J. G. Ballard

James Graham Ballard was born on 15 November, 1930 in Shanghai, China. The son of a managing director for a subsidiary of a Manchester textile firm, Ballard grew up in an expatriate suburban idyll, a comfortable enclave of large houses, swimming pools, servants and chauffer-driven Packards. At that time, Shanghai was an American zone of influence, and the young Ballard's cultural diet was a peculiar mix of classic children's literature (Alice in Wonderland, Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels), American comics and magazines (Collier's, Life), and American cinema. Ballard was educated at the Cathedral school in Shanghai, but his comfortable colonial life-style came to an abrupt end in 1942 when, in th