A 1965 interview with Robert Shaw by ‌Norman Shrapnel ends with a quote by Shaw. “I like acting, but I act to make money. I don’t write to make money. But I want people to read me, so I hope my books sell.”
 

Shaw, as a novelist in conversation, be that in print or in, as it has yet to be seen in entirety, the 1970 Omnibus television conversation with Robert at his then home in Buckinghamshire, we see a frustration and honesty present. He is confessional, even. As a writer, this side of his self-expression, as the storyteller, is of great importance to him. Why?

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"Writing as an outlet, the need to place one’s ideas and thoughts on a page, be that in any form, has an element of self-reflection at its core. Be it a journal, factual, through fiction or just in the simplicity of scribbling on odd bits of paper that come to hand." Writing, as Shaw states, has to be honest.

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"To be confessional about myself for a spell, writing is how I deal with a bombardment of loose threads that hover over other undetached threads in my thinking. Events, things read, my own experiences, be that a loss, relationships or societal, all create something tangible. Only by being truthful, as Shaw suggests, can you genuinely convey how it affects you, from your individual perspective. Past and present experiences merge when putting pen to paper. Both the characters and the setting create the context where the story unfolds."

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While reading Robert’s books, it’s impossible not to wonder about Robert’s identity in the narrative. This is something that is for the reader to interpret.

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The articles he penned for ‘Queen Magazine,’ a British society publication, reveal Shaw’s unreserved self, offering a glimpse into his true personality as Robert, which is also conveyed in his novels.

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These passages he wrote for the magazine are whimsical in part, melancholy, journalistic and, curiously, we read Shaw as the poet. Robert, at the time of writing for ‘Queen’, had seen his first novel ‘The Hiding Place’ published in 1959 and with his last piece for Queen in 1962, his Hawthorn Prize-winning novel ‘The Sun Doctor.’

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‘Sweet Thames, Run Softly’, an ode to the ‘Thames’, he wrote for the November 9th 1960 edition of ‘Queen.’ Robert writes of the river, its history and its place within Londoners’ lives and outside. Photographs accompanied his work by John Hedgecoe, with characters associated with the river. Shaw writes from a place of nostalgia, where he and his sister once visited the river as children and where he would later visit as a student.

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It’s quite lengthy, so for simplicity, I will use for examples Shaws, passages that are more directly associated with him.

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“When I was a boy and came to London I could stand for hours by the Thames.

Everyone was going somewhere,

Mind you, I was an obsessional child about water.

My sister Elizabeth and I used to have spitting

Races down the runnels of galvanised iron roofs.

You know…. You start spitting at the top on the inclination

And the winner is the one whose stream first…

I grow old…I grow old

When I was eighteen, I always used to go sadly home from the Thames because I always came to regret I was watching it alone

When I was a student and succeeded in going out with girls who used to paint there was a place by Chelsea Bridge that very few people knew.

The police didn’t seem to know

You had to climb over the embankment wall when no one was looking and down by the side and almost underneath the bridge you were safe from all watchers but those on the water

It was a very romantic place at night with the lights on the water and the noise of the traffic above and later the echoing footsteps on the bridge

“Elizabeth and Leicester

Beating oars.”

I’m afraid they’ve cut down those protecting trees now and the iron rails stand bare and unhelpful. And I once took a famous actress there to lunch.

“We grow old…we grow old…

We shall wear the bottoms of our knickers rolled.”

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Robert continues in this manner of reflection and adds his own personal memories of the river, alone and shared. He talks about his sitting outside St Thomas’ Hospital on a bench and it smelling of potato soup.

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The delightful aspect of this ode is the way Robert’s mentions of Thames locations provide a window into Shaw’s life and the period he lived in London. Whether during his time at RADA or as a young man.

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In the November 1962 issue of Queen, Shaw writes about Christmas. Titled ‘The Dream of Christmas’, we are told the story of a father who sits on the bed next to his son. The story sets the scene around a cedar tree outside the house at the beginning of December. When viewed from the child’s window, they talk of what they would place on the tree and its branches. The son comforts his father, who is repeatedly asked throughout the story why he is sad.

