Tom Mallin

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Tom Mallin
Born
Tom Mather Mallin

(1927-06-14)14 June 1927
Giles Cooper Award
Websitetmallin.blogspot.com

Tom Mallin (14 June 1927 – 21 December 1977)[1] was a British writer of novels and plays, and also an artist. Beginning his working life in the art world, as a picture restorer as well as a practising painter, illustrator, and sculptor, Mallin at the age of 43 became a full-time writer, with five novels published and several plays produced on stage and for BBC Radio before his death from cancer at the age of 50.

Biography

Early years, family and education

Tom Mather Mallin was born at West Bromwich, Staffordshire, England, to Clifford Vincent Mallin (1887–1932) and his wife Olive May née Mather (1895–1978).[1]

From 1943 to 1945 Mallin studied at

Royal Academy Schools. However, but after doing National Service he decided to study at the international Anglo-French Art Centre in London, where he met his future wife Muriel Grace George (1925–2002).[2] He earned a living by finding employment as a Bond Street picture restorer, mainly of 17th- and 18th-century paintings, while also creating his own paintings, drawings, illustrations, prints and sculptures.[1][3] Mallin and Muriel George married in 1949, moved to Clare, Suffolk, in 1955, and had two sons, Simon and Rupert.[1]

Writing

Mallin had his first play, Curtains, produced in 1968, and went on to write many more, for both stage and radio, having a six plays broadcast on BBC Radio before his death in 1977 and others posthumously.[4]

Turning to full-time writing in 1970, at the age of 43, he also had five novels published by

Allison and Busby,[4]
the book covers featuring his own artwork.

In a 1971 article in

Bunuel."[5] The novel was also published in the US, by Outerbridge and Lazard in 1972, to mixed reviews, with Kirkus Reviews noting that Dodecahedron owes a great deal to the playwriting genre.[6][7][8]

Mallin's last novel, Bedrok, published in 1978, was described by Hermione Lee in The Observer as "a stylish as well as a very troubling novel".[9] Two of Mallin's novels have been reprinted: Knut ("a darkly comic take on the gothic novel")[10] and Erowina ("A dark, ambitious, stimulating, and challenging novel ... Tom Mallin's masterpiece, and a work that remains surprising, fresh and vital").[11]

Awards and recognition

In 1979, alongside

Giles Cooper Award, with his posthumous winning work being included in Best Radio Plays of 1978.[12]

Mallin was included in The Imagination on Trial: British and American writers discuss their working methods (Allison & Busby, 1982), co-edited by Alan Burns and Charles Sugnet, which contained interviews with 10 other authors as well as Burns himself: J. G. Ballard, Eva Figes, John Gardner, Wilson Harris, John Hawkes, B. S. Johnson, Michael Moorcock, Grace Paley, Ishmael Reed, and Alan Sillitoe.

Mallin is mentioned in Dennis O'Driscoll's poem "Siblings Revisited":

"Only a few years ago, it was Jennings schoolboy stories
that I brought you. Now, I pack avant-garde books:
Tom Mallin, Alan Burns, Beckett's Shorter Plays."[13]

Bibliography

Novels

Selected plays

  • Curtains, 1968 – Edinburgh Festival's
    ISBN 978-0714507927
  • As Is Proper, 1971, King's Head Theatre, London
  • Cot, 1971,
    Edinburgh Fringe Festival
  • Downpour – broadcast 1971
  • The Novelist, 1971, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh;
    Hampstead Theatre Club
  • Mrs Argent, 1972, Soho Poly, London; BBC Radio 3, 1980
  • Rooms – broadcast 1973
  • Birds of Prey – (not produced), 1973
  • Two Gentlemen of Hadleigh Heath – broadcast 1973
  • The Lodger – broadcast 1974
  • Vicar Martin – broadcast 1974 (BBC Radio 3, 1976)
  • Whispers (not produced), 1974
  • Rowland, BBC Radio 4: The Monday Play, 4 July 1977, and BBC Radio 4: Afternoon Theatre, 27 August 1978
  • Spanish Fly – broadcast BBC Radio 3, 18 September 1977
  • Halt! Who Goes There?, 1977, broadcast posthumously, with
    Giles Cooper Award and published in Best Radio Plays of 1978 by Methuen, 1979[4]

References

  1. ^ a b c d "MALLIN, Tom". Suffolk Artists. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
  2. ^ "MALLIN, Muriel". Suffolk Artists. Retrieved 30 December 2020.
  3. ^ Rushfield, Rebecca (23 August 2021). "Conservators who write fiction". The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Work. Retrieved 27 March 2022.
  4. ^ a b c Wortley, Richard. "Tom Mallin Radio Plays". Retrieved 28 December 2020.
  5. ^ "Curtains Up". The Guardian. 26 January 1971.
  6. ^ "Dodecahedron". Kirkus. 1 September 1972. Retrieved 27 March 2022.
  7. ^ "New & Novel | Dodecahedron". The New York Times. 31 December 1972.
  8. ^ Scheper, George L. (4 February 1973). "A Dozen Steps to Golgotha [Review of Tom Mallin's novel Dodecahedron]". The Baltimore Sun. p. D5.
  9. ^ Lee, Hermione (16 July 1978). "World of the pigsty". The Observer. p. 26.
  10. ^ Knut Paperback. 24 November 2014. ASIN 9810921659.
  11. ^ "Erowina Paperback – Illustrated". 16 March 2015 – via Amazon.
  12. ^ "In brief". The Guardian. 7 June 1979. p. 9.
  13. ^ O'Driscoll, Dennis. "Siblings Revisited". Poetry Ireland Review (12). Poetry Ireland: 11. Retrieved 10 April 2024.

External links

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