Tony Bradman is a children's author who has written poetry, picture book texts and fiction. In recent years he has co-authored a number of titles with his son Tom Bradman – the Space School series, Spartacus, a dramatised biography for kids, and Already Dead, a zombie apocalypse play for secondary schools. Their latest co-production is Titanic: Death on the Water, a short novel for children about one boy's experience on the most famous ship in history.
"I will confess to having something of an interest in stories about fathers and sons, perhaps even an obsession. How could it be otherwise when I was lucky enough to be given by my parents that essential qualification for becoming a writer, a dysfunctional family background? I won't bore you with all the details – all you need to know is that my parents divorced in the early 1960s, long before it became a commonplace, and I didn't see my father for several years. Looking back I now realise this primed me to seek out stories about fathers and sons, masculinity, men, what it meant to be male and so on.
Anyway, I'm pleased to report that I've 'worked through' the 'issues around' my childhood and am now a fully functioning member of society, although being a writer does mean I'm probably still a little weird. I am a paterfamilias myself these days, with a lovely, long-suffering wife, two grown-up daughters with children of their own, and a son who announced a while back that he wanted to be... a writer. Once I'd got over the shock and disappointment (I'd been hoping for 'my son the barrister', or even 'my son the accountant' – and I don't remember his childhood being that dysfunctional), I began to see this might be a way for me to get a bit more time off. So now my son and I write together, and I like to think it's been a great experience for both of us.
So here is my top 10 list of father and son stories. They're all my favourites, by the way, not Tom's* – although I do know he's enjoyed several of these too. I discovered while I was putting this list together that dads often don't get a good press in stories – they tend to be mad or bad or missing, presumed dodgy/or misbehaving. But over the years I've managed to find a few fathers who might make good role models, the kind of men I want to be like when I grow up.
*I've talked to Tom, and he came up with Dune, with Duke Atreides and his son Paul; Game of Thrones with any number of fathers and sons; and Terry Pratchett's Mord, in which Death becomes a 'father figure' to the story's hero. But as senior partner here I'm going to ignore all of those in favour of my own selection."
1. Odysseus and Telemachus in The Odyssey
Where else to start but with the Daddy of all missing father stories? Homer's Iliad is full of manly stuff, but as a boy I was drawn to The Odyssey and its tale of a son waiting for a father who went out one day with his mates and didn't come back for 20 years. Most people focus on the romantic idea of faithful Penelope waiting for Odysseus to return. Telemachus is far more interesting, though. He's the one who holds it together at home for his mum, seeks out his father, then bonds with dad by helping him to slaughter the suitors. If I were Telemachus I'd be asking why mum hadn't seen them off in the first place, and how come dad had dallied so long with all those comely, bewitching girls on the way home? Telemachus, of course, is far too well-behaved to do any such thing.
2. The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Eagle of the Ninth was published in 1954, the year I was born, but I must have read it for the first time when I was 12 or 13, just after my Tolkien phase. Like many other Sutcliff fans, I was gripped by this story of a young man travelling from the soft south of Roman Britain to the wilds beyond Hadrian's Wall where the Scots were still very independent indeed. Marcus Flavius Aquila is on a mission to find out what happened to his father's legion, the 9th Hispana, which marched north into the Caledonian mists and was never seen again. Of course Marcus is really trying to find out what happened to his father, and whether his dad died nobly or not. Essential reading for all boys worried that their absent dad might not always have been a paragon of virtue.
3. The Mouse and his Child by Russell Hoban
A strange one this, but then strangeness is a defining quality of all Hoban's work. The Mouse and his Child is probably his second best-known book after Riddley Walker (which also features a boy and his dad, albeit a dead one). The eponymous heroes make up a single clockwork toy, a father mouse and his son, who are exiled from the safety of the toy shop when they are bought, and find themselves on a quest for the beautiful doll's house they once knew. It's a magical-realist tale, full of memorable characters and philosophy, but what stayed with me after I'd read it was the tender love of a father for his son.
