Michael Davies, author of Outback, writes: In the decades after the Second World War, a certain style of adventure thriller came to rule the bookshelves. Typically with an everyman-type hero cast into uncharted territory – either literal or metaphorical – they became some of the bestselling books of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Names such as Alistair MacLean, Hammond Innes and Len Deighton were ubiquitous; but one writer was a cut above the rest. Even MacLean said so, acknowledging Desmond Bagley as “the best”.
Now, to mark the centenary of his birth in October 1923, Bagley is to get the ultimate recognition from the town where he grew up. Blackpool Civic Trust is to bestow a blue plaque on the property where his parents ran a theatrical boarding house, at 48 Lord Street. The house stands a short walk from the Central Library where, at the age of 13, the insatiably curious Bagley began devouring literature.
A shy boy with a stammer, he had found his world. Beginning with HG Wells and continuing through some heavyweight scientific tomes, he took on all comers. “I read widely and, it must be said, indiscriminately,” he would later confess.
A wartime stint as an engineer in an aircraft parts factory was coupled with a burgeoning talent for writing, nurtured by his mentor George Higgins, a stalwart of the town’s Anonymous Players. But it was an advert in the local Gazette newspaper that changed his life.
The advert sought participants for an overland expedition to South Africa, a trip that promised to broaden horizons after the privations of the war and one which appealed immediately to the putative author looking for some life experience. He joined the expedition, leaving Blackpool Town Hall on January 7, 1947, and embarked on a new phase of his life.
What followed were several years of travelling before settling in South Africa, where he met his redoubtable wife Joan. By the end of the 1950s they were back in England, settling first in Totnes, Devon, and later on the island of Guernsey. Starting with The Golden Keel in 1963, Bagley began a run of bestselling novels – roughly one a year – that catapulted him to literary fame.
His early death at the age of 59 put an end to the run, although Joan completed two further manuscripts for posthumous release, and a third was discovered in the Bagley archive in Boston, Massachusetts, leading to the 2019 publication of Domino Island by his longstanding publishers HarperCollins.
When it came to marking the Bagley centenary, ideas were floated such as a new reprint or new covers. But having worked extensively on Domino Island, I knew there was more mileage in its hero, the resourceful ex-Army man Bill Kemp, and I pitched an original story, using Kemp as the protagonist, to HarperCollins. This sequel, Outback, has been published as the ‘Desmond Bagley centenary thriller’ – not intended to mimic the great man but to honour his legacy.
The launch of the paperback edition coincides with the unveiling of the blue plaque, which takes place at the Bagley family home in Lord Street at 1.30pm on Tuesday, October 31, 2023. It’s followed by a centenary event at the Central Library in Queen Street in which I’m joined in conversation by HarperCollins’s estates publisher David Brawn. Both events are free and open to the public. It’s a terrific way of keeping the Bagley flame alive.
Outback by Michael Davies is published by HarperCollins
