The Novels

The Novels

Robert Shaw's novels, like their author, are very complex works and have been interpreted in many ways. I will offer a brief synopsis of each, then leave it up to you to interpret them as you wish.

The Hiding Place

(1959)

Shaw's first novel was based on a newspaper article about a bomb falling on a gun emplacement during World War II. Shaw did a lot of research about post-war Germany, including POW camps before writing the text. It would become his method to store all of the information he had collected in a trunk and then plug each rephrased selection into the text he had already written. He preferred to have it all in his head before commencing. Shaw would require an inspirational setting, and would quite often listen to The Beatles, Beethoven or Bach whilst writing. He could begin writing anywhere under any circumstances when he was a young man.

The story is about two British airmen Connolly and Wilson, who are shot down over Bonn. They are kept prisoner by a German named Frick who drugs them and puts them in chains in his cellar. They are treated well by their captor and fed at regular intervals. Half of the novel is about their first day of captivity and one begins to wonder if they will spend the rest of their lives there, as Frick is enjoying their company so much that he doesn't tell them when the war ends and continues with the masquerade for years that Germany is still fighting. Frick leaves for work one day to his job at a pharmacy. He makes the mistake of leaving a broom behind with a nail in it. Connolly pulls it out and the German returns on his lunch break, relieved to see the two men still there. It is during a meeting with other Nazis that evening that Frick becomes quite upset by the news that they will disband. He has a heart attack and whilst recuperating in hospital, worrying about his captives, he has a change of heart and decides to set the two men free.

The rest of the novel revolves around the two soldiers making their way home to England, which will be a process of rediscovering the world they had only dreamed of seeing again for many years, sunning themselves and observing nature, until they are hungry enough to search for food. They venture up the Rhine in a stolen canoe, hearing world news along the way and working on a farm at one stage.

Upon returning to England, they search to find Connolly's Regent Park house. His wife is gone, having since remarried and moved to Australia. At the end, Frick appears, after having followed them from a distance and tells the pair that he wishes to work for them, so that he can be with them once again.

The London Times wrote that it had "high dramatic value in it" but that it "ends in mid-air and one feels that the author had a good idea that he did not quite know how to carry through." The New York Times went on to say that it was "an unusually neat and professional first novel."

Shaw's first novel sold well-12,000 copies were sold in England and the same number in America. He won a Book Society Award and The Hiding Place would later be made into a TV adaptation. Shaw was happy with the original British version entitled "The Pets" in 1960 and also quite pleased with the American Playhouse 90 adaptation, which cast Trevor Howard, James Mason and Richard Basehart in the lead roles. To his disappointment, it would later be made into a film in 1965, entitled "Situation Hopeless, But Not Serious". He was happy that Alec Guinness would star but nothing else would please him as there were too many changes, and casting Robert Redford and Mike Connors as the prisoners made it seem too American.

Shaw was very pleased with the critical and public reviews but derived his greatest satisfaction from his friend's comments, as he always loved to surprise and impress them. "I never knew you could do that." they would say.

The Sun Doctor

(1961)

Shaw's second novel turned out to be an even greater success than his first. His ideas came from a variety of sources for this one, which came out in 1961. He wanted his readers to be "bowled over" from the beginning, the same desire he had for his audience when he acted. I enjoy reading Shaw more than watching him because I've always found that he revealed himself in his novels and that the same could not be said of his acting.

The story begins in a ship's cabin, with Dr. Benjamin Halliday tossing restlessly. He is returning to England after many years of missionary work in Africa and is about to receive a knighthood for his travail. As the ship approaches his home, he finds himself reminiscing of the work he left behind. He was involved in helping a remote tribe which had been infected by an exotic disease. He befriends a tribesman he calls Friday and also becomes involved with a girl named Kamante. He finally succeeds in convincing the tribe to follow him to the nearest hospital but finds himself exasperated when they refuse to give up their traditional ways. He vents his anger and frustration on Kamante and when she fails to understand, he hits her hard enough to kill her.

Halliday feels guilty about his knighthood and feels that he is a failure. He refuses to return to Africa, remaining in England intent on marrying his housekeeper, with whom he is having an affair. He then decides to travel about, first to Europe and then returning to his father's home in the Orkneys. It is here that he finds an old islander and begins to understand his father, a man driven by his missionary work. It has been speculated that Shaw was coming to terms with his own father's death, upon a recent trip to the Orkneys with Mary Ure and his children. This is only speculation, as is the title, The Sun Doctor, or Doctor's Son (More Than A Life). Upon this discovery, and the answer as to why he felt so guilty, he makes a decision to return to Africa.

