When you grow up, and put pen to paper, following in your father’s footsteps and mine, there will be, out there and all around you, a world differing greatly from the world in which I grew up, different too, though in lesser degree, from your father’s and your mother’s world. This is in the nature of things. Change for better, I hope, for worse, I fear, but change, inevitably. You will write of the world you live in, your works will be of their time, as mine have been of theirs. Your world, of computers, of the wonders of that almost infinitely small micro-universe of the subatomic the infinite world of outer space, your world of vast social, economic, political changes, your universe so different in almost every way from mine, will yet have one constant. No matter all the changes, there will be in your stories, as in mine, the realization that there is nothing except it is filtered through our minds. Received truth, or the tentative theories of scientific research; folklore, or ideology; the endless philosophical searchings, or the bovine acceptances, all have their origins in the minds of humans. You will come to realize, I trust, that we are a unique species of animal, the only species that can contemplate its distant past and have hopes and fears for its future. Someone said that in the mind-numbing magnitudes of space, poor puny Man is yet the Astronomer. We, the human species, are indeed unique, and to the best of my knowledge, each one of us is uniquely individual; no two sets of fingerprints the same, no total human being identical with any other of our four or five billion. You will write, I know, of individuals; you will not fall for the tricky talk of national superiority or inferiority, or the numerous other false ways of lumping humans in groups as we class sheep. Ask yourself always why humans have always split the human family along lines of colour, religion, class, and ask too, who benefits? Divide and rule; it is a tactic that works now as it has worked ever since the start of agriculture and the permanent settlements that allowed mankind to separate into the exploiters and the exploited, the rich and the innumerable poor. Ask the question, and I’m sure you’ll have a wealth of material for your writing. Look below the glittering surface of our complex modern society, and you’ll find the same old divisions, the same monumental injustices, that have plagued our species since we first set out on the track that led from the caves to the enormous shimmering beauty, the vile festering ugliness, of our twentieth century world.

Look beneath the surface, take no heed of the politicians, the bankers, the exploiters; ask always the question, ‘who benefits?’

You will find writing a lonely craft. You will find too that it is most unrewarding, in the material sense. But you will find, as so many of us have found, that life can be lived at any one of a multitude of material levels, and still bring a sense of satisfaction, of a life well lived. Remember, in the bleak days that come soon or late to every mortal who has taken up the pen, that you are one in a grand host, marching to a drum that the others, the millions not of your host, perhaps do not hear. Or hearing find it uninteresting. You will; this is my dearest wish for you: you will write of what you know. Fantasy, as long as it is your fantasy. Work, the work process, by all means write of it, but if you write from the inside. as one who has worked at that particular calling of which you write, be sure it is a calling at which you have sweated to make your living. Too many otherwise good writers fall into the trap of watching men or women at work and imagining that watching makes them workmates of the ones they observe. Naturally a writer will wish to write, and will write, of people of all kinds doing work of all kinds, but the writer must, I believe, be cautious, must write from the viewpoint of an outsider, unless he is truly one of the insiders. Another point I must make; be most careful to dodge what I can best describe as ‘the secret panel trick’. It is often used, by some first-rate authors, but it is phoney. It works thus. Having painted himself into a corner, the writer opens a hidden door, making his escape from the predicament in which he has placed himself. Unclear? Try reading with ‘the secret panel’ in mind, and you will be surprised at the frequency of its use. (By the way, there are such people as good publishers).

Of books of reference there are many. I feel sure that when you have learnt the miracle of reading and writing, your parents will see to it that you have access to at least one dictionary. May I recommend the Concise Oxford? It has been my companion for almost my lifetime, and next to it, in my mind and on my desk, has always been Roget’s Thesaurus. Together they are a constant stimulus. With them, I find always to my hand the Holy Bible, the King James Version with dictionary of proper names, subject index, and concordance. Whatever your religious beliefs or lack of belief, I know you will find in the Bible such an awesome use of our great English language as will enrich every day of your life. It goes without saying that you will have a hefty dislike of the ill-named Good News Bible, an American monstrosity that seeks to fill with Coca-Cola the chalice of the Eucharist. What other reference books you will have by you will of course be your concern; I do most strongly commend the three I’ve mentioned.

You will live your life, I’m sure, to the full; you will have a wealth of good material for your writing. Whatever path you tread, you will be, heed those who say, ‘Well, / could write, too, if I’d had an interesting life such as yours.’ The writer has all the world around him, the physical world, and those other worlds of the mind and the spirit, for his material. Whatever path you tread, you will be, always, in the world of thought. Not all the temptations and enticements of the high life, not the numbing weariness of the slave, not the hodden-grey monotony of the wage-plug’s existence, nothing in your life will leave you without subject matter. The ordinary, the commonplace, can be the material of great work, if you can bring a well-honed talent, a questioning mind, and a full measure of compassion to your task.

Music has sound, architecture has mass and space, painting has colour and line and form, but literature has the Universe, all mankind, nature, the inner world, the many worlds beyond the horizon, for its subject matter. As a writer, you will be one of the great army who hold all of history and the genealogies of Humanity, who have custody of the mythologies, who indeed are the originators of those mythologies, who celebrate the tribal victories and console the tribe in defeat. The Music of the trumpet brought down the Architecture of the walls of Jericho, but always remember that had there been no scribe to record the event it would not have been remembered for more than a few generations.

So, my young newcomer to our species. I hope you will grow towards the pen. In your fantastic world of the future, remember that you are one with the storytellers of the far-distant pre-literate past. you are in the host that marches the Homeric, Shakespearian, road, you will record through the filter of your mind, all the beauty and the wonder, all the terror, all the anguish, all the grandeur that makes up the human condition. You will write such part of the story as you can, yet you will never be content with what you have written.

Take all Humanity to your heart, and write of human beings to the utmost of your ability. Beware Patriotism; it leads men’s minds astray. War is always for someone’s material benefit, someone other than the soldier, the toiler, the exploited. Never glorify War; it is a leprosy of the human spirit, and I hope it may never touch you. All my best wishes for your writing. I hand the world over to you, my grandson of three months.