I differ with John Burbidge on one small but important point in his splendid evocation of Glaskin. That concerns Glaskin’s oft-repeated claim that publishers Barrie & Rockliff forced him to use the pseudonym Neville Jackson. My research shows that Glaskin suggested the pseudonym himself and wanted to write more books as Neville Jackson, but that his publishers demurred. Glaskin also came up with the working title, You Can’t Get Away from It, and the final title. My information comes from the Barrie & Rockliff files in the Random House Archives in the United Kingdom, an archive that Burbidge acknowledges but in which he appears to have missed the files I accessed.

That matter aside, Burbidge has scoured the Glaskin archives thoroughly in every other way. He also corresponded with numerous friends and colleagues of Glaskin, including Han Suyin (he started his research while she was still alive), Alan Seymour, who wrote an unfilmed screenplay of No End to the Way, Tom Hungerford, and Clive Newman. He was also able to interview a number of Glaskin’s sexual partners in Singapore from the 1950s and Amsterdam from the 1960s. This helps reveal intimate aspects of lives that would otherwise be unrecorded. The lifestyles of gay men in Australia in the 1950s are largely unknown, so this glimpse into how such men existed in Singapore and Amsterdam is fascinating.

Burbidge also had the support of Glaskin’s partner, Leo van de Pas. This impressive research brings Glaskin back from near oblivion. Burbidge gives us Glaskin with all his charm as well as his furious obstinacy. We see him arrested for wilful exposure on a West Australian beach, suicidal in Amsterdam, frolicking with British soldiers in his Singapore flat, fighting with his neighbours in Perth, ferociously attacking the medical staff caring for him in his final days – and writing, writing, writing. For instance, he completed the 90,000- word manuscript of what would become No End to the Way (the original title was O Life) between September and November 1961, a year in which he published three other books.

Burbidge makes it clear that Glaskin was a complex man. Is he a great writer? Yes and no. No End to the Way is a considerable achievement. However, as Burbidge shows with other books, while Glaskin was a good storyteller, he played around with narrative form so much that his publisher received an unpredictable, though extensive, output. Burbidge makes a good case for Glaskin lacking the discipline to refine his work. When writing he also proselytised and departed from the story. His publisher and editor John Bunting put it well in a letter of 18 December 1963 (not quoted in this book) when he said Glaskin had ‘a tendency to continue banging the nail when it is safely embedded in the timber’. Barrie & Rockliff wanted more books like Flight to Landfall (1963), possibly Glaskin’s most commercially successful book, thanks largely to its inclusion in the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books program. Flight to Landfall is plot-driven, with rich characters.

What is without doubt is that Glaskin is himself a fascinating character. While he could have raging battles with some people, with others he had deep, lifelong friendships (though sometimes he fell out with old friends). His relationship with van de Pas, to whom the book is dedicated, is indicative of his contrariness. While the men were together from 1968, the relationship was tested by what Leo called Glaskin’s incessant ‘picking and bitching’, but Leo resolved his differences and the two continued on as before. In the last two years of Glaskin’s life, when the legacy of numerous injuries reduced his mobility and his health waned in other ways, Leo cared for him, even in the last months when Glaskin was hospitalised. As with the rest of this biography, Burbidge’s telling of this part of the story is delicate and empathetic.

Never heard of Gerry Glaskin? With John Burbidge’s biography, you no longer have any excuses.