This time, he chooses to live with the tribe. He learns in the end that truth can only be found by "a pattern of inconsistencies-that any observation he might make could be equaled by its opposite. That all apparent truths were to be questioned; and once questioned, acted on, questioned again, and acted on again. Therein lay the thread." With this self-realization, Halliday can now begin his missionary work once again with the compassion and self sacrifice he had previously been lacking.

His personal turmoil is marked by his restless sleep, Halliday finds answers in his dreams. In the last one, he meets with a comic speaker named Grandfather Hosken, dressed as a music hall comedian. The character laughs at Halliday's selfishness, belittling him. When Halliday is insulted, Hosken explains, "Somebody must boy, somebody must." The book is split into five parts, each of it is a lesson in what it is to be a truly caring person. In the first three, Hosken is Halliday's teacher. In the last two, the teacher is Halliday's father. He lost his father when he was very young and has since wondered what kind of father it was that he had lost. He learns from both figures that what he had previously been lacking in character. He had been a good doctor in the sense that he had cured illnesses but had no compassion for his patients, most importantly the hopeless cases.

A critic for The London Times wrote that The Sun Doctor proved "Shaw could command anything. His story of a British Schweitzer is tender, exciting, funny, reflective, ingenious and deep by turns." John Coleman, writing for New York Statesman however, complained "questions get begged" and that "characters disarm each other and us with improbable avowals and confidences." Then he goes on to praise Shaw and highly, impressed with his "certainty of touch and the sheer intensity with which both the choked, sodden jungle and Halliday's dealings with its maimed owners are sketched in here, for once, the confrontation of black and white makes for marvelous metaphors of dignity and courage." In 1962, it won the highly distinguished Hawthornden Prize, Britain's oldest literary prize.

The Flag

(1965)

Robert Shaw was a very busy man in 1964 but still managed time to write his third novel The Flag and to co-edit Flashpoint, a collection of modern poetry. Shaw had started out as a poet, one of his passionate loves was poetry but he didn't have much success. Many people believe The Flag was his best work and my personal favourite, something I would have truly enjoyed discussing with him, had I ever been given the opportunity to meet him in person.

Robert Shaw was inspired to write The Flag based on the story of Conrad Noel, the Anglo-Catholic vicar of Thaxted. He created a huge commotion in the 1920s because he raised a red flag in his church, one which symbolized human rights and justice. Shaw thought to himself, "Here is the sort of man I would like to write about."

http://www.anglocatholicsocialism.org/noel.html

He didn't want to write a historical novel but once again began to research extensively and his story would become his own rendering of the events. The book is dedicated to Mary and some of his children's names can be found in the characters, as well as poems that his daughters actually contributed to the book. Most of them are Deborah's, with the exception of "The Swallow" which was written by his daughter Penelope.

'The Swallow'

Gracefully, carefully, flies the Swallow

In and out of the trees with sorrow

Never thinking unless he worried

What his mother would say.

Penelope Shaw

It was night

The moon shone bright

The lights were out

No one was about

Only the fairies danced in the moonlight

They danced in fairie ring all night.

When the day came

They went to sleep again.

Deborah Shaw

The novel begins with Calvin arriving for work with his three children and unhappy wife. He became a vicar in the northern industrial town of Houghton (Westhoughton?) before being summoned to the Suffolk coastal town of Eastwold. He tries to persuade any of his parishioners who will listen of his beliefs in social justice. It is no small task to convert them from their old, comfortable beliefs and whilst this is going on, an old miner, Rockingham, tries to follow him and bring him the red flag which represents the Rights of Man.

The old man meets many interesting town folk along the way, Jean-a pregnant young woman he befriends and an evil old screever. The entire story revolves around these two characters as well as the vicar's attempts to convert his parishioners. Rockingham arrives in time to hear the vicar's first sermon and the red flag is unfurled between the Union Jack and the Sinn Feiner. The vicar defends himself and wins the sympathy of the church council but the crowds waiting outside threaten to tear it down. Trying to save the flag, Rockingham takes it up to the top of the church tower and falls to his death but takes his enemy the screever with him and the flag.

One of the characters has been compared to the writer that Shaw himself would become. "I want to push the world on. I want to help other people to live better. I want to take sides. I know that if I don't take sides, it won't be any good. Of course I am using the word political in it's widest sense. I want to make judgments. I want to state values."

The Times Literary Supplement praised the novel by saying it was "laid out with great skill" and that Shaw was someone "writing at all times with originality and imaginative truthfulness." Punch had nothing but praise for Shaw's "strange imagination" and found that "the same power that makes him one of the most terrifying of actors throbs through his writing."

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