster with occasional psychopathic tendencies. His Mortdecai comic-thriller trilogy won critical plaudits back in the 1970s and early 1980s; actors Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are among those who are fans of his work. His books are still in print and have been translated into several different languages.

Bonfiglioli's style and novel structure have often been favourably compared to that of P. G. Wodehouse. Mortdecai and his manservant Jock Strapp bear a fun-house mirror relation to Wodehouse's Wooster and Jeeves. The author makes a nod to this comparison by having Mortdecai reference Wodehouse in the novels.