Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen, by Terrance Dicks

What follows is dedicated to the memory of my friend John J Johnston who died yesterday morning. The EES has an obituary. You can also see John in typically erudite form giving a talk on Sutekh’s sex life. A man with such an enormous heart that Anubis will need bigger scales. RIP.

The third of the 236 books written by Terrance Dicks was published on 21 November 1974. It was the first of Target’s Doctor Who novelisations to star the Second Doctor, though he’d appeared briefly in both Terrance’s previous novels (in the prologue of Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion and in the Mind Analysis Machine sequence in Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks).

This wasn’t planned to be the Second Doctor’s debut in the range. My first edition of Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks, published on 18 March 1974, lists the books “in preparation” in this order:

• Doctor Who and the Dæmons
• Doctor Who and the Sea-Monsters
• Doctor Who and the Cybermen
• Doctor Who and the Yeti

The first two of those (each starring the Third Doctor) were published on 17 October that year,  though by then the second of them had been retitled Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils. According to this list, the Second Doctor was then due to make his debut pitted against the Cybermen, to be written by Gerry Davis and presumably published in time for Christmas. However, things got delayed; it’s probably no coincide that, on 9 May 1974, Davis was also commissioned to write a new Cyberman story for the TV series, which he may have given priority.

Terrance’s Yeti book must have been delivered in good time and required little editorial work if it could be brought forward in the schedule. By the time of publication, the title had changed to Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen to match the original broadcast.

Earlier this year, I looked through two separate appointments diaries Terrance had for 1974. One he used (sporadically) to list appointments. On Tuesday, 30 April 1974 he had a 10.30 meeting at 93 Piccadilly — a branch of Natwest bank, presumably to discuss his new status as a freelancer. He was then due to meet, presumably for lunch, Mike Glover, the new editor at Target.

The following day, Terrance attended the final studio recording on Planet of the Spiders, his last Doctor Who story as script editor. The day after, 2 May, according to his other diary, he started writing his fourth novelisation, Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons (which, as I’ve explained previously, was his fifth to be published).

So his first three novelisations were all written while he was on-staff at the BBC, QED.

The decision to novelise the first Yeti story is interesting, given that the Yeti had not appeared on screen since a brief cameo at the end of The War Games in the summer of 1969 and there were no plans to bring them back to the series. They’d certainly made a lasting impact: during production of the Doctor Who TV movie in 1996, Paul McGann was asked his memories of the series and recounted, vividly, details of the Yeti control-spheres.

As I’ve argued before, editor Richard Henwood was also very monster-focused. Books about Daleks, Cybermen and Silurians/Sea Devils had all been commissioned by Target, and the Ice Warriors would soon feature in Doctor Who and the Curse of Peladon, published on 16 January 1975. The Yeti were the only other monster to star in more than one TV story up to this point.

Another possibility is that this particular Yeti story resonated with Terrance, who must have been working on the novelisation at the same time as script editing TV story Planet of the Spiders which is also about Tibetan monks and nefarious psychic powers. An element of that  TV story ends up in this book, with the Doctor teaching companion Victoria to resist hypnosis by reciting the “jewel in the lotus prayer”: “Om, mane, padme, hum” (pp. 127-128).

That TV story was, of course, inspired by and an expression of the Buddhist faith of co-writer, director and producer Barry Letts. He was surely the source of the details about life in a Tibetan monastery in Terrance’s novelisation of The Abominable Snowmen which don’t feature in the TV version.

The monks, for example, wear “saffron-coloured robes” (p. 26) a detail that could not be conveyed in the black-and-white TV episodes. We also learn that these monks drink “unsweetened tea with Yak butter floating in it” (p. 49). When the villains are defeated and life returns to normal, the monks’ rituals include “banging an enormous gong” (p. 138). None of that is from the TV scripts; it must have come from Terrance’s friend and colleague.

I don’t think Terrance can have seen the sole surviving episode of the TV story before he wrote the book. Had he done so, he would surely have tried to convey something of the scale and ambition of the location filming, with Snowdonia doubling for Tibet. His descriptions are serviceable but curt. He also describes the Yeti control-spheres as the size of a “large pebble” (p. 70), fitting easily into a pocket. On screen, they had to be football-sized to accommodate motors.

We get our first description in a Target book by Terrance of the interior of the TARDIS, which has a “centre console” rather than “central” (p. 10). On the same page, the Second Doctor has a “shock of untidy black hair”, the “shock” borrowed from the description of the Third Doctor in Terrance’s previous book. He describes companions Jamie and Zoe pithily, and provides potted histories - I assume working from either the in-universe history of the whole series in The Making of Doctor Who (1972) or the story-by-story summaries in the Doctor Who 10th anniversary special published in 1973 by Radio Times. 

Though Terrance is credited as co-author of The Making of Doctor Who, my suspicion is that he was more of a consultant on the first edition than a writer. The recent biography of Malcolm Hulke also reveals that the in-universe history of the series given in that book was compiled by Hulke’s assistant and sometime girlfriend Lauraine Palmeri (Herbert, p. 46). So Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen is the first example of Terrance acting as not just the script editor of the current TV show but a historian of the whole series.

There’s one further historic first here. Terrance generally writes in an engaging plain style, the descriptions concise and straightforward. This novelisation is, I think, even more straightforward than Terrance’s previous ones. In those, he reworked some events and structure of the TV stories they were based on; here each episode is relayed breezily in two chapters each. There’s a sense of bosh, job done.

But on p. 106, the Doctor produces a piece of chalk from his “capacious” pockets. It’s a word Terrance will often use again in these novelisations, along with other occasional archaic, vivid gems: “roustabout”, “mountebank” and “jollop” feature in his next two novelisations. Each time, they make perfect sense in context so readers learn this new vocabulary. They are little bombs of knowledge.

Capacious is particularly effective. It’s a Dickensian word: for example, Old Fezziwig in A Christmas Carol (1843) wears a “capacious waistcoat”. The Second Doctor’s battered old coat doesn’t just have big pockets; that perfectly chosen adjective makes them, vividly, something a bit magical and from another time. 

Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks by Terrance Dicks

Just sixty days after the publication of novelisations of the Third Doctor’s first two screen adventures — Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion by Terrance Dicks and Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters by Malcolm Hulke — there was more. On 18 March 1974, Target Books presented two further Third Doctor books by the same pair of authors, skipping ahead to adventures that each star a major baddie.

Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon, by Hulke, features the villainous Master and also introduces us to companion Jo Grant (even though this was not her debut story on TV). Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks, by Dicks, pits Jo and the Doctor against — well, guess.

I think you can see that these follow-up novelisations were written pretty quickly. The phrase, “You’re right, of course,” is used two-thirds of the way down page 11 of Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks and then again at the top of page 12, which is just the sort of thing a copy editor ought to catch if missed by the author. 

Later, we’re told three times within about a page of text (pp. 101-102) that the futuristic trikes are specially designed to race across a landscape strewn with rubble — for all that this is a neat explanation of why there happens to be a trike conveniently parked out in the wilderness. When the Doctor sees this vehicle,

“He jumped into the driver’s seat” (p. 102).

On to, surely, when it’s a trike. Or there’s the awkward alliteration and repeated “recent” here:

“I have been studying the recent reports of resistance activity. It has reached a peak in recent weeks.” (p. 14)

That’s a shame because Terrance, who spent five years in advertising before his time on Doctor Who, had a particular gift for the pithy, vivid phrase. There are plenty of those here, too. The Controller of Earth Sector One sums up the Third Doctor as the,

“tall lean man with the shock of white hair” (p. 99).

