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.
Tom Mallin | |
|---|---|
| Born | Tom Mather Mallin (1927-06-14)14 June 1927 West Bromwich, Staffordshire, England |
| Died | 21 December 1977(1977-12-21) (aged 50) Clare, Suffolk, England |
| Education | Birmingham School of Art Anglo-French Art Centre |
| Occupation | Playwright, novelist, artist |
| Spouse(s) | Muriel Grace George, m. 1949 |
| Children | 2 sons |
| Awards | Giles Cooper Award |
| Website | tmallin |
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 Birmingham School of Art, going on to win a scholarship to the 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]
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 The Guardian, Michael McNay described Mallin's first novel, Dodecahedron (1970), as "shocking", and said: "Tom Mallin's prose bleeds. His plays and novels are the flayed flesh of English language. If there had to be a visual comparison (and why not? Mallin used to be a realist painter) it would be with a crucifixion by Grunewald or a film by 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]
In 1979, alongside John Arden, Richard Harris, Don Haworth, Jill Hyem, Jennifer Phillips and Fay Weldon, Mallin won a 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.