The Worlds of Wolf Mankowitz

Between Elite and Popular Cultures in Post-War BritainDunn, AnthonyWolf Mankowitz, that high-profile and pugnacious participant in the cultural life of 1950s and 1960s London, was a man of so many parts one scarcely knows where to begin. Mankowitz was an acknowledged expert on Wedgwood china (one of his special talents was to make this abstruse and specialized subject read like a detective story in The Portland Vase); the writer of film scripts such as A Kid for Two Farthings; a street trader; one of the founders of the Pickwick Club in Great Newport Street; a novelist; Professor of English at the University of New Mexico; a writer of short stories, plays, history, musicals, and more. He even became Honorary Consul to the Republic of Panama in Dublin. This first biography of Mankowitz reveals a writer from the Jewish East End who had the confidence and the ability to exercise his talents in many fields. He was a close associate of Orson Welles, Peter Sellers, and Sophia Loren, and this