Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry

4/5/2026

Richard Burton could have made reading the phone book sound interesting, but when you gave him Dylan Thomas or, in this case, Malcolm Lowry to quote it proves exceptional. That's as well, really, because otherwise this is a singularly sad story about the author of ''Under the Volcano''. Born of reasonably wealthy Liverpudlian stock, Lowry wanted for nothing but like so many in that situation - he was bored. At a young age he signed on to work as a cabin boy on a freighter and that's when he started to hone his skills with the bottle. Returning and heading to Cambridge he also had to face his own questions about his sexuality and his own potential, and those questions saw in him a restlessness that forced a move across the Atlantic, to marry, head to Mexico and then finally realise that if