Bruce Chatwin

by Nicholas Shakespeare

IV War Baby: The Mythical Escape

"Desperate attempts on my part to escape, if not mythically, by the invention of a mythical paradise. He always sought father and mother figures," says Diana Melly, who would look after the adult Bruce in Wales. "My subsequent travels, imaginary or real, are of course relatively unimportant. But I would say at the outset that I value my ambivalence highly. I avoid head-on collisions, and attack surreptitiously or just walk out. I accumulate things rapidly and with financial success, then suddenly dispose of them in an ill-tempered and impulsive way. I have never felt any real attachment to a home and fail to produce the normal emotive response when the word is mentioned – except when travelling …"

V: The Contemplative Process

"He could absorb any piece of information and then try and make a connection with it – and when it couldn’t all fit together, he’d make up the rest of it. For me, he’d wear a sign on his forehead: ‘Don’t disturb. I am thinking. When I am ready to talk to you, I’ll do so.’ Then he’d come out with his stories, fully prepared."

XIV: The Concept of Homecoming

"The word ‘homecoming’ in that sense is the idea of returning to some kind of original landscape. His life as it was constructed resembled a circus tent. Everything else can go on, but it has to have a pole to keep it in place. He needed someone both to run away from and to come back to and he found in Elizabeth that person."

XVI: Embracing Change

"Change is the only thing worth living for. Never sit your life out at a desk. Ulcers and heart condition follow."