News & Chat

Number of posts: 891

Sohemian Event

03-Mar-2010 by Frank Marker

The Sohemian Society Presents A talk on Alexander Baron - novelist of London 's street life & politics. Speaker Ken Worple Tuesday, 16 March 2010, 7.30 The Wheatsheaf, Rathbone Place ..... Admission £2.50 The Guardian described Alexander Baron (1917 - 1999) as 'the greatest British novelist of the last war and among the finest of the postwar period.' Jewish-born in Hackney, Baron was amongst those idealists who tried to fight in Spain, who got caught up in political and literary life in London, fought in several major wartime battles, and who, after the war became the author of a series of gripping novels about war and London life in the East End, and in Soho. Three of the most famous are 'From the City, from the Plough' (1948), 'The Lowlife' (1963) and 'King Dido' (1969) Our speaker Ken Worple knew Baron and has written a biographical introduction to a new edition of 'King Dido' published by Five Leaves Press.

Terry Thomas

02-Mar-2010 by Lizst

I read one years ago. Strangely, I could never understand why he was so well regarded and never found him funny,

"Bounder" Terry Thomas Bio ?

02-Mar-2010 by KIng Crombie

Not my regular terrain and so I wondered if anyone who pokes about on London Books site had read this Terry Thomas biography ?

Much obliged Frank Marker

23-Feb-2010 by KIng Crombie

Kops on Lost Steps, I'm on the case (cue "Devil's Gallop").

Bernard Kops

23-Feb-2010 by Frank Marker

interesting interview with Bernard Kops on Resonance's Lost steps show. http://www.loststeps.org.uk/Broadcasts.php

King Dido: Thumbs Up!

20-Feb-2010 by Frank Marker

I thoroughly enjoyed it KC. Who can forget Dido's nemesis Inspector Merry and their final showdown at the end of the book. For anyone interested in Baron and other forgotten London writers from the 1930s there's an excellent study by Ken Worple, who wrote the intro to the reissued King Dido, in his book Dockers and Detectives.

King Dido (Alexander Baron) - done

19-Feb-2010 by KIng Crombie

It's been a while since I had a go at historical fiction, but I lapped up this pre First World War, East London novel up. As my previous will show, I consider Baron neither hard boiled ,or black hearted - he is for certain a compassionate man. Still this is a tough tale of hard people in difficult circumstances and well worth a dip.

Sohemian Society

08-Feb-2010 by Frank Marker

The Sohemian Society presents The grinning shadow that sat at the feast: In commemoration of Hector Munro, 'Saki' A talk by Professor Tim Connell Tuesday 16th February 2010, 7.30pm The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, North Soho , W1 (off Oxford Street ; nearest tube station: Tottenham Court Road) Admission: £3 Hector Munro was a journalist better known for his satire and biting wit, written under the pen name Saki. He foresaw the outbreak of war and wrote about it in 1913 with When William Came. Although over-age, he volunteered for service at the outbreak of war with the Royal Fusiliers (a City regiment) and died on the Somme . But why did he refuse a commission, why did he not join the Intelligence battalion to stay out of the trenches - and why did he choose the pen-name Saki? A 100-year literary mystery is about to be solved.

bedsit land

03-Feb-2010 by Field Marshal Montgomery

I 'm well informed that sparrowhawk has been seen living in a Rotherham city centre bedsit with Elvis Presley and Ronald Kray!!!

Said article

03-Feb-2010 by Herpes Howard

Notorious Epsom drug smuggler's whereabouts a mystery Exclusive By Thais Portilho-Shrimpton » The whereabouts of a notorious drug smuggler from Epsom remains shrouded in mystery, after apparently false reports of his death were leaked to this newspaper. Martin Knight, Philip Sparrowhawk and Howard Marks The Epsom Guardian received a tip-off that former Tadworth resident Philip Sparrowhawk had died of a heart attack in Vietnam at the beginning of this year. However, there has been no confirmation of Mr Sparrowhawk’s death and attempts to find him have failed. Mr Sparrowhawk – former business partner of druglord Howard Marks – lived in Thailand with his wife Pao for the past five years. The mystery began with an email from a John Rose, who claimed the former drug smuggler, and author of Grass, had died of a heart attack. He also claimed a funeral had been held for him in Danang, Vietnam, and his ashes had been scattered at sea. However, close friends of Mr Sparrowhawk believed the claims were a hoax. Writer Martin Knight, Grass co-author, said: “His relatives have completely dismissed this claim. One of them said this was the fourth time he’d heard these rumours. “My gut feeling is he’s alive and either he, or someone else, wants people to think he’s dead. The strange thing is I haven’t been in touch with him since before Christmas. His Facebook page has also disappeared.” Mr Rose claimed Mr Sparrowhawk had been found at a flat in New China Beach and taken to Benh Vien Mat (an eye hospital) in Danang. One of Mr Sparrowhawk’s former neighbours, from Tadworth, said: “Philip used to live here with his wife and daughter, but one day they just moved out. “He used to work in Epsom as a taxi driver. All I know is that after they left, the bailiffs cleared the property.” Mr Sparrowhawk comes from a family of bookmakers from Epsom and made a small fortune from street trading, which he bet on a horse called Njinsky, the winner of the 1970 Derby. With money from the bet, the former smuggler and Mr Marks opened a business and soon after started smuggling drugs from Thailand. Mr Sparrowhawk was arrested by the US Drugs Enforcement Agency in the 1980s and served several jail terms in America. The only post in a Twitter account believed to be his, from November 10, 2009, read: “Still trying to live in a warm country without being molested by the United States of Bullying.”

Sparrow

01-Feb-2010 by Matt Holgate

Sparrow is with me on the Isle of Wight.

Will the real Martin Knight please stand up?

01-Feb-2010 by The Jolly Cooper

Opening my local rag over a battered haddock and chips on Friday, I was intrigued by an article on page five concerning the possible demise of local Epsom lad and international drug baron Phillip Sparrowhawk. Having read Sparrowhawk’s autobiography “Grass” (co-authored by London Book’s very own Martin Knight) while holidaying with the misses in Cancun circa 2004, I found Knight’s idea that Sparrowhawk might have done a Reggie Perrin highly amusing and well in line with some of Mr Sparrowhawks previous escapees (didn’t he have a go on Mother Teresa?). While I was vigorously consuming this latest account in the life and times of Mr Sparrowhawk my eyes were drawn to the image of him Howard Marks and Knight, however this is where I was baffled, for the image clearly bore no resemblance to the Knight I had meet myself when attending a book signing hosted by him and his strong men. Which begs the question? Did I meet Knight? Is Knight Sparrowhawk? The man I meet was short Jack Nicholson figure where as the photo (Sorry but London Books does not allow photo’s to be attached) shows night being a rather burley skin headed unshaven figure. Living in Epsom the topic of Knight came up in my Sunday Bridge game, when discussing Knight the subject he became an enigma apparently going under various titles, upon describing what I knew of him one friend swore he had known him (Knight) for years but under the name John Hay other names that popped up for our esteemed master of the pen included Budda, The King and Garry Wesmond. Strange? Can anyone post any light on this or the Sparrowhawk affair?

Found It...Vernon Sewell !

27-Jan-2010 by King Crombie

Found it on line, looks kosher to me. Directed by veteran British director Vernon Sewell who also in charge of the fim version of "Wide Boys Never Work" - "Soho Incident" (AKA "Spin A Dark Web".

The Wind Of Change DVD ?

27-Jan-2010 by King Crombie

Frank, is this a kosher DVD ? If so, where from ?

Baron

26-Jan-2010 by Frank Marker

I've just finished From the City, From the Plough. I thoroughly enjoyed it. A very realistic and powerful insight into the squaddies hopes and dreams on the eve of the D Day landings. I have now started on the 2nd part of Baron's war trilogy, There's No Home. For your further interest I also spotted this b-feature now available on DVD: Winds of Change/ Traitors: Set against the Notting Hill race riots of the late 1950 s THE WIND OF CHANGE is a gripping kitchen-sink drama focusing on the relationship between a father (Donald Pleasence), a world-weary yet liberal man who spends all his spare time looking after his rabbits, and his rebellious, unemployed son Frank (Johnny Briggs). Frank is bigoted racist who believes the black immigrants are taking all the British jobs, though he doesn t seem too concerned in trying to get one himself. When Frank and his gang of teddy boys beat up a black man who later dies of his injuries, he must face the consequence of his actions.... Picture and Sound remastered by BBC Post Production. SPECIAL FEATURES BONUS FILM THE TRAITORS (1962) Espionage film starring Patrick Allen (62 Minutes)

King Dido (Alexander Baron) - kicked off.

23-Jan-2010 by king Crombie

I've finally kicked off "King Dido" and if the first two chapters are anything to go by, it will be top shelf read.

Cardinal and the Corpse

18-Jan-2010 by Frank Marker

I am quite intrigued by the Cardinal and the Corpse too. There's a brief 5 minute snatch of it on Youtube but that's about it. I guess your best bet for a showing would be the NFT.

The cardinal and the corpse

16-Jan-2010 by anonymous

Ive been wanting to see this film for a long time now ,just wondering if anyone knows where i could find a copy or if London books have any plans to show it in the near future.Thanks.

John Sommerfield

13-Jan-2010 by Frank Marker

I see London Books reissue of May Day by John Sommerfield is available for pre-order on Amazon. Nice cover lads.

Lost Steps

13-Jan-2010 by Frank Marker

Very glad you enjoyed it KC. It's a veritable treasure trove of interviews, I'm very pleased I came across it. I can also recommend the Classic London literature and the Battle of Stepney Green (Siege of Sydney Street) podcasts, the latter will be of particular interest to you KC as one of the interviewees, Phil Ruff, is currently working on a book about the subject.

Lost Steps Top Shelf

13-Jan-2010 by King Crombie

Courtesy of Mr Marker, to whom I doff my stingy brim low slow, I listened to the Lost Steps show on Alexander Baron. Top shelf stuff indeed and it's well on the cards I will give them a regular earball.

Nice one Frank

12-Jan-2010 by King Crombie

Nice one Frank, I shall chase it up at first chance (cue "Devil's Gallop"). If anyone at London Books wants to delete the 5 posts below, between Larry and myself - be my guest. Hardly riveting reading.

King Dido

12-Jan-2010 by Frank Marker

King Crombie Just found this podcast about Baron and King Dido http://www.loststeps.org.uk/Baron.php

Sorry…

11-Jan-2010 by Larry Heliotrope

… I meant 'post it into the space for the address'

It doesn't come up on a Google search yet

11-Jan-2010 by Larry Heliotrope

But if you copy http://lostlondonlit.blogspot.com/ and paste it into the space it should work

DIDN'T WORK EITHER

11-Jan-2010 by King Crombie

Maybe it's because I use Google, anyway can't say I didn't give it a spin, even tried searching through Gilt Kid and Angel Pavement. Nothing for me - good luck anyway. it's not kosher to go on about my technical failings here.

It does exist, honest!

11-Jan-2010 by Larry Heliotrope

Just copy and paste the url…

Can't find it Larry

11-Jan-2010 by King Crombie

The title says it all. Had 3 goes too.

Lost London literature - new blog

11-Jan-2010 by Larry Heliotrope

Some of you might be interested in the blog I've started up on Lost London literature. The emphasis will be very much on the likes of Curtis, Westerby and other low-life fiction, but also encompassing Arthur Morrison, JB Priestley, Compton Mackenzie, David Stuart Leslie and others. (Any suggestions welcome.) I'm aiming to deal with one book every week or so. So far I've covered The Gilt Kid and J B Priestley's Angel Pavement. Feel free to leave a comment! http://lostlondonlit.blogspot.com/

King Dido - not yet

09-Jan-2010 by King Crombie

Frank, I haven't got to it yet. Mine is a 1969 hard cover Macmillan first, with a torn dustjacket (red stencil lettering and anink illustration of a sharp dressed geezet in a brim). No introduction and the dedication reads "FOR MY WIFE".

King Dido

08-Jan-2010 by Frank Marker

Btw King Crombie, what was your opinion of King Dido? I have just received my copy, it includes an excellent introduction about Baron written by Ken Worple

Thanks

06-Jan-2010 by Frank Marker

And a Happy New Year to you King Crombie.

Count Me In

05-Jan-2010 by King Crombie

I'm up for both of the Camberton's, - "Scamp" and "Rain On The Pavement",, as i've never managed to trawl, reasonably priced copies. PS Happy New Year Mr. Marker.

Scamp

05-Jan-2010 by Frank Marker

Thanks Criscpop, I'm certainly looking forward to getting my hands on Scamp.For anyone interested here's an article about the author by Ian Sinclair: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/30/fiction

Roland Camberton

22-Dec-2009 by criscpop

Five leaves publications (the people who have just republished King Dido) have announced on their blog that they are going to reissue Roland Camberton's scamp and rain on the pavements with the original John Minton covers. Details to be announced...

Done and Dusted Dan,

16-Dec-2009 by King Crombie

Can't see how any bookshop that isn't a part of a chain or a big numbers merchant can survive. Surely any small time enterprise that has to "pay the rent" is done for. I do know someone who runs their shop at a loss - they own the premises and are doing quite well on other fronts, so for them it's somewhere between a hobby and a charitable concern. By all accounts it doesn't lose that much, just can't pay it's own fare. The future I suppose is on line, which is not so shabby, but does eliminates the accidental purchase.

Bookshop closures

10-Dec-2009 by Dean Street Dan

Any views on what the future will bring?

The Houndsditch Murders And The Siege Of Sidney Street ?

09-Dec-2009 by KIng Crombie

Anyone had a go at Donald Rumbelow's book ? Looks well interesting, but I'm otherwise engaged and backed up. Still., just wondering ?

Gypsy Joe

06-Dec-2009 by Alan Harvey

Pleased to see that one of our titles: Gypsy Joe was The Observer's Sports Book of The Year in today's paper.

'King Dido" - Alexander Baron

04-Dec-2009 by KIng Crombie

Just swagged a nice, reasonably priced 1st of King Dido. The jacket's a bit torn and creased, but all there. I won't get started until the New Year, as I'm up to my neck already. Still, once sorted I will post a review.

Sohemian Society Events

27-Nov-2009 by London Central

THE SOHEMIAN SOCIETY PROUDLY PRESENTS Tuesday December 1st, 7.30pm Upstairs at The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, North Soho QUENTIN AND PHILIP A talk by Andrew Barrow Andrew Barrow will give a talk based on his book about his friendship with Quentin Crisp and Philip O'Connor. Andrew first met Mr. Crisp in 1971 and their friendship lasted until Mr. Crisp's death. Through Mr. Crisp, Andrew Barrow met the wild, much-married "genius" Philip O'Connor. The two men had known each other since the beginning of World War II when they both inhabited the same select corner of Low Bohemia. O'Connor was as ill-mannered as Quentin was polite but, like Quentin, he would enjoy huge success with a volume of autobiography. FRIDAY DECEMBER 4, 7.30pm at County Hall, in The Debating Chamber 'DREAMING OF FITZROVIA' The Movieum of London is presenting a series of rehearsal readings between Decemeber 1st and 6th, including a new play by Matt Phillips, directed by Laurence Moody: 'The odd couple face their fears and desires in darkest Shepherds Bush'. Please come and support this up and coming Sohemian Society writer. County Hall is on the South Bank, next to the London Eye. Nearest tube station: Waterloo.

26-Nov-2009 by red farmer

Mark benny?

Much obliged Frank Marker

16-Nov-2009 by King Crombie

I caught the Tony Kay Radio 4 play, all thanks to you Frank. It's not quite "Damned Utd", but still of value for sure.

Wheatley

10-Nov-2009 by Frank Marker

600 pages of it! The Channel 4 Doc about Wheatley and his dodgy politics is still available on You Tube

Denis Wheatley

09-Nov-2009 by Roger Andout

I'm on the enormous Wheatly biography, just issued. I see Paul Willetts of London Books gets a namecheck. Will report back when done.

Freddie Mills

09-Nov-2009 by The Monocled Mutineer

There was a book recently that featured Randy Turpin and Freddie a sort of double biography and it could have been written by James Morton who co-wrote Frankie Fraser's books. The strongest evidence that he did not commit suicide was that he shot himself with his left hand when he was right-handed. I think he came from Bournemouth and as did Benny Hill.

Swan and Layne

09-Nov-2009 by COFFIN DODGER

Yes, Matt Le Tissier recently admitted to throwing a game. Agassi has done the same. Jockeys are at it all the time. MPs have turned it into an art form. These people who see little wrong in fiddling and cheating now are mainly wealthy. Swan and Bronco and the others were catching the bus to home games. They had nothing. They took their punishments and disappeared from the game. By today's standards they showed dignity and I feel sorry for them.

Scandal

09-Nov-2009 by frank Marker

Hi Geoff The film was called The Fix with Jason Isaacs as Kay with Coogan playing a journo, I think? Interesting what you say about the harsh treatment meted out to the Wednesday trio as the real Tony Kay ends the play by stating exactly the same point.

Peter Swan

09-Nov-2009 by Geoff Binns

A few years back there was a TV dramatisation with Steve Coogan in the role of the investigative reporter. It was good. Swan actually went back to Sheffied Wednesday after his bird and retired gracefully. He also did a book. Compare their punishments to some of the ones given out today.

1960s Football Scandal

09-Nov-2009 by Frank Marker

Anyone catch the afternoon play on Radio 4 last Friday? It was a drama about the early 1960s match fixing scandal featuring the Sheffield Wednesday players Tony Kay and Peter Swan. It's still available on listen again. Worth catching.

Part two...

08-Nov-2009 by Michael Keenaghan

Good point. Okay here goes again. My name is Michael Keenaghan. I am a writer of short London Fiction. Sample my stuff here... www.myspace.com/michaelkeenaghan

Did I miss something....

08-Nov-2009 by King Crombie

Or is just my age ? Why post anonymous when your setting out your stall ?

London tales...

07-Nov-2009 by anonymous

I am a writer of short London fiction. Sample some of my stuff here: www.myspace.com/michaelkeenaghan

David Seabrook's "Jack Of Jumps"

06-Nov-2009 by King Crombie

Poking about on the subject of Freddie Mills this "black cat crossed my path". Any pointers (on either book or Mr Seabrook) ?

Much obliged Frank Marker

06-Nov-2009 by King Crombie

Much obliged for both those tips Mr Marker. Will be following on both, cue "Devils Gallop".

More Mills

06-Nov-2009 by Frank Marker

KC Further to the book recommendation there's also a two part doc on YouTube you may care to view called Freddie Mills Death and the Krays

Mills

06-Nov-2009 by Frank Marker

Hi KC Try 'Fighters - The Sad Lives and Deaths of Freddie Mills and Randolph Turpin' by James Morton.

Freddie Mills Book, which one ?

06-Nov-2009 by King Crombie

i've been plotting to read something on the boxer Freddie Mills and the circumstances around his demise. Any pointers ?

The Looked After Kid

30-Oct-2009 by Wild Bill

I look forward to reading it. Any idea what it is about or when it is out? The Looked After Kid was one of the most moving books I have ever read. Hewitt always seems to have his fingers in a lot of different pies

The Looked After Kid

28-Oct-2009 by Junco

Saw Paolo Hewitt is bringing out a follow up to this superb book. Excerpt on his blog http://paolohewitt.blogspot.com/ Top writer/top bloke (for a Spurs mod).

President Blair

28-Oct-2009 by Young Billy Curtis

From Griffin to Zebedee in ten easy posts. I must have had some of that acid because I turned on the radio this morning and they were talking about a European President and how Tony Blair is going to get the job. Talk about surreal.

Greens and The Magic Roundabout

27-Oct-2009 by Grocer Jack

Greens are said to be very good for the brain, while acid on an empty stomach can lead to confusion.

Re: Greens

27-Oct-2009 by Crump

I never did like my greens. I think it's significant that when Milky Way wanted to market their inferior product to kids drunk on Fudge, they placed a red car head to head with a blue one. This was during the 80s, thus the blue car won. The red car, a symbol of big government and three day weeks even ate the trees, the only bit of green near the course.

Greens

26-Oct-2009 by anonymous

You should vote Green. They cover the issues that really matter!

Politicians

26-Oct-2009 by Postman Pat

I don’t believe the BNP are the answer either. What I was trying to say is that people are attracted to them for other reasons than their racial politics. What we really need is a new form of politics with none of the present politicians involved.

iT GOES BEYOND THE bNP

26-Oct-2009 by Jacqui Smith

The key issue is not whether large scale immigration is beneficial or not it is that a policy has been actioned to move Britain to a multi-cultural society driven by rapid large scale immigration and nobody ever asked anyone. THis has not been in any manifesto, ever. If the British people think ir is right or wrong so be it but let them decide NOT turds like Hain and Straw et al who are passionate in their belief they know best.

Balti

26-Oct-2009 by anonymous

Postman Pat, you make some good points about the EU but the BNP are not the answer. Yes Straw was shown up, but Griffin was totally lost once he started squirming about the Ku Klux Klan and holocaust denial. The fact is the BNP leadership and their main activists have a strong history of extreme right wing activism and they may bang on about the things you talk about to attract disillusioned white working class ex Labour voters but their real agenda is faciscm by the back door. You dont have to much digging to find Nazi/Strasserites/Anti Semites/Odinists/Loyalist paramillitaries/C18 and all kinds of weird nutcases involved in all their major positions and committees. These people are against mixed race relationships, they think Britain should be white only, they think the holocaust was faked by Zionists, they think blacks are mentally sun normal and they ultimately believe in re-patriation and worse in some cases. Just because they have some nice suits and try and position themselves as anti establishment doesn't mean they've changed their real agenda. I also think that there is an underclass in this country who have grown up through 2 or sometimes 3 generations of of entire families living on benefits and who tend to be in the poorest white estates of this country and it would be naive to deny this. To admit this is not an attack on the working class but more on a succession of Labour and Tory Gov'ts policies form Ted Heath onwards. Until only very recently immigrant labour was the main source of people who would clean offices, serve food and pick fruit, work in hotels etc.

The Londoners Nobody Wants To See

24-Oct-2009 by Pride Of London

Talk at the Bishopsgate Institute, London EC2, November 24, 2009. Picture Hauntology: Tracking The Londoners Nobody Wants To See. Have you ever met a morrie, a boiler or a deviator? Had your drum done over by a screwsman or seen a Joe Ronce putting out girls on the bash? Using the underworld slang of their times, a handful of writers recorded a forgotten London of spielers, speakeasies, dogtracks and moody gaffs. James Curtis, Robert Westerby, Patrick Hamilton and Derek Raymond had an ear for the street and an eye for those swept under by the dark currents of criminality. Through the socio-realist crime fiction from the 1930s to the 1990's Cathi Unsworth retraces the steps of those writers whose sympathies for the dispossessed mirrored their own close proximity to the London of the lost. The talk will be held at the Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 4QH. Event starts at 7.30pm Tickets cost £7 or £5 concessions. Advance booking is required.

Workers

24-Oct-2009 by Postman Pat

What do you mean by immigrants? Our membership of the EU means that anyone in the EU can work and live here. In many cases the bosses can exploit these workers, as they will accept much lower wages than British workers, thereby putting native workers on benefits. There are 2.5m British workers out of a job now and it’s scandalous to say they are lazy or don’t want to work. This attitude suits big business, which knows no loyalty and is always looking for a way to exploit ordinary people. Then there are the foreign workers at the top of the chain, and there are a great number of them in our major cities and especially London. These people are here solely for the money and they drive the financial institutions who, again, exist only to make a profit. These wealthy foreigners push up house prices and buy new buildings for investment, leaving many British people homeless. They add nothing to Britain. A responsible level of immigration always adds to the flavour of a country, but right now it is out of control. We need to get out of the European Union which is a totalitarian state in the making and exists only to consolidate the power of the multinationals. We are seeing gerrymandering on a massive scale. How long before anyone who lives in a country is entitled to vote? The name England has even been erased from the European map. The fascists couldn’t beat us in the war so now they are doing it through laws and lies. It is appalling that none of the major parties are taking this on, though not surprising, as they only exist to prop up the ruling class. People are attracted to the BNP because they are talking about these problems. People vote for the BNP despite their racial stance, not because of it. If the BNP got rid of the racial angle they would win the next election and I for one would vote for them.

RE: Griffin

24-Oct-2009 by Crump

I thought he came across as a kind of Evil Ray Stubbs.

LARGE SCALE IMMIGRATION HAS TO CONTINUE

23-Oct-2009 by Graham Greene

Without large scale immigration our economy would collapse completely. We do not let people move here as an act of benevolence, but simply to assist and partake in the usually crap jobs a consumerist society has in abundance. If you live in a big city you will understand my point. How often do you see British office or shop cleaners? More often than not these immigrants are doing the jobs us Brits do not want to do.

BBC Slight Entertainment

23-Oct-2009 by Lord Copper

The hysteria surrounding Griffin's appearance was because the political class KNOW that millions of people do agree with some of his points. They know that the oxygen of publicity could spell the end of their efforts in social engineering and their nest-feathering lives. STRAW was found out last night. He disowned being BRITISH and said that LARGE SCALE IMMIGRATION will continue. They are worried in the same way they are worried about allowing a referendum on the EU. We are idiots, remember, and must NOT be allowed to make up our own minds on ANYTHING. They know best:. By doing nothing we allow the likes of BLAIR./BROWN/STRAW/JAQUI SMITH/BLEARS etc decide our destiny. Somethings gotta give.

Question Slime

23-Oct-2009 by Leroy

Spot on YBC. What qualifies someone who sang Blanket on the Ground to take the ethnic high ground? The most honest thing Nick Griffin said was that seeing men kissing in public unsettles him...if he added that, however, seeing women do the same did not...then we get into interesting territory. Straw admitted there are no plans to control immigration and I found that the most revealing comment of the night. This has nothing to do race but proves that the ruling class are not fit custodians of this country's scarce resources.

Question Time

23-Oct-2009 by Young Billy Curtis

It was an ambush that backfired. The panel and audience were hand-picked and unrepresentative of ordinary people and spent their time shouting at Nick Griffin. I thought he handled it well, though he didn’t get much chance to speak. The lowest point came when Bonnie Someone mocked the existence of an English people - imagine if Griffin had said that about another ethnic group! Who is she anyway? He is going to have a lot of sympathy this morning. The elite are so far up their own arses that they actually think they embarrassed him when they only embarrassed themselves.

Griffin

23-Oct-2009 by Roger Andout

was never going to change the course of politics getting on Question Time. He is shifty and reptilian. He will never be able to disown the Nazi bagggage. But, imagine if someone from a new party with no so-called right wing credentials emerged who simply believed that Britain is great and carried no shame about our past, who beleived that we should control our borders, that our people must decide on whether we remain in the EU, that it is wrong to sexualise our children before they are 11, that if you commit crime you should be punished, that people should work if work is available and they are capable, that the tolerant, low-key Christian culture of this country is not a bad thing, that the white-working class are generally NOT racist good-for-nothing oafs, that Britain has an enviable record of assimilating different cultures and races and any groups that do not want to assimilate and reject our traditional values should not be welcomed and encouraged, that the BBC has become a hypocritical monster, that Nelson, Drake, Livingstone et al should be taught in our schools again, that stops pretending that the disabled sports are more exciting than able-bodied ones, that allows pubs to decide whether they want to be smoking or non-smoking and allow punters to make the choice, that forces MPs to abide by the same laws that we do then they would have had a revolution on their hands. This is not right-wing and BNP dressed up in sheep's clothing it is simply what a significant amount of the population feel.

God bless the King

22-Oct-2009 by Paul

Nice one for the tip off, will check it out. Good news, managed to contact Sillitoe's agent. Fingers crossed...

Stilltoe Desert Island Discs

22-Oct-2009 by KIng Crombie

Paul, don't know if it's what you're looking for, but Stilltoe was on Desert Island Discs a few months back. I thought it gave a glimpse of the man behind the dust jacket. Haven't a clue if the Beeb archive that show or not, but might be worth a poke about.

Re: Sillitoe

21-Oct-2009 by Paul

Sorry, that is not a good start. No question mark and the word dodgy was probably not a good choice, I meant getting on. Anyway, any help would be appreciated.

Alan Sillitoe

21-Oct-2009 by Paul, Stourport

Having read the recent re-issue of A Start in Life and noticing the great man's involvement in the whole London Books manifesto, I was wondering, could someone put me in touch with Mr Sillitoe. I am a dodgy mature student who has decided to cover his career as my dissertation topic and would love the oppurtunity to get in touch.

Dennis Wheatley

21-Oct-2009 by MK

Quite true, I still have the letter. It was the first letter I had seen written on headed paper and I remember his address was Cadogan Square. I even went to look at his mansion block. Strange most 10 year-old kids would have been hero-worshipping Bobby Charlton or Jimmy Greaves and there I was stalking Dennis Wheatley. I still have the letter and will dig it out but remember he said "write about what you know" and said something like there is no point about writing about Red Indians or something like that if you've never met one. Begs the questions was DW a satanist?

Dennis Wheatley

20-Oct-2009 by Frank Marker

A biography on Dennis Wheatley, entitled The Devil Is a Gentleman, written by Phil Baker has just been published today. I hope to get the author to talk about his subjecy at a future Sohemian Society gathering. I remember reading DW's autobiography, all three volumes of it, many years ago. An interesting man. I also remember Martin Knight of this Manor telling me at a past Sohemian event that he had written a letter to D W asking for his advice on 'becoming a writer'? His answer was amusing , yet practical. Can you remind us what it was Martin?

Crime

17-Oct-2009 by iPat

Have finished Welsh's Crime novel. Got to say it was a good read despite the uncomfortable subject matter.

Sohemian Event

16-Oct-2009 by Frank Marker

The Sohemian Society Presents The Frock-coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels A talk by Tristram Hunt Monday 26 October 2009, 7.30pm Admission £3 Upstairs at The Wheatsheaf Rathbone Place, W1 Friedrich Engels, in addition to being an early and key propagator of socialism and feminism, a close friend and financial supporter of Karl Marx, a Manchester factory owner, was also a fox-hunting bohemian. One visitor in 1891 described him as ‘a tall, bearded, bright-eyed and genial septuagenarian’ who was a ‘generous and delightful host’. A bon viveur to the end, Engels enjoyed wine and beer, women and song. As Tristram Hunt observes in his new biography, Engels’ writings – from his impassioned critique of industrial capitalism in Manchester in the 1840s (The Condition of the Working Class in England) to his polemical introduction to Marxism in the 1880s (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific) – were more accessible than Marx’s theoretical writings and had a major impact on the labour movement in the twentieth century. Engels seems to have been equally at home with the illiterate Irish Burns sisters who became his lovers, with the Cheshire hunt, in which he participated with gusto, and with the trade unionists and socialists who flocked from all over Europe to his north London salon in the 1880s and 1890s (usually to be greeted in their native language). Hunt provides a comprehensive account of Engels’ life and work. He gives him full credit for his important contribution to the emergence of Marxism, from his collaboration with Marx in The Communist Manifesto of 1848 to his contributions to Capital (including the laborious tasks of editing and publishing Volumes 2 and 3 after Marx’s death) and his continuing defence of Marxism against both bourgeois critics and radical vulgarisers up to his death in 1895. Dr Tristram Hunt is one of Britain’s best known young historians. Educated at Cambridge and Chicago Universities, he is lecturer in British history at Queen Mary, University of London and author of Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City. Copies of The Frock-coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels (Allen Lane) by Tristram Hunt will be available at the meeting for £25.

King Dido

16-Oct-2009 by Richard@BG

It is published by Five Leaves.

WILL HAY - does anyone know about this

15-Oct-2009 by BenjaminGirth

Graham Rinaldi new book about the 1930s comic, hardcore fans are rightly pleased. But there are some strange omissions. No mention of Hay's role in the German race to develop atomic weapons. Hay was an accomplished astronomer becoming a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1932. He discovered a white spot on Saturn in 1933 with a modest 6" refractor telescope winning international recognition. What theories did Hay formulate on planetary alignment? Gravitational calculations are serious science, immensely complex and still the stuff of supercomputers. But in the 1930s they were more fiction than fact. Theories were developed that the earths' axis was vulnerable to comets and meteors colliding but also man made explosions that could push the earth out of alignment. Even very minor fluctuations would end life on the planet. Hay had serious expertise on comets. Hay was an pioneering private pilot (he gave lessons to Amy Johnson) who would have been able to fly anywhere in Europe even after 1934 when he is reported to have lost interest in aviation (page 119). Flying is a passion, not something you just give up on. He was able to write in reverse, the sort of mind that can manage complex codes. He was polyglot, a translator and a fluent German speaker. The German intelligence and scientific communities would have taken an interest in any off Hay's theories. Hitler had a love of British films and the slapstick / astronomer / comedian's movies would have been available for him to view. Would Hitler have enjoyed meeting Will Hay? How sophisticated was the British Secret Service in creating "back channels" to top Nazi scientists (See Christopher Andrew: Defence of the Realm) is a matter for research if the records are ever made available. Interestingly Hay spoke Norwegian, Norway being crucial as a source of heavy water needed for atomic fusion. Hitler interfered in, and had deep fears about, the development of certain technologies, rockets in particular and he did not support the development of atomic weapons. How did Hitler arrive at these opinions, which would have produced war-winning weapons? The "nightmare dreams argument" looks like crude intelligence service disinformation. Was he was warned about possible consequences and if so by whom? Intelligence operations are never clear cut, typically ragged. The "defection" of Rudolf Hess begs many unanswered questions. Hess and Hay were from the perspective of astrology (Hess) and astronomy (Hay) both fascinated with Saturn. Frank Foley and two other MI6 officers were given the job of debriefing Hess as was the psychiatrist John Rawlings Rees who worked at the Tavistock Clinic. That is where the connections are to be found. Who got access to Hitler and formed his views on atomic weapons? Then Val Guest comes into the story. Working on film screenplays for Gainsborough Pictures he became a close colleague of Hay. In 1961 he co wrote (with Wolf Mankowitz) and directed the 1961 film "The Day the Earth Caught Fire." The premise was atomic weapons tests impacted on the Earth's stability, shifting the rotational axis propelling us towards the sun. Humanity was to endure an agonising death. Was this the stuff of Hitler's nightmare? Certainly there is no doubt at all Will Hay would have been very interested in this film.

Sohemian Event 14th October

13-Oct-2009 by Frank Marker

Author Paul Du Noyer will be discussing his latest book In the City: A Celebration of London Music with the Sohemian Society. Upstairs at The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, W1T 1DG. Admission £3. Underground: Tottenham Court Road. 14th October, 7.30pm. 0207 306 4625

Richard

13-Oct-2009 by Alan Harvey

Its fine to put the King Dido details up.

"Saint Spiv" Ronald Duncan.

12-Oct-2009 by KIng Crombie

I must confess I was mugged by both the title and a handsome book jacket illustration, but what a struggle to read ! It was a test of my will to make it through the last thirty pages. Ronald Duncan was by all accounts very important in the development of the Royal Court and I can only hope it was for better fare than this. My 1961 Dennis Dobson version is presented as a novel, but I've discovered it debuted as a play in 1950 and has also gone under the alias's "St. 'Orace" and "Nothing Up My Sleeve". A thumbs down for sure.

King Dido - excellent news!

12-Oct-2009 by King Crombie

Do we know who the publisher is ? I've been looking a reasonably priced copy for some time.

KIng Dido -re issue launch

12-Oct-2009 by Richard@BG

Something that I thought might be of interest. Alexander Baron's King Dido is being re-issued. There will be a launch at Bethnal Green Library (Bethnal Green Tube) on Friday 23rd October 7-8.30pm. Ken Worpole is giving a short talk about East End writing, refreshments will be served and it is free. All welcome

Not fit for purpose

06-Oct-2009 by McFurious

is the latest pathetic buzz phrase. John Reid said it a few years ago when talking about his own Health Department and now they're all at it.

Profuse Apologies.

05-Oct-2009 by Frank Marker

Yes it is an awful term. Sorry KC. My hated one is Human Resources.

No offense taken Frank, but....

05-Oct-2009 by King Crombie

No offense taken Frank, as I'm sure none was intended, but I'm not sure I care for the term "messenger" ? Brings to mind some herbert on a motorcycle plowing down the middle of Berwick St. market, or some old geezer marching down Bishopsgate with a large manilla envelope in tow.

Recommended; Seasonal Suicide Notes

04-Oct-2009 by Frank Marker

Try to get your loved one to slip Seasonal Suicide Notes by Roger Lewis into your christmas stocking. It's an excellent read - and antidote - for jaded 40-something blokes, who, I suspect, comprise most of the messengers on this site.

Peter Denyer

02-Oct-2009 by Frank Marker

He also played one half of a gay couple in the early 80s comedy, Agony. I personally found it quite an irritating series, not helped by the fact that Maureen Lipman starred in the lead role as agony aunt Jane, it was however one of the first series on TV to show a gay couple living a normal and domestic life, without a hint of Inman/Grayson 70s campness.

Dennis Dunstable

02-Oct-2009 by H. P. Source

Just read that Peter Denyer died this week. He played Dennis Dunstable in Please Sir! The character started out as just the class thicko but developed into a more complex boy with social difficulties and a particularly poor father. Later he was in Dear John, written by John Sullivan who would later bring us Del Boy. Please Sir! has not aged well but at the time was a real crowd-pleaser. Sadly, among the kids Craven (Malcolm McFee) and Maureen (Liz Gebhardt) have already passed on.

"eavy and 'airy"

28-Sep-2009 by King Crombie

Recall Frank, how can I ever forget, left me scarred for life. A lot of them even looked worse than they sounded, which was quite an achievement. Dodgy with a capital D.

Heads, Hands and Whoops a Daisy

28-Sep-2009 by Frank Marker

Sorry, I stand corrected. Heads, Hands and Feet were a country-rock outfit in the style of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Rock Names

28-Sep-2009 by Frank Marker

If I remember righly they were a 'eavy 'airy rock outfit. Bands had names like that in those days, as I'm sure you recall KC? I remember one band, circa 68/69, with the moniker, Heavy Jelly and of course there was a Humble Pie album titled, Very 'Eavy...Very 'Umble.

Dodger ?

28-Sep-2009 by King Crombie

What were Heads, Hands & Feet - a psychedelic calypso come limbo combo ? A very iffy monicker, if you ask me.

Chas

25-Sep-2009 by COFFIN DODGER

I think he was in Heads, Hands and Feet too who I'm pretty sure one rainy day at Charlton Athletic's Football Ground support The Who. Probably 1974. God, I am old.

Chas and Dave

25-Sep-2009 by Frank Marker

Yes indeed KC. Did you hear about the time the Gallagher Bros turned up at White Hart Lane for Man City V Spurs game? Apparently the Spurs fans turned around and chanted at them, "You're just a crap Chas and Dave act"! Seriously though, Chas Hodges has a damned good pedigree. He was, along with Richie Blackmore, a member of The Outlaws who were Joe Meek's houseband. He turns up in a cameo role in the recent film Telstar Man.

Mr. Du Noyer

25-Sep-2009 by King Crombie

No doubt he'll have up to the minute commentary on the Chas"N'Dave front !

Sohemian Society Meeting 14th Oct

24-Sep-2009 by Frank Marker

Paul Du Noyer, author of In the City: A Celebration of London Music, will be discussing his book with the Sohemian Society. Upstairs at The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, W1T 1DG. Admission £3. Underground: Tottenham Court Road. 14th October, 7.30pm. 0207 306 4625

Budgie

21-Sep-2009 by Wally

When were were kids we truanting one day and up on Epsom Downs. They were filming Budgie in the underpass that linked the racecourse with the main road. They had a blowing machine and were blowing false five pound notes through the subway and Adam Faith was chasing them,. He stopped and signed our autographs and asked why were not at school. I remember being shocked at how many people, vans and equipment it took to film one small scene

LSF

21-Sep-2009 by Richie4

probably the recently departed Keith Waterhouse who wrote the scripts with Willis Hall. KW also wrote Billy Liar which I loved as a TV series in the 1970s with Jeff Rawle and George C Cooper as his foul-mouthed Dad. I think the mUm was Avis Bunnage and Colin Jeavons played Mr Shadrack at the funeral parlour. Jeavons, I remember, was a superbly insidious Uriah Heap in an earlier TV adaptation of David Copperfield and an adult bullied kid in the Dennis Potter thing with adults playing children

Laughing Spam Fritter

21-Sep-2009 by King Crombie

Played by John Rhys-Davies (?), who later earned a few quid digging about in the sand in Steven Speilberg pictures. Be nice to know who came up with the moniker ? Your starter for ten, Bamber...

Budgie

19-Sep-2009 by Richie4

Iain Cuthbertson as Charlie Endell was a delight. He was the forefather of Boycey in Only Fools in a line of cuddly gangsters. I believe they did a spin off from Budgie featuring only Charlie Endell but was canned after one series. The best character if only by name in Budgie had to be LAUGHING SPAM FRITTER...

Sohemian Society Event 22nd Sept

17-Sep-2009 by London Central

The Siege of Sidney Street A talk by Philip Ruff On 16th December 1910 five City of London policemen were shot and three of them killed, when they were called to investigate suspicious noises coming from a property adjacent to a jeweller’s shop in Houndsditch. The “Houndsditch Murders” are still regarded today as the single worst police murder in British history. The Latvian anarchists held responsible entered into East London folklore when, trapped inside a house in Stepney, they took on Winston Churchill and the British Army in “The Siege of Sidney Street”. Two died, but no one ever accounted for the mysterious “Peter the Painter”, popularly supposed to be the leader of the gang and to have escaped the burning house during the battle. The story inspired two major feature films – The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1934), and The Siege of Sidney Street (Jimmy Sangster, 1960) – as well as a slew of books, all with different theories on the background to the shootings and the identity of those involved: Peter the Painter was a tsarist police agent, he was Stalin, he was the brother of a Metropolitan Police interpreter, he never existed, he did exist and became an agent of Lenin’s Cheka in Russia. At the start of the 1970s, when the bombing campaign of the Angry Brigade pushed the word “anarchist” back into the headlines, one of the groups under investigation by Special Branch called itself “The Siege of Sidney Street Appreciation Society”. As recently as 2003 one of the contributors to a London Weekend Television documentary about the Houndsditch Murders called Peter the Painter “the Osama Bin Laden of his time”. Philip Ruff’s detective work in Latvia since 1988 has resulted in proof positive on the real identity of Peter the Painter and unearthed the real story of his life and revolutionary career. But more than that, he has opened window on the hitherto unknown history of Latvian anarchism and of the 1905 revolution in the Baltic which gave rise to it. This wider story reveals the violent events in London – shocking as they may appear – to be part of a much bigger story of class war, revolution and survival. Philip is a historian of the anarchist movement. His book on the true identity of Peter the Painter will be published next year. Wheatsheaf Pub, Rathbone Place W1 7.30pm Admission £3

Iain Cuthbertson

17-Sep-2009 by Frank Marker

Yes Milky very sad news to hear of the passing of Iain Cuthbertson. As a boy I remember him playing Dr Thomas Arnold (bit removed from Charlie Endell) in Tom Brown's Schooldays and Jenny Agutter's, "My Daddy!", in the TV version of The Railway Children.

