Julian Rathbone
Encyclopedia
Julian Christopher Rathbone (10 February 1935 – 28 February 2008) was an English
novelist.
, Cambridge
, where he was a contemporary of Bamber Gascoigne
and Sylvia Plath
. At Cambridge he took tutorials with FR Leavis, for whom, without having ever been what might be described as a 'Leavisite', he retained an abiding respect. After university Rathbone lived in Turkey
for three years, making a living by teaching English. While in Turkey he heard that his father had been killed in a road accident at the age of sixty, an event to which Rathbone would return when himself the same age, in Blame Hitler. On his return to England jobs in various London schools were followed by the post of Head of English at the comprehensive school in Bognor
, Sussex
. Having originally aspired to be an actor or a painter, Rathbone had also taken up writing and by the end of the 1960s had had three novels published, all set in Turkey and informed by a background of which he had intimate knowledge. In 1973 Rathbone finally gave up teaching and left for Spain with the woman who would become his wife and lifelong companion, determined from then on to make his living by writing. Back in England and after some financially lean years Rathbone found his tenacity beginning to pay off. Booker Prize short-listings in 1976 and 1979 brought critical recognition, and although major commercial success remained elusive Rathbone's work appeared regularly, gaining a loyal readership and increasing popularity both at home and abroad. His novels continued to display interests and talents across several genres, from mainstream through thrillers to historical fiction. His novel of 1066, The Last English King
, published 1997, achieved considerable commercial success and has been optioned for film several times without having yet made it to the screen. As a writer of non-fiction Rathbone made a lasting and original contribution to Wellington
and Peninsular War
studies with his Wellington's War, 1984.
). Then the "Joseph" of Joseph
(Booker
nomination 1979) makes his reappearance as Charlie Boylan in A Very English Agent and later as Eddie Bosham in Birth Of A Nation, as Rathbone follows the thread of events from the war in the Peninsula through the world of German exiles taking refuge in early Victorian London and on to the early years of the modern USA. Two books for Serpent's Tail
- Accidents Will Happen
and Brandenburg Concerto - focused on Renate Fechter, head of a German squad of Eco-police. Then finally Rathbone created a British private investigator, Chris Shovelin, for the two recent books Homage
and As Bad As It Gets for Allison and Busby. Although diverse and strong characters in themselves, none of these four ever seemed likely to take over the oeuvre as a whole. Rathbone remained committed to diversity of inspiration rather than the formulaic approach to which concentration on a single character can lead.
, the ferocious Cambridge don makes a brief appearance in the intellectual life of a gifted English student at a school not unlike the one Rathbone had taught in until a few years previously. As a writer perhaps the nearest Rathbone came to an acknowledged antecedent was Graham Greene
, whose weaving of the thriller and mainstream strands of fiction, together with in-depth exploration of wider spiritual and political issues often set in foreign locations, clearly struck many chords both with Rathbone's vocational subject-matter and belief in the novelist's ability to address himself to all aspects of human life on as broad a front as he likes, with the finished work of fiction as the only credential he needs. Greene remained an icon with Rathbone throughout his writing life, as did the different figure of James Joyce
, object of Rathbone's greatest reverence although rarely exercising any overt influence in his writing. A Last Resort is probably the most Joycean of Rathbone's books, in its use of accumulation of mundane detail to build up an almost surreal portrait of a country whose identity is dissolving in front of its face. To Joyce himself Rathbone paid the ultimate compliment of constantly rereading without seeking to imitate.
's two-volume biography, which re-established Wellington as a subject for serious study, Rathbone's book is a radical and original departure from the normal run of biographical accounts. Based on detailed research into both Wellington's collected correspondence and the battlefields of the Peninsular War
, it counterpoints extracts from the letters with Rathbone's own elucidations and comments. As well as uniquely conveying the immediacy of events through Wellington's thought-processes and human voice, Wellington's War does more than any other book on the subject to illustrate the dimension and brilliance of Wellington's genius. The Duke himself has a habit of cropping up in various of Rathbone's fictions, notably in Joseph
and A Very English Agent and, more hauntingly, in Blame Hitler, the novel in which Rathbone writes about his own father. Rathbone described his own interest in Wellington as "probably Oedipal", and the Duke as "the ultimate father-figure". Wellington's War remains unique not only in Rathbone's own work but also in the growing contemporary literature on Wellington.
