Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Monypenny, William Flavelle
MONYPENNY, WILLIAM FLAVELLE(1866–1912), journalist, and biographer of Disraeli, came of an Ulster Protestant family of Scottish extraction, which until 1898 spelt the surname ‘Monypeny’. The second son of William Monypeny, a small landowner, of Ballyworkan, co. Armagh, and of Mary Anne Flavelle, his wife, he was born at Dungannon, co. Tyrone, 7 August 1866. Educated at the Royal School, Dungannon, and at Dublin University, where he graduated with high distinction in mathematics, he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford; but temporary ill-health compelled him, after a short residence, to leave Oxford for London, and he became a regular contributor to the Spectator. In 1893 he joined the editorial staff of The Times, where his outstanding abilities were quickly recognized.
Early in 1899 Monypenny was offered unexpectedly the editorship of the Johannesburg Star, the foremost organ of the Uitlanders, who were suffering under the oppressive rule of President Kruger. The offer was accompanied by an assurance of unhampered editorial freedom. He accepted it, and made the journal a power in the political struggle that ensued. When this culminated in the South African War he obtained a commission in the Imperial Light Horse, fought in Natal, and, not without injury to his health, endured the siege of Ladysmith. Later, under Lord Milner's high commissionership, he became director of civil supplies and a member of the committee for regulating the return of refugees after the annexation of the Transvaal. When the Star was again published he resumed the editorship; but he resigned it in 1903 from a scrupulous sense of honour, finding himself unable to countenance the importation of indentured Chinese labour. He made his way from Lake Victoria Nyanza by an exhausting tramp past Wadelai and Dufile and down the White Nile to Khartoum, and thence to England, where he rejoined The Times staff. In 1908 he was appointed an original director of The Times Publishing Company.
Monypenny's great opportunity came when he was chosen by The Times to write the authoritative biography of Lord Beaconsfield, from the materials bequeathed to Lord Rowton. The choice was in all respects happy. He had taken a lifelong interest in the greater issues of politics, imperial and domestic, upon which he brought to bear a judgement of conspicuous sagacity, fortified by close observation, penetrating shrewdness, and a natural gift for separating the essential from the accidental. These qualities gave weight to a lucid style, charged with thought. The first volume of his Life of Benjamin Disraeli appeared in October 1910, and the second, delayed by failing health, in November 1912. Ten days later, on 23 November, Monypenny died in the New Forest. The biography was continued, and completed in four more volumes, by Mr. G. E. Buckle, the editor under whom Monypenny had served The Times. Mr. Buckle also wrote the inscription for the memorial tablet in the parish church of Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire, where Monypenny is buried. Monypenny was never married.
[The Times, 25 November 1912; private records; personal knowledge.]