Couple of sad exits

17-Sep-2009 by Milky

Posters may have seen the passing of Iain Cuthbertson aged 79 and the bloke who wrote the first Z Cars scripts and The Italian Job. Cuthbertson was Charlie Endell in Budgie. Great character.

The Charmer

11-Sep-2009 by Frank Marker

Well worth watching for the two excellent performances from Bernard Hepton as the jealous and vindictive Mr Stimpson and Rosemary Leach as the arriviste -"as my late husband the Colonel always said" - Mrs Plumleigh-Bruce.

Hamilton's Gorse: The Charmer being repeated.

10-Sep-2009 by Bill Londonsoul

Bit of a late shout this, but The Charmer (an adaptation of Hamilton's Mr Gorse & Mr Stimpson) is being repeated on ITV3 on Monday nights. Obviously not painstakingly faithful, but well worth a look for the whistles, motors and interiors.

Terry Taylor

10-Sep-2009 by King Crombie

Gave that the once over Frank and it certainly looks tasty. Still I'm always a bit suspicious of the "should have been there" memoir (even disguised as a novel), after all who could resist a little revision here and there ?

Baron's Court, All Change

09-Sep-2009 by Frank Marker

Hello KC Check this website http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/sex/baronscourt.htm

Baron's Court

09-Sep-2009 by Frank Marker

Sorry can't help KC. I haven't got a copy either!

If You Don't Mind Me Asking Frank...

09-Sep-2009 by King Crombie

Frank, I'm much obliged on your tip re "Baron's Court All Change" but where exactly do you get your form on Mr Taylor from ? I am not for a minute denying it's authenticity, it's just that I have no way of knowing whether it's kosher or not. A quick glance at the usual fences puts it out of my price range.

Gypsy Joe

03-Sep-2009 by " The Elvis Killer" Joe Pike

What a gem, brilliant read had me hooked from start to finish. met joe on holiday and what a gentleman he is. I hope he cracks the golf . I'd like to wish joe and all his family the best in the future and thanks for sharing your story and talking sense to me on holiday.

Baron's Court, All Change (1961)

03-Sep-2009 by Frank Marker

Anyone hear of a book called Baron's Court, All Change (doesn't that title just grab you!) by Terry Taylor. The writer was the model for the unnamed narrator of Absolute Beginners, hung out with William Burroughs, was the original mod before the term was even being used and wrote this book, the first Brit novel to mention LSD, as well as having a drug dealing narrator who wants to spend his profits the cool way, on jazz and shirts from Cecil Gee. Any chance of London Books republishing it?

Sohemian Society Event 22nd Sept 7.30 pm

02-Sep-2009 by Frank Marker

Books That London Forgot

26-Aug-2009 by Larry Heliotrope

Sorry - forgot to include link in post below: http://www.housmans.com/events.php

Books That London Forgot

26-Aug-2009 by Larry Heliotrope

Rather short notice, but this is an interesting-looking event happening tonight at Housman's bookshop in London

Bernard Kops "The Hamlet of Stepney Green"

23-Aug-2009 by King Crombie

Have to give Kops' 1958 play the thumbs down. A tale of East London Jewish working class life, with never do well son, and dying- dead father. I'm not that familiar with Shakespeare's "H" so some of the nuance may have been lost on me, But I found it dull and predictable. Anyone interested in the subject would be better served by Kops' own, vastly superior "The World Is A Wedding".

The Kilburn Tale

05-Aug-2009 by Nick

Ernest Raymond was a successful novelist of the '20s and '30s. His most famous book is 'Tell England' about the Dardenelles campaign of World War 1. Te;; England was the basis for the Mel Gibson Film 'Gallipoli'

Gypsy Joe

03-Aug-2009 by Wally Whyton

Good book. I did not realise that Joe was Jimmy Stockin's cousin and On The Cobbles is one of my top ten books of all time. Parallels in their story but for Joe to make his way in the snobby corridors of golf is some achievement. He has a good grasp of the 'gypsy problem' and is far more pragmatic in his approach to their social relations than others. Witty and entertaining probably does more for the cause of gypsy/gorgia relations than any government-funded study. Heard Joe on Robert Elms recently and I think the BBC need to get him on Question Time.

Bernard Kops "The Hamlet of Stepney Green"

21-Jul-2009 by King Crombie

Just swagged a copy of Bernard Kops' play "The Hamlet of Stepney Green." First performed in 1958. Just started something else, but will post a review once I've had a go.

Mantovani

10-Jul-2009 by Bernadette

Another with one name

Cavalcanti

09-Jul-2009 by Frank Marker

Just Cavalcanti if you please. I love the chutzpah of a man who only needs to use his surname.

"They Made Me A Fugitive"

09-Jul-2009 by King Crombie

Directed by the mighty Alberto Cavalcanti and shot by Otto Heller (a top shelf cinematographer). A young good looking Sam Kydd can be spotted in the gang. A KC "must see".

They Made Me a Fugitive

08-Jul-2009 by Frank Marker

Further to my message about They Made Me a Fugitive fellow travellers may be interested to know the script was by the same fella that did The Wizard of Oz and was taken from a novel by one Jackson Budd? Any ideas on the latter?

Brit Grit Films

08-Jul-2009 by Frank Marker

Just watched a terrific brit -grit thriller called They Made Me a Fugitive (1947). What a title! The film stars Trevor Howard as a recently discharged Squadron Leader lured into a life of crime and vice which through a bungled crime and the death of a copper leads to series of tragic consequences for poor old Trev. This film really does tap into the fear of post-war crime with cosh boys and still aggressive discharged servicemen kicking their heels and feeling superfluous to civvy street. It also has a first rate script, punchy and witty, with excellent all round performances from the cast. Check out the old Major from Fawlty Towers as the cynical old detective. Next on my list is the Flesh is Weak (1957). A film based on the real-life activities of London's Messina Gang.

Malayan Swing

27-Jun-2009 by Steve

I just finished reading Malayan Swing which I ordered from your site and I have to say that it is one of the most moving books I have ever read. I was a big Lurkers fan when they had the original line-up going, so I bought the book out of interest more than anything, seeing as Pete Haynes used to drum with the band, but didn’t expect to receive such a powerful and eye-opening book. Well done Pete.

Sohemian Meeting 8th July

26-Jun-2009 by Frank Marker

Our next meeting will be about singer/songwriter and actor Anthony Newley. Paul Goodchild, Secretary of the Anthony Newley Society, will be giving an overview of Newley's career (and life applicable to the career) with particular interest to his main output to the theatre (Stop the World, Roar, Gobod, Once Upon a Song, Chaplin and the never to be Richard III) along with background to some of his songwriting methods and stories behind the songs. Paul will also touch upon the films including Merkin, The Small World of Sammy Lee and some more rare aspects of his recording ouput. Paul was a friend of Newley's in 1989 interviewing him for a video release and worked on various projects with him for the last 10 years of his life, his friendship remained until his death when he left the Society in his hands. The Wheatsheaf Rathbone Place London W1 (Nearest tube Tottenham Court Road) 8th July, 7.30 pm Admission £3

Steven Wells

26-Jun-2009 by Peter Pan

Didn’t he trade under the name Seething Wells when he was doing the punk poetry? I used to read him as well. He had an obvious agenda and could drive you mad at times, but he was also a fine writer and could make you laugh out loud. Farrah Fawcett also died, which is a great shame. Both of these people will be overshadowed by the death of Michael Jackson. It all seems a bit over the top. Am I the only one who thinks his music is massively overrated? Nothing person, but I just couldn’t see what the fuss was about.

Steven Wells RIP

25-Jun-2009 by Junco

Remember seeing him as Seething Wells with Attila way back in the early 80's. Love him or hate him in the NME. he often made me laugh.

Gypsy Joe

23-Jun-2009 by Private Veinotte

Nice review of Gypsy Joe in the Standard today.

Give Us A Review Bob

22-Jun-2009 by King Crombie

I haven't a clue, but please don't forget to give us a review when you're done Bob. All donations gratefully received, etc., etc., etc !

The Kilburn Tale

21-Jun-2009 by Bob Todd

Just picked this up, published 1948 and written by Ernest Raymond. Anyone know of him? Googled him but although mentioned very little info.

Priestley & 84 Charing Cross Rd.

18-Jun-2009 by Bill Londonsoul

Absolutely with you on Angel Pavement, Larry. My old man raved about it for years - and passed his enthusiasm for it onto me. So, now there's 3 of us!!! After sitting on the shelf for years, I've just read 84 Charing Cross Road. Loved it. it seems to be 2 books in this (and most) edition. The second - "The Duchess of Bloomsbury" is a true account of the author's trip to london after the sucess of 84 CCR. A wee bit twee compared to my usual reading, but the woman has a sharpish tongue and a real passion for London. Could read it in a day - well recommended. Bill

Sohemian Society Event 17th June

17-Jun-2009 by Frank Marker

WEDNESDAY JUNE 17 7:30pm The Sohemian Society presents 'You cannot live as I have lived and not end up like this': the thoroughly disgraceful life & times of Willie Donaldson. A talk by Terence Blacker, biographer of Willie Donalson at: The Wheatsheaf 25 Rathbone Place, North Soho (off Oxford Street, nearest tube: Tottenham Court Road) Admission £3 .Willie Donaldson was found dead in his flat in Fulham in June 2005. His computer was still running logged on to a lesbian porn site. Donaldson’s extraordinary, perverse career, under-achievement and excess put him in the same holy bracket as Peter Cook, Jeffrey Bernard, Peter Sellers, Hunter Thompson and Allen Clarke, although a peerless talent for self-sabotage has meant that his legend has remained largely a secret. By the age of 25 Willie had published Sylvia Plath and produced Beyond the Fringe and would become best known for his Henry Root letters later in his career. He had affairs with some of the most desirable women of the sixties including Sarah Miles and Carly Simon. His remarkable capacity for self-destructiveness (he took up smoking crack in his 50s) and deviance meant he was at his most happy in the company of criminals and tarts.

Much obliged

17-Jun-2009 by King Crombie

Much obliged Messrs. Suitcase and Heliotrope, I shall swag myself a copy of the Collins. Not sure I'm fit enough for 600 pages of Priestley, still title noted and maybe I'll work up to it. Thanks for the pointer.

London Belongs To Me

16-Jun-2009 by Larry Heliotrope

This has indeed been reissued by Penguin in a nice-looking edition. It's a good read - possibly slightly overlong, but a nice picture of London just before the war. In a similar vein but a little earlier (1930), I'd heartily recommend J B Priestly's Angel Pavement. If you like books about the lives of ordinary Londoners, this is a must – a great, great book. Even at 600 pages, I just wanted it to go on.

London Belongs To Me

16-Jun-2009 by Man In A Suitcase

I think it has been re-issued I'm sure I saw it in a bookshop recently in modern paperback. I read it years ago and remember the film of the book about different lifestories in a guest house. Sort of Patrick Hamilton meets It Always Rains on Sunday. I think Collins lived to a ripe old age and became a senior TV executive.

'London Belongs To Me" ?

14-Jun-2009 by King Crombie

Anyone read this 1947 Norman Collins book, which I assume was written before the picture was made ?

MayDay and others

11-Jun-2009 by Alan Harvey

MayDay will be an October release. Out in July and available in the Shop now are Malayan Swing by Pete Haynes founder of punk band The Lurkers. A great and unusual novel about Care in the Community or lack of it from the inside. The first in our British Fiction series. Also a non-fiction title Gypsy Joe about a gypsy man who beats prejudice and the pull to a criminal lifestyle to become a professional golfer.

"May Day" ?

10-Jun-2009 by King Crombie

Have we got a date on that Frank ?

New Book

10-Jun-2009 by Frank Marker

I'm really looking forward to London Books next long lost classic from the 1930s, May Day by John Sommerfield. Apparently this more political and experimental in its literary from than LB's previous Brit Grit books. Anyway I'm pretty certain it will be an excellent read, I wouldn't expect anything less from those discerning people at London Books. Bet you've got another great cover for it too! Messageboarders may also be interested to know that the film about Joe Meek, Telstar Man, is on general release later this month.

"Down Oxford Street' ?

06-Jun-2009 by King Crombie

Brought to my attention by Warpole, I have a couple of questions: 1) Has anyone read this ? 2) Is this Ralph Finn the same geezer that has written all the football books ? Your starter for ten Bamber !

Sohemian Event

03-Jun-2009 by Frank Marker

In the first of half of tonight's event our guest Jake Arnott will be reading from and discussing the background to his latest novel, 'The Devil's Paintbrush'. In the second half, Jake will be talking about those two Sohemian Poster Boys, Lord Boothby and Tom Driberg. Upstairs at the Wheatsheaf Pub, Rathbone Place, London W1. 15th June 7.30 pm. Admission £3 Copies of The Devil's Paintbrush will be available for sale on the night.

It weren't me guv!

29-May-2009 by Frank Marker

Frank Marker did do nick for a crime he didn't commit. I may be incorrect here, but I have a feeling he covered up for someone else too. Apart from that you learn nothing about his background during the entire run of the series. And that is the beauty of it! Nowadays tv decs have to be burdened with 'issues, tedious ex lovers, tiresome long lost children, a boring drink problem ad bloody nauseam. Public Eye just relied on good solid plots and excellent ensemble acting. I'd love to do a Public Eye for the Sohemians. I know Alfie Burke is still with us. Unfortunately he's bit immobile these days, well he is 90. I'm reliably informed from another veteran actor, Murray Melvin, he's a very nice guy too. He also turned in a very good performance as the 'good german' officer in another fine series called Enemy at the Door.

Public Eye

29-May-2009 by IS

Full set out on DVD. Worth a look.

Public Eye

29-May-2009 by Paul

Wasn't called Private Eye at first? I was puzzled by this programme as a kid because my parents used to pull up the sofa and get right into it. I didn't get it at first. If I remember wasn't there some mystery about Frank Marker's past.? Been in the nick, I think. One wonders if Colombo was not inspired by him. Scruffy raincoat. Odd demeanour. Burke is still with us, I think. You guys should do a Sohemians evening with him.

Let's Hope...

28-May-2009 by King Crombie

Let's just hope that "Public Eye" is considered too small a franchise to produce the required investment to profit ratio. Or that they can re-make The Persuaders instead !

There's a Mole in my Odeon

27-May-2009 by Bill Stubbins

The best is yet to come. I have also heard rumours that Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is also due for a big screen treatment. The whole beauty of the original tv version was its dark intimacy with an intriguing and labyrinth tale which was allowed develop over 7 episodes. I can only hope the Tristrams never get hold of my favourite tv series, Public Eye. I can just see them casting flavour of the month actor Bill Nighy in the Alfred Burke role. He's a not bad actor as louch types go, but he couldn't hold a candle to Alfie Burke's down at heel, yet oddly moral, Frank Marker.

It is sad

27-May-2009 by King Crombie

Nice choice of word there Hubert - sad, very sad indeed. I'm sure there are plenty of new ideas out there, but the mullahs of moolah like an easy sell and a quick profit. Anything with a pedigree, or some kind of brand recognition is favoured over creativity and hard work.

Why?

27-May-2009 by Hubert Lane

What I want to know is why? Apparently they are remaking The Sweeney. Because Ashes to Ashes pulled in a nice few viewers? And if they do they will sanitise it and politically correct it so the only thing retro in it will be the Ford Corsairs and large collars. Brighton Rock's beauty is because it is of its time. When the seaside was the place to go and blousy old prossies with good hearts frequented the pubs. Are they are no new ideas in Film World? Why do they rely so heavily on remakes, sequels and sequels to sequels. Its sad.

Brighton Rock - Remade Remodeled ?

27-May-2009 by King Crombie

Can't see anything positive coming out of this caper. If it's even watchable, I'll eat my argyle socks (cashmere of course).

Brighton Rock - Remake

26-May-2009 by anonymous

With Sam (Ian Curtis) Riley playing Pinkie. Going to be reset in the 60's using Mods and Rockers as the backdrop. Starts shooting in Sept. Remaking a British classic is always dangerous ground, although I was never entirely convinced by Sir Dickie as a Brighton herbert...

How about....?

23-May-2009 by Sidedoor

Lionel Blair - flairs; Lionel Bart - fart; Aryton Senna - "tenner"; Lady Godiva - "fiver" & unfortunately Feargal Sharkey (which I'm glad to say I haven't heard for many years)

Talk TONIGHT

21-May-2009 by Alan Harvey

Lost London Authors: Iain Sinclair & Paul Willetts in conversation. Thursday 21st May at 6.30pm Iain Sinclair- author of 'Downriver' and now 'Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire'- and Julian Maclaren-Ross biographer Paul Willetts share a fascination with the less familiar stories that London and its writers have to tell. In this unique event, they join together to look at neglected classics of London writing by James Curtis and Robert Westerby. Venue: Waterstones, Gower Street Tickets £4

Cafe-Bar ?

16-May-2009 by King Crombie

I'd be much obliged Frank.

Cafe Bar

15-May-2009 by Frank Marker

Hello KC I will be attending next week's Willetts/Sinclair chat. If I remember I'll ask him about Cafe Bar.

"Cafe-Bar" ? Any pointers ?

14-May-2009 by King Crombie

On the first page of Iain Sinclair's introduction to "Wide Boys Never WorK" he mentions a book title "Cafe-Bar". Any pointers as to the writer ?

Dugs new novel?

12-May-2009 by Mrs Ethel tinkerbelle Brimson ( No relation)

Hi chaps can anyone on here tell me when Dougie Brimsons new novel "Dinner by Candlelight" hits the shops? I cant wait ! Dugs a very underated writer and I'd go as far as to say one of the best we have in Britain today.

don't worry

12-May-2009 by as

http://www.test.com

don't worry

12-May-2009 by as

www.test.com

Willetts and Sinclair

01-May-2009 by Frank Marker

Thanks Alan I'll certainly drop everything for that one. Paul's a very good friend of the Sohemians. It was through his book on Maclaren-Ross that the society was formed. I doff my capo to him. Anyone go to see the Zombies perform Odessey and Oracle at the Hammersmith Apollo last Saturday. A fab night! Those old boys can still do it and in many way probably even better than when they spotty kids in matching black polo necks.

Upcoming event - Iain Sinclair and Paul Willetts discuss Westerby and Curtis

28-Apr-2009 by Alan Harvey

Roy Bentley

24-Apr-2009 by Frank Marker

I remember seeing Roy Bentley playing in a charity match for a showbiz first 11 against Didcot Town (Isthmian League) back in, oh, 68/69 sometime. Scored a goal too. Best wishes to the old fella!

Rhyming Slang

23-Apr-2009 by Bill Londonsoul

Peter Purves - service. E.g. "The peter's terrible in there". Frank Bough - off. E.g. "are you doing the Frank"? (are you about to depart?).

Roy Bentley

23-Apr-2009 by Harry Harkins

Yes, a big toast to Roy Bentley. He's been under the cosh a bit lately with his wife and daughter passing away. CFC look after him well, I;m glad to hear.

Happy 23rd

23-Apr-2009 by iPat

On this day in 1955 with a 3-0 win against Sheffield Wednesday at The Bridge, Chelsea became Champions for the very first time. Lift a glass to St George, William Shakespeare, Roy Bentley and the 'Bentley boys'. Bless you one and all.

Rhyming slang - cockney, or otherwise ?

23-Apr-2009 by King Crombie

Always a tricky subject the rhyming. There's always been a steady demand for a finite amount of rhymes and their meanings- along the lines of a dictionary. There has also always been a contingent that believes in an ever evolving/perpetually updated verbal that retains some criminal/clandestine content. Obviously the established rhymes have considerable value, but I think it's hard to compare them with the latest update. I guess it depends on the purpose of usage, or am I wrong ?

how about?...

22-Apr-2009 by bilbo baggins

Pete Tong? James Blunt? ;o)

I can think of one...

22-Apr-2009 by Sam Spade

Luca Viallu for Charlie for coke for cocaine.

Jack Jones

22-Apr-2009 by Paul

Surprised to hear that Jack Jones has died. Surprised because I thought he was long dead. When I was a kid he was one of a bunch of union people always on the telly (Vic Feather, Len Murray, Joe Gormley and Arthur Scargill) and by then he was their older statesman. I note he was 96. His greatest achievement, perhaps, is that he entered mainstream cockney rhyming slang fairly early in his own life time. Being on your Jack Jones meaning on your own. Cannot think of many others who have achieved this besides Ruby Murray.

Much obliged Frank

21-Apr-2009 by King Crombie

Much obliged Frank, I'll have a poke about that website too !

Baron Family At War Episodes

21-Apr-2009 by Frank Marker

Hello KC Here's the episodes Baron penned for the Family at War Series: The Breach in the Dyke (1970) Brothers in War (1970) A Lesson in War (1970) Believed Killed (1971) The Lost Ones (1971) Two Fathers (1972) If you want a synopsis to this episodes there's an excellent Family at War site at http://bearspace.baylor.edu/Richard_Veit/www/index.htm

Typo !

20-Apr-2009 by King Crombie

That should read King not king. Us regal types have to pay attention to detail.

Any Chance Frank ?

20-Apr-2009 by king Crombie

Frank is there any chance that you could list the Baron "Family At War" episodes ? I'm not a big Box man, but I might well give them a gander. PS "From The City From The Plough" - any comments ?

Baron

17-Apr-2009 by Frank Marker

Interestingly enough the episodes he scripted for 'Family at War' were very humane and to my mind the best in what was a superlative series. He seemed to have a real understanding for the frustrations and at times, tragedies, the people on the Home Front had to endure. He also brilliantly portrayed how Britain would have to face up to the post-war world of a Labour Government and its sweeping nationalisation programme, schools where children would not gaze upon maps on walls with the colour red liberally doted on them and a boss that may well have a regional accent. A top writer!

Newley

17-Apr-2009 by Frank Marker

For anyone interested you may like to know the NFT are having a Tribute To Anthony Newley Evening on the 24th April. Included will be the bizarre Newley vehicle, 'Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?' a complete episode of the off the wall comedy 'Gurney Slade' and finally various clips of Tone singing. The Sohemian Society hope to be getting a pal of Tone's to to give us a talk on his life and career at a future meeting.

Dodgy

15-Apr-2009 by anonymous

There is but a tiny space between therapist and the rapist.

Alexander Baron "The Human Kind"

15-Apr-2009 by King Crombie

Alexander Baron's "Lowlife" as many of us know is an excellent book. The sequel "Strip Jack Naked" for me was hardly worth the read and so this is my third Baron. "The Human Kind" is a prologue, twenty four short stories and an epilogue, in 189 pages. These are war stories about the best and worst of human nature, told for a change by a soldier, not an officer. It is essentially a memoir of a decent East London Jewish lad, becoming a man during World War Two. It's an easy read, I carted aboutreading it here and there. Some of the stories are much better than others, but although it is unflinching, it is for the most part neither hard boiled nor black hearted. Baron is a compassionate man and although he gets hardened by war, he retains his humanity. I enjoyed it and plan to read his WW2 novel "From the City, From the Plough". I've been told that "The Human Kind" was made into a picture "The Victors"(1963), but the Tommy's were re-cast as G.I.'s !

Theremin

15-Apr-2009 by Jim Pennington

from the latin theremis, -me, -min, -mitis, -mitis, -mi. Meaning "Cosy spookiness in the back row of the Kinema". Once seen at a Frank Zappa concert, last seen in use at The Beys, Kings Place. Can be used to induce the whimper that precedes the full blown yowl of a Primal Scream therapy session.

Therapist ?

15-Apr-2009 by King Crombie

Jim, a therapist that the funny sounding instrument that you wave your hands over - used in cheap horror pictures ?

it's a fair cop guv'

14-Apr-2009 by Jim Pennington

entirely inappropriate cross-ref anyway ...Mr Len the fence would have had a sharp pair of eyes and do sums so quick in his head you thought you were diddling him instead of being diddled yourself. Bit like what my therapist gets up to.

Already shot myself in the foot

14-Apr-2009 by King Crombie

Copper not cooper, shows what a pillock I am.

A word Jim

14-Apr-2009 by King Crombie

I might get some stick for this, but be that as it may. I am neither a cooper, sunday school teacher or a social worker, but I do feel duty bound to point out that the phrase "ch*nky eyed" is uneccessary. No harm intended ( I hope) and no harm done (I hope too). I'm all for era appropriate usage of the language, but in contemporary usage I think we should shelve that one.

The Gilt Kid, Karl Marx and the case of the suspect ironist.

13-Apr-2009 by Jim Pennington

Page 173 - the Kid throws the book on the floor. Is this because " (£400 const. + £90 var.) + £90 surpl." does not add up to either £500 or £590? It certainly does not make sense. I find the quote in "Capital" and it does add up because the £400 should read £410, like it does in the previous paragraph. Is this Curtis being ironic? Or a typo from London Books? I find a tattered 1947 Penguin for £4 (the edition London used) and it reads the same. I refuse to pay a fortune for a Cape edition. That miserable danish bookseller, who seems to have the only copy on the Internet, cannot be arsed to even look at his copy for me. But then, Gawd blimey. Who'd have thought it! I find a 40p ex-lib Cape in a charity bin down the Holloway Road!!! And on page 211 it has (£410 constr. Case solved, Inspector...it wasn't the Irony Kid what done it, after all... must have been some Chinky-eyed proof-reader in Penguins. I'm running off the erratum slips straight away - message me if you want one - am so cook-a-hoop I might even go down the London Book warehouse and stick 'em in their unsold stock for free ...well no .. for a free supply of their forthcomings. Please.

Sammy Lee

09-Apr-2009 by Frank Marker

Great news about Sammy Lee. Pity it's not being released individually though. I already have the fab The London Nobody Knows and the not so fab Bikes of Belsize when it was released on dvd last year. Still have to buy it though, just for the excellent Sammy Lee. Just started to read a biog on Tony Newley. A very talented chap and not some you could pigeon hole either. The BBC comedy series The Strange World of Gurney Slade and the Newley/Bricusse musical Stop the World were bot well ahead of their time.

Sohemian Society

09-Apr-2009 by Frank Marker

Thanks for the kind comments Billlondonsoul. Try and make our next one on the 15th. The talk will also include a powerpoint presentation.

Sammy Lee

09-Apr-2009 by Stan Bowles

A mouthy little scouser walking round Soho's strip joints?...

"THE SMALL WORLD OF SAMMY LEE"

09-Apr-2009 by King Crombie

Strictly top shelf picture. The opening Berwick Street foootage alone worth the price of admission.

London Films Box Set

08-Apr-2009 by Bill Londonsoul

This might make up for the lack of contemporary decent British film making. It was on the Cindelica site, and I can't wait!: We've just got a list of DVD releases and reissues for the next months - and the London boxset has certainly caught out eye. Apparently coinciding with the GLA festival celebrating The Story of London, the box will feature movies that offer 'diverse post-War London locations from the 50s and 60s and which explore quintessentially London themes' - think the London docks, Soho and the Underground. So what's on it? Well, two films we've seen and review before (The London Nobody knows/Les Bicyclettes de Belsize) and three gems from the 50s and 60s never before released on DVD - The Yellow Balloon, Pool of London and the much-anticipated The Small World of Sammy Lee (pictured above and which you can read about here). Release date is 1st June 2009 - we'll be reviewing well before then.

The Sohemian's Groovy Bob night.

08-Apr-2009 by Bill Londonsoul

Really enjoyed this, last night. Thank you.

Sohemian Meeting 15th April

08-Apr-2009 by Frank Marker

Sohemian Meeting: A talk and powerpoint presentation on the History of Gay Soho. Admission:£3 15th April 7:30PM Upstairs at the Wheatsheaf, Rathbone Place Speaker: David Thompson Join us in a historical journey through the streets of Soho that have witnessed the secrets, trials and triumphs of gay life for nearly a thousand years. Hear about everything from the 17th century Molly trials, to the haunts of Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward, Virginia Woolf, Radclyffe Hall and Derek Jarman. From the clandestine club life of the 30s and 40s to the underground world of the 50s. With a serial killer or two thrown into the mix, this is a talk that everyone interested in the cultural history of Soho should attend. Sohemian Meeting A History of Gay Soho Admission:£3 15th April 7:30PM Upstairs at the Wheatsheaf, Rathbone Place Speaker: David Thompson Join us in a historical journey through the streets of Soho that have witnessed the secrets, trials and triumphs of gay life for nearly a thousand years. Hear about everything from the 17th century Molly trials, to the haunts of Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward, Virginia Woolf, Radclyffe Hall and Derek Jarman. From the clandestine club life of the 30s and 40s to the underground world of the 50s. With a serial killer or two thrown into the mix, this is a talk that everyone interested in the cultural history of Soho should attend.

British films

08-Apr-2009 by COFFINDODGER

I am consistently appalled at the dearth of good British films in any genre. I think the last truly great British made movie was Confessions of a Driving Instructor.

very true Nick...

07-Apr-2009 by anonymous

I comepletely agree with you on recent Brit flicks - I don't think there's been a genuine 'sit up and take notice' british film since Trainspotting. And with regards to the post below yours...maybe Human Punk or England Away can address the balance?...I hope so.

Can British films get any worse?

06-Apr-2009 by Nick

Can British films get any worse? The Boat That Rocked has already triggered debate as to whether it's even crummier than Lesbian Vampire Killers. François Truffaut said, "There's something about England that's anti-cinematic," and English film-makers - quite possibly Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish ones, as well - always seem to fall over themselves to prove him right. I seldom go to see British films for pleasure. I go out of duty, and invariably regret it. Love Actually and The History Boys were so ineptly crafted and emotionally dishonest they left me depressed for days. The only thing that stopped me slitting my wrists after Atonement was that No Country for Old Men and Sweeney Todd were coming out a week later, and I was looking forward to seeing those. I got so bored during The Wind That Shakes the Barley that I actually started trying to read a magazine. In the cinema! In the dark! Of course, there are exceptions. Happy-Go-Lucky was interesting (it forced me to examine the reasons why I wanted to kill the Sally Hawkins character) and The Bank Job mildly diverting, but most British output seems divided between prestige period pics by inheritors of the Merchant Ivory mantle, and ladmag fodder, exemplified by all those ghastly British gangster films that spoiled my stint as a bona fide film critic in the 1990s. There isn't space here to bang on about all my wacky theories about what Truffaut called the "incompatibility between the terms 'cinema' and 'Britain'", so I'll limit myself to just a couple. I once heard a British film director say in an interview that he wasn't interested in telling a story visually (why were you directing a bloody film then?), and it's clear he's not the only one. Historically, Britain has produced more world-class writers than painters, and words tend to be valued far above visual imagery, if only because reading and listening apparently require more effort than looking, and so are deemed to be worthier pursuits. A lot of British film-makers assume that screenplay equals dialogue, and because the Brits still haven't caught on to William Goldman's maxim that "Screenplay is structure", we get endless exposition and a plodding procession of scenes unfurling like stage plays. Scene begins, there's some dialogue, scene ends, next scene begins, more dialogue and so on. Lawks-a-mercy, we might as well be watching a Restoration drama at the Old Vic. The worst recent offender in this area was Revolutionary Road, which may not have been strictly British, but its director was, and he sure as hell managed to imbue it with his achingly dull theatrical sensibility. I'm not saying theatre is dull, you understand; just that there's a time and a place for it, and it's not up there on the cinema screen. Even when British directors do try to tell a story visually, the best they can manage is to copy other, better film-makers, usually American ones. They think a bit of Goodfellas-style steadicam would be cool, for example. The likes of Guy Ritchie or Nick Love fail utterly to grasp that the reason a fancy editing or camera effect might originally have worked was because the director was using it to advance the narrative or make an emotional point, instead of doing it just to show off or to try to be "visual" without actually thinking in visual terms, like poor old Kenneth Branagh, who inserted so many pointless camera parabolas into Mary Shelley's Frankenstein that the results were comical. That the British distrust all genres except the one in which people wear bonnets doesn't help, but just as big a problem is their undue reverence for realism. Fantasy is frowned upon, or dismissed as fare for kiddies or spotty adolescents. Yet the British films that have best stood the test of time are not critically revered kitchen-sink dramas such as A Taste of Honey or Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, but Hammer's gothic fairytales, Ealing's bracing whimsy, and the sublime romantic fabulations of Powell and Pressburger. And let's face it - realism is probably the last thing we need right now.

Human Punk and England Away films?...

06-Apr-2009 by Mad Hatter

hi all, a while ago there were a few posts about the release of film adaptations of Human Punk and England Away...is there any further news on this?

Sohemian Talk

03-Apr-2009 by Frank Marker

Sohemian Society Presents Tuesday April 7, 7pm POP! GOES THE EASEL The life of '60s art Impressario 'Groovy Bob' Fraser Come and re-live London in that Go-Go decade, hang out (albeit retrospectively) with the top cultural movers n' shakers of the time, get high on the conceptual art that was flying off the walls of Groovy Bob's cutting edge Mayfair gallery. Groovy Bob's biographer Harriet Vyner will be talking to Cathi Unsworth, former music journalist and author of ‘The Not Knowing’, ‘The Singer' and the forthcoming, and much awaited 'Bad Penny Blues' . Yes, it promises to be quite an evening. Copies of Harriet's book will be available on the night. This event will take place at The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1 (off Oxford Street, near Tottenham Court Road underground station). Entrance fee: £3 "Drugs? What do you know about drugs?" Overheard – Robert Fraser to Keith Richards, 1982

Robert Peston

30-Mar-2009 by Will

is a bit like the kid in school who put his hand up and pleads 'miss, miss' but i've just read his book Who Runs Britain and it is a pretty damning indictment of how this goverment has presided over a huge outflow of value from this country. The main culprits he contends are the private equity companies who now own a signifcant percentage of what used to be called UK PLC and who have made huge profits but they and their partners are domiciled overseas therefore depriving Britain of tax revenues that would build schools and hospitals. The Tories privatised our public sector and Labour have sold off our private sector. Read it. He goes off on tangents here and there as he does on TV but on the whole the man on the Clapham Omnibus can understand it.

Chris Eccles stole money from his mother

27-Mar-2009 by fytzti@ncerva.com

THIEF, pay it back says Charlie.........

Chris Eccles is a Fag

27-Mar-2009 by fytzti@ncerva.com

Charlie is cheating on you boyfriend.......

"The Human Kind"

20-Mar-2009 by King Crombie

Frank, according to Ken Worpole it's a book of short stories "set before ,during and after the War". Only so far in, but have no reason to disagree with KW thus far. First published 1953 my Pan copy !957.

Alexander Baron

20-Mar-2009 by Frank Marker

What's the Human Kind about King Crom? I just picked up a Pan copy of his war novel, From The City From The Plough. I've just finished watching on DVD the complete series of Family at War. Baron was the scriptwriter for a number of the episodes, they are by far the best in what was a superlative series. Anyone remember the memorial opening with the Union Jack fluttering defiantly on the sandcastle and the beautiful strains of Vaughan Williams Symphony No 4 used as the theme tune?

Topper

20-Mar-2009 by London Central

People make their own choices. It's like drink, if it turns you into an in sufferable ass, then don't do the bloody stuff! Period. Sorry if that sounds like Bufton Tufton, but, er, tuff. Anyway, I'm sure as you say Topper is a charming chap nowadays. Still not sure about La Faithfull though.? She appears to be turning a sort of jewish agony aunt (a groovy Claire Rayner with tattoos if you like) telling 'her children' like Mossy how they should run their lives. Kate is a flibbertigibbet, so just leave her to it.

Sohemian Evening

20-Mar-2009 by Frank Marker

Hello Richie4 Thanks for the kind message re Sohemian Meeting. It was very enjoyable evening all round. Paolo was a fine fellow. I suspect most people were initially there for the Marriott half of the talk, although I think a good many who had never heard of Friday were still entertained by Paolo's descriptions of his antics on off the park. Kissing a PC when he scored! Nowadays the copper would probably say he had been psychologically scarred by the incident. I noticed Paolo didn't mention the incident with Mark Lawrenson's sport's bag! Check Wiki if you want to find out the full details. Our next event will be on the 7th April when we will be inviting Harriet Vyner to give us a talk about the 1960s groovy art gallery owner, Robert Fraser. So if posho junkies hanging out with Keef and Mick are your thing, please come along. On the 15th April will be hosting a talk on the History of Gay Soho. It'll be a bona evening. Please bring your polari glossary with you.

Alexander Baron "The Human Kind"

18-Mar-2009 by King Crombie

Just swagged a lovely Pan-Books copy of Alexander Baron's "The Human Kind".. Not sure it will look so handsome by the time I'm through with it, still books are for reading. Review to folow....

Thanks

11-Mar-2009 by Richie4

for the Paolo Hewitt evening the other week I thoroughly enjoyed it, Please keep us posted of any other events.

Terry Dene

04-Mar-2009 by COFFIN DODGER

I'm not sure he ever went to prison. He was called up for National Service at the peak of his career and had a nervous breakdown. After that his career never recovered and he has attempted many comebacks since.

Very interesting....

04-Mar-2009 by Hubert Lane

Wipe it off. I think Terry Dene a long -forgotten beat star did time for shoplifting. He later found God. He was so popular for while he even starred in his own film vehicle.

COMPUTER THIEVING IS A SERIOUS CRIME

04-Mar-2009 by anonymous

BEWARE OF UGLY STINKING LOW CLASS RACIST BRITISH POLICE IN UNIFORMS AND UGLY STINKING LOW CLASS RACIST WHITE BRITISH NEIGHBORS BOTH COMMITTING THE SERIOUS CRIME OF INTERNET AND OFFLINE COMPUTER HACKING. RACIST BRITISH POLICE IN UNIFORMS PERPETUATE RACISM IN CONNIVANCE WITH RACIST WHITE BRITISH NEIGHBORS TO ILLEGALLY AND UNWARRANTEDLY USE WALL SEE THROUGH TECHNOLOGY, AUDIO LISTENING IN DEVICES, EMR VAN ECK PHREAKING EQUIPMENT, AND INTERNET, EMAIL, AND LANDLINE AND CELLPHONE TELEPHONE HACKING AGAINST ASIANS IN THEIR HOMES THROUGH WAILING SIRENS FROM OUTSIDE FOR EVERY BODY MOVEMENT OF ASIANS IN THEIR HOMES. INTERNET AND COMPUTER HACKING AND INFILTRATING INTO OTHERS PRIVACY IS A SERIOUS CRIME. THE SOLE PURPOSE OF THE RACIST BRITISH POLICE IS TO MAINTAIN LAW AND ORDER THROUGH ENSURING THAT THE RACIST WHITE BRITISH SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO DEHUMANIZINGLY DISTURB, INTIMIDATE, AND HARASS ASIANS IN THEIR HOMES AND ON STREETS, SHOPS, AND PUBLIC TRANSPORT THROUGH THE ILLEGAL USE OF THESE TECHNOLOGIES WITH POLICE CONNIVANCE AND TO INTIMIDATE, HARASS, DISTURB, AND PROVOCATE ASIANS WHO REFUSE TO TOLERATE THIS ILLEGAL NONSENSE OF RACIST BRITISH POLICE IN CONNIVANCE WITH RACIST BRITISH NEIGHBORS. http://the-bastard.com/index.php?section=3&page=454 http://www.articlearchives.com/international-relations/national-security/1790326-1.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N3ySmBP5ds http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/22/racist-cop-uses-uk-t.html http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1026865.cms http://www.sukh-dukh.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=2251 REFER ITEM NO. 7 FOR YOUR INFORMATION AND AWARENESS http://www.justlanded.com/english/UK/Tools/Forums/Culture/Whyare-the-English-so-racist-towards-Indians-and-Pakistanis http://gideon.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/12/white-australia-racism-against-indian-students.htm http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/08/145937.php http://www.hindu.com/2007/08/11/stories/2007081161911900.htm http://www.british-sikh-federation.org/Local%20and%20General%20Election%20Issues,%20Year%202001-20021.htm http://www.justlanded.de/english/Dubai/Tools/Forums/Culture/Racism-in-Dubai-against-Expatriates Burke, J. and Warren, P. (2002). How mobile phones let spies see our every move. The Observer, October 13. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,811027,00.html Bush, Steve. (2002, August 12). Radar with Cell Phones? Look at CellDar. http://3nw.com/pda/radar_with_cell_phones__look_at_celldar.htm Bush, Steve. (2006, November 17). Police will use radar to see through walls. Electronics Weekly. http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/2006/11/17/40181/Police+will+use+radar+to+see+through+walls.htm Chan, Hans, H. (1999, June 4). Cops have eyes on x-ray vision. New technology would let police see through walls. New York: APBNews.com. http://www.angelfire.com/nj3/soundweapon/xray.htm Hearn, Kelly. (2001, April 18). High tech cop tools see through walls. United Press International cited on CommonDreams.org. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0418-04.htm Hunt, A., Tillery, C., & Wild, N. (2001). Through-the-wall surveillance technologies. Corrections Today, 63(4), 132. Kuhn, M. G., & Anderson, R. J. (1998). Soft tempest: Hidden data transmission using electromagnetic emanations http://groups.csail.mit.edu/cis/crypto/classes/6.857/papers/ih98-tempest.pdf Lamb, G. M. (2006). Does digital age spell privacy’s doom? Christian Science Monitor, 98(149). Lyon, D. (2001c). Surveillance after September 11. Surveillance after September 11. Sociological Research Online 6(3). http://www.socresonline.org.uk/6/3/lyon.html Marx, G. T. (1986). The iron fist and the velvet glove: Totalitarian potentials within democratic structures. http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www.iron.html Marx, G. T. (2001). Murky conceptual waters: The public and the private. Ethics and Information Technology, 3(3), 157-159. http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/murkypublicandprivate.html McGowan, Dave. (2000, June). Sony’s Magic cameras. http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/cameras.htm Mejia, R. (2002). More surveillance on the way. The Nation, October 30. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20021111/mejia20021030 Miles, Donna (2006, January 3). New device will sense through concrete walls. American Forces Information Service. US Department of Defense. http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2006/20060103_3822.html Sanders, Jane (2001, April 12). Flash of force: Radar flashlight could help police detect suspects hiding behind doors and 8-inch thick walls. Georgia Institute of Technology Research News. http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/RADARFLASH.html Simonite, Tom. (2006, November 14). Compact radar tracks movement through a wall. New Scientist. http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/weapons/dn10524 Wright, J. (2005). National security, corporate security, or human security? http://globalresearch.ca/articles/WRI506A.html

Go Easy Son

03-Mar-2009 by King Crombie

It's easy to have a go at junkies, but in my limited experience which includes never tasting H, it's no easy occupation. It would seem to me both of those recently mentioned here (Faithful and Headon) have experienced heroin addiction with and without dosh, something Messrs. Richards and Wood know nothing about. Although it's my nature to be less than charitable to most Rock"n'Roll people, I do feel especially in Mr Headon's case (having been a genuinely talented musician) that he's done his bird and should be left to make the best out of whatever he has left .Nuff said !

