Between January 1, 1943, and September 15, 1945, we now know that Robert Marcar (“Marc”) Anthony developed — at his flat in Chelsea, London — a 118-page typescript of his autobiography that provides extensive details about his life in Penang, Scotland, Singapore, London, and other parts of Europe up until just after the end of the Second World War. He would have been 54 years of age in September 1945. This typescript was unknown to Colin Goddard when he wrote his own biography of Marc Anthony in 2015 (and which can be found elsewhere on this web site).

The title of the autobiography is clearly given as “INTERVAL, by Marc Anthony” on the first — otherwise blank — page of the typescript. However, on the very next, opening page of Chapter I, it was also initially given as “IT’S A QUEER WORLD, by Marc Anthony”. The words “IT’S A” were then crossed out by hand and replaced by “THIS”, i.e., “THIS QUEER WORLD”. And then this title was also crossed out and the cover page with the new title was added.

This original typescript was acquired by Colin L. Goddard in 2019 with the help of Andrew Shanahan of Matthew R. Lewis Portraits in London. Some time prior to or soon after Marc’s death in 1970, it appears to have been given to another (now deceased) friend of Marc Anthony’s and has passed through at least one other set of hands while being carefully looked after in the Chelsea and World’s End areas of London for most of the ensuing 49+ years.

The original typescript is partially damaged and repaired in places. It can therefore be a little difficult to read on some pages. Consequently, in addition to uploading the entire original typescript to this web site — with its original handwritten edits, we have also decided to re-type the content into this web site, with relevant editorial corrections and annotations as necessary.

It is possible that Marc Antony was, in fact, mildly dyslexic. His spellings of names of relatively well known people could be variable and “odd” at times, and even though he had clearly been through the original typescript at least once to make editorial corrections and adjustments, there are numerous errors in spelling and words that are simply “missing in action”.

The headings of the sections of the typescript include a series of brief numbered Chapters I through XIII followed by additional sections on specific areas of interest to Marc. Whether Marc had intended to revise this document into one time-contiguous autobiography or leave it in its current form is unclear.

In developing the retyped version of the original typescript, we have taken the liberty of doing five things:

• We have added links to information about people and places referred to in the text, and with which or whom the reader may be less familiar today.
• We have broken some of the text into manageable paragraphs (which Marc appears not to have worried about too much).
• We have added some other punctuation where we felt this to be of value (as would any good editor).
• Where a word appears to be missing or there is some other form of inaccuracy, we have added or modified the text and placed it in italic type and in square brackets to clearly show that it has been altered.
• We have carefully annotated the edited text to ensure that (a) significant modifications and corrections (for example, in the corrected spellings of people’s names) as compared to the original are called out and (b) to ensure that where we have been unable to identify people referred to in the text, this is made clear.