David Pryce Jones

Early life

Pryce-Jones was born in Vienna, Austria. His mother was Therese Fould-Springer, an heiress belonging to a mostly Viennese Jewish family of immense wealth. Her sister married Élie de Rothschild. He was educated at Eton and read History at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied under A. J. P. Taylor.

Career

Pryce-Jones did his National Service in the Coldstream Guards, in which he was commissioned in 1955, promoted lieutenant in 1956, and served in the British Army of the Rhine. In 1956, Pryce-Jones lectured the men under his command about the necessity of the Suez War, but admits that he did not believe what he was saying. At the time, he believed that the Islamic world would soon progress after decolonization, and was disappointed when this did not happen. He has worked as a journalist and author. He was literary editor at the Financial Times 1959–61, and The Spectator from 1961 to 1963.

Pryce-Jones currently works as senior editor at National Review magazine. He also contributes to The New Criterion and Commentary, and for Benador Associates. He often writes about the contemporary events and the history of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and intelligence matters.

In his 1989 book The Closed Circle, Pryce-Jones examined what he considered to be the reasons for the backward state of the Arab world. A review described the book as more of an "indictment" than an examination of the Arab world. In Pryce-Jones's opinion, the root cause of Arab backwardness is the tribal nature of Arab political life, which reduces all politics to war of rival families struggling mercilessly for power. As such, Pryce-Jones's view power in Arab politics consists of a network of client–patron relations between powerful and less powerful families and clans. Pryce-Jones considers as an additional retarding factor in Arab society the influence of Islam, which hinders efforts to build a Western style society where the family and clan are not the dominant political unit. Pryce-Jones argues that Islamic fundamentalism is a means of attempting to mobilize the masses behind the dominant clans. In his book, Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews, he has accused the French government of being anti-Semitic and pro-Arab, and of consistently siding against Israel in the hope of winning the favour of the Islamic world.

Personal life

He is the son of writer Alan Payan Pryce-Jones (1908–2000) by his first wife (married 1934), Therese "Poppy" Fould-Springer (1908 – February 1953). Therese was a daughter of Baron Eugène Fould-Springer, a French-born banker who was a cousin of Achille Fould, and Marie-Cecile or Mitzi Springer, later Mrs Frank Wooster or Mary Wooster, whose father was the industrialist Baron Gustav Springer (1842–1920). She also had a brother, Baron Max Fould-Springer (1906–1999), and two sisters Helene Propper de Callejón (1907–1997), wife of Spanish diplomat Eduardo Propper de Callejón and grandmother of actress Helena Bonham Carter, and Baroness Liliane de Rothschild (1916–2003).

His parents married in 1934 in Vienna, and Pryce Jones was born in Vienna. In 1940, a four-year-old David was stranded with his nanny in Dieppe and was rescued from the invading German army by his mother's brother-in-law Eduardo Propper de Callejón. Pryce Jones acknowledged his uncle-by-marriage's efforts in saving his own life when Propper de Callejón retired from Spanish diplomatic service.

He married Clarissa Caccia, daughter of diplomat Harold Caccia, Baron Caccia, in 1959. They have three surviving children, (one deceased, Sonia: 1970–1972), Jessica, Candida and Adam, and live in London.

Pryce Jones is a first cousin of Elena Propper de Callejón, wife of late banker Raymond Bonham Carter and mother of actress Helena Bonham Carter. Another cousin is Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild, only son of the better known Baron Élie de Rothschild.