After college, Bryans taught in Devon, before moving to London. He claimed to have spent time working on a farm in
Morvern in the Highlands of Scotland, and became a missionary in Canada before becoming involved in diamond prospecting, which he also pursued in South America. He later claimed to have lived as a trapper, although he worked for a time as a teacher at Shawnigan Lake School in British Columbia. He returned to London to London to work in the theatre, before living and working in Grenada, Europe and elsewhere. In Canada, he befriended the elderly Adeline, Countess de la Feld, who in her youth had been a translator of Chekhov. Later, he may have been received into the Russian Orthodox Church with her as his godmother. After falling out with publisher
Charles Montieth of
Faber & Faber, Bryans began a campaign of harassment, including denouncing Monteith as a homosexual in letters to judges, MPs, and other prominent figures. In 1977, Bryans was jailed after having embarked upon a bizarre campaign against community figures in the village of
Rottingdean in Sussex, again involving 'scurrilous letters.' According to a newspaper report, Bryans had shouted at local people and made 'slanderous remarks', he then broke a court order by attending a church service with his partner, George Balcombe. The service was conducted by Canon David Walters, who Bryans had previously been ordered to avoid. At the altar, Bryans shouted that he was being refused the sacrament, left the church and attempted suicide by overdose of tablets. When he recovered he was sent to prison by order of the High Court. In 1979 Faber and Faber were awarded damages, and after throwing a jug of water at a barrister, Bryans was imprisoned for three years for contempt of court. Another victim was former friend, Peter Montgomery, then president of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, whose social circle Bryans had entered in the early 1960s. In April 1990, Bryans publicly stated in the
Dublin-based magazine
Now that
Lord Mountbatten,
Anthony Blunt, and others were involved in an old-boy network which held gay orgies in country houses and castles on both sides of the Irish border, as well as at the
Kincora Boys' Home. Similar to the Faber case, Bryans sent letters and postcards to the rich and powerful in British establishment circles but once the postcards began to circulate there were complaints to the police and he was warned that he would be prosecuted for criminal libel. A not untypical example of Bryans' letter-writing style is copied here.
John Costello, the author of
Mask of Treachery, a study of the Soviet
Cambridge spy ring, wrote: "Bizarre though some of Harbinson's [Bryans] theories may be, those that could be checked mesh with an established record." In later life, he worked as a librettist and was also involved in a school of music. ==Travel writings, novel and poetry==