school at fourteen and went to work in a local factory. Alan never presented himself as a misunderstood sensitive being, and always insisted that he had a wonderful time chasing girls and going with workmates to the lively Nottingham pubs. He also joined the Air Training Corps (ATC) where he absorbed information so quickly that by the age of seventeen he was working as an air traffic controller at a nearby airfield. World War II was still being fought, and his ambition was to become a pilot and go to the Far East, but before that could be realized it was VE Day. As soon as possible he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. It was too late to become a pilot or a navigator, but he got as far as Malaya, where as a radio operator he spent long nights in a hut at the edge of the jungle.
The Morse code he learned during this time stayed with Alan all his life; he loved listening to transmissions from liners and cargo ships (although he never transmitted himself), and whenever invited to speak, he always took his Morse key along. Before beginning his talk, he would make a grand performance of setting it up on the table in front of him and then announce that if anyone in the audience could decipher the message he was about to transmit, he would give that person a signed copy of one of his books. As far as I remember, this never happened.
In Malaya, Alan caught tuberculosisâonly discovered during the final physical examination before demobilization. He spent the next eighteen months in a military sanatorium, and was awarded a 100 percent disability pension. By then Alan was twenty-three years old, and it was not long until we met. We fell in love and soon decided to leave the country, going first to France and then to Mallorca, and stayed away from England for more than six years. That pension was our only reliable income until, after several rejections, the manuscript of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was accepted for publication. Afterward, Alan would say that during those apprentice years he had been kept by a very kind woman: the Queen of England.
It is said that an artist must choose between life and art; sometimes Alan would tell whomever questioned him that after his first book was published and he became a recognized writer, he stopped livingâthere was not enough time to do both. I hope that was not entirely true. But writing was his main activity: He would spend ten to twelve hours a day at his desk, reading or answering letters when he needed a break from working on his current novel. And there were poems, essays, reviewsâand scripts for the films of his first two books, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner , and later others. He was extremely productive. But certainly he also enjoyed social life with our friends and going to concerts or the theatre. This was the heyday of the young British dramatists at the Royal Court Theatre.
Now, in the 1960s, there was enough money for what we enjoyed most: travel, and although in the first few years our son was still a baby, we would spend up to six months of the year away from England. Alanâs books were translated into many languages, which meant that he was invited to many other countries, frequently to literary festivals, or sometimes offered the use of a villa or grand apartment for generous periods of time. I remember a stay at a castle in then-Czechoslovakia, where we were awoken every morning by a scream from our son, who had managed to get his head or hand caught in some part of the rickety crib that had been put in our room for him. We also spent months in Mallorca, in a house generously lent by Robert Graves. During our four years on the island we had become good friends with him and the Graves family.
Time passed ⦠the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties.⦠Every year or two a new book, a trip to another part of the world. Japan, India, the United States, Mexico, and Latin America: the range
The Morse code he learned during this time stayed with Alan all his life; he loved listening to transmissions from liners and cargo ships (although he never transmitted himself), and whenever invited to speak, he always took his Morse key along. Before beginning his talk, he would make a grand performance of setting it up on the table in front of him and then announce that if anyone in the audience could decipher the message he was about to transmit, he would give that person a signed copy of one of his books. As far as I remember, this never happened.
In Malaya, Alan caught tuberculosisâonly discovered during the final physical examination before demobilization. He spent the next eighteen months in a military sanatorium, and was awarded a 100 percent disability pension. By then Alan was twenty-three years old, and it was not long until we met. We fell in love and soon decided to leave the country, going first to France and then to Mallorca, and stayed away from England for more than six years. That pension was our only reliable income until, after several rejections, the manuscript of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was accepted for publication. Afterward, Alan would say that during those apprentice years he had been kept by a very kind woman: the Queen of England.
It is said that an artist must choose between life and art; sometimes Alan would tell whomever questioned him that after his first book was published and he became a recognized writer, he stopped livingâthere was not enough time to do both. I hope that was not entirely true. But writing was his main activity: He would spend ten to twelve hours a day at his desk, reading or answering letters when he needed a break from working on his current novel. And there were poems, essays, reviewsâand scripts for the films of his first two books, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner , and later others. He was extremely productive. But certainly he also enjoyed social life with our friends and going to concerts or the theatre. This was the heyday of the young British dramatists at the Royal Court Theatre.
Now, in the 1960s, there was enough money for what we enjoyed most: travel, and although in the first few years our son was still a baby, we would spend up to six months of the year away from England. Alanâs books were translated into many languages, which meant that he was invited to many other countries, frequently to literary festivals, or sometimes offered the use of a villa or grand apartment for generous periods of time. I remember a stay at a castle in then-Czechoslovakia, where we were awoken every morning by a scream from our son, who had managed to get his head or hand caught in some part of the rickety crib that had been put in our room for him. We also spent months in Mallorca, in a house generously lent by Robert Graves. During our four years on the island we had become good friends with him and the Graves family.
Time passed ⦠the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties.⦠Every year or two a new book, a trip to another part of the world. Japan, India, the United States, Mexico, and Latin America: the range
Similar Books
