1 Utterly Immoral, Robert Keable and his scandalous novel
2 1920s Tahiti
Thanks so much for a great talk yesterday. So many people enjoyed it.
Gill Matthews, R & S Ladies Probus
Thank you so much for a wonderful talk about your grandfather, a truly interesting man with a fascinating history. Your talk was very detailed, well-illustrated and held the gents attention throughout.
Geoff Bourne, Beaconsfield Probus
Simon is an experienced speaker at Probus lunches and other meetings speaking at both Gentlemen, Ladies and Mixed clubs. He is currently offering two talks.
1 Utterly immoral, WW1 chaplain Robert Keable and his scandalous novel
In this talk Simon discusses Robert Keable’s time as a chaplain during the First World War and the events that led him to write his notorious novel Simon Called Peter. He looks at the critical reception to the novel, the attempts to ban it and the book’s great success. The author’s life was truly extraordinary. As a child he was an evangelical preacher. He won a scholarship to Cambridge, became a priest, worked in Zanzibar and Basutoland as a missionary and gained a reputation as a writer of devotional books. He recruited black labourers to help with the war effort and in 1917 travelled to France as chaplain to the SANLC. Witnessing the appalling racism the men faced ‘changed him’, as well as an affair with a 19 year-old lorry driver called Jolie. He left the church and after a year as a teacher back in England he fled the country to go and live in Tahiti. He continued to write and remained an international celebrity throughout the 1920s.
2 1920s Tahiti
In Simon’s new talk he looks at the enduring image of Tahiti, as a special kind of paradise, that lasted from the first European visitors to the island up until the 1920s. He investigates the Tahiti craze which began after WW1 as seen through the books and movies of the time and he looks at some of the extraordinary writers and artists who settled in Tahiti and worked as forerunners to today's digitial nomads. Writers such as James Norman Hall and Charles Nordhoff - famous for The Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy, the first millionaire novelist Zane Grey and Alec Waugh - Evelyan Waugh's elder brother. And artists like warecolourist William Alister Macdonald and muralist Viscount Jack Hastings.
Simon is Robert Keable. He has been researching Robert Keable’s life and work for the last thirty years. After taking early retirement following 25 years as a politics teacher his first book Utterly Immoral, Robert Keable and his scandalous novel, came out in November 2022. His second book Guys like Gauguin, Writers and Artists in 1920s Tahiti comes out in August 2026.