the whole of his time there he was easily the most talked-of person in the city") and had groupies ("a court of young women and admiring dons"), and gave sensational parties sometimes attended by London entertainment celebrities, Johnson wrote. Tynan produced and acted in plays, spoke "brilliantly" at the Oxford Union, wrote for and edited college magazines. He retained a lifelong admiration for his tutor at Oxford, C. S. Lewis; in spite of their marked differences in outlook, Tynan viewed him as a father figure. In 1948, after the death of his father – the man he had known as Peter Tynan – Tynan learned to his surprise that "Peter Tynan" was in reality an alias of Sir Peter Peacock, a former mayor of Warrington, who had been leading a double life for more than 20 years, and who had a wife and another family in Warrington. Tynan's mother was obliged to return Sir Peter's body to his wife and family in Warrington for burial. Tynan's discovery of his father's deception (and his mother's collusion) did long-term damage to his ability to trust others. When Tynan was called up for National Service, he put on an act of appearing outrageously camp including wearing a floppy hat, velvet coat, painted fingernails and a great deal of Yardley scent. Perhaps partly as a result, he was rejected as "medically unfit" for service. Career 1951 to the early 1960s On 25 January 1951, Tynan married the American author Elaine Dundy after a three-month romance. The following year, their daughter, Tracy (born 12 May 1952, Westminster, London), was named after the character in The Philadelphia Story, Tracy Lord, played by Katharine Hepburn. Subsequently Hepburn was asked to be godmother, which she accepted. Tynan's career took off in 1952 when he was hired as a theatre critic for the London Evening Standard. According to Johnson, Tynan "quickly established himself as the most audacious literary journalist in London. His motto was: 'Write heresy, pure heresy.' He pinned to his desk the exhilarating slogan: 'Rouse tempers, goad and lacerate, raise whirlwinds.'" Two years later, he left for The Observer, and it was there that he rose to prominence (1954–1958, 1960–1963). Tynan was highly critical of what he called "the Loamshire play", a genre of English country house drama which he felt dominated the early 1950s British stage, and was wasting the talents of playwrights and actors. Tynan