Or there’s the poetic moment in describing,

“the Time Vortex, that mysterious void where Time and Space are one” (p. 39).

Generally, this is a cracking prose version of a cracking TV story in which gorillas (p. 9) battle guerrillas (p. 17) at the behest of the Doctor’s arch-enemies. While the Daleks, on screen, don’t appear until the closing seconds of Episode One — that is, a quarter of the way into the story — Terrance brings them in after just seven pages, and there’s a big illustration, too. The book promises and delivers.

It also includes the ending excised from the TV version, in which the Doctor and Jo appear to their earlier selves, the first half of which otherwise doesn’t make much sense. The trike sequence is a great deal more thrilling than on screen, with Ogrons pursuing on their own trikes and the Doctor driving up the side of a house and doing cool skids and jumps, in the way you imagine a chase when you’re a child.

I’m amused by 22nd-century guerrilla Anat not having seen a telephone before but knowing how it works (p. 63) — I’m not sure my own children would — and Boaz having read “history books” (p. 73) so that he knows all about servants. The mechanics of future, Dalek-conquered Earth also include gruel for most humans but “real wine in a real china cup” for the Controller (p. 12). Who grows the grapes and presses wine in the Dalek Empire? Who makes fancy cups? (I have wanged on before about the economics of the Daleks.)

Other added details include the mechanics of changing future history. At the end of the novelisation, the Doctor explains that,

“I was able to intervene and put history back on its proper tracks.” 

And Jo responds:

“I know … because you’re a Time Lord.” (p.138) 

That, I think, is tying this up with what happens at the end of the TV story Invasion of the Dinosaurs, which had just finished broadcast when this book came out. 

Then there’s the way this novelisation ties in with one of Terrance’s later TV stories. We’re told that the Daleks’ Mind Analysis Machine — with capitals — has previously left its human subjects, 

“shambling idiots with all their intelligence drained from them” (p. 100). 

The Doctor is badly hurt by his experience, though recovers after,

“a little food and wine, and a chance to rest” (p. 109).

Terrance’s next book, Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen, also has stuff about the dangers of tampering with people’s minds, all almost a decade before his TV story The Five Doctors features the dreaded Mind Probe. The implication is that Terrance — who helped created the evil, hypnotic Master — found mind control rather disturbing.

I think this novelisation also helps reveal something that Terrance really liked about the Master’s debut TV story. In Episode Three of Terror of the Autons (up on iPlayer), Captain Yates bravely commandeers’ the Brigadier’s Austin Maxi and drives it straight into an Auton. The creature goes flying, somersaulting down a hill — and then, all in the same shot, gets back up and starts climbing.

It’s a brilliant stunt and Terrance has something like it happen in three of his first four books: on p. 139 of Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, again on p. 77 of Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks (in this case, the Brigadier driving into an Ogron) and then on p. 75 of the fourth book he wrote, Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons.

In each case, the vehicle being driven is referred to as a “jeep”. The word “jeep” is used a lot in TV Doctor Who overseen by Terrance as script editor, from Episode 7 of The Invasion (1968) — the first story on which he received a screen credit — to Part Four of Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974); Terrance’s successor, Robert Holmes, began shadowing him from the next story.

(“Jeep” is also used in Part Four of The Curse of Fenric (1989) and in Doomsday (2006); I wonder if there’s a correlation between script editors / show runners who don’t drive, just as Terrance didn’t.)

Of course, what’s seen on screen in these stories and what would be used by the British Army or its UNIT spin-off is not the distinctive US Army general purpose vehicle but instead the British Land-Rover, inspired by the American jeep but a notably different car. Someone must have pointed this out to Terrance or the Target editorial team at some point between the manuscript of Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons being delivered around the end of May 1974 and then typeset, and the publication of the next book Terrance wrote, Doctor Who and the Giant Robot, published the following March.

In the latter, the “Brigadier’s Land-Rover” first appears on p. 24 and then throughout. But it is “jeep” throughout the novelisation of Terror of the Autons. Terrance surely didn’t correct the error in one book and then return to the wrong name in his next, so this misidentification of the Brigadier’s make of car is further evidence to support my wheeze that Terrance wrote the novelisation of Terror first and then wrote Giant Robot, though they were published the other way round.

More of this stuff to come as I write up my forthcoming biography of Terrance Dicks, due for publication some time next year. In the meantime, you might like my biography of David Whitaker, the author of the very first Doctor Who novelisation.

Bookish, by Matthew Sweet

This is a novelisation of the first series of the TV drama of the same name, created by Mark Gatiss and co-written by Matthew Sweet (both of whom I know). The titular Gabriel Book runs a bookshop, Book's, at 158 Archangel Lane, WC2, his wife Trottie running a wallpaper shop next door. Book has an encyclopaedic memory of the thing he's read and a great interest in the strange and macabre, consulting for the police when they have unusual cases. He also seems to have done some kind of intelligence work in the war and has his own secrets...

Sometime around February 1946, a young man called Jack Blunt is released from prison and finds himself offered a job assisting Book. Jack's an orphan, left with only a photograph of his father and not even his name. Soon he's caught up in the Books' lives and their investigations of murder.

The novelisation largely follows the events of the three two-part TV stories but its peppered with additional details. For example, it is bookended by letters from 1962, 14 years after the events seen on screen and giving some hints about what is still to come. We also glimpse a bit more of Trottie in the war and Book takes a haunting journey on a train. 

When books are mentioned, we often learn their publisher and bindings - and so gain something of the way Book classifies his world. We're told the second adventure takes place in August 1946 six months after the first (p. 129), and that the third story occurs "weeks" later, so in September.

It's also peppered with bits of real history, such as the other roles taken by film extras Linda and Barbara:

"The David Lean Great Expectations condemns them to the cutting-room floor." (p. 160)

As with the TV series, it's all good fun but the cosy crimes are given an edge by the real social history. In that sense, it's got something, I think, of the feel of Call the Midwife: just the thing for a Sunday evening in front of the box. A second series is now in production and I hope it can be seen more widely than on the relatively limited channel U&Alibi because it is a delight.

See also:

• Me on The New Forest Murders, by Matthew Sweet

Writers' Guild guide to working with factual material

The Writers' Guild of Great Britain has produced a new, free guide to working with factual material. 

I've been involved in helping put it together, in my role as chair of the guild's Books Committee. Earlier this week, I was quoted by trade paper the Bookseller in its coverage of the free guide. Later this week, on 27 August, I'll be hosting a free online event about it later this week (see below for details).

It's likely to be my last job as chair, as my three-year stint comes to an end next month at the guild's AGM. 

Full blurb for the guide and event details as follows:

The lives of real people and true stories have always provided inspiration for writers. But the practicalities of working with factual material – and the potential to upset an existing person (or their lawyer) – can leave writers feeling anxious.

Which is why WGGB has today (19 August 2025) launched a new free, online guide on working with factual material.

The guidelines cover how copyright law treats factual material and how writers can build relationships with their subjects. They also provide advice on how to avoid being accused of libel or defamation.

The guidelines have been produced by the WGGB Books Committee, but the advice and principles contained in them will also be useful for writers working in other craft areas such as film, TV, theatre or audio.