Topper

02-Mar-2009 by London Central

Sorry, but tough. There's nothing worse that old rockers breast beating.

Topper

02-Mar-2009 by iPat

In the recent Joe Strummer film he talks about how low he was then. It's easy to judge but he'd lost everything. If you dont respect yourself you cant respect others can you? It was god to see him healthy in the film.

The Horse

02-Mar-2009 by Frank Marker

The Topper was done for heroin. I remember seeing him in the Blue Sky Cafe in Westbourne Grove immediately after he was kicked out of the Clash. He had all his gold records gathered under his arms. When this sweet old boy, who'd probably never heard of the band, went up to congratulate him on his records Mr Headon muttered to his mate "Silly old ***ker!" Never thought much of him after that. He deserved the nick!

Nicky "Topper" Headon

02-Mar-2009 by King Crombie

The Clash's Mr Headon did a stretch, but I don't know how long or exactly what for ?

Crosby

02-Mar-2009 by Frank Marker

Hi Peter Day I don't think it was Steve Stills, but his erstwhile colleague Dave Crosby who did chokey for drugs and firearms offences. Talking of music, is any of you chaps off to see the Zombies perform their classic 1968 album Odessey and Oracle at the Hammersmith Apollo next month? They'll also be a solo set from Colin Blunstone, one of the truly great voices in brit pop.

Bono

02-Mar-2009 by Frank Marker

Is it possible to put that plonker Bono and U2 away for inflicting their dreadful noise pollution on the West End of London last Friday night?

Richards spending the Night

02-Mar-2009 by Peter Day

The Last Time I heard they did. Didn't William Rees-Mogg write the editorial in the Times the following morning and they were released during the next day? I was Just A Boy (shit that was Daltrey) at the time.

JailByrds

02-Mar-2009 by Peter Day

Stephen Stills, Willie Nelson, James Brown and does Tony Orlando (Tie A Yellow Ribbon) qualify?

02-Mar-2009 by Bob Todd

Does Johnny Cash count?

Stars Behind Bars

02-Mar-2009 by Hubert Lane

Dare I mention Mr Glitter?

Did Richards even spend the night ?

02-Mar-2009 by King Crombie

I have a pal who was in the exercise yard when Keith got pulled out .My Pal was well gutted as he hadn't had a chance top have a chat .

Popstars who have been jailed...

01-Mar-2009 by Peter Day

Leapster, fontana, boygeorge, jagger and richard for one night. Macca in Tokyo any more?

The Leapster

01-Mar-2009 by Sister George

According to Wiki The Leapster has had such an eventful life, singing that one hit in every 1970s chicken-in-a-basket cabaret club presumably, he has recently published the first of two parts of his autobiography. His website is well worth a visit if you have a spare minute or two. Here's an extract from his philosophical take on life: "Just as long as you have yer health, sense of humour and a bit o love in yer life, it aint all bad" . Not so much Wittgenstein, as the old flipping drunken bore who props up the bar and is to be avoided at all costs. Anyone see that BBC4 1963 fly-on-the-wall doc about Swindon Town the other day? Here's a few of the names I recognised, Mike Summerbee, Don Rogers, Bobby Woodruff and Ernie Hunt. Lovely stuff.

A True Mind-Bender

01-Mar-2009 by Frank Marker

Another 60s pop star who got locked up a year or so ago was ex Mind Bender, Wayne Fontana. He got 11 months for setting light to his about to be repossessed car with the repo man still inside. When he was committed to trial he turned up at court dressed as the lady of justice, with a sword, scales, crown, cape and dark glasses, claiming justice 'was blind'.

leapy Lee

01-Mar-2009 by anonymous

The Leapster did have a bar in Spain and Little Arrows still gives him a living of sorts. I remember him best for getting locked up at the peak of his fame when he and Diana Dors' husband glassed a man in a pub in Sunningdale. I think he was a handful, Mr Lee, and Lake went on to shoot himself.

Nice Interview

01-Mar-2009 by Jimmy Jazz

Total change of subject - sorry - i've just found this John King interview at www.bookdepository.co.uk/interview/with/author/john-king Maybe old news to some but i found it quite interesting.

Leapy Lee's 2nd Act ?

01-Mar-2009 by King Crombie

I'm pretty certain Leapy Lee ended up in Majorca or some other mug infested Spanish hell hole pimping Leapy Lee's Curry Circus or some similar foolishness.

Leapy Lee

28-Feb-2009 by Ladbroke Grove

I beg your indulgence Coffin Dodger, you were quite correct the Crispy hit was called Pied Piper. Leapy Lee was the performer on Little Arrows.

Elmsy.

28-Feb-2009 by Frank Marker

Here's that quote in full: "From half-spoken shadows emerges a canvas. A kiss of light breaks to reveal a moment when all mirrors are redundant. Listen to the portrait of the dance of perfection: the Spandau Ballet". What a wordsmith! Do you any of you think that when you hear 'True' being played at a wedding reception?

Liverpool Vs Spurs

28-Feb-2009 by Frank Marker

I remember at the time big things were expected from the Dave Clark Five. They were seen as London's answer to the Beatles. The music papers at the time termed the DC5's awful tubthumping crapola, 'The Tottenham Sound'. Damned lucky for us the Stones came around!

Little Arrows

28-Feb-2009 by Ladbroke Grove

Hi Coffin Dodger. Yes I well recall Crispy. But wasn't his hit called Little Arrows? I remember our music teacher at the time playing it on his dansette for the delectation of his bemused pupils, obviously under the misguided impression that he was 'getting down with the kids' by being all hip and groovy.. He would have made more of an impression if he he'd spun Stockhausen's musique concrete oeuvre. I have a feeling Crispy now runs a bar in a Spanish resort somewhere? I imagine he still woos the ex-pats with Little Arrows. I must agree with you Old Donovan Leitch is a bit away with the cosmic fairies these days. I remember an old flower child saying how he knew the 'peace decade' was over when he heard old Don yell "Wanker!" at some unfortunate bloke backstage at a 1968 Benefit Concert. You have to admit, though, the man did write some memorable songs. Tony Hadley has to be accepted into the Naff Pop Stars Club - actually you could pluck anyone from the 1980s. Anyone remember MC Robert Elms toe-curling four line intro to the Spands before they took to the stage at some pretentious New Romantic Club? To think people at the time took that arse as a style guru!

Groovy party

28-Feb-2009 by COFFIN DODGER

Crispian ST Peters stormed to the number one slot in the mid-sixties with a catchy tune called The Pied Paper. The success went to his head and he announced in the Melody Maker that he was going to be bigger than The Beatles. Three months later he was back into the obscurity he had emerged from. He'd be good value at the party. Donovan is another one whose self delusion has not been successfully treated. get him along.

Naff Rock Stars

28-Feb-2009 by Ladbroke Grove

Back to Daltrey. I remember a friend of mine thought up an imaginary club where naff pop/rock stars all hung out together. Daltrey was one of the members along with Justin Hayward, Cliff Richards, Meatloaf, Brian May,all of the Quo and Ringo Starr. Can any of you chaps think of any more inclusions? I thought of putting Bono up, but then again, he's so bloody awful, he'd probably be blackballed by this mob.

Marriott and Friday

28-Feb-2009 by Frank Marker

I'd like to give a big thank you to any London Books messengers who came to our last Sohemian meeting on Steve Marriott and Robin Friday. Paolo Hewitt's passion and love of these two lovable blokes shone through on what turned out to be our best attended meeting to date. Keeping with the 60s/70s theme our next meeting will be on Groovy Bob (Robert Frazer). So if posho junkies hanging out with Keef and Mick are your thing please come along.

West End Jungle

26-Feb-2009 by Frank Marker

Anyone seen West End Jungle DVD yet? I really can't recommend it highly enough. Hilarious transatlantic voice over too. It's available on Amazon and Network

Guardian

23-Feb-2009 by Alan Harvey

Top 1,000 Novels feature on Saturday: Night and The City by Gerald Kersh and The Football Factory by John King both feature.

Marianne

23-Feb-2009 by COFFIN DODGER

Your'e right Ladbroke - she's made a career out of Jagger and Mars Bars. She was very sweet singing As Tears Go By sitting on a stool and in a mini skirt and kinky boots on Ready, Steady, Go though. Yes, there was a lot of other quality talent out there at the time: Chrissie and Jean Shrimpton, Judy Geeson, Twinkle and others.

Faithless

21-Feb-2009 by Ladbroke Grove

Bar the allure of la Faithful did anyone stick out Girl on a Motorbike? I thought it was a bloody awful film. I see Faithful's got another book out too. From what I can see it's yet more rehashing of her life story, a bit more updated to the present perhaps. I personally think she's a bit of pain-in-the- arse. Similarly to ex-drug addled middle-class women who were in the spotlight in the 60s for hanging out with rock stars, but with no apparent talent to speak of, she now hawks her tedious Mother Courage bit around for all sundry. She's a bit of a precious madam in interviews too.

Marianne & The Leather Girls

21-Feb-2009 by King Crombie

I do believe the continental title for that flick was "Naked Under Leather". Bardot, Blackman and Miss Rigg should all get mentioned in despatches.

Girl on A Motorcycle

21-Feb-2009 by COFFIN DODGER

mariane faithfull at her most alluring

Not a black leather man myself

20-Feb-2009 by King Crombie

Well not on the geezers anyway ! Jan Hudson wrote a NEL paperpabck called "Hells Angels" - not to be confused with Hunter's classic and Pat Stadly wrote "Black Leather Barbarians" for them too. Not sure if this help's, I'm not that clued into the biker genre.

Bikers

20-Feb-2009 by Will S

Spotted an obit the other day of an author. Can't find it now but he was among other things the writer of books about biker gangs terrorising Britain. I meant to find out more. Don't think it is the guy who wrote the Chopper books in the 1970s but it could be. Anyone help?

Sohemian Society: Steve Marriott and Robin Friday

20-Feb-2009 by Frank Marker

Just a reminder to let people know about our talk by Paolo Hewitt on the above two lovable 'erberts. Here's the details Date and time: 25th Feb 7:30pm Upstairs at the Wheatsheaf Pub Rathbone Place W1 (nearest tube Tottenham Court Road) Admission: £3

Laters

18-Feb-2009 by Funny looking postman

I can't divulge

only asking

17-Feb-2009 by Cass Pennant

Can anyone on here tell me when Dougie Brimsons next offering is out I hear on the grapevine its going to be a craker? Come on Doug mate dont keep us hanging on any longer mate? We've waited along time now.I did hear he was writing a musical with Jess Conrad based on his time in the RAF is this true?

Faith and Daltrey

17-Feb-2009 by anonymous

they were both raised in acton, london

Faith and Daltrey

17-Feb-2009 by McFurious

Georgina Hale who cooked a meal for McVicar in the film naked except a small apron also played Adam Faith's squeeze Celeste in Budgie

Faith in Daltrey

17-Feb-2009 by Man In A Suitcase

A chap called David Courtenay wrote songs for Sayer and Daltrey - Giving It All Away etc - also both bods were in McVicar which could well have been in gestation in the late 1970s as it was released in 1980. Adam had his finger in many pies and Daltrey probably aspired to his financial acumen. Sadly Adam's finances came undone before his death when he was made bankrupt after investing his fortune with the crook Roger Levitt - this in spite of him writing a financial tips column for the Mail on Sunday.

The Burwash Rog - Terry Nelhams- Leo Sayer connection ?

16-Feb-2009 by King Crombie

Luke J you may have marched in on the very plot-up that foisted Leo Sayer on the punters. Wasn't Adam Faith Sayer's manager ?

Roger Daltrey

16-Feb-2009 by Luke J

I too met Mr Daltrey. It was in the mid 1970s in a pub in Dean Street one week-day afternoon. I was working for an advertising agency running copy around by hand. I saw him through the window sitting with Adam Faith. Full of youthful bravado I marched straight in and shook Adam Faith by the hand and said it was an honour to meet him. I completely ignored Daltrey. Sweet.

Daltrey

16-Feb-2009 by anonymous

I'm not near now and don't know if he still owns the gaff. When I bought my first car in the 1970s we used to drive out to the country and one summer afternoon we pulled up on the village green and watched the cricket match to my astonishment Roger was bowling, his perm bouncing when he ran. I saw him often after that in the area on Sunday's walking his dogs in tweeds and breeches and stick. My passneger would roll down the window and roar him up which did not amuse him,

Burwash Rog anonymous ?

15-Feb-2009 by King Crombie

So whats the damage thirty years on ?

Well he did.

15-Feb-2009 by anonymous

It was in Burwash in Sussex and Rog had trousered Rudyard Kilpling's old gaff. He was walking around the village in breeches and a deerstalker by the mid-1970s.

Roger has a trout farm too ?

14-Feb-2009 by King Crombie

I thought the OAP rock geezer with the trout farm was that one legged git from Jethro Tull who played the whistle . Does Roger have one too ? A different kind of counter culture I guess, but to quote "Irish' Jack Lyons "Daltrey and Entwistle were always fuckin' Teds".

Roger

14-Feb-2009 by anonymous

Piss off back to the trout farm. Shame you didn't die before you got old.

Rog, A couple of ?'s

14-Feb-2009 by King Crombie

What did McVicar think of you wearing the George Davis shirt ? It's well recorded that he guided you away from your interest in The Twins. Was it before you and he teamed up ?

He Loved His Ma.

13-Feb-2009 by Roger "Wear Your George T-Shirt With Pride" Daltrey

George Davis: Yes just what we need: Another film on a thoroughly nasty piece of work. Very uplifting. Loved Alan Sillitoe on Desert Island Disc's imploring us to hang a banker while introducing Edith Piaf's, La Ca Ira, a rousing anthemic song to the storming of the Bastille,

1984 by Orwell

13-Feb-2009 by Leroy

Free in today's Times. Nice Penguin paperback

George Davis

13-Feb-2009 by COFFIN DODGER

Geoff, many years ago when I worked in the City I was having lunch in a pub near St Paul's called the Master Gunner and Rose Davis was our waitress. I believe her husband was prison at the time for a crime he did commit and AFTER she and others had fought tenaciously for his release. She had dignity and was very elegant .should have been a kept woman and I always thought it was a great shame you had hitched herself to him at an early age,

George Davis Is Innocent

13-Feb-2009 by Geoff Binns

Piece on George Davis in today's Daily Mail. Apparently he's been barred from his wife's funeral today. He's now a minicab driver leading the quiet life. But those who recall the George Davis Is Innocent campaign will remember how daring and exciting it was at the time. I've always thought it would make a good film incorporating the London of The Sweeney and a love story with an unhappy end a bit like Buster. Lots of opportunities for comedy. Screenplay writers out there - take notice.

DOCKERS & DETECTIVES ROUND #2

11-Feb-2009 by King Crombie

I'm giving Ken Worpole's "Dockers and Detectives" a second going over and although it's a bit "cap'n'gown" in it's presentation there's still plenty of meat on the bones. Well worth a second dip !

The Tall Man

05-Feb-2009 by anonymous

New book I recommend by Chloe Hooper. It is the true contemporary story about the death of an Aborogine in police custody in a remote part of Australia. Has a Truman Capote In Cold Blood feel to it and I would be surprised if a film does not emerge from this.

John Terry's spare time

04-Feb-2009 by anonymous

I know there's a few Chelsea fans on here, so I thought you'd might like to know what your captain does in his spare time ;o)... http://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/news/4076812._NHS_is_exploiting_my_life____claims_trasnssexual/

Charles Frend

04-Feb-2009 by Man In A Suitcase

was the director of The Cruel Sea and later in his career he directed one episode of the legendary TV series Man In A Suitcase.

Cruel Sea

03-Feb-2009 by Frank Marker

Great music by Alan Rawsthorne too.

The Cruel Sea - C4 1.05pm today

03-Feb-2009 by Junco

"Charles Frend's San Demetrio London was one of the finest naval combat films made anywhere during the Second World War. Here, the director's insight into the conditions endured and the emotions experienced by embattled sailors of all ranks is very much to the fore in this stirring adaptation (by Eric Ambler) of Nicholas Monsarrat's bestselling novel. Produced by Leslie Norman (father of Barry), this is a prime example of the docudramatic style that, spurning the gung-ho heroics of Hollywood, characterised the best British war films. The performances of Jack Hawkins and his all-star crew reinforce the sense of realism." Worth a watch?

Marriot and Friday Talk: Amendment

02-Feb-2009 by Frank Marker

Whoops. That date for the Sohemian Talk on the above two should read: 25th February: 7:30pm and NOT 25th November. Sorry!

Marriott and Friday talk

02-Feb-2009 by Frank Marker

Here's the details of the first Sohemian talk for 2009. Wednesday, 25th November 7:30pm The Sohemian Society presents Steve Marriott and Robin Friday a talk by Paolo Hewitt Upstairs at The Wheatsheaf 25 Rathbone Place London W1 (off Oxford Street, nearest tube: Tottenham Court Road) Entrance: £3 After the talk Paolo will be signing copies of his biographies on Marriott and Friday.

A Kid For Two Farthings

02-Feb-2009 by Bob Todd

I watched this film as recommended and was surprised at the presentation of the ethnic mix in east london in the 1950s. Was it really that diverse then? I think not if they had to get Spike Milligan to play a Sikh in a turban,

Marriott

31-Jan-2009 by Frank Marker

Look forward to seeing you there Eamon. I happen to think the songwriting partnership of Marriott and Lane in songwriting terms were a real power to be reckoned with. Like Marriott I also think Ronnie Lane managed to keep his integrity, especially when he went solo, unfortunately losing a lot of money when he took to the road with his band Slim Chance, accompanied with a travelling fair and if that wasn't bad enough contracting MS in the early 1980s. I hear the Small Faces ex drummer, Kenny Jones, now plays polo with Prince Charles and the nobs. Oh well, each to his own I suppose. RIP: John Martyn and Davey Graham: two more uncompromising talents.

Steve Marriott

30-Jan-2009 by Eamon

Look forward to that Frank. Marriott is one of the most underrated guitarists, vocalists and songwriters of the last 50 years. His refusal to bow to the star system and take shit from anyone cost him dearly but his integrity is at least forever intact.

Ref: Sohemian Society Meeting for February

29-Jan-2009 by Frank Marker

Paolo Hewitt will be talking about ex Small Faces singer and guitarist Steve Marriott and legendary footballer Robin Friday in February. Details to follow.

MIAS (NOT MIA'S)

26-Jan-2009 by King Crombie

As I rarely watch the box I can't pass judgement on Mr Frost's show, but have no reason to doubt your sp. Why does he do it ? - DOSH &/OR EGO !

KC

26-Jan-2009 by Man In A Suitcase

What I was getting at is - why would David Frost contaminate a prestigious career with such sugary TV as Through the Keyhole?

Man In A Suitcase Regarding Dosh...

26-Jan-2009 by King Crombie

The way I see it - it doesn't matter how much you've made, what matters is A): how much you've spent and B): how much more you need to spend. Can't exactly see Mr Frost down Tescos for a deal on a case of Stellas, can you ?

A Kid For Two Farthings -the book

26-Jan-2009 by King Crombie

Yes, I posted about the book last year - i enjoyed it and Kid Crombie (twelve years old) gave it the thumbs up too.

Kid for Two Farthings

25-Jan-2009 by Callan

Yes, an excellent film directed by Carol Reed. Look out for Babs Windsor, Sid James, Alfie Bass, Sam Kydd, Irene Handel, Diana Dors and the boxer Primo Carnera. Originally a book by Wolf Mankowtiz based on his own east end childhood and one you may want to think about reviving.

Gilbert Harding

25-Jan-2009 by Man In A Suitcase

Yes, I stand corrected about Harding comitting suicide - I don't know where I got that from. I'd have sworn on it. Surely, there must be a case for those John Freeman interviews to be released on DVD? Besides Harding I remember the interview with Adam Faith which was also very revealing and had a close-up, smokey quality which nobody has tried to emulate since. Frost was good for a while and I note the Nixon film that has just been released. But to me one of life's greatest mysteries is why does David Frost persist in presenting the afternoon-TV dross THROUGH THE KEYHOLE? Surely he does not need the money?

A Kid For Two Farthings

25-Jan-2009 by Kenneth Drury-Lane

Next week (Tuesday at 1.40pm I think) Channel 4 are showing the film A Kid For Two Farthings which if memory serves was discussed on this board some time back. I notice it is in colour which means the last time I saw it was when I owned (or my parents did) a black and white set. It has a lot of London footage and is a charming tale to boot peppered with familiar faces. SkyPlus it.

Car Boot Sale

22-Jan-2009 by Harry Harkins

Book stalls included. Mill Lane off the Purley Way. Sunday Feb 1 2009. Traders from 6-7am. Public 7.30 onwards. be there or be square.

The Gangs of Manchester: the story of the Scuttlers

22-Jan-2009 by King Crombie

Anyone had a go at Andrew Davies' book ?

One for the diary

21-Jan-2009 by Arthur Askey

Sunday, 25 January at 11.15, Radio 4. Desert Island Discs with Alan Sillitoe. Will he choose the Arctic Monkeys?

Watch yer Heads!

21-Jan-2009 by Frank Marker

I'll keep my eyes open for you Derek and ensure I wear a crash helmet next time I walk around an old bone yard. Fellow posters may be interested to know of two fabulous dvd releases on Network: 'who Killed Teddy Bear' starring Sal Mineo as a bodybuilding weirdo killer and a documentary from 1961 called West End Jungle which offers the definitive insight into the reality of working in the sex trade in early 60s Soho

Gravestones

21-Jan-2009 by Derek Wellman

I am currently putting together a crime fiction piece based on a series of gruesome murders in graveyards around the UK where the victim was crushed by a falling piece of masonary that once formed part of a gravestone. I am in the research stage at present but am keen to hear from fellow tombstone death fans

Gilbert Harding

21-Jan-2009 by Frank Marker

Although Gilbert Harding was a depressant and alcoholic - his interview on John Freeman's Face to Face was testament to what a sad, unfulfilled and lonely man he was - he did not in fact commit suicide. He actually expired on the steps of Broadcasting House, Portland Place, through a massive heart attack.

Michael Holliday

20-Jan-2009 by Man in a Suitcase

Wasn't he the singer who commited sewage pipe when stories about him having an affair with the ex-boxer Freddie Mills surfaced? He had a nice song but I can't remember it. Freddie became a panellist on What's My Line with Gilbert Harding and Lady Isobel Barnett and sadly all three of them took their own lives.

Four feather falls?

19-Jan-2009 by Mr Interesting from Purley

Can any one remember the cowboy puppet show four feather falls and was the sound track sang by a chap that went by the name of Micheal Halliday?

Thanks for your concern KC

18-Jan-2009 by COFFIN DODGER

I do have a thirst for trivia I must confess and I thought that one was not too bad. Another thing I discovered recently was that Mark McManus who played Taggart was the half-brother of The Sweet's Brian Connolly. Not a lot of people know that.

ARE YOU OK CD ?

17-Jan-2009 by King Crombie

Coffin-Dodger, are you alright son ? Maybe you've been over-doing University Challenge or something ? Any mention of "Bohemian RhapsodY is always cause for concern in my corner !

OK As you are all in suspense

17-Jan-2009 by COFFIN DODGER

Bohemian Raphsody was the song where the title does not appear in the lyric and it was replaced by Abba's Mama Mia whose title DOES appear in Bohemian's lyric.

Gravestones

17-Jan-2009 by Peter Day

Report in today's Telegraph says that council officials have been accused of being over-zealous in flattening gravestones that are a health and safety danger to the public. Does anyone, anywhere know of anyone who has ever been injured in any way by a grave stone?

Teaser

17-Jan-2009 by COFFIN DODGER

Which 1970s no,1 hit had title where the words that make up the title do not appear in the lyrics of the song and which song knocked it off top spot and had a title which WAS a lyric from that first song?

Peter Blake cover

15-Jan-2009 by King Crombie

Sorry all, I still blame my sister's Slade records !

"Funny Way To Be a Hero"

15-Jan-2009 by King Crombie

A couple of years back I stumbled into a copy of John Fisher's "Funny Way To Be Hero" (with Peter Balke cover) - chock-a-block with observations on British Comedy from the music halls to 'the box". Odds on, it will be of interest to some, but not sure if it's still in print ?

Music Hall

15-Jan-2009 by Bob Todd

I will try and find books now on Leno and Tich. Didn't realise what a phenomenon music hall was and how the establishment felt threatened by it, always attempting to clean it up. There is a Dan Leno walk in Fulham, I wonder if he lived there?

Music Hall

14-Jan-2009 by Callan

First time poster. Marie Lloyd died in 1921 and was performing up until her demise so she would have appeared with many of the stars that transferred to the big and small screen. She was massive by the way, as Bob would have read, on a par with any of today's idols and had a backdrop of alcoholic endeavours and violent relationships, It didn't all start with Amy Winehouse. Her contemporaries such as Dan Leno and Little Tich, who boasted six toes on each foot, were equally iconic in their own life times. By the way the 1911 Census is on line at findmypast.com but this time there is no free period and they are charging from day one. Well the Government does need the money.

Unwanted present ...

13-Jan-2009 by Jimmy Jazz

Agree with you there Bob - Andrew Marr's book is good. I'm about half way through it at the moment but had to stop for a breather. The missus gave me a Viz annual for crimbo - don't ask me why. Can't even give the thing away at work. Oh , and happy new year to all ...

Yes, a few snippets....

13-Jan-2009 by Bob Todd

Book wise I'm ploughing through Andrew Marr's political history of Britain. Fine book, but a lot of it, and best to absorb in bite-size chunks. Biography of Marie Lloyd. Didn't realise she appeared on the same bill as Jimmy Jewell who I remember on the TV when I was a kid. Worst of all a DVD of the Brendan Behan book Borstal Boy. Apalling. No connection to Behan's book in reality and lots of Danny Dyer playing tonsil tennis with men. Behan would have spat feathers and Guinness had he been around.

Let's Kick It Off

13-Jan-2009 by King Crombie

Been waiting for someone to post in 2009, but nothing thus far. So I'll kick it off. Happy New Year to the usual supects and any new faces. Anyone get anything to read over Crimbo ?

Dear London Books

28-Dec-2008 by Peter Day

Am reading Night and The City, a present from my wife. Your Mr Kersh was certainly incisive when he wrote way back in 1938 - ' Nobody goes into Woolworth's shops to buy anything:one visits Woolworth's as a kind of museum, merely to look.' There in a nutshell did Kersh diagnose the store's problem 70 years ago.

Happy Christmas and New Year to all

24-Dec-2008 by martin, john and alan

Hope we can get out a few gems in 2009.

splendid savage sue

23-Dec-2008 by King Crombie

I'll deserve a slap if i'm telling you what you already know, but i'll chance it. Try bookfinder.com, a good place to start.

The Splendid Savage

23-Dec-2008 by sue_rey@hotmail.co.uk

Help!! Trying to track down a non fiction book of this title (circa 1945) about a boy stranded in the jungle for my brothers 70th birthday in February

Happy Christmas

23-Dec-2008 by Gate 17

Up the Chels

They Drive By Night review in today's FT

20-Dec-2008 by Alan Harvey

They Drive By Night Review by Melissa McClements Published: December 20 2008 01:13 | Last updated: December 20 2008 01:13 They Drive By Night By James Curtis London Books £11.99 212 pages FT Bookshop price: £9.59 Shorty is a petty criminal in 1930s London. In the opening pages, he is released from Pentonville Prison “as wide a boy as they made them”. When he goes to look up an old girlfriend, he chances upon her still-warm, strangled corpse. In panic, he flees – certain the murder would be pinned on him. With little money and the police on his tail, his only escape is to beg a lift from a lorry driver going north. He finds himself immersed in a seedy, pre-motorway world of roadside ‘caffs’, hardened truckers and prostitutes. This is the second of Curtis’ novels to be revived by London Books (The Gilt Kid was published in 2007). Very much of its time (it came out in 1938), it offers an intriguing glimpse of the squalid underbelly of pre-war society. The slang seems comical at times, with characters exclaiming ‘Gawd stone me blind’ – although the descriptions of women as “tarts”, “pieces” and “gels” might seem less amusing to half the population. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Madness - The Liberty Of Norton Folgate (Moodboard)

18-Dec-2008 by iPat

very nice try utube or their myspace site.

Aint That A Shame

15-Dec-2008 by King Crombie

Shame that the larger posts have to be presented in one portion. Can nothing be done ?

Interesting review of Wide Boys from 3am magazine

14-Dec-2008 by Benn Gunn

Wide Boys Never Work By Richard Marshall. Robert Westerby, Wide Boys Never Work, London Books, 2008 The seventeenth century Puritan Perkins wrote that washing up and preaching were both equal in the eye of God. If you have a Gift, get a calling. ‘I am my work’ was the Puritan’s calling card. Modern rebellious sensibilities have tended to therefore loath this tendency and clutch all types of decadence in subterranean defiance. The city, where the puritan work ethic is most evident is also the place where its bohemian opposite is also ubiquitous. And in Gotham, to each boho Batman there is always spawned his half-formed necoromantic insane twin, the Joker, as Miller’s Dark Night story makes explicit. Thus the creative and the criminal lives cheek by jowl in joint opposition to bourgeoise diligence and thrift. This is the formula that Westerby’s reissued first novel takes out as a pensum once learned by heart, then forgotten and now, in these weird, crunched up times, getting to be reborn. It’s taken seventy odd years to get it out again – seventy odd years! And it took God only six days to make the whole world! But hey — Iain Sinclair, the great vernier of appraisement and appreciation, whose continuing calculus of the gravitational & binary effects, special margins and astral straws of forgotten writers, cranks, artists and genius’ beyond gulfs of bloated memory is what propels this novel back into its bleak perambulation, would no doubt ask us to regard the state of our freaked out world and then regard the book. City poet Valery dissects the boho’s instinctive, scandalous grace with his observation that ‘modern man wants the sensation without the boredom of conveyance.’ It’s a phrase that catches up with the mean ethic of short-cuts that slice to the chase of frenzied violence and selfish greed that controls the desperate wide boy hoodlum’s world, a chancer’s world that exists only for each last instinctive bet that delivers a stop-gap future redeemed only by luck or dying. Pure sensation diminishes with overload, which curiously, in recall, seems often times more like a sullen underload. Unreflected, unreflective sensation becomes itself interminably boring. And ‘Too much of nothing,’ as Dylan puts it, ‘can make a man mean.’ Living life high for a top exchange rate of intensity is to seemingly live for high stakes. But the ‘carcass-in-waiting’ is what lies for all of us at the end of the road, to pick up Alan Jenkins memorable phrase from his TLS review of the recent Francis Bacon exhibition in London, and it isn’t clear exactly when a person starts to really understand that democratic starkness. Win or lose, we all die. Bacon’s opulent and squalor-filled exile in South Kensington has become an archetype for bohemian high stakes rough-trade existentialism, the defining image of the artist of that pure sensation where his imagination of Yeats’ ‘Violence upon the roads; violence of horses’, of involuntary memories of Baudelaire’s and Proust’s involuntary memories propel him in a frenzy of rude-boy associations to make the uninhibited discoveries in oil that locate him amongst the gods. For this image to work there must be nothing intruding between the articulation and the execution, the realisation of the principle that wide boys don’t work. And Bacon is presented, and presented himself, as a wide-boy artist, a gay gambler gangster painter spawned in the den of dangerous low life. Booze, beatings, sex, suicide, gambling, glamour, slapping on the paint in a miracle of sensational talent within an enclosed room of mess and postcards, that’s the stuff of his legend. But the raw material is a lie not merely a mistake. It’s an image carefully constructed by Bacon but we know that he did work hard at his paintings. Prep sketches and studies were made, despite his protesting that they weren’t, they were found in his room after he had died. So he wasn’t a wide boy after all: he worked. So the wide boy is only the loser, stubbornly refusing to work save only on his own representation, captivated by the lie that it’s possible to achieve glory by just Being, taken in by winners who prefer to hide their graft. Bacon is a quick proof that existentialism fails to deliver the beef and a morality tale that warns us against the bluff hand of the philosophic con at the core of this tribe. So then what? Beckett. Joyce. David Hume. Joyce: ‘ How can Hume the Idealist write a history of the world?’ Beckett: ‘A history of representations?’ Cut to a screaming Pope Innocent X. Fade to endless black wintereisse, just off Grays Inn Road. (We’ll come to that later.) In Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur, the aging gambler gangster preens himself in a doorway before continuing his perambulations from Sacre Coeur to Montmatre and Pigalle. He checks himself out in the mirror glass of a dark doorway to confirm his existence as a legendry underworld man, an image delineated as a narrative in the mouths of others and reflected in the eye as someone sharply dressed in the tumultuous aesthesis of the generate degenerate astride the glowing moodiness of dawn and dusk equally. And so he has become this portion of locale and this slice of time and is no other. The shape of narratives about hoodlums, pimps, hard-boys, wide boys, gangsters, ponces and so on are not the shapes that are seen from the inside but are more the whorescopic corrective of ‘I err therefore I am.’ From the inside of the Cartesian spirit there’s always the bravado fear of the emptying streets, of faces, minds, lives reversing the initial trauma of birthing identified as nothing less than intrauterine primal recall. In all this cock-a-hoopla, there’s the stirring of a lost, underdeveloped twin, embryonic, not entirely born, wrapped inside whatever has been left to crawl out. Narcissism is fear controlled by reflections that don’t deepen but rather harden the surface, driven by the too late realisation that, as with Dostoevsky, all plausible concatenation is merely vulgar. In the morning you get braced up, by evening they’ll try and calm you down but it won’t be done. The dead twin is always half who you thought you were going to be and half who you already are and wished gone. Jim Bankley, Westerby’s man, is a character forever out in the dark, staring into the wish-fulfilling future that is a naked street. He sees nothing but what could better what’s there, what’s coming, what’s promised. His look is a look that is always reaching for more. ‘He turned away and wandered slowly down the street. There was hardly anyone about, and the streets were shining wet, reflecting the neon signs outside the cinema, distorted and trembling lights across the puddles as he walked along towards them.’ Here he is, alone and lonely, ‘wandering’ without a direction because there are no real directions, no destinations, and everything is either distorted or mirror-like, and it recalls an anti-pastoral anti-clockwise movement that lacks a ghost, friendly or contrary, or the promise of companionship to find a friendly end that might redeem him from this blank, bad space. This is an identity awake to its fading into stubborn atomism, someone robbed of being part of any crowd, by the meanness and self-absorption of his skrimshanker angst. From this descriptive passage the character can only stare hard at the glass case advertising the film on at the local cinema and grow envious about the kind of girl he’d like to have if he could become someone else. It’s like Pacino in Scarface but with that film there’s a sort of glamour that rubs up the narrative into something different, something more than despair, because we get to see how De Palma’s character gets close up to his roaring pappy dream. Westerby’s character, however, always remains in this dim-witted, mean and strange state. ‘They had pretty girls in those film towns, in Hollywood and that. Look at that one. She was a hot looking girl all right. Take a lot of money to get a girl like that. Wouldn’t it? But that’s what he’d do if he had a lot of money. And he stood there thinking about it, turning vicious thoughts over and over in his mind.’ The viciousness is that low level of elevation he gives to his thinking horizon, where this threshold state of reason and consciousness crawls around like a hen-and-a-half worm, the larval form of a future self that remains throughout the novel in a state of primeval mud, impenetrably dark, merely a coarse promise of apparent transcendence, a kind of Leibniz with knuckle dusters. Leibniz had a theory of monodal development implying the clarification of perceptions where even the unconscious is potentially capable of being perceived just as a wave can be heard even if a single drop of water can’t. Leibniz corrected the Cartesian mistake which was to treat as non-existent perceptions that we aren’t conscious of. What the novel does is shove in our faces everything that Jim isn’t conscious of so we get to delineate possibilities that he himself freezes out and refuses to acknowledge as real. For example, there’s a woman he might have loved, who might have loved him, but this is thrown away by both of them. Ditto with some of the men. Mick, ‘the first person he had ever feared’ and especially his father, who works to bring him back from the brink. Westerby himself doesn’t always get this. He mistakes Jim’s final act in the book as an emblem of what he has to be, a defeated man who will return again and again to his vomit. He suggests that Jim will never be able to develop, that his story cannot be one of transcendence. But there are characters and other voices that suggest that this is merely a slick pessimism imposed onto his story, and by slick I mean merely slick. Westerby writes about the character without really finding within himself sympathy with other potentialities. The author betrays a somewhat regressive politics himself in this. He both pretends to know no more than Jim and finds nothing in his own story to suggest that Jim can change. This is both a false note and a bullying trap that is belied by the narrative energies of the novel overall. As in the Melville film, the author’s voice occasionally breaks in to pass comment on the action, and Melville’s remains admiring of his protagonist, charmed by his vivacity and liveliness. But Westerby’s voice fixes Jim as being locked into a dismal cycle of criminality, poverty and sleaze thus imposing the didactic stridulence of insects upon his character which is not justified at all by the actual fluid meat of the story. Maybe this is just the way Westerby is working on us, to shove his characters and his world up against the damnation of the moralising, fatalistic judgements that mirror the character’s own fleeting reflections upon himself. If so, we should take with a pinch of salt Westerby’s interruptions, treat his chorus as tear-jerk romantic agony played out to the existenchal jazz noise of Thomas’s ‘post tempestatum, magna serenitas’, serenity beyond the mind’s tempestuousness etc. Recall in its stead Swift on St Patrick’s Cathedral: ‘where savage indignation can lacerate his heart no more.’ In short, perhaps there is here a somewhat dry case of contention that ‘happiness is the condition of the deceived, and that a dry eye doesn’t bring about the contrary, au contraire…’ which Westerby is inflicting upon his less than fair readers (this is very masculine territory) in order to engender a required last hours of the doomed atmosphere to his volume. Westerby’s book gets this just about right. It crawls about with failure, and though the authorial voice tempts us with a ready steer, there’s a strong reading that resists any such conclusion. Any conclusion at all in fact. Really, nothing happens (like the Melville film too, though not as extreme as Godot where nothing happens twice….) except in the head of the protagonist, where his own consciousness of his helpless, hopeless and bereft condition is clarified. Westerby has passages of great descriptive strength but he uses these to contrast the external world with the tormented consciousness of Jim’s inner life. He’s a man who is always looking out to others to find out who he wants to be, never mind who he is. His self is a self-loathing appetite, greedy for what he has been told is what he ought to want. A rough trade Hamlet, Stendhal as Vinnie Jones wannabe, he is a mirror walking down from the North to London, a Dickhead Whittington barely able to make the respite between the crucifixion of narrative and the resurrection of the mind’s stasis, where he reflects on his own processes. London too works as his mirror, (so he is a mirror walking in a mirror, which explains the curious iteration of feelings and events, the peculiar atmosphere of turmoil and stillness that pervades the book) and the underground figures he moves with become a way of his fixing his own image, deciding his traits, his opportunities, his fears. It is in Mick that he is finally confronted with terror as he recognises something in this hoodlum that frightens him beyond anything he has confronted before. In Mick there seems a brief moment when perhaps he might enter a different realm, that of Beckett’s dwarf longing for a full-size coffin. But that would be a different novel, one where the enlarged shadow is also one that thins out. A vampiric longevity. Jim is a character that hasn’t a sense of death’s meaning. His desire is a lust for completion as narrative, not resolved stillness. Yet he remains encountering only mirrors, seeing only what is reflected in his other people’s eyes. Westerby takes time to describe what surrounds this man because it’s in these descriptions of things that he captures what Jim Bankley both is and is not. The book’s a brilliant depiction of the despair and loneliness of a Narcissus trumped by the dead living inside. It is a book about someone who wishes for the freedom to admire himself that he cannot find in family, work, locality, friendship or love. It’s a typical yoof thing in this respect. He has to walk out on his father and brother, on his work and his work mates, the place he was born and bred because all they show him is a futility and limitation that offends his imagination. It is his imagination that feeds this sense of masculine alienation from his surroundings and from the promised future. Jim Bankley is capable of imagining himself as not being himself. He finds out the hard way that the tough thing is to go further than that and imagine what the new self is like. Like a decadent artist he refuses toil, refuses community, refuses home comforts and love and oh what’s left if he has no gift or inclination for artistic squalor? He plumps for Elsewhere, the fairy story ‘streets are paved with gold’ type of thing, the sweet promise of mythic London, a place that becomes the empty source of his reflected identity. Westerby captures well the onanistic reflex of this type of rebellion. Inarticulate beyond the musculature of his youthful priapic urge, we are presented with a Daliesque character of supreme social and sexual retreat. The sole pleasures are not soulful but self-regarding. The only beauty he registers in the whole of the book is his own body, and even that is caught at a strange angle, in a strange time when he is falling out from the initial superficial success of his migration to the dream-life and falling into its abjection and emptiness. Women, interestingly, never measure up. There are strong metrosexual homoerotic stirrings still in this. In the end he can’t submit to any object of desire outside of himself and remains throughout incapable of encounters with others that are not strategies of hostility and greed. His brutishness is depicted in terms of his devouring of all others; he feels nothing for the women he professes to fancy, they are merely part of his agony, to be used as mere extensions of his own feelings and circumstance; so too the men. And so for both these women and men he visits upon them his vicious thoughts, sometimes vicious actions. We imagine, where he can’t, (he being never engaged with any dimension of the arts) the drumming sound of his fists to the rhythm of the last seven bars of Schubert’s lied ‘Nacht und Traume’ and mouth the accompanying words of Matthaus Casimir von Collin ‘Holde Traume, kehret wieder’ – ‘Sweet dreams, come back.’ Jim is one of the sad men where the twin in him continues to grow and stunt his growth, right through to where the novel ends. Yet there is an ambiguous validation of his being at the end, and that is portrayed in the character of his old father. ‘The two Bankley’s pushed out through the crowd and walked to the main door. Together, they went down the steps into the street. It had stopped raining, and there were stars in the sky.’ It is both a trivial and intimate ending, one which, perhaps, intimidated Westerby into trying, in a final extra page, to gloss what the whole sorry story could mean. It’s a superficial reading he offers, hardly making any sense of the old man sinking back into the life of his son, restraining the havoc of his own memory. Together, man and boy – for Jim remains just a boy despite his years - we are presented with a counter-image to that of Jim’s, and its a fitting end. The novel has shown us Jim at first desiring the material world but finding himself incapable of finding himself there. He then loathes himself and that world, setting both as nought, self-inspection leading to the discovery of his own worthlessness, and so it ends with a humility worthy of Geulincx: ‘where you are worth nothing, there you should want nothing.’ (Yet recall Dylan’s retort to Geulinex in ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, ‘If you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose,’ which reminds us that in these circumstances you could find yourself pushing off in quite the opposite direction if you so chose and at the behest of just the slightest shift of nuance.) His father traipses diligently, unreasonably, to collect his son, to save him, to resurrect him, to bring him home. It’s a consummate dime novel, and doesn’t try to bitch continuity to hell. That fact alone can hide the catastrophe of incoherence that is Jim’s story, and it can also suggest a kind of fashionable nihilism that would be a complete travesty. But there are other possibilities – I’ve outlined one such – and nothing should be settled too soon. Iain Sinclair has written a superb introduction that gives the context and the sources, as well as a brilliant endpiece on Losey’s prison film The Criminal which fixes pothooks and clears the ground. There is also a short piece by Westerby excusing himself, a drab little expose of its social setting and relevance that is neither dog nor hinny. ‘Suffering humanity perishes and falls blindly from one hour to another, like water dashed from crag to crag year after year, down into the unknown’ as the poet of Tubingden wrote, and Jim would get that. It’s at least partially a London novel, but as Chris Petit noted in conversation, London is probably everywhere by now. Here’s a personal note. Beckett visited the tower where Holderlin wrote the fragment quoted above and the other day I walked with a friendly companion through the freezing dark of Gray’s Inn Road to the little street near the arse of King’s Cross Station, Ampton Street, where at number four Beckett rented a room for seventeen shillings and six pence per week from Mrs Southern for six weeks. I was keen to just make its acquaintance. Thomas Carlisle has a green plaque on one of the houses on the street, now occupied by a family whose little children were playing in the hoary dark at the half open door. But the half of the street where Beckett would have lived has been flattened and replaced by a block of flats. Jim would have got this provocation, desire rebuffed by ruins and indifference, an indigent imagination in the great mess of London dismissed anonymously as being all balls, yes, all balls. Proust’s ‘irremediablement seul’. I Was Dora Suaraz boiling the same wellspring, Pascals’ distractions, the city devouring its own hard boys like time, and all those boys screaming in turn, like a lurid preposterous Bacon triptych, screaming like the Beckett dwarf, screaming not longing now mind you, for a bigger grave. Wide Boys Never Work noirs-up this sense, gives pulp resonance to this irruption, and Westerby is rightly honoured by Sinclair and Martin Knight’s London Books for writing this first stab, like Antonella da Messina bringing the secrets of oil painting to Italy. ‘He types on your eyeballs with a hot needle’ comments Sinclair. The novel charts a trauma at the root of an attachment. It’s about an artist without art. About the physical impossibility of apnoea. About the soft dream of every hard man’s reputation. About (obscurely) the yellow of Vermeer’s View of Delft – a reference to a character in Proust dragging himself off his deathbed to look on the beauty of that colour for one last time, but in the manner of Heraclitus – the weeping philosopher – attached to the cudgel. It’s about all our wide boys out there still, truculent, nasty and confused, breeding their hopeless desires in violent, cheating and inexcusable penumbra and never getting themselves properly born until someone other gives a damn and seeks them out and proffers them love. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Richard Marshall (centre) is former editor of 3:AM and his essay on Stewart Home appeared in its fifth anniversary anthology The Edgier Waters (2006). He lives in London. First published in 3:AM Magazine: Saturday, December 13th, 2008.

