Oswald Wynd, novelist; born July 4, 1913, died July 21, 191998
MANY will remember him as thriller writer Gavin Black, but his real name was Oswald Wynd, under which he wrote his greatest novel, The Ginger Tree, one of the most beautifully-crafted works by a Scot in this century. It was televised across the world in 119989. Sadly, as so often happens, he gained little recognition in his own land and was more widely published in America than in Britain. Yet he was here in our midst for most of his life, spending the last 45 years in a charming house overlooking the harbour at Crail in Fife - three cottages knocked into one and once the summer home of Lord Kilmany, who remembered watching from there as the fleet sailed off to the Battle of Jutland. Oswald Wynd, a tall, quietly spoken and distinguished man, had a truly remarkable life story. His father William was the son of a farmer in the Carse of Gowrie by Dundee who gave up the land, became a Baptist and went off to preach Christianity to the Japanese in 1890. His girlfriend, Anna Morris from Edinburgh, went out to join him, and Oswald was their fourth child, a late baby born in Tokyo in 1913. When his parents retired to Edinburgh in 1932, he was just in time to embark on four happy years at Edinburgh University. His attempts at becoming a writer were interrupted by the Second World War, when he served first with the Scots Guards, and then with the Intelligence Corps, where his complete knowledge of Japanese would be useful for interrogating prisoners. He sailed from Glasgow on the night of a blitz, en route to Malaya, but was ambushed on the Causeway to Singapore and was himself taken prisoner. His captors were totally flummoxed by this Scot, whose passport showed the dual nationality of British and Japanese, and who spoke their language immaculately. Although he did suffer a beating, he found that his guards, mostly ex-thugs, were ashamed of doing anything more brutal in his presence. On his way to the prison camp, he further bamboozled them by pointing to a summer home which still belonged to his family! On the way back from captivity, Oswald Wynd was directed through Hollywood by film star Basil Rathbone, who was in charge of British prisoners-of-war, before calling on his sisters in New York. There he met a man from Doubleday Books who heard he had been writing a novel in the prison camp. ''We are putting up a prize of $20,000,'' said the man. ''Your book might stand a chance.'' Oswald came home to Scotland and finished his novel, called Black Fountains, which did indeed win that Doubleday prize. It was a wonderful start to his writing career. He married Jan Muir, whose father was a procurator-fiscal in Glasgow, and they lived in the farmhouse at Baligrundle on the Island of Lismore, off Oban. Returning to the mainland, they settled in Crail, where he wrote more than 30 novels, including a dozen popular thrillers under the name of Gavin Black, his own favourite being The Eyes Around Me. But his masterpiece was undoubtedly The Ginger Tree, which was published by Collins in 1977. It told the story of an Edinburgh girl who set sail at the beginning of the century to marry a British military attache in Peking. Her subsequent affair with a Japanese soldier raised a scandal in the European community and left her to face life alone in an alien culture. After several Hollywood options it was taken up by the BBC, who commissioned Christopher Hampton to write the script. It became a four-part drama series, shown not only in this country, but particularly on American and Japanese television. At 76, Oswald Wynd began to gain a wider recognition, but it still fell short of what he deserved. Now he is gone at the age of 85, having been ill for some time, and is survived by Jan. Oswald Wynd was not only a writer of true distinction, but a gentleman of rare charm and wit.
Jack Webster
