In deference to Malcolm Lowry's masterpiece, Under the Volcano, biographers and scholars often begin at the end, with his death. Lowry's end did not quite complete the circle of its beginning; equally, most of his projected work remained incomplete, a voyage that never ended. Lowry was born and raised in Cheshire, but most of his erratic schooling was in Cambridge, and after an acrimonious break with his family he did not return to the Liverpool area. Rather, he married an American woman, Jan Gabrial, in France; followed her to New York and Los Angeles; and took her to Mexico (1936–37), where the drinks were cheaper and his allowance went further. The marriage did not survive the Mexican inferno, but after escaping to Los Angeles Lowry met Margerie Bonner, his second wife, and settled in Vancouver for the happiest and most productive decade of his otherwise shambolic life.

The success of Under the Volcano (1947) relieved some of Lowry's financial and artistic worries, and after much travelling the Lowrys in 1956 settled in the small Sussex village of Ripe. Although Margerie made brief contact with the Lowry family, Malcolm did not, and when visiting the Lake Country, he avoided Liverpool and Cheshire. His death by misadventure on the night of 26 June 1957 (after swallowing a bottle of sodium amytal sleeping tablets) may or may not have been tacitly abetted by his wife, whose accounts were contradictory, but it generated a last jest that Lowry would have appreciated. Douglas Day, Lowry's early biographer, traces the events of that fraught evening: Margerie upset; a row ensuing; Lowry buying a bottle of gin; a botched last supper; a further row over the volume of a BBC Stravinsky concert; Margerie trying to take away the gin; Malcolm attacking her; Margerie taking refuge with Mrs Mason next door; and her resolution when she woke up the next morning to get ‘poor Malcolm’ a cup of tea, then go up to Liverpool to see if she could get control of part of the estate to hold over him when he had such attacks. Day's first chapter concludes by telling how Margerie climbed up to the bedroom and found Malcolm on the floor beside the smashed gin bottle: ‘Without hesitating, Margerie ran back to Mrs. Mason's. “Oh, Winnie,” she cried, “he's gone!” “Where, Liverpool?” asked Mrs. Mason. “No, he's dead.” And so he was.’