The guide includes answers to questions that the WGGB is regularly asked. For example:

• Do I need ‘life rights’ to write about a real, living person?
• What if I want to write about a real, deceased person?
• Do I need permission to include a reference to a brand or trademark in my work?
• Do I need a licence to quote an academic or journalistic article in my work?
• Do I need a licence to parody or pastiche something factual in my work?
• What if my sources are in the public domain?
• How do I protect my copyright when doing research/conducting interviews?
• Should my interview subjects sign an NDA?
• How do I work with historical consultants?
• What if my subject wants a cut of the profits from my project?
• I want to base a fictional character on a real person – can I do that?

When it comes to undertaking research and interviews, for example of subjects or specialists in the author’s chosen area, we have published an accompanying template ‘Right to release’ form (as a free download) which the writer can ask the interview subject to sign to confirm that they understand the purpose of the interview and which grants the writer the right to use their material.

Working with factual material guides writers through understanding the differences between libel and defamation, best practice to protect themselves against a legal case, and the implications of writer warranties and indemnities.

WGGB Books Chair Simon Guerrier said: “When it comes to working with factual material, there are clearly many areas in which writers want help and clarification — as WGGB has received numerous enquiries in the past few years.

“This clear, concise publication guides writers through what they need to know and includes some practical tips.

“I’m very grateful to everyone on the WGGB Books Committee and at the union for their hard work in putting these guidelines together.”

Working with factual material – come to our free event on 27 August

WGGB Books Chair Simon Guerrier will be offering some practical advice on this subject and discussing with guests (to be announced) the pitfalls of writing about real-life characters, events and issues, whether contemporary or historical.

Live captions will be available throughout. Please let us know when you register if you have any additional access needs.

5-6pm, 27 August

Online, via Zoom

Price: free

More information and bookings

Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion by Terrance Dicks

“In this, the first adventure of his third ‘incarnation’, DOCTOR WHO, Liz Shaw, and the Brigadier grapple with the nightmarish invasion of the AUTONS — living, giant-sized plastic-modelled ‘humans’ with no hair and sightless eyes; waxwork replicas and tailors’ dummies whose murderous behaviour is directed by the NESTENE CONSCIOUSNESS — a malignant, squid-like monster of cosmic proportions and indescribably hideous appearance.”

John Grindrod’s excellent talk at the Target Book Club event last month made me revisit the blurb on the back of this novelisation, the first* of more than 200 books by Terrance Dicks, originally published simultaneously in hardback and paperback on 17 January 1974. That blurb, a single, thrilling sentence chock full of adjectives, was probably written by commissioning editor Richard Henwood.

Heywood’s brilliant instincts for what would appeal directly to his readership of 11-14 year-olds also included changing the titles of stories to focus on the monsters. The TV story Spearhead from Space thus became Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion. 

Published on the same day was Malcolm Hulke’s novelisation of his own TV story, Doctor Who and the Silurians. This already had a monster-focused title but “Silurian” is a technical word referring to a specific period of geological time. Henwood went for something simpler and more vivid, a title to immediately conjure a mental image: Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters (with hyphen). The cover, by Chris Achilleos, promises monsters plural: a T-rex and a Silurian.

Of course, these new titles also fitted with those of the first three Target novelisations, published on 2 May 1973 and all reissued versions of books originally published in the 1960s. Two were originally published with snappy, simple titles focused on the antagonists: Doctor Who and the Zarbi and Doctor Who and the Crusaders. Henwood changed Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks to Doctor Who and the Daleks to match (though only on the front cover; it retains its original title inside).

As John Grindrod pointed out in his talk, these three Target reissues were published as part of the wider “Target Adventure Series”. The inside cover of each lists the other two Doctor Who books and also a non-Doctor Who adventure story called The Nightmare Rally. Written by Pierre Castex, this was again a reissue of a book originally published in the 1960s, which the new cover proclaimed was “Now an exciting Walt Disney film, Diamonds on Wheels”; the reissue was published ahead of the film being released in cinemas later that year.

Also listed as part of the Target Adventure Series in these first Doctor Who books was a non-fiction title, Wings of Glory — written by Graeme Cook and about the history of war in the air. Another non-fiction title, None but the Valiant, about war at sea, was,

“to be published in Target Books, September 1973”.

Note that there was no mention here of further Doctor Who books as “in preparation” — a feature of later Doctor Who novelisations. Henwood had written to the BBC on 3 November 1972 expressing a wish to novelise further Doctor Who stories beyond the three reissues but it seems he and the team at Target waited to see how those sold before formally committing to more.

They sold extremely well: The Target Book by David J Howe with Tim Neal, which is essential reading on this stuff, estimates an initial print run of 20,000 copies per title, a reprint within six months (October/November 1973), and again three months later (January/February 1974). One of the books, Doctor Who and the Daleks, reached no. 6 in the WH Smith top 10 on 20 July 1973. 

By this point, with the books clearly a success, six new Doctor Who titles had been commissioned. As well as Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion and Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters, there were to be novelisations of the following TV stories:

• Day of the Daleks (published as Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks by Terrance Dicks on 18 March 1974)
• Colony in Space (published as Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon by Malcolm Hulke the same day)
• The Daemons (published as Doctor Who and the Daemons by Barry Letts on 17 October 1974)
• The Sea Devils (published as Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils, with hyphen, by Malcolm Hulke the same day)

At this stage, Mac Hulke was the backbone of the Target range, writing half of the new books — all based on his own TV serials. To begin with, all his books were to be renamed with punchier titles: Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils was originally going to be put out as Doctor Who and the Sea-Monsters (as per the “in preparation” list in the first editions of Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks and Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon). The changed title and hyphen were surely to help indicate that this was a direct sequel to Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters. 

My guess is that the title was changed back to Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils following the last-minute decision to repeat the omnibus version of The Sea Devils on TV on 27 May 1974, a few months ahead of publication. Perhaps it was also to ensure the title matched the list of all Doctor Who TV serials given in the Radio Times special marking 10 years of Doctor Who, published in November 1973. Another title listed as “in preparation” in March 1974, Doctor Who and the Yeti, was also changed back to its TV title and published as Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen.

However, before Target abandoned this policy of changing titles to make them more simple, vivid and monster-focused, this approach seems to have had a profound effect on Hulke and others working on the TV show. On 2 July 1973 — around the same time that these first six new novelisations were confirmed — Hulke was also commissioned to write the scripts for a new six-part Doctor Who story on TV called Timescoop. By early August, that name had been changed to Invasion of the Dinosaurs. TV story Death to the Daleks, commissioned the same day, already had this kind of title but Return to Peladon, commissioned on 12 July from writer Brian Hayles, became The Monster of Peladon (Hayles was also soon commissioned by Target to novelise his first Peladon story). 

Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts had originally planned to end the 1974 TV series of Doctor Who by killing off the Master, as played by Roger Delgado, in a story to be called The Final Game. When Delgado died and then star Jon Pertwee decided to leave Doctor Who, the finale became a story to kill-off the Third Doctor, now with a monster-focused title: Planet of the Spiders. In the following season of TV adventures, the titles of all but one story — The Ark in Space — include the name of the monster.

The books introduced other stuff that found its way into the TV show, too. The Making of Doctor Who (1972) by Hulke and Dicks revealed that Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart’s first name is “Alastair”. This fact is given again in Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, published months before studio recording of the name’s first use on screen in Part One of Planet of the Spiders.

Then there’s this, from the climax of the Auton invasion book, as one of the monstrous shop-window dummies is caught in the blast of a grenade.

