Monsarrat legacy braves the cruel sea

Nov 21 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

After years of planning, Nicholas Monsarrat’s archive arrived in Liverpool and the saga of its travels will be celebrated in a national radio documentary. Peter Elson reports

LIKE bookends to a life, two portraits of the Liverpool writer Nicholas Monsarrat as an 18-year-old student and old man facing death stand on a desk at Liverpool’s Royal Navy headquarters.

Painter John Bratby’s picture was not completed until after the novelist’s demise. The artist poignantly inscribed it to his widow, Ann: “With good wishes, Mrs Monsarrat, so sorry about Nicholas.”

While that marked the end of his life in 1979, this momentous occasion is a new beginning with the long-awaited arrival of the Nicholas Monsarrat archive in Liverpool.

Such is the renewed interest about the author of The Cruel Sea that BBC Radio 4 is making a documentary. It will be presented by top cinema critic and writer Barry Norman, whose father, Leslie Norman, produced the film of the novel.

Nearly two years ago, Nicholas’s widow Ann, a long-standing friend, called me from their home on Gozo, an island off Malta, to ask how she could donate his archive to Liverpool.

In spite of me reminding her of its value on the open market, she was implacable, saying: “I’m not interested in money. This is what Nicholas would have wanted.”

After submitting a list of possible homes, on hearing about the Liverpool Athenaeum Library she immediately settled upon that.

Her father-in-law, the eminent surgeon Keith Monsarrat, was a member of the club when Nicholas was born in 1910. Ann imagined the club as a part of the old Liverpool Nicholas would have known.

It proved a happy choice. Past Athenaeum president Judge John Roberts and current president Hilary Gatenby have been hugely enthusiastic about the project.

The dynamic Athenaeum general manager, Pamela Brown, arranged the archive’s carriage from Malta and, finally, it is here in the city.

Ann says: “I’m overjoyed and so glad it’s arrived safely after all the planning. It’s a huge relief and was the right thing to do.”

Dr John Edmondson, cataloguing the archive for the Athenaeum, says: “The Cruel Sea is the definitive novel of the Battle of the Atlantic in which Liverpool played a crucial part, based on his experiences here.

“This archive is very important as it demonstrates Nicholas Monsarrat’s reputation as one of our most famous and successful post-war authors.