Harry Saul Bloom (born Solomon Harris Bloom; 1 January 1913 – 28 July 1981) was a South African journalist, novelist, activist and lecturer.
Early life and career
Solomon Harris Bloom was born into a Jewish South African family. He was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand, obtaining his law degree in 1937. He subsequently became an advocate in Johannesburg. In 1940, he married Beryl Cynthia Gordon, after knowing her three weeks, and they moved to London, living in Old Compton Street during the Blitz. Writing under the pseudonyms Walter and Beryl Storm (to avoid anti-Semitism), they worked as war correspondents during the Second World War, and covered the Nuremberg trials after the war.
The couple moved to Czechoslovakia and together they wrote the book We meet the Czechoslovaks, an account of their early years in Czechoslovakia, also under the Storm pseudonyms. Beryl later played an active role in editing, advising and typing the manuscripts for his subsequent books. Fearful for their security as Stalinism gained strength in post-war Eastern Europe, they returned to South Africa, and settled in Bramley, Johannesburg. In 1957, a few months after Bloom's first novel, Episode in the Transvaal, was published, the family moved to Cape Town.
Life and work in apartheid South Africa
Episode, a novel, was published in 1956; it was later retitled Transvaal Episode. It was dedicated to four people: his wife Beryl, who provided editorial assistance and typed the manuscript; Bram Fischer, Bloom's close friend who defended Nelson Mandela at the Rivonia Trial; Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, and Guy Routh. Bloom worked with Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg in the 1950s. During the state of emergency that followed the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, he was detained for 45 days without charges or trial, King Kong: An African Jazz Opera (1961) became a musical. Episode was republished in 1981.
Exile and work in England
In 1963, Bloom left South Africa for Kenya, mainly due to his opposition to apartheid, and then moved to England. According to The Times, he came to England "in search of a new life, mainly as an academic and a journalist."
Family and personal life
After the war, Bloom and wife Beryl returned to Durban, South Africa, where their first child, Peter, was born in 1944, but he died aged six weeks. In October 1948, their daughter Susan Storm-Bloom, a photographer and jewellery designer, was born in Prague. Their son Stephen Jack Bloom, a photographer and author, was born in Johannesburg in 1953. Sonia had two children fathered from an affair with Harry Bloom’s student, Colin Stone – Samantha Bloom (born 1975) and actor Orlando Bloom (born January 1977), who until age 13 believed Harry Bloom was their biological father.
Bloom suffered a stroke in 1976. After a period of declining health, he died in a Canterbury hospital in 1981.