Laura Davis discovers why author Malcolm Lowry is globally celebrated but forgotten in his Wirral home

THE untimely death of Malcolm Lowry happened one evening in June 1957 after a fight with his wife. She smashed his gin bottle, he hit her and she left, seeking refuge next door.

By the time she returned at 9am the next day, he was dead in their East Sussex cottage.

And so ended the life of the writer with a unique voice, tipped as a new James Joyce.

Lowry died, at the age of 47, much as he had lived – drunk and miles away from his Wirral birthplace. An idyll, in his eyes, that he would return to many times in his writing but never in real life.

The author had sailed out of Birkenhead on the steamer SS Pyrrhus in 1927 – a 17-year-old “deckhand with a ukelele” as the Daily Post’s sister paper, the Echo, reported it.

This was about as much attention as Lowry would receive from his home town, despite being celebrated internationally and an inspiration to generations of artists and writers, including Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

Until now that is – 100 years after his birth.

“We’re claiming him back as a writer for this city – trying to wrestle him from the Canadians,” says Bryan Biggs, director of The Bluecoat, which is holding an eight-week festival to mark Lowry’s centenary.

The series of events, which includes an exhibition of paintings, film and sculpture, is named for his one successful novel, Under the Volcano, which was made into a film in the mid-80s starring Albert Finney.

“Essentially he wrote one great book and then struggled to do much else,” explains Biggs.

“He did a lot of other writing but it was half finished.

“Under the Volcano is the perfect book in that sense, he spent so long on it.

“His style was very experimental. He’d read James Joyce and was inspired by that and it’s got elements of that stream of consciousness writing.”