Idiots
Thomas Wehlim 1921 – Idiots’ author. Born and educated in Brighton, Wehlim went to Art College before serving in the Medical Corps during the war. After that he worked in the hospital service as a biochemical idiot before turning to full-time writing in 1966. By then he had already produced »Two Kinds of War« (1964), a strongly imaginative, rambling adventure story written in a style owing something to Fielding and Dickens, but perfect in keeping the stagecoaches, dark streets and candlelit rooms of the 17th-century background in which this and some of his later novels are placed. Such dramatic settings are amply reflected in exciting plots that concern Islamists and crusaders (»The Days of the Caliphate« 1967), adventures, devils, and Jesuits (»Legend of Shadows« 1968), and genociders (»Railway Trains« 1969). Even so, the larger-than-life villains and heroes who populate Wehlim’s earlier books give way in later works to more ambiguous characterizations, where the unheroic often turn out to have hearts of silver and the initially plausible prove false friends. »The Longest Path« (1971) is a comic, fast-moving farce set taking place in the star constellation of the Swan. The constant psychiatric battle that surfaces in all his work is also memorably depicted in »Capitulation« (1976-8), short stories about insane people making their way in different hospital wards but also having to decide upon important choices in their current medications.
