Hugh Alexander Pollock: Difference between revisions

Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Alexander Pollock DSO (29 July 1888 – 6 November 1971) was a British publishing editor. He served as a soldier in the Royal Scots Fusiliers in the First World War and in the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps in the Second World War. He was the first husband of Enid Blyton, and then Ida Pollock, both authors.

Early life

Pollock was born in Ayr in Scotland, the eldest son of bookseller and publisher William Smillie Pollock (1858–1942) and his wife Jessie Smith McBride. He was educated at Ayr Academy. He and his younger brother Fred worked in his father's business. He married Marion Atkinson in October 1913, at the Hotel Dalblair in Ayr. They had two sons, William Cecil Alexander (1914–16) and Edward Alistair (1915–69).

He joined the British Army, and became a Second Lieutentant in the 5th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers in May 1912. In the First World War, he served with his regiment in Gallipoli, Palestine and France. He was a captain, serving as an adjutant, in September 1915. He had been promoted to major, attached to the 12th Battalion, when he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1919. After the war, he served as a temporary captain in the Indian Army.

Pollock's first marriage ended after his wife had an affair during the First World War, and he did not maintain contact with his sons.

Publisher and marriage to Enid Blyton

Pollock moved to England, and joined the publishers George Newnes in London. He met Enid Blyton while he was working at George Newnes, after Blyton was commissioned to write a children's book about London Zoo. Their relationship developed, and shortly after he divorced his estranged first wife he married Blyton at Bromley Register Office in August 1924; the couple spent their honeymoon in Jersey.

After their marriage the Pollocks lived in a flat in Chelsea. They moved out of central London in 1926 to live at Elfin Cottage in Beckenham, and then to Old Thatch in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire in 1929. They had two daughters: Gillian, born in July 1931, and Imogen, born in October 1935. The family moved in 1938, settling in a large house in Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire which was named Green Hedges by readers of Blyton's magazine Sunny Stories.

He worked with Winston Churchill in 1930s, editing Churchill's six-volume narrative history The World Crisis. Churchill had briefly served as commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front in the First World War, from December 1915 to May 1916. Talking of those times with Churchill possibly revived the trauma Pollock had suffered during World War I; he became a heavy drinker and his marriage to Blyton came under severe strain. She had a series of affairs, and began a relationship with a London surgeon in 1941.

Pollock rejoined the Army after the outbreak of the Second World War and worked in the Cabinet Office. He was appointed a Major in the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps in November 1940, and was appointed the Commandant of the War Office School for Instructors of the Home Guard in 1940, based at a (now demolished) country house at Denbies in Dorking. Pollock had befriended aspiring author Ida Crowe when George Newnes had published her first novel Palanquins and coloured lanterns in the 1920s, and he asked her to join him in Dorking in a secretarial role. Pollock was posted to the United States in June 1942 to advise on civil defence. He was a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Pioneer Corps when appointed an Officer in the US Legion of Merit in 1947.

The state of his marriage to Blyton continued to worsen, and Pollock and Blyton were divorced in 1943. Blyton married the surgeon Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters in October 1943, and Crowe and Pollock were married at Guildhall Register Office six days later. Their daughter Rosemary was born in 1944.

Later life

Pollock left the Army for a second time after the Second World War with the rank of lieutenant colonel, but found Blyton prevented him returning to his old job, threatening to change her publisher if he was accepted back. She also used her influence to block him from working elsewhere in the publishing business, and he worked in the Cabinet Office. Blyton also stopped him from contacting their daughters. His heavy drinking resumed and he petitioned for bankruptcy in 1950.

Meanwhile, his second wife found success as a romantic novelist. Her first contemporary romance was published by Mills and Boon in 1952. They lived at various places in England, Ireland, France, Italy, and Switzerland before settling in Malta. Pollock died in Malta in 1971, and is buried at the military cemetery at Imtarfa. His wife died in December 2013. Their daughter Rosemary also became an author.

External links

• Adulteress Enid Blyton 'ruined her ex-husband', The Daily Telegraph, 20 October 2002
• Hugh Pollock: the first Mr Enid Blyton, Ayrshire Notes No.21, Autumn 2001, pages 20-23