“An Auton arm blown clear from the body continued to lash wildly around the room, spitting energy bolts like a demented snake.” (p. 146)

It’s surely the inspiration for what happens in the TV episode Rose (2005).

(ETA clever Nicholas Pegg points out what goes through the mind of the policeman facing, in the novelisation, the Auton invasion of Oxford Street:

"Students, he thought vaguely. They'd gone too far this time. That thought was also his last." (p. 134)

Rose's response to encountering the Autons for the first time, in a department store in "central London", is that they must be students...)

I’ve much more to say about what Terrance does and doesn’t do in his first novelisation, but I’ll save it for my forthcoming biography of him...

* Terrance was credited as co-writer of The Making of Doctor Who (Piccolo, 1972), but Mac Hulke did the bulk - probably all - of the actual writing, and took 75% of the royalties. "The Auton Invasion was the first book of any kind I'd written," Terrance told the authors of the Target Book (p. 19). Years later, he alone carried out the rewrites on the updated edition of The Making of..., published by Target in 1976, but reused some of the material originally written by Hulke.

Further reading:

• Me on Terrance's next book, Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks
• Richard Benson, "Mark Gatiss, the boy that Dr Who books made", in the Bee - this new interview includes the influence on Mark of Spearhead from Space on TV and Terrance's novelisation of The Three Doctors
• Matthew Michael on Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion
• Jim Sangster on Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion
• More by me on Terrance Dicks

Doctor Who Magazine #620

The new issue of the official Doctor Who Magazine is out today and includes After Image by me, in which I look again at recent TV episodes Lucky Day, The Story & the Engine, The Interstellar Song Contest, Wish World and The Reality War.

I, in turn, get reviewed, with Jamie Lenman casting his critical eye over Smith and Sullivan: Reunited, of which I wrote one episode. He says Blood Type is "complex and nuanced", which is nice.

There are lots of other goodies this issue, not least Gary Gillatt's lovely piece about the war service of the actors who played the first three Doctors Who. 

Anyway. I'm on deadlines so must dash. Will write up notes on some recent books read and post them here asap.

Daumier, by Sarah Symmons

In the summer of 1993, me and my friend O. trekked up to London to work our way round various galleries, ticking off a longish list of paintings we’d been given as part of our A-level art course. It was mostly 19th century stuff, Turner and Constable through to the post-Impressionists. 

I scribbled basic pencil sketches of the ones I thought most interesting and bought postcards of anything on the list. Later, compiling this in an A4 folder to hand in to our teacher, I realised that while the postcards reproduced the paintings much more accurately than my sketches, they didn’t always convey their effect. On my sketch of Monet’s Water Lilies, I added little stick figures of people in the National Gallery, to get across that it took up a whole, enormous wall. I got extra marks for that.

It was also interesting to see which paintings I’d thought worth sketching had or hadn’t been selected for reproduction as postcards. Portraits of single individuals and landscapes of real places tended to get reproduced. Odder, more interesting stuff tended not to. In the Courtauld Institute, I bought two postcards of a painting that particularly spoke to me — one for my homework project and one for my bedroom wall. I couldn’t say at the time what it was about Don Quixote and Sancho Pancha (c. 1870-72) by Honoré Daumier that so held my attention. I’ve thought about it a lot since.

Honoré Victorin Daumier, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, c. 1868-72, The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust). Image courtesy of the Courtauld.

For one thing, it’s an unfinished painting, the work of an old artist in the process of going blind. That may account for the murky, dream-like quality and the half-formed figures — an impressionistically gaunt Quixote and his horse. Yet this crude, skeletal figure sits tall and proud, shoulders back, form in total contrast to the execution. If you know the story (I think I learned it after first seeing this painting), you’ll know Quixote is a fantasist, convinced he’s on an epic, noble quest. The posture here is his delusion.

Beside him, Sancho Panzo is a heftier silhouette, a little slumped upon the silhouette of a donkey. We get a sense of these two contrasting characters from this barest outline. They are dwarfed by the high, steep, dark terrain behind them, for all they are so prominent in the composition. But on they stride — Quixote proudly, Sancho with reservation — into the light.

I must have bought Sarah Symmons’ 2004 book on Daumier around the time it was published. Reading it again, I’m amazed by how prolific he was, producing some 4,000 lithographs, 1,000 woodcuts, 800 drawings and watercolours, 300 paintings and 50 pieces of sculpture. From this, Symmons calculates an extraordinary pace:

“Daumier completed a new work every two or three days of his adult life, except for the last three or four years when he was blind” (p. 22) 

Even so, we might query that word “completed”; he was notorious for not finishing work. Also extraordinary is Symmons tracing what Daumier was probably paid, not least for his lithograph work for Parisian magazines. He was, at least at times, on good money — and yet frequently poor and more than once bankrupt (p. 10). Sadly, there seems to be little surviving in the way of contemporary sources to explain this discrepancy. 

Again, I query the choice of words when Symmons says,

“His subject matter was limited to human activity,” (p. 16)

I think it would be better to say “focused on”. As she says, the vast majority of his work has striking figures in the foreground, no middle-ground and then a background at some distance. The effect is like a tableau, or portrait mode on a phone camera. 

Daumier was influenced by a range of other artists — his contemporaries, classical sculpture, Goya and Rembrandt. Symmons says Rembrandt had a particular effect on him from the late 1850s,

“after several new masterpieces by the Dutch artist were acquired by Napoleon III” (p. 99).

Presumably, these pieces were exhibited and Daumier went to see them. But I wonder how he — and other artists — accessed such works more generally. How much were they influenced by reproductions in print rather than the real thing? Basically, to what extend did Daumier learn and develop his craft through the equivalent of postcards?

Stone & Sky, by Ben Aaronovitch

This is the tenth full-length novel in the Rivers of London series about a London copper who is also a wizard, and it is a delight. I bought it for the Dr when she was feeling a bit low and it worked its magic.

Peter Grant and his extended family are in Scotland on holiday and to look into alleged sightings of a huge panther - or, melanistic leopard to be precise. As well as liaising with the local police to investigate this “weird bollocks”, Peter must also wrangle his parents, his toddler twins, his river goddess partner, and apprentice Abigail — who tells half of this story herself.

It’s smart and funny, and kept be guessing to the end. As always, I’m in awe of Ben’s ability to create such a vast range of rich characters, and how he grounds the fantastic elements in the mundane. The details — from the stone which built Aberdeen to the differences in police procedure and legislation once you cross the Border, are exemplary. I’ve been learning lots about scuba diving over the last year (as the Lord of Chaos is doing a course in it) and so found the threat at the end particularly tense. 

There are loads of nerdy references, the Doctor Who ones including Daleks (p. 26), Peter’s explanation of his job,

“I deal with the odd, the unexplained, anything on earth…” (p. 108).

and what might be a reference to one of Ben’s own Doctor Who stories, in using the word “obstreperous” (p. 153). I wonder, too, if there’s an echo of Doctor Who and the Sea Devils by Malcolm Hulke in some of what goes on here.

It’s fun to pick up on this stuff and the other nerdery (such as Abigail working out the physics of mermaids). And it’s fun following character’s personal lives — the impact on Peter of being a dad, the love lives of Abigail and of Indigo the fox, the hints we get about Dr Abdul Walid’s early, wild years.

So many detectives have terrible personal lives and rub people up the wrong way. Peter is a charmer (literally!) and peacemaker, and it makes him and his world very engaging company. 

