Saturday, June 26, 2010

Peter Van Greenaway

The Medusa Touch by Peter Van Greenaway. Gollancz 01702, 1973 (h/c). Cover by Colin Hay
With his third novel, Peter Van Greenaway proves himself to be unquestionably a master of suspense. Each of his plots turns out to have a more shattering impact than the previous one. The Man Who Held the Queen to Ransom and Sent Parliament Packing was hailed in the Press as the "most astounding novel" of its year. Of its successor, Judas!, R. C. Churchill said (in the Birmingham Post), "as thirlling a story of suspense as any reader could desire"; the Manchester Evening News called it "a cliff-hanger"; and The Times declared, "This extraordinary book (which contains about three other novels) is impossible to set aside." Now Mr Van Greenaway comes up with something even more startling.

The quiet opening, which suggests a detective story, is deceptive. A well known novelist, Morlar, has been battered almost to deatah; in  fact, the police doctor pronounces him dead, but by some miracle of will-power, there's a flicker of life in him still, desperately holding on. Inspector Cherry of the Yard can find no conventional clues; but, an unconventional man, he begins to explore Morlar's mind, as revealed in his novels and in interviews with his psychiatrist, Zonfield.

Zonfield describes Morlar as "the most dangerous man in the world", and he could be right... throughout Morlar's life, his enemies have mysteriously met disaster. In their sessions together, the psychiatrist has tried to explain this (and much more) away as coincidence or premonition. But he cannot explain away the appalling evidences of his power which Morlar now produces—the destruction of a submarine, the crash of a jumbo jet into Centrepoint, the fatal deflection in orbit of a manned moon rocket.

And now, from a note in Morlar's journal, the Inspector realises where he intends to strike next, and why he is striving so desperately to stay alive to engineer his atrocious coup...

The novel builds up to a climax of agonising suspense, as the Inspector tries in vain to persuade people at the very top level that he isn't crazy and that the fantastic danger is real. And at the end Morlar, his coup achieved, passes on a last two-word message of even more terrible import. This is indeed the Arctic and Antarctic of chillers.
Peter Van Greenaway is a bit of a mystery. His novels are well known, especially The Medusa Touch, which was filmed in 1978 and starred Richard Burton and Lee Remick. What surprises me is that almost nothing is known about Van Greenaway himself.

Despite what it says in the blurb above, The Medusa Touch was not his third novel but his fifth, the first two (The Crucified City and The Evening Fool) appearing in the early 1960s. Van Greenaway was born in London in 1929 and died in 1988. He was a former lawyer who turned to writing full time... and that is all that appears to be known about him.

The real mystery is that he doesn't seem to appear in birth or death records. There is a brief announcement of his engagement on 12 October 1949 in The Times: "The engagement is announced, and the marriage will shortly take place quietly, between Peter, only son of Mr. and Mrs. A. G. Van Greenaway, of London, and Ursula, only daughter of the late Mr. Philip Mond, and of Mrs. Mond, of Flat 7, 71 Holland Park, London, W11."

The marriage records record the marriage in 4Q 1949 in Kensington between Ursula A. I. Mond and Peter V. Greenaway. Ursula was born in 1928.

It seems that Van Greenaway began writing for TV in the late 1950s, his scripts including one-off plays for ITV Television Playhouse, ITV Play of the Week, The Wednesday Thriller, Thirty-Minute Theatre, Mystery and Imagination and ITV Sunday Night Theatre. Working backwards, he appeared as an actor in a series called Escape in 1957 and had a play on the radio (Home Service) entitled The Drummer Boy as early as 1955.

However, this small (but usually well received) list of credits is all that remains of Van Greenaway beyond his engagement notice and a note that he and his wife attended the memorial service of Mrs. Constance Goetze in 1951.

If Van Greenaway was, indeed, his name. The name doesn't turn up in any census or phone records. Only two Peter Greenaways were born in 1929, one (Peter N., born in Uxbridge) the son of Horace and Beatrice Greenaway, the second (Peter, born in Maidstone) the son of William and Laura Greenaway... not A. G. Van Greenaway.

So who was Peter Van Greenaway? At this time I have no idea... a mystery that has me mystified. Unusual for such a high profile author.

