Richard Hughes

Biography

Richard Arthur Warren Hughes (1900–1976) was a Welsh novelist, playwright, and poet best known for A High Wind in Jamaica, one of the most original and disturbing novels of the 20th century. Born in Weybridge, Surrey, and raised in North Wales, Hughes studied at Oxford, where he became the youngest playwright to have a work produced in the West End. After traveling widely, he published A High Wind in Jamaica (1929), which became an international bestseller. The novel’s unflinching portrait of children as amoral, unreliable creatures—far from Victorian ideals of childhood innocence—shocked and fascinated readers. Hughes followed it with In Hazard (1938), a novel about a cargo ship caught in a hurricane, and began an ambitious trilogy, The Human Predicament, of which only two volumes were completed: The Fox in the Attic (1961) and The Wooden Shepherdess (1973). These later novels provide a panoramic view of European history from 1923 to 1934, including a remarkable portrayal of Hitler’s rise. Hughes lived most of his adult life in Wales and was deeply connected to Welsh culture.