As the title of his 2018 memoir, Two Lives to Lead, hinted at, Martin Bax’s working life was split between two equally demanding duties – that of a consultant developmental paediatrician who published extensively on child disability, and founder of the long-running literary and arts magazine Ambit. Bax, who has died aged 90, also wrote fiction, while continuing his work within the NHS.
Those medical and literary interests fused with his 1976 novel The Hospital Ship, a dystopian vision showing the crew of the ironically named Hopeful tending to victims of a global mass psychosis. Text from the book was later developed, with the trumpeter Henry Lowther, into The Vietnam Symphony, performed at the ICA and on BBC Radio 3. He also published a short story collection, Memoirs of a Gone World (2010), and a children’s book, Edmond Went Far Away (1988), illustrated by the artist and Ambit contributor Michael Foreman.
