William Bolitho

William Bolitho Ryall (1891–1930) was a South African journalist, writer and biographer who was a valued friend of prominent writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Noël Coward, Walter Lippmann and Walter Duranty. He wrote under the name ‘William Bolitho’ but was known to his friends as ‘Bill Ryall’. He died on 2 June 1930 at the age of 39 just as his reputation was being established.

Ryall was born as Charles William Ryall in Droitwich, in January 1891. His father was a Baptist minister, born in South Africa and he was taken there as an infant. He changed his name to 'William Bolitho Ryall' which was his uncle's name who died in South Africa and who wrote the book Pensam: His Mysterious Tribulation published in 1883. Before enlisting in the British Army he had gone to seminary in Gordonstown South African and become a deacon in the Anglican Church. 

In 1916 he was buried alive with fifteen other men in mine explosion on the Somme. He was the only survivor and was initially thought to be dead, but was unconscious with a broken neck and other injuries. He spent a year convalescing in a Scottish military hospital but never fully recovered his health.

After the war he became the Paris correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, for which he covered the 1919 Peace Conference at Versailles. In 1920 he reported on the communist rebellion in the Ruhr valley in Germany. This incident later became the subject of his play entitled Overture. In 1923 he was appointed correspondent with the New York World to which he contributed many notable dispatches. 

In 1924 he reported on the housing conditions in Glasgow and these dispatches were published in the World and in the book, The Cancer of Empire. In 1925 he travelled throughout Italy interviewing people about Mussolini's regime and this resulted in the book Italy under Mussolini which brought to public notice the abuses of Mussolini's power. Ryall arrived in New York on 26 September 1928, having sailed from Southampton on the S.S. Homerio. He then had a thrice weekly column with the New York World.