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Winston Mawdsley Graham
(30 June 1908 - 10 July 2003)
Winston Graham was undoubtedly best known as the author of the Poldark novels which rapidly became a hugely popular cult television series during the seventies, being shown in twenty two countries around the world. Yet in his lifetime he was also known as "the most famous unknown novelist in England". For an "unknown" novelist, who wrote over 40 widely translated novels amongst them Marnie, which Alfred Hitchcock made into a memorable film, he therefore did remarkably well as is shown by the enduring appeal of all his novels.
When it was suddenly announced that Hitchcock had managed to persuade the international actress Grace Kelly, eventually Princess Grace of Monaco, to play the lead role of Marnie, as Winston says in his autobiography 'all hell broke over my head' as reporters from all over the world instantly besieged him for interviews. After some months however she reluctantly had to announce her decision to withdraw despite the enormous sum Hitchcock had offered to pay her, as it seemed that the Monegasques took great exception to their fairy tale Princess playing the part of a thief and a liar. He rubbed shoulders too with many internationally famous personages and actors of the day such as Charlie Chaplin, H.G. Wells, Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, Alastair Cooke and Sir Ralph Richardson, and of working with the likes of Gregory Peck, Jack Hawkins and Dennis Price, not to mention Valerie Hobson, Arlene Dahl and Samantha Eggar. However most readers will undoubtedly appreciate his contribution to modern film history in giving the pre-007 Sean Connery a huge boost to his early career by agreeing to him sharing the lead role with Grace Kelly's replacement Tippi Hedren in Marnie.
During the war years and serving in the Auxiliary Coastguard Service in Cornwall he freely admitted he'd had a very, very 'lucky' war, with many long quiet hours alone on watch in all weathers which into the bargain brought him the sort of health he had never known before. Wryly adding at the same time that it felt like a prolonged sea voyage without often being afloat. Additionally, though with little time to write it did also provide him with a considerable amount of time in which to think, meditate and dream, and more than ever before to be able to watch and understand the sea and to love Cornwall in a new way.
 "When I began to write Poldark I drew on this part of my life as in another dimension". "It was a remarkable experience" he reflected. "What I was writing was not a planned thing, it was organic, with the characters working out their own destiny. Sitting there in the grey old empty bungalow, I felt like a man driving a coach and four, roughly knowing the direction in which the coach would travel, but being pulled along by forces only just under his control. It was physically and mentally both exhausting and exhilarating. Every now and then after a long passage the coach, as it were, would lurch to a stop with a half-dozen possible roads opening ahead and no signposts. A day or two of agonizing indecision; then the road would be chosen and we would be off again.......all I knew was that I was writing something out of my very guts, and that I was content."
Always by his own admission a very ordinary yet private man, there was also a hidden edge of steel and it showed clearly in the description of his dealings with the people filming Poldark for the BBC. At the start, he was virtually ignored, the producer even telling him that if he dared show up during filming he would be treated like an ordinary member of the public. By the end of course it was quite the opposite as they were only too anxious for him to begin writing a third series following up on the international successes of the earlier ones.
Now and again, and something that will no doubt intrigue modern readers of all ages especially those who entertain similar dreams of literary stardom, Winston, having all his life only ever written in longhand, tantalisingly reveals his totally professional approach to writing. "I have been under considerable pressure to buy at least a laptop computer. I have always turned the suggestions down for the reason that I have never done creative work on a typewriter. There is to me a lack of empathy. I have been told of the many extra advantages of word-processing, and I acknowledge them. But, apart from other reasons, I find that a sentence, a page, a book, assumes a different nature when it is first in manuscript, second in typescript, and third in page proofs. There is a separate, a welcome change, and each time one is able to see it in a new light."
Undoubtedly he could more than afford to take his time, but beyond all this his constant and deliberate attention and unyielding determination to thoroughly research and track down even the smallest of details was legendary. For example and among other similarly enjoyable tales, in order to learn about boxing when writing Angell, Pearl and Little God, he spent so much time in the Thomas à Becket pub in the East End that he was eventually treated as a regular, a rare honour in itself. To the extent that big fight promoters like Mike Barrett - and top international boxers like Henry Cooper - counted him as one of their true friends.
Summing it all up he said: "I have never been clever enough - or egotistical enough to spend 300 pages dipping into the sludge of my own subconscious".
Yet despite such a long and highly successful career he never once lost his natural and disarming modesty, genuine courtesy and consideration towards others, always coupled to a strong and lifelong devotion to his wife and family. He warmed especially as well to all of the actors, actresses and crew in Poldark, and they to him and his wife Jean in equal measure, in particular Angharad Rees, (Demelza Poldark in the TV series), who became a regular visitor to him in hospital when he became increasingly frail.
"A few years ago, after reading through a novel I had just finished, I wrote these few lines. Maybe they sum up something of my philosophy, and act as a suitable envoi to this book:
Perfection is a full stop.
Give me the comma of imperfect striving,
Thus to find zest in the immediate living.
Ever the reaching but never the gaining,
Ever the climbing but never the attaining
Of the mountain top."
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