WRITER an Enquiry Into a Novelist
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B DESMOND A G L E Y WRITER An Enquiry into a Novelist Edited by Philip Eastwood with foreword by Mike Ripley WRITER An Enquiry into a Novelist DESMOND BAGLEY Edited by PHILIP EASTWOOD with foreword by MIKE RIPLEY ii COPYRIGHT Published by Philip Eastwood www.thebagleybrief.com Copyright Brockhurst Publications Limited 2021 Editorial Philip Eastwood 2021 Foreword Mike Ripley 2021 Desmond Bagley and Philip Eastwood assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-5272-8391-6 Published with the consent of the trustee for the J M Bagley Settlement: Moore Stephens Fiduciaries (Guernsey) Limited, and with the assistance of HarperCollins Publishers and the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any other means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Front cover illustration: A.H. Edwards 1955, from the Desmond Bagley Collection Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University. Rear cover illustration: Moon Fantasy Peter Le Vasseur 1980. iii CONTENTS TITLE PAGE ii COPYRIGHT iii CONTENTS iv FOREWORD vii PREFACE x INTRODUCTION 1 PART ONE: PROTO-WRITER 7 GENEALOGICAL NOTE 8 CHAPTER 1 10 Kendal and Bolton (1923 – 1936) 10 CHAPTER 2 23 Blackpool (1936 – 1946) 23 CHAPTER 3 35 Blackpool to Durban, South Africa (1946 – 1951) 35 CHAPTER 4 53 African Gunshots and the Orange Free State (1951 – 1955) 53 Poem published in African Gunshots: 'Cakes' 55 Science fiction descriptive piece: 'The Romance of Space Travel' 57 CHAPTER 5 62 Misty Hill and the Short Story (1955) 62 First published short story in Argosy: 'My Old Man’s Trumpet' 66 Article for Johannesburg Sunday Times: 'Oh Yeah?' 85 iv PART TWO: JOURNALIST 90 CHAPTER 6 91 Johannesburg and the Rand Daily Mail (1956) 91 CHAPTER 7 101 The Federal Hotel, Journalistic Pseudonyms and Joan Brown 101 Essay: 'The Function of the Film Critic' 114 CHAPTER 8 123 An Assassination at Milner Park (1960) 123 Real life crime story written for The Mystery Writers of America: 'The Circumstances Surrounding the Crime' 125 CHAPTER 9 142 Scriptwriting for Filmlets in Johannesburg (1960 – 1961) 142 CHAPTER 10 149 Sub-Editor at the Rand Daily Mail (1962) 149 CHAPTER 11 155 Fantasy and Science Fiction Writing (1962) 155 AFTERWORD 161 Bagley’s Legacy Continues 161 Author biography: 'Joan Magaret Bagley' 165 APPENDICES 170 APPENDIX I 171 South African newspaper articles written by Bagley (1956 – 1962) 171 APPENDIX II 192 Filmlets (SA) Ltd. Film and TV Script Scenarios (1959 – 1961) 192 Essay: 'Bagley – Film and TV Scripts' 198 MOON FANTASY 201 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 203 v ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS 204 Philip Eastwood 204 Mike Ripley 204 CHARITABLE DONATIONS 205 FURTHER READING 207 vi FOREWORD It is widely accepted that there was a ‘Golden Age’ of English crime fiction in the 1920s and 1930s, centred very much on the detective story which set a puzzle, usually a ‘whodunit?’ but sometimes a ‘howdunit?’ or even a ‘whydunit?’. Famous fictional detectives were created, among them Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, Father Brown and Miss Marple, all familiar names to this day, yet even in the ‘Golden Age’, their adventures in print were eclipsed by the popularity of thrillers. However much the Golden Age authors of detective stories are revered – and they certainly should be – the fact is that at the time, they were outsold by thriller writers such as John Buchan, ‘Sapper’, Leslie Charteris, Edgar Wallace and many others long forgotten. The thriller writer was not so much interested in who had done the crime (invariably murder) but in putting his characters in jeopardy and then posing the question ‘how do they get out of this?’ But if there was a Golden Age of the British thriller, and there was, it ran from 1953 (the first James Bond book) until around 1976. In that period, British authors of adventure thrillers, and then spy stories, dominated best- seller lists internationally and the ‘big three’ were Hammond Innes, Alistair MacLean and Desmond Bagley. The triumvirate of Innes, MacLean and Bagley had much in common, not the least being the same publisher, William Collins (now HarperCollins). Innes’ thriller writing career began during World War II and many of his adventure stories were turned into successful films in the 1950s, the books on which they were based outselling the spy fantasies of Ian Fleming, much to Fleming’s annoyance. By 1958, Innes’ sales had been overtaken by those of relative newcomer Alistair MacLean, with a trio of thrillers set during the war, vii written as high adventure, but both authors benefitted from large runs of paperback editions. It was no wonder that Desmond Bagley approached Collins with his first novel The Golden Keel, supposedly introducing himself as someone who ‘wrote stories like Alistair MacLean’ and indeed a review of that debut in the The Sunday Times claimed that ‘it catapults him straight into the Alistair MacLean bracket’. In truth, Bagley’s novels had more in common with those of Hammond Innes than MacLean, a fact ironically acknowledged early on in The Golden Keel when a character says ‘(this sounds like something) from a Hammond Innes thriller.’ But all three shared one important life experience: they had travelled widely at a time when foreign holidays for most of their readers were still only an aspiration. Both Bagley and Innes were inveterate travellers and MacLean had seen wartime service in the navy in the Arctic, the Mediterranean and the Far East. Their experience of exotic, foreign locations soaked into their writing and became a key factor in their success. Not surprisingly, few of their stories took place on mainland UK with Bagley’s fictional Atlas eventually covering the High Andes, Yucatan, the Bahamas, British Columbia, the Sahara, Scandinavia and, perhaps most famously of all, Iceland. Reading a Desmond Bagley, who could describe the topography, climate and natural hazards of far- away lands in beguilingly simple prose, was like going on an expedition without leaving one’s favourite armchair. And in a Desmond Bagley novel, that expedition would always be in the company of ordinary, believable characters who would come through whatever was thrown at them by nature or by villains, by resourcefulness and pluck, not super-human powers or gadgets. In this, Bagley was following in a long tradition of popular writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Nevil Shute. viii One other thing Bagley had in common with Innes and MacLean was sex, or rather the lack of it. Female characters do, of course, feature in the novels of all three but sex – unusually for the ‘Swinging Sixties’ – never raised its ugly head. Its absence gave Bagley’s work something of an air of innocence and certainly did not affect his sales one jot. It may also explain one other thing. I have no empirical evidence other than conversations with hundreds of thriller readers and writers over the years, but I am convinced that Desmond Bagley was as popular with female readers as he was with adventure-seeking red-blooded males. For proof, I can only offer a snippet from a newspaper interview given by Bagley in 1980 when he told a journalist; ‘In Lahore there’s even a Desmond Bagley fan club of about 400 teenage girls. What on Earth they do, I haven’t the faintest idea.’ They read your books, Desmond, and they enjoy them. They probably still do. This memoir, painstakingly and lovingly reconstructed, gives a rare glimpse into the early life and formative influences of a very successful author and a man about whom few had a bad word to say. As a writer and as a reader of his novels from the age of 13, I was both fascinated by it and grateful for it. Mike Ripley ix PREFACE By 1979 Desmond Bagley was regarded as one of the world’s most successful thriller writers with twelve best-selling adventure novels to his credit, each more popular than its predecessor. Initial print runs of his hardback novels were in the region of 150,000 copies, followed by a first impression of half a million paperback copies with total sales approaching sixteen million copies. Bagley’s success justified William Collins Ltd, in bestowing on him the publishing trade’s appreciative description of ‘a valuable continuing property’. His 1971 novel The Freedom Trap, had been adapted for cinema by Warner Brothers Inc., and released in 1973 as The Mackintosh Man. Directed by John Huston the film starred Hollywood actor Paul Newman in the lead role with the cream of British acting talent in supporting roles, including James Mason, Harry Andrews, Ian Bannen and Michael Hordern. In July and August 1978 Fontana Books ran their very first national cinema advertising campaign to publicise the launch, in paperback, of Bagley’s 1977 novel The Enemy. Success followed success, with BBC Scotland adapting for television his 1970 novel Running Blind, which aired in January of 1979. From his very first novel, which Bagley referred to as his ‘action stories’, his writing had been overseen by his long-term friend and in-house editor at Collins, Robert Knittel. Despite his success, writing hadn’t always come easily to Bagley, who suffered from occasional bouts of writer’s block. Just such a period set in around July of 1979. This particular bout of writer’s block followed the failure of Bagley’s seventh attempt at writing a novel set in Antarctica, and despite having some promising ideas, by November he was still struggling to get down to writing a new novel.