Philip Lindsay

Who was Philip Lindsay?

Philip Lindsay was an Australian writer, who mostly wrote historical novels. He was the son of Norman Lindsay, an Australian artist and a younger brother of writer Jack Lindsay. He was educated at the Anglican Church Grammar School in Brisbane, and emigrated to England in the 1930s. Most of his novels were written whilst he lived in England. His daughter Cressida also became a novelist.

His novels often treated his subject matter in a dark fashion, with his central characters depicted as brooding, depressed, or disturbed characters. They include:

The Devil and King John, influenced by Margaret Murray's The Divine King in England, according to which John had leanings towards the "Old Religion" of witchcraft and his first wife Hadwisa was an actual witch. However its treatment of the better-established facts of John's reign, although ambiguous, was more sympathetic to John than most accounts. Archbishop Stephen Langton is an important character who is treated relatively sympathetically.

One Dagger for Two, about Christopher Marlowe. In this account Marlowe is an atheist, but heterosexual. He was stabbed in a tavern quarrel, but over a dispute about a woman, not just a petty dispute over the bill.