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Book Title: When Blackbirds Sing
The author of the book: Martin Boyd
Edition: Penguin Books Ltd
Date of issue: 1993
ISBN: 0140187634
ISBN 13: 9780140187632
Language: English
Format files: PDF
The size of the: 39.89 MB
City - Country: No data
Loaded: 1633 times
Reader ratings: 6.2

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Martin Boyd is one of my all-time favourite writers: an Anglo-Australian born in Switzerland, he is one of only a few writers to capture the ambivalence of belonging in neither homeland yet intensely fond of both. His novels all feature the upper-class world of British privilege and its Australian offshoots, yet Boyd has a strong empathy for those of a different class. And in this novel When Blackbirds Sing there is yet another contradiction: he is anti-war yet not a pacifist.

When Blackbirds Sing (1962) is the fourth in The Langton Quartet, preceded by The Cardboard Crown (1952); A Difficult Young Man (1955); and Outbreak of Love (1957). The novels, which can be read independently of each other, explore the lives of the Langton family, loosely based on Boyd’s own remarkable family, described as a cultural dynasty in the Text Classics introduction by Chris Wallace-Crabbe. (See Brenda Niall’s splendid biography, The Boyds: A Family Biography). The dynasty included the great painter Arthur Boyd (1920-1999), and the influential architect Robin Boyd (1919-1971), as well as other noted painters, potters, and architects. But it was Martin Boyd who was the writer.

The title When Blackbirds Sing derives from these lines by Julian Grenfell, one of many WW1 war poets who linked youth and imminent death

The blackbird sings to him, Sing, brother, sing,
If this shall be the last song you sing…
Who doth fighting hath increase

Dominic Langton enlists in the belief that it is necessary to protect his wife and son on their farm in Australia, and to prevent Australia from becoming a German colony. It is a matter of honour:

He had very simple ideas of honour, as had Helena. If he had not gone to the war, they might not have continued to be happy, knowing that their honour stood rooted in their dishonour. Also Dominic had been intended for the army, but he had failed in his examinations, and he thought that now he had the opportunity to remedy this disgrace, which had overwhelmed him at the time. (p. 6)

But rather than join the Light Horse as so many Australians enthusiastically did, he sails to England to enlist where he has family connections: his father had advised him to apply to the colonel of grandfather Byngham’s regiment, so that he would not be quite unknown. But in the event, Dominic’s application is so diffident and self-effacing that the colonel doesn’t recognise the family name and barely acknowledges the letter. Dominic ends up settling for the Territorials, a volunteer force lacking the regimental traditions and cachet of the British army altogether and administered by the County Lord Lieutenant who is not even a soldier. In this case the Lord Lieutenant is Lord Dilton, near neighbour to the Langton ancestral home, and the father of a girl that Dominic had provoked into breaking their engagement…

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Read information about the author

Martin à Beckett Boyd (10 June 1893 - 3 June 1972) was an Australian writer born Lucerne, Switzerland, into the à Beckett-Boyd family—a family synonymous with the establishment, the judiciary, publishing and literature, and the visual arts since the early 19th century in Australia.
Boyd was an expatriate novelist, memoirist, and poet who spent most of his life after World War One in Europe, primarily Britain. His work drew heavily on his own life and family, with his novels frequently exploring the experiences of the Anglo-Australian upper and middle classes. His writing was also deeply influenced by his experience of serving in World War One.
His siblings included the potter William Merric Boyd (1888–1959), painters Theodore Penleigh Boyd (1890–1923) and Helen à Beckett Read, née Boyd (1903–1999). He was intensely involved in family life and took a keen interest in the development of his nephews and nieces, and their families, including potter Lucy Beck (b. 1916), painter Arthur Boyd (1920 - 1999), sculptor Guy Boyd (1923 - 1988), painter David Boyd (1924 - 2011), painter Mary Nolan (b.1926) - who was married to painters John Perceval and Sidney Nolan, and architect Robin Boyd (1919 - 1971). His nephew Guy Boyd was his literary executor.