FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM SIX OF ONE CO-FOUNDER DAVE BARRIE

Many years ago, a publisher approached me, and asked me if I would write a book about The Prisoner. At the time, I was still working, frequently away from home on business. I explained that I wasn’t in a position to even think about it. They were gracious enough to say they would grant me time.

Some years later, now retired, in the spring of 2020, sitting in the garden recovering from Covid, I was enjoying the sun, the feel of grass beneath my feet, eyes closed, listening to birdsong. Then it happened. A muse alighted on my shoulder, whispered into my ear, and this was the sign to begin.

Where to start? What to write? What content? I was facing both a blank canvas in my mind, and a blank sheet of paper before me. I reflected, mulled it over for a while, as gradually an idea formed, from wherever ideas come from, emerging into my consciousness.

Of course, I was steeped in The Prisoner, I had the entire Six of One output, books, videos, DVDs, interviewed guests at conventions, hosted the Brain Bashes, written articles, all over a forty-plus year period, and, seeing the series in 1967, it had been coursing around my mind since then.

I was aware that the production had been related a number of times, besides; I had always been fascinated by discussing the show, hearing different views, interpretations, meanings. I was aware that, in the grand scheme, there was comparatively little analysis, not a great deal of, ‘digging deep’. That was what excited me, exploring, ‘What’s it all about?’, and to do exactly what Patrick Joseph McGoohan hoped we would do: ‘Question Everything!’

The preface and Introduction should help you navigate this book. I attempt to make my explanations clear in those, but for one thing, so I should share this with you now. I did not write the seventeen episodes chapters sequentially. It was as much as voyage of exploration for me as it will be for you, though in a rather different way for me. I had no ‘grand plan’, I was driven by instinct. I decided to make a start with the chapters about which I had already written essays, or episodes where I had corresponded with the writer, or perhaps interviewed them. After all, these were the ideas men. ‘I had some encouraging insights from Terence Feely, (The Schizoid Man), and both interviewed and assisted Ian Rakoff when he was writing his book, (Living in Harmony). I had not only been the first interviewer to discuss, (A Change of Mind), with Roger Parkes, but both he and his wife Tessa, came to our wedding. Another out-of-sequence chapter was Dance of the Dead, which, over the decades, I returned to a number of times, even hosting a ‘day workshop’, devoted to Anthony Skene’s three episodes. I write this to explain that in a way, each of the sequential episode screened chapters can be read as a stand-alone chapter.

Since that day in 2020, I don’t think a day has passed when I have not been working on the book in some way, whether a day typing urged on by an insight, reflecting and wrestling with composition, staring at a blank piece of paper, casting for a beginning. Before tackling a new chapter, I usually spend anything up to a month assembling material, reading, allowing a natural pattern as befits that particular chapter to inspire and develop. Then it begins! A chapter may linger, going through anything up to a dozen or so drafts. I owe it to the reader to say I failed dismally at school, leaving with no qualifications whatsoever. I am self-educated. As I write I would say the book should be finished by 2025. Then it’s to the publisher. I estimate the word count at around a quarter-of-a-million words when complete.

A peer reviewer said to me, ‘Do you want the reader to agree with you?’ Without missing a beat, I shot back, ‘No, I wish to replicate exactly what The Prisoner set out to do. Each of us will arrive at our own interpretation, our own understanding, our own route through the maze of life.’ Continue watching this page for further updates from time to time.

Dave Barrie. Malvern. May 2024.