Here Lies

Ambler's autobiography, published in 1985 when he was 76 years old, offers a lot of insight into the man, but not so much into how he wrote, except that he obviously did it quickly. Indeed, in the very first chapter he writes, in regard to responding to questions from folks he meets on book tours, "For the rest of the tour I dealt with persistent buttonholers by referring them to my forthcoming autobiography. It would, I assured them, be brutally frank: the ideal handbook for anyone setting out to make a fast book writing thrillers."

Ambler then continues, "I knew I could never do it. Only an idiot believes that he can write the truth about himself." So--how much is true here, and how much does it matter?

Ambler's pre-war suspense novels show more are still models of their kind and have often been imitated. He is credited with rescuing the genre from the usual hacks who were trying to imitate John Buchan. Reading any of his early novels, you are cast into a Hitchcock film, although Hitchcock never filmed any of them. Reading this book, you can at least see the intelligence behind these books. Born in 1909, Ambler was the son of music hall entertainers (and had a hand at it himself, playing the piano in a not-so-successful act), but developed an early taste for science and engineering, winning a scholarship at age 16. By that time, however, his interest had turned to playwriting and he spent much of his time playing hooky in the theater. His aptitude gets him an apprenticeship with a manufacturer of electrical items, where he is soon tasked with figuring out how to sell some defective lightbulbs; thus his second career as a advertising copywriter is born. All the while he continues to write, and some of his early one-act plays were produced, but he professes to have forgotten the names of most of them. When he turns to novels in the 1930s, success is almost immediate. His books are published both in Britain and America. The film rights sell for more than he originally received for the book itself. Almost overnight, it seems, he is a best-selling and respected author. So when World War II happens, he finds himself enlisted in a film making unit after initial stints learning how to ride a motorcycle and how to be an artillery officer. Some of his wartime adventures, particularly in the company of John Huston, are harrowing to say the least. But mostly he is trying to make propaganda films, working with David Niven, who was already a star, and Peter Ustinov, who was to become one.

Once the war ends, the book sort of fizzles to a conclusion. While writing at length about his first wife, we never find out about Ambler's second. Nor are we treated to anecdotes about his years as a screenwriter before he returned to writing novels in the 1950s. The only up-to-date parts we get are at the very beginning when he tells us (fascinatingly) about a car accident he miraculously survived in Switzerland and segues into his dislike for book tours. Though he lived another 14 years, he never wrote the second act of his autobiography. But maybe it wasn't needed. By showing, in significant detail, how he grew up, introducing us to his relatives and friends, and telling the story of how an intelligent British man born when he did excelled both during the Depression and World War II, he demonstrates the self-assurance, intelligence, and dexterity that made him a great novelist. His works are still well worth reading. show less