Basil MacDonald Hastings (20 September 1881 – 21 February 1928) was an English author, journalist, and playwright.
Early life and education Hastings was born on 20 September 1881 in London, second son of solicitor S. J. Edward Hastings. He was educated at Stonyhurst and King's College London.Who's Who, 74th edition, vol. 1, ed. Henry R. Addison et al, A. & C. Black, 1922, p. 1219The Catholic Who's Who, vol. 20, ed. F. C. Burnand, Burns & Oates, 1927, p. 217 His nephew- son of his elder brother, Major Lewis Aloysius Macdonald Hastings (1880-1966), a farmer in Southern Rhodesia, where he had been a diamond prospector, political organizer, and served in the Cape Mounted Police- was the politician Stephen Hastings.Did You Really Shoot The Television? A Family Fable, Max Hastings, HarperCollins Publishing, 2010Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2005-2008, ed. Lawrence Goldman, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 493
Career Hastings was on the War Office staff for eight years before being appointed assistant editor of The Bystander, where he remained for three years. During the First World War, Hastings served as a second lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps, having previously been a corporal in the King's Royal Rifle Corps; he founded and edited the RAF journal, The Fledgling (later Roosters and Fledglings).Who's Who, 74th edition, vol. 1, ed. Henry R. Addison et al, A. & C. Black, 1922, p. 1219Who was Who, St Martin's Press, 1929, p. 474 Hastings was a friend, collaborator, and regular correspondent of Joseph Conrad. Hastings produced a successful adaptation of Conrad's novel Victory performed at the Globe Theatre in London in 1919.Joseph Conrad: Interviews and Recollections, ed. Martin Ray, University of Iowa Press, 2010, p. 224 By this time, Hastings had "already written several plays and collaborated on two others with Eden Phillpotts".The Selected Letters of Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad, ed. Laurence Davies, Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 523 Hastings's best-known play, The New Sin (1912), "had some success on the London stage".
He died on 21 February 1928 in London after a "lengthy illness", at age 46.Who was Who, St Martin's Press, 1929, p. 474
Personal life Hastings married Wilhelmina ("Billie") Creusen White, of a Catholic family from Peckham, South London, some of the members of which subsequently "developed social pretensions" and treated her with condescension, according to her grandson Max Hastings.Did You Really Shoot The Television? A Family Fable, Max Hastings, HarperCollins Publishing, 2010 They had a son- journalist and author (Douglas Edward) Macdonald Hastings (father of the journalist, author and historian Max Hastings)- and a daughter.Who's Who, 74th edition, vol. 1, ed. Henry R. Addison et al, A. & C. Black, 1922, p. 1219
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