Rivers of London novels I've also blogged about:

• Lies Sleeping
• False Value
• Amongst Our Weapons

Rivers of London novellas:

• What Abigail Did That Summer
• The October Man
• The Masquerades of Spring

Bellarion, by Rafael Sabatini

Until recently, I knew little about Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950), the best-selling author of swashbuckling, romantic adventures set in the past, such as Scaramouche (1921), Captain Blood (1922) and The Sea Hawk (1915 but overlooked until the 1920s). When Terrance Dicks was asked in an interview what his favourite books had been in childhood, he cited one by Sabatini:

“I was always a great reader when young. Kim, by Rudyard Kipling, which I read over and over again. A historical novel called Bellarion by Rafael Sabatini, which again I read time and time again. I think those are the two that came out most, as it were.” — Gareth Kavanagh, “Terrance Dicks”, Vworp Vworp! Volume Three (March 2017) p. 126.

When I visited Terrance’s home earlier this year, in pride of place in his study was a set of Sabatini’s novels, most of them in either brown or blue leather-bound editions published by the Phoenix Book Company Ltd of 3 & 4 King Street, Covent Garden, London — a company founded in 1928 and which “faded away” at some point during the war. Terrance’s copies are clearly well loved, Bellarion especially. But there’s nothing to tell us if this is the very book he read and reread as a child. He may well have bought these editions later in life and as a child borrowed and reborrowed Bellarion from his local library in East Ham.

Even so, I sourced a Phoenix Book Company edition of Bellarion for myself — in better nick than Terrance’s — and read it with great interest, hoping to understand why it made such an impression on him and whether it left any trace in Terrance’s own writing. 

It begins pithily enough:

“‘Half-God, half-beast,’ the Princess Valeria once described him, without suspecting that the phrase describes not merely Bellarion, but Man.” (p. 9). 

There’s a lot packed into this opening sentence. The contradiction in those first four words is intriguing. Then the name “Princess Valeria” suggests the kind of story this will be: history, fairy tale, romance. But we’re also being invited to question Princess Valeria’s judgment — and, surely, to make our own assessment of the titular Bellarion, whoever he may be, before we’ve even met him.

Sabatini clearly knew the importance of a good opening sentence, as we can see from what he said himself about the genesis of his most famous novel:

“I began by fastening upon a title, Scaramouche, and almost simultaneously came the phrase descriptive of the character: ‘He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.’ That supplied the opening line and the keynote of the book. With so much in hand, the setting readily suggested itself. How the actual story came I do not know. But the seed and the soil were found, and the rest followed somehow.” — Sabatini, quoted in Herbert Greenhough Smith (ed.), What I Think — A Symposium on Books and Other Things by Famous Writers of To-Day (1927)

After its zinger of an opening line, Bellarion continues by telling us that what follows is drawn from a real, historical document attributed to a big name:

“It is more than probable that this study of Bellarion the Fortunate (Bellarione Fortunato) belongs to that series of historical portraits from the pen of Niccolo Macchiavelli, of which The Life of Castruccio Castracane is, perhaps, the most widely know. Research, however, fails to discover the source from which he draws. Whilst many of his facts agree completely with those contained in the voluminous monkish Vita et Gesta Bellarionis left us by Fra Serafino of Imola, whoever he may have been, yet discrepancies are frequent and irreconcilable.” (pp. 9-10)

But Fra Serafino of Imola is an invention of Sabatini, while the reference to Macchiavelli is surely a gag, because he’s thought to have made up large parts of his Life of Castruccio Castracani. 

There’s more historicity peppered through this account of intrigues in Italy in the years 1407-1412. At one point, Sabatini supplies an “Englished” version of a rare surviving letter from Bellarion, preserved in the Vatican Library (p. 295). He compares an account given of an incident by Fra Serafino (him again) with that of real-life Milanese historian Bernardino Corio (p. 326) — which can’t really exist because the incident is invented. Sabatini responds to Bellarion’s “detractors” (p. 302), suggesting a host of historical sources and scholarly debate. We’re told that Bellarion’s military tactics are critiqued in L’Art Militaire au Moyen Age by M. Dévinequi (p. 386), but there’s no such book or historian, whose surname translates as “Guess who”.

Yet many of the characters here are real historical figures and Bellarion schemes his way through real history. The Visconti Castle of Pavi “as described by Petrarch” (p. 327) is a real place, and really was described by Petrarch in Letters of Old Age. The wholly fictional Bellarion has been inveigled into real history, just as the character inveigles his way into the various courts and councils.

So what of Bellarion himself? Our first impression is of a precocious, bookish teenager. Aged 17 in 1407, he has been brought up since the age of 6 by the abbot (!) in charge at the Convent of Our Lady of Grace of Cigliano, and is widely read but has little experience of the real world. That’s clear from the argument he has with the abbot, taking the logical but blasphemous view that because God can do no evil, He would not create sin or the Devil, and so neither of these things can exist. 

Worn down by Bellarion’s recalcitrance, the abbot sends him away to be better educated. But on the way, the naive Bellarion falls in with a man claiming to be a friar but who we can see is a thief. After some comic episodes, Bellarion realises the truth — just as the friar is arrested. Accused of being the friar’s accomplice, Bellarion scarpers and, by chance, escapes into the garden of Princess Valeria. He lies to her about who he is, and finds himself quickly caught up in court intrigues and then bigger plots, battles and wars.

I can see why this lively, often funny tale about a bookish boy of modest background living on his wiles and running rings around the posh lot would appeal to the young Terrance Dicks. The dry humour is very him. For example, when Bellarion is on trial and facing sentence of death, his earlier (false) claim to be the adopted son of a nobleman makes his enemies pause.

“Thus it was demonstrated to Bellarion how much may hang upon a man’s wise choice of a parent.” (p. 123)

Perhaps some of the language rubbed off on Terrance, too — on p. 97, Valeria and Bellarion are mocked repeatedly as, “long-nose and long-shanks”.

“Is this Doctor a long-shanked rascal with a mighty nose?” — Irongron, Doctor Who — The Time Warrior, script editor Terrance Dicks

But then there’s the kind of hero Bellarion is.

“I grew up reading John Buchan, and Dornford Yates, and Rafael Sabatini, people like that, and I imbibed my ideas of what was right and proper – and the way an English gentleman should be – from my reading.” TD interviewed by Benjamin Cook, “He Never Gives In And He Never Gives Up…” Doctor Who Magazine #508 (2017).

Bellarion — an Italian — is not a fearsome warrior but a bookish, thoughtful man who aspires to be a monk.

“If I were your chronicler, Bellarion, I should write of you as the soldier-sage, or the philosopher-at-arms.” (p. 334)

He is a canny tactician and strategist, but not motivated by conquest, fortune or glory. 

“‘Tell me why you so schemed and plotted.’

Bellarion sighed. ‘To amuse myself, perhaps. It interests me. Facino said of me that I was a natural strategist. This broader strategy upon the great field of life gives scope to my inclinations.’ He was thoughtful, chin in hand. ‘I do not think there is more in it than that.’” (p. 368)

He’s done all he’s done out of intellectual curiosity; because he was bored. He is prone, too, to what we might call moments of charm, such as when he disses an enemy:

“He assumed that I, too, had no aim but self-aggrandisement, simply because he could assume no other reason why a man should expose himself to risk.” (p. 79)

He’s brave and brilliant, moral and determined, and passes easily among dukes and princesses while not being quite of their kind. Like so often with Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, there’s a chapter where everyone thinks he is dead. 