Erectile dysfunction

11-Dec-2008 by webadmin

In spite of the presence of anti-impotency medicines in the market such as Cialis and Levitra, Viagra, the medication to treat erectile dysfunction, has remained the undisputed leader in the pharmaceutical market on account of its effectiveness in treating the male sexual disorder. Details on Viagra mechanism, Viagra benefits, viagra side-effects et al are present at http://www.viagrathunder.com/ and further it would be helpful for you to start off your erectile dysfunction treatment effectively if you have a first hand account on the significant tidbits associated with Viagra.

Thank you King Crombie

11-Dec-2008 by Leroy

I did find confirmation on a site called TV Heaven

Leroy , a pointer.

09-Dec-2008 by King Crombie

There's a site called Britmovie (don't know the exact e-address). You should ask on there.

Peter Osgood

09-Dec-2008 by Leroy

Talking to an older friend the other night and he recalled the great man appearing in an episode of NEVER MIND THE QUALITY FEEL THE WIDTH in the 1960s. He said it was about two tailors, a Jew and a Catholic, and they arranged a match against one another and Ossie cameod as a ringer recruited for the team. I wonder if the tape still exists.

Erectile Dysfunction

08-Dec-2008 by Frank 'Sorry luv. I've got to take the dog for walk' Marker

Oh dear. Do you think the poster assumes this website is patronised by men going though the male menopause? I've always found a stiff whiskey and a Youtube viewing of Pickettywitch, featuring the gorgeous Polly Browne, gets me throught any problems. It's a damned site cheaper and less absurd than a Harley anyway.

Lifting children out of poverty

08-Dec-2008 by William Williams

Another empty soundbite from this patronising Government. This 'lifting all children out of poverty' is claimed to be their key aim during this term. Children do not have independent means (or lack of them) so how are they doing this without lifting their parents out of poverty? And if they are lifting their parents then they are claiming to be abolishing poverty full stop which obviously they are not. Because it is meaningless and hard to quantify it is used constantly. The only thing they are lifting is the pound in our pocket. Aaargh

Post Below

07-Dec-2008 by King Crombie

One of those scenarios where the description sounds worse than the incident itself

Erectile dysfunction

06-Dec-2008 by Erectile dysfunction

Cialis and similar other anti-impotency medicines are extremely popular as effective medications to treat male erectile dysfunction but altogether it is also true that drugs like Cialis would effective results only when administered in accordance with the instructions of the physician. However, http://www.buy-cialis-online-now.com/ contains significant tidbits on cialis that throw light on the importance of following the doctor`s suggestions while taking Cialis and similar other details. Log in to the website immediately, get hold of Cialis details and kickstart your war against erectile dysfunction.

Heads Up - Barney Bubbles Book

03-Dec-2008 by King Crombie

I've just got word that a book on Barney Bubbles titled "Rasons To Be Cheerful" by Paul Gorman has just been published. For those of us intereted in visuals this first book on B.B. might be very special indeed. For those of you unfamiliar with Mr Bubbles (R.I.P.) - he might very well be the best graphic artist Britain has yet to produce. Well worth checking out!

Press item from Camden New Journal

29-Nov-2008 by Alan Harvey

Stories from the City and tales from the underground They Drive By Night. By James Curtis. London Books £11.99 Night And The City. By Gerald Kersh. London Books £11.99 JAMES Curtis was a figure known in the pubs along Kilburn High Road, always happy to pass the time of day over a pint, and earning a living as a school caretaker. But few who raised a pint with him in the 1950s and 1960s will have known he was a successful author before the war – a man whose novels illuminated the seedy world of Camden and Westminster in the 1930s. His books, long out of print, are available again. Independent publishers London Books focus on finding and reprinting some of the 20th-century’s forgotten masterpieces: they issued to great acclaim Curtis’s The Gilt Kid last year. Now they have followed it up with They Drive By Night. Written in 1938, it tells the story of a murder committed in Drummond Street, Euston – and how an ex-convict is wrongly accused of the crime. Its popularity when it was first published was helped by a successful film adaptation, starring Ernest Thesiger, brother of the travel writer Wilfrid Thesiger. London Books have also released Night And The City by Gerald Kersh. It offers another glimpse into the West End between the wars. Kersh wrote 19 novels but before becoming an author he worked in a number of jobs – all of which provided experiences he turned into copy. He was a West End cinema manager, a cook and a minder and even spent time sleeping rough. Night and The City tells the story of Harry Fabian – wide boy, pimp and wrestling promoter who stalks the seedy bars and clubs of Soho. It works as a snapshot of the days that made Soho’s reputation – and recreates the flavour of the area in the early part of the 20th century. Dan Carrier

Anonymous

28-Nov-2008 by Nameless

I think you should tread carefully with poor old Anonymous. He has stepped out of the shadows and had his say, but now I fear his confidence will be shattered and he won’t return to the board. Of course, I am assuming that Anonymous is a He, when ‘he’ might be a She. Either way, don’t take it to heart Anonymous. Keep your head up and please return with further valuable comments. I am sure that you think these things through more than most.

Gangland Soho

28-Nov-2008 by Dean Street Dan

I’ll be there.

Sohemian Society Meeting

27-Nov-2008 by Frank Marker

Gangland Soho Our last meeting for this year will be with crime writer and former defence lawyer James Morton who will discussing his latest book Gangland Soho. Gangland Soho charts the history of crime within the square mile - from the razor gangs of the 1920s, and the 1950s gangleaders, Billy Hill and Jack Spot, to the notorious Sabinis, Krays, Richardson. It also includes chapters on the 1920s drug scene, the mysterious death of boxing champ Freddie Mills and the corruption of the porn squad in the 1970s. Venue: Upstairs at the Wheatsheaf, Rathbone Place, W1 Date: 2nd December, 7:30 pm Admission: £3

Teenage Kicks

24-Nov-2008 by Benn Gunn

is reviewed in Nuts this week. Great little stocking filler where a range of people in the public eye recall fondly their love affair with Subbeteo. I was telling my son about it recently as he played on his XBox Football Manager 2008. When I got to the bit about the plastic dug-out and how the pitch creased on the carpet he gave me that 'get a life' look.

That's the problem with Anonymous - he doesn't think things through

23-Nov-2008 by Bob Todd

Re Mixed up Britain

23-Nov-2008 by Junco

Don't quite get the point you're making anonymous. Those names were leaked onto the net by a disaffected member of the BNP not the Gov't. The strange times we live in are more to do with the internet and the fact that once information is leaked online, there is very little anyone can do about it.

Mixed up Britain

23-Nov-2008 by anonymous

Confused times we live in. Baby murderers protected by anonymity laws but members of a legal political party have their names published and are harangued.

Bob Elms

21-Nov-2008 by Richie4

Heard the chaps on the Robert Elms Show today. Can't wiait to see what titles are slated for next year. This Norman Collins does sound interesting and will check him out.

Other than "Lowlife"

21-Nov-2008 by King Crombie

Ben Sherman, I meant other than "Lowlife". I've been looking for an affordable copy of "King Dido" for some time, but no luck yet.

Other than "Lowlife"

21-Nov-2008 by King Crombie

Ben Sherman, I meant other than "Lowlife". I've been looking for an affordable copy of "King Dido" for some time, but no luck yet.

Germany 1 England 2

20-Nov-2008 by Sheepskin Steve

That is the best I’ve seen England play for a long time. I would stick with the new lads, people like Downing, Agbonlahor, Carrick. Players with a hunger for the game. Capello is doing a great job by choosing players on merit, making them stick to a shape, instilling some discipline. People whine about foreign managers but I believe they appreciate what we have more than the English lot who are stuck in a money making mentality and the star system that goes with it.

"Strip Jack Naked "

19-Nov-2008 by King Crombie

Ben, I've only read "Strip Jack Naked" the sequel to "Lowlife"and I was very disappointed, a few good pages but that's all, I wouldn't be surprised if it was suggested as an earner by some third party>

Alexander Baron

18-Nov-2008 by Ben Sherman

Apart from Lowlife has anyone read any of Baron's 2nd World War books? I've just picked up a copy his 'From the City From The Plough', a novel about the Wessex Regiment battling their way through D-Day and the Normandy campaign. His later, 'With Hope, Farewell', a trilogy about the war, is highly rated by critics and writers alike. It appears he was also a very good scriptwriter for tv. I recently watched a couple of episodes he did for the excellent Family at War series - remember that unforgettable opening with the sand castle, the waves and the Vaughan Williams signature tune - and very good they were too.

Murray Melvin

18-Nov-2008 by ben Sherman

Hello Bob Todd Look forward to seeing you and lady friend at the Murray Melvin Evening. I know he'll be damn good value. I recently heard as one of the speakers at a Tribute to Joan Littlewood Evening at the NFT, her film 'Sparrows' was shown afterwards. Murray was a very gracious and entertaining gentleman and amazingly sprightly for his age. Do you remember him playing, rather improbably in my opinion, Michael Caine's best mate in Alfie? He also played the marvellously named Reverend Runt in Kubricks Barry Lyndon.

Murray Melvin

18-Nov-2008 by Bob Todd

One of those actors who you know so well but would not necessarily know his name, Mrs Driscoll and I are in town on that day and will drop by. I note he was also in Let Him Have It, Chris and The Krays. The former was an excellent representation of the notorious Craig and Bentley case of the 1950s and the latter self-explanatory. Bsides Honey I see he was in Sparrows Can't Sing the cockney film that introduced Barbara Windsor.

Thanks for the tip Doc

18-Nov-2008 by King Crombie

Nice one Doc. I had a quick poke about and William Pett Ridge has a few lines on Wikipedia. Perhaps someone more savvy than me, might want to stick it up here. Looks like a very interesting geezer.

Threadneedleman

17-Nov-2008 by Doctor Lager

Quality post. Will have to take a wander down the Walworth Road and visit the shop. Well done Paolo Hewitt. Oddly, I’m half way through a novel called Mord Em’ly, by an author called Pett Ridge, which follows the fortunes of a teenage girl in a street gang in the late 1800s, based around Camberwell with plenty of mentions of a bustling Walworth Road. She’s at a boxing match watching her boyfriend at the moment, a boxer called Henry Barden, who is taking on a Shoreditch man over in the East End. Her gang has broken up and she has spent three years in a home after being convicted of stealing some cakes. It seems Pett Ridge was a respected chronicler of London life around the turn of the century and his writing reminds me of the great Arthur Morrison. Anyone heard of Pett Ridge? I’ll definitely be reading more of his work.

Sohemian Society Talk

17-Nov-2008 by Ben Sherman

Actor Murray Melvin (Geoff in 1962 Taste of Honey) will be talking about his stage and film career. Murray was a member of Joan Littlewood's legendary Theatre Workshop and in a long and distinguised film career worked with directors Ken Russell, Tony Richardson and Stanley Kubrick. Murray will be signing copies of his book The Art of Theatre Workshop after his talk. The Sohemian Society Upstairs at The Wheatsheaf Rathbone Place London W1 26th November, 7:30pm Admission £3 Contact (020) 8960 7172

Much obliged Billy

16-Nov-2008 by King Crombie

Thanks for the post mate, next time I have six and a half sheets, i might pop over to Walworth Road...fine chance, after the Mrs and kids have had a dip !

Interview with Threadneedle Man found on net

16-Nov-2008 by Billy

INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE DYER PAOLO HEWITT: How did you get into the tailoring business? GEORGE DYER: I loved dressing up as a kid. This was the Sixties. My dad was a trouser maker and he made my school clothes. My mum used to take me to the school shop and I would always choose something the other kids wouldn't have. For example, I'd buy a blazer that was bigger than my size so I could put a vent in the back, that kind of thing. I always liked unusual things. Through your clothes you were trying to make a statement and although I don't want to call myself a rebel, I wasn't conforming. I left school round my 17 th birthday, which was round about '71 or ‘72. The old man said to me, alright boy, you have left school now the one thing I am going to tell you to do is go out there and find a trade because I don't want any criminals in my house. He thought that if you didn't have a trade you would go into crime. We had an upbringing which was strict so you listened to your parents. I loved clothes but I also loved music but my dad wouldn't let me get into the music scene because he used to be a musician and play guitar in nightclubs and stuff and when you're a musician you're around drugs and drink and he didn't want me to get into that, so he said anything but. So I took up tailoring. PH: What was your first job? GD: I managed to get an apprenticeship with a company in Fleet Street. It was called Dombey and Sons. They put a broom in my hand and told me where the kettle was and told to get on with it. After a while, they saw I could take instructions so two months down the road I was asked if I wanted to go tot tailoring college and learn the trade Which I did. I went to the London College Of Fashion and Clothing Technology in the Barbican. It was a three-year course. What I learnt there was craft tailoring which was everything pertaining to sewing, different stitches, how to make pockets. Then you had to learn padded construction, textiles, fabrics, all aspects plus you had to have an ability to design something. I got out of there with a City and Guilds degree. PH: Was Dombey a big company? G: Huge. They had 38 shops in and around London. In fact, there was a guy called Dickie Wright who was the manager of the Southend shop and his son was Steve Wright, the DJ. PH: What style were you into at this point? GD: Well, at school it had been the Fred Perrys, the Ben Sherman's, the loafers, the Sta-prest, but now it was the big blown out afro and wide trousers, more of a soul boy thing. I leant more towards the soul music and the jazz whereas a lot of my boys were roots or Rasta boys. But I was a soul boy because I liked clothes and the soul boys liked to dress up as well. So I finished my apprenticeship and stayed on with the company for twelve, thirteen years. I worked in a number of their shops – Seven Sisters, Jamaica Road, Walworth Road, Peckham, Berwick Street. In those days everyone wore a made to measure suit. These were the times when people couldn't go into a bar saloon without wearing a suit so there was a big demand for made to measure. The gangsters were about then, the Krays, the Richardsons, and young people would copy them. People used to wear ties and look smart. PH: What was it like working in these shops? GD: There were some right characters. I used to work in Brixton and there was an old experienced cutter working there who liked to be called Dick. He used to come in with 40 Bensons every day and smoke them one after the other. One in, one out, one in, one out. I said to him can't you give that up? It's going to kill you. He said, Mate, if I give them up that's when it will kill me! PH: Why did you leave? GD: Got made redundant. The sons took over and made changes at which point my old colleague Jimmy Nash who had worked in a shop called Sydney Fox as a boy, was approached and asked if he wanted to take over. Within a week the owner had died and I went to work for Jimmy. He was great, Jimmy. He was another one. He had this saying. He used to say boy, remember, there will always be fat men and cripples! You heard stuff like that all the time. I worked with him for about another twelve or thirteen years in which time he changed the name of the shop to James Anthony. There was always faces coming in like TV presenters and stuff because a lot of celebrities lived in the area, Camberwell Grove round there. PH: Wasn't it about this time that the tailoring business took a bit of a nosedive? GD: It started when the designer jeans and cords and that lot came in. When Armani, Boss, Conran and Smith and all these people came about, the old boys wouldn't buy them because they were too used to made to measure suits not off the peg numbers. But once they've gone…. PH: So you did 13 years with James Anthony? GD: It was there and at Dombey and Son that I learnt the trade and I have got a lot to thank them for. PH: When did you start your own shop? GD: By the late 80s, business had declined at James Anthony and I could feel that my partner Jimmy could at any point say to me sorry mate can't afford to keep you on. So before that happened I got involved with two friends of mine who were involved in the theatre side of tailoring. I had met them at college and kept in touch so I approached them. Long story short, we found some premises, bought the lease and worked at my father's house making theatre garments. Unfortunately it ended up in tears but suffice to say I gained a lot of experience out of that. When I pulled the plug I got some money which was paid to me over a period of a year which is how long it took me to get everything together to open up my own shop which I did in 1995. PH: When you started out what were you offering that people couldn't get anywhere else? GD: Although suits aren't as popular as before there is still a market. When I started the shop people told me that tailoring was finished and ten years later here I am. What do I offer people? I have a skill which I want to keep alive and there is a direction which I want to go in. That direction is to make Mod fashionable suits, suits that a Mod can access from L550 onwards. PH: When you say a Mod suit what kind of design are you thinking about? GD: I think every generation should make his mark. Yes, I can give you the essence but I'd like the customer to also make his own thing and put his stamp on it. In that way, the history of Mod can continue. It shouldn't just stop in the 60s, the Mod style should develop and this is one way of ensuring that. The Mod suits I make are not 100 per cent accurate to the Sixties but do have the essence of them. PH: You're adding your own twists to the classic design? GD: Not just me, the customer as well. I want the input to come from both parts. When I make a suit for anybody I like to think that it is us who are creating that suit, that it is us who are making the masterpiece. And it can work in many ways. You can come in with a picture or a sketch and we can work it from there. Or you can buy material from me or bring in your own material. Doesn't matter. It's a partnership. PH: Okay, final question. What's the greatest Mod record ever made? GD: ‘As' by Stevie Wonder.

Spot On Bernadette

15-Nov-2008 by King Crombie

Ten out of ten B, and a Club Row unicorn too. Haven't seen the flick yet (directed by Carol Reed no less) but intend to.

Resurrecting a lost era of working-class fiction

15-Nov-2008 by anonymous

Readers of books blogs past will have seen plenty of material on the joys of mugging up on forgotten authors and of sharing your favourite undiscovered books. As Billy Mills pointed out, such activity is full of obscure pleasure. Like him, as well as taking simple enjoyment in quality writing, I relish the opportunity to become a bore and to press my unusual learning on others. The train-spotting regions of my psyche also delight in the heady sense of privileged knowledge that comes from reading a book unknown to most. I'm additionally always pleased to give my hunter-gatherer instincts a workout. A dusty old book might not present all the excitement of a sabre-tooth tiger, but anyone who's caught a secondhand book dealer on a bad day (and they have many of them) will know there are at least moments of fear and accompanying nervous thrills. Such guilty pleasures are fortunately also overridden by a broader, more noble satisfaction. There's a certain altruism in retrieving these lost authors. To dig a buried gem from obscurity is to stick one in the eye of time. Death loses some of its sting as you revive the spirit those departed writers breathed into their words Of course, it's hard for one individual to make much of a difference in this struggle against mortality, so it's always especially pleasing when publishers themselves unearth a few treasures. Like the last book I read: They Drive By Night by James Curtis. This is a fantastic book and I would never have heard of if it weren't for its publisher, London Books. Set up in 2006 by the writers John King (of Football Factory fame) and Martin Knight (the ghost behind George Best's last book), the firm is supposedly the result of a pub conversation. As Martin Knight told me, he and King "both started talking about this wonderful book that we'd both read - and it was the same one." The volume in question was Gerard Kersh's Night And The City and they thought it deserved a wider audience. So they set up a company to try and re-introduce it, together with other examples of old working-class London literature they felt passionately about and which (more recently) posters on their hyper-active messageboard have recommended. In doing so, they've also proved that literary history needs to be rewritten. In 1940, George Orwell summed up the general consensus when he claimed that if you looked for the working classes in fiction "and especially English fiction, all you find is a hole in the air". So when the Angry Young Men came along, they were seen as completely revolutionary. As Martin Knight (who is now 50) explains: "I was led to believe that this kind of earthy, gritty working-class fiction only broke cover in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Well these books - that so far have been glossed over and removed from history - prove that's absolute rubbish." They Drive By Night is a case in point. Here is a book written from the perspective of an articulate, intelligent and very angry working-class man, in a rich salty vernacular. This is Shorty, who is forced to go on the run on the very day he is released from Pentonville Prison when he stumbles across the body of a murdered female friend and realises that he will be suspect number one. It's a classic story of who didn't do it, slightly ridiculous in its ultimate resolution, but gripping along the way and made absolutely fascinating by the twilight world into which Shorty plunges. There are vivid descriptions of the early truck drivers on the Great North Road; the transport caffs that fuelled their slow ponderous journeys (smelling of: "Sweaty bodies, an open coke fire, cheap clothes drying from the rain, coarse dirty fat used for frying eggs."); and the girls that plied their trade along them. There are hilariously inept provincial policemen, stumbling around in the darkness and committing acts of brutality by day. There are "ponces" and their "tarts" and "pushes in the truck" in grimy London bedsits. There are telling observations from the very bottom of society: "Every time you come out of stir, something was different, something that made the world harder to live in." Such rich and unusual details make it a fine book, and I'm pleased to note there are more where that came from. During the 1930s, James Curtis was as prolific as he was popular. It was only after the war that he succumbed to heavy drinking and a species of writers' block that saw him endlessly researching new material but never completing any of it. He died in tragic obscurity in a bedsit in Kilburn in 1977 and probably no one imagined that his books would ever again find the audience they deserve. Happily, London Books have helped to change that much. SAM JORDISON/GUARDIAN/BOOKS

Kid for Two Farthings

15-Nov-2008 by Bernadette

I remember the film KC watching it with my parents one Sunday afternoon and crying my eyes out. I think the kid was Andrew Ray who I think died young. The Dad was David Kossoff whose son Paul of the band Free died so young and I think Diana Dors was in it who also had a tragic life. All about a unicorn wasn't it?

WOLF MANKOWITZ "A Kid For Two Farthings"

15-Nov-2008 by King Crombie

Just read this 1954 children's book set in East London and enjoyed it. I shall pass it over to Kid Crombie and see what he makes of it.

Good point

11-Nov-2008 by Donald Massingham, Chelmsford

Yes, I too was amazed at the language and connotations in both Wide Boys and They Drive By Night. Best one in the latter 'having been in the nick and I hadn't had A PUSH IN THE TRUCK for ages. How did this get past 1930s censors. Obviously the whole book was beyond them and that is what is so delicious about them. Well done London Books. I bet you don't get a penny from the Arty Farty Council. Keep it that way.

Wide Boys Never Work

11-Nov-2008 by Frankly Keith

This is my first time on the site and a great site it is too with all these marvellous writers buried away inside the pages, people I had never heard of until now. I found it via Wide Boys Never Work, a brilliant novel that has opened my eyes to a London I only knew through The Sweeney and Minder. To find similar characters were ducking and diving forty or more years before Regan and Arthur Daley is amazing. I was struck by how modern the book feels. The subject matter is not something I would have expected to have been written about in those days - criminality, violence, sex - and in such an honest way. I loved the Franks gang and also the visits they make to White City dog track. That is a very different place now. I was also surprised by the way Louie is accepted by Jim. It really shows that we aren’t as original as we like to think and that nothing is really new. I will be reading They Drive By Night next . O yes, a great introduction by Iain Sinclair and I especially loved his article at the end of the book about the director Joseph Losey. The Criminal is one film I need to watch!

Threadneedleman

08-Nov-2008 by Lightandbitterman

Isn’t that Threadneedleman on the Walworth Road? He has been doing quality gear for mods, skinheads and general London faces for decades. He did the suits for Suggs and Madness in their heyday I believe.

Streetware

07-Nov-2008 by Harry Harkins

Caught this. Incisive comments from Mr Hewitt and stylish footage of the young Danny Eccles. Great stuff. Does anyone know more about George Dyer the tailor to the skins?

BBC2 Streetware programme

07-Nov-2008 by ipat

Anyone see it? From the spivs through to the chavs. its on the iplayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00fh77w/British_Style_Genius_Loud_and_Proud_The_Street_Look/

Benny Hill Hill Hill Hill

05-Nov-2008 by Arthur Askey

Junco - the point I was trying to make was that the 'new wave' of alternative comedians used the 'naffness' of Benny and the boys to promote themselves. They were hip and that everyone that went before wasn't. This was their message. They were in showbusiness just the same but pretended they were not. Once they had upset the applecart and helped ruin a few careers they became just the same. Forming production companies and floating them on the stock exchange, Ullo John I've Got A New Motor - it's a Bentley. Everyone is of their time as your rightly say and Benny was of his and his impact and the pleasure he gave to his audience was far greater I would argue than Sayle, Elton, Rhys-Jones, Mulville et al. You talk about music. Have you forgotten Ernie? I'll never forget old Ernie.

Benny Hill

05-Nov-2008 by Junco Partner

So not liking Benny Hill means you're not working class and went to a posh school? Benny Hill was funny up until you were over 10 years old then just looked unfunny. Getting into the Pistols and The Clash meant he wasn't going to be high on the radar. Comparing it to music, Benny Hill was like the Wurzels and Alexi was like The Clash. Of course everything is of its time, but not all so called alternative comedy was crap. It was a bit like punk whereby a load of establishment acts had got bloated and stale and a new load of acts came in taking it back to basics. yes there was a lot of rubbish but some good stuff came out of it and then became very like the original acts they'd slagged off. As I said like punk. In the end I just didn't find him funny (and no I am not David Cameron).

SORRY RAY LOWRY

04-Nov-2008 by King Crombie

Apologies to all

RAY LOWRT R,I.P.

04-Nov-2008 by King Crombie

I don't think much of the recently late Ray Lowry's stuff has dated.

04-Nov-2008 by Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell

I never saw Sayle but imagine most of his routine in the 1980s was fundamentally an anti Thatcher rant . Nothing wrong with that, it's just that satire (Hogarth, Gilray, Defoe and other 18th Century luminaries excepted) rarely comes across as very funny a decade or so later.

Rose Tinted Glasses

04-Nov-2008 by Reginald Goss-Custard

In retrospect Benny Hill looked awful in the mid-80s but then so does Sayle's output in the noughties. Unlike a good claret, stand-up comics rarely age well. There are exceptions of course, Dave Allen, Tommy Cooper, Frankie Howard and Morecambe and Wise being the notable few.

Benny Hill Hill Hill

04-Nov-2008 by Bob Todd

Junco - I don't know where you grew up in the 70s - Eton, perhaps. But where I came from and in our teenage age group Benny Hill was considered the nuts. His show was talked about at school the next day. And I agree with Arthur he was far more amusing than Alexi Sayle.

04-Nov-2008 by Junco Partner

Arthur Askey, you are not seriously saying you prefer Benny Hill to Alexi Sayle? I grew up in the 70's and everyone I knew thought Benny Hill was shit even then and as for Tarby? Terrible. The reason people liked Eric Morcambe and Tommy Cooper was because they were funny unlike those two goons. I saw Alexi Sayle in 1983 in full flow and it was like a punk gig. He was unbelievable. Ben Elton ripped him off wholesale but was a pale watered down version. Bit like seeing The Police instead of The Clash.

The Dail Wail

04-Nov-2008 by Oliphant Chucklebutty

Dail Wail readers! Oh I say. " Oh dahling! Can you get the fish knife presentation case mother gave us? We've got guests coming around for dinner" Let's get down to the serious business here. Has anybody read Paul Willetts new book, Teenage Flicks, a collection of Subbuteo stories from football professionals, pundits. comics (Jonathan Ross free) and gossips, yet? What sweet memories. Anyone fancy a game? Bagsy Hibernian though.

Tone It Down

04-Nov-2008 by King Crombie

Can we keep the effing and blinding down to an essential minimum ? Otherwise it starts to make the site look a bit shabby. I"m no copper, but lets not walk about with our arses hanging out of our strides.

The BBC

03-Nov-2008 by Sheepskin Steve

That’s exactly what the BBC should be spending their money on - covering important issues, not wasting £18m on trivia. The Mail is a terrible paper, and their agenda is clear, but these wealthy celebrities are no liberals. A true liberal would want them sent packing so proper journalists can be employed and put to work on things that actually matter.

FEAR OF PEOPLE IN GOLFING JUMPERS WHO READ THE DAILY MAIL

03-Nov-2008 by Albert Finney

Since when did this message board turn into The Daily Mail letters page? Yes what J Ross said was wrong and offensive, but an apology should surely have been the end of it, but no we get a silly right wing media witch hunt; and people falling for it like zombies. It is interesting to remember that when the programme was first broadcast it had just two (yes 2!) complaints. Only after the Mail on Sunday ran a piece on it a number of days later did the complaints roll in...People need to get a grip...I for one hear worse things uttered everday at work, in the pub, on the street and read in many London books publications ...but the message board seems to have been overtaken by people who have been brainwashed by the Daily Mail moralising agenda. Which really is about something much deeper - its perpetual war with the 'liberal' licence fee paying BBC (The Daily Mail! mmm that bastion of morals, didn't they support the Nazis back i the thirties?) As for the comment on the alternative commedians of the nineteen eighties, it is a fair point to say they were awful. But lets remember why they came about - because of the naff bigoted comics of the previous decade. Funny how little Englanders can get so worked up about an offensive comment by a DJ on a radio! Do you know how many people have died in Iraq because of an illegal war? Do you know how many people die everyday because they haven't got clean drinking water? People need to get a grip!

Letter I sent to Mr Ross in June of this year

01-Nov-2008 by Barry Desmond

June 18 2008 Dear Jonathan, How the fuck are you? I’m sure you’re not worrying too much over the media whores getting on your fucking case about the wonga you’re pulling out the BBC. Good on you! Look at the money the bastards waste on all this Life on Earth type shit – have you ever met any fucker in your boozer that has ever watched any of that crap? Exactly. No, keep up the good work, bruv. Is that bald, fat cunt (can’t remember his name –like the rest of the country) still writing your stuff? One tip – the token homo stuff is wearing a bit thin now – get rid of them four queers and a piano, you’ve done your bit for the uphill gardeners – let them make it on their own. By the way I fucking creased up when you asked that Cameron tosspot if he ever wanked over Mrs Thatcher. Magic. You’re a genius and that’s a fucking fact. Give us some more stories about you’re weird pets – they’re fucking hilarious. And a few more mentions of your wife’s bazookas wouldn’t go amiss. Yours sincerely, Barry Desmond PS Try and get the paddy Sean Hughes on your show – he’s fucking quality.

No Box For Me - Well not much...

31-Oct-2008 by King Crombie

I don't really watch the box, some football, the odd flick and a bit of news and some stuff with the nippers, It seems like I'm not missing much.

Agree

31-Oct-2008 by FRANK MARKER

I agree totally Art. What you have to understand with all these Oxbridge types, who for all their so-called egalitarianism, actually loathe and fear the working-classes. So what they do to drug us into submission with pap and crap like EastEnders, brain numbing gameshows and finally belittle us with middle class comedians playing ignorant working class types like The Pub Landlord. Makes you bloody weep doesn't it?

Betrayal

31-Oct-2008 by Arthur Askey

It all goes back to Ben Elton. He's on my hit list. He destroyed Benny Hill's reputation; made him out to be some sort of evil leering rapist when he was a national treasure and had nothing to be ashamed of. Then Elton's cronies followed suit and rubbished everything that went before. Forsyth, Tarbuck, Sykes et al banished to the golf course. They left the dead ones alone like Tommy Cooper and Morecambe and Wise alone but had they of lived they'd have got it to. We had to pretend we found pigs like French and Saunders funny and even Lenny Henry who is about as amusing as a positive Aids test. It was called alternative comedy. Alexi Sayle pseudo intellectual fat wanker. This lot were all con-men. Baying to free Nelson Mandela but piling up the money. Hypocrites all. I remember New Year 2000 and the BBC did a roll of honour of 'stars'. There was the real time when all those still alive then could have been honoured just a walk through of the people from the 50s, 60s,70s stlll with us but what did we get French, Saunders, Henry. The problem is that there is no respect or desire to please the older audience. In fact they seem to go out of their way to upset them even though they make up the biggest TV watching group in the country and the Ross/Brand/Sachs incident sort of encapsulates this perfectly. Entrepreneurs out there take not. A TV channel for older people would clean up. There the ones with the money. Advertisers would soon realise it. Presenters would come cheap as they have been frozen out. real people. real guests. Re-runs of what real people want to see not american canned laughter shit.

Emperor's New Clothes

31-Oct-2008 by FRANK MARKER

I've heard people call Brand a 'comedy genius' and are under the misguided impression that his brand (ho ho) of wit is deeply surreal . Lawks a mercy! Don't make me laugh! The only idiots who admire him are those irritating fashionable types who sit around all day in trendy Soho cafes sipping skinny lattes in the mistaken belief it gives them instant wisdom on the world. Give any semi literate twat a spliff and a thesaurus and you'll have a Russell Brand.

The BBC

31-Oct-2008 by Steve

Totally agree Arthur. Ramsey - don’t get me started on him! The BBC is special and is being let down by people in positions of power who are out of touch with the mass population and think someone like Brand or Ross is ‘cutting edge’. Why does the media keep talking about ‘pushing the boundaries’. Ross and Brand are not ‘edgy’ or even interesting. There are plenty of public schoolboy run channels available on satellite TV to house this sort of rubbish. Dumbing down comes from the top. These two have left the BBC open to further abuse from commercial interests who would love to get in there and destroy one of our last great institutions. They have ruined British football and have even started on cricket now. We are in recession. Selling everything off to the highest bidder helps nobody but those doing the buying. When will this country wake up?

Bran dross

30-Oct-2008 by Arthur Askey

No they are not particularly. If one good thing comes out of this it will be an end to Ross's effing on his show and then maybe the spotlight will next fall on the sweaty, pock-marked, pretend ex footballer Ramsey. I mean what are we meant to think Ross is funny, he's hard, he's hip because he says Fuck. And yes they are out of order bullying an old man. Pair of cunts. How would Ross like it if we left a message on his ansaphone putting on an irish accent saying we were Sean Hughes and we did HIS wife over the sofa. Not a lot. If I saw Russell Brand in a pub I would nut him and that's before this bullying episode. One episode of Andrew Sachs playing Manuel has contributed more to the comedy pantheon of this country than the entire career of Brand Ross. Manuel will be remembered long after these two have the maggotts crawling out their nostrils. Don't start me on Ramsey. I'd like to invite him to my restuarant pretending I needed help and then plunge a corkscrew deep into his jugular vein and watch him spray blood around the kitchen. Let's hear him swear then.

Humour

30-Oct-2008 by Sheepskin Steve

Are Jonathan Ross and Bland Man funny? I can’t see it myself. What happened to humour in this country? We used to produce great comedians. Don’t say this, don’t say that. And what about the BBC. What has happened to this great institution. When we are being fed a hundred satellite channels of televised trivia and the air waves are full of gossip and nonsense can’t the BBC stand up and deliver some quality. Freedom of choice? Don’t make me laugh. As some well-known cockneys once said ‘freedom? what f/ing freedom?’

"LADY JAZZ' by Frances Kennett ?

28-Oct-2008 by King Crombie

Just stumbled across this one. Published in 1990, it is evidently set in 1930's Soho. Any pointers ?

Much Obliged Alan Harvey

27-Oct-2008 by King Crombie

I dip my stingy brim low and slow to you sir. Much obliged.

Wide Boys review

27-Oct-2008 by Alan Harvey

Wide Boys Never Work Review by Melissa McClements Published: October 27 2008 05:33 | Last updated: October 27 2008 05:33 Wide Boys Never Work By Robert Westerby London Books £11.99, 226 pages The fourth in a series resurrecting long-lost, London-based novels, Wide Boys Never Work was first published in 1937. In it, Westerby – who later became a Hollywood scriptwriter – paints a gritty portrait of the capital’s underbelly between the wars. Jim Bankley works on the production line in a car factory up north. Bad-tempered, mouthy and handy with his fists, he’s the classic angry young man. When he meets a London gang at the local dog track, he is seduced by their talk of easy money and women, and promptly follows them down to the big smoke. Westerby’s hard-hitting prose brings the seedy bars of 1930s Soho to life, packed with spivs, gangsters, pimps and prostitutes. Jim soon finds himself knee-deep in murky goings-on. Celebrated writer and London-lover Iain Sinclair – author of London Orbital – champions this novel as an underground classic, and sets it in context in a vibrant introduction. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Any Chance Of Posting FT Review ?

26-Oct-2008 by King Crombie

Is there any chance of some kind person posting the FT review ? I don't get the FT and anyway, it's way beyond my technical skills.

Wide Boys

26-Oct-2008 by Paolo

Nice review in yesterday's FT.

The new Sillitoe biography

23-Oct-2008 by NW1

Just out by Richard Bradford is worth a read too. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Writer. Just finished. Now on The Snowball about the life of the US super-investor Warren Buffett. He's the bloke who has just bought a chunk of ailing Goldman Sachs

Yo-Ho-Ho

23-Oct-2008 by King Crombie

Got my Westerby and Curtis(#2) Yo-Ho-Ho !!!

Wide Boys

21-Oct-2008 by happy jack

Arrived. Demolished. Great

A Pin to see the Peepshow

07-Oct-2008 by Hoopla

I remember watching this TV production of the Thompson and Bywaters case starring Francesca Annis back when i was a child. My father used to tell me about all these murders and explained that how when he was a child murder was so infrequent here that each one gripped the country and the subsequent trials were lapped up by the public with relish. It says a lot about the novelty aspect of murder only 50 years ago. Don't believe Governments when they say that the murder rate is decreasing.

