Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Christopher MiddletonNotes on a Viking Prow
(PN Review 10)
Next Issue Kirsty Gunn re-arranges the world John McAuliffe reads Seamus Heaney's letters and translations Chris Price's 'Songs of Allegiance' David Herman on Aharon Appelfeld Victoria Moul on Christopher Childers compendious Greek and Latin Lyric Book Philip Terry again answers the question, 'What is Poetry'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
PN Review Substack

This article is taken from PN Review 213, Volume 40 Number 1, September - October 2013.

Gerald Kersh and My Mum's Secret Adrian May
I was going through some old papers of my Mum's, when I found two typescripts of a short story and a couple of love letters to her from the author Gerald Kersh. The story is called 'The Musicians' and one copy has a handwritten dedication: 'For Gladys / with love from Gerald Kersh / March 2nd '40'. I had vaguely heard of 'Kersh', as he signed himself in the letters, and would have said, if someone had asked me, '30s short story writer?' Mum died when I was a small boy, but discovering this material revealed many unexpected connections. It became the focus of a sense of a multi-dimensional person I was seeking in my Mum, there among the few papers, letters, diaries and photos which remained from her short life. It revealed a secret side of her, which had uncanny connections with my own life. She seems to have rescued the story from oblivion, when Kersh lost his original copy in an air-raid in the Blitz. Also, she might even have inspired it.

Gerald Kersh (1911- 68) has a 'noir' London status, but for me discovering this adventurer-writer also helped put my father, himself a writer, into a stronger cultural perspective and helped me to see some aspects of his relationship with my Mum in a more vital way. I'd been trying to find out what kind of person she was beyond the vague and unavailable knowing of a child and the sparse memories of those who knew ...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image