But that’s not to say that Bellarion is a prototype Pertwee Doctor. He is often impetuous, at one point murdering a man in cold blood who tries to rescue him, which causes no end of complications later. He’s also no good at combat; for all he is brave in executing his clever schemes, they are often a means to avoid his having to fight. On one occasion, he pretends to be ill to get out of a joust. 

It’s also not very dramatically satisfying that his various schemes all succeed exactly as he predicts. In that sense, I think Terrance was better on the structure of this kind of adventure.

At the end, when Valeria finally realises that Bellarion is not the rogue she thought and kisses him, the romantic ending is punctured by a joke, or at least by downplaying the moment: the last line is Bellarion saying he must have a fever. Valeria isn’t the only woman to fall for Bellarion but it often seems that this is another kind of conflict for him to dodge.

It’s intriguing, too, that the title page calls this book Bellarion the Fortune. Is Bellarion lucky or does he make his own luck? That’s something Terrance Dicks thought about quite a bit when considering his own career… More of which anon.

Target Books Day audio recording

I had a lovely time at Target Books Day on Saturday (19 July), organised by James Goss. He assembled a really fun, engaging series of talks and readings related to the Doctor Who novelisations, including me wanging on about Terrance Dicks - most prolific of the Target authors - and the early days of the range that launched in January 1974, alongside learned critiques and readings from new books that won't be published until next year.

You can now listen to my talk, "The Unseen Terrance Dicks", and lots of the other contributions, as episodes of the Hamster with a Blunt Penknife podcast:

Target Book Club Part One on Apple, Podbean, Spotify

• Gary Gillatt, "Opening Lines"
  Every first line of a Target novelisation, in publication order. Bliss.
  
  
• Simon Guerrier, "The Unseen Terrance Dicks"
  
  
• Jenny Colgan, reading from her forthcoming novelisation of 2010 TV episodes Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone
  
  
• Mags L Halliday, "Romancing the Target"
  Including much love for the loved-up work of David Whitaker

Target Book Club Part Two on Apple, Podbean, Spotify

• Robert Shearman, reading from his forthcoming novelisation of 2002 audio play The Chimes of Midnight
  
  
• John Grindrod, "Terror of the Blurboids"
  On the changing face of back-cover blurbs
  
  
• Nev Fountain, "The Policeman's Face Peeled Away"
  On the work of illustrator Alan Willow 
  
  
• Dr Paul Quinn, "I See The Rumours About You Are True..."
  On sexual predation in the TV version and novelisation of Ghost Light - requiring a trigger warning

Target Book Club Part Three on Apple, Podbean, Spotify

• Stephen Gallagher discusses and reads from the novelisation of his own 1980 TV story Warrior's Gate
  
  
• Steve Cole, "The Wheel of Tara" aka confessions of a books editor
  
  
• Alex Hewitt, "Reading Games with Pip and Jane"
  On literary games for children written by Pip and Jane Baker years before they scrivened for Doctor Who
  
  
• Joe Lidster reading from his forthcoming novelisation of 2005 TV story Alien of London and World War Three
  
  
• Gareth L Powell reading from his newly published novelisation of 2025 TV episode The Well
  
  
• James Goss reading from his newly published novelisation of 2025 TV episode Lux

Backlisted #244: The Ballad of Halo Jones

I'm the guest on the latest episode of books podcast Backlisted. Keen to choose a book that was a formative influence and by an author they'd not previously covered, I chose The Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson. Thanks to Dr Una McCormack, Andy Miller and Nicky Birch for inviting me. What fun.

• Backlisted #244: The Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore

In our natter, we mention other works by Alan Moore. You might like to read the big essay I wrote for my MA on V for Vendetta. 

The episode also mentions something that was announced on Saturday at the excellent Target Books Day: I am currently at work on a biography of Terrance Dicks, to be published by Ten Acre Films (who published by previous biography, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television). More of all that anon.

Chapters of Accidents, by Alexander Baron

As expected, Alexander Baron’s autobiography confirms that various elements of his novel The Lowlife (1963) are based on real life: his own, his relatives’, his neighbours’. That image that so struck me of the continually rechalked squares for hopscotch, is mentioned here on p. 350. In fact, the autobiography — written in the 1990s — draws from his novels to recall events otherwise since forgotten, quoting From the City, From the Plough (1948) to recount Baron’s direct and harrowing experience of the D-Day landings.

The autobiography covers his early life as a working class boy from a non-practising Jewish immigrant family in Hackney up to the sale of his first novel. One note describes the sounds of East London between the wars:

“‘Won’t you buy my pretty flowers?’, ‘I’ve been 7 years in prison…’. Other ballads — Victorian London, Dickens’ London — continued until the war scattered a way of life in 1939.” (p. 344)

It’s not the only reference to Dickens. For example, while his father read science books by such authors as James Jeans, Baron and his mum would visit the library on Northwold Road each week “with oilskin shopping bags”, where Baron read huge, bound volumes of adventure stories by GA Henty and Percy Westerman before progressing to PG Wodehouse’s PSmith.

“about one of the vast army of clerks which still existed, now swelled by women typists, who were the cleverer children of working-class families which were proud of their status (escaped!) Although almost all worked for wretched wages, often in Dickensian offices.” (p. 349)

Baron read some Dickens at this point, citing Barnaby Rudge and,

“its effect on me as a small boy — lurid, a phantasmagoria, those Gordon Riots — the unspeakable ecstasy of reading books you cannot understand when you are small” (p. 347),

He also speaks of the “effect on me” of The Pickwick Papers, while David Copperfield was a formative read later, while he was stationed in Southampton as a soldier during the war. I’m fascinated by all this because he later dramatised Oliver Twist for the BBC, broadcast in 12 episodes in 1985. The novel was first published in 1838 but I wonder how much Baron and producer Terrance Dicks (born in East Ham, 1935) were conjuring the London of a hundred years later; the one they’d both known as children.

As with Terrance, cinema was another key influence on Baron — he explains, pp. p. 347-48, how it shaped the structure of his writing. But his literary interests had another powerful consequence: it was on a trip to a library while still at school that he was first enthralled by the communists. Though he didn’t join the Community Party officially at that point— they thought it better he didn’t so he could infiltrate the Labour youth movement instead — he was a keen adherent. They even sent this schoolboy revolutionary on an errand to France.

“It was of all days Yom Kippur, the supreme Jewish fast. My parents had taken my sister to the East End to visit my grandparents. I left a note on the kitchen table, ‘Gone to Paris. Back Monday.’ The reader would have to understand the nature of the times, the moeurs of a working-class Jewish family and the particular character of my parents to appreciate what a bombshell that was going to be for them, how incredulous they would be.” (p. 168).

When he returned, all that his parents asked of him was whether he had a nice time (p. 170).

There’s something a bit Boy’s Own adventure about much of this stuff, with brassneck and dodges and pluck — such as his role in the Labour League of Youth’s weekly street-corner meetings.

“I was too shy to speak at these, but I was given the job of heckling our own speakers to draw a crowd, which I enjoyed.” (p. 147)

It’s in the mode too, I think, of Kipling’s schoolboy stories, Stalky & Co, which Baron dramatised for the BBC, the first time he worked with Terrance Dicks. 

