Name Petre Mais | Role Author | |
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Died 1975, Lindfield, United Kingdom Books Southern Rambles: Walk the, Southern rambles for Londoners, Walking in Somerset, Fifty years of the LCC, Walking at Week‑Ends | ||
Stuart Petre Brodie Mais (4 July 1885 – 21 April 1975) was a British author, journalist and broadcaster. He was a prolific author of travel books and guides, and had an informal style that made him popular with the general public.
Contents
Biography
The son of a Bristol rector, John Brodie Mais, and his wife Hannah Horden, he was born in Ladywood, Birmingham but raised in Tansley, Derbyshire, where his family relocated shortly after his birth.
He was educated at Denstone College, Staffordshire. After graduating in English Literature at Christ Church, Oxford, and then teaching at Rossall, Sherborne and Tonbridge, and Royal Air Force College Cranwell, Mais later worked for National Press at Fleet Street. A prolific author writing over 200 books, he also broadcast for numerous wireless programmes for the BBC between the 1920s and 1940s. In 1913 he married Doris Snow (born Clifton, Bristol in 1892) in Oldland, Gloucestershire; the couple had two daughters: Priscilla (1916-1982) and Vivien (born 1920). After the marriage was dissolved (they never divorced), he got together with Jill Doughty (who was considerably younger). S.P.B. (who preferred to be called Petre), was an ardent campaigner for the English countryside and traditions, leading walks for people who came for a day trip by train from big cities, often from London. He began to broadcast Letter from America in 1933, a ground breaking venture at the time.
Mais worked as a journalist for The Oxford Times newspaper, and also for the BBC as a radio broadcaster, most famously on the Kitchen Front radio show that aired after the morning news during World War Two. For an account of these broadcasts see Calling Again - My Kitchen Front Talks with some results on the listener by S. P. B. Mais, 1941. He presented Letter from America from 1933, 13 years before it was made famous by Alistair Cooke; he also presented a series on This Unknown Island.
One grandson is Evening Standard writer Sebastian Shakespeare, who wrote of his grandfather:
"My grandfather, S. P. B. Mais, wrote more than 200 books and was a household name in his day. Prolific production alas was no guarantee of riches. He wrote to keep the bailiffs at bay. I'll never forget when my mother told me how she once had to hand over the contents of her piggy bank to his creditors."
Death
Stuart Petre Brodie Mais died in April 1975 at Lindfield, Sussex.
Doris Mais died in 1978 in Chichester, Sussex.
Critical works
Novels
Travel books
These include: