Biography

Robert was born on 18th August 1947 at Cedar Court nursing home in Sutton, Surrey and grew up in a semi-detached house in Cheam, opposite Nonsuch Park. At the age of seven he had a vision in which only he could see above the 'smog' in which the whole city of London was enveloped. He understood from this that it was his task in life to lift all humanity from the smog in which it presently existed into a higher level of understanding. At that age such understanding seemed no problem as he regularly stepped out on the threshold of sleep to explore the Milky Way, compose complex contrapuntal music in his mind, experience the weightlessness of perfect gyroscopic balances and visit many places he has yet to discover in reality.

Sadly, his environment in Cheam in the 1950s was entirely devoid of any sense of spirituality, which was regarded mostly with suspicion, and visions were a cause for alarm and medical diagnosis.  Out of self-preservation Robert soon learnt to keep his innermost thoughts a secret, and the shadow of the madhouse as his likely destination loomed large throughout his childhood.

Having received his mission at the age of seven, by the age of eight it was becoming apparent that the means to achieve it was through art.  He naturally imitated that which affected him most deeply, and music, architecture, radio drama, and later cinema, spoke a language he could understand.  Artistic work did not impose on people.  It inspired them.  On one level it could be seen as mere entertainment, but it could also provide a door through which those that chose might pass into another dimension of the mind.

His artistic path which began with an opera about the Mafia written at the age of eight, has been so devious that sometimes it seems not like a path at all. At the age of nine his mother took her somewhat peculiar child to see a neurologist in Harley Street, who gave a name to his illness by pronouncing him a 'genius'. Although this positive diagnosis postponed the madhouse for a few more months, his mother remained gloomy, as there was no known cure.

His schoolmates soon spotted the oddity in his character, and teased him so viciously both mentally and physically, that by the age of twelve he suffered a nervous breakdown. He felt cut off from every living thing, and dreamt that God was speaking to him in a voice too loud to hear. However, later that same year, his father bought him a cine-camera, and this changed his life, bringing to light his innate ability as a film director. He moved to a new school and with friends there made more than fifteen films.

When he reached University, Death took over from Madness in the role of chief enemy. He was ill for over six months and would undoubtedly have died, had it not been for the intervention of Gustav Mahler and Friedrich Ruckert who crackled to him through the hospital radio's tubular headphones. "Um Mitternacht" reminded him that only a small effort was required to find an answer from the universe, and he regained the will to live. Although still in considerable pain, he asked to be propped up and for a drawing board to be brought on which he wrote for as long as he could hold the pen. He then began to recover.

His professional career began in 1970, when "Blood on Satan's Claw", a horror film which he had scripted in three weeks, reached the top twenty in the USA his troubles were not then over. His chosen path has meant that he has received no consistent support from any quarter, and each work had to be set up from scratch, sometimes taking many years.  Also, although his main work was in films, it was music that had saved his life, and it was not forever content to remain a poor cousin to the silver screen.  A life-changing dream, in which irridescent butterflies descended from the blue sky, but proved themselves to be grand pianos as they neared the ground, landing all around him with the force of thunder, made this quite clear.  Latterly music has become more predominant than film, as melodies, structures, even whole symphonic movements, which were conceived in his teens, committed to memory, but never written down, are now resurfacing and demanding expression.

Some works which he considers worth remembering are listed below:-

• 1964 "Confessions of an Introspective Computer" - prose work which captures the anxiety of its time, and faces head-on some painful problems of existence.
  
  
• 1965 "Six Watches of the Night" - a cycle of poems, a profound evocation of the spirit of the night.
  
  
• 1968 "A Winter Emerald" - novel, an atmospheric evocation of teenage love.
  
  
• 1970-1978 "The Vagrant Muse" - orchestral song-cycle to poems by John Clare, completed in 1997, when the ghost of Clare, a man whokept remarkably sane through long years of madhouse life, came to the composer's aid in a time of destitution, by reminding him the work was incomplete.
  
  
• 1979 "Double Piquet", short film, leading the way for independent production in Ireland.
  
  
• 1982 "The Outcasts", feature film.
  
  
• 1986 "A Summer Ghost" & "Out of Time", TV films.
  
  
• 1992 "Scherzo", short film.
  
  

As with a volcano slumbering beneath the ice, his life’s mission has emerged fitfully, through cracks and fissures, to produce works which give only some idea of the energy at the core.

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