It was not altogether a frictionless association. He left the school without passing any exams or gaining a leaving certificate. Next came a Scottish public school, Loretto, where he failed to benefit from the education on offer. Like his near contemporaries CS Lewis and Louis MacNeice, the young Gilbert was sent away to prep school in England, spending the years between 10 and 13 at The Leas, Hoylake, Cheshire (he quite enjoyed his time there). Stephen Gilbert was born in Newcastle, Co Down, in 1912, into a prosperous Northern Irish mercantile family, and grew up mainly in an affluent district of East Belfast. Gilbert's other claim to fame is as the protege of Forrest Reid – not the only protégé, indeed, but the predominant one. EM Forster called him "a writer of distinction", and reviews of his first novel, The Landslide, referred to "a little classic" and "an original and graceful work", yet Stephen Gilbert is chiefly remembered as the author of the more lurid Ratman's Notebooks (1968) – Willard in the American version, after it was made into a horror film by Daniel Mann (1971).
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