Myself Through Others

Born in London, England, of Cornish stock, David Watmough arrived on Canada’s West Coast in 1961 and quickly became a fixture on the Canadian cultural scene. Now in his eighth decade, Watmough, often spoken of as this country’s senior gay male fiction writer, has decided to commit his memories to paper.

Given the autobiographical nature of his fiction, the prolific raconteur has opted for a novel approach to his own life by telling his story through his encounters with the numerous people he has met, befriended, loved, and jousted with over the years. And what a parade of personalities it is! Watmough serves up incisive, trenchant, often witty profiles of writers W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, Stephen Spender, Raymond Chandler, Tennessee Williams, Carol Shields, Margaret Laurence, Jane Rule, and Wallace Stegner; artists Bill Reid and Jack Shadbolt; politicians and celebrities Pierre Trudeau, Clement Atlee, and Eleanor Roosevelt; Hollywood actress Jean Arthur; and a host of others.