The modern writer submits his literary work to the critics. My desire is to submit my work to those fellow travellers who seek for maps to make sense of their life’s journey. Ronald Laing, the psychiatrist, once said to me, ‘The only reason I go on psycho-analysing my patients, is in the hope that just one of them in his narration will reveal to me something that will help to make sense of my own life.’
I look back on my works as being, as it were, way-marks on a journey, one which when taken had seemed not only without destination, but in itself nothing but a troubled and turbulent wandering. All I took with me through what seemed the disorder of my life was a satchel with two connected compartments. One was the formal education and culture as a child of my time. The other hidden pocket contained another version of events, both historical and familial, which gave glimmerings of significance that seemed to indicate that in all the dreadful business of living and the great wasted tracts of enjoyment, that there was meaning to be found and that illumination would one day emblazon both the road and the landscape.