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
novelist.
Life
Julian Rathbone attended Magdalene CollegeMagdalene College, Cambridge
Magdalene College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1428 as a Benedictine hostel, in time coming to be known as Buckingham College, before being refounded in 1542 as the College of St Mary Magdalene...
, Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, where he was a contemporary of Bamber Gascoigne
Bamber Gascoigne
Bamber Gascoigne, FRSL is a British television presenter and author, most known for being the original quizmaster on University Challenge.-Biography:...
and Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
. At Cambridge he took tutorials with FR Leavis, for whom, without having ever been what might be described as a 'Leavisite', he retained an abiding respect. After university Rathbone lived in Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
for three years, making a living by teaching English. While in Turkey he heard that his father had been killed in a road accident at the age of sixty, an event to which Rathbone would return when himself the same age, in Blame Hitler. On his return to England jobs in various London schools were followed by the post of Head of English at the comprehensive school in Bognor
Bognor
* Bognor Regis* Bognor Regis Town F.C., a football club* Bognor Regis and Littlehampton* Bognor Regis railway station* Alexandra Theatre, Bognor Regis* Bognor Regis Community College* Bognor , a British television series from 1981...
, Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
. Having originally aspired to be an actor or a painter, Rathbone had also taken up writing and by the end of the 1960s had had three novels published, all set in Turkey and informed by a background of which he had intimate knowledge. In 1973 Rathbone finally gave up teaching and left for Spain with the woman who would become his wife and lifelong companion, determined from then on to make his living by writing. Back in England and after some financially lean years Rathbone found his tenacity beginning to pay off. Booker Prize short-listings in 1976 and 1979 brought critical recognition, and although major commercial success remained elusive Rathbone's work appeared regularly, gaining a loyal readership and increasing popularity both at home and abroad. His novels continued to display interests and talents across several genres, from mainstream through thrillers to historical fiction. His novel of 1066, The Last English King
The Last English King
The Last English King is a historical novel by English writer Julian Rathbone. The novel covers the time of the Battle of Hastings. It revolves around Walt Edwinson, a housecarl of Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. The story starts with Walt returning to his home at Iwerne in...
, published 1997, achieved considerable commercial success and has been optioned for film several times without having yet made it to the screen. As a writer of non-fiction Rathbone made a lasting and original contribution to Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Irish-born British soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century...
and Peninsular War
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...
studies with his Wellington's War, 1984.
Fiction
Various threads run through Rathbone's novels over their forty-year span. Standing firmly in the 19th Century tradition with its belief in the primacy of the writer's imagination and its consequent freedom to explore human life in all its aspects, Rathbone always refused to be tied to a single genre, time or place or character in undertaking this exploration. An ostensible thriller may be just as much a study of relationships, an apparently mainstream novel an investigation of crime, a work of historical fiction a meditation on contemporary issues. In blurring and blending genres in this way, for three decades or more in which the book market became increasingly obsessed with the typecasting and branding of books and their authors, Rathbone can be seen as having explored and questioned the nature of genre itself, its scope and limitations. Wherever the definitions of a particular genre threatened to restrict his enquiry into the human condition, Rathbone never hesitated to push it into wider territory. In a climate of increasing specialisation expected of novelists by the marketplace, this was an unfashionable approach to take, with arguably a heavy commercial cost over the years as Rathbone went his own way and refused to seek or accept any label or badge of identification which might increase sales but confine his activities as a writer.Characters
Rathbone in fact created four characters who appear in more than one of his books, permitting a certain grouping around each of them while never taking over the heterogeneous spirit of his work or deflecting him from the pursuit of wider fictional interests. First was Inspector Jan Argand (The Euro-Killers, Base Case, Watching The DetectivesWatching the Detectives
Watching the Detectives is a 2007 romantic comedy film written and directed by Paul Soter. The film stars Cillian Murphy as the film geek owner of an independent video rental store whose life is turned upside down when femme fatale Lucy Liu comes into his life.The film, which played film festivals...
