The
Writer
by John Coldstream
There are novelists,
biographers, essayists, scriptwriters, journalists, critics
and poets. In his time Dirk Bogarde was all of those. Some who
write for publication - nowadays especially - are not necessarily
driven by some inexplicable interior force. Dirk was. It would
be safe to say that he satisfied more than most the definition
of the ‘born writer’. This much-used, and often
misused, expression applies in truth only to someone continually
in the grip of a compulsion; and the most convincing symptom
of the need to write is to be found in the private
diary and the personal letter. Only fragments of his journals
remain, but Dirk was also a prodigious correspondent –
prolific not only in the astonishing quantity of letters and
cards that he consigned over the years to postboxes in Britain
and Europe, but also in the length at which he wrote. He had
so much to say. And, fortunately, those taking part recognised
its particular quality sufficiently to preserve his side of
the conversation.
Few examples survive from Dirk’s
early life, but a handful of letters home from the schoolboy’s
wretched exile in Glasgow indicate the strength of his prose,
the vividness of his description and the fertility of his imagination.
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