4. The William Stories by Richmal Crompton
Naturally as a young reader I always identified with Richmal Crompton's William, John Lennon's favourite fictional character. Who wouldn't? William has no equal for unbridled anarchy, and the way in which he blasts through the adult world's attempts to control him is a joy. Unless you happen to be an adult, of course. It was disconcerting (to say the least) to re-read William's adventures when I had become a parent and to find myself in deepest empathy with Brown père. I too had given lectures about behaviour, rolled my eyes and sought for strength in the face of childish mayhem. But what is most appealing about Brown senior is his tacit admission that he was once like William too.
5. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Scrooge is the headline act in our most famous Christmas story, and quite rightly so. Those of us interested in father-son relationships will however linger over the scenes featuring Scrooge's oppressed office slave Bob Cratchit, and Bob's son, Tiny Tim. Yes, Tiny Tim is deeply irritating, and I'm surprised there hasn't been a Hollywood remake in which Bob goes postal and takes Scrooge out with a few well-placed rounds before the ghosts can do their work. But as Pink Floyd once said, "hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" and, in my view, Bob's willingness to put up with almost anything in his working life to ensure he can take care of his family makes him a real hero. Probably in his creator's too, as the young Charles ended up a slave in a blacking factory because he was unlucky enough to be the son of a dodgy, deadbeat dad.
6. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
My son thinks I'm a total wimp as I can only watch things like The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later from between my fingers, especially if any children are in danger. So you can imagine just how difficult I found The Road, Cormac McCarthy's vision of a devastated, post-apocalyptic future in which a father is utterly determined to save his nine-year-old son from a fate much worse than anything Tiny Tim might encounter, the options being starvation or ending up as kebabs for some particularly nasty cannibals. The writing is extraordinary, and although it's clearly a fable, the characters are so clearly drawn they stay with you long after you finish the book. I've got the DVD of the film version, and one of these days I'll get around to watching it. But not just yet.
7. Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian
This could be construed as cheating, I suppose – the two main characters have no blood relationship. But I've decided to accord Tom Oakley honorary status as an adoptive dad, and like many men in that position he performs much better than some who are genetically linked to their offspring. Tom has an evacuee foisted on him in September 1939, young Willie, a boy who comes from the kind of poor London background in which plain old-fashioned neglect on its own would have been better than the treatment he actually received. Tom's heart was broken by the death of his wife, but gradually he and the boy draw each other out. Add a great plot and you have a guaranteed tear-jerking classic.
8. And When Did You Last See Your Father? by Blake Morrison
Cheating again, I suppose, as this is not fiction but a classic memoir, an examination of a father by his son. However, I read it practically in one sitting, gripped by the unfolding of an account that uses all the arts of storytelling to keep you turning those pages. Blake Morrison re-creates his difficult, fascinating father Arthur and explores their relationship, and few men could read it without recognising themselves or their own dads. It's particularly fine on the embarrassment engendered by dads, an emotion that morphs into hostility and eventually some kind of understanding. That's what I'm hoping for, anyway.
9. Henry IV Parts I and II
Fathers and sons is not a theme which immediately leaps to mind when thinking about Shakespeare, which is slightly odd as like Dickens, Will was also the son of a dodgy, bankrupt dad. Hamlet's story is really all about the boy, and King Lear is about fathers and daughters, another theme entirely. It's definitely there in the two parts of Henry IV, though. Prince Hal is William Brown writ large, and his father's disapproval of Hal's dedication to sowing his wild oats casts a long shadow over both plays. Falstaff of course is a substitute father and Hal's rejection of him comes in time for a death-bed reconciliation with his proper dad, which Hal almost spoils by pinching the crown before dad is dead. But it works out OK, so Hal doesn't need any family therapy or counselling.
10. Homer and Bart Simpson
Last but not least, we return to Homer, but not the one who wrote The Odyssey. Generally Tom and I get on very well when we're working on a book, but there have been times when he's been grumpy after I've changed the plot we'd agreed on without consulting him. I don't see what the problem is, but our conversations tend to fall into a Simpsons-like pattern – "Eat my shorts, old man!" "Why, you little..." I haven't tried to strangle him for a while – the last time I did he pinned me painfully to the floor – but I think our relationship has parallels with that of Homer and Bart. Deep down, whatever happens, Homer and Bart are pretty close. Just so long as they don't start working together.