). Then the "Joseph" of Joseph
Joseph
-Media:* YosepH, album by Luke Vibert* Josef , a Croatian television movie from 2011*Various works based on the life of Joseph in the Hebrew Bible:** Joseph and his Brethren, oratorio by George Frideric Handel...
(Booker
Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...
nomination 1979) makes his reappearance as Charlie Boylan in A Very English Agent and later as Eddie Bosham in Birth Of A Nation, as Rathbone follows the thread of events from the war in the Peninsula through the world of German exiles taking refuge in early Victorian London and on to the early years of the modern USA. Two books for Serpent's Tail
Serpent's Tail
Serpent's Tail is a British independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Pete Ayrton. It is notable for its translated works, particularly European crime fiction, and is the British publisher of Elfriede Jelinek and Lionel Shriver...
- Accidents Will Happen
Accidents Will Happen
"Accidents Will Happen" is a song by Elvis Costello. It first appeared on the 1979 album Armed Forces, which he recorded with The Attractions. In reference to the song title, the cover of the single was printed inside-out...
and Brandenburg Concerto - focused on Renate Fechter, head of a German squad of Eco-police. Then finally Rathbone created a British private investigator, Chris Shovelin, for the two recent books Homage
Homage
Homage is a show or demonstration of respect or dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic....
and As Bad As It Gets for Allison and Busby. Although diverse and strong characters in themselves, none of these four ever seemed likely to take over the oeuvre as a whole. Rathbone remained committed to diversity of inspiration rather than the formulaic approach to which concentration on a single character can lead.
Influences
Leavis, although Rathbone never shared his cultural aridity, was a long-term presence in the novelist's background as a man who insisted on the power and importance of imaginative literature. In A Last Resort, written around the time of Leavis's death and giving a brilliant portrayal of a Britain making itself ripe for ThatcherismThatcherism
Thatcherism describes the conviction politics, economic and social policy, and political style of the British Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher, who was leader of her party from 1975 to 1990...
, the ferocious Cambridge don makes a brief appearance in the intellectual life of a gifted English student at a school not unlike the one Rathbone had taught in until a few years previously. As a writer perhaps the nearest Rathbone came to an acknowledged antecedent was Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
, whose weaving of the thriller and mainstream strands of fiction, together with in-depth exploration of wider spiritual and political issues often set in foreign locations, clearly struck many chords both with Rathbone's vocational subject-matter and belief in the novelist's ability to address himself to all aspects of human life on as broad a front as he likes, with the finished work of fiction as the only credential he needs. Greene remained an icon with Rathbone throughout his writing life, as did the different figure of James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, object of Rathbone's greatest reverence although rarely exercising any overt influence in his writing. A Last Resort is probably the most Joycean of Rathbone's books, in its use of accumulation of mundane detail to build up an almost surreal portrait of a country whose identity is dissolving in front of its face. To Joyce himself Rathbone paid the ultimate compliment of constantly rereading without seeking to imitate.
Politics
Rathbone was a man of what might be called the classic Left. After public school and Cambridge three years in Turkey told him all he needed to know about poverty, and the next decade and a half of teaching in British secondary schools made him expert in the class system of his own country. His politics were those of tolerance and libertarianism, with an innate distrust of self-serving hierarchies and a cynicism towards power-structures and their manipulation of the world, in particular the world of the helpless. In his fiction, much influenced by Greene, he always made social and historical context part of the weave of the narrative. Twenty years ago, in Zdt and The Pandora Option, he dealt with food as a new weapon in the armoury of the superpowers, and in the early 1990s (Sand Blind) with the capacity of those same superpowers to fabricate wars in the interests of their own technologies and consumer needs. In Trajectories (1998) he presents a nightmare vision of Britain in 2035 which seems more recognisable and likely with every year that passes. Over a writing career of forty years, during which the world might be said to have changed out of recognition, it is notable how few of Rathbone's preoccupations and perceptions have dated, while many have been prescient and remain as relevant as they ever were. In his latest book The Mutiny, dealing with the Indian rising against British rule in 1857, the same commitment to clarity of vision is evident, an equal openness to all experiences and forces involved in the events of the time, which continues to mark Rathbone down as unashamedly in the line of the great novelists of the 19th Century. The critic who took Rathbone to task for appearing to claim a superiority of approach to the professional historian in dealing with such contentious historical material was raising a question which Rathbone's whole career, and The Mutiny itself, was dedicated to answering.Non-fiction
For a man of wide intellectual interests Rathbone produced relatively little outside his long list of novels. Much travelled, and loving foreign places, he always aspired to produce volumes of travel writing, but nothing in this direction ever came to fruition commercially. His one non-fictional publication was Wellington's War (1984), product of a fascination with Wellington which dated back to schooldays. Following within fifteen years of Elizabeth LongfordElizabeth Longford
Elizabeth Pakenham, Countess of Longford, CBE, better known as Elizabeth Longford was a British author.-Life:...
