William Donaldson - Life and Career

Life and Career

Donaldson enjoyed a privileged upbringing in Sunningdale, Berkshire as the son of a shipping magnate. He was educated at Winchester College, where he met Julian Mitchell. While reading English at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he was orphaned and inherited a substantial fortune. He spent some of that inheritance supporting young writers such as his contemporaries Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. He completed his National Service in the Royal Navy in the late 1950s, reaching the rank of Sub-Lieutenant.

On graduation, Donaldson became associated with the set surrounding Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon and worked as a theatrical producer. He established himself as a central player in the United Kingdom satire boom of the early 1960s as co-producer, with Donald Albery, of Beyond the Fringe (1960), and of dramatisations of J. P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man (1959) and Spike Milligan's The Bed-Sitting Room (1963). The pair earned a weekly £2,000 from Fringe when the principal performers, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller, were earning only £75. However, Donaldson managed, not for the last time, to squander his fortune.

In 1971, Donaldson left for Ibiza where he imprudently spent his last £2,000 on a glass-bottomed boat. Before long he was scavenging for food on the beach. Returning to London, he found refuge with a former girlfriend who was running a brothel on the Fulham Road. His experiences there formed the basis of his first novel Both the Ladies and the Gentlemen (1975).

However, it was to be Donaldson's fictional correspondent Henry Root that made him a final fortune. Root's satirical lampooning of the wealthy, famous and influential was retold in the books:

• The Henry Root Letters (1980) - with letters to, among others, famous football clubs, publishers, chief constables, Margaret Thatcher, politicians, newspaper editors and, on 17 April 1979, to First Sea Lord (volunteering his services owing to the "imminent outbreak of hostilities with the Soviets" and concluding "I'm on red alert here and can leave for my ship at the drop of a bollard")
• The Further Letters of Henry Root (1980)
• Henry Root’s World of Knowledge (1982)
• Henry Root’s A-Z of Women: "The Definitive Guide" (1985)
• The Soap Letters (1988)
• Root into Europe (1992)
• Root about Britain (1994)

Donaldson lived at 139 Elm Park Mansions on Park Walk, Chelsea, London SW10 from which address all the Root letters were sent. Nearby The Henry Root restaurant has been established in his memory.

Donaldson's biographical survey of roguish Britons through the ages, Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics (2002), has been described as "a breathtaking triumph of misdirected scholarship".

The phenomenal success of the books, especially the first, enabled Donaldson to resume his chaotic lifestyle and in the mid-1980s he began using crack cocaine. He continued its use for more than a decade, but insisted he was not addicted.