Brian Aldiss Author rian Aldiss began his writing was ‘Now’. career in 1928, at the age of three. “Coming to Oxford was the best decision His mother, May, lovingly bound I ever made,” Brian said. Here he wrote his those early stories with pieces of 61 books and novellas and, with C S Lewis, left-over wallpaper and placed founded the Oxford University Speculative them alongside Dickens and HG Wells on the Fiction Group, in 1955. He also became the Bfamily’s bookshelves. literary editor of the Oxford Mail. Now aged 85, Brian’s prodigious talent has While working at Saunders he wrote a been celebrated by the greatest writers of the number of short pieces for a booksellers trade age — his writing has been compared with that journal about life in a fictitious bookshop, of Isaac Asimov and Aldous Huxley. and this attracted the attention of Charles In 1977 he was elected chairman of The Monteith, an editor at Faber and Faber. The Society of Authors’ Committee of Management result was Brian’s first puiblished book, The and, in 2000, was made Grand Master of Brightfount Diaries (1955), a collection of his Science Fiction by the Writers of America. bookshop pieces. His books have been a “After life in the army, source of inspiration for I did not adapt easily to many readers around the a nine-to-five job but the globe. experience was lightened Brian was born in East by the characters who Dereham, Norfolk, in walked through the door 1925. His father, Stanley, of Sanders. I began writing expected the young Aldiss sketches about them. to join the family business Sanders subscribed to The — in particular the Bookseller and I wrote to its gentleman’s outfitters which editor suggesting he could was a part of the extensive enliven the magazine with a enterprise founded by humorous column written his grandfather, Harry by me. Hildyard Aldiss. “He suggested I write six Just before the outbreak of them for him to study of the Second World War, –six without a guarantee Brian’s family moved to of publication! But I did North Devon, eventually it and he published them settling in Barnstable all, week by week for two where, in 1939, Brian became a student at West years. Faber and Faber contacted me saying Buckland School. In 1943 he enlisted and was they were fans. Would I like to make a book sent with the Royal Signals to the Far East. out of the series? I agreed ‘and could it be After being demobbed and having illustrated?’.” experienced the world beyond Devon, Brian To be approached by a publisher must be decided Barnstable was not for him. every writer’s dream — and Brian got his He had heard that Oxford was full of illustrator too. libraries and bookshops and so bought a train The Brightfount Diaries came out with Pearl ticket to our city. Falconer’s sketches in November, 1955. That Wandering down the The High, he came same year he won his first literary prize for a across Sanders, which is now well known as short story competition in The Observer. the UK’s largest seller of fine prints, maps and No surprise then that a copy of his first book engravings. In those days it also sold books. would be first choice to accompnay him to our Brian went inside and asked for a job and after island. questioning him, the owner asked when he “My copy of The Brightfount Diaries with could start work. Brian’s confident reply the letters and reviews would be a bit of nostalgia on the island,” he said. sten-gun over shoulder, passing by half- “There was still some way to go before starved, half-naked barefoot people. I looked I could become a full-time writer. The at their faces and was struck by their serenity. I manuscript of my first attempt at a novel is thought, ‘We must be doing something wrong.’ somewhere in a box, possibly in the Bodleian. “Eventually, we were shipped home. Our I called it Shouting down a Cliff. It was 80,000 troop ship moored in LiverpooI docks, in words long but I knew it was no good — too a deserted dockyard – absolutely no one to amateurish. I never looked at it again but I welcome us. Not so much as a sergeant-major! learned from that experience.” “I took the train to Aldershot to sign His experiences in the forces are also off. People appeared weary and unfriendly. reflected in his writing. Brian showed me a England seemed a miserable place after India. copy of his 1962 novel Hothouse. “I made my way to Barnstable, but did It is set in a far future where the earth has not feel it was the place for me. The army stopped rotating and plants are engaged in a experience, although disciplined, had given me constant frenzy of growth and decay. Small a sense of independence. I guess that is how I groups of elvish humans live beneath a giant was able to leave home and come to Oxford.” banyan tree that covers the day side of the Brian’s 1964 novel, Greybeard, is set in Earth. Oxford, decades after the Earth’s population “Penguin have just reprinted this as a has been sterilised as a result of nuclear bomb Penguin Classic. When I was stationed in the tests. The book shows an emptying world, Far