Tom Mallin

Tom Mallin (14 June 1927 – 21 December 1977) 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). 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. Mallin and Muriel George married in 1949, moved to Clare, Suffolk, in 1955, and had two sons, Simon and Rupert.

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

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". Two of Mallin's novels have been reprinted: Knut ("a darkly comic take on the gothic novel") and Erowina ("A dark, ambitious, stimulating, and challenging novel ... Tom Mallin's masterpiece, and a work that remains surprising, fresh and vital").

Awards and recognition 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.

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 storiesthat I brought you. Now, I pack avant-garde books:Tom Mallin, Alan Burns, Beckett's Shorter Plays."