In Brief

I see that my Dad's letters - those extracts I've posted here - have vividly shown something of the character of the man, and have caught the positive interest of some of my commenters, and that has made me see my Dad in a new light somehow - as something entirely other than my father. What is hard for me is to know how to respond. I have encountered him anew in reading the letters, and feel a very odd mixture of excitement and sadness. I wish I'd known him better, and that he'd lived longer, which might have allowed that to happen.

Maybe a first step is simply to answer the questions as they were posed.

Did your father ever write his novel?
No. It was clear that in his retirement he had once again planned to write one, but there is no material that suggests he actually started it. I guess I see him as what Julia Cameron calls a 'shadow artist', living his creativity vicariously through working closely with authors (see below). He used to write witty political poems for competitions in the Spectator and New Statesman, and frequently won £5 or a bottle of Scotch!

What did he do with his life?
In 1953 he married my mother, and together they went on to have our family - my elder brother and sister, and myself. My parents separated in 1978 - my mother's initiative.
He was a distinguished editor, a director of the Bodley Head, a small highly regarded publishing house based on Bow Street in London. He worked there for his entire working life. Notably he worked with Graham Greene, and his last project before retirement was the Collected Letters of George Bernard Shaw. The Bodley Head had a fantastic children's list, and my earliest memories are of him bringing me home the latest picture book, extracting it like treasure from his battered brown leather briefcase.
In 1987 he retired and in February 1988 he committed suicide aged 62. Some of you already know this from my previous blog.

What is it like reading the letters as his daughter?
Extraordinary. Very moving, and also unbearably tantalising. Here's this intense glimpse into the mind and the life of my father over a two-year period aged 20-21, and suddenly it ends with his long-awaited demob. And he's gone. There are many passages that evoke the inner conflicts he struggled with then, and was to struggle with all his life. Seeing these roots so clearly is both strangely reassuring and utterly heartbreaking.
I have a few vivid memories of him from my early childhood, but then it is as if he went into a slow fade, mirroring the disintegration of my parents' marriage. After my parents separated I saw him infrequently. I lived to regret this.