A 1965 interview with Robert Shaw by ‌Norman Shrapenel ends with a quote by Shaw. “I like acting, but I act to make money. I don’t write to make money. But I want people to read me, so I hope my books sell.” 

Shaw, as a novelist in conversation, be that in print or in, as it has yet to be seen in entirety, the 1960 Omnibus television conversation with Robert at his then home in Buckinghamshire, we see a frustration and honesty present. He is confessional, even. As a writer, this side of his self-expression, as the storyteller, is of great importance to him. Why? 

Writing as an outlet, the need to place one's ideas and thoughts on a page, be that in any form, has an element of self-reflection at its core. Be it a journal, factual, through fiction or just in the simplicity of scribbling on odd bits of paper that come to hand. Writing, as Shaw states, has to be honest. 

To be confessional about myself for a spell, writing is how I deal with a bombardment of loose threads that hover over other undetached threads in my thinking. Events, things read, my own experiences, be that a loss, relationships or societal, all create something tangible. Only by being truthful, as Shaw suggests, can you genuinely convey how it affects you, from your individual perspective. Past and present experiences merge when putting pen to paper. Both the characters and the setting create the context where the story unfolds. 

While reading Robert's books, it's impossible not to wonder about Robert's identity in the narrative. This is something that is for the reader to interpret. 

The articles he penned for 'Queen Magazine,' a British society publication, reveal Shaw's unreserved self, offering a glimpse into his true personality as Robert, which is also conveyed in his novels.  

These passages he wrote for the magazine are whimsical in part, melancholy, journalistic and, curiously, we read Shaw as the poet. Robert, at the time of writing for ‘Queen’, had seen his first novel ‘The Hiding Place’ published in 1959 and with his last piece for Queen in 1962, his Hawthorn Prize-winning novel ‘The Sun Doctor.’ 

‘Sweet Thames, Run Softly’, an ode to the ‘Thames’, he wrote for the November 9th 1960 edition of ‘Queen.’ Robert writes of the river, its history and its place within Londoners' lives and outside. Photographs accompanied his work by John Hedgecoe, with characters associated with the river. Shaw writes from a place of nostalgia, where he and his sister once visited the river as children and where he would later visit as a student.  

It’s quite lengthy, so for simplicity, I will use for examples Shaws, passages that are more directly associated with him. 

“When I was a boy and came to London I could stand for hours by the Thames.

Everyone was going somewhere,

Mind you, I was an obsessional child about water.

My sister Elizabeth and I used to have spitting

Races down the runnels of galvanised iron roofs.

You know…. You start spitting at the top on the inclination

And the winner is the one whose stream first…

I grow old…I grow old

When I was eighteen, I always used to go sadly home from the Thames because I always came to regret I was watching it alone

When I was a student and succeeded in going out with girls who used to paint there was a place by Chelsea Bridge that very few people knew.

The police didn’t seem to know

You had to climb over the embankment wall when no one was looking and down by the side and almost underneath the bridge you were safe from all watchers but those on the water

It was a very romantic place at night with the lights on the water and the noise of the traffic above and later the echoing footsteps on the bridge

“Elizabeth and Leicester

Beating oars.”

I’m afraid they’ve cut down those protecting trees now and the iron rails stand bare and unhelpful. And I once took a famous actress there to lunch.

“We grow old…we grow old…

We shall wear the bottoms of our knickers rolled.”

Robert continues in this manner of reflection and adds his own personal memories of the river, alone and shared. He talks about his sitting outside St Thomas' Hospital on a bench and it smelling of potato soup. 

The delightful aspect of this ode is the way Robert's mentions of Thames locations provide a window into Shaw's life and the period he lived in London. Whether during his time at RADA or as a young man.

In the November 1962 issue of Queen, Shaw writes about Christmas. Titled ‘The Dream of Christmas’, we are told the story of a father who sits on the bed next to his son. The story sets the scene around a cedar tree outside the house at the beginning of December. When viewed from the child's window, they talk of what they would place on the tree and its branches. The son comforts his father, who is repeatedly asked throughout the story why he is sad.  

“What would you put on the top?”

“I suppose I’d have to put an angel.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Would you put an angel father.”

“Not now.”

“Would you if you were me?”

“Oh yes, I’d put an angel then.”

“But what would you put know.”

“I don’t know what I’d put now.”

“I think it must be sad for you, father.”

“Since this is said without condescension, seeking to reassure, our normal roles are turned about. This does happen with my children….”

The conversation between son and father continues in this vein, with the son reassuring father. The father speaks of what he knows when he thinks about what to put on the cedar branches.