Minor update: 26 February 2011
From an anonymous comment below and a little further digging, we learn that Peter Greenaway was the son of Arthur Thomas George Greenaway (1902-1972) and his wife Florence Mary (nee Hyde, 1906-1991) who were married at Forest Gate on 10 April 1926; their son, Arthur L. Greenway, was born in 1927. If you recall that 'Peter' was the only son, I think this one can be classed as "solved" thanks to our anonymous contributors.

22 comments:

  1. Brilliant author, and immensely inspirational to me. Glad I'm not the only one who can't confirm whether he ever existed...

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  2. Peter Greenaway was born to Arthur and Florence(nee Hyde) Van was not a given name, he was born in Plaistow, but his parents moved outside of Brighton. He married Ursula but they divorced. He had a partner later and I believe two children.

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  3. that is peter there are no other siblings he was named after his father

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  4. I know he existed! My mother knew him.

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  5. He lived in London, Kent, Devon and moved north.
    I understand that there was only one child.

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    1. Dear Anonynous, Thank you for the information. I am the co-founder of Aristeia Press and I am trying to find out who owns the copyright for Peter Van Greenaway books. Could you please send me the contact of Ursula or someone who can put me in contact with her? We would appreciate it very much. You can write me to admin@aristeia-press.com Thank you! Samantha Devin (If anyone who has written on this page has any information please let us know. As all of you we love Peter's books and we want to see them published again)

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  6. He had a daughter, born around 1964.

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  7. I was at school with his daughter. As far as I was aware she was an only child. She went to University in 1982 and I lost touch with her soon after.

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  8. His daughter Janine was born on 12 May 1964. She died a few years ago. She had copies of his books, I remember. Although her mother is referred to as "partner", her parents did in fact marry, much to Janine's bewilderment, when she was about 19. The Greenaways had no more children, although Janine did mention a half brother she had never met, her mother's son. Her father called her Jenny, and one of his books is dedicated to her.

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  9. Alison, if Janine was a friend of yours and you want to know what happened to her, give me an email address and I'll update you.

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    1. I've only just seen this. How do I send you an e-mail address without posting it on here?

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    2. Comments are posted anonymously, so I don't have contact details. But if you want to send me your address (my e-mail is below the photo, top left) and "Notusedtoblogging" also contacts me, I can put you in touch with each other.

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    3. Only just seen this Alison. If you still want to contact me email me using shounafalconer@yahoo.co.uk

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  10. Thanks for the additional information. This is like adding to a portrait one brushstroke every six months!

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  11. I had no idea he had been a high profile author since his daughter played down his accomplishments and she was not the sort for false modesty. This makes me think he was perhaps a private person with no desire for recognition. Although I met Mrs Greenaway I never met him. I remember asking Janine why he had Van in his name and she didn't. She said they preferred not to use the Van but that it was their proper name. The only other thing I know is that the family moved from Ramsgate on the Kent coast to Errogie near Inverness at some point during the daughter's schooling. Janine was highly intelligent so I imagine he was an erudite sort of man. There was no evidence of riches, sad when you consider how much money is made from books whose writers can't use the verb comprise properly.

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    1. I think they moved to Errogie around 1978 or 1979. Janine is in photos I have of a class trip in May 1981.

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  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  13. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  14. Ursula Mond is my Dad's first cousin. She didn't have children with Peter so any children must have been from a second marriage. Ursula is still alive.

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    1. Dear Helen, Thank you for the information. I am the co-founder of Aristeia Press and I am trying to find out who owns the copyright for Peter Van Greenaway books. Could you please send me the contact of Ursula or someone who can put me in contact with her? We would appreciate it very much. You can write me at admin@aristeia-press.com Thank you!
      Samantha Devin
      (If anyone who has written on this page has any information please let us know. As all of you we love Peter's books and we want to see them published again)

      Delete
  15. Yes Helen, you're right. His daughter (deceased) was born to his long term partner, not to his wife. The couple married some years after she was born.

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  16. Read and enjoyed one or two of his books. Particularly remember Take the War to.Washington - noticed caricatures of Nixon, Agnew Kissinger, Teddy Kennedy, John Wayne Frank Sinatra

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