On another occasion, Baron explains how one night he escaped a gang of young Fascists keen to beat him up by running on to Hampstead Heath then lying down with his arms around himself, so that he resembled one of the other copulating couples (p. 156). It’s another funny dodge — but a bit less heroic than what happens in The Lowlife, where the main character evades his pursuers thanks to a native grasp of London buses and trains, then beats them up single-handed.

Things become more serious as the war approaches. Baron speaks of his own horror at having to recruit men to fight in the Spanish Civil War — and his relief that he never succeeded. At the same time, he says how easily he might have done in Spain what a contemporary did, working for the Republican Army’s secret police (Servicio de Informaction Militar), befriending young soldiers and then reporting those who criticised the party. He cites another case, another friend, who was accused of writing “calumnious letters” home and seems to have been shot.

“I am an old man now but I am ridden by the memory of these distant events, of him and of Monty, the one murdered by the secret police, the other in their ranks, both brave, honourable in intent and so alike; and I am all the more fervently relieved that I did not send Bill Featherstone or anyone else to fight where I did not go myself.” (p. 181)

In all this and what follows, Baron doesn’t mention Malcolm Hulke, who must have been in and out of the King Street HQ of the Communist Party around the same time, and who he might just have bumped into after the war when they both worked in management at the Unity Theatre. Baron says that while he was at Unity,

“we wiped out a large and chronic debt, which must have been a feat unique both among fringe theatres and organisations of the left.” (p. 332)

In part, this organisation was because Baron avoided the “tantrums and cliques” of the actors; as with his reticence at public speaking cited before, he seems to have been a bit quiet and shy.

“My own nature kept me apart from a crowd who were serious in their intentions but involved with all the scattiness and temperamental quirks that are to be found in theatricals.” (Ibid.)

There’s also the suggestion that he’d not been well after the war, suffering from some kind of PTSD. The war certainly had a profound effect on him, not least in undermining his communist zeal. There was no single cause but that loss of faith went in tandem with his new-found interest in writing. Soon after the war, he had a chance meeting with his old friend Ted Willis — who had also left the party to become a writer. Baron tells us that,

“This was a drastic step for a member of the inner core [of the party], since writing was regarded at King Street as a trifling and contemptible occupation.” (p. 331).

They referred to Ted as a “deserter”. Later, Baron explains why it was thought so contemptible, quoting what he was told by his former mentor John Gollan:

“What does a writer do, even a good writer, even one of ours? He describes the world. You are one of the people who have to change it. And one day to run it.” (p. 336)

I wonder how convincing Baron found this? Earlier, he speaks of the,

“Communist ability to show a fair face in any company, display charm, patience, reasonableness and willingness to listen and a persuasiveness that provide irresistible to many.” (p. 208)

If his first novel had not been a success, how easily might he have been drawn back into the fold?

For all he was compelled to write a novel based on his own wartime experience, Baron put it away in a drawer and says he later showed it to Ted Willis unwillingly. It was Willis and his wife who submitted it to Jonathan Cape, and Cape’s wife who came up with the title under which it was published. 

Baron tells us that he thinks much of history is accidental like this — hence the title of this autobiography. But I think something else is going on: this is a bildungsroman, showing the development of a man’s character through his experience and choices. When he bumps into Ted Willis after the war, its because Baron has chosen to buy a typewriter — that choice surely compelled the conversation that followed. Willis, facing the opprobrium of his former comrades, must have been glad to find in Baron a fellow scribe. And what Baron went on to write was infused with all the things he’d soaked up in Dickens and cinema and the life he’d lived.

His escape was no accident at all.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon

I first read this an age ago, before I had children or that much knowledge of autism. It's been a strange thing to revisit now I have more experience. 

This audio version is largely narrated by Ben Tibber as 15 year-old protagonist Christopher Boone from Swindon, but with a full cast playing the other characters. That works very well. We see (or hear) events as Christopher understands them. He has an eye for and takes satisfaction in detail, and we often get raw, unembellished facts, whether about his own anxieties and bodily functions or grown-ups' sex lives, swearing and violence. 

His hyper-focus on particular things - prime numbers, colours, smells - and his bluntness are often funny. I've seen some readers object to this, feeling that we are led to laugh at Christopher. But I think something else is going on; we laugh because we understand the way he sees the world. It comes about through empathy.

That, I think, plays off against the more disturbing stuff. The world is a scary place. A whole load of things terrify Christopher (noises, strangers, things that are brown) and sometimes leave him unable to speak (except to us). There are also a whole load of things that he doesn't quite comprehend - but we do as readers. 

Reading the book again now, what strikes me is how many of the characters are cross, impatient, at the end of their tether and sometimes downright cruel. That's in direct contrast to us as readers, comprehending of and amused by this boy. We embrace the ways he thinks differently; they just lose their tempers.

Christopher can certainly be exasperating and exhausting, and the grown-ups are fallible, flawed people. There are things here I recognised as the parent of an autistic child. But the over-riding sense, I think, is one of sadness because Christopher is not exactly surrounded by kindness. There's a lot of chaos and argument (which I can empathise with) but not a lot of joy. As a result, I think we judge his parents, his neighbours, his teachers, the police... The empathy for him is not extended to them. And I think that's an an issue given that some of their bad behaviour is rather contrived.

I keep picking over a key element of the plot. As Christopher determinedly investigates the murder of his neighbour's dog, he unravels an audacious falsehood that has been told to him and others for some time. Yes, I can see how Christopher would be duped because he takes what he's told at face value. But that doesn't apply to anyone else: have they really not questioned or checked what has been said about something so fundamental? When the lie is exposed, is there no consequence for the liar? The school, the police, the neighbours... no one seems very bothered.

At the end, Christopher seems liberated by a number of things that have happened over the course of the story: his schoolwork, his trip to London, his unravelling of the mystery. He's written this account - this book - and feels he can achieve anything. I'd like to believe so but I'm not sure surviving an ordeal is the same as learning from it. What will he and those around him do differently to avoid another crisis, or deal with it better when it comes?

But I'm not sure if that's a criticism of the book or a sign of how much it got under my skin.

The Lowlife, by Alexander Baron

Harryboy Boas is a working-class gambler in Hackney. While his sister has married well and moved to Finchley, Harryboy still haunts the streets he knew as a kid, where hopscotch  is still played in the same place, for all that the squares have been rechalked, sometimes on new tarmac. We feel the thrill of his addiction to gambling, and the shame of it, too. But he presents a good front to the woman he pays for sex, and to the uptight family that have just taken rooms in the shabby house he’s renting.

Then, almost 100 pages in, we learn something else about Harry that helps explain what makes him tick. Before the war, he lived in Paris with a girl there. He thought about marrying her but when war broke out he went home to London. Only later, much too late, did he receive a letter saying she was pregnant. He and she are Jewish — and we never learn her fate.

So, he stalks the streets of London haunted by the Holocaust. He takes each day, each bet, as it comes, and tries not to get involved in anything more complex. But the little boy in the room downstairs has taken a shine to him…

The foreword to this edition is by Iain Sinclair, who — with filmmaker Chris Petit — visited Baron at home in Golders Green in 1992:

“The elderly author, unpublished since 1979, when his Spanish novel, Franco is Dying, met with the indifference that seems to be the lot of any awkward cuss who refuses to step aside when his humber’s up” (p. vi).

Characters in the novel might well speak of protagonist Harryboy as an “awkward cuss”, but we’re privy to his rich inner life, his passions for gambling, books and women, his strong survival instinct paired with a self-sacrificing moral core. He’s a loner in many ways, and one reason is because he is bookish.