's two-volume biography, which re-established Wellington as a subject for serious study, Rathbone's book is a radical and original departure from the normal run of biographical accounts. Based on detailed research into both Wellington's collected correspondence and the battlefields of the Peninsular War
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...
, it counterpoints extracts from the letters with Rathbone's own elucidations and comments. As well as uniquely conveying the immediacy of events through Wellington's thought-processes and human voice, Wellington's War does more than any other book on the subject to illustrate the dimension and brilliance of Wellington's genius. The Duke himself has a habit of cropping up in various of Rathbone's fictions, notably in Joseph
Joseph
-Media:* YosepH, album by Luke Vibert* Josef , a Croatian television movie from 2011*Various works based on the life of Joseph in the Hebrew Bible:** Joseph and his Brethren, oratorio by George Frideric Handel...
and A Very English Agent and, more hauntingly, in Blame Hitler, the novel in which Rathbone writes about his own father. Rathbone described his own interest in Wellington as "probably Oedipal", and the Duke as "the ultimate father-figure". Wellington's War remains unique not only in Rathbone's own work but also in the growing contemporary literature on Wellington.
Works
- Diamonds Bid: Michael Joseph, 1967
- Hand Out: Michael Joseph, 1968
- With My Knives I Know I'm Good: Michael Joseph, 1969
- Trip Trap: Michael Joseph, 1972
- Kill Cure: Michael Joseph, 1975
- Bloody Marvellous: Michael Joseph, 1975
- King Fisher Lives: Michael Joseph, 1976 (Shortlisted for Booker Prize, 1976)
- ¡Carnival!: Michael Joseph, 1976
- A Raving Monarchist: Michael Joseph, 1977
- The Princess A Nun! (last third only - completing book by Hugh Ross WilliamsonHugh Ross WilliamsonHugh Ross Williamson was a prolific British historian, and a dramatist. Starting from a career in the literary world, and having a Nonconformist background, he became an Anglican clergyman in 1943....
): Michael Joseph, 1978 - Joseph: Michael Joseph, 1979 (shortlisted for Booker Prize, 1979)
- The Euro-Killers: Michael Joseph, 1979
- A Last Resort: Michael Joseph, 1980
- Base Case: Michael Joseph, 1981
- A Spy of the Old School: Michael Joseph, 1982
- Watching the Detectives: Michael Joseph, 1983
- Nasty, Very : Michael Joseph, 1984
- Wellington's War: Michael Joseph, 1984
- Lying in State: Heinemann, 1985
- ZDT: Heinemann, 1986
- Greenfinger: Penguin, 1987
- The Crystal Contract: Heinemann, 1988
- The Pandora Option: Heinemann, 1990
- Dangerous Games: Heinemann, 1991
- Sand Blind: Serpent's Tail, 1993
- Accidents Will Happen: Serpent's Tail, 1995
- Intimacy: Victor Gollancz, 1995
- Blame Hitler: Victor Gollancz, 1997
- The Last English King: Little, Brown, 1997
- Brandenburg Concerto: Serpent's Tail, 1998
- Trajectories: Victor Gollancz, 1998
- Kings of Albion: Little, Brown, 2000
- Homage: Allison and Busby, 2001
- A Very English Agent: Little, Brown, 2002
- As Bad as it Gets: Allison and Busby, 2003
- The Indispensable Julian Rathbone: The Do-Not Press, 2003
- Birth Of A Nation: Little, Brown, 2004
- The Mutiny: Little, Brown, 2007