George Melly

Alan George Heywood Melly (17 August 1926 – 5 July 2007) was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer and lecturer. From 1965 to 1973 he was a film and television critic for The Observer and lectured on art history, with an emphasis on surrealism.

Early life and career

He was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, and was educated at Stowe School, where he discovered his interest in modern art, jazz and blues, and started coming to terms with his sexuality.

Interest in surrealist art

Melly once stated that he may have been drawn to surrealism by a particular experience he had during his teenage years. A frequent visitor to Liverpool's Sefton Park near his home, he often entered its tropical Palm House and there chatted to wounded soldiers from a nearby military hospital. It was the incongruity of this sight, men smoking among the exotic plants, dressed in their hospital uniforms and usually deficient a limb, that he felt he later recognised in the work of the Surrealists.

He joined the Royal Navy at the end of the Second World War because, as he quipped to the recruiting officer, the uniforms were "so much nicer". As he related in his autobiography Rum, Bum and Concertina, he was crestfallen to discover that he would not be sent to a ship and was thus denied the "bell-bottom" uniform he desired. Instead he received desk duty and wore the other Navy uniform, described as "the dreaded fore-and-aft". Later, however, he did see ship duty. He never saw active combat, but was almost court-martialled for distributing anarchist literature.

George Melly (MP)

George Melly (20 August 1830 – 27 February 1894) was an English merchant and shipowner and a Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1868 to 1875.

Melly was the son of Andrew Melly and his wife Ellen Greg, daughter of Samuel Greg of Manchester. He was educated at Rugby School and became a merchant and shipowner. He was a member of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, and a director of the Union Marine Insurance Co. He was a J.P. for Liverpool and was major of the 4th Lancashire Artillery Volunteers from 1859 to March 1866. He authored a number of books and pamphlets.

Melly stood unsuccessfully for Parliament at a by-election in April 1862 in Preston, and in Stoke-upon-Trent at the 1865 general election. Melly was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Stoke-upon-Trent at a by-election in February 1868 following the resignation of the Conservative MP Alexander Beresford Hope. He was re-elected at the general election in November 1868, and in 1874, and held the seat until his resignation on 5 February 1875 by taking the Chiltern Hundreds.