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Remembering Paul Bailey

Former RLF trustee and grants beneficiary Paul Bailey, who died on 27 October at 87, was a memoirist, poet, nonfiction writer and twice Booker-shortlisted author.

His first novel, At The Jerusalem, was published in 1967 when he was 30. Described by The New Statesman as recently as 2012 as “astonishing”, At The Jerusalem won the 1968 Somerset Maugham Award, a prize fund set up by RLF benefactor W. Somerset Maugham in 1947 to enable young writers to enrich their work by gaining experience of foreign countries. Bailey is one of several RLF beneficiaries and Fellows who have received this award over the years, alongside Doris Lessing, Elizabeth Jennings, Horatio Clare, Francis Spufford, Mark Blayney, and others.

Later novels by Bailey also enjoyed great critical success, with Peter Smart’s Confessions (1977) and Gabriel’s Lament (1986) both shortlisted for The Booker Prize. Other awards his work has received include the Arts Council Writers’ Award, the George Orwell Prize and the inaugural E.M. Forster Award in 1974.

Born in Battersea in 1937, Bailey’s first volume of memoir – An Immaculate Mistake: Scenes from Childhood and Beyond, released in 1990 – reflected on his early life as a young, gay, working-class man in post-war South London. His name at birth was Peter Bailey; he became ‘Paul’ (a name he had originally given to an imagined twin brother during his childhood) when he joined the performing arts union Equity. His early career as an actor followed some years spent studying the craft at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama, to which he won a scholarship in 1953.

Bailey wrote At The Jerusalem between acting jobs and whilst also working at Harrods, as he told Observer journalist Robert McCrum in a 2010 article:

When his first novel, At The Jerusalem, was published in 1967, he was paid £200, in instalments. “I was working in Harrods,” he remembers. “My publisher paid me £10 a week to finish it.” For his second novel, Bailey got £400, which sounds and is, even at contemporary prices, peanuts.

– Paul Bailey in conversation with Robert McCrum

In the same article, Bailey spoke frankly about the always-present challenges of earning a living as a writer, telling McCrum, “Last year was hell.” Having previously been an RLF trustee and member of the General Committee, it was during this time that Bailey himself applied for and received a grant from the RLF.

Like many of our RLF writers, Bailey’s contribution to literary culture is far broader than his own published works. Over the years, he was a columnist and reviewer for The Guardian, as well as a sometimes controversial but often entertaining critic on topics including television (again for The Guardian), theatre (for The Oldie magazine – although his last review for them, published in the week of his death, was of Judith Tick’s biography Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song) and, of course, books (his 1996 review of the actor and playwright Steven Berkoff’s autobiography in the pages of TLS generated such a strong response from its subject that the literary letter pages were apparently full for weeks.)

Bailey also made regular appearances as a broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and was himself a Booker Prize judge in 1982 – an experience he did not enjoy, writing in The Guardian in 2012 that he “…would never repeat the grisly experience, with the horse-trading and bargaining that was a feature of the judging process.”

And, of course, he continued to write and publish his own books. As a biographer, his works include An English Madam – The Life And Work Of Cynthia Payne (1982), The Stately Homo: A Celebration of the Life of Quentin Crisp (2000) and Three Queer Lives: An Alternative Biography of Naomi Jacob, Fred Barnes and Arthur Marshall (2001). The last novel of his to be released was The Prince’s Boy in 2014, and his final published work was a second collection of poetry, Joie de vivre, which came out in 2022.

Almost a year ago, on Christmas Day 2023, Guardian reviewer Carol Rumens chose Bailey’s ‘Breadcrumbs for the Sparrows’ as her Poem of the Week. It begins:

Rose

He did not back away
when the first glowing someone in his life
encompassed him
in welcoming arms

She told him to stop twitching
whenever she enfolded him –
I’m here, she said,
in case you haven’t noticed

– Paul Bailey, ‘Breadcrumbs for the Sparrows’

In her review, Carol writes of Bailey’s melancholy, imagination and wit, “as he takes stock of the people gathered in his memory”, finding the “essentially autobiographical” miniature portraits shared in ‘Breadcrumbs for the Sparrows’ a fitting reminiscence for the end-of-year season:

On 25 December, a day when families of all faiths and none sit down together, and when even among the non-family oriented celebrants, memories tend to waken, Bailey’s generous Breadcrumbs are a non-scriptural reminder of the love that is at the centre of the Christmas story.

– Carol Rumens

Paul Bailey was represented by his agency, RCW. His work was published by Jonathan Cape, Fourth Estate, Bloomsbury and CB Editions. He is survived by his partner, Jeremy Trevathan.

Image of Paul Bailey by David Levenson.

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