East, I spent some time in Calcutta. I took occupied by an ageing, childless population. a ferry across the Houghli to the botanical “When my first wife left me to live in The gardens. There stood this huge Banyan tree, Isle of Wight, I was devastated. I knew I which they claimed was the biggest tree in the couldn’t earn my living there — I felt that I world. It was not tall like a giant redwood but had lost my children, Clive and Wendy, so wide-spreading, branch after branch — as if it precious! That intense emotion led me to could eventually stretch around the world. imagine a whole world without children. That “The gardeners used forked posts to support marriage was a flop. My second marriage to each section because goats climbed into it. Margaret was different altogether,” Brian said. It was so surreal, it looked like a creation of “Margaret died in 1998 after a long Salvador Dali. Julian Huxley had written about illness, my daughter Charlotte and I went to that very tree. The idea for Hothouse was also Palaeohora, in Southern Crete. born in those venerable branches.” “I was feeling shocked but we made the While in the Royal Signals regiment in most of things. Wandering, I found myself in 1944, Brian was sent into a real hothouse, a forest of ancient, scabby, olive trees. In the fighting the Japanese. middle of the forest was an abandoned private “Burma is a beautiful country but it is chapel. On the wall, in a state of decay, was a difficult to talk about war. The Battle of mural which I took to be of Mary with Jesus in Kohima was fought from either side of a tennis her arms. I was intrigued. court,” he recalled. I asked the local priest about it. He said “When we were trying to take back ‘Oh no, that is not Mary, it is St Anna, Jesus’s Mandalay, at times, I was dropped with my grandmother.’ In the Near East there is a radio set in the jungle, to pass messages from legend that, when Mary ran out of milk, brigade ahead and division behind. But you Anna suckled the baby. I returned and took a did not know which was ‘front’ or ‘behind’. photograph of the mural. “After Kohima, the Japanese army was “Later my daughter and I were in a café breaking up, but that meant small groups by the seafront. The daughter of the owner could be anywhere. I tried to sleep with was pressed into service as the waitress but my rifle beside me but there were so many we found her in a cramped space behind the animal noises, mostly birds and rats in the door. When she was not waiting at table, she undergrowth; but that same noise could be practiced painting in the Byzantine manner. I made by a Japanese soldier,” Brian said. asked her to make a copy of the mural. I paid “After we had taken Mandalay and were her enough for her to leave the café and go to back in Calcutta, I remember marching in Athens, where she probably paints pictures for uniform with my steel tipped army boots, tourists.” Brian explained that the story doesn’t really end there. “A publishing company called Stratus had recently brought out Moreau’s Other Island and Last Orders and some other out-of-print books of mine. They had come up with an idea called print-on-demand, which avoided paying expensive warehousing. But the general public were not ready for this idea and Stratus was struggling to survive. So I offered them the novel I had been working on. Its opening line was: ‘What a bugger I said to myself in my old- fashioned way, what an absolute bugger.’ “I guess that was how I felt at the time and I called that book The Cretan Teat. Charlotte and I had travelled inland from Palaeohora and discovered an unhappy town. Here the priest said, ‘You know there is a curse on this town’. Wherever we went, people told us about what had “I thought ‘I must write about this’. That happened there in the Second World War,” novel gradually changed into my imagined Brian explained. story, one of history, of blame, corruption, sex “Because it was mountainous country, the and the novelist growing old disgracefully. Germans parachuted their troops in and the Stratus accepted the novel but the company partisans were able to shoot them down as was collapsing. The editor, Edna Grey had they fell. In revenge the Germans rounded up been given her notice but she doggedly worked the women and children, locked them in the on my novel and it was eventually published.” church and set fire to it. At this point Brian showed me a copy of “After the war Willy Brandt, then Chancellor The Cretan Teat and there on the cover was a of the Federal Republic of Germany, went to reproduction of the picture of St Anna. this little town to attempt to make amends. He “I think this picture must have been painted had a bridge and road built, and a monument by a celibate priest who had never seen a to the victims. When he finished rebuilding woman’s breasts!” he laughed. the church, a band played and the Germans If I can only take one thing to the island,it marched away. But no one in that town has to be the portrait of St Anna because it has clapped. so many connections. “