HP Film

06-Oct-2008 by anonymous

Sounds good Kicky, good luck!

Human Punk Screenplay

06-Oct-2008 by Kicky

Hi there, in response to earlier posts - John is very much involved in the adaptation of Human Punk - and has been since the first draft. I am now working on an 8th draft with a director, and hope to have completion in the next month or so - then it's on to the rocky road of raising finance. We do hope the success of TFF will support the making of Human Punk of course. With regards to adapting - it's a real challenge - this was my first actually, but at the heart of what I've written is above all, my love of the original story/novel. Inevitably, you have to cut bits out - screenplays are only 90(ish) pages long. I like to think I've been true to the themes and characters of the novel as much as possible. Hopefully we'll start shooting in 2009 and you'll soon be able to judge how I did!

Sohemian Meeting Thompson/Bywaters

02-Oct-2008 by FRANK MARKER

Our next Sohemian Meeting will be on the Edith Thompson/Fredericick Bywaters murder case. This murder achieved great notoriety in 1920s Britain and was seen by many in the case of Edith Thompson's execution, as a grevious miscarriage of justice. Edith's story has been novelised many times most famously in F Tennyson Jesse's 1934 book A Pin To See The Peepshow. Our speaker for the evening will be Rene Weis, author of Criminal Justice - The True Story of Edith Thompson. Upstairs at The Wheatsheaf Pub, Rathbone Place. Admission £3. 15th October 7.30pm

To P Hewitt

25-Sep-2008 by Gavin

I'm guessing that's you paolo hewitt. Wanted to say how much I enjoyed your book The Looked After Kid. I was in care for a short while and can identify with a lot in there. Also just read the new Weller book. Much better than the other one. Well done.

Book to Flick

24-Sep-2008 by King Crombie

I'm sure if we surveyed thel film caper for the 100 or so years it's been around we would find plenty of examples of great books that were made into great flicks. In today's commercial climate I would imagine film rights are frront and centre of manya book publishers priorities. Money, artistic input and contriol are, I would imagine , "all negotiable". But it would be naive to imagine that even if a writer's work is butchered in the film making process, that somewher along the way, the writer did not bin a few readies.

p.hewitt

23-Sep-2008 by Jimmy Jazz

good luck with your question. I don't think the authors on this site actually respond to (or read) any of the messages posted on the website ( probably get fed up with all the talk about gangster books etc.) I don't know if John King had any role in the screenplay for The Football Factory - putting a book onto the big screen will always( in my opinion )dilute what was in a novel. Books are best. Always have been. Always will be.

FRANK MARKER

23-Sep-2008 by FRANK MARKER

Oh, by the way King Crombie, please let me know what you think of Dope Girls after you've read it.

Needle of Death

23-Sep-2008 by FRANK MARKER

Needle of Death was a track on on Bert's 1965 album, 'Bert Jansch'. Dates are just so important to blokes aren't they? The album also featured Davy Graham's perennial instrumental classic, Angi (or Anji? or what you will!) Talking of early druggie songs, anyone remember Donovan's jazz inflected Sunny Goodge Street? It featured the lines " A violent hash-smoker shook a chocolate machine. Involved in a eating scene".

Me - "A bit of a div"

22-Sep-2008 by King Crombie

Apologies to all and sundry re my "Needle Of Death" post, being as it was released in 1965, there's little possibilty of it being written in '66. I'm all crinkly mouthed

open message to john king

22-Sep-2008 by p. hewitt

so "england away" and "human punk" are being developed as films? hope they turn out better than the football factory - having taught scriptwriting I understand the need for adaptation, but stripping away the soul of the book ( the examination of working class culture) leaving little more than violence set to music is not big or clever. By the way, loving "skinheads" - could be a fantastic film...

Bert Jansch - "Needle OF Death"

18-Sep-2008 by King Crombie

Bert Jansch - "Needle Of Death" top shelf stuff. I wonder when it was written, I'm no expert but imagine it to have been recorded circa '65/'66.

Scriptwriter

18-Sep-2008 by FRANK MARKER

Agree with you there KC. Ego fuelled with copious amounts of Bolivian marching powder has resulted in arrogant arses producing mucho crapola. The all night chemist in Piccadilly Circus you mentioned was a legendary place for junkies from the 50s onwards. I remember in the 1970s a pal of mine telling me to go there and ask for a certain 'cough medicine' that he assured would see me through a night in Tiffanys disco. Like the callow youth I was I muttered something about it to the stern faced assistant and instead came away with a packer of aspirins. It was reminiscent of that scene in A Kind of Loving where Vic goes into a chemist for a packet of rubbers and instead emerges with a bottle of Lucozade: cue his mate, played by James Bolam, laughing his socks off. Did you see that BBC4 series 'Folk Brittanica' ? As part of it they showed a short 1965 documentary on a junkie buying his gear in Picc Circus and shooting up in a nearby lav. What made it even more harrowing was the use of Bert Jansch's anti-drug song Needle of Death, a song written about the tragic death through heroin of a friend of Bert's.

Scrpitwriter ???

18-Sep-2008 by King Crombie

Mr Marker, When I was a young 'erbert a scriptwriter was someone who would sell you a piece of paper that might get you something "naughty" at the 24 chemist in Trafalgar Sq. Nowadays, I assume you are referring to the motion picture lark. Fret not either way , I no longer have the nerve for one or the ego for the other.

Dope Girls

17-Sep-2008 by FRANK MARKER

You're more than welcome KC. If you fancy yourself as a scriptwriter then Dope Girls would make an excellent subject for a film. I'm more than surprised Sarah 'Tipping the Velvet' Walters hasn't got her hands on it yet. There's dope, Edwardian 'Boy's Own' racism, comical undercover cops in top and hat tails making notes on their cuffs in Soho nightclubs and just for Ms Tipping the Velvet, supposed sapphic goings on between some of the stage musicals girls. Enjoy.

Dope Girls

16-Sep-2008 by King Crombie

Much obliged Mr Marker and I tip my stingy brim to you. Cue "Devil's Gallop" and I'm off on the trail of "Dope Girls".

Brighton

16-Sep-2008 by FRANK MARKER

Hello King Crombie In Shepperton Babylon by Matthew Sweet there is a 1920s Maidenhead nightclub used by matinee idols and the Mayfair Set called Murray's. The proprietor was a former medic in the American army who settled in England after the war and made a fortune selling drugs under the counters of his nightclubs. So by no stretch of the imagination can you rule out an underground drug scene in Brighton and don't forget people like Wilde and his fellow 1890s opium tokers spent considerable periods their too. I can't recommend too highly (no pun intended) Marek Kohn's (a Brighton resident) Dope Girls. It's a fascinating study of the birth of the British drug underground,which uses the deaths through drug overdoses of stage beauty Billie Carleton and dancer Freda Kempton as its central theme.

Brighton - Opium Dens ?

15-Sep-2008 by King Crombie

I don't know if it's a load of old codswallop - but I was told on more than one occasiion that there were opium dens in Brrighton back in the 30's. Is there any kind of deviant history we can refer to ?

BRIGHTON

15-Sep-2008 by FRANK MARKER

As Keith Waterhouse once said of Brighton, "a town that looks as though it should be helping the police with their enquiries". It was also the setting for the 3rd series of Public Eye.

Brighton

15-Sep-2008 by King Crombie

My old man (RIP) always referred to Brighton as "London by the sea"' '!

Billy Hill

14-Sep-2008 by Ken Barnes

Should be interesting. Thank you Frank. I was always surprised by the fact that Billy Hill lived so long. He is indelibly associated with the pre-Kray era yet he was still alive and kicking in quiet retirement in Brighton until the 1980s, I understand. Brighton. What a place! Not only Patrick Hamilton's canvas but homes to Max Miller, Graham Greene's Pinky, and many, many more. After London must be one of the most productive towns for literary fiction.

BILLY HILL THE GODFATHER OF SOHO

13-Sep-2008 by Frank Marker

Journalist and crime writer Wensley Clarkson will be addressing the Sohemian Society on the life of 1950s crime lord and mentor to the Kray twins Billy Hill. Wensley will be signing copies of his book 'Billy Hill: The Godfather of Soho' after his talk. Upstairs at the Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place W1 1DG Info 020 8960 7172 Underground Tottenham Crt Rd. Wed, 24th Sept, 7.30pm Admission: £3

prison house album

12-Sep-2008 by Jimmy Jazz

ok so can someone at London Central tell us when/if the albumn based on John King's The Prison house is going to see light of day ? Is it finished ? Can we have a sneek pre-view ?

What happened

12-Sep-2008 by Derek, Islington

Was your building overrun by pornographers and paedophiles in a dirty siege? Keep them doors bolted. The new titles look smart. I have a Wide Boys here from 1937 which cost me an arm and a leg. Loath to buy another. But Sinclair introduction? Needs to be had.

Wide Boys

12-Sep-2008 by Alan Harvey

Wide Boys Never Work and They Drive By Night are now both in stock but not officially published until mid_October. If anybody wants one just order through the shop. Also new content on the main site relating to these books and their authors.

Test

12-Sep-2008 by Infozure

Test

Message foe Alan Harvey

03-Sep-2008 by Albert Finney

I am very fortunate to have a copy of both Roland Camberton's novels, but others may not be so lucky. Any chance of London books reprinting Rain on the Pavements and Scamp?

The Outcast

18-Aug-2008 by Gavin

Just bought and read this book by Sadie Jones. It is a Richard & Judy book, whatever exactly that entails, but I did not hold this against it. Set in 1950s straitlaced and squash on the lawn Surrey it tells the story of a young boy, Lewis, who loses his way after witnessing the death of his mother. His father cannot express his grief and rapidly remarries and Lewis withdraws into himself. A whispering campaign spreads around the village that Lewis may have been more than a witness to his mother's demise. The boy loses his way and expresses himself in such ways as burning down his local church. Good book. Well paced with such a good build up it renders the ending an inevitable anti-climax. Highly recommended.

Sohemian Society

15-Aug-2008 by anonymous

Just a quick line to let people know of a few up and coming events for our autumn/winter season of talks. In October we will be welcoming author Rene Weis to give a talk on his book Criminal Justice, an account of the Edith Thompson/Frederick Bywaters murder case. We will also be having actor Murray Melvin, who will be giving a talk about d working with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop and his recently published book The Art of Theatre Workshop. We also have future talks planned on Billy Hill, Gangland Soho and William Blake. Please check our website in October for dates and further details: www.sohemians.com

Future of books

15-Aug-2008 by John Drew

Does anyone know anyone that has read an e-book? Amazon's Kindle e-reader is about to reach tipping point? Will books as we know them become defunct and mainly be read on telephones, blackberries, computer screen? I can't see it, myself but I thought texting would never catch on. What do we think out there?

No, sir we are talking about the one and the same

13-Aug-2008 by McFurious

Mr Hudson

Alan Hudson - not the Chelsea player

12-Aug-2008 by King Crombie

i'm getting the strong impression that the Alan Hudson being referred to is not the former Chelsea player. My misconception should explain my previos comments. Ignorance not nonsense.

Paul Canoville

11-Aug-2008 by ipat

Just started Black and Blue by Paul Canoville

Alan Hudson

08-Aug-2008 by The Nightwatchman

Hudson’s novels remind me of William Burroughs at his experimental best. I am thinking of the post Junky novels, especially Cities Of The Red Night and The Ticket That Exploded. WB’s chemically assisted tinkering with cutouts was later employed by Bowie on the albums Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs I believe. Bowie would have been at his peak at a similar time to Alan and I like to imagine the two poets sharing a drink or two in the Chelsea Drugstore on the King’s Road. Whether either of these London legends ever met Burroughs I do not know, although I read that Burroughs spent some time in London, possibly in the Earls Court area. I often read Burroughs and Hudson when my insomnia is at its worst, the music hall rhythms of Bowie playing softly in the background as I am transported to alternative realities. Forget Hamilton, stick with Hudson. He is the wise man who will lead you safely through the night.

Patrick Hamilton

08-Aug-2008 by Lemmy

Through A Glass Darkly by Nigel Jones is an excellent and thoroughly researched biography of Patrick Hamilton recently published. I caught on to Hamilton only two or three years ago when a friend recommended Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky and then the BBC dramatisation followed. Have now read everuthing I can lay my hands on declare him the greatest writer i'VE yet come across and Mr Thwaites from the Slaves of Solitude the most fantastic fictional character of the 20th century. He seemed to be a slave to drink most of his life but he nevertheless produced great books for nearly 30 years.

Sports books

08-Aug-2008 by Tony Arter

Not sure what the nonsense is below. Football books have for the large part been pretty appalling. They were churned out in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s by a small company who filled the gap. Ghost written they tried for snappy titles (About A Ball) for guess who and followed a well mapped out formula. From junior football, to cleaning the pros boots, to debuts, to finals and internationals. Much of these early works were taken with descriptions of the foreign lands visited because then to travel abroad was such a novelty. In the 1980s it ratcheted up with slightly weighter tomes being penned by top journalists as ghost writers. Michael Parkinson for George Best is a good example. In this decade Jimmy Greaves broke the mould with his book 'This One's on Me' where he not only discussed his career but his fight with alcoholism. George Best wasn't far behind with his The Good, The Bad and The Bubbly penned by gossip columnist Ross Benson. By the 1990s the doors were open for footballing' superstars to bring out a second autobiography this time including things they could not the first time around. The market boomed and lesser footballers who would not have got a book deal in the past were now publishing and selling. The market has probably peaked and Wayne Rooney's 3 book and Gazza's 2 book deal probably marked the high (in aspiration at least). As you may have guessed I am a connisseur of the genre and my favourites are FOOTBALL AMBASSADOR by Eddie Hapgood from the 1950s and TWO LEFT FEET by Gary Nelson. Millwall's Eamon Dunphy did ONLY A GAME in the 1970s which was swam against the tide. ADDICTED by Tony Adams is ptrobably the best of the confessionals.

600 pages by Alan Hudson !

06-Aug-2008 by King Crombie

Not being a Shed boy, 600 pages by Alan Hudson strikes me as a page or two over the odds. Maybe if I have a go at "the most egotistical book of all time" ( quite a recommendation) i'll change my tune ?

Tinker

06-Aug-2008 by CDR

Do you mean The Tinker and The Tasilman? That's how it was printed, anyway. Yes that was quite a large book....

Football Books

06-Aug-2008 by Felix

If you’re a fan of The Working Man’s Ballet (possibly the most egotistical book ever published). One must read The Tinker and Talisman Hudson’s true masterpiece over six hundred pages of nonsense.

Football books

05-Aug-2008 by Slim Jim

As the writer below says The Damned United is a damned fine book. It transcends telling a story and enters the mind of Brian Clough. The relationship between him and Johnny Giles is so fiery that the book practically ignites. No wonder Giles has sued. Tony Cascarino did an honest book as did a Charlton player a few years back 'My Left Foot' or something and painted an alternative picture of life for footballers not blessed by Premiership riches and fame. George Best and 21 Others traces what happened to the 22 youth players in a City and United youth game in the early 1960s and is an entertaining social document. My particular favourite is The Working Man's Ballet being the autobiography of Alan Hudson. The book is tinged with madness and that makes it stands out.

Much Obliged Junco

04-Aug-2008 by King Crombie

I shall swag myselg a copy, once i've made it through John Fisher's Tommy Cooper bio ( an Xmas present from Prince Crombie).

04-Aug-2008 by Junco Partner

Steve Claridge's 'Tales From the Boot Room' is a good read, great account of the life of a journeyman footballer and his battles with a serious gambling addiction. The man can write (and it wasn't ghost written).

Football books ?

04-Aug-2008 by KING CROMBIE

The season will soon be upon us and every once in a while I like to dip into a fottball book, most of which aren't worth the punt. "4-2", "Damned Utd" and of course "Fever Pitch" all still reside in my grey matter, but the others seem to have scarpered. Any pointers ?

Nice piece from today's Times re Alan Sillitoe

01-Aug-2008 by Harry Fabian Junior

Bring back Alan Sillitoe and a refreshing view of humanity Today's cultural elite depict ordinary people as degraded, disgusting chavs and slagsMick Hume Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe's classic novel of working-class life, is being republished on its 50th birthday. And to judge by the gutter culture of today, it's not a moment too soon. My daughters having reached that difficult age when they watch EastEnders, I have just glimpsed the grimy soap - depressing enough to make anybody want to east-end it all. It bears little relation to how people live in our corner of northeast London. But it seems typical of the cultural elite's depiction of “ordinary people” as degraded, disgusting, Shameless victims, abusers, chavs and slags, seen everywhere from reality TV shows to “gritty” novels, movies and misery memoirs. Against that background, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning feels like a 50-year-old breath of fresh air. Young Arthur likes nothing better than drinking, fighting and sex - a reminder to some that these things existed before 1997. But Seaton's “anti-social behaviour” is life-affirming and uplifting. In achieving Sillitoe's aim of being “both ordinary and extraordinary”, Arthur, the spirit of the age in a drape suit, still speaks to us about the universal human spirit of resilience and aspiration. If today's degraded cultural stereotypes reflect the more marginalised, atomised condition of the working classes, Seaton marks the birth of the individual rebel as part of a confident workforce of the 1950s, with more money, clothes and attitude than ever before. Proud of the £14 a week that he earns for skilled piecework, he also daydreams about blowing up the Nottingham bike factory where he works. Like pale imitations seen in popular culture since, he is unbound by traditional politics or morality. Yet unlike them, Seaton is nobody's victim or whinger. He lives by the creed “Don't let the bastards grind you down” and sees himself as “a bloody billy goat trying to screw the world... because it's trying to do the same to me”. While acknowledging that he'll always be “fighting with mothers and wives, landlords and gaffers, coppers, army, government”, he concludes that “it's a good life and a good world, all said and done, if you don't weaken, and if you know that the big wide world hasn't heard from you yet, no, not by a long way, though it won't be long now”. In our easily-offended times, some have reacted to the abuse heaped on working-class people by trying to ban the dread word “chav”. They would be better off taking Seaton's attitude to such contemptuous branding: “Whatever people think I am or say I am, that's what I'm not, because they don't know a bloody thing about me.” Fifty years on, the time is surely right for the big wide world to hear from Arthur again

Rimbaud

28-Jul-2008 by iPat

the reasoning behind the crass drummers use of the name. Im sure Penny says something about it in Sibboleth. returning to the teddy boys in Lambeth, i recall that was where Penny started on his way (although it may not have been exactly Lambeth) and theres a clip on you tube where he meets the beatles - the winner of an art competition. With the Windsor free festival being smashed by the police, he helped start Stonehenge as an alternative before being heavily involved in the punk scene with crass. Hes not stopped either since then and has been an influence on a lot of people for a long time.

Rimbaud - punk for sure.

27-Jul-2008 by King Crombie

Although i doubt he ever heard the term "punk" and wrote poetry not novels, it's hard to see why Rimbaud wouldn't be considered a punk writer - perhaps the first ? Which would put the French in the frame.

27-Jul-2008 by Junco

The Boy Who Looked at Johnny by Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill? If by any others you mean good, then you're bang on.

Punk novels

26-Jul-2008 by Mark

Besides John King's excellent Human Punk has there ever been any other punk novels. Cannot think of any.

First Bands to be called punk ?

26-Jul-2008 by Barnet

The American North-west scene of around 66/67' was the first time bands were specifically called punk bands amongst them featured The Sonics - still going strong now.

Lenny Kaye - "Nuggets" - punk rock

24-Jul-2008 by King Crombie

First time I heard punk used to describe music was in Lenny Kaye's liner notes for the "Nuggets" compilation, most of which would now be described as "garage". Still any earlier references to the word than Sir Humphrey Mildmay's 1642 usage ?

American Punk

24-Jul-2008 by Albert Finney

Even if we out do them on the use of the word. I am afraid they outdo us and predate us on the music. Think The Stooges, Patti Smith, New York Dolls, Ramones...verses the Sex Pistols and er...The Damned...I am afraid there is no contest

the first punk

24-Jul-2008 by iPat

the yanks always going on about being the first with punk. The colonies were founded in 1607, so this still pre dates this reference. ; ) gotto to outdo them on this!! : )

Punks (1640's)

24-Jul-2008 by King Crombie

I'm reading Christopher Hibbert's "Roundheads and Cavaliers" and in it a gentleman refers in his diary to "punks" which Hibbert annotates as "whores". Is this the origin of the word, or does it go back to before the English Civil War ? Your starter fro ten Bamber...

Bermondsey Boy

23-Jul-2008 by COFFINDODGER

I have recently read Bermondsey Boy written by the entertainer Tommy Steele. There does not appear to be a ghost writer and it well written cleverly evoking the war-time cockney south London of his formative years. Well worth a read.

Public houses

23-Jul-2008 by Doctor Lager

Go back twenty or thirty years and a pint of lager, bitter, mild, cider was very cheap compared to today. I know these things creep up and the memory fades, but beer wasn’t expensive at all, that’s why the pubs were packed most nights of the week. I take your point, but a bit of shopping around and you can find a pub where a pint is £2 or cheaper. Kids now have a lot more spare cash than twenty or more years back, so I don’t know if that is a factor so much. These are kids who walk around in trainers that cost a small fortune, with mobiles, iPods and all sorts. It’s only my personal opinion of course, but I think if pubs eased up a little the drunks would be off the streets and youngsters would be drinking in safety. It is a myth that more drink is consumed today. Another state lie. Everyone was on the piss when I was growing up. Many of us still are. I would actually suggest dropping the legal drinking age to sixteen as kids that age are going to drink anyway so why not accept the fact? Drop it to sixteen and then stay lax on the law as that way the odd fifteen year old can sneak in as well. I was in the pub fairly regularly by fifteen and I really don’t see the harm in it. A lot of girls were in there by thirteen or fourteen as I recall as they tended to mature a lot faster than boys and could get served with their older boyfriends.

True

22-Jul-2008 by John Drew

Dr Lager what you say is true. But I reckon that if alcohol was sold as relatively cheaply as it is today in supermarkets, then we'd be loading up on cans too and sitting around the parks etc

Hooligan nights

22-Jul-2008 by Doctor Lager

Every time I turn on the radio these days the presenters are going on and on about drinking. If it isn’t the harm it does adults it is the trouble young hooligans cause on the streets when they are wandering around with their cans of lager. Well when I was a lad it was easy to get served in a pub so we stayed inside and if we didn’t want the landlord to chuck us out in the cold we behaved ourselves. It was as simple as that. Nowadays pubs are so strict you hardly see anyone under 20 let along a fifteen or sixteen year old. What are young people supposed to do? Let the kids in so they can get pissed in the warmth. It never did me any harm. In fact it made me the man I am today.

Benny Green

22-Jul-2008 by King Crombie

Sheepskin Steve, evidently he's written many books including several on jazz, cricket and at least two on London. I remember him as a London TV/Radio personality and have only read his Rook introduction.

Mark Benny

22-Jul-2008 by Albert Finney

I have been interested in Mark Benny for a while but I have had no luck tracking his books down, they seem very difficult to get hold of. What books did he write?

Benny Green

22-Jul-2008 by Sheepskin Steve

I’ve read Mark Benny but not Benny Green. What did he write about Mr Crombie? Heard Irvine Welsh on the radio talking to Robert Elms the other day. He came across well and I have bought Crime on the back of that. Third of the way in now and it is a very good read. Well worth buying. Listening to the show made me think about Elms. I reckon he does an excellent job for London and is one of the few people out there who covers real Londoners. He is a million times better than snobby publications like the Standard and Time Out who are only interested in house prices and trendy tourist restaurants.

Clarence Rook "The Hooligan Nights"

22-Jul-2008 by King Crombie

Just finished "The Hooligan Nights" by Clarence Rook (first pub.1899), brought to my attention by Whistling Jack Smith at this very site. Chapeau Whistling Jack. The story of a South London "Hooligan"/petty criminal it reads much like a series of newspaper/magazine sketches that it originally was and contains some wonderful language. Still I'm far from convinced that all the adventures Rook unveils all happened to Young Alf alone and suspect it's more of a true life criminal compendium passed of as "one lad's story". Benny Green's over wordy 1971 introduction casts similar doubts. Anyone here read any of Benny Green's writing

Lambeth boys

21-Jul-2008 by anonymous

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=the+lambeth+boys&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a plenty of clips on you tube

Lambeth boys

21-Jul-2008 by anonymous

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=the+lambeth+boys&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a plenty of clips on you tube

Chris Steele-Perkins & Richard Smith

21-Jul-2008 by King Crombie

Is it "The Teds" by Steele-Perkins and Smith. Some top shelf smudges of the 70's "Country and Western" Teds.

Teds

21-Jul-2008 by Vince

There is a smashing pictorial Ted book down at my barber's that never ceases to amaze me. The photos were taken in the 1970s but were the original Teds then all in their 40s. They are centred around a pub in west london. I will get the details and post it on here. We are the Lambeth Boys was a 1960ish documentary which is available on Amazon. Authentic and interesting.

Richard Allen

21-Jul-2008 by Solly

New site: http://richardallen.wordpress.com/

Elephant Boys

18-Jul-2008 by Chuck

Came out a few years back now. Not a cult book more underworld but I'm sure there was Ted stuff in there from 1950s.

What about the Teds ?

18-Jul-2008 by King Crombie

Has there been much literature of merit featuring Teddy Boys ? Colin Macinnes touches on it, but it's not the focus of his attention. Any pointers ?

Skinhead by JK

18-Jul-2008 by iPat

After my recommendation a pal got a copy and read it and i was suprised by his lack of enthusiasm for the book. He was chuffed about the horses surviving but was disapointed by the ending. In context the other books have never turned out that way so the ending suprised me but also captured how we stress and worry about things needlessly so much of the time. The book hasnt been discussed here that much as i guess no--one wants to spoil the story for those who want to read it. But what did you think?

Skinheads in literature

18-Jul-2008 by iPat

I recall being given a list, it must have been around 93/94 of skinhead type media. I guess i was hoping to get better than the Allen type stuff but this was mainly video or fanzines covering the skinhead scene including scootering. A lot of it was was extreme and didnt interest me so i never really went further with it. I guess a lot of the literature went into DIY formats, some of it being regurgitated on some websites.

Skinheads in literature

17-Jul-2008 by Mark

Its surprsing that for a such a cultureal phenomemon how little skinhead related books there actually are. Of course there is now John King's book Skinheads but before that besides Richard Allen's and Martin King's Boy Stories what was there?

Skinhead books

17-Jul-2008 by anonymous

They were an absolute phenomenon. Read now there is little to commend them, except as a trigger for nostalgia, but every apsiring skin owned it even those who could not read. Richard Allen I understand was a paid hack and never benefited in any serious way in what were the best-selling books of 1969-70-71.

Richard Allen Skinhead

16-Jul-2008 by Albert Finney

I have a similar experience with those books - Skinhead, Suedehead etc were pretty good, but kind of lost interest with the later ones...

Richard Allen - must have a posse

16-Jul-2008 by King Crombie

I'm no expert, but I was a young customer of Mr Allen's. Like many other young 'erberts of the time I cut my teeth on "Skinhead" and a handful of others, but stopped long before titles like "Glam" and "Teeny Bopper Idol". I know some of the skinhead related titles were re-issued in an anthology. I'm sure if you had a poke about online - you'd find plenty on him - he must have a posse.

DodgemGreaser

13-Jul-2008 by Derek, Islington

I have it here. Haven;t read it in years but about Norman's days travelling with the fair. There was a spate of Chopper books in the early 1970s about a Hell's Angel, I think they may have been by Richard Allen and put out by the New English Library but not sure. I remember reading the bit in school where they have a chicken head biting initiiation.

Frank Norman

13-Jul-2008 by Albert Finney

I have always been curious about his book Dodgem Greaser, anyone read it and is it easy to get a copy? I do agree that what with a revival of interest in writers such as Westerby, Kersh and Hamilton he does seem have fallen by the wayside.

Frank Norman

13-Jul-2008 by COFFINDODGER

A little known fact about Frank Norman is that he wrote scripts for The Two Ronnies.

Any plans for Frank Norman

13-Jul-2008 by Sally Norman (no relation)

Frank Norman is a more recent author than your current crop but he too seems to have been swept under the literary carpet. He was an orphan who ended up in clink but produced some wonderful books and went on to become the toast of swinging London in the 1960s. Check out Banana Boy, Dodgem Greaser and Stand on Me. I believe he also wrote the play Fings Aint Wot They Used To Be. Ripe for a revival.

Francis' Paypal pitch

12-Jul-2008 by King Crombie

Can't one of the bouncers at London Books give Francis' Paypal pitch the Big E ? Go on delete it !

Trotters Independent Traders

11-Jul-2008 by Derek Trotter Esquire

Nothing to do with us, though we ARE doing a nice line in leopard-skin lamps at the moment. Failing that we have a box of Robert Westerby first editions in the lock-up. Lovely jubbly. You know it makes sense.

Your a very sad man Francis

10-Jul-2008 by Henry Green

This has nothing to do with this notice board. IT IS ABOUT BOOKS DO YOU UNDERSTAND? Please keep your dodgy naff scams to yourself. Do you work for Trotters Independant Traders?

Pay pal finally gives back to you

10-Jul-2008 by Francis

TURN $5 INTO $15,000 IN ONLY 30 DAYS...HERES HOW! This is a Money Scheme and Not, I repeat... This is Not a Scam!!! You have most likely seen or heard about this project on TV programs such as 20/20 and Oprah, or you may have read about it in the Wall Street Journal. If not, here it is below - revealed to you in step-by-step detail. This program is by no means new. It has been in existence in many forms for at least a decade. But in the early days, it required a lot more time and effort, as well as an investment of a few hundred dollars. However thanks to PayPal and the Internet, the investment is now virtually ZERO! And what's more, the entire process is FASTER, EASIER, and MORE LUCRATIVE than it has EVER been! Below is the email sent to me: How to Turn $5 into $15,000 in 30 Days with PayPal I WAS SHOCKED WHEN I SAW HOW MUCH MONEY CAME FLOODING INTO MY PAYPAL ACCOUNT I turned $5 into $14,706 within the first 30 days of operating the business plan that I am about to reveal to you free of charge. If you decide to take action on the following instructions, I will GUARANTEE that you will enjoy a similar return! STILL NEED PROOF? Here are just 2 testimonials from the countless individuals who decided to invest nothing more than $5 and half an hour of their time to participate in this program: "What an amazing plan! I followed your instructions just 3 weeks ago, and although I haven't made 15 grand yet, I'm already up to $9,135. I'm absolutely gob smacked." -Pam Whittemore , Ohio "Well, what can I say?... THANK YOU SO MUCH! I sent 40 e-mail's out like you said and then I just forgot about the whole thing. To be honest, I didn't really think anything would come of it. But when I checked my paypal account a week later, there was over $5,000 in After 30 days I now have over $11,000 to spend! I can't thank you enough!"-Juan Tovar, NY,NY The only things you will need are: An email address. A Business PayPal account with at least $5 deposited in it, and just 15 to 30 minutes of your time. This program takes just half an hour to set up. After that, there is absolutely no work whatsoever to do on your part. You have absolutely NOTHING to lose, and there is NO LIMIT to the amount of income you can generate from this one single business program. Let's get started, just follow the instructions exactly as set out below and then prepare yourself for a HUGE influx of cash over the next 30 days! Here's what you need to do. . . REQUIREMENTS [THESE INSTRUCTIONS MUST BE FOLLOWED VERBATUM FOR THIS TO WORK] #1) an email address #2) a Premier or Business PayPal account Now follow the steps: 1-4 STEP #1 - Setting up your FREE PayPal Account It's extremely safe and very easy to set up a FREE PayPal account! Copy and paste this to the address bar https://www.paypal.com (notice the secure "https" within the link) Be sure to sign up for a free PREMIER or BUSINESS account (and not just a PERSONAL account) otherwise you won't be able to receive credit card payments from other people. STEP #2 - Sending PayPal money "It is an undeniable law of the universe that we must first give in order to receive." Now all you have to do is send $1.00 by way of PayPal to each of the six email addresses listed below. After setting up your free paypal account and confirming or verifying YOUR ACCOUNT AND putting (five Dollars) $5.00 into your Paypal Account use the Account tab on Paypal to send $1.00 to each of the Names on the List then move the top one and place yours in the #5 spot on the list of names #1-#5. Remember your name becomes #5. Make sure the subject of the payment says... *PLEASE PUT ME ON YOUR EMAIL LIST* (this keeps the program 100% legal.. so please don't forget!) Note: (If you do not see the full email address for the 5 members, just hit reply to this email and they will show up.) (Just in case you still haven't opened your PayPal account yet, use this link to open one in your name), https://www.paypal.com #1) gkiln[ at ]bluebottle.com #2) reddragon1054[ at ]gmail.com #3) trothjx[ at ]yahoo.com #4) rinakrook[ at ]optusnet.com.au #5)frncsgitau[ at]yahoo.com Remember, all of this is ABSOLUTELY LEGAL! You are creating a service! A Business... An Email List Service Business If you have any doubts, please refer to Title 18 Sec. 1302 & 1241 of the United States Postal laws. STEP #3 - Adding Your Email Address After you send your five $1.00 payments, it's your turn to add your email address to the list! Take the #1) email off the list that you see above, move the other addresses up one (5 becomes 4 & 4 becomes 3, etc) then put YOUR email address (the one used in your PayPal account) as #5) on the list. **MAKE SURE THE EMAIL YOU SUPPLY IS EXACTLY AS IT APPEARS IN YOUR PAYPAL ACCOUNT.** STEP #4 - Copy Message to 200 Newgroups, message boards,etc...... The Pure Joy of Receiving PayPal Money! You are now ready to post your copy of this message, to at least 200 newsgroups, message boards, etc. (I think there are close to 32,000 groups) All you need is 200, but remember, the more you post, the more money you make - as well as everyone else on the list! In this situation your job is to let as many people see this letter as possible. So they will make you and me rich!!!! You can even start posting the moment your email is confirmed. Payments will still appear in your PayPal account even while your bank account is being confirmed. HOW TO POST TO NEWSGROUPS & MESSAGE BOARDS Step #1) You do not need to re-type this entire letter to do your own posting. Simply put your CURSOR at the beginning of this letter and drag your CURSOR to the bottom of this document, and select 'copy' from the edit menu. This will copy the entire letter into your computer's temporary memory. Step #2) Open a blank 'Notepad' file and place your cursor at the top of the blank page. From the 'Edit' menu select 'Paste'. This will paste a copy of the letter into notepad so that you can add your email to the list. Or copy to a Word Document. and Place in the email upon completion. Step #3) Save your new Notepad file as a .txt file. If you want to do your postings in different sittings, you'll always have this file to go back to. Step #4) Use Netscape or Internet Explorer and try searching for various newsgroups, on-line forums, message boards, bulletin boards, chat sites, discussions, discussion groups, online communities, etc. EXAMPLE: go to any search engine like yahoo.com, google.com, altavista.com, excite.com - then search with subjects like? millionaire message board? or money making message board? or opportunity message board? or money making discussions? or business bulletin board? or money making forum? etc. You will find thousands & thousands of message boards. Click them one by one then you will find the option to post a new message. Step #5) Visit these message boards and post this article as a new message by highlighting the text of this letter and selecting 'Paste' from the 'Edit' menu. Fill in the Subject, this will be the header that everyone sees as they scroll thru the list of postings in a particular group, click the post message button. You're done with your first one! Congratulations! THAT'S IT!! All you have to do is jump to different newsgroups and post away. After you get the hang of it, it will take about 30 seconds for each newsgroup! REMEMBER, THE MORE NEWSGROUPS AND/OR MESSAGE BOARDS YOU POST IN, THE MORE MONEY YOU WILL MAKE!! BUT YOU HAVE TO POST A MINIMUM OF 200** That's it! You will begin receiving money within days! **JUST MAKE SURE THE EMAIL YOU SUPPLY IS EXACTLY AS IT APPEARS ON PAYPAL.** Explanation of why it works so well: $$$$$ NOW THE WHY PART: Out of 200 postings, say I receive only 5 replies (a very low example). So then I Made $5.00 with my email at #5 on the letter. Now, each of the 5 persons who just sent me $1.00 make the MINIMUM 200 postings, each with my email at #5 and only 5 persons respond to each of the original 5, that is another $25.00 for me, now those 25 each make 200 MINIMUM posts with my email at #4 and only 5 replies each, I will bring in an additional $125.00! Now, those 125 persons turn around and post the MINIMUM 200 with my email at #3 and only receive 5 replies each, I will make an additional $625.00! OK, now here is the fun part, each of those 625 persons post a MINIMUM 200 letters with my email at #2 and they only receive 5 replies that just made me $3,125.00!!! Those 3,125 persons will all deliver this message to 200 newsgroups with my email at #1 and if still 5 persons per 200 newsgroups react I will receive $15,625.00! With an original investment of only $5.00! AMAZING!! When your email is no longer on the list, you just take latest posting in the newsgroups, and send out another $5.00 to emails on the list, putting your email at number 5 again. And start posting again. The thing to remember is, thousands of people all over the world are joining the internet and reading these articles everyday, JUST LIKE YOU are now!! So can you afford $5.00?? And see if it really works?? I think so? People have said, what if the plan is played out and no one sends you the money? So what are the chances of that happening when there are tons of new honest users and new honest people who are joining the internet and newsgroups everyday and are willing to give it a try? Estimates are at 20,000 to 50,000 new users everyday, with thousands of those joining the actual Internet. Remember, play FAIRLY and HONESTLY and this will work. This really isn't another one of those crazy scams! As long as people FOLLOW THROUGH with sending out $5.00, it works! With warm wishes, bless you and your loved ones, https://www.paypal.com $$$$$ REMEMBER, IT IS 100% LEGAL! DON'T PASS THIS UP

Through a glass darkly

10-Jul-2008 by Lemmy

I'm just reading Hamilton's biography by Nigel Jones and also recently republished by Black Spring. I think he was a pretty decent sort of chap and of his time. To foist modern values and hindsight on his character would be a tad unfair. He had a horrific road accident that disfigured him and was a long time alcoholic howver his writing at his best is among the finest produced by any British author.

Patrick Hamilton

08-Jul-2008 by Dean Street Dan

I read Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky and thought it was a brilliant novel but then read something about Hamilton himself and there seems to be a conflict between his professed communism, use of prostitutes and an unnatural interest in strangulation. Can anyone fill me in on Hamilton’s true character and moral standing? Is he another perverted toff preaching equality while abusing working class people or is he a great author with honest principles?

Craven House

07-Jul-2008 by COFFINDODGER

This early novel by Patrick Hamilton has just been released by Black Spring Press. I'm reading it now. It was written, incredibly, when the guy was 19 or something and is not his best book but it has all those Hamilton trademarks: stifled people in stifled places leading stifled lives spiced up with acute observation. He honed his style to perfection following this work but is nevertheless and entertaining and worthy read.

Alan Sillitoe - West End Nights And Sunday Mornings

23-Jun-2008 by London HQ

Alan Sillitoe with be reading from A Start In Life and talking about his own life at the Sohemian Society this coming Wednesday (June 25th). The address is The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, North Soho, London W1 - a five minute walk from Tottenham Court Road tube station. Entrance is £3 and the event starts at 7.30pm. Alan will also be signing copies A Start In Life during the evening.

Alan Silltoe

21-Jun-2008 by Hayley

I spent an enjoyable evening at Waterstone Gower Street on Thursday listening to Mr Sillitoe read from his works and talk about his life. His books still pack a punch nearly half of a century later. I had no idea he also penned poertry and will endeavour to read some more of these. We were also introduced to the London Books publishers who look impossibly young and fresh-faced for publishers.

The Speakers by Heathcote Williams

20-Jun-2008 by King Crombie

I'm in the thick of Heathcote Williams' "The Speakers" (1964) not always easy but well worth paying the fare.

Jack Sheppard

16-Jun-2008 by King Crombie

Although Jack Sheppard had a go at the Highwayman caper, it was his exploits as a prison escape artist that won him his mighty reputation.

Highwaymen

15-Jun-2008 by Mark

Coincidentally a number of the letters in the Maclaren-Ross collection concern a screenplay he wrote about the highwayman Jack Sheppard....

Julian Maclaren-Ross

15-Jun-2008 by Mark

Selected Letters - just out from Black Spring Press. Excellent.

Didn't Stand Up or Deliver Much

14-Jun-2008 by King Crombie

I've just finished David Brandon's "Stand And Deliver ! A History of Highway Robbery" and would suggest anyone interested in the subject to try elsewhere. There's a good amount of information but it's poorly written and thus dull. Wish I had opted for Christopher Hibbert's "Highwaymen" as I liked both his "King Mob" (Gordon Riots) and "Road To Tyburn" (Jack Sheppard).

mmm...whats lucky about that?

11-Jun-2008 by anonymous

Unless you are the unlucky one who is locked up for forty days for a crime you have not commited...I say again why should we count ourselves lucky for our government bringing in such brutal and unfair laws?

the Govenment wants 40 days

11-Jun-2008 by anonymous

so we should think ourselves lucky

21 days so what ?

11-Jun-2008 by King Crombie

I've not read "Boy" so I have to be on double duty here, but What does it matter in how many days it was written in ? I couldn't care less if it was written in 21 hours and i wouldn't be suprised if some of my favourite songs were written in less than 21 minutes !

I read BOY too moving to Orwell

10-Jun-2008 by Bachelor Boy

It says in the preamble that it was written in 21 days and I'm afraid you can tell that. Having said that some passages are outstanding leaving the reader in no doubt the book is autobiographical despite the author's denials. Have just picked up Coming Up For Air by Mr Orwell for the first time in a couple of decades and look forward to that. Speaking of the great man I visited his grave at Sutton Courtenay recently and is simply marked 'Eric Blair' and his dates. A few graves away lies former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. not sure whether Orwell would have liked that or not. Asqith's son was Anthony who directed that fine film The Winslow Boy with Robert Donat and his great granddaughter is the actress Helena Bonham Carter and she starred in the film of Orwell's book Keep the Aspisdrata Flying. What symmetry.