“I can think of a branch for all the years I’ve lived,” I say.

“Your old father.”

“I can think of a branch for all the years I’ve lived and what was on it….and all the years to come, and what’s going to be on them.”

The child's role as comforter of the father could relate back to Shaw’s childhood. For we know, his father’s suicide affected him throughout his life. Reassurance is prevalent throughout Robert’s piece. 

 One line on the tree is partially dark. Described in a manner where the ending of one's life could be associated with. “The cedar I called sovereign looks strong enough to hang me on.” 

With Christmas as the theme here, and what it means between a child and father where a cedar tree seen as sovereign depicts Shaw using lore. The father and a child swap roles. Here, the child is the strength. A cedar tree outside the child's bedroom window provides a symbol of strength and protection. Shaw’s use of symbolism is at play throughout his piece. Again, it is worth reading Robert’s ‘Queen’ writings. In his second novel, ‘The Sun Doctor,’ we can see echoes of the passages about the father figure and child that he applied to his piece on Christmas.

We also see a different side of Robert's competitiveness, as shown in an article he wrote for Queen magazine in March 1961. We see a competitive spirit reminiscent of himself in the athlete Gordon Pirie. Shaw’s questioning as he watches Pirie falter in the 1960s Olympics, being held in Rome, is telling. 

Here we see an honest, unmasked Shaw showing empathy for the loser. Robert seems crushed seeing Pirie’s struggle. Watching the 5000 metres, Pirie is last.

“Later in the race when he was trailing, I wished he would stop, lie down, and rest. He looked so defeated.” Shaw then continues, “I don’t know him. I suspect three-quarters of what I read about him. I never felt so much sympathy for an athlete as I did for Pirie that evening. What must it have been like?” 

Shaw’s wanting ‌Pirie to stop and rest is telling. In summing the reason for Pirie’s poor performance, and seeing him as a dedicated man, he writes   

“There he was carrying his country’s hopes and his own. A dedicated man who, I suppose, drove him-self too far.” 

Robert’s own competitive nature and pace of work could so easily apply to what he wrote about the Olympian runner he admired when watching him from the stands in Rome.

Looking at an interview with Mary Ure in ‘Detroit Free Press’ of May 19th, 1965, speaking of her husband Robert, we get some idea of pace that at certain times he kept. 

 ‘The Luck of Ginger Coffery’ on its release in America had caused some excitement, and offers of work were coming Robert and Mary’s way. Robert at this time was on Broadway, in Friedrich Durrenmatt’s play ‘The Physicists.’ 

“We’re too busy to be excited about it. Bob is working every day making a television film for the United Nations-he plays a modern-day Scrooge, of all things, in a Twentieth-Century version of Dicken’s Christmas. He finishes at seven and is on stage in ‘The Physicists’ 90 minutes later.”   

Again, we return to the honesty being of importance mentioned in his ‘Omnibus’ interview on talent is failed by exhaustion. 

“No failure isn't going to knock me to the ground, until I’m too tired, that’s what I’m saying I’m going to fight against, exhaustion.”  

Robert the writer is competitive, but as with all writers, it is a competitiveness with oneself.  In reality though, how others see you, how you are remembered is by those that come after. Shaw’s drive to write one or two books that would not be as books left on a shelf is though something he achieved. Interest in Roberts’s novels has always been there, and there abouts. His film career and partially his role as the character Quint in Jaws has created, sustained an interest in his books and plays. The ‘Queen’ writings are well worth seeking out, if wanting to become more failure with his work. They are a wonderful example of Robert at work, on a theme and working within confines that are not applied to his novels.

The broadcast of ‘Talking Jaws’ on BBC Four on New Year’s Eve 2025 provided an insight into the BBC's Jaws archives. Seeing Jaws out in style on the last night of what had been the film's 50th Anniversary, we had some treasured nuggets from the never repeated 1970 Omnibus "Robert Shaw: The Actor as Novelist"‌ an edition of the programme first broadcast in November 1970. In the programme’s aims, this was to compare the characters Quint and Robert as alike. What is of note also, we get a real taste of Robert the writer. Despite the BBC's limited coverage of this edition, the interview snippets reveal Robert's zeal, disappointment, and rage regarding the perception of him as a talented actor by some and a less recognised novelist. 