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“What would you put on the top?”

“I suppose I’d have to put an angel.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Would you put an angel father.”

“Not now.”

“Would you if you were me?”

“Oh yes, I’d put an angel then.”

“But what would you put know.”

“I don’t know what I’d put now.”

“I think it must be sad for you, father.”

“Since this is said without condescension, seeking to reassure, our normal roles are turned about. This does happen with my children….”

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The conversation between son and father continues in this vein, with the son reassuring father. The father speaks of what he knows when he thinks about what to put on the cedar branches.

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“I can think of a branch for all the years I’ve lived,” I say.

“You're old father.”

“I can think of a branch for all the years I’ve lived and what was on it….and all the years to come, and what’s going to be on them.”

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The child’s role as comforter of the father could relate back to Shaw’s childhood. For we know, his father’s suicide affected him throughout his life. Reassurance is prevalent throughout Robert’s piece.

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One line on the tree is partially dark. Described in a manner where the ending of one’s life could be associated with. “The cedar I called sovereign looks strong enough to hang me on.”

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With Christmas as the theme here, and what it means between a child and father where a cedar tree seen as sovereign depicts Shaw using lore. The father and a child swap roles. Here, the child is the strength. A cedar tree outside the child’s bedroom window provides a symbol of strength and protection. Shaw’s use of symbolism is at play throughout his piece.

 

Again, it is worth reading Robert’s ‘Queen’ writings. In his second novel, ‘The Sun Doctor,’ we can see echoes of the passages about the father figure and child that he applied to his piece on Christmas.

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We also see a different side of Robert’s competitiveness, as shown in an article he wrote for Queen magazine in March 1961. We see a competitive spirit reminiscent of himself in the athlete Gordon Pirie. Shaw’s questioning as he watches Pirie falter in the 1960s Olympics, being held in Rome, is telling.

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Here we see an honest, unmasked Shaw showing empathy for the loser. Robert seems crushed seeing Pirie’s struggle. Watching the 5000 metres, Pirie is last. “Later in the race when he was trailing, I wished he would stop, lie down, and rest. He looked so defeated.” Shaw then continues, “I don’t know him. I suspect three-quarters of what I read about him. I never felt so much sympathy for an athlete as I did for Pirie that evening. What must it have been like?”

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Shaw’s wanting ‌Pirie to stop and rest is telling. In summing the reason for Pirie’s poor performance, and seeing him as a dedicated man, he writes

“There he was carrying his country’s hopes and his own. A dedicated man who, I suppose, drove himself too far.”

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Robert’s own competitive nature and pace of work could so easily apply to what he wrote about the Olympian runner he admired when watching him from the stands in Rome.

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Looking at an interview with Mary Ure in ‘Detroit Free Press’ of May 19th, 1965, speaking of her husband Robert, we get some idea of pace that at certain times he kept.

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‘The Luck of Ginger Coffey’ on its release in America had caused some excitement, and offers of work were coming Robert and Mary’s way. Robert at this time was on Broadway, in Friedrich Durrenmatt’s play ‘The Physicists.’

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“We’re too busy to be excited about it. Bob is working every day making a television film for the United Nations-he plays a modern-day Scrooge, of all things, in a Twentieth-Century version of Dicken’s Christmas. He finishes at seven and is on stage in ‘The Physicists’ 90 minutes later.”

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Again, we return to the honesty being of importance mentioned in his ‘Omnibus’ interview on talent is failed by exhaustion.

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“No failure isn’t going to knock me to the ground, until I’m too tired, that’s what I’m saying I’m going to fight against, exhaustion.”

 

Robert the writer is competitive, but as with all writers, it is a competitiveness with oneself. In reality though, how others see you, how you are remembered is by those that come after. Shaw’s drive to write one or two books that would not be as books left on a shelf is though something he achieved. Interest in Roberts’s novels has always been there, and there abouts.

 

His film career and partially his role as the character Quint in Jaws has created, sustained an interest in his books and plays. The ‘Queen’ writings are well worth seeking out, if wanting to become more failure with his work. They are a wonderful example of Robert at work, on a theme and working within confines that he is freed of when applied to his novels.