Alan Sillitoe

06-Jun-2008 by Alan Harvey

Will be reading from A Start In Life at Waterstones, Gower Street on Thursday, June 19 2008 from 6.30. Be there or be square

Chapeau IPat

04-Jun-2008 by King Crombie

Well Done.

Boy independent link

02-Jun-2008 by iPat

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/boy-by-james-hanley-457378.html

BOY - INDEPENDENT ARTICLE 2007

02-Jun-2008 by King Crombie

For me this is quite a discovery abnd I tip my stingy brim low and slow to the Coffindodger. I f I knew how to stick it up here I would, but alas I'm well short in that (and many other) department(s). It's an article by Ken Worpole whose pedigree is beyond question. Maybe one of our "can do" contributors might have a go

BOY

01-Jun-2008 by COFFINDODGER

Is fiction written by Julian Hanley. I've finished it now and I must say a disturbing book overall and hard to believe was published first in 1931. It leaves little to the imagination. I will investigate the author's further work

BOY ?

31-May-2008 by King Crombie

Thanks for the tip Coffindodger, memoir or fiction ? Also who's the author ?

Boy

31-May-2008 by COFFINDODGER

Stumbled upon this book from Oneworld Classics. Boy is the story of a young stowaway in the 1930s who is rudely awakened to adult life. First published in 1931 it was banned for decades because of its unfllinching subject matter but was acclaimed by Anthony Burgess. Only 20% in but it is knocking me backwards in my armchair.....

Windass & Barnby return

26-May-2008 by Robin

Jimmy, You never know your luck, i'm guessing he'll play a pivotal role in the prem adventure, at least he has prem experience. You never know he might do the hat trick, I'm hoping one of these seasons that Hearts break the old firm monopoly and win the SPL, so never stop believing Take Care Robin Take care Robin

A NorthernTown

26-May-2008 by Jimmy Jazz

Robin & Shay - thanks. The premiiership will be a struggle but a good laugh. Hull has it's problems, like most cities , there are good & bad areas but the people are diamonds. They love their football & rugby. I'm looking forward to seeing Chelsea next season. You never know, Windass might grab a hat-trick !

Hull City

26-May-2008 by Shay

Many years ago. It may have been 1976 when Chelsea were in the old second division I took the special up there and we ended up missing the train back. Long story. We ended up drinking in Hull six of us and we were nervous because there were no chelsea in town. Local lads took us under their wing and we had a great time and they clubbed together and paid our fare to fo back in the morning,. Good peopel and will never forget the kindness. So for me and a bunch of lads from Hillingdon Hull will always be our second team. Good luck in the Prem,

Congrats

25-May-2008 by Robin

Fair play, the boy done good. Isn't it good to see someone around the same era as yourself cut the mustard in the premiership. Hope u do well next year, and Dean keeps doing the business for you. Wot about Stuart Elliot is their any chance you will be bringing him back. Don't know much about Hull City, but given a half decent chance he could proove himself from what I have seen, he would certainly give 110% to the cause.(Or has the loan to Doncaster become a permanent one.) Good luck Robin

Special Writer

25-May-2008 by Jimmy Jazz

Hit the nail on the head Robin. John King is a very special writer. I too was born in 1970 and it's really great to have someone writing about things that were happening around about when you were growing. John King - writing about real people and putting across a point of view that makes you stop and re-think the world around you. Long may he continue writing. Oh and by the way. Come on you Tigers ! Hull City in the Premiership ! Who would have thought ? Dean Windass you hero !

Robin.W@hotmail.co.uk

24-May-2008 by www.london-books.co.uk

Have read all the john king books, human punk and skinheads is most definitely my favourite. Best books I have ever read. Are charasismatic, makes you fell good about being born when you where (1970). Keep on writing cos u have a gift. Best of luck Robin (Norn Iron, (Season ticket Windsor Park, jambo and Chelsea man, long live the chopper and bring back the special one, Healey! Healy! Healey!) John King Best ever author please reply.

Capote

24-May-2008 by Trixie

Good film for book lovers. Tells the story of Truman Capote writng the book In Cold Blood rather than the story of the murders themselves. Very watchable as he ambles around the murder town with his researcher Harper Lee who later wrote To Kill A Mockingbird. There is a theory that Capote wrote this for her as they were childhood friends. THis comes from the fact that Harper Lee never wrote another book.....

Wide Boys Never Work

23-May-2008 by Alan Harvey

The title has been acquired and we will be publishing in October.

Soho Incident

22-May-2008 by King Crombie

I've deliberately avoided seeing it until I've read the book (NUDGE NUDGE LONDON BOOKS) . It was released in the U.S. as "Spin A Dark Web" and Mexico as "44 Soho Square"

Film adaptation of Wide Boys Never work

21-May-2008 by Albert Finney

I have just purchased the film version of Robert Westerbys' great novel Wide boys Never Work called Soho Incident anyone seen it?

Cheers Albert

19-May-2008 by King Crombie

I'm on the hunt, cue "devils gallop".

Roland Camberton

19-May-2008 by Albert Finney

He was described by Iain Sinclair as 'Hackneys greatest writer', not sure of the competition though. He only wrote two novels and then disappeared. His first was called Scamp and is set in Soho and is about a writer trying to set up a magazine; it is a critical, satirical study of the bohemian Soho and its inhabitants. Many of the characters are based on true people, Quentin Crisp for example. Julian Maclaren Ross was scathing of the book in his review of it, although that maybe because it was to close to home and cut to close to the bone. J B Priestley though liked the book. The only other novel he wrote was called Rain on the Pavements, which is about Jewish life in London in the 1950's again it touches like Scamp on the world of London cafes, pubs and clubs of the time. Good luck tracking them King Crombie; I know from personal experience they are tricky to find and a don't often come cheap.

Camberton Mr Finney ?

19-May-2008 by King Crombie

I don't know anything about Camberton. Any titles you might recommend ?

Message for the Crombie Kid

19-May-2008 by Blockhead Bill

I like donkey jackets.

Jew Boy

19-May-2008 by Albert Finney

King Crombie I am glad you enjoyed Jew Boy. I don't think the influence and importance of Jewish writers can be underestimated. So many great writers from that period who write about interesting subject matter and lives were Jews, maybe due to the harsh economics, slum living that many found themselves trapped in. Think of Gerald Kersh, Bernard Kopps, Alexander Baron and Roland Camberton, Simon Blumenfeld to name but a few truly great writers.

Blockhead Bill

19-May-2008 by King Crombie

Well the name says it all .

Difficult to read?

18-May-2008 by Blockhead Bill

I love big blocks of text, the bigger the better in fact. Keep them coming! I also enjoy joined-up writing, wolf whistling at pretty girls, and hot tea. It must be hot though as I can’t drink it warm!!!

A Start In Life and Alan Sillitoe from today's SUNDAY TIMES

18-May-2008 by Alan Harvey

Fame and Fortune: Alan Sillitoe The author, poet and one-time Angry Young Man says his work should matter more than the cash Mary Meyer Alan Sillitoe was one of the “Angry Young Men” of the 1950s alongside John Osborne, John Braine and Kingsley Amis. Sillitoe was born in Nottingham and left school at 14. He worked in the Raleigh bicycle factory for three years and then as an air traffic control assistant for a year before joining the RAF in 1946. He published his first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, in 1958. It was made into a film two years later. Sillitoe's 1959 short-story collection, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, remains his most celebrated work. It was awarded the Hawthornden Prize and the title story was adapted for the big screen. His ninth novel, A Start in Life, has just been republished. Sillitoe, 80, has also published several collections of poetry, short stories and plays. He lives with his wife, the poet Ruth Fainlight, in Notting Hill, west London. How much money do you have in your wallet? Never, or rarely, less than £50. I have to verify quite often that there's that much in my pocket because such an amount is easily spent, especially since I try to pay as little as possible with credit card. Do you have any credit cards? I only have one credit card - a Barclays Visa - but rarely use it, except to draw cash from a bank when travelling. I'm old enough not to worry too much about credit cards and things like that. I like to know what money I have in my account and in my wallet - and as long as I know that, I know that I'm safe. I pay my card off every month but often there's nothing on it. Are you a saver or a spender? Neither a saver nor a spender. I enjoy spending but when you get to a certain age there are not many things that you need, or at least that you feel you need. You even get to need fewer clothes (except for underwear and shirts, of course). I've never stinted myself on buying books, though, which I suppose is understandable, considering my occupation. I spend half as much more on books as I do on travelling. I have a deposit account which makes an income, a reserve account - a smaller amount on which I can draw - and, of course, my current account. It's like a stepladder. I have a private pension with the Society of Authors which I have put money into over the years, as well as my state pension. I started drawing money from my Society of Authors pension 10 to 20 years ago. How much did you earn last year? There's no regular sum for a freelance writer. It varies a lot year by year. Last year it was about £25,000. With my two pensions, my earnings from my books and my freelance writing, I am quite comfortably off. How much was in your first pay packet? I went to work at Raleigh bicycle factory at the age of 14 in 1942, and my first pay packet was £1, 12 shillings and sixpence (£1.62). Calculate that in modern spending power if you can! Apart from the 2/6d I kept for spending money, it was a welcome addition to the family income. Have you ever been really hard up? I've never been desperately hard up after starting to earn a living. On leaving the RAF I received a 100% disability pension, having developed tuberculosis during active service in Malaya. This allowed me and my girlfriend to live in Spain for several years. It was the life of Riley but at the same time we were working very hard on our writing. Anyway, work, what's work? It was a perpetual holiday. What is the most lucrative work you have ever done? Did you use the fee for something special? I suppose the best-paid work I've ever done was to write the script for the film of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in 1959. I got £1,500 [about £25,000 in today's money] and it occupied me for about three months. Even better, of course, is when the rights are bought for one of your novels, which is like a gift falling from heaven. The rights for The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner came to £6,000. I bought a pair of Barr & Stroud binoculars, which I'd always wanted. What property do you own? We own a flat in Notting Hill Gate, where we've lived since 1970. Property here was relatively cheap then because the area was somewhat squalid. Its obviously worth quite a bit now - £800,000 maybe. However, personally I think that what a property is worth is totally meaningless because it's just where you live - you can't say much more about it. The property was leasehold at first and then later on we got the freehold. It's very difficult now to estimate what we paid originally. What was £20,000 then might now be £200,000 or £300,000. We also have a small cottage in Leicestershire which is very good for working. I bought it four years ago for about £250,000. Do you invest in shares? No, I don't. I think it's too risky. It's not morality, probably I'm too cowardly. I did have a few thousand shares in the 1960s but I sold those. I made some money but I had a notion that if I'm not careful, I'm going to lose it. I thought it seemed a good time to sell. I don't remember who the shares were with, probably all sorts of dangerous things - tobacco, armaments. What's better - property or pension? Property is better than shares, but so is insurance, and the combination just about takes care of everything - if the system holds up or you're lucky. Are you financially better off than your parents? My father, who was a labourer in the 1930s, rarely earned more than £2 or £3 a week. The war was a terrible disaster, of course, but we were eating better in the second world war than we were before. My father could neither read nor write, and when I handed him my first novel to look at he turned it round and round in his hands and said, with some stupefaction: “Bloody hell, Alan, you've written a book! You'll never have to work again!” What has been your worst investment? And your best? I have no idea really. I'm one of those people who as long as I have a roof over my head, clothes on my back and food on the table I don't care about the rest of it. We've never been people to spend a lot because we don't come from that high-flying background. My best investment has been my dedication to my work - that's of more value than anything, to tell you the truth. What aspect of our taxation system would you change? I've never objected to paying taxes, but the whole concept of Vat seemed to me senseless and tyrannical when it first came in. What is your financial priority? My financial priority was never to have a mortgage, never to be in debt. I was brought up to never owe anyone anything and I've more or less followed that as much as I possibly could. I think borrowing is inadvisable but people don't think that these days. I just don't agree with it. People are lent money whether they want it or not - it's ridiculous. Do you have a money weakness? Books, obviously, or radios. Sometimes, I pick up a radio I like the look of and listen to strange French stations. What is the most extravagant thing you have ever bought? The most extravagant items have been cars. I have always enjoyed long-distance driving. I once bought an AR-88 Radio Corporation of America communications receiver for £85, the model I used as a wireless operator in Malaya. Morse code wireless interception has always been one of my pastimes - a therapy, you might say. What is the most important lesson you have learnt about money? A writer should pay more attention to the work than to making money, but he is doubly lucky when successful in both, as I have been.

JEW BOY

18-May-2008 by King Crombie

Just finished Simon Blumenfeld's "Jew Boy" and really enjoyed it. An easy read, with some great pre WWII insight into life for the working poor. It's hard to imagine this woulkd not have been an influence on Bernard Kops. Obviously some of the concepts of a Soviet utopia and a proletarian brotherhood will now seem naive, but the thoughts and feelings behind those desires are for me, very understandabl and admirable. If you don't know anything about being a poor Londoner in the 1930's read this and you will learn something.

I Must Agree With Frank

16-May-2008 by King Crombie

It really would make for a better improved Message Board, if the longer posts could be broken up/down. It is after all about literature. As it is now, the longer posta really are intimidating, which is not as it should be. Surely someone at London Books can get "on the case" ?

England Away/Human Punk

15-May-2008 by Gorse

Both are in line to being made into films. Human Punk will be shot second although nothing is confirmed as yet. In answer to the original post, the film of Human Punk will definitely be shot with a true punk spirit running right the way through it from the script, to the casting and director. John K will also be fully involved.

Layout

15-May-2008 by Frank Bryant

Dear London Books, as KC rightly indicates there are no breaks here on this board and when putting up something of any length it becomes arduous reading. Can you do something, please? Found the Balchin appreciation on the net., by the way

Chapeau Frank Bryant

14-May-2008 by King Crombie

Where did you uncover this ? I've only read half of it and had to come up for air ! I dip my stingy brim low and slow.

HP film

13-May-2008 by yellowandblue

i think the book ends in 2000...but agree it could be a great film

Human Punk

13-May-2008 by anonymous

oh, ok...thanks David Webb...shame tho

Nigel Balchin - interesting find......

13-May-2008 by Frank Bryant

Nigel Marlin Balchin 1908 - 1970 Nigel Marlin Balchin was born on 3rd December 1908, the youngest son of William Balchin, a shopkeeper in the small West Country village of West Lavington. His was a lower middle class family, and neither his brother nor his sister showed any of his determined and persevering fascination with books and learning from an early age. It was an unsupportive upbringing for a budding scholar, for there was little interest and less money to be spared for his ambitions. In business Mr. Balchin senior was neither talented nor successful, a factor that may have had some bearing on Nigel's lifelong preoccupation with the techniques and machinations of the factory floor. He grew up intensely aware of money - the need to make it, the difficulty of keeping it, and the uncertain nature of its continued arrival. Even at the height of his career, when he was by any standards a wealthy man, the shadow of poverty remained with him, although paradoxically he was also extremely generous. Highly intelligent and verbally fluent, Nigel won a scholarship to the nearby Dauntsey's School which provided him with all the support and sympathy he had lacked at home. Academically he excelled, and also developed a love of cricket which remained with him for the rest of his life. From Dauntsey's School he won a further scholarship to read Sciences at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He accepted, reluctantly, because although he was interested in science, his true passion lay on the arts side, and he already dreamed of a career as a writer. However, without the scholarship there was no university education, and he duly became an Exhibitioner and Prizeman at Peterhouse, and in time (1930) obtained a First Class Honours degree in Natural Sciences. During those Cambridge years he also wrote his first short stories, in which the scientific life he pursued by day reappeared by night in fictional guise. After graduation, the excellence of his degree would have meant a ready path in to academic research. However, he was more interested in theory of use to people than abstract concepts, and instead he joined the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, becoming consultant to Rowntrees. His job there was a pioneering one - liasing between management and workforce, he studied the psychology of the workplace and how it could best be developed and adapted to provide the greatest possible efficiency and best working conditions. his involvement with all levels of manufacturing bore fruit in more than one direction, for he also conceived of the bubble-filled chocolate Aero, and suggested the name KitKat for the company's latest chocolate bar. In 1933 he married Elizabeth Walsh, daughter of the writer Douglas Walsh, whom he met at Cambridge where she was reading Archaeology and Anthropology. His first novel, No Sky, was written on their honeymoon, and in the copy he gave Elizabeth he wrote 'For ourselves. Kept like a baby's first shoes, as a pathetic relic of one's first blunders.' In fact it was far from the inept production he implied; his writing was already stylish and accomplished, and his sense of plot and characterisation impressively assured. It received excellent reviews and sold well, as did Simple Life, published in 1935. Their first child Prudence was born in 1934. Whilst writing his first two novels he was also contributing to Punch under the pseudonym Mark Spade. How to run a Bassoon Factory and Business for Pleasure are witty, satirical and telling sketches offering tongue-in-cheek advice to the aspiring businessman. Begun in the form of a series of sketches, the whole collection was published much later in 1956 as an omnibus edition. Meanwhile, family life for the Balchins continued in Highgate, with the birth of a second daughter Penelope in 1937. (She has in adult life become the famous childcare guru, Dr Penelope Leach.) At this time Nigel continued to double as writer and workplace consultant at Rowntrees, commuting to York at least once a week. He produced a companion to the Mark Spade series -Income and Outcome - and in 1936 broke new ground with Lightbody on Liberty, the story of a small-time shopkeeper transformed into a crusader for justice. It was a funny, exciting and moving novel, which brought the name of Balchin to new prominence. However, there was no time for Nigel to capitalise on this, to him, unexpected and somewhat bewildering acclaim. In Whitehall, the shadows of war were already gathering, and discreet recruitment of the exceptionally able and informed from all fields of industry was taking place by the Government. Nigel was approached, and in the course of time appointed both to the personnel section of the War Office as a consultant and psychologist, and to the British War Council as a Deputy Scientific Adviser, in time rising to the rank of Brigadier General. The dual nature of his work and his excellence in both fields was another example of his versatility; it also put him in a unique position for gathering the heterogeneous material for the three novels which ensured his reputation. The first of these, his fourth novel published in 1942, was Darkness Fails from the Air, and his first popular success. It gives a compelling account of life during the London Blitz and the multi-stranded and disabling frustrations of a temporary civil servant endeavouring to serve his country against constant checks of petty bureaucracy. Probably his most famous book, The Small Back Room was published in 1943; the hero Sammy Rice is a crippled scientist fighting against personal demons of pain and alcohol, as well as the ineptitude and corruption of the departmental politicking and ministerial ignorance which makes his vital work almost impossible. This book added to the English language, giving us 'boffin' and 'backroom boy' as terms of common parlance. It struck a nerve in contemporary wartime Britain, and has continued to do so to this day. Sammy became one of the early prototypes for the cynical and reluctant hero who has dominated modern fiction, from Graham Greene (with whom Nigel was often compared in his day) to Dick Francis, whose best-seller status in the popular market parallels Nigel's in the closing years of the war. The novel was made into a successful film in 1949, which is shown periodically on Channel 4 and at the National Film Theatre. In 1945 Mine Own Executioner was published, and became arguably his most popular novel - a psychological thriller, for which Nigel subsequently wrote the scenario for the motion picture starring Burgess Meredith. Whilst working in his wartime posts, Nigel and Elizabeth travelled the country as the Army Council shifted its headquarters from the capital to Wales and back again to London, where Elizabeth secured a job vetting potential agents for the espionage unit, S.O.E. After the war, the Balchins, now a family of five with the arrival of their third daughter, Freja, on Boxing Day 1944, moved from London to Leigh Barton, a rambling black-beamed farmhouse at Stelling Minnis in Kent. It was an idyllic rural setting, but within commuting distance of London and gave Nigel peace for his writing, to which he could then devote more of his time. He continued his advisory work at Rowntrees, newly reopened after the war. His reputation grew tremendously, but he also had time to pursue other hobbies with equal perfectionism and intensity. He as a keen gardener, loved roses and fruit trees which he cultivated with the scientific precision of grafting, pruning and pollination whilst also taking great pleasure in the aesthetic and sensual results. Although essentially a solitary person, he joined in the life of the village and rekindled his love of cricket by playing in village matches. When he allowed himself time away from his writing, he enjoyed wood-carving and small-scale cabinet making. After the successes of his wartime novels, he felt free to experiment with different genres. Unlike so many popular novelists, he was never content merely to exploit the formula of previous successes, and instead was constantly pressing towards the boundaries of fiction. Although he had attempted playwriting during the war, Miserable Sinners and Leader of the House were not successful. However, shortly afterwards he adapted Mine Own Executioner and Howard Spring's Fame is the Spur for the screen, both proving highly successful and acclaimed films which led him towards the dramatic form of his next novel, Lord I Was Afraid, published in 1947. It was a brilliant, allegorical and ambitious documentation of the effects of war and its aftermath on ordinary people, their intelligence, aspirations, innocence and cynicism, and the complex variations on those traits which constitute character, always the chief motivating interest of his writing. The result, even today, is an exposition of why the 'New World' failed to materialise out of the ashes of Belsen and Hiroshima, all the more chilling for the apparent triviality of its setting and protagonists. Unfortunately, the book failed, being too inaccessible for most of his readers who were simply accustomed to 'a good read'. This was bitter confirmation of his inescapable conviction that he was most valued for a kind of competent craftsmanship, and fell far short of the creative genius to which his relentless perfectionism aspired. Nigel was still experimenting in his subsequent novel, The Borgia Testament, which was published in 1948. This is a first-person account - and to some extent a justification - of the life of Cesare Borgia related four and a half centuries after his death. His approach was both scholarly and rigorous, and found favour again with his readers, re-establishing him as a popular 'serious' novelist. He drew on his day job for his next novel, A Sort of Traitors, published in 1949, and once again the 'scientists as human beings, only more so' formula charmed the lectorate. He followed this with a volume of thirteen essays about famous criminals, The Anatomy of Villainy (1950), which includes studies of Guy Fawkes, Judas Iscariot and Rasputin. Sadly, however, life at home, whilst eminently satisfactory for Nigel - interspersed with visits to London for his advisory work for industry, membership of the Saville Club where he was esteemed and very enthusiastic - was less so for Elizabeth. The marriage had for some time been difficult; Nigel never really understood his wife, trying unsuccessfully to give her what she wanted and needed. She had held a position of authority during the war years, but he had expected her to return to a life of domesticity which for a woman of her intelligence and background was hard, if not impossible, to accept. His habit of bringing home interesting people to meet Elizabeth at Leigh Barton finally brought matters to a head when Nigel introduced, in 1948, a young painter, sculptor and writer, Michael Ayrton, to her. Initially he was pleased with their rapport, and when Joan, Michael's long term partner, became Nigel's lover on a light-hearted and temporary basis, the four spent a good deal of time together in an amiable menage á quatre - combining travel in Europe with weekends at Leigh Barton. Unfortunately, Elizabeth did not share her husband's mutually enjoyable essentially, trivial polygamy, and fell deeply in love with Michael despite his being eleven years her junior. Eventually the Balchins agreed to part, and the marriage was finally dissolved in 1950. A year later the former Mrs Balchin became Mrs Michael Ayrton. Nigel was not only faced with the loss of his wife, but also his best friend. Michael had all the self-confidence in his own talent that Nigel lacked; the fact that out of this autonomy he could also give Elizabeth the kind of support and happiness which Nigel had intended to provide, despite his failings, made the whole affair all the more bitter. Following the break-up of his marriage to Elizabeth, Nigel was forced to sell Leigh Barton, his home in Kent, and for some months he lived in a series of rented flats in London - an unsatisfactory arrangement which eventually became intolerable. There was the welfare of his three children to consider, and Nigel resented the idea of his family moving in to the casual bohemian squalor of Michael Ayrton's home in All Soul's Place. It would have added insult to injury, and for months he used every possible resource to prevent it. It would be intolerable, he declared, for his children to associate with Michael's drunken friends in a household founded on an immoral relationship. The two younger children were made Wards of Court, and it was made clear to Elizabeth that if she wished to keep them, she must remain in her own flat. Prue and Penny, now 14 and 11, were established in a respectable day school nearby, and the uncomfortable shuttling between flats continued, unsatisfactory for all concerned and doing nothing to resolve an increasingly tense situation. However, in the spring of 1950 Elizabeth moved in with Michael, bringing five year old Missie (Freya) with her. To do Nigel justice, he never seriously proposed separating his youngest daughter from her mother. Meanwhile, both the elder girls rebelled against the new school. Prue, having obtained her School Certificate with matric exemption at the early age of 14, announced her desire to go on the stage. She secured herself a place at LAMDA, abandoning her younger sister without a qualm, while poor Penny was left, at Nigel's insistence, to the miseries of an exclusive boarding school in Malvern which she loathed even more than the day school, and suffered greatly from homesickness. Elizabeth did not approve of Penny being sent away, but Nigel was adamant, and once it had been forced upon her, she felt free to move in permanently with Michael, who later proved himself to be an excellent stepfather. None of the Balchin children resented the part played in breaking up their family life, not even Prue, who, old for her years and devoted to both Nigel and her mother, would have been ready to find a scapegoat for her divided loyalties in her mother's lover. Instead she liked him from the start. But Nigel remained determined that the Ayrton establishment was unsuitable for his children, and must be only a temporary solution. However, when Penny was sent home from boarding school with pneumonia, Nigel had to reluctantly agree with Elizabeth that she should stay at All Soul's Place, as he did not feel able to cope with a sick child. Michael accepted a third Balchin child in to the household, but when Penny and Missie began squabbling over a bedroom, he realised that lack of space was becoming a problem. Elizabeth was dying to leave London and return to the country where she felt Nigel would accept such an establishment as suitable for the two girls. Eventually, in 1952, after their marriage, the Ayrtons moved to Bradfields, North Essex, which had been recommended to Michael by a friend in the Saville Club. While Nigel was enduring all this domestic misery, one small incident stands out at the time which illustrates his character and integrity. When his wife's affair with Michael Ayrton became common knowledge at the Saville Club, outraged members proposed that he should be asked, or if necessary should be compelled, to resign his membership. Michael had been introduced to the Club by his father at the early age of fourteen, later becoming a full member at his coming of age, and it would have been a devastating blow for him to leave the Club, where he greatly valued his position and friends. Knowing this, Nigel could have effectively reaped his revenge by allowing events to take their course. Instead he quietly made it known the should such action be pursued, he himself would resign. Needless to say the motion was dropped. During those bitter and difficult months, Nigel still continued his writing, and in 1951 A Way Through The Woods, his tenth novel and his fifth book in as many years, was published. This dealt, yet again, with a troubled relationship, and drew on his own experiences for this tale of a husband who condones his wife's infidelity in the hope that she might outgrow her infatuation. The work was successfully adapted for the stage by Ronald Millan, under its new title Waiting for Gillian, and starring husband and wife team Googie Withers and John McCallum it became one of the last plays to be staged at the St James's Theatre. Finding London life impossible, Nigel moved back to the country, buying a converted oast house in Sussex, where he now continued writing full-time with less-frequent trips to London. Following the breakdown of his marriage, Nigel had several short-term relationships, but none developed beyond initial attraction, until he met Yovanka Tomich, a young Yugoslav refugee, whom he eventually married in 1953, and by whom he had two children. Following the marriage he took on a new lease of creative life and produced three novels in the next three years. With Sundry Creditors in 1953, he demonstrated that, like Dickens and Norman Collins, he could work on a broad canvas. The novel chronicles the fortunes of a family-run engineering firm in the Midlands, with a host of convincingly-drawn characters, ranging from shop-floor workers to members of the Board. Like many successful novelists, Nigel had by this time contributed a number of short stories to various leading magazines, although none of these had been collected between hard covers. His 1954 work, Last Recollections of my Uncle Charles, redressed the balance to a certain extent, being made up of fifteen stories featuring the loveable rogue of the title. Taken together, they form a warm and skilfully-drawn portrait of that perennially popular type, the 'born raconteur', and the book was yet another best-seller. Now at the height of his powers, Nigel published yet another novel - his third in as many years - in 1955. The Fall of the Sparrow is a piece of textbook storytelling, tracing the inexorable downfall of a morally-weak public schoolboy who inspires loyalty in a small group of friends, even as he betrays their trust. The novel was successfully adapted for the small screen (although not by the author) and remains hugely enjoyable in its original form after more than four decades. In 1955, Nigel left England for Hollywood where he spent the next seven years writing screenplays, during which time he averaged one produced screenplay a year - an impressive figure considering how few movie projects ever get off the ground - including his own A Sort of Traitors, imaginatively retitled Suspect by the Boulting brothers. His most notorious exploit was his collaboration on the first script for the great farce of Cleopatra. Although almost the entire body of his work on the project was eventually abandoned, he later took whimsical delight in including among his works 'the first folio edition of Cleopatra'. However, in spite of his success, Hollywood was bad for him in many ways. Although he saw a number of his screenplays produced, they were almost always the ones he valued least. The endless rewrites imposed by outsiders, who cared only for the latest fashions of the box office or the vagaries of the stars, were agony to a craftsman accustomed to making every word count in careful construction of plot and character, while the superficial glitter of the Hollywood lifestyle he found draining and depressing. All the old feelings of inadequacy returned, and he countered them disastrously by drinking. In Hollywood, drink of all kinds flowed freely; while never plumbing the depths of alcoholism, Nigel soon became bitterly aware that his drinking was becoming a problem. He hated it, he hated Hollywood, but he was unable to tear himself away. Finally, in 1961, he roused himself to return to England and to novel writing. Seen Dimly Before Dawn, published in 1962, proved to his many admirers that screenwriting had sharpened rather than dulled his skills. This heady mixture of sexual awakening, intrigue and betrayal, related - perhaps surprisingly, considering that Nigel was 54 - from the viewpoint of a callow youth, was a tour de force. The book also contains a classic example of the way in which the experiences of his own life informed, but did not exactly match, his books. All his novels are to an extent autobiographical, and much can be learnt of the man and his life by reading them. But to assume that Balchin is present in his fiction - that his emotions and grievances are the sum total of his material - is to mistake the case, misread the texts, and undervalue his craftsmanship, his imagination, and ultimately his achievement. Life was not kind to Nigel in the years that followed; his health broke down, partly due to his drinking, but also as the result of a serious gastric operation, which left him frail for a long time. His marriage to Yovanka was stormy and often difficult; he needed support and got it only erratically, while he failed to give her security and the social excitement she craved. They had two children, Charles and Cassandra, and he continued to see his daughters by Elizabeth, but he had never been very easy with children, and was the last man to relish the role of benevolent father and grandfather. Now in his late fifties, though physically aged beyond his years, he continued to write with great enthusiasm. His last two novels - In the Absence of Mrs Peterson (1966) and Kings of Infinite Space (1968) took him into fresh territory, while exploring his own experiences. In the Absence of Mrs Peterson is concerned with intrigue and adventure in Yugoslavia but, in passing, we are treated to as succinct a description (the narrator is a screenwriter) of the battle between artist and philistine as we are ever likely to encounter in print. He came full circle in his last novel, Kings of Infinite Space, not only returning to his roots but effectively bringing them up-to-date. This novel was, in effect his final interweaving of the human and the technical; his final consideration of the duality of Science and Art which had been a fundamental part of his whole life. In the end, despite his fascination with Science and all it could and should stand for, he gave the accolade to Art, and the invincible, intangible entity which has been called the human soul. Published a year before Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, the novel is narrated by Dr Frank Lewis who, at the age of 36, is plucked from his cosy Cambridge laboratory, seconded to NASA and subjected to training as an astronaut. Nigel, of course, was uniquely equipped to handle such a tale, which benefits both from his detailed technical understanding and his penetrating insight into the human psyche. As surely as he had recreated the world of the wartime research scientist in The Small Back Room, Nigel brought to life the world of the space race, and in doing so revealed how similar they remained. Nigel Balchin died in London on 17 May 1970 at the age of 61 - full and often damaging years, which had burnt him out before his time. He left behind an impressive collection of books, covering a wide spectrum in themes and techniques. His reputation died almost as soon, as he died, but he remains a discovery which many people make, and the popularity of a handful of his books, especially The Small Back Room, continues. This novel introduced to English fiction the workings of the empirical scientific mind. Indeed, it was largely through his work, and that of another contemporary, Nevil Shute, that the British, emerging from the War, had much of an idea how they had won it. In that it is a novel tied essentially to its time. But to the battle which Sammy Rice wages against himself no date can be attached. The struggle goes on. What would have pleased him are the tributes of fellow writers: of Dick Francis, who on one occasion named him his favourite author; of Elizabeth Jane Howard whose first novel he read and approved in manuscript, and who speaks of him as an example to modern novelists; and of William Golding, who applauded his instinct for character and plot. On his death, tributes appeared in both the London and New York Times. It may at first seem incongruous that a scientist - by definition a seeker after truth - should also be a teller of tales, and yet who better to subject mankind to the harsh unrelenting scrutiny of the microscope, especially when, as in the case of Balchin, the lens of that microscope has been coated with more than a dash of humanity. The writer, Rosalie Hooper, would like to express her grateful thanks to Justine Hopkins, Nigel Balchin's granddaughter, for her help.

Film gossip

13-May-2008 by David Webb

According to the CFC fanzine it is England Away by John King that is being made into a film with shooting starting over the summer. Cant see they would be doing two at the same time.

Human Punk

13-May-2008 by anonymous

hi, I see on John King's author biog that they are working on a film adaptation of Human Punk... I love that book and have always thought it would make a great film. Its a chance to link 2008 with the times of the late 70's - and when you really think about it there's a lot in common, more than first appear - culturally and artistically. The soundtrack would be a best seller too! A double album, then and now perhaps? I hope they go about making it in a 'punk' way too, from the writing, to the actors to direction - get some unknown talent in. And I definitely think it can be better than "This is England".....do we know who's involved in it yet?

Nigel Balchin any pointers ?

13-May-2008 by King Crombie

Just received a tip on Nigel Balchin who wrote the novel "The Small Back Room" was based on and many more besides (novels not rooms). Anyone read any of his stuff ? I haven't a clue. Any pointers much appreciated.

EBBSFLEET ANONYMOUS

12-May-2008 by anonymous

Does that mean there are 35,000 shares or 35,000 shareholders ? What i'd like to know is do you get a vote per shareholder or vote per share. I too will sign this post Anonymous, so that you mighjt not have to testify against me come a clampdown. keep the faith.

Congratulations to Ebbsfleet United

11-May-2008 by anonymous

Ebbsfleet United, formerly Gravesend and Northfleet, now owned by thousands of internet shareholders won their first trophy yesterday - the FA Trophy - at Wembley in front of 40,000 punters. The shareholders - all 35,000 of them - vote on team selection and everything. A great template for handing power back to the people. I am watching developments carefully as the internet has the ability to re-empower the people and force Governments to represent our interests - not theirs! I choose to remain anonymous at this stage as we don't want our plans scuppered

Hold Up Parrot Face

08-May-2008 by King Crombie

People that live in glass houses, etc.,etc. Not sure how much real damage Mr Pastry could have done when the brolly and bowler regulars were in every day attendance in the City. The flour graders on the other hand, may have been an advance column for damage "yet to come". They're almost like pre-rave, knee high, benevolent coke dealers - happy, friendly and covered in white powder !

The Rise and Fall of the Bowler

07-May-2008 by Freddy Parrot Davis

I blame the MacDougalls Flour Men and Mr Pastry

Bowler Battles

07-May-2008 by King Crombie

After all Patrick MacNee's hard graft to repair the damage done by Acker Bilk, John Cleese almost literally puts his foot in it ! Odd Job certainly deserves a mention in despatches.

Bowler Hats

07-May-2008 by Ministry of Silly Walks

Monty Python didn't help matters

Crikey Anonymous

06-May-2008 by King Crombie

Hope I dont catch you with your drawers/pants/boxers down. But I had noticed that I don't have a budgie in my front room and as for the bowler hat, I for one still feel that post Clockwork Orange it's very hard to pull off.

Things that have disappeared that you hadn't noticed

06-May-2008 by anonymous

* Wedding photo pages in your local paper * police phone boxes * steam-rollers * thrushes * chilblains * fixed wheels on bikes * the telephone on the left hand side of newsreaders' desks * bowler hats * the word 'crikey' * budgies in people's front rooms * tea cosies *

clubbers

05-May-2008 by ipat

Hi there Clubbers! ; ) Albert, I think I didn’t make my point well. When I said “I think thats a valid point but different.” to Jennifers post, I was making the point you far more eloquently made (re: 30 april You dont know what you are talking about ipat)! : ) That’s why we do indulge in this site, because it offers a different account and is a breath of fresh air amongst the dross out there. We agree, i should just take more time in making my point so it doesnt get misunderstood.

Of Love and Hunger

02-May-2008 by Albert Finney

I dont think you will be disapointed. It really evokes the feeling of what it must have been like in London and Brighton at that time. A world of spivs, dodgy salesmen, boarding houses and smokey backstreet pubs.

Nuff Said Spider

01-May-2008 by King Crombie

While waiting on your word, I swagged a copy of "Of Love and Hunger" on line and am looking forward.

Freudian slip

01-May-2008 by Mayor Boris

Biography, I should say...

Wrote his autobiography ?

01-May-2008 by King Crombie

Hold up Boris, Paul Willets wote Julian Maclaren-Ross's autobiography ? I'm not saying you're wrong, as I know nothing on the subject and have yet to read the book. Do you mean ghosted or just plain old wrote it ?

Of Love and Hunger

01-May-2008 by Boris (I'm bored today) Johnson

Paul Willetts who wrote Julian Maclaren Ross's autobiography told me once he interviewed a fellow vacuum cleaner salesman of his subject whilst doing his research. It is a great book. I remember these salesmen knocking on our door when I was a kid in the 1960s and tryin to charm my Mum into buying. Coming to think of it, in my pre-school days, there seemed to be a never-ending stream of people coming to the door. Brush salesmen, knive sharpeners, catalogue people, rag and bone men, pools coupon men, encyclopedia salesmen and on and on and on.

Of Love and Hunger

01-May-2008 by George Davis Is Innocent

The best vacuum cleaning sales novel ever wrote.

Of Love and Hunger

01-May-2008 by Albert Finney

Any thoughts on the great Julian Maclaren Ross novel?

I'm sorry

01-May-2008 by Jennifer

I'm sorry.

No offence meant Jennifer and ipat

01-May-2008 by Albert Finney

I do hope this is not an exclusive gentlemen's club and I hope I didn't appear too rude. I just wonder what your interest in London books and their publications is? As has been previously stated I feel there is a world of difference between the works of James Curtis and Gerald Kersh and those cheap books written by former 'gangsters' that do often celebrate a vile, violent lifestyle.

HARDLY SHOUTED DOWN

01-May-2008 by King Crombie

Jennifer, i do not think the replies of myself, IPat or Mr. Finney warrant the description of "shouting you down". To me they appear polite. considered and show a genuine concern for an area of interest. I can't comment on the content of television, as I make every effort to avoid watching it except for football,the Tour De France and those news stories that are better served by the moving image than the radio or written word. As for this being a Gentleman's Club, i have no idea. I don't think of it as a club of any sort. Having said that there are several regulars to this board that are no strangers to good manners.

This is like every other board.

30-Apr-2008 by Jennifer

I make a comment and try to provoke a debate and then get shouted down. Is this a gentleman's club, by any chance?

You dont know what you are talking about ipat

30-Apr-2008 by Albert Finney

When I spoke of 'lowlife' books I was writing in relation to novels written by very talented, interesting and often neglected authors (isn't that what this message board and infact what London Books is about?) Not about cheap money making 'true life' accounts by former gangsters and bouncers. The reason writers such as James Gilt, Alexander Baron, Robert Westerby, Gerald Kersh are interesting is that they write about a London that is not dominated the 'moral' middle class; that are about working class people who may at times be amoral (Shock, horror) but these books are well written accounts, almost historical accounts of people who lived in the slums of the East End, in the boarding house lands, who frequented the race tracks and seedy back street pubs. They are not a sanitised 'Daily Mail' version of the pre and post war period but they show the harsh reality of life for many people. These books are great forgotten literary works. Maybe you should try reading them before dismissing them. Try reading 'Night and the City' recently republished by London books or Robert Westerbys 'Wide Boys Never Work' (Soon to be republished by London Books) Alexander Barons 'Lowlife', Simon Blumenfelds 'Jew Boy' or even the novels of Patrick Hamilton before rushing to judgement.

values

30-Apr-2008 by iPat

I can quite agree Jennifer. There is a plethora of books that revel in the negatives of life. I think thats a valid point but different. Im sick of seeing books by this and that hardman as a cheap way of making a few bucks on the back of someone elses misery but its not different from reading Jordans bio really. An insight into the culture and the goings on is different from cheap bragging. It doesnt have to be 'low life' to get that but usually thats the ones available with a bit of charachter. Douglas Bader was a great account but so's the one about the gypo fighting to feed his familly through boxing fairs. ; )

30-Apr-2008 by Jennifer

Thank you, KIng Crombie. I take your point but don't you agree there is an unhealthy interest in the printed and visual media with criminals and criminality? On the TV we don't seem to able to do drama without it being murder, detective, police and the like. Our soaps rely on criminals and crime themes and Eastenders, particularly, seems to think that gangsters are as familiar a part of every community as the postman. Books are domimated by True Crime and Misery. Few films do not contain acts of violence. I guess that is what I was getting at.

Obsession, I think not...

29-Apr-2008 by King Crombie

Point taken Jennifer. Obviously there are many more forgotten authors than those remembered here, or anywhere else for that matter. Some of us that congregate in this arena happen to have a penchant for authors whose stories feature those who have fallen from grace and those who never acquired it in the first place. This in no way denotes that we have no other areas of interest, be they literary or otherwise. An interest yes, an obsession, I think not...

Why the obssession with 'low-life?

29-Apr-2008 by Jennifer

There are plenty of other forgotten authors from the last century that are worthy of rediscovery other than those obssessed with the underbelly of society. Howard Spring springs to mind. Fame is the Spur is an excellent tome which I couldn't even find in my local Library. Spring's grasp of the human condition is unmatched.

