Professor of Health Humanities at the University of Nottingham, Dr Paul Crawford is back with a new mystery novel, The Wonders of Doctor Bent. Aurora Amaryllis speaks to Paul about how his passion for creative writing converges with his experience researching institutional mental health.
Your new novel, The Wonders of Doctor Bent, was published on 18 March. Can you tell us what it is about?
Sure, the worlds of Jason Hemp, an English lecturer, and Dr Bent, the unlikely Medical Director of high-security psychiatric hospital Foston Hall, come together in a dark tale of murder, revenge and abandonment.
Attempting to track down his twin brother’s killer, Jason finds his life unravelling in unexpected and frightening ways, whilst visionary Dr Bent, controversially, attempts to reform Foston Hall into a more humane, less prisonlike place, all while facing his own mental health challenges.
What kind of journey have you had as author leading up to writing The Wonders of Doctor Bent?
The Wonders of Doctor Bent is my second novel. My first novel, Nothing Purple, Nothing Black came out 23 years ago and had great reviews and a film option with British film producer, Jack Emery, until his production company, The Drama House, folded after serious illness. Thankfully, he finally recovered but the silver screen moment for the book slipped away. I licked my wounds by writing more and more non-fiction in my academic career at The University of Nottingham, becoming Professor of Health Humanities at The Institute of Mental Health. About four years ago, I decided to turn back to creative writing, inspired by my research supporting recovery from mental trauma, and penned The Wonders of Doctor Bent.
In a great deal of English literature, the personal struggles of the author are cloaked or disguised. In writing the novel, it helped enormously to have experienced depression and the pain of bereavement
Before all this, my ambition to be a writer, came aged eleven when all new boys starting at St Philips Grammar School in Edgbaston, Birmingham, received a copy of The Hobbit by former pupil, J.R.R. Tolkien. I devoured that book as quickly as any dragon would, and thought it astonishing that words could generate another world in my mind. I was hooked.
How has your life in Nottingham featured in the novel?
The novel is set largely in Nottingham and the wider Midlands. Foston Hall bears some resemblance to Rampton Hospital, which treats psychiatric patients who are a grave and immediate risk to the public. Jason Hemp works at the fictional Nottingham East University, a new institution that competes to lure valuable overseas students by copying the architecture of the more established University of Nottingham, even including its lake.
What modern day dilemmas does The Wonders of Doctor Bent resonate with?
The fiction delves into the controversial matter of whether those who commit terrible acts with diminished responsibility due to serious mental illness, such as paranoid schizophrenia, should be treated or punished. Furthermore, through the actions of Foston Hall’s gothic, wounded healer, Dr Bent, whether high-secure hospitals should be more comfortable and creative environments albeit with safety of the public in mind.
The novel was written before the devastating attacks by Valdo Calocane on our students, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, and other members of the public. This awful event has understandably generated a lot of anger and soul-searching. Debates have been reignited about how the public are better protected and those with such serious mental health challenges are treated.
If there was one thing for readers to take away from these moral debates going on in your novel, what would you hope that would be?
That society strikes the right balance between properly supporting and punishing people with serious mental disorders to reduce the risk of calamitous events occurring. Also, how books, and creativity more broadly, really can save lives. They saved mine.
Would you mind sharing how books have saved your life?
As a student at Bristol University, I struggled with depression. I ended up standing on Clifton Suspension with the darkest thoughts. Fortunately, I got to walk off the bridge and get on with building a life. I left university early, turned to books, to writing, to reading, and this helped my mental state. Eventually, my passion for books led me to complete a PhD on William Golding at The University of Birmingham, supporting the development of my academic work investigating the ways that the creative arts can promote mental wellbeing.
Have your own personal struggles with mental health come through in this novel?
There is no pure separation between the life of authors and the fiction they write. Writing draws on the author’s experiences, what they have seen, heard, felt, and then imagined. In a great deal of English literature, the personal struggles of the author are cloaked or disguised. In writing the novel, it helped enormously to have experienced depression and the pain of bereavement. But the novel is not a memoir.
Is there anyone you’d like to acknowledge - in your life and writing?
Yes, Heather Nelson, who worked as a counsellor at The University of Nottingham, and who put me together again like a piece of Kintsugi when I tragically lost most of my family. And my new, chosen family and friends.
The Wonders of Doctor Bent is available at Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith, Foyles, Cranthorpe Millner and all good bookshops.
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