Early years, family and education

Tom Mather Mallin was born at West Bromwich, Staffordshire, England, to Clifford Vincent Mallin (1887–1932) and his wife Olive May née Mather (1895–1978).^[1]

From 1943 to 1945 Mallin studied at Birmingham School of Art, going on to win a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools. However, but after doing National Service he decided to study at the international Anglo-French Art Centre in London, where he met his future wife Muriel Grace George (1925–2002).^[2] He earned a living by finding employment as a Bond Street picture restorer, mainly of 17th- and 18th-century paintings, while also creating his own paintings, drawings, illustrations, prints and sculptures.^[1][3] Mallin and Muriel George married in 1949, moved to Clare, Suffolk, in 1955, and had two sons, Simon and Rupert.^[1]

Writing

Mallin had his first play, Curtains, produced in 1968, and went on to write many more, for both stage and radio, having a six plays broadcast on BBC Radio before his death in 1977 and others posthumously.^[4]

Turning to full-time writing in 1970, at the age of 43, he also had five novels published by Allison and Busby,^[4] the book covers featuring his own artwork.

In a 1971 article in The Guardian, Michael McNay described Mallin's first novel, Dodecahedron (1970), as "shocking", and said: "Tom Mallin's prose bleeds. His plays and novels are the flayed flesh of English language. If there had to be a visual comparison (and why not? Mallin used to be a realist painter) it would be with a crucifixion by Grunewald or a film by Bunuel."^[5] The novel was also published in the US, by Outerbridge and Lazard in 1972, to mixed reviews, with Kirkus Reviews noting that Dodecahedron owes a great deal to the playwriting genre.^[6][7][8]

Mallin's last novel, Bedrok, published in 1978, was described by Hermione Lee in The Observer as "a stylish as well as a very troubling novel".^[9] Two of Mallin's novels have been reprinted: Knut ("a darkly comic take on the gothic novel")^[10] and Erowina ("A dark, ambitious, stimulating, and challenging novel ... Tom Mallin's masterpiece, and a work that remains surprising, fresh and vital").^[11]

Novels

• Dodecahedron, Allison & Busby, 1970, ISBN 085031030X.
• Knut, Allison & Busby, 1971, ISBN 0850310369; new edition, with an introduction by Rupert Mallin, Verbivoracious Press, 2014, ISBN 978-9810921651.
• Erowina, Allison & Busby, 1972, ISBN 0850311314; new edition, illus., Verbivoracious Press, 2015, ISBN 978-9810944704.
• Lobe, Allison & Busby, 1977, ISBN 0850312027.
• Bedrok, Allison & Busby, 1978, ISBN 0850311314.

Selected plays

• Curtains, 1968 – Edinburgh Festival's Traverse Theatre, directed by Michael Rudman; Canonbury Theatre, London, 1970; produced for radio by Guy Vaeson; published by Calder & Boyars, Playscript 57, 1971, ISBN 978-0714507927
• As Is Proper, 1971, King's Head Theatre, London
• Cot, 1971, Edinburgh Fringe Festival
• Downpour – broadcast 1971
• The Novelist, 1971, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh; Hampstead Theatre Club
• Mrs Argent, 1972, Soho Poly, London; BBC Radio 3, 1980
• Rooms – broadcast 1973
• Birds of Prey – (not produced), 1973
• Two Gentlemen of Hadleigh Heath – broadcast 1973
• The Lodger – broadcast 1974
• Vicar Martin – broadcast 1974 (BBC Radio 3, 1976)
• Whispers (not produced), 1974
• Rowland, BBC Radio 4: The Monday Play, 4 July 1977, and BBC Radio 4: Afternoon Theatre, 27 August 1978
• Spanish Fly – broadcast BBC Radio 3, 18 September 1977
• Halt! Who Goes There?, 1977, broadcast posthumously, with Clive Swift, Rosemary Leach, 26 March 1978; winner of a 1978 Giles Cooper Award and published in Best Radio Plays of 1978 by Methuen, 1979^[4]