28-Apr-2008 by Shed Boy

Many of you will not have heard of Brinsworth House in Twickenham. But you will have heard of many of the people that have lived there over the years. Thora Hird died there recently, as did David Lodge and Hylda Baker a few years earlier. Chelsea supporter Richard O’ Sullivan and star of Man About the House has been staying there in recent months as has Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman and Charlie ‘Hello My Darlings’ Drake. Some might say it is a residential home for famous people you thought were dead. Whatever. The important thing is that the home has been around since 1908 and provides a dignified sanctuary for entertainers who have fallen on hard times or are unable to care for themselves or do not wish to be a burden to their own families in old age. They can gain strength, pleasure and nourishment from seeing out their days or recovering in the company of fellow entertainers normally in the twilight of their lives. More importantly the home is financed by the entertainers themselves through the Entertainment Artistes Benevolent Fund. This profession has always recognised that at any one time only a few of them will be earning big money and that you never know when your fortunes will change. It is an excellent ethos. Brinsworth House came into my mind when I was contemplating the problem facing our top professional footballers these days in terms of the money they are earning. Problem? I hear you say. Yes, I think it is a problem for them. Put yourself in their Pumas. If your club is prepared to pay you £92,000 a week you are going to take it. It is human nature to try and earn as much as you can for as long as you can and then rationalise to yourself why you are worth it. But they must carry a sense of uncomfortableness about it even a sense of guilt. They are not guarding police stations in Basra or developing vaccines for Bird Flu or performing heart transplants or running Vodafone. It is too much money for what they do and everyone knows it but few of us really blame them for taking it because we know that we would given the chance. Yet, they must wonder sometimes how and what they could do to put something back without being seen as jumping on bandwagons or seeking publicity or risking some bunch of wankers squandering it. I think an answer is for today’s footballers to launch their own Brinsworth House for the guys that have made all this possible for them in the first place and who better to get the ball rolling than our very own home-grown Chelsea lads? Imagine if our John, Frank and Joe, for example, pledged 1% of the salaries whilst their earnings remained above say £50,000 a week to acquire and run such a home. Imagine the genuine kudos and goodwill this would generate for the players themselves and imagine the happiness and comfort it could bring to all those ex-players from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s and so on who could benefit from the recognition of the foundations they laid. No more sad stories of reading of medals sold and lonely old ages spent fretting over whether to put the extra bar on the electric fire in a cold winter. Imagine how the reputation of other players would suffer if they refused to support such a deserving scheme. It would be a relatively small price for players to pay for a big, meaningful and lasting legacy. If one assumes the average wage in the Premiership is £1.5m per annum and a third of Premiership players contributed this would raise in the region of £2m per year at a stroke. It would not be fanciful to think that three or four homes could be set up around the country to cover the geographical spread of ex-players. How about it Chelsea lads? Lead the way again.

Free

28-Apr-2008 by anonymous

Interesting documenatry on Sky Arts. Jeff, did you see it>? Paul Rogers, your hero is in Queen!!!!

The war

28-Apr-2008 by NW1

Point taken ipat about the second world war. It did rather interrupt things. In the case of James Curtis, from what I hear, he didn't produce hardly anything post-war to present to publishers. His daughter has said that he spent an inordinate amount of time on research for his 'new book' but never actually wrote it. Kersh, on the other hand, ploughed on until his death and Westerby worked for Disney among others.

"Lowlife"

27-Apr-2008 by King Crombie

Alexander Baron's "Lowlife" is absolute top shelf stuff and I would recommend it to anyone. However, I wasn't taken with the sequel "Strip Jack Naked" at all.

Wide Boys

27-Apr-2008 by Tony Arter

scheduled for October 16 2008 according to Amazon. Read somehwre that SPIV comes from the stamp used on parcels during the war Surplus Products in Vehicle. These parcels were subsequently stolen therefore leading to the acronymn SPIV and the term 'fallen off the back of a lorry'. My mum told me this so she could be wrong

Lost London Lowlife

26-Apr-2008 by Albert Finney

1. Alexander Baron "Lowlife" 2. Robert Westerby "Wide Boys Never Work" 3. Simon Bluemenfeld "Jew Boy" 4. Julian McClaren Ross "Of Love and Hunger" 5. Roland Camberton "Scamp"

late 30's authors

25-Apr-2008 by iPat

"it is strange how all these great 1930s authors seemed to disappear from view." N1, i may be stating the obvious (and not meaning to be patronising) but there was a bit of a shoot up around that time which saw a lot of talented people lost. Just wonder if they became war reporters etc which might lead to a whole new genre of writing subject from that time

"WBNW" WHEN ?

24-Apr-2008 by King Crombie

Great news. My search for an affordable copy could be coming to an end, but when ?

Westerby

22-Apr-2008 by Eyesteel

I've got Only Pain Is Real. I think it's his first novel. I knew it had a boxing theme and was very excited to track down a copy, expecting something along the lines of Curtis's There Ain't No Justice. So I was slightly disappointed when i discovered it had a not-very-convincing American setting. That said, it's not bad - but not as hard-boiled, nor as interesting as WBNW. Don't know if any of Westerby's later works have a London underworld setting…

Wide Boys Never Work

22-Apr-2008 by NW1

Surely not Eyesteel.. in 1937...I thought John Geiguld was the only gay person in those days? Wide Boys is a great book I wonder if Westerby coined the phrase Wide Boys? Anyone read his other books? I like his titles such as Only Pain is Real. I know he went to Hollywood but it is strange how all these great 1930s authors seemed to disappear from view. There's a book in the stories of these authors alone I'm sure.

Wide Boys Never Work

22-Apr-2008 by Eyesteel

I see that London Books is planning to reissue this brilliant 1937 novel later in the year - and I'd recommend it unreservedly. Some great scenes set in the worlds of used-car dealers, greyhound gangs and seedy gambling dens. Will the introduction address the implicit gay relationship between Jim Bankley and his thuggish young mate? As an example of London low-life fiction from that period, I'd say it's up there with Curtis…

He Kills Coppers

22-Apr-2008 by Harry Fabian Junior

Likewise, KC. It started well, didn't it? But got lost somewhere in the second episode. I liked The Long Firm but found the homosexual stuff overdone. And this is a theme that Arnott seems to labour. He's gay so was Ronnie Kray, so what?

Wholesale Jewelry

22-Apr-2008 by Richard Cannon

Giving the gift of diamond is one of the best romantic way to propose girls. The timeless symbolism of a circle diamond pendant is a perfect gift for any special occasion, and is sure to be an appreciated and memorable gift. At Richard Cannon [url=http://www.rcjewelry.com/Wholesale-diamond.aspx]wholesale diamond[/url] jewelry store you can easily search through a huge selection of diamond jewelry, including the circle diamond pendant, sold at a wholesale price. Have a look at variety oF Diamonds, gemstones and Gold jewelry at [url]http://www.rcjewelry.com/[/url] [b]Business Description[/b] -------------------- [url=http://www.rcjewelry.com/]Wholesale jewelry[/url] manufacturer & jewelry suppliers. Browse wholesale diamond jewelry and [url=http://www.rcjewelry.com/Wholesale-gold.aspx]wholesale gold[/url] jewelry catalogs including body jewelry, fashion jewelry, costume jewelry, loose diamonds jewelry, 14k gold jewelry, diamond earrings, wholesale gold chains, diamond ring, wholesale diamond necklace, wholesale bracelets etc. [b]Contact Detail[/b] --------------------- Toll Free phone: 201-845-5105 work phone: 201-845-5105 fax: 201-226-0480 Email Address: [email]Sales@Rcjewelry.com[/email] [b]Address[/b] ---------------- Richard Cannon Jewelry, 36 W. 44th. St. Suite #1020, New York, NY 10036 United States

To Be honest...He Kills Coppers (book)

21-Apr-2008 by King Crombie

I shall 'fess up to having ditched "He Kills Coppers" about a third of the way through. Too been, seen and done for me. Although I didn't mind "The Long Firm," I have my doubts about Arnott.

Zen, HKC's and Skinhead

21-Apr-2008 by iPat

Zen, really the first chapter is the relevant part and it was a drawn out read. He Kills Coppers: i struggled through it although i appreciated the quality of the production. I expect the book would be better. Skinhead. Finished it and loved it, some nice tounge in cheek references with the music and charachters. Took my time, relishing the tale and it was worth it. Liked the inclusion of other charachters from other tales so must go back to the other books to see if there are any more.

Fred in Blackpool

20-Apr-2008 by anonymous

Holiday?

Fred Sewell

20-Apr-2008 by COFFINDODGER

You're right not a mention on Google yet I remember the case well. He shot a senior plain clothes man in Blackpool and also had a period on the run.It was massive news with all the calls for hanging etc. I think he was a South London man so not sure why he was in Blackpool

Battersea Boy

20-Apr-2008 by Sheepskin Steve

Wasn’t there a book called Battersea Boy out years back? Title seems to ring a bell. I’ve read Battersea Girl by the way. Excellent book. I thoroughly recommend it. I was particularly interested in the character Titchy Thorogood. Nasty bit of work.

He Kills Coppers

18-Apr-2008 by Charlie Endell

Anyone been following this dramatisation on TV? Good period fare based on Jake Arnott's book of the same name. Obviously loosely based on Harry Roberts who gunned down three policeman in Shepherd's Bush in 1966. What puzzles me is that in an age where the true crime genre has been done to death (hasn't even Reg Kray's prison flunky even done a book?) there is nothing to speak of on the aforesaid Mr Roberts. I wonder why? He was not a gangster in a Kray or Richardson mould but no less interesting for that I suspect and the crime really did rock the country. There was another police killer just a few years later called Frederick Sewell and this was an enormous story yet that one seems to be completely forgotten.

Battersea Girl

18-Apr-2008 by anonymous

It follows the life mainly of Knight's grandmother whose own grandparents pitched up in Battersea after the Irish potato famine. She lived to be a 100 and died in 1988. The book is at its strongest in the period between the two world wars and certainly captures the flavour of the time.

'Battersea Girl" any pointers ?

18-Apr-2008 by KIng Crombie

Let's skip any witty replies like "about a girl from Battersea" etc. When was it set ? Is it fiction or a memoir ? Any pointers greatly appreciated

Battersea Girl

17-Apr-2008 by Howard

Fine book. Searched the web to see what other people have said and found this site. We lived in Battersea up until the 1970s and although the story is earlier in the century alot of what the author says is familiar to us.

We reply ...

15-Apr-2008 by Jimmy Jazz

I was thinking the same thing KC. I like to see the message board ticking over. I've just found two John King short stories , 'Last Rites' (in Rovers Return) and (The Beasts of Marseille' (in Fortune Hotel). If anybody knows of any more then i'd like to know. In my copy of 'England Away' it says in the author blurb that John is currently working on a novel and a book of short stories. Obviously the short story book hasn't yet seen the light of day. I wonder what happened to it ? Didn't 'The Football Factory' start out as a short story collection and then the editor at the publishing house suggested turning it into a novel ?

JUST POSTING THIS......

14-Apr-2008 by KIng Crombie

Every time I check this site, the Dassin obit glares me in the eye and I take my share of the blame,but... is anyone out there ?

Jules Dassin obituary

01-Apr-2008 by Alan Harvey

Jules Dassin, Filmmaker on Blacklist, Dies at 96 By RICHARD SEVERO Published: April 1, 2008 Jules Dassin, an American director, screenwriter and actor who found success making movies in Europe after he was blacklisted in the United States because of his earlier ties to the Communist Party, died Monday in Athens, where he had lived since the 1970s. He was 96. A spokeswoman for Hygeia Hospital confirmed his death but did not give a cause, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Dassin is most widely remembered for films he made after he fled Hollywood in the 1950s, including “Never on Sunday” (1960), with the Greek actress Melina Mercouri, whom he later married; “Topkapi” (1964), with Ms. Mercouri, Peter Ustinov and Maximilian Schell; and the 1954 French thriller “Rififi.” But before his blacklisting he had also carved out a successful Hollywood career making noir movies like “Brute Force” (1947), a prison drama starring Burt Lancaster and Hume Cronyn; “The Naked City” (1948), an influential New York City police yarn that won Academy Awards for cinematography and editing; and “Thieves’ Highway” (1949), about criminals who try to coerce truckers in California. Mr. Dassin’s last major effort before his exile was “Night and the City” (1950), a film shot in London starring Richard Widmark (who died last Monday) as a shady but naïve wrestling promoter and Francis L. Sullivan as a predatory nightclub owner. Some critics called it Mr. Dassin’s masterpiece. “Dassin turned Londontown into a city of busted dreams and nightmare alleys,” Michael Sragow wrote on salon.com in 2000. “He mixed the fantastic and the real with masterly ease.” The producer Darryl F. Zanuck had assigned the film to Mr. Dassin just as Mr. Dassin was to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He never did testify, but testimony by the directors Edward Dmytryk and Frank Tuttle, who recalled Mr. Dassin’s Communist Party membership in the 1930s, was damning enough to sink his career. Mr. Dassin left the United States for France in 1953 because, he said, he was “unemployable” in Hollywood. In Paris, unable to speak much more than restaurant French when he arrived, he encountered hard times and remained largely unemployed for five years. In need of money, he agreed to direct “Rififi,” a low-budget production about a jewelry heist. A memorable sequence is of the robbery itself, lasting about a half-hour and filmed without music or dialogue. Mr. Dassin also acted in the movie, under the name Perlo Vita, playing an Italian safe expert. He won a best-director award for the film at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. By the time he wrote and directed “Never on Sunday,” a comedy about a good-hearted prostitute (Ms. Mercouri), the anti-Communist witch hunt in the United States had been discredited, and he had been accepted again. Mr. Dassin also had a role in the movie, as a bookish American from — like Mr. Dassin himself — Middletown, Conn., who tries to reform the prostitute. His directing and screenwriting were nominated for Academy Awards. The movie was a moneymaker and its title song was a hit, though some critics found the script predictable. Ms. Mercouri became Mr. Dassin’s second wife in 1966, two years after he directed her in “Topkapi,” another film about jewel thieves, the prize in this case being gems from the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul. Jules Dassin was born in Middletown on Dec. 18, 1911, one of eight children of Samuel Dassin, an immigrant barber from Russia, and the former Berthe Vogel. Shortly after Jules was born, his father moved the family to Harlem. Jules attended Morris High School in the Bronx. He joined the Communist Party in 1930s, a decision he recalled in 2002 in an interview with The Guardian in London. “You grow up in Harlem where there’s trouble getting fed and keeping families warm, and live very close to Fifth Avenue, which is elegant,” he told the newspaper. “You fret, you get ideas, seeing a lot of poverty around you, and it’s a very natural process.” He left the party in 1939, he said, disillusioned after the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler. In the mid-1930s, Mr. Dassin studied drama in Europe before returning to New York, where he made his debut as an actor in the Yiddish Theater. He also wrote radio scripts. He went to Hollywood shortly before World War II erupted in Europe and was hired as an apprentice to the directors Alfred Hitchcock and Garson Kanin. Soon he was directing films for MGM, including “Reunion in France,” a Joan Crawford vehicle with John Wayne in which her character comes to believe that her fiancé is a Nazi collaborator. His later movies were often joint efforts with Ms. Mercouri. They included “He Who Must Die” (1957), about life overtaking a Passion play in a village on Crete; and “La Legge” (1959), a noirish melodrama with Gina Lollobrigida, Marcello Mastroianni and Yves Montand. One film without Ms. Mercouri was “Up Tight!” (1968), a remake of a John Ford classic, “The Informer,” set in a poor black neighborhood, with a script by its star, Ruby Dee. It was Mr. Dassin’s first film in the United States since he had left. The year before, Mr. Dassin had directed the Broadway musical comedy “Illya Darling,” based on “Never on Sunday,” for which Ms. Mercouri was nominated for a Tony Award. The couple lived in Manhattan during the run. The same year, 1967, Ms. Mercouri, an ardent anti-Facist, lost her Greek citizenship for engaging in what Greece’s rightist government called “anti-national activities.” In 1970, Mr. Dassin was accused of sponsoring a plot to overthrow the junta. The charges were later dropped. When the regime lost power in 1974, he and Ms. Mercouri returned from exile, which had been spent mainly in Paris. Ms. Mercouri entered politics, becoming a member of Parliament and later culture minister. They had homes in Athens and on the Greek island of Spetsai. Ms. Mercouri died in 1994. They had no children. Mr. Dassin’s first marriage, to Beatrice Launer, from 1933 to 1962, ended in divorce. Their son, Joseph, who became a popular French singer, died in 1980. Mr. Dassin is survived by two other children from his first marriage, Richelle and Julie Dassin, an actress, as well as grandchildren. Toward the end of his life, Mr. Dassin ran the Melina Mercouri Foundation, which tried to induce the British Museum to return the Elgin Marbles, sculptures taken from the Parthenon nearly 200 years ago. In September, a museum is set to open at the foot of the Acropolis displaying plaster casts of the works. Mr. Dassin ended his directing career in his late 60s on a disheartened note, when his film “Circle of Two” (1980) — about an aging artist (Richard Burton) who is infatuated with a teenage student (Tatum O’Neal) — did poorly at the box office. Mr. Dassin never made another film. He had always been demanding of himself and often critical of his own work. In 1962, with his best films largely behind him, Mr. Dassin told Cue magazine: “Of my own films, there’s only one I’ve really liked — ‘He Who Must Die.’ That is, I like what it had to say. But that doesn’t mean I’m completely satisfied with it. I’d do it all over again, if I could.”

JULES DASSIN GONE TOO

01-Apr-2008 by King Crombie

Director Jules Dassin not only the director of "Night & The City," but also "Riffif", "Brute Force", "Thieves Highway" and many other films has died. A very talented man.

Sorry Richie

30-Mar-2008 by King Crombie

Sorry Richie, never read it. I was still in my second hand Richard Allen phase, at the time.

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

28-Mar-2008 by richie4

Did anyone actually enjoy this book? I think we can admit it now

Cliff Goodwin's Sid James bio

28-Mar-2008 by King Crombie

Nuff said Mac, I'll pass on your regards to the lads. A few years back i read Cliff Goodwin's bio of Sid. Welll worth a read if you want to connect the dots and not too hard to find.

Sid James

28-Mar-2008 by McFurious

KC. Of course, comic actors - nobody touches Sid. I am old enough to remember him in programme called Taxi, where he was a black cab driver. Without getting all Kenneth Williams, I think the Carry Ons cramped his style. He was in some 1950s films like Joe Macbeth where he played boxing promoters, gangsters and the like. He and Michael Balfour, another great character actor, looked like they had spent their early demob faces living rough in each other's faces. Good call. Regards to the sunshine band.

Sir, I beg to differ...

28-Mar-2008 by King Crombie

Surely any connoisseur of the silver screen woul;d consider the talents of Sid James vastly superior.

Up to a point, Lord Copper

28-Mar-2008 by Claud Sam-Kydd

See where you are coming from Sheepskin Steve, but not the full picture. Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, George Cole, Anthony Hopkins etc. However, the greatest British actor of all time has to be Sam Kydd. His output was phenomenal and is the only person to have appeared in every British film made between 1936 and 1974. Sometimes these were accidental as when he walked from set to set at Ealing Studios he was caught by surprise. His book btw FOR YOU THE WAR, IS OVER is excellent.

Richard Widmark

28-Mar-2008 by Sheepskin Steve

One of the greats along with Robert Mitchum, John Wayne and James Stewart. Rest in peace. What do we have that compares? John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, John Mills? Why do old English films star weedy, upper crust twits as the heroes while the tougher common man is cast as a semi-literate bully or fool?

Guilty Dickie

28-Mar-2008 by KIng Crombie

Didn't mean to post that anonymous

DICKIE WIDMARK

27-Mar-2008 by anonymous

Pure class. Top Man.

Harry Fabian is dead!!

27-Mar-2008 by Harry Fabian Junior

Actor Richard Widmark dies at 93 Widmark made more than 70 films between 1947 and 1992 Hollywood star Richard Widmark has died at the age of 93 after a long illness, his wife has announced. The prolific actor, who often portrayed killers and gunslingers, made a memorable big-screen debut in 1947 as a giggling psychopath in Kiss of Death. He went on to star in such 50s classics as Night and the City, Pickup on South Street and the western Broken Lance. The craggy-faced actor died at his home in Connecticut on Monday, according to his wife Susan Blanchard. His last film role came in the 1991 thriller True Colors, although he made occasional appearances afterwards in TV documentaries. 'Irritating' "I now find the whole moviemaking process irritating," he said in 1987. "I don't have the patience any more." Born in Minnesota in 1914, Widmark began his career in radio and theatre before playing cackling killer Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death. His acclaimed movies included 1961's Judgment at Nuremberg The film landed him an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe award for best newcomer - but he was not entirely enamoured with fame. "That damned laugh of mine!" he said in 1961. "For two years after that picture, you couldn't get me to smile. "I played the part the way I did because the script struck me as funny and the part I played made me laugh." Subsequent films included 1952's Don't Bother to Knock, in which he co-starred with Marilyn Monroe, and Cold War submarine drama The Bedford Incident, which he also produced. Other notable roles included Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961, How the West was Won the following year and Cheyenne Autumn in 1964. Detective Madigan, in which he played a loner detective, became a short-lived TV series in 1972. In the same decade, cinemagoers saw him murdered on the Orient Express and pursued by bees in The Swarm. When not working, he and his second wife lived on a horse ranch in California or on their Connecticut farm. His daughter from his first marriage - to writer Jean Hazlewood - became the wife of baseball star Sandy Koufax.

Hear, Bloody, Hear

26-Mar-2008 by king Crombie

Do you have any idea in which year Kersh made this statement ?

Mr Kersh

26-Mar-2008 by David Latham

I have in front of me Gerald Kersh's substantial obituary published in the New York Times, November 8 1968. QUOTE: "I left Britain because the Welfare State and the confiscatory taxation make it impossible to work over there, if you're a writer." Hear, bloody, Hear

Wide Boys Never Work

25-Mar-2008 by Eyesteel

Hey, KC, as and when you get hold of Wide Boys…, you won't be disappointed. I won't give away too much, but it's a fascinating and surprising work and I'd place it up there with James Curtis. Talking of Curtis, I'd like to second the plaudits for last week's Sohemians event - a great evening, and it made me want to re-read Night And The City (which I've always had mixed feelings about).

Gilt Kid

22-Mar-2008 by Jim Pennington

Just finished this gripping pulp fiction gem and thanks must go to the LB gang for bringing it back out of the lost-book graveyard. I shall be out skip-hunting the other Curtis gems (the Abebook prices are just doolally) even though I reckon he does not quite get full marks on continuity - the buses certainly must have run faster then than now. And talking of which, what this about the seats on the left side of bus being more comfortable (page 121)?

Westerby's "Wide Boys'

22-Mar-2008 by King Crombie

i've been hoping to read this for some considerable time, but thus far have never come across a copy in my price range. Maybe someone wwil re-publish it ? Nudge nuudge, wink wink, sayn no more...

Wide Boys Never Work

21-Mar-2008 by Claud Sam-Kydd

Scraping around on the web I came across this reference in a document about censorship and banned books in Australia: Of the three categories, publications falling into the last one – those that could be termed seditious – were dealt with according to the regulations introduced by Billy Hughes in 1921. This was dragnet legislation that proved controversial enough to be revoked by the Lyons government in 1929 and then reintroduced in 1932, to be significantly watered down through a policy rewording in 1937. This legislation was administered by the Attorney-General’s Department rather than Customs, so books turning up on the wharves that looked suspiciously likely to be advocating the ‘overthrow of civilised government’ had to be sent to Canberra to be forwarded. [16] Index card files held in the Sydney office of the National Archives document the many publications banned on political grounds through this period. These were mostly Soviet and Communist publications, including Marx and Engels’ Manifesto of the Communist Party, and the works of Lenin and Stalin, but also fiction like the books of American novelist Agnes Smedley, writing about China, and Robert Westerley’s novel of the down-and-out, Wide Boys Never Work.

FIX UP LOOK SHARP

20-Mar-2008 by King Crombie

April 24th NFT will be showing "The Small World Of Sammy Lee'. I've never seen this and its not out on DVD or VHS. Tony Newley as an early 60's Soho wideboy. Got to be worth a gander.

Sohemians

20-Mar-2008 by Helena Saville

Wonderful evening. Thank you London Books! All that was missing was plumes of cigarette smoke and a few seats. Totally unexpected to see James Curtis's daughter whose answers, honest as they were, just threw up more questions about her enigmatic father. A biography there, I sense. Thank you again.

London Books - Skinheads

18-Mar-2008 by Jimmy Jazz

I agree with Simon Coombes. John Kings latest book 'Skinheads' is a really great book. I tried buying it from Waterstones in Hull but they'd sold out. Thought I'd buy a signed copy from this website and received it two days later. Good service London Books! Well worth the wait.

LA Bern

17-Mar-2008 by COFFINDODGER

It was common knowledge about la Bern in those days. I'm sure his sleeve notes said as much. He did his stir in his native France so he could of been a romancer.

Unusual and Awesome

17-Mar-2008 by Richard C

Richard Cannon Jewelry is a leading manufacturer and wholesaler of gold and diamond jewelry. Our line consists of a full range of 14k and 10k gold jewelry from chains, bracelets, earrings, rings, and charms. Just about everything we sell is priced per gram at www.rcjewelry.com.

La Bern The Plot Thickens...

16-Mar-2008 by King Crombie

Two top shelf posts on Arthur La Bern from Harry Fabian Jnr. and Coffindodger, take a bow both of you. If HBJ"s micro bio is mostly true, is it likely that back in the day, an ex-con could have been hired on Fleet St as CD suggests ?

It Always Rains on Sunday Part 6

16-Mar-2008 by COFFINDODGER

Alfred La Bern wrote the novel but he did not write the screenplay. La Bern ,by the way, was an ex -con, long before Frank Norman claimed the title of jailbird laureate. The screenplay was written mainly by Angus Macphail who was a prolific movie man penning most of Will Hay's classic comedies and other beauties such as Whisky Galore.

Found this on Mr La Bern

16-Mar-2008 by Harry Fabian Junior

Arthur La Bern was for three decades a reliably solid writer, responsible most famously for Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square, the novel on which Alfred Hitchcock's last classic movie, Frenzy, was based, but also for the books behind a clutch of British cinematic melodramas: It Always Rains On Sunday, Night Darkens The Streets (filmed as Good Time Girl, Freedom To Die and Dead Man's Evidence. Here's an extract from the biographical note at the beginning of the book: Arthur La Bern claims to be a Gallic Cockney, having been born in London of French parents. He worked as a journalist for a number of newspapers including the Evening Standard, the Evening News, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail. During the Second World War he was war correspondent for the Evening Standard and flew with the Fleet Air Arm in the Pacific. He has also been a crime reporter, and has written biographies of George Joseph Smith, the Brides in the Bath murderer, and of Haigh, the Acid Bath murderer, as well as a biographical novel about General Booth, Hallelujah!

Arthur La Bern - Hitchcock Too

15-Mar-2008 by King Crombie

I don't have the book, I just learned about it, poking my nose about. Hitchcock's "Frenzy" was also based on a LaBern novel too.

La Bern

15-Mar-2008 by Harrington Harry

Didn’t he also write Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square? I know nothing about him, are there any pointers in the book you have Mr Crombie? His name is unusual, was he English?

Arthur La Bern "Your Starter For Ten'

12-Mar-2008 by King Crombie

Just discovered "it Always Rains On Sunday" was based on a Arthur La Bern novel, any pointers ?

Public Eye

12-Mar-2008 by Frank Bryant

Thank you

Googie Withers

12-Mar-2008 by Pat Holland

She played a prison governer in Within These Walls ITV in the 197os a forerunner of Bad Girls and The Governor etc. She is the only Googie I've ever come across so deserves applause for that. But for one letter she'd have had a world famous search engine named after her

You nailed it !

12-Mar-2008 by King Crombie

Yes Mr. Willoughby-Tough, thats it in a nutshell. Good Cast (including Sydney Tafler and a young Alfie Bass) and great cinematography by Douglas Slocombe.

Googie Withers

12-Mar-2008 by John Madaxe Willoughby-Trough

was in that I believe. She is still alive. Great film about a man on the run and Googie being in love with him but settled into family life. Or am I off track?

IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY

11-Mar-2008 by King Crombie

i just watched Robert Hamer's "It Always Rains On Sunday" released in 1947 and set in Bethnal Green. If any of you haven't seen it, it's well worth a gander.

Skinheads

11-Mar-2008 by Simon Coombes

Thank you to John King for an excellent tome. Skinheads ranks among his best books and tells the story of three generations of West London skinheads running a cab firm and attempting to rejuvenate a delapidated old working man's club. The characters are sympathetically drawn and media myths about skins (and other things) are systematically demolished. The skinheads in this book emerge credibly as perhaps the only upstanding people in a society that is dislocating all around them. Undoubtedly a must for anyone that was ever a skinhead and will enter the canon along with Richard Allen's seminal works but will grab anyone that appreciates good earthy literature.

PAUL WILLETTS ON JULIAN MACLAREN-ROSS

04-Mar-2008 by King Crombie

Just received an anonymous tip that Paul Willetts wrote something on Julian Maclaren-Ross. I'm clueless, any pointers ?

Lost London Fiction night

03-Mar-2008 by anonymous

SOHO NOIR: LOST LONDON FICTION. Wednesday 19 March at 7.00pm. The Wheatsheaf Pub, 25 Rathbone Place, off Oxford Street, London. Tickets: £6 on the door. Writer and film-maker Iain Sinclair will be talking about two classic, newly reissued 1930s London novels, NIGHT AND THE CITY and THE GILT KID. He’ll be appearing alongside Cathi Unsworth and Paul Willetts, fellow literary chroniclers of the capital’s neglected past. Their contributions will be interspersed by actors reading extracts from the reissued novels, written by James Curtis and Gerald Kersh. Curtis’s daughter will also be present to discuss her late father’s tragic, bohemian life which carried him from literary stardom to an impoverished death in 1970s Kilburn. Iain Sinclair is the author of LONDON ORBITAL, LIGHTS OUT FOR THE TERRITORY and many other influential books. ‘As a stylist, he is incomparable,’ writes Peter Ackroyd; ‘he is the De Quincey of contemporary English letters, scathing and sometimes savage.’ Cathi Unsworth is a crime writer whose most recent novel, THE SINGER, was described by Jake Arnott as ‘an astonishingly evocative and emotional elegy for the blank generation.’ Writing in THE TIMES, Marcel Berlins described her previous novel as ‘the best debut I have read for some time.’ Paul Willetts, who wrote the preface to James Curtis’s THE GILT KID, is the author of a much-praised biography of the Soho dandy Julian Maclaren-Ross. Willetts’s last book, NORTH SOHO 999, featured in both THE INDEPENDENT’s and THE SPECTATOR’s ‘Books of 2007’ selections. Further information about the Sohemian Society, which has previously staged events featuring George Melly, Jonathan Meades, D.J. Taylor, Virginia Ironside, Francis Wheen and others, can be found by visiting www.sohemians.com.

"PUBLIC EYE" THEME TUNE ?

25-Feb-2008 by King Crombie

Who was responsible ? i have absolutely no memory of the theme tune whatsover.

Public Eye

25-Feb-2008 by marker

Frank Bryant You'll be pleased to know Network have just released the 1971/72 series of Public Eye. Poor old Frank is still holed up in downtown Windsor and of course dealing in his own quiet and humane manner with splendid humdrum cases. His working relationship, some would say friendship, is still going strong with local detective brilliantly played by Ray Smith and he still popping over to the antique shop to share tea and sympathy with the 70s dolly bird. What a great theme tune too.

Whistling Jack

15-Feb-2008 by Doctor Lager, West London

I agree, brilliant stuff. I’ve always loved the word hooligan and appreciate it even more now.

Handsome Is As Handsome Does

14-Feb-2008 by King Crombie

I think a collective tip of the stiingy brim is in order. What an excellent post Whistling Jack Smith. Must have done a spot of research on Kaiser Bill's dollar. Chapeau !

IN search of the first hooligan

13-Feb-2008 by Whistling Jack Smith

IN SEARCH OF THE FIRST HOOLIGAN The word hooligan and the term hooliganism are familiar to all and especially those who follow football. In fact the words football and hooligans go together like horse and carriage or Maurice and Chevalier. Yet there is no proven explanation for the origins of the word. What is clear is that hooligan did not achieve common currency until the early years of the last century. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle uses the word in his 1904 book The Adventures of the Six Napoleons and Baden-Powell in his manifesto for the Boy Scout movement worries about boys drifting into Hooliganism in 1908. Significantly both men either capitalise the word or put it in inverted commas suggesting it was a new term. In 1898 the Daily Graphic had written about ‘the avalanche of brutality under the name Hooliganism’ as it were a new phenomenon or at least a new word for an old phenomenon. The key theories for the origins of the word are as follows: 1. It comes from an Islington street gang led by a man called Hooley around 1890-1900. Hooley’s gang became Hooligan. 2. A play called More Blunders Than One first produced in 1824 featured a character called Larry Hooligan who was a drunken valet and the name was adapted to describe people with similar qualities. 3. A character called Hooligan appeared in a music hall song of the mid to late 19th century. 4. The Hooligans were an Irish South London family with a large criminal pedigree. One member Patrick Hooligan was particularly troublesome and caused uproar when he killed a policeman. He is said to have died in prison. I am inclined to conclude that the first three are unlikely. If the Hooley gang were active between 1890-1900 I cannot see that references to them would have evolved into the encompassing term hooliganism by 1898. I don’t believe a drunken valet would inspire the saying either – a drunken valet being a figure of fun rather than a menacing thug. Music hall songs and their lyrics have been quite rigorously recorded by devotees of this genre and the only reference I have been able to find is to a Mrs Hooligan who had a cook book. (Echoes of Delia Smith here). So, to Patrick Hooligan. Perhaps the strongest evidence that this theory is the likeliest is a book called The Hooligan Nights written by a Clarence Rook an investigative journalist in 1899. Rook befriended a south London petty criminal referred to as Alf and wrote about his lifestyle. Rook describes the man as a hooligan and at the beginning of Chapter 2 qualifies this thus: There was, but a few years ago, a man called Patrick Hooligan, who walked to and fro among his fellow-men, robbing them and occasionally bashing them. Rook later adds that he lived in Irish Court in Lambeth and hired himself out as a bouncer and finally killed a police officer during a fight and was imprisoned. He died either in prison or in hospital whilst still a prisoner claims Rook. The author has “Alf” admiring Patrick Hooligan as a local cult hero in the Lambeth/ Elephant and Kennington area. Therefore if Alf is 19 in 1899 this indicates that Hooligan was still active up to, probably, 1890. Another writer, Earnest Weekley, said in his Romance of Words in 1912: “The original Hooligans were a spirited Irish family of that name whose proceedings enlivened the drab monotony of life in Southwark about fourteen years ago”. It would seem from the other evidence that spirited and enlivened are euphemisms. This is where it becomes problematical in verifying the theory. Census records show no Patrick Hooligan resident in London in the period 1851-1901. There are a number of people with this name but they are mainly resident in Widnes and Manchester. Fair enough, Patrick, was not likely to be the sort of man to sit down and have a cup of cocoa with the census man. However Metropolitan Police remembrance records throw up no obvious victim of Mr Hooligan. Simarlarly newspaper archives have yet to surrender details of any horrendous crime committed by him. If he died between 1892 and 1900 we may never know as by dying in prison (where he would have been recorded) he would have dodged the census years, however, with the acceleration of the conversion of public records to internet database searching it is almost sure that before long the mystery will be solved one way or another. In the meanwhile allow me to quote from Rook’s 1899 book where he attempts to describe a typical hooligan: The average Hooligan is not an ignorant, hulking ruffian. His type of face approaches nearer the rat than the bulldog; he is nervous, highly strung almost neurotic. He is by no means a drunkard; but a very small quantity of liquor causes him to run amok, when he is not pleasant to meet. Undersized as a rule, he is sinewy, swift, and untiring. He is very bad to tackle in a street row, where there are no rules to observe. Then he will show you some tricks to astonish you. No scruples of conscience will make hesitate to butt you with his head. The Hooligan is by no means deficient in courage. He is always ready to fight, though he does not fight fair.

'THE HOOLIGAN NIGHTS" - CLARENCE ROOK ?

13-Feb-2008 by King Crombie

Cheers to Martin Knight, for putting this one on my radar. No offence, but does anyone know if Mr. Rook is to be trusted ? After all, we all know that more than a few porkie pies have been comitted to paper. Having never seen a copy I'm assuming this was sold as a memoir.

Peter

12-Feb-2008 by Charlie Endell

A Peter is indeed slang for a safe and appears in low-life literature such as the books you are publishing from the 1930s and before. I have never seen nonce in anything pre-1960s and therefore think that the theory expounded below may have some weight.

Peter The Nonce

12-Feb-2008 by Jo Ronce Jon

The origin of the word Nonce coming from Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise or Not Of Normal Criminal Element is somewhat of an urban myth. The word nonce has been in use before criminals would have any chance of physical outdoor exercise. It simply is derived from someone who has been convicted of a nonsense crime something the other convicts don’t respect (purloining an old lady or stealing turnips from their neighbours garden). As for A Peter I’m quite sure this colloquialism is not homage to Jacques Clouseau. I not 100% sure however I think there is link to Peter be a slang term for a safe. I’ll do some research and I’ll get back to. Congratulations on a fascinating site and keep up the work with reprinting such classic works. yours sincerely Jonathan Bernstein

Peter

12-Feb-2008 by Frankie Forearm

A while ago I asked a pal of mine the same question when he was recalling a stay he had at her maj's pleasure he told me it's short for Peter Sellars.

Peter

12-Feb-2008 by Great Poulteney Street

No I don't know that Young Billy but I do know that the term NONCE comes from the prison acronym NOT ON NORMAL COURTYARD EXERCISE

Peter

12-Feb-2008 by Young Billy Curtis

Any ideas where the expression ‘peter’ meaning ‘prison cell’ comes from? At least I think it means prison cell.

Garrity

12-Feb-2008 by Captcha

Thanks, all

Hooligan

12-Feb-2008 by Martin Knight

Did a bloke called Clarence Rook nail that down in his turn of the century book Hooligan?

HOOLIGAN ? WHO KNOWS

12-Feb-2008 by king Crombie

i've heard the Irish connection sprouted on many an occasion, but never seen (or read) it backed up with any real clout. Geoffrey Pearson's lovely "Hooligan A History Of Respectable Fears" couldn't nail it down in '83. Perhaps someone has nailed iot down since then ?

Garrity

11-Feb-2008 by Doctor Lager, West London

Sounds like an Irish name to me - the expression could possibly come from an Irishman who acted in an unusual or mad way. The word hooligan is alleged to have been derived from the O’Hoolihans, a family of trouble-makers in London. I’m not having a go at the Irish, I am a big fan of Irish boozers, especially the old diddly daddly pubs, but the connection seems obvious to me and I have to be honest and say that I’ve met one or two Irish nutters in my time.

Garrity

08-Feb-2008 by Captcha

I wonder if anyone here can help? In my part of the world garrity is a fairly common slang word for 'going mad' , losing one's temper, having a fit etc. I always thought, but don't know why, that it came from the surname of Freddie of the mersey group Freddie and the Dreamers,. He used to prance around on stage. However I can find no origins on the internet. Anybody have any ideas because the person I am debating this with has not heard the term and dismisses the Freddie Garrity connection.

Apologies, that should be Fabian.

06-Feb-2008 by King Crombie

Poor spelling, I blame it on my sister's Slade singles.

Excuse me Fabain

06-Feb-2008 by King Crombie

Through the murk. I'm thinking maybe I've read this, a good few miles back mind you. The Soho chiild murder rings a bell. Does it feature a tailor/wardrobe dealer that cateres for misfits ?

Newspaper

05-Feb-2008 by Doctor Lager

I read a piece in the newspaper the other day about official records being released and revealing the story of a toilet cleaner who diffused an IRA bomb in 1939. It was planted in a toilet in the West End and the man saw it and knew what it was right away, picked the bomb up and put it in a bucket of water, knowing that this would make it safe. Several other bombs exploded around the West End that night and apparently another one was made safe by a police inspector in Oxford Street. He diffused it with his bare hands. The officer’s name was Fabian. I would guess that this is Fabian Of The Yard, mentioned in Paul Willetts’ North Soho 999 and name-checked in Kersh’s fictional character Harry Fabian? A boy was blinded in one eye in the explosions but it doesn’t seem that anyone was killed. With pre-war tension high mobs roamed the West End looking for those responsible, attacking some Germans in the process.

Prelude To A Certain Midnight

05-Feb-2008 by Fabian Of The Yard

This is another Kersh novel set around Soho - concerns a child murder and comes with some sharp class observations. There is a vicious edge to this novel that sets it apart from other Kersh books I’ve read.

BOOK REVIEW: White Heat by Dominic Sandbrook

05-Feb-2008 by COFFINDODGER

Extensive political, social and cultural history of the 1960s. Don't panic nothing to do with White Teeth by Zadie Smith. Entertainingly written but refreshingly goes beyond all the "if you can remember the 1960s, you weren't there....sexual intercourse began in 1963.....Liverpool was the centre of the universe...." nonsense.

Gerald Kersh

04-Feb-2008 by J. David Markham

They Die With Their Boots Clean - A fulgent account of British soldiers training for the Second World War.

Gerald Kersh

04-Feb-2008 by Eyesteel

Don't bother with The Weak And The Strong - one of the worst books I've ever read.

Angel and the Cuckoo

02-Feb-2008 by Harry Fabian Junior

Great Kersh book. Way ahead of its time.

Gerald Kersh Any Pointers ?

01-Feb-2008 by King Crombie

A pal of mine has come into a pile of Gerald Kersh books and given me first dibs. I've done "Night & The City" and "Fowlers End", any pointers on the rest of his output ?