The need to act to support his family, who at the time of this recording numbered eight children, is ever apparent in the interview. He expresses within the parameters of his own battle against exhaustion that his novels, which he estimates at nine, sit on a bookshelf and that nobody will read anymore after his death. This is where the battlefront sits. Writing something of note that would sustain, but eludes one. This is all wrapped up in a writer's limits, what comes to be necessary in achieving a book that crosses over eras and what undermines that goal. Shaw describes himself as lacking success in his own mind. To see this Omnibus programme in its entirety is, as ever with the BBC, a tall order. In the archives, under these Jaws-related content circumstances, we had a glimpse into. As a writer and as an actor, his honesty is apparent in his self-description.   

 “I would like to be appreciated by the intelligentsia, the fools, the comics, the alcoholics, everybody, of course I would like that. I wouldn't then have to guard against, which I do anyway, as an actor, too much adulation, too much sycophancy. I mean, I can work with a group of people who’ll be trying to convey to me everyday I'm the greatest actor on earth, well I’m not.” Talent is no guarantee of success.

“What is sad in life is the people who have got genuine talent, who failure beats, failure knocks into the ground. No, failure isn't going to knock me to the ground, until I’m too tired. That’s what I’m saying you have got to fight against, exhaustion.” 

The interview continues where Shaw delves into the judgement of him by those watching the television programme itself.

“I believe in the parable of the talents. I really do believe in that. I also believe in honesty. As much as it is possible. Even on this bloody television, I believe in it. I know perfectly well by the way, all the time I’m talking to you, that it’s always 50-50. Half the people who are listening to what I’m saying are going to think, what an egocentric, aggressive, loud-mouthed stupid, charmless man. And there are others who are going to think, oh god at least he’s refreshing, he’s got some energy, at least he’s trying. It’s always like that.”

 Highlighting the existence of turmoil that lives within the writer or as the actor, where a 50-50 split lives with those who judge his work, reflects a competitiveness within himself as well. It’s as if he is trying to beat the split, weight equation. Shifting the odds in his favour while being honest in what he conveys is of course a high-energy endeavour.    

In an early interview for The Saginaw News, November 24th, 1968, we see a more at-ease understanding of where his thoughts are, as the writer. Even a settlement far removed from where he would find himself before the 1970 Omnibus broadcast. Although being seen as a writer, and remembered as one, is again forefront in his mind.  

 “I often think I’m an encouragement to any poor struggling 36-year-old. It seems to me I’m just getting into my prime, and that can’t last forever.” The interview continues and is a precursor in sentiment but not in delivery in what he would later convey with honesty and some anger in the 1970 BBC broadcast.   

“I'd like to be remembered as a writer, inevitably. I would rather write one book, or God willing, two - well, I am superstitious. That would really last, that's what I'd like to do". 

His becoming a writer was on the advice of a friend, who suggested he write novels. In needing to find a change of pace from acting and venturing into another dramatic form, he speaks of himself as a late developer. Shaw’s reflection on his age from the 1968 interview, at this time he was 41, could be an inspiration to others. 

These two contrasting interviews are from different periods in his life but are consistent in highlighting Robert’s drive to be a novelist of note. The one or two books to be lasting in readership after his death is oddly at some level achieved in a combination of his abilities as an actor and as a writer in his most known role as Quint, in Steven Spielberg's directed film ‘Jaws’. Employing his writing skills and his acting talent in reworking the ‘Indianapolis’ monologue, he then delivered a chilling performance of that monologue. Shaw’s performance as Quint is riveting. Recounting the horrors witnessed by him as a crew member of the Indianapolis and what he and his crewmates endured after the initial sinking of the USS are of an intensity. Not unlike his forceful accounts of himself as an actor and writer. 

Robert Shaw and Yvonne Mitchell, an odd route to arrive at after watching ‘Talking Jaws’. Well, not really. In practicing ‌honesty, Robert prescribed too. In these gems of snippets, the last two years have been very much a work in progress regarding Robert and Yvonne. Hopefully, by 2026, I will understand why, what, and when, and I will also see why I have been on a specific path. Uncannily, these two companions  — for that on some level is a reality — cross over on many levels, be that as actors sharing the stage, themes conveyed through their novels or as playwrights. The Jaws 2025 50th anniversary continues to surprise me in where the film reaches. On the last evening of that 50th year, is no exception to this phenomenon where, as the author, Shaw is aside Mitchell in a period where they shared a commonality of stage, film, newspaper coverage and as novelists.

The cast of the 1953 season at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre had a talented troupe of actors and actresses, but ‌of this group, Yvonne Mitchell, Robert Shaw, and to some extent Michael Redgrave became authors.

