 Maddox had become a convert to surrealism after discovering one of Wilenski's books in Birmingham Central Library in 1935.Maddox and John Melville had an obvious link as artists practicing in the surrealist genre, but Melville was eclectic in his tastes and lacked Maddox's unwavering commitment to the surrealist cause.As a result Maddox also formed a strong attachment to John's brother Robert Melville, who was later to become a widely published critic and whose understanding of surrealism's theoretical basis was to provide much of the group's intellectual underpinning.