The Tightrope Men / The Enemy (53 page)

This illuminating pen portrait of the author was written by Desmond Bagley himself for the original release of
The Tightrope Men
. It is the first time it has appeared in any of his books.

‘I want to write - Galsworthy’s dead and there’s only Maugham left, so there’s a chance for me,’ fourteen-year old Desmond Bagley told his mother when she enquired about his future career. Today, slight, bearded, bespectacled Bagley is among the biggest-selling novelists of the ‘sixties - and ‘seventies.

‘Desmond Bagley must be just about the fastest developing writer in the thriller business,’ said Gavin Lyall in 1966 reviewing Bagley’s third successive best-seller,
Wyatt’s Hurricane
. Then by November 1971,
Vogue
reviewing his last novel,
The Freedom Trap
, wrote: ‘The most exciting to date of the tough, literate, fast-paced spy thrillers which have become the unchallenged territory of Desmond Bagley.’

Since the publication in 1963 of his first novel,
The Golden Keel
, Bagley has not only built up a reputation which puts him in the top bracket of thriller writers, but he has notched up sales of over two and a half million copies: all nine of his titles have been Book Club choices; editions of his books have appeared in ten European countries and in the United States; and his first eight titles have been published in paperback by Fontana.

Desmond Bagley was a freelance journalist living in South Africa when he sat down to write his first novel. Like many readers, he had often felt as he laid a book aside that
he could do as well - but he did not leave it there. With the help of his wife, director of a bookshop in Johannesburg, he set to work systematically to see what kind of book sold well and who published it. The result was that he decided to write a thriller for Collins (he thinks a would-be writer should always choose his publisher first and write to suit that publisher’s list). He then analysed many thrillers to isolate what seemed to him the ingredients of success, and produced
The Golden Keel
. Collins accepted it at once.

An American publisher who saw the manuscript immediately gave Bagley a three-book contract and a five-figure advance. Since then, Desmond Bagley has averaged a novel a year - his latest being
The Tightrope Men
, which was published on 19th March 1973. He makes almost no notes, writes his first draft straight on to an electric typewriter, and carries his vast store of technical and geographical information in his head. But query his facts and he is likely to come up with an article from some obscure mining journal; ask him how he gets his plots and he will produce a newspaper cutting or the notebook, no bigger than a pocket diary, in which he occasionally jots down an idea.

The plot of
The Golden Keel
, his first novel now in its tenth reprint, which deals with an attempt to smuggle Mussolini’s hidden gold out of Italy, dates back to 1949, soon after Bagley arrived in South Africa. He was working in an office in Natal and struck up a friendship with the man at the next desk. This man, a South African who had been captured at Tobruk, had joined a band of Italian partisans after the Germans invaded Italy and had helped to ambush a German convoy which turned out to be full of gold. The South African was the last survivor who knew where the gold lay hidden. He and Bagley discussed returning to fetch it, but when Bagley moved to Johannesburg, the two men lost touch.

‘Over the years,’ says Bagley, ‘the story kept coming back to me and, as an imaginative exercise, I mulled over the
problems of smuggling treasure from Italy. The problem seemed insurmountable until I hit on the idea that finally formed the basis of
The Golden Keel
. By this time I was a journalist writing extensively for the South African press as a freelance, and during a slack period in 1962 I sat down to put my imaginings on paper.’

Normally, Desmond Bagley’s meticulous research is very necessary, for he does not usually visit the areas where his novels are set. For instance, before writing
Landslide
, set in British Columbia, Bagley took out a three months’ subscription to the
Vancouver Sun
and soaked himself in the Canadian atmosphere for three months before he even started to write.

However, in 1972, Desmond Bagley went to Finland to see if he could find a book there. He did. In fact he fell in love with the place; the gay, volatile people with a high regard for individuality, which is reflected in their politics by a new government every year, and the country itself, with its beautiful lakes and trees, and its freedom. Now the book has come, where action, pace and suspense dominate the story of a man who wakes up to find he is somebody else - and Finland is one of the characters. The book is
The Tightrope Men.

Other elements of success in Bagley’s novels are his plots, which are strong action stories with their full share of violence (but without the sadism that too often accompanies it) and his characters, who are human and sharply differentiated, yet fitted neatly to their allotted tasks.

Born in 1923 in Kendal, Westmorland, where his parents kept a theatrical boarding house, Bagley can recall being dangled on Basil Rathbone’s knee when that actor was on tour. This early contact with the stage had no lasting effect on him, and when he was four the family moved first to Bolton, and then to Blackpool. On leaving school, Bagley became a printer’s devil. He hated it, so he took a job in a factory making plastic electrical fittings, transferring when war broke out to one making aircraft components instead.

In 1946, tired of austerity England and fired by the tales of Air Force friends who had trained overseas, he decided to emigrate to South Africa. The problem was that in 1946 shipping and airlines were booked up for two years solid. Bagley’s solution was to journey to South Africa by road. He prepared with his usual systematic thoroughness, and on 7th January 1947 left Blackpool in a blizzard, accompanied by the good wishes of the Mayor and Corporation.

Crossing the Sahara so soon after the war was a risky business, since it did not then have the roads and safety precautions it does today, but Bagley reached Kampala, Uganda, took a job, went down at once with malaria - and left hastily for a better climate. He worked his way down Africa, taking jobs in asbestos and gold mines, mainly in store-keeping and store accounts, and in 1957 decided to try his hand at freelance journalism.

In 1964, following the success of his first two books, he and his wife Joan (whom he married in 1960) returned to England, where they now live in Totnes, Devon. As a fulltime writer, Desmond Bagley now has time to indulge his hobbies of sailing, motor-boating, reading and what he calls ‘just plain loafing’.

A friend of Bagley’s once said that his books read like fictionalised versions of the
National Geographic Magazine
. Bagley believes he meant this in praise and not in disapproval. He says: ‘For myself, I am an entertainer and not a pedagogue. I don’t know if my readers are instructed while reading my books - that is not my aim. I do know that while doing research in odd corners of the world I am giving myself a liberal education.’

March 1973

Desmond Bagley was born in 1923 in Kendal, Westmorland, and brought up in Blackpool. He began his working life, aged 14, in the printing industry and then did a variety of jobs until going into an aircraft factory at the start of the Second World War.

When the war ended, he decided to travel to southern Africa, going overland through Europe and the Sahara. He worked en route, reaching South Africa in 1951.

Bagley became a fréelance journalist in Johannesburg and wrote his first published novel,
The Golden Keel
, in 1962. In 1964 he returned to England and lived in Totnes, Devon, for twelve years. He and his wife Joan then moved to Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Here he found the ideal place for combining his writing and his other interests, which included computers, mathematics, military history, and entertaining friends from all over the world.

Desmond Bagley died in April 1983, having become one of the world’s top-selling authors, with his 16 books—two of them published after his death—translated into more than 30 languages.

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‘I’ve read all Bagley’s books and he’s marvellous, the best.’

ALISTAIR MACLEAN

Flyaway
AND
Windfall

The Golden Keel
AND
The Vivero Letter

High Citadel
AND
Landslide

Running Blind
AND
The Freedom Trap

The Snow Tiger
AND
Night of Error

The Spoilers
AND
Juggernaut

Wyatt’s Hurricane
AND
Bahama Crisis