"In most fields of creative endeavour
in which I am interested—painting, music, cinema, etc.—I tend to be attracted
primarily to those artists who have been forgotten by the mainstream and are consequently
hiding in the shadows, to the extent that the majority of the population are
blissfully unaware of their existence. So it is with literature too and the
novelist Nigel Balchin can certainly be described as a writer who has gone
missing since his death in 1970—very few people remember him nowadays.
I discovered Balchin’s work entirely
by accident. In the early 1990s I had the good fortune to watch an enthralling three-part
BBC Television drama. The novel from which this entertainment had been crafted
was Never Come Back by John Mair. Is
anyone still reading this superb 1941 political thriller these days? If not,
then I can heartily recommend it. About a year after watching the TV series, I
managed to find a copy of Never Come Back
in my local bookshop. Nestling in the endpapers was a notice for another book
that caught my eye—The Small Back Room
by Nigel Balchin. The blurb sounded promising: ‘As an account of the war
experience, the book is realistic and unsettling, and as a study of a
personality under stress, it reveals perennial truths.’ I quickly tracked down
a copy of Balchin’s 1943 masterpiece, read it, loved it and proceeded to read
all of his other books. Things snowballed from there and my quest to discover
all that I could about Balchin has recently culminated with the publication of His Own Executioner: The Life of Nigel
Balchin, the first biography to have been devoted to this fascinating
individual.
Like his friend, the painter and
sculptor Michael Ayrton (the two men remained friends even after Ayrton had run
off with Balchin’s wife), Balchin was a polymath. He succeeded not just as a
novelist but also as an essayist, non-fiction and short-story writer,
BAFTA-winning screenwriter, broadcaster and industrial psychologist (his
crowning achievement in this sphere was playing a pivotal role in the
introduction of Black Magic chocolates in 1933). During World War Two he
excelled in the army, working first in personnel selection and then in
Whitehall as a ‘boffin’. So impressive was he whilst clothed in khaki that he was
made a brigadier. Even in his leisure hours, Balchin found the time to be a
skilled woodcarver, a talented musician, an authority on subjects including
Oriental rugs and Norse sagas and a gifted sportsman adept enough to have
played Minor Counties cricket for his native Wiltshire in his youth.
Aware of the nature of the website on
which I am kindly guesting, I should point out that there are some links
between Balchin and the crime genre. He was an ardent admirer of Conan Doyle,
remarking on one occasion that “I don’t read detective stories […] except
Sherlock Holmes”, and I believe that a scene in his excellent 1945 novel Mine Own Executioner may well be an
homage to the Holmes story The Sign of
Four. Balchin wrote a screenplay for the interesting fog-bound thriller Twenty-Three Paces to Baker Street
(1956), a film based on a novel by crime writer Philip MacDonald, and, thirteen
years later, penned the script for a murder mystery of his own devising, Better Dead, which was the subject of a
blog in this same corner of cyberspace last year. The custodian of this site
has the advantage of me here because I have to confess that I have never seen Better Dead, my excuse being that I was
still a grizzling toddler when it was broadcast during the Apollo-landing
summer of 1969!
Balchin’s finest novels (Darkness Falls from the Air, The Small Back Room, Mine Own Executioner, A Sort of Traitors, Sundry Creditors and The Fall
of the Sparrow) deserve to earn him a place in the literary hall of fame. If
my biography of Balchin succeeds in dragging him out of the shadows in which he
has been lurking for the last fifty years and pushing him back towards the edge
of the mainstream then I will be delighted. He is definitely worthy of renewed
attention.
His Own Executioner: The Life of Nigel Balchin by Derek Collett is published by
SilverWood Books on 1 September."
Yes, it was seeing Better Dead that sparked my own youthful interest in Balchin. Wish I could trace the script..I echo what Derek has said about Mair's book, by the way.
I will BOLO for Balchin now that I've read your posting. Also, I have enjoyed visiting and browsing through your fine blog. Now, though, may I be bold enough to change the subject and invite you to visit my blog? I am a retired federal government court reporter and paralegal, and I am an avid reader and reviewer of crime, detective, mystery, espionage, and historical fiction; the new edition of my blog, "Crimes in the Library," is where you will able to find regularly posted book reviews and commentary. Here is the address: http://crimesinthelibrary.blogspot.com/ I hope you will stop by and comment often. Thanks, Harper
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