 Yvonne and Robert, as accomplished writers, continued to be published up to the time of their deaths, although Shaw’s last work, ‘The Ice Flo’, goes unfinished. Yvonne Mitchell’s first novel, ‘The Bedsitter’, and Shaw’s ‘The Hiding Place’ were both released in 1959 and picked up by the press. The Daily News, London, on November 4, 1959, in a truly awful summing-up last sentence, states, “Miss Yvonne Mitchell joins the ever-growing band of actors who are writing novels. A few weeks ago, Mr Robert Shaw, and coming shortly, Sir Michael Redgrave. What will happen when the Society of Authors puts on Hamlet”.

Yvonne became a prolific writer, where not only would she write several adult novels but also a biography of ‘Colette’, the French author, a semi-autobiographical biography of herself, three children's books and a book of fables. 

An interesting comparison between Mitchell’s last novel, ‘But answers came there none’ and Robert Shaw’s unfinished and unpublished novel ‘The Ice Floe’. Both are heartfelt, although we only have Shaw’s premise for his novel and the odd sentence to come to this conclusion. Both novels focus on the experiences of people in old age who require care. 

Whether it's an elderly hospital ward or a retirement home. Shaw's story uses the Inuit legend where people set old people adrift on an ice floe when others judge their value based on their current contributions to the living. Once others believe you have no value, they set you adrift. 

In Yvonne's novel, an old lady who is bedbound, inconsiderately cared for and is near death. Either through her imagination or in a subconscious form of reality, she experiences the different levels of heaven and hell. 

The Button Moulder from ‌Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt accompanies her. We, the readers, in wondering what she sees and her questioning of the Button Moulder, are between a place of hope and despair. Our beliefs about the form and even the existence of the afterlife become uncertain. The book in its title is the ultimate conclusion. Shaw and Yvonne both explore morality. Uncaring of the physical, and a belief of what awaits us are at play. Judgement, whether by our peers, societal, by an authority or one’s god,‌ defines the source of any verdict. The wisdom of that verdict in coming to its reasoning is to be questioned.

The care of us in our old age is a judgement of our own humanity. Where this matters in one's last judgement, if by a higher force, is not necessarily what defines one's destination. Shaw’s book, ‘The Man in the Glass Booth’, would also throw a believed certainty with the prosecution of a war criminal into a questioning of those passing judgement. A link between Quint and the Goldman character in the book, relating to survivor's guilt, is also of interest. 

 As writers, Shaw and Yvonne differ in the way they describe the writing process. Shaw expresses a need to isolate, but this is a lonely exercise, as he expresses in the Saginaw News, “But I couldn’t be just a writer, because it’s too lonely.” 

In his writing, ‌he has to push aside his family. Again, from the 1970 Omnibus broadcast. “I have eight children, therefore I have a lot to deal with them, a lot of responsibilities, and at the same time, some days I have to just shut them out, I can’t cope with them anymore, if I’m going to do all this work, it’s a ghastly thing.”

Yvonne’s approach, though, comes from a much less pressurised space. Derek Monsey, her husband, a writer himself and a critic, both wrote at the same time and location at their family home in France. They would even occasionally share characters from their different novels. Although this is never an on-purpose exercise, as a collaboration, the results are worth exploring if ever the chance to read these four books arises . Yvonne’s two Cathy children's books share not only characters from her own adult novels but an unsettling character called ‘Voldi’ from Derek’s ‘The Adulterer’ and ‘The Big Picture.’ As a reader, I’ve not come across this before with two different writers who approach a character from two different perspectives.

In an interview with Yvonne in The Guardian in 1974, we get an insight into the openness and honesty that Yvonne shared with Shaw when approaching their writing. 

“I have no wish to know what the effect of my work is. The totally selfish thing is that I’m not really offering it to anyone. The absorption of doing it is why one does it. Anything we write is ourselves, isn’t it? The total self is the only thing which will reach people. I suppose, but how do we ever find it? We go towards it.”

A personal crossover between these two writers is the loss of a parent at a young age. Shaw's father committed suicide when Robert was 12. Yvonne, aged 8, lost her mother. These traumatic events had a profound effect on them both. Shaw’s book ‘Sun Doctor’ and Yvonne’s ‘The Family’ both tackle the emotion of grief and searching for one's path after the death of a parent. 

‘Talking Jaws’, on another note when watching, also brought to mind Spielberg, Quint, blackboards, and Jack Clayton’s film, the 1961 masterpiece ‘The Innocents’. Think eyes first, travelling with the character as in Brody and fingernails. Oddly, Quint is a ghostly character in Clayton’s film. The latter, just a coincidence?