April 23, 1931-February 11, 2010
Brian Burland was the first Bermudian to achieve success internationally as a novelist.
Gifted and prolific, he was the author of eight critically acclaimed novels and a children’s book. He also wrote poems, plays and was a painter.
While he lived overseas for most of his adult life—residing for many years in Essex, Connecticut—he had a deep but complicated love for Bermuda, which almost always figured in his novels.
Burland, who shared a birthday with William Shakespeare, was born on April 23, 1931. His parents were Gordon Burland, an engineer who founded the construction company now known as BCM McAlpine, and the former Honor Gosling. He was one of four children and grew up in Paget.
Burland’s early schooling was at Saltus Grammar School, but in January 1944, four months before his 13th birthday, he was shipped off to England to attend boarding school.
The Second World War was on, and the 19-day crossing was terrifying for Burland, who sailed in a convoy and witnessed ships in his convoy being sunk by German U-boats.
The freighter on which he sailed, however, made it safely to England. The experience left a lasting impression and would become fodder for two of his novels, A Fall from Aloft and Love is a Durable Fire.
Burland attended Aldenham School in Hertfordshire, and then the University of Western Ontario in Canada, but he eventually dropped out. It was while attending Western that he gave serious thought to becoming a writer. He credited a graduate English course taught by a “brilliant teacher” Dr. Ross Woodman. He received little encouragement for this pursuit from anyone in Bermuda, other than Ronnie Williams, the long-time editor of The Bermudian magazine.
Burland spent some time in Ireland living on abandoned minesweeper, after quitting university. But the death of his father in 1951 bought an end to his Irish sojourn. He returned home and ended up working at Burland’s for the next five years.
Burland was a progressive man whose acute awareness of Bermuda’s racial divisions had emerged during his formative years. One of his earliest memories was of his beloved nanny, Sarah Hinson, a black woman who lived in the household, and was nearly 100 years old when she died.
While working at Burland’s, he raised eyebrows when he joined a black cricket team, becoming its only white player. It gave him an entrée into black Bermudian culture, greater insight into Bermuda’s racial inequities and provided him with material for his novels. Sarah Hinson would become a character in his fiction as well.
In 1956, he sold his interest in Burland’s, more determined than ever to make it as a writer.
The following year, he went to Jamaica with a friend, where he was introduced to the writer Noel Coward. Coward’s favourable response to a short story he had written boosted his confidence, although it was not until 1964 that he was able to secure a publisher for a children’s book St. Nicholas and the Tub. The book, which was published in the U.S., was dedicated to “the children of Bermuda—black, brown and just plain suntanned.”
Burland by then was living in Essex, Connecticut with his second wife Edwina Trentham, whom he married in 1962 and with whom he had a son Benjamin. His first marriage to Gale Taylor, with whom he had three children, Susan, Anne and William, had ended in divorce.
Over the course of 13 years Burland—who wrote religiously for four hours a day— would send manuscripts to U.S. publishers as he completed them, but to no avail. Finally, in 1968, a British publisher accepted his coming-of-age novel A Fall From Aloft—and he was on his way.
It was followed by A Few Flowers for St. George, published in 1970, and Undertow, which published the following year. U.S. publishers, including Random House, took notice and produced editions for the American market.
In 1973, The Sailor and the Fox, his novel about a bout between an aging white boxer and a younger black man, hit bookstores. Set in Bermuda and inspired by the 1959 Theatre Boycott, it made such an impression that Hollywood producer Quinn Martin bought film rights. A script was written, and approaches were made to actors, but the movie was never made, which was a major disappointment for Burland.
But he never stopped writing. His other novels are 1975’s Surprise, the story of an “uppity” slave who leaves Bermuda to establish a free colony in the Caribbean, Stephen Decatur, the Devil and the Endymion, which was published the same year, Flight of the Cavalier, published in 1980 and finally, 1985’s Love is a Durable Fire. That book is based in part on the experiences of his close friend John Hartley Watlington, a pilot whose plane was shot down over France during the Second World War and was missing for nearly a year.
Burland’s novels were praised by reviewers writing for quality newspapers such as the Sunday Telegraph, the Sunday Times and the New Statesman and by writers such as Anthony Burgess and David Rabe. They also made their way onto university English literature curriculums. Recognition from the literary world came in 1979, when Burland was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Locally, he was praised for his honest depiction of race relations, for pinning down the Bermudian dialect with accuracy—he had a gift for regional accents—and for his spot-on portrayal of pre-war Bermuda. But there was discomfort in some quarters with his racy language and sexual content.
For many years, Burland lived off the income from his share of the family business. At various times, he taught creative writing at Yale University, where he was a guest fellow, and also at Connecticut College. At one point, he divided his time between the U.S. and England where he worked for a publishing house. But essentially, he devoted himself to writing full time.
His novels did not make him wealthy and after 1985’s Love is a Durable Fire, he had difficulty finding a publisher. His books eventually went out of print.
Like many creative people, Burland battled depression and alcoholism, both of which were eventually successfully treated. All three marriages—his third wife was Isabel Lee—ended in divorce. In the late 1990s, he returned to Bermuda, where he would spend his last years.
Despite the literary laurels he had received overseas, he remained largely unrecognised in Bermuda, although that had begun to change.
In 1994—while still living overseas—Burland was a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bermuda Arts Council. In 2001, Government’s Department of Community and Cultural Affairs established the Bermuda Literary Awards. Burland won the Founder’s Award and the prize for Children’s and Young Adult Fiction. In 2008, the fiction award was renamed the Brian Burland Prize for Fiction.
Burland became afflicted with Huntington’s Disease and spent his final years first at Westmeath Home and then at Sylvia Richardson Care Facility in St. George’s, where he died on February 11, 2010.
He was buried at St. Paul’s Church in Paget following a Baha’i service at the church hall. Burland was the first Bermudian to become Baha’i—its principles of racial equality and the oneness of mankind had long resonated with him.
Burland once expressed regret that few Bermudians had read his novels. Getting greater recognition for this hugely talented son of the soil has long been a goal of his admirers.
Canadian literature professor and frequent Bermuda visitor Sandra Campbell, writing in the Winter 2008 edition of The Bermudian, said that it was time for Bermuda “to take fuller and prouder measure of one of her greatest writers, whose literary genius had thrown light on Bermuda in ways that Shakespeare never dreamed of.”
The Bermuda College took a major step towards that goal on May 8, 2013, with the creation of the Brian Burland Centre for Research at the library.
The Centre is the repository for Burland’s novels and literary papers, which were donated to the College by his daughter Dr. Susan Burland. It will be used to promote his works, for literary research by local and visiting scholars and to encourage aspiring writers.
