speculation and faith healing. The leather work lasted from 1916 until 1920 when he moved to Paris to work as a shop assistant. In 1923 he started writing for The Christian Science Monitor, which sent him to Ireland and Spain. From 1926 he wrote reviews for that paper and for the New Statesman, later being appointed its literary editor. Pritchett's first book, Marching Spain (1928), describes a journey across Spain, and his second book, Clare Drummer (1929), is about his experiences in Ireland. While he was there he met Evelyn Vigors, who he later married. Theirs was not a happy marriage. Pritchett published five novels, but he said he did not enjoy writing them. His reputation was established by a collection of short stories, The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories (1932). In 1936 he divorced his first wife and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts, by whom he had two children; the marriage survived until Pritchett's death in 1997, although they both had other relationships. Their children include the journalist Oliver Pritchett, whose son is the cartoonist Matt Pritchett MBE, and daughter is screenwriter Georgia Pritchett. During the Second World War Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information while continuing to write weekly essays for the New Statesman. After World War II he wrote extensively and embarked on various university teaching positions in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California (1962), Columbia University and Smith College. Fluent in French, German and Spanish, he published acclaimed biographies of Honoré de Balzac (1973), Ivan Turgenev (1977), and Anton Chekhov (1988). Pritchett was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1975 for "services to literature" and a Companion of Honour in 1993. His other awards included FRSL (1958), CBE (1968), the Heinemann Award (1969), the PEN Award (1974), the W.H. Smith Literary Award (1990) and the Golden PEN Award (1994). He was President of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers and the oldest human rights organisation from 1974 until 1976. Sir V. S. Pritchett died of a stroke in London on 20 March 1997. Bibliography Marching Spain, 1928 Clare Drummer, 1929 The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories, 1932 Shirley Sanz, 1932 Nothing Like Leather, 1935 Dead Man Leading, 1937 This England, 1938 (editor) You Make Your Own Life, 1938 In My Good Books, 1942 It May Never Happen, 1945 Novels and Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1945 (editor) Build the Ships,