ARTHUR C CLARKE AND EXMOOR
Arthur C Clarke was born to West Somerset parents. His mother, Nora, was a daughter of William Baker Willis, a butcher in Minehead. Her grandfather was Arthur Heal, well-known huntsman for the Devon and Somerset Staghounds. Her father died when she was young and she went to live with her grandfather at Exford while her mother built up a guest house business. This work was continued by Nora’s sister Nell (Mrs Abrahamse). When still a young woman, Nora worked at the Post Office at Bishops Lydeard. There she met Charles Clarke, the son of the postmistress. They married during the First World War and after Charles’ war service they farmed at Ballifants, near Bishops Lydeard. Nora recorded the story of her family growing up there in her book My Four Feet on the Ground (1978).
Nora stayed with her mother-in-law while her husband was away on war service. However, he own mother demanded that she should stay at the guest House in Blenheim Road, Minehead for the birth of her first child, Arthur, in 1917. They stayed there for over a year until Charles returned, Nora helping with the guest house, which had become a temporary residence for gentry rather than holiday makers. When Charles did return he became determined to be a farmer. After a failed attempt with a farm near Chard he bought the smallholding at Ballifants. There he and Nora produced three more children: Fred, Mary and Michael. Arthur had the use of a study at Ballifants. He enjoyed stargazing and enthusiastically read old American science-fiction magazines. He built his first telescope when he was thirteen. His father died the following year, forcing a change in lifestyle as his mother began to give riding lessons to augment the family's income. Arthur helped at the post office and was fascinated by the radio and telephone communications there. After secondary school, and studying at Richard Huish College, Taunton he was unable to afford a university education and got a job as an auditor in the pensions section of the Board of Education.
Plaque at 13, Blenheim Road.
The house today. It was originally No 4 but was re-numbered after the road was extended.
During the Second World War, he served in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist and was involved in the early warning radar defence system that contributed to the RAF's success during the Battle of Britain. He was in charge of the first radar talk-down equipment, the Ground Controlled Approach, during its experimental trials. He was demobilised with the rank of Flight Lieutenant. After the war, he obtained a first class degree in mathematics and physics at King's College London.
In the postwar years Arthur stayed in London and became involved with the British Interplanetary Society, to whom he presented the idea that geostationary satellites would be ideal telecommunications relays. He has also written a number of non-fiction books describing the implications of rocketry and space flight. The most notable of these may be The Exploration of Space (1951) and The Promise of Space (1968). Arthur had published a few short science fiction stories during the war years, in the genre of the American magazines he was fond of. He contributed to the Dan Dare series, and his first three published novels were for a juvenile audience. He was friendly with CS Lewis, with whom he frequently discussed science fiction. He devoted himself to writing full-time from 1951 and in 1953 published Childhood's End, which went on to become one of most popular and acclaimed science fiction novels of all time.
In 1953 Arthur met and quickly married Marilyn Mayfield, a twenty-two year old American divorcee with a young son. They separated permanently after six months, although a divorce was not finalised until 1964. Arthur never re-married. He has lived in Sri Lanka since 1956, first in Unawatuna on the south coast, and then in Colombo. In 1954 he started to give up space for the sea and has long been an avid scuba diver. His diving school was destroyed by the 2004 tsunami but has since been rebuilt. Sri Lanka inspired the locale for his novel The Fountains of Paradise, in which he describes a ‘space elevator’. This, he figures, will ultimately be his legacy, more so than geostationary satellites, once such elevators make space shuttles obsolete.
Clarke's first venture into film was the Stanley Kubrick-directed 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick and Clarke met in 1964 to discuss the possibility of a collaborative film project. They decided it would be best to write a novel first and then adapt it for the film upon its completion. However, as Clarke was finishing the book, the screenplay was being written simultaneously. The film was released in 1968, before the book was completed. In 1982 Clarke published 2010: Odyssey Two, which was also made into a film. His thirteen-part TV series Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World in 1981 and Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers in 1984 have now been screened in many countries. His novels, and much of his non-fiction, reinforce his belief that we are intelligent apes who, with our technological skills, can transcend our earthly prison.
In 1988, he was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome and has since been confined to a wheelchair. He was knighted in 2000. His last visit to Minehead was for his 75th birthday in 1992. Accompanied by his brother Fred, who has always lived in the area, they opened a Space Age Festival, when there was a screening of 2001 and an exhibition of props from the film. He later said: “The highlight of the Minehead visit was being made the town's first Freeman, at a special meeting of the Council. No one seemed quite sure what privileges this conveys; the suggestion that it entitles me to drive sheep through mid-town on market day could not be confirmed.” At the same time he wrote an article for London Sunday Express entitled Minehead Made Me. Plans by Arthur C. Clarke Foundation for the Arthur C. Clarke Space and Communications Centre at Minehead have currently been shelved.