Charles Birkin #NottsWriters

Sir Charles Birkin (1907-1985)

Born in Nottingham in 1907 - and grandson of the former High Sherriff of Nottingham, Sir Thomas Birkin, owner of the Birkin Lace Company - Sir Charles Birkin launched the career of many a horror writer and, in the 1960s, he did much to keep the genre alive in Britain.

Birkin is associated with Ruddington Grange, a mansion made famous under the Birkins’ ownership when monkeys roamed freely inside. It was later occupied by Frank Bowden (founder of Raleigh) who sold it to Thomas Farr (founder of Home Ales). Its land is now home to the Ruddington Grange Golf Club.

Charles Birkin was educated at Eton (1921-26) before working as an editor for the London Publisher Philip Allan, developing their Creeps Library of titles, a series of anthologies which began with Creeps in 1932, for which he included stories of his own under the alias Charles Lloyd. Birkin acquired and published many collections including the debut of the US sci-fi writer Edmond Hamilton, and the first published story from William F Temple (a leading sci-fi writer of the ‘40s and ‘50s), in addition to the many reprinted works from the likes of Tod Robbins and Russell Thorndike. The popular Pan Book of Horror series later pulled stories from Creeps which was one of the few magazines of the era to feature horror.

At Philip Allan, Birkin published the early short stories of John Steinbeck, The Pastures of Heaven (1933), but the contract had lapsed before Steinbeck become a big seller. Philip Allan’s greatest success came with the steamy novels of Winifred Mary Scott and Pamela Wynne, then, in 1936, Birkin had his own book published, Dark Spawn, a collection of his Charles Lloyd stories.

During the Second World War he served as a Captain in the Sherwood Foresters and married the Australian actress Janet Johnson. Their son, John Birkin, directed/produced many TV comedies including Mr. Bean, French and Saunders, and Harry Enfield's Television Programme.

It wasn’t until 1963 that Birkin resumed his writing career after being contacted by Hutchinson (Stanley Middleton’s publisher) requesting new stories. Nearly 100 stories followed, in seven collections, from The Kiss of Death (1964) to Spawn of Satan (1971). They now fetch quite a fee, though they come with a warning, Birkin writing of murder, rape, torture, mutilation and concentration camps. His prize-winning story Fairy Dust was admired by Noel Coward, and, according to Mike Ashley (not that one), writing in 1999, “invokes the darker side of Peter Pan and Never-Never Land.”

There's a warning on the cover: 'Not For the Squimish!'

In the early 1970s Birkin lived in Cyprus, fleeing after the Turkish invasion, an experience he reflects upon in A Low Profile (1977). Birkin and his wife retired to Sulby on the Isle of Man.