Jon Manchip White was a distinguished Welsh-American writer who published over 35 books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry over a long writing career. His works of fiction include both novels, collections of short stories and many scripts for film and television. His non-fiction books include history, biography, archaeology, anthropology, travel and personal essays.
After graduating from Cambridge in 1950, Manchip White moved to London and became story editor for the newly established BBC Television Service. During his time at the BBC, he read scripts, made adaptations, and wrote original dramas. From 1952 to 1956, Manchip White served Britain as a Senior Executive officer in the British Foreign Service. He continued to write poetry and novels during his time in public service, and he resigned his job to concentrate full time on his writing as an independent author. From 1956 to 1967 he worked as a screenwriter for movies, including a period employed by Samuel Bronston Productions in Paris, Rome and Madrid, where he spent five years. During this time, he traveled widely around Europe and other parts of the world like South Africa. His travels helped to increase his knowledge and provided him the opportunity to research subjects and places for travel and non-fiction books.
In the mid-sixties, Jon Manchip White felt the time had arrived to change his circumstances, to shake up his routine. Ever the wanderer, he decided to go to the United States, a place he had admired since college when he wrote a dissertation on the Pueblo Indians. Around this time, he had met the critic and biographer, Cleanth Brooks, who had been in London as the Cultural Attaché at the American Embassy. Brooks suggested that Manchip White look for a position at an American university, and he wrote him a recommendation. In 1967 Jon accepted a job as the writer-in-residence at the University of Texas at El Paso where he started the creative writing program. He enjoyed and excelled at teaching, and eventually he received a full professorship. Teaching also allowed him more time to focus of his main ambition of being a writer of books. The position at El Paso gave him the opportunity to explore the American Southwest and Mexico. As much as he loved Texas, in 1977, he was offered a position at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville as the Lindsay Young Professor of English, an offer too good to refuse. He was the founder of the creative writing program at the University of Tennessee, and soon grew to love East Tennessee with its beautiful forests and mountains.
Jon Manchip White has became an American citizen. He continued to live and write in Knoxville, Tennessee. In 1997, Iris Audio Publications released two audio tapes of the author reading from his book of short stories, Whistling Past the Churchyard: Strange Tales From a Superstitious Welshman. In 1999 Iris Press republished his memoir, The Journeying Boy: Scenes From a Welsh Childhood originally published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1992. Iris, in 2007, published his new historical novel, Solo Goya: Goya and the Duchess of Alba at Sanlúcar based on episodes in the life of the great Spanish painter, Francisco Goya. This novel, along with his earlier biographies of Diego Velázques and Hernán Cortés, concluded what Jon has called his Spanish Trilogy. In July of 2012 Iris Press published Manchip White’s final book, The Bird With Silver Wings, a collection of stories with musical themes.
Jon Manchip White died in Knoxville, Tennessee in July of 1913 at the age of 89.