William Horwood is probably best known for his Duncton Wood books. But for me, his novel Skallagrigg, based on his experiences as a father of a child with cerebral palsy, is his masterpiece.
It gets the most regular and deepest and most moving correspondence. It was the book I was most pleased to write. Skallagrigg is different; I feel it’s an important subject.
I interviewed him in 2002 (no-one can accuse me of rushing to publish!) about a screening of the film of Skallagrigg. This film starring Richard Briers, Bernard Hill, Ian Dury, Billie Whitelaw, Jamie Beddard and Nabil Shaban won the BAFTA for Best Single Drama in 1995, but had never been repeated on the BBC.
At the screening, John McCardle who played Dilke (real name taken from 1876 report into mental asylums of a man accused of systematic torture of his patients) tapped William Horwood on the shoulder. The author backed away from the actor. “I’m sorry I can’t talk to you”, he said, unnerved by the actor’s chilling portrayal of the product of his imagination.
Casting of disabled actors
Horwood was “pleasantly surprised” by the film:
It raised a lot of issues that I’d raised in the book.
I thought that it was fantastic that a film like that was made. Even greater that, on the whole, good use was made of people who had disabilities of one sort or another (which was unexpected). I thought they would try and use “real” actors. Except in one or two cases where it was arguable.
Horwood describes Ian Dury’s role as “inspired casting”. My friend and colleague, the late Margie Woodward, was one of the extras in the asylum. She was paid extra to have her head shaved!
Parents of disabled children are not heroes
The general perception of what fathers and mothers ought to be is heroic. We should be heroic, basically i.e. we’ve got a problem, a child with special needs. We’ve got to do something about it. We shouldn’t complain and moan and grumble. We’ve got to be brave, on behalf of society, on behalf of the child, and I suppose, on behalf of ourselves and I have to say on behalf of the siblings of the child. There is a whole lot of pressure for goodness. My observation however, and it didn’t take much research, to find this out was that many marriages break up as a result of such a birth in a family. It imposes fantastic pressures on both parents.
The father in the novel Richard Marquand is “full of doubt, mean and angry and nasty and feels inadequate”. He doesn’t come to terms with his daughter’s cerebral palsy.
Horwood’s daughter Rachel was born 3 months premature and weighing just over 3 pounds. She had delays in communication and could not walk.
My form of denial was not to love my child. It was 6 years before I accepted my daughter as my daughter… I looked at this tape recorder and I said to myself “Is there anything I couldn’t say into the tape recorder in the privacy of this room which nobody will ever hear which I can wipe off immediately. I switched it on. A long silence followed by some heavy breathing. I burst into tears and I said “I love Rachel” and at that moment I began Skallagrigg.
Inspirations behind Skallagrigg
Skallagrigg was in part inspired by a story from a hospital in Kent. A woman was made pregnant through rape or incest and the child was born in hospital with cerebral palsy. He had stayed there for the first 30 years of his life when a nurse realised that he was intelligent because he laughed in all the right places during Fawlty Towers. He was sent for an assessment but he was recommended to stay in the institution because he couldn’t recognise coinage. He had never spent money in his life!
After the interview, Horwood gave me a lift back to Oxford station. We went via his lock-up garage where he still had a can of film he used in his research. Thanks to this detour, A Happy Human Being is now available on YouTube. This tells the story of Bill Howe, a man with profound communication difficulties and the author of Crossed Wires.
Horwood and disability
Horwood reflected on his role as father and writer:
I’m not a nice person. I’m a ruthless novelist. That’s what I do… I couldn’t, because I was divorced, contribute particularly to my daughter. I didn’t have the energy, willpower or the interest to contribute to a society of people concerned with the issue but I felt the skill I had was to create the story. I feel pretty proud about the book and I couldn’t write it again. It’s much better than I am.
William Horwood should be proud of Skallagrigg and his honesty. His memoir Boy With No Shoes is a fascinating insight into his early life and his search for his own father. We are all flawed human beings. Writers can help us to understand and empathise with our flaws.
Alex White writes 
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