The private life of a parent as an individual, not simply a father or mother figure, can be a mysterious thing for a child. But for Saul Wordsworth, the mysteries that surround his late father’s volatile personality and painful secrets have grown and grown. Why were his famed creative gifts never properly harnessed? What tormented his soul, and what was the terrible, hidden incident in his youth? Had he perhaps committed murder?
Some facts were clear: Christopher Wordsworth, born in 1914 in Calcutta, now Kolkata, India, was a renowned, charismatic literary figure: a phrase-maker even, credited with coining the satirical gem “a legend in his own lunchtime”, still frequently deployed today. For several years from the mid-60s, he was a book reviewer and sports reporter for the Observer. And, with writing talents that were hailed on Fleet Street and beyond, he was expected one day to produce a great novel. The blistering essay he once wrote for the Guardian, detailing a period living hand-to-mouth in rural Wales, had set up big hopes among publishers, not to mention confirming Wordsworth’s own belief that he was capable of creating a towering work of fiction.
