Drury retired from his job covering Capitol Hill in 1959 and became one of five Washington correspondents for Reader's Digest. He briefly served in the Army, then worked for United Press, Pathfinder magazine and the Washington Evening Star before joining the New York Times. He began his career with the Tulare Bee in Tulare, Calif., as an editor in 1940. Drury was born in 1918 in Houston and graduated from Stanford University in 1939. Drury was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to the National Council on the Arts. He was interested in education and encouraged aspiring journalists to study political science, history and literature. At a forum for newspaper critics and their targets, he quipped that the best solution to dealing with critics was to condemn them to an 'eternity of reading their own writings.' Drury was in great demand around Washington in the 1950s and 1960s. The novel paved the way for later blockbuster Washington political dramas penned by journalists, such as 'All the President's Men,' by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and 'Primary Colors,' by Newsweek's Joe Klein.Īs a speaker, Mr. The title came from a sentence in the Constitution that concerns the president's nominations of Cabinet members and other officials.

Working Washington journalists were hired to play bit parts in the film, directed by Otto Preminger.

In 1962, 'Advise and Consent' was made into a movie starring Henry Fonda, Peter Lawford, Walter Pidgeon and Charles Laughton. His later works included the controversial 'A Shade of Difference' (1962), which dealt with racial problems in politics and focused on the problems besetting the United Nations, 'Courage and Hesitation' (1972), about the Nixon administration, 'A God Against the Gods' (1976) and 'Pentagon' (1986). 'Advise and Consent' holds the record for the longest-running bestseller in history - 93 weeks on the New York Times list. Drury, who became a full-time novelist the next year. It won the Pulitzer for literature in 1960 and precipitated a career switch for Mr. Drury's first and most successful, quickly received critical acclaim and became a bestseller.

The novel, which took him seven years to complete, weaves a tale of political and sexual intrigue centering on the selection of a new secretary of state. Senate for the Times in 1959 when 'Advise and Consent' was published. Drury, an eloquent speaker and gifted writer who penned 17 other novels and five nonfiction works, died of heart failure in a Tiburon, Calif., hospital near his home, his publisher, Scribner, announced. Allen Drury, the New York Times reporter who used his knowledge of the inner workings of official Washington to write the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel 'Advise and Consent,' died Sept.

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