Haunted Libraries and Rocket Summers

If you grew up in the 1970s or thereabouts with an early interest in space exploration you would almost certainly have come across some of Ken’s books. The very same ones that are now on display in the BIS library. Often in the form of easily accessible pocket guides they were an ideal primer to the subject and I suspect remain on many a bookshelf to this day. Ken’s books were so popular they were often translated into other languages and sold abroad.

Ken worked in the aeronautical industry in the Surbiton and Kingston area and was a lifelong member of the BIS, serving as its President for three years (1973-76). Part of a true “Golden Generation” of BIS members that included contemporaries such as Val Cleaver, Arthur C. Clarke and Patrick Moore. In addition, Ken was editor of SpaceFlight magazine for twenty years.

As a boy growing up in New Malden I had no idea that Ken lived literally right around the corner in an adjacent street called Bramshaw Rise, not until many years later when I too was a member of the BIS. I never met Ken but you can still feel his presence at the BIS, as if he is standing in the library, which he must have visited, quietly studying the shelves for a tome that sparks his interest. Libraries are haunted terrain after all, with all those ghosts longing to escape the confines of the books that hold them fast, to tell the stories that run through their spectral veins.

Ray Bradbury wrote about “rocket summers” but so did Ken, about destinations you could reach in real-life “silver locusts.” I like to think that’s where he is now, at the end of an interplanetary excursion, stepping down onto the surface of a “fossil sea” to keep Ray company in a “house of crystal pillars” on the edge of Martian bone town. A long way from Bramshaw Rise but still within hailing distance of the British Interplanetary Society – the Society he did so much to support.

The image gallery includes a picture of Ken with cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.

For more on that picture see the May 2012 issue of Odyssey, the BIS arts and culture magazine, available by contacting the editor, Mark Stewart, here.

You can read more about Ken in the updated history of the BIS – “Interplanetary.” And the next time you are in London, come and see our Ken Gatland corner in the BIS Library, which also houses our Arthur C. Clarke Archives.

To learn more about the second edition of “Interplanetary”, just released, visit our website.

Members’ comments

“When I was a boy I used to walk around with my copy of “Manned Spacecraft” by Ken Gatland in a similar way to Michael Portillo clinging to his Bradshaw’s Continental Railway Guide!”

–  John Lewin, BIS Chief Financial Officer

I have the “Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Space Technology,” also translated into Italian. How beautiful! I can say that I grew up with those books from Ken, and I have often talked about them in my ramblings about the BIS. And consider I bought them first in Italian, because at the time these were books considered worth translating! (This is not so today). And then I re-bought them in English. These are the books where I read about this incredible Society in the UK to which my other hero belonged – Arthur C. Clarke. I think it is time for someone to consider re-publishing at least “Manned Spacecraft” as a special historical edition with annotations to align it better with history.

–  Fabrizio Bernardini, BIS Vice President

“I well remember “The Pocket Encyclopaedia of Spaceflight in Colour” from when I was a lad – a glossy series which really promoted how exciting it all was back then.”

–  Richard Hayes, FBIS and Assistant Editor of Odyssey

“I have sweet memories of these books: they were in our school library and many is the time I spent a free-time Saturday afternoon poring over these wonderful works, especially the beautiful illustrations by John W Wood, Tony Mitchell, and others. Admittedly, I has forgotten about these books for many years until I saw them again adorning Fabrizio’s bookshelves in Rome, and ‘it all came flooding back’! I immediately sought them out on eBay and, very thankfully, managed to buy good copies at very reasonable prices. Now they sit proudly in my own office – but I need to make more time to pore over them, again and again, and enjoy them as I once did in the last millennium.”

–  Steve Salmon, BIS Vice President

“Ken Gatland’s The Pocket Encyclopaedia of Spaceflight in Colour, published by Blandford Press, was a revelation at the time. For any space enthusiast, each of the four books in the series was a bible and for many it was their first introduction to the work of the British Interplanetary Society. The combination of accurate in-depth technical information with detailed colour illustrations was inspirational. The books are treasures and I still regularly refer to my copies today.”

–  Colin Philp, BIS President