Richard Buckle | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1916-08-06)6 August 1916 Warcop,Westmorland, United Kingdom |
| Died | 12 October 2001(2001-10-12) (aged 85) Salisbury, United Kingdom |
| Occupation(s) | Ballet critic, author, editor, playwright |
(Christopher) Richard Sandford BuckleCBE (6 August 1916 – 12 October 2001), was a lifelong English devotee of ballet, and a well-known ballet critic. He founded the magazineBallet in 1939.
Buckle was the only son of Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Galbraith Buckle,DSO,MC, of theNorthamptonshire Regiment,[1][2][3] and his wife Rose, daughter of Francis Marmaduke Henry Sandford (descended from theDukes of Portland andBarons Brooke) and his wife Constance Georgina (née Craven), great-granddaughter of the soldierWilliam Craven, 1st Earl of Craven and maternal granddaughter of the naval commander and politicianCharles Philip Yorke, 4th Earl of Hardwicke.[4] They lived at the Old Cottage,Warcop,Cumberland.[5]
The Buckle family consisted of minor gentry descended from SirCuthbert Buckle,Lord Mayor of London in 1593–1594. Buckle's uncle (married to his father's sister) was the clergymanEric Graham.[6][7] His father was killed in 1918 – Buckle was raised (and doted upon) by his mother and a number of female relations, including his paternal grandmother, Lily Buckle of Eden Gate, Warcop.[5] Though raised in "genteel poverty", Buckle was interested in his extensive network of relations (some of them high aristocracy) and formed some close relationships with them. He contributed some genealogy toU and Non-U Revisited in 1978.[5] He was educated atMarlborough College, then went toBalliol College, Oxford, to read modern languages, where he failed to obtain a scholarship and left after a year.[8][9] He then attended theHeatherley School of Fine Art in London for a short time, having developed an interest in ballet,[8] to which he dedicated himself, although his family had hoped he would pursue a stable career in banking – or even in the stage design he had studied.[10]
Buckle founded the magazineBallet in 1939, and revived it after theSecond World War, in which he served with theScots Guards, beingmentioned in despatches in 1944 during the Italy campaign. Between 1948 and 1955 he was ballet critic forThe Observer. He organised a number of successful exhibitions, notably one in 1954 on the life and work ofDiaghilev, first at theEdinburgh Festival and then atForbes House in London, and the quatercentenary Shakespeare exhibition atStratford-upon-Avon in 1964–1965. His publications include comprehensive biographies ofNijinsky (1971) and Diaghilev (1979). He edited several books, including the autobiography ofLydia Sokolova and the selected diaries ofCecil Beaton. Richard Buckle was appointedCBE in 1979.
Having begun to suffer from poor health (yet producing some of his best work – the biographies of Nijinsky and Diaghilev – during this period),[8] Buckle left London in 1976 and settled inWiltshire in an isolated cottage, made more so by the fact that he did not drive. After recovering from a heart attack in 1979, he concentrated on his autobiographical works. He regularly visited his home village of Warcop,Cumbria, in the 1980s, sharing his recollections of the place fifty years earlier.[5]