“Among the uneducated (which frankly is what you would call the general population where I live) the serious reader is a lonely person. He goes about among the crowds with his thoughts stuffed inside him. He probably dare not even mention them to his nearest pals for fear of being thought a schmo. There’s a hunger in his eyes for someone to talk to.” (pp. 63-64)

Harryboy reads a great range of books. “Chandler and Hammett are my favourites,” he tells us (p. 63), at a time he’s working through everything by Zola. He holds forth on Upton Sinclair, HG Wells and George Simenon, and later on Nat Gould, Edgar Wallace and Damon Runyon. On p. 148, he’s reading Theodore Dreiser, on p. 211 he cites a poem by John Masefield. There are women writers, too:

“We were both at that time searching out psychological thrillers at the library, the kind the Americans do well, Vera Caspary, Patrica Highsmith and so on.” (p. 134).

It’s a diverse list of names but I wonder if they’re united by a naturalistic style, a focus on — or unwillingness to avoid — the grit and dirt of life.

That’s the kind of view we get of post-war London, particularly in all the stuff about the short-term investment in renting squalid building, which the council will surely soon condemn, to the new waves of immigrants. Sinclair says in his introduction that “Baron foresees Peter Rachman”, who died in 1962 — the year before The Lowlife was published — but became notorious as a slumlord after his death as the Profumo scandal broke. That makes the book exactly of its moment.

But I’m not sure this is a social realist or kitchen sink novel. It’s more of a thriller, the stakes every building against Harryboy, caught against his will in different, conflicting loyalties. There’s a theft, a chase and a violent punch-up, We really think at one point he is going to lose an eye.

And yet for all its an adventure, it feels very real — and is full of shrewdly observed detail. Many Londoners, Harryboy included, take the changing demographics of London in their stride, but Baron is good on the prejudice, too. It’s most directly seen in snobby neighbour Evelyn Deaner. At one point, we catch her horrified by the hats on women in the Daily Mirror.

“Can you imagine me wearing one? I think they must design these hats for exhibitionists.”

Then, from nowhere, she is “fighting for breath” in fury that their landlord let a room to a black couple.

“‘You know’ — she turned to me — ‘there’s only one water-closet in this house.’” (p. 125)

Later, she’s sure, on no grounds at all, that this couple eat “tinned cats’ mean” (p. 147) and mean to serve it to her son.

When Evelyn’s husband Vic tries to quell what Baron calls these “spasms of hate”, Evelyn tells him he doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he’s out of work all day.

“Suppose that man cam home early. Eh? Have you thought of that?” 

And then, almost immediately:

“Please don’t tell me now that I’m prejudiced. I know there are good and bad. … What do you think I am — one of those colour-bar people? [But] this man is a labourer.” (p. 126)

It’s all unfounded and in her head; she’s conscious of it being unfair; it’s about class as much as ethnicity. There’s a lot bubbling up here, and Harryboy then makes his own connection:

“Sure, I nearly added, and these haters of life, they can even murder babies. Because that moment brought back to me like a twitch of pain in the head my fear that a little son of mine might have been packed into a dark, suffocating, sealed trunk for five days and nights and sent to the furnaces.” (p. 133).

It’s the mechanics of prejudice observed and relayed by a Jewish veteran of the war. The connection haunts him, and it haunt us, too.

I'm now reading Baron's autobiography, more of which anon...

My Baby Box, by Dr Debbie Challis

The Dr has made available online the full text of her memoir, My Baby Box, which deals with her (our) experience of infertility, the death of our eldest daughter and a whole loads of things besides.  

• Full text of My Baby Box, by Dr Debbie Challis

Blurb as follows:

A portrait of Queen Victoria’s baby. Statistics on the fertility of educated women. Tokens left at the Foundling Hospital. Sunken headstones in a suburban cemetery. Tiny 4,000 year-old beads. A hippo amulet. The bones of a newly born child… 

These are some of the things in My Baby Box, a memoir about my double loss. The loss after a diagnosis of infertility and the loss after the death of my unexpected baby.

It is also about my double love. The love found through adopting a child and then having a second baby who lived. It is about trying to become a mother through fertility treatment, approval from committees, getting to full-term pregnancy and giving birth safely, as well as what I have learnt about the historical context of what I went through. It is my account of trying to become a mother in early twenty-first century Britain and how I came to understand what happened to me through the things belonging to those who had been there before me, whether in Victorian Wigan or Ancient Egypt.

I've previously posted here about infertility and the loss of Emily. 

Learning to Think, by Tracy King

I’ve been blown away by this extraordinary, powerfully moving book, having met the author briefly at an event earlier this year. The subtitle says it’s “A memoir about” and then there are a series of crossed-out words: hardship, education, hellfire and family before it settles for “a way to break free.”

The blurb tells us more:

“Tracy King grew up on an ordinary council estate outside Birmingham. Her home life was filled with creativity, curiosity and love, but it was also marked by her father’s alcoholism and her mother’s agoraphobia.

“By the time she turned twelve her father had been killed, her sister taken into care and her mother ensnared by the promises of born-again Christianity.”

Roughly the first half of the book covers the author’s childhood and this series of traumas as she felt and understood them at the time. She’s very good on telling detail about people and place, so we know these individuals, we like them. We share their joys and small victories, we root for them, and feel their suffering and loss as awful things unfold. We are appalled by what happens in the trial of the people involved in killing her father.

In the second half of the book, we see the effect his death and these other things then have over the following years. It all casts an oppressive shadow but something else is also going on: the combined impacts of a love of reading and an interest in computers (both instilled by her late father), the opportunities offered by libraries and college, and then a rewarding job. At a key moment, she stumbles on a second-hand copy of The Demon-Haunted World by the astronomer Carl Sagan and it lights something inside her: a way of seeing and tackling the world that I think Sagan would call science but Tracy calls critical thinking.  

Then, in the last, enthralling part of the book, Tracy applies critical thinking to that key trauma in her past life: the death of her beloved father. She reads the police report and dares to seek out and interview people involved, including the man who killed him. The result is suspenseful, brave, compassionate — and quite brilliant. 

There’s no single, definitive account of what happened that night — not, as she says, without CCTV or her having being there herself — but she sifts the sometimes conflicting evidence and collates the most probable version. This is more than a coldly logical process; it’s driven by empathy and understanding. I’m reminded of something I was once told at school, that “courage” literally means “of the heart”.

Much of what she describes here — not just about her father but other things such as the way education authorities treated her and her sister — is gruelling, often shocking. Yet the book is about her coming to terms with this stuff and the sense at the end is that the process brings her some peace.

At one point, she probes accounts of her father’s last moments, and whether he died instantly or not. She’s haunted by the suggestion of people there watching and doing nothing to help.

“There was nothing anyone could have done to save his life, Does it matter that a dead person was left alone for ten minutes? Is there dignity after death? Without a soul, a spirit, a ghost, does it matter whether anyone was with him while he lay on the cold concrete in the rain?

Of course it matters.

We can bear witness to his death now, through thee pages. Every reader is there with him. We outnumber the bystanders.” (p. 280).

What a privilege it has been to stand with her, to be part of that congregation.

In the epilogue, she links her past experience to the situation now, with school “refusal” (a term she critiques), increasing levels of poverty, and the closure of libraries and other kinds of support and opportunities that were so crucial to her. For all this is a memoir, it’s a book about how we move forward from where we are now. I urge you to read it.