Young man on the make

We are not going to agree about Bruce Chatwin. The five books he published in his lifetime are, to some readers, magnificent works of art, setting out grand ideas about the human condition with reference to a closely observed local type — a Czech porcelain collector, Australian nomads, a displaced slave-king, taciturn British farmers and the communities of remotest Patagonia. In other eyes, he was an absurd pseud and show-off, whose work never extended much beyond a tremulous aesthete’s gush over exotic objects, half-digested history and anthropology.

It is fair to say that the latter view has gain- ed ground since his death, and even his most passionate defenders would concede that his work was advanced, during his lifetime, by an unusually compelling personality. His books do not enjoy much esteem among professional students of the communities he wrote about. Few anthropologists have a kind word to say about The Songlines. But for all his absurdity, his books remain highly readable. He was a reporter of considerable talent, who had the wit to go to some very interesting places.

The outlines of Chatwin’s life are well known. Though it is sometimes assumed, from his energetic tuft-hunting in later days, that his origins were somehow low or even shameful to him, in fact he came from a perfectly respectable background, and was born in Sheffield, in 1940. After school, he worked at Sotheby’s, where his talent was quickly recognised. He married an American colleague, Elizabeth Chanler, to the astonishment of everyone who knew him.

A brief and uncongenial spell studying archaeology at Edinburgh was followed by a stretch at the Sunday Times magazine in its golden period under the eye of Francis Wyndham. All this time, he was working on an ultimately unpublishable book about nomadism. His Sunday Times stretch came to an end when, he claimed, he sent a telegram to his editor reading ‘Gone to Patagonia for four months’.