Full Circe

01-Feb-2008 by Marion

Simon Dee dated Joanna Lumley who's son was rumoured to have been fathered by Rod Stewart who played in The Faces with Ronnie Wood who was also a Rolling Stone who once had a residency at The Crawdaddy in Richmond which is the next door town to Twickenham where Brinsworth HOUSE is and there we have a full circle.

Carry ON

01-Feb-2008 by Nick

Richard O' Sullivan, he of Man About The House fame, played a schoolboy in Carry On Teacher. O' Sullivan ran off with Tony Blackburn's wife causing the DJ to cry live on Radio One. He (Richard) is now a resident of Brinsworth Lodge in Twickenham and battling a number of health issues. Blackburn started on Radio Caroline with Simon Dee and there we have a full circle

Carry On Lottie

01-Feb-2008 by king Crombie

A chance session with Charlie Hawtrie ! Double pricelss

Carry on drinking

31-Jan-2008 by Doctor Lager, West London

That was very lucky of you! I would loved to have walked into a pub near Sid James’ house in Iver and found the great man at the bar. Sid represents everything great about an Englishman - crusty good looks, humour, sauce and an eye for the ladies that is hardly ever returned. Yes, I know he was a South African hairdresser in a previous life, but Sid was a gentleman spiv, a ducker and a diver. He would definitely have bought a round a two as well.

Carry On Charles

30-Jan-2008 by Lottie

I can add only this to the great Carry On debate: twenty years ago I was stationed in Deal in Kent and we often took in the pubs of this sleepy seaside town. One lazt afternoon me and two pals walked into a pub and sitting in the corner was Charles Hawtrey. We approached him and first he was sniffy but accepted a drink. Eventually he opened up and we drank with him all afternoon. He was old and skinny but knocked back lager like a teenager. He slagged off the entire cast and said he barely earnt a penny. The people that made the films he said were minted but none of the actors were, I always remember he said Kenny Williams was a poof which we thought was a bit rich from coming him. He worked with Will Hay and John Mills and Ralph Richardson and wished he had never got into the Carry Ons. He never bought a round...

Carry Ons

30-Jan-2008 by Doctor Lager, West London

I went to a double bill at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith a few years back - I think they still do them - of Carry On Cleo and Carry On Screaming. The prints were old and crackly but seeing Sid James and the rest of them on a big screen was fantastic. During Carry On Cleo one of the reels was run in the wrong place, but I don’t think too many people noticed. It took me a while I’m afraid. Now that is classic comedy. Doesn’t matter what order it runs in! Better was to come as the print of Carry On Screaming had jumps in it, so of course it got to the line Kenneth Williams shouts in the vat - “frying tonight“ - and the film jumped and the line was lost. The audience noticed that one and a massive groan went up with lots of head shaking.

Respect please

30-Jan-2008 by Honest Bob

Show some respect Young Billy Curtis. Pamela is a beauty it’s true, but no lump of meat. I heard she is a vegetarian and anti-fur. She seems to be following the lesson of Bridget Bardot that a high-profile star can be intelligent as well as stunning to look at.

Carry On Dr. Lager

29-Jan-2008 by KIng Crombie

I can't agree with the Dr.'s take that the "Carry-Ons" are pretty unbeatable (I'm something of an Ealing man myself), but they certainly do contain a ton of talent. A couple of years back I read a very sharp little biography of Charles Hawtrey titled "The Man Who Was Private Waddle" and I would recommend to anyone that can remember seeing a"Carry On" flick. A delightful read for sure.

Public Eye

29-Jan-2008 by Frank Bryant

Among the tedium of christmas presents this year (what does one buy a 62 year old?) was a gem from my son. A DVD of Public Eye on of the forgotten understated TV programmes of the 1960s and 1970s. The Public Eye was a Private Eye called Frank Marker played hauntingly by Alfred Burke. He had the raincoat before Colombo, and the character defects before the hundreds came after. On a generation reared on Sexton Blake, he was a revelation. This couple of series hold up well and I cannot recommend them high enough.

Pamela

29-Jan-2008 by Young Billy Curtis

I’d give her one! Pam that is, not Hattie...

Carry Ons

29-Jan-2008 by Doctor Lager

The Carry Ons and Dad’s Army are sheer class, never approached let alone bettered. Imagine Sid James in the DA platoon, possibly playing Walker’s dad. Hattie? Great actress but personally I prefer Pamela Anderson for sex appeal. Haven’t read Pam’s book yet but it is on my list.

BOOK REVIEW: Hattie

29-Jan-2008 by Dr Feelbad

This being the authorised autobiography of the 'Carry On' comedienne Hattie Jacques. Unless it was authorised via Colin Fry I can't see how Hattie, herself, rubber stamped it as she died aged 59 in 1980. Hattie was married to John Le Mesurier (Sgt Wilson from Dad's Army) but this union broke down and she spent her later life surrounded by a coterie of homosexual fringe theatre workers. Professionally she was unfulfilled in getting mainly only 'fat lady' roles. Neverthelesss she lived life to the full and raised two talented sons - both musicians. Decent books for afficianodes of the genre and the era. I give it 3 stars out of 5. * * * * *

No Pity

28-Jan-2008 by Young Billy Curtis

Stewart Home is definitely into some very funny yet very sick pulp pastiche. Irvine Welsh has also provided some memorable examples of filth as social commentary over the years. Great authors both of them though I doubt they will ever be considered for the Booker Prize!

Oi you -

28-Jan-2008 by Doctor Lager

Sounds like a maverick talent in the Dave Brock/Michael Moorcock style and interesting that he progressed to the 101ers. I will get hold of a copy of that Iain Sinclair book you mention. I see Sinclair is doing a talk with Will Self about London at the V&A. Any idea what that is about? I’ve heard the ‘psychogeography’ (probably got the spelling wrong) term before, know it is something Stewart Home is also involved in. Any idea what it means?

Martin Stone

28-Jan-2008 by King Crombie

King Crombie here and for starters, I dont usually answer to 'Mr." unless your twelve years old or younger. For the record, I much prefer "Your Highness' or "oi you". Anyway, to Martin Stone, I'll try to be brief and please keep in mind what i know is from "afar". Any additional info, or conflicting alibi's would be much appreciated. Evidently hailing form Craig and Bentley's manor, Martin Stone became something of a London guitar-slinger, playing for The Savoy Brown Blues Band, The Action/Mighty Baby, his own Stones Masonry, Chilli Willi & The Red HotPeppers, The Pink Fairies, The 101'ers and no doubt a few more. At some point he shifted his focus to second hand book dealing and struck up an infamous partnership with one Iain Sinclair. Sinclair presents a thinly disguised Stone in his classic "White Chappell Scarlet Tracings". For reasons unknown to me, Stone eventually "upped sticks" and moved to Paris. He was last spotted there as a very nattily attired street musician with a fondness for the gargle.

Dodgem teds

27-Jan-2008 by Doctor Lager

I can’t think what the book is then. If you find out I’d love to know the title as well. Who is Martin Stone, Mr Crombie? I have Frank Norman’s Stand On Me and it is vintage - I remember Arthur Daly using the expression ‘stand on me’ when he was trying to convince Terry of something in Minder but I don’t know where the expression originates.

Dodgem Greaser

27-Jan-2008 by Derek, Islington

Thank you for the tip. I don't think the book I am envisaging had that title. But possibly it may have had more than one title? I will investigate that one, however. There was an illuminating documentary on Simon Dee, by the way, a couple of years back. He is stark raving bonkers, I'm afraid.

BOOK REVIEW : Whatever Happened to Simon Dee?

26-Jan-2008 by Tony Arter

Subtitled: The Story of a Sixties Star. Fascinating subject and a book that strangely has only been written now which, for me, only added to the bermuda triangle feel to this man's career. Author Richard Wiseman has done a good job but the publishers a bad one by deciding on a yellow frivolous cover which gives an initial impression of an unworthy stocking filler. Dee was a Radio Caroline Disc Jockey who had a meteoric rise to becoming a TV chat show host with 15 million viewers and an inconic status. Then he was gone. I can remember hearing many conspiracy theories over the years about his demise and found it hard to believe that a self-publicist like himself never appeared to bemoan his fate and present his side of the story. The truth, as this book reveals, is less fanciful. Dee began to believe his own publicity; thought he was untouchable and influential, and could not be trusted on live television. On top of all this it emerges he may well have has mental problems that these days would be more apparent. Billy Cotton effectively sacked him from the BBC and ITV could not work with him. He was the first media pariah. Well worth reading and I give it four out of five stars. * * * *

Dodgem Greaser?

26-Jan-2008 by Doctor Lager

By Frank Norman? Not sure if it’s about Teds, more like gypsies and greasers, but a cracking read all the same. Given the scale of the Teddy Boy movement and how long it lasted I’m amazed there aren’t more books documenting it, though I suppose in those days there was less media around to hype things up and especially such a solidly working-class bunch of tear-aways as the Teds

Put Me Down For A Copy Too

26-Jan-2008 by King Crombie

Count me in, Derek. If Martin Stone is still alive (last seen in Paris drunk and busking) I bet he'd know the title.

Fairground book

25-Jan-2008 by Derek, Islington

My name is Derek. Wonderful site. Have been scrolling down reading the myriad of messages. Perhaps you can help me. As a teenager in the 1950/1960s I read a book, and for some years this was the only book I did read, all about a travelling fair in England in the 1950s. It was risque for the time and this is why this book did the rounds. The characters were Teds and rockers and they pillaged the local girl population everywhere they went like modern day Vikings. I can't remmeber the title or the author and to this day have never seen the book again. The cover showed a Ted swinging around the bar that connects a dodgem car to the roof. Anyone know the book and where I can get it?

A Tip "No Mean City" ?

25-Jan-2008 by King Crombie

I got a tip on a Glasgow book that might be worth a read "No Mean City". Thats all I know, any pointers ? P.S. Cheers Roger for the "To T.S.Eliot" post, I'm already in pursuit (cue "devil's gallop).

Skinheads Sneek Peek

24-Jan-2008 by Jimmy Jazz

Any chance of a extract from JK's new book ? Come on London Central just a couple of pages to cheer me up. It's grim up North you know !

Local Papers

23-Jan-2008 by Rupert Murdoch

Marriage pictures are still extremely popular in local papers however the Messenger/Guardian series do not print them. So if you live in South London/Kent/Surrey you are unlikely to see them

Local papers

23-Jan-2008 by Dr Feelbad

They don't put pictures of couples getting married in the local papers any more, do they? My local had a page devoted to it for years but now none, This can't be because people are not getting married any longer because they are. Also I doubt it is because couples no longer want it... strange

Emanuel Litvinoff

18-Jan-2008 by Roger

As well as writing novels Litvinoff was/is a fine poet. One of his poems "To T.S.Eliot" is a powerful attack on Eliot's antisemitism.

Child porn

18-Jan-2008 by Young Billy Curtis

There is no excuse at all. Do you feel the same way about Pete Townsend?

Things that have annoyed me today....

17-Jan-2008 by McFurious

1. "documentary" screened the other night with celebrity paedophile, Chris Langham. Pamela Connolly nee Stephenson played psychotherapist. They were mates on Not The Nine O Clock News twenty five years ago., Langham has created a whole pyschobabnle alibi around his child porn offences that would not withstand the slightest interrogation, Shamefully Connolly would not provide this. Because they are famous, creative and friends they think they have a right to excuse behaviour as reprehensible as this. I should have guessed with Connolly as I have never forgiven her husband for making the 'why don't they just get on with it' joke about Iraqui hostage Ken Bigley: a few days later they did. 2. Jeremy Kyle. He annoys me every day, I don't watch it but I know he's still there. Michael Grade, chairman of ITV, knows he is still there but does nothing. 3. How come in Scotland when an elderly person has to go into a nursing home they do not raid the equity in that person's house (if they own one) as they do here? 4. Why does bread only last a day now before it tastes off? When I was a kid it lasted days. 5. What sort of society are we where we tolerate being put through to call centres in India for hours when WE are the customer? Are we fucking mad? How come companies do not recognise if they restored correct customer values they'd clean up.

Hold Up Sancho

14-Jan-2008 by King Crombie

I for one will step up for "On The Road'. Perhaps someone with such a shallow perspective, shouldn't choose a 400 year old tag. In case you didn't know "the goal posts have moved" since 1957 and one of the reasons they have is because Kerouac wrote "On The Road" and some of us got it.

On The Road ……… To Boredom

14-Jan-2008 by Sancho Panza

Browsing in Waterstones I spotted Jack Kerouac’s On The Road which Dylan states in a blurb on the cover “It changed my life like it changes everyone else’s” The publishers also claim it was book shaped a generation on top of that great sell it had also been recommended to me numerous friends whose opinions I respect. However within the first 20 pages I found myself increasingly bored it took me about a month to read this book as it was such an ordeal building up the energy to read through another chapter of self conscious searching shite, lead by a main characters whose only dialogue seems to be “ yes, yes, dig it, that cat, phew, man, wow! Yes”. I imagine the novel is based on Kerouac’s true experiences and as I see it he bummed a few lifts around America with some intellectual/Buddhist/hobo/thief went to few parties, weighed a couple of birds in and smoked some weed. Kerouac obviously thought this was better than sliced bread and released the tale in the form of On The Road, it seems pathetically pitiful that every few pages he trying to convince the reader how mad he and his buddy’s are. Oh and those fucking stupid passages “the mist set on the field and Dean and I saw the Negro girl in the field barefooted in that instant Dean and I didn’t say anything we just dug it man this was living this was beat” – cunt. Maybe I just didn’t get it? Are they meant to Heroin addicts or something? Anyhow if it did inspire a generation to up sticks and start living like hobo’s ripping people off and bumming lifts – they must have been fucking idiots. My other theory is that Kerouac was just a Brimson I don’t recall Orwell picking up a different woman in each town visited in Down And Out In Paris And London.

Emanuel Litvinoff - Any Pointers ?

14-Jan-2008 by King Crombie

If i'm proper, "Journeys Through A Samll Planet" would be the book Sinclair boosted. Perhaps I'm wrong ? Either way there's other E.L. stuff about, any pointers ?

Wedding

13-Jan-2008 by Honest Bob

I’ve got that sitting on my shelf to read, can’t remember where I heard about it, but picked up a copy a year or so back. There’s another East End writer, Litvinoff, mentioned in City Of Disappearances, a book about London compiled by Iain Sinclair. Seems well worth reading. On another note - I read in the paper that Jaimie Oliver has been gassing chicks for TV (didn’t he previously kill a lamb?). The egg industry runs on female chickens, so the girl chicks are allowed to live (if you can call it life) until they no longer produce, while the boys are killed while still babies. Sickening and unnecessary. Just like the dairy industry in fact where cows are raped and kept pregnant artificially, the girls born allowed to live until they become infertile, the boys taken from their mothers and shipped over to the continent to make veal and other ‘delicacies’. It made me wince seeing the reaction to those horses found neglected in a field outside London - they were doomed already, to be shipped to Europe; unwanted pets, race horses, etc etc. This is going on all the time but few people care or protest. We live in a sick society. A holocaust in going on all around us. Oliver is right down there with Ramsay and that idiot who runs the meat-raising programme, curly haired toff, don’t know his name I’m afraid.

BERNARD KOPS' "THE WORLD'S A WEDDING"

11-Jan-2008 by KING CROMBIE

Just done Bernrd Kops' 1963 memoir "The World's a Wedding". Some wonderful words on Jewish Stepney Green/East London, The War and Soho. For me though, he really does start to lose it after a while. I struugled to the end, although on the later pages there is some nice Cambridge Circus flavour. Definitely worth starting, just go "til your 'at floats".

God’s Lonely Men

11-Jan-2008 by D Shell

Just finished the Manic Esso/Pete Haynes book and I would like to add another WELL DONE to those already expressed. I particularly enjoyed the sections on Malcolm Fairplay in Bradford and Jimmy’s Bar in New York. God’s Lonely Men is far more than a band memoir and contains a fine blend of humour and social observation. I look forward to reading Malayan Swing when it is published.

From today's Independent on Sunday Review

30-Dec-2007 by Alan Harvey

D J TAYLOR "Starting a new publishing firm must stand high on the list of risky endeavours in these uncertain times, so it was a pleasure to receive the first two offerings of the newly-formed London Books: James Curtis's The Gilt Kid and Gerald Kersh's Night and the City, both immensely hard-bitten reports from the London underworld of the 1930s, first publication dates 1936 and 1938 respectively, and gamey to the point of purulence.'

Gravestones

27-Dec-2007 by anonymous

There are other tricks in the pipeline, Steven. Graveyards mean land for yuppie flats and houses. Don’t be surprised if the next few years sees councils and private house builders targetting this land, backed up by the EU, who are eager to ship in more European yuppies to change the make-up of our society and its voting patterns - the same as the Chinese have done in Tibet. They have no respect for anything. They are destroying everything that reminds us of our past and our democratic history. Soon they will come for our dead.

Saint Spiv

27-Dec-2007 by Frank Bryant

Can't find much about the book on the net but there is plenty on the author Ronald Duncan. He seems to have been extraoridnarily prolific but most interesting to me was that he wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film Girl On A Motorcycle. This starred Marianne Faithfull and involved lots of unzipping and her getting in and out of tight leather.

Saint Spiv

27-Dec-2007 by King Crombie

I'm eyeing a copy of an unkown to me book by Ronald Duncan "Saint Spiv". Any pointers ?

Warning! Dangerous gravestones......

22-Dec-2007 by Steven Hindmarsh

Walk around your local churchyard and you will see dozens of grave headstones lying flat on the ground. When I first noticed this, I seethed. Blamed young vandals and thought: We were bad, but we'd never do a thing like that. I happened to see the vicar and commented. He soon put me right. "It's not vandals," he said. "It's the council. They come around and when they judge that certain stones are wobbly or unsafe they pull them over and lay them flat." According to the vicar it is a nationwide phenomenon. Now if one of these stones did topple they have at most a few inches to drop forward or backward and unless you are lying directly underneath (which you won't be) and have an eggshell skull then you can't be hurt. It's another ridiculous health and safety directive (probably from the EU) that is legitimised vandalism and thoroughly stupid. I despair.

Dear Friends

22-Dec-2007 by Ian Mac

Fuck off

Dear friends:

22-Dec-2007 by asdsf

Dear friends: We are a large wholesaler who mainly sell electrical product ,such as digital cameras, mobile, LCD TV, Laptops Motorbikes, Digital Video, Mp4, GPS, PS3,2 and so on. my web is ,company msn is The quality of our products is the best, our service is perfect, and our price is the best, the speed of our shipping is very fast. MSN is: htrade-stom66@hotmail.com our company email is: htrade-stom66@hotmail.com our company website is: www.htrade-stom.com

Managers

20-Dec-2007 by Young Billy Curtis

And Glenn Hoddle was the first England manager sacked for his religious beliefs - he believes in reincarnation, the same as nearly half the world’s population. In fact, Christians believed in reincarnation for several hundred years until the elders decided to invent heaven and hell as it was more final and would help control the masses. No wonder Glenn is having a moan, he doesn’t owe the FA a thing. Odd though isnt it that the PC brigade didn’t back him up, there again he’s only a football manager out of Hayes

England Manager

20-Dec-2007 by McFurious

Alf Ramsey was a gippo, Don Revie was an A-rab what the problem?

English football

20-Dec-2007 by Glenn

As long as the players are English then I don’t think it matters who’s in charge. Of course, if we had someone English who could do the job, I would hundred percent give it to them, but we don’t. Between the years of 1970 and 1982 we didn’t even qualify for a World Cup and this was when there were lots more English players around and every manager was English born and bred. We rarely produce genius in this country - Wayne Rooney (Irish descent), Joe Cole, Matt Le Tissier (French), Paul Gascoinge (French?), Agbonlahor (Nigerian?) are exceptions. No, what we need is someone who has been successful over a period of time and who is pragmatic, who can channel our limited abilities into a winning formula. Sven did well with limited resources and was unjustly treated. People got jealous, a middle aged man with a beautiful girlfriend, lovers, massive salary and a job he enjoyed doing. He’s proving himself at Man City. Good luck to Sven, good luck to Capello

An Innocent Man

20-Dec-2007 by Mr Vidler

Truman Capote did not start the real crime genre as stated on this forum earlier and generally believed. In Britain at least true crime has fascinated and been a 'genre' since between the wars. Orwell himself talks of the British obsesssion with murder in one of his famous essays and although much of this obsession was fed by the popular press there were many true crimes and famous trials books on the market. Leonard Gribble was one of the better known proponents of this art. In Cold Blood Capotte described himself as a non-fiction novel. John Grisham current master of the crime thriller has added to the real crime catalogue with his latest book The Innocent Man which charts the wrongful trial and imprisonment of a failed American baseball player for a murder he did not commit. Its a great read from Grisham in his first venture into non-fiction.

England manager

20-Dec-2007 by Laurence

Glenn, I beg to differ. The England national side should be managed by an English manager, surely? If the national team is not about nationality what is? Fair point about the dearth of ability out there but facing up to that may result in facing up to the structural problems we have . We are not much good anymore. And that has nothing to do with technical nous. (This word technical, by the way, in a football context what does it actually mean?) It has everything to do with kids not playing football in a spontaneous way anymore. That is where our stars of the past honed their talents - on the greens, in the recs, in the schools and on the fields in games devoid of adults and coaching interference. No amount of colleges of excellence and such bollocks can ever substitute that.

England manager

18-Dec-2007 by Glenn

I can’t believe some of the stuff I’m hearing on the radio, ‘experts’ moaning about Capello’s appointment as England manager, complaining because he’s not English. Who should we appoint then? - Pearce, Southgate, Bruce, Jewell, Coppell, ‘Big’ Sam, Redknapp? None of them has ever won a trophy. Alan Shearer? He has never even been a manager. Terry Venables I could understand, but he doesn’t get a mention. Martin O’Neill? Fair enough, but he’s Irish and not in the Capello league. If Capello can get this bunch of prima donnas playing then who cares if he’s from Mars. No wonder we’ve only ever won one trophy if this is the way we think.

Thanks

17-Dec-2007 by Dean Street Dan

Just send the fiver to Dan, c/o Dean Street, Soho, Central London. It will find its way to me okay

Couple of recommendations

15-Dec-2007 by Herman

Just finished a couple of books that I thoroughly enjoyed both on the shelves but publshed some time back. In True BLood by Truman Capote - a forerunner of the now common murder non-fiction book but no cuttings job - this. And When Did You Last See Your Father by I can't remember for a minute his name. Great non-fiction again where the author is coming to terms with his father's death or more like his life as pennies from the writer's childhood finally drop.

15-Dec-2007 by Pete Haynes (M. Esso)

Thanks for coming to my book launch, there was a good atmosphere and II felt it went well. I'll send a fiver to Dean for his comment on my drumming.

Gods lonely men

14-Dec-2007 by Sir Francis Younghusband.

I too was one of those poor lost souls that queued for hours at the book launch last Monday to get a climpse at some of the celebs attending the bash. Madonna and guy hung back for ages chatting to the crowds as did Bowie and Pamela Anderson and Billy Idol who stood and were very paitent with the gathered press and well wishers, top party Esso and I love the book! Was the scruffy pair passing themselves off as Ant and Dec, Martin Knight and John King?

The Brown Dog Affair

10-Dec-2007 by Herbert Central

... and The Brown Dog Affair is the main feature on Wikipedia today (Monday).

God’s Lonely Men

09-Dec-2007 by Herbert Central

Pete Haynes’s/Manic Esso’s website can be reached on www.petehaynes.co.uk and is well worth a visit...

Manic Esso

09-Dec-2007 by Dean Street

I’m looking forward to buying God’s Lonely Men when it comes out as I saw The Lurkers a few times in their heyday and Manic Esso was the top punk drummer in my book. Topper, Cook, Ruffy, Tommy Ramone were all class, but Manic was the guvnor.

Cathi Unsworth

09-Dec-2007 by Young Billy Curtis

I have been tuning into Cathi Unsworth and she presents a very good show, really knows her stuff. She is a big Derek Raymond fan and has been published in her own right.

Missed this

08-Dec-2007 by Alan Harvey

Cathi Unsworth talks to Paul Willetts, Resonance FM, December 6, 7-8pm A wide-ranging discussion about Julian Maclaren-Ross, Patrick Hamilton (both published by us), his own true-crime story North Soho 999 and two re-releases from London Books, Gerald Kersh's Night and the City and James Curtis's The Gilt Kid. Promises to be a varied and interesting hour.

British Pathe newsreels

08-Dec-2007 by RobG

Just been on the British Pathe website and I'm addicted already!! You can download everything for free and theres some fantastic stuff on there e.g. Soho in the 50s, Notting Hill riots, 70s Chelsea fans etc etc....literally thousands of clips to search through!! If anyones interested go to https://www.britishpathe.com/index.html

Cadillac

06-Dec-2007 by Ziggy

A Bowie fan!

How moving and gentle

30-Nov-2007 by Dave Thurston

Ive just bought the new Pete Haynes book, Gods lonely men and I couldnt put it down I dont know if I had any sort of glue on my fingers because I was wrapping some christmas presents up and you know how these things happen , Blah Blah Blah. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.But I agree with the viewer from Mitcham I also so the Bard of Phipps Bridge live and he was awesome and so inspiring,a preist lay at the feet of a Cadillac and a queer threw up at the sight of that.

Who mentioned Harry Worth,

28-Nov-2007 by Laura

anyway?

Harry Worth

27-Nov-2007 by D Licious

I always thought he was good but could be my regressive imagination playing tricks. Never see his stuff repeated or on DVD/Video so hard to tell. Bumbling old fool who appealed to children as he couldn't help amusing himself by playing optical tricks with his reflection in shop windows. He was on when Kennedy was assasinated. I remember running in the kitchen to tell my parents when the programme was interrupted. As they were not watching him he probably had little appeal to them. I also liked Charlie Drake when Henry McGee used to pull him over the counter in the employment exchange. But my parents didn't think much of him either. They liked Arthur Haynes and strangely a bloke called Joe Baker. Not the footballer but a rotund comedian in a show called Fire Crackers. Joe Baker the footballer I think played for both England and Scotland and was a rotund centre-forward. Not as fat as the Liverpool goalkeeper Tommy Lawrence who they called The Flying Pig.

From The Observer, 25 November 2007

27-Nov-2007 by anonymous

That's the best thing we've read all year Harry Potter's finale, the lives of Stalin, Brian Clough and Graham Greene, Ted Hughes's letters, a history of teenagers and not forgetting a tome on Welsh furniture ... writers and other cultural figures choose their favourite books of 2007 Sunday November 25, 2007 The Observer Iain Sinclair I welcomed the reissue, with new introductions, of two classics of London lowlife: Night and the City by Gerald Kersh (London Books) and The Gilt Kid by James Curtis (London Books). Exuberant, life-affirming accounts, both, of how the individual is crushed by the gravity of the city. Nostalgia for Unknown Cities by the poet Ken Edwards (Reality Street) is the wild card: hypnagogic derangement as the urban dream dissolves before our eyes

Tim Out

14-Nov-2007 by Dean Street Dan

You have a nice review of Night and The City in Time Out this morning

Xmas cards

11-Nov-2007 by Will

Great cards. Great image. Thanks. Like you say they will delight my Chelsea friends and terrorise everybody else. Obvioisly I recognise the man in the white sta-press but anyone know any of the others and what happened to them?

Aghhhhhhhhh!!

06-Nov-2007 by Adam P

Fck me i'm annoyed I havent seen this site before. It all looks brilliant. Congrats M & J, hope it's going well.

Review from Jewish Chronicle today

03-Nov-2007 by Alan Harvey

NIGHT AND THE CITY Revival of writer who sank into the squalor of Soho 01/11/2007 Reviewed by Lawrence Joffe Night and the City By Gerald Kersh London Books Classics, £11.99 From the opening scene it grabs you. You feel yourself being dragged through a thicket of urban undergrowth. Night and the City by Gerald Kersh lurches from comedy to menace, vivid description to rapid-fire dialogue. Witty and sharply observed, the novel boasts a pantheon of flawed and sometimes repulsive characters, most, apparently, “on the make”. Even “a cat of the city” reflects the nocturnal mood: “shameless and heartless, elusive as an eel, resilient as rubber, indestructible as chewing-gum; a tile-begotten hybrid, born among salmon-tins and broken bottles, whose pedigree had slunk in offal from dustbin to dustbin since Egypt”. Yet amid the anarchy and breakneck narrative pace of Kersh’s description of Soho, heart of London, his crafty plotline is firmly controlled. Then you look at the date of first publication: 1938. Can it be? “I was knocked out when I first read the novel,” says Martin Knight, whose colleague, John King (author of The Football Factory), discovered an old copy, quite appropriately, in a louche Soho discount bookshop. “It felt so current and immediate, and the writing is really brilliant. Kersh deals with permissiveness and the so-called lower classes, 20 years before ‘angry young men’ like John Osborne broached the same topics,” says Knight, ghost writer for a number of top footballers. Inspired by Kersh and other chroniclers of the capital’s seamier side, King and Knight set up the London Books imprint to revive the genre. Kersh’s Night and James Curtis’s Gilt Kid of 1935 are two of what they hope will be a trove of long-buried literary gems. Next year they aim to bring back A Start in Life (1970) to coincide with author Alan Sillitoe’s 80th birthday. Another title they are eying is Simon Blumenfeld’s seminal Jewboy (1935). Kersh’s third novel maintains its zest 60 years after it first appeared. His “hero” is Harry Fabian, a hapless odd-jobber and pimp, always with some quixotic plan to make a fortune. The latest, we learn, involves all-in wrestling. After each disappointment, Harry returns for one more tilt at the windmills. But his life turns into a nihilistic vortex. Ultimately he betrays and cons everyone, including himself, as the police close in. Meanwhile London cleans its streets in preparation for the 1937 Royal Coronation. Along the way, Harry meets characters like Lipsky, Liquid Finger, Phil Nosseross, Anna Siberia, Adam the sculptor, and Figler, whose notebook carries “a lifetime of tortuous research in the snake haunted hinterland of questionable commerce… a kind of Kabbalah of buying and selling”. Kersh’s creations almost resemble Sholem Aleichem’s, but are far darker in hue. It comes as no surprise to learn that Night and the City spawned two film treatments under the same name. First came a UK cinema noir classic of 1950, starring Richard Widmark; then a 1992 remake featuring Robert de Niro and Jessica Lange, relocated to New York. All of which makes one wonder why Kersh fell so abruptly off the radar. “From Kersh’s books, you can tell that he obviously lived that life himself,” notes Knight. Born into a large Jewish immigrant family in Teddington-on-Thames in 1911, Kersh began writing at eight and published his first novel, Jews without Jehovah, in 1934. Four offended relatives sued him for misrepresentation — even though it was meant to be fictitious. Happily, this did not put Kersh off his passion. He went on to pen more than 1,000 articles, 400 short stories and 19 novels. He also worked as a bodyguard, cook, local newspaper editor, French teacher, travelling salesman and cinema manager. He married three times, sometimes slept rough, and built a house in Barbados which burnt down. Kersh’s mordant account of basic training during the Second World War, They Die With Their Boots Clean (1941) was enormously popular. Later he learnt that many of his French relatives had perished in the Holocaust and went on to write about Belsen. Troubled by botched tax returns, failing health and a torrid personal life, Kersh still churned out masterpieces like Prelude To A Certain Midnight (1947) and The Great Wash (1953), which dealt presciently with melting polar ice caps. Anthony Burgess called his Fowlers End (1957) “one of the best comic novels of the century”. Eventually Kersh died penniless and forgotten in New York in 1968. Paul Duncan is currently writing his biography. Night is bound to win him a new generation of fans. As John King writes in his introduction, “the vibrancy of his storytelling prov[es] that good literature is timeless”.

The Dark End Of The Street

30-Oct-2007 by Radio Head

The author and journalist Cathi Unsworth is presenting a radio series on noir fiction, from 7-8pm every Thursday night on Resonance FM. The series began on 25 October with the first of a four-part investigation into the man seen by many as the Godfather of British Noir, the late, great Derek Raymond. Part One featured Raymond’s first novel, The Crust On Its Uppers, originally released in 1962 under his real name, Robin Cook, at a time when Raymond was deeply involved in London’s criminal underworld, while Part Two, due on1 November, will take a look at Raymond’s disquieting and visionary novel, 1970’s A State Of Denmark. Written after Raymond had left London to work on a vineyard in Italy – and become foreign minister of his local anarchist collective – this novel forsees the reign of a Prime Minister who changes the old Labour party into the New Pace, an increasingly authoritarian regime with many startling parallels to New Labour. To discuss the work will be Raymond’s publisher Peter Ayrton of Serpent’s Tail, and Martyn Waites, a noir novelist strongly influenced by Raymond. Part Three, on 8 November, deals with the first of Raymond’s ‘Factory’ series of novels, He Died With His Eyes Open. Having spent years working variously as a mini-cab driver back in London and a labourer in rural France, Raymond was challenged by a neighbour that he would never write a book again. The resultant He Died… the first novel to be published under the non de plume Derek Raymond, appeared in 1984. Raymond’s friend and literary executor John Williams explains the very personal true story behind this groundbreaking novel. Part Four, on 15 November, concludes the series with a look at the book many regard as Raymond’s masterpiece, 1988’s I Was Dora Suarez. Although one publisher famously ‘threw up all over his desk’ while reading the manuscript, this haunting and redemptive novel was made into a record with the London band Gallon Drunk and went on to inspire a new generation of writers. Maxim Jakubowski, Raymond’s agent and friend, talks about the book.

Skinheads

30-Oct-2007 by West Londoner

I've only just discovered this site after a chat with Barnet Mark a couple of weeks ago at the 12 Bar club in London where he runs the regular "London Calling" night. I've enjoyed reading the reviews and opinions on various books and writers here on the message board and on the site in general. My main reason for visiting was to find out about a release date for the latest John King book "Skinheads" which I've now found out is due to be published in March next year. I'm really looking forward to reading this book, having been a Skinhead myself from the late '70's through the 1980's and '90's and still having an interest in the style, music and culture today. I'm pretty confident if anyone can write a accurate novel based on the cult then John King is the man to do it! I've read all the books written by John from "Football Factory" to "The Prison House". I know they have all probably been discussed on this site previously and I certainly haven't the skills to review them and do justice to them but I can say that I've enjoyed reading them more than any other books by any other authors. I was brought up in the West London area myself (Hounslow) and the first two books and to a certain extent the "Human Punk" novel are based in areas of London near to where I grew up and that I know well. Although John King adds so much detail to the characters in the books and his knowledge of the culture he writes about brings the novels to life anyway I found that being able to picture the actual areas, streets, pubs, etc that are mentioned was a bonus that added to my enjoyment of the books. Having lived a similar lifestyle to some of the characters in the books and having been into the music and styles of the years when "Human Punk" in particular was set I can certainly vouch for the accuracy of his writing, it was as if I was reading about my own experiences of growing up in my early teenage years and also those of people I knew. It was so good to find an author with such skill who could bring those memories to life on a printed page. Only someone who has themselves lived the lifestyle could do so I think, not that I would know that for certain having never met John King and only ever having read interviews, although I did find myself standing near him at a gig at the 12 bar club a few months back! I was very tempted to say how much I'd enjoyed reading his work but as the East End Baddoes were on stage with Terry Hayes belting out a cover of the old 4 Skins number "Chaos" it didn't seem an appropriate time..... he probably wouldn't have heard me anyway and after all the guy was there to watch some bands, not to talk about his books with some Skinhead who'd just wandered up out of the crowd!! Anyway, I seemed to have rambled on for no particular reason just to point out what everyone on this site already knows... that John King is a bloody good writer!! Cheers to Mark for tipping me off about this site. Rob

Lewes Literary Festival

27-Oct-2007 by Marion

Thank you, we picked up your leaflet at the LLF last night and after seeing your actors read some jolly good extracts from Night and The City, Gorse, The Gilt Kid and North Soho 999 wanted to say well done. Shame there was not more people there because it was certainly better than what came after!

Resonance radio

26-Oct-2007 by Robert C

I love the site! I heard mention of London Books and The Gilt Kid on Cathi Unsworth’s radio show last night and have to say it’s great what you are doing with these books. Keep up the good work. Can’t wait to read Curtis and Kersh when they arrive.

From the Morning Star

25-Oct-2007 by D Licious

A life of crime in '30s London (Sunday 14 October 2007) The Gilt Kid by James Curtis (London Books, £11.99) FIRST released in 1936 and now given a special reprint by London Books, The Gilt Kid follows the adventures of a young burglar fresh out of prison. Convinced that only saps work, it's only a matter of hours before he starts to line up various "jobs" in an underworld inhabited by criminals, prostitutes and detectives. In many ways, the gilt kid is quite a difficult and intriguing character. Very often brutal and shallow, he can also be incredibly sentimental and genuinely aware of the suffering of others. Like many petty criminals, our anti-hero is his own worst enemy. Uncomfortable with himself and everyone else, "the kid" is on the run from the start and can only drown his insecurities in the sea of alcohol found in the pubs and clubs of the city. Like a lot of crime writing during this period, the depiction of women leaves a lot to be desired. Take this on board, however and it's worth a look just for its breathless portrayal of the seedier side to London and for its fantastic use of language. The author of this cult classic is a pretty fascinating figure too. Eschewing his own rather upper-class background, Curtis made no secret of his political sympathies and shot to fame as a left-wing crime writer in the 1930s. Falling out of favour in the post war period, he continued to write and to prowl the streets that he had come to love. Published with a useful essay by Paul Willets and a frank interview with Curtis's daughter, it's a great read, which has been out of print for far too long. STEVE ANDREW

From the Camden New Journal this week

25-Oct-2007 by D Licious

Underworld Kid is back James Curtis, the ‘missing person’ of English literature, is about to be rediscovered with the reissue of a novel set in 1930s Soho, writes Dan Carrier THE GILT KID. By James Curtis. London Books, £11.99 THE novelist James Curtis has been missing for more than 50 years. His success, which burned brightly but rapidly, came in a meteoric burst in the mid-1930s. Curtis wrote six novels in his short career. He was last published in 1956, although he lived until 1977. This year, 30 years after his death, his first novel, The Gilt Kid – a politicised thriller about a petty criminal who gets caught up in a potential double murder case – has been re-issued. It reveals Curtis as a fine example of a writer inspired by the socio-political milieu of the period. But compared to contemporaries like Patrick Hamilton who helped make the 1930s political novel a celebrated genre, little is known about Curtis. He shunned publicity. In the preface to the new edition, Soho historian Paul Willetts, writes: “Curtis has taken the well-trodden path to obscurity. You won’t even find references to him in the standard literary histories and guide books. He’s one of English literature’s missing persons, his work only kept in circulation by a handful of devotees.” James Curtis was a pseudonym used by Geoffrey Maiden who was born in India in 1907, but whose family moved back to Britain when he was young. His parents ran a hotel in Hertfordshire up until the late 1930s. His daughter, Nicolette Edwards, says her father was a keen linguist, which might explain the sensitive ear he employs in The Gilt Kid. It is full of slang, written in the voice of London’s streets in the mid-1930s. Nicolette tells of the toll the war had on him. He saw service in France and Burma, rising to the rank of major, but his daughter believes he may have been discharged under a cloud. The war not only contributed to the breakdown of his marriage, but seems to have affected his creativity. He was to write just one more book. His daughter writes: “His reputation declined partly due to the interruption of the war, his unmarried state, as well as his lifestyle of drinking, smoking and gambling. He seemed to lose motivation.” He moved to Kilburn and worked as a hotel night porter for a time, and then a school caretaker. But he spent much time in libraries searching for inspiration, rather than writing. His daughter says: “He was completely unmaterialistic and saw possessions as unnecessary.” His lifestyle caused him problems. He had diabetes, and died aged 70 from a heart attack. He was buried in St Pancras cemetery. His daughter recalls “a complex character… charismatic, enthusiastic and impulsive… his manners were old-fashioned, exceptionally polite… with a sense of fair play”. But he found his talent hard to harness. His sister said she believed he could have succeeded in all areas of his life, but seemed intent on destroying everything good that happened to him. The Gilt Kid was published in 1936, his first of six novels. Two where made into films – They Drive By Night (1938) and There Ain’t No Justice (1939). But his productivity dropped dramatically following the war, after which he published just one novel. The Gilt Kid brings alive Soho and the West End of the period. In this way the similarities with Patrick Hamilton’s trilogy 20,000 Streets Under The Sky are geographical and physical as well as chronological and political. As well as writing about the same period from the eyes of an urban underclass, they describe the same pubs and streets these anti-heroes inhabit. The Gilt Kid also works as a crime novel. Although the hero – the Kid is a petty criminal, so-named because of his shock of blonde hair – is described in passages as a Communist, his political views are not the mainstay of the narrative he shares with the reader. Instead, it is his quest for the simple score, the easy blag, to fill his pockets with notes to spend on drink and women. He is no party apparatchik, and you can sense the author’s displeasure with the didactic-spouting left-wing philosophers of the period. In two scenes in the book, the Kid attempts to read a Marxist tract before he falls asleep. Both times the reader can feel him yawning through the economics and comparing it darkly with his experience of the real world outside books. He meets a Communist in a pub, who introduces himself by telling the Gilt Kid he sold him a copy of the Daily Worker at a recent anti-war demo and they launch, at the Gilt Kid’s suggestion, into a political debate. The Communist, calling our hero Comrade, says: “It’s quite simple really. We Communists believe first of all in the materialist conception of history, by which we mean…” The Gilt Kid interrupts. Fuelled by beer, he espouses a bar-stool philosophy of his own: “Yes I know all about that,” he begins, dismissively. “I know all about the materialist conception of history, and the class war, and the theory of surplus value. And for God’s sake don’t try to tell me about economic determinism… what I want to know is when you are getting on with the job.” When the Communist talks of propaganda campaigns and the right conditions for revolution, the Kid retorts that it’s the job of the Communists to be making the revolution, making the conditions right, not waiting. The desperation produced by being aware of the world’s ills and feeling unable to do much about it leads to him choosing housebreaking as a career. With a war not of his making looming, and the England of the day not offering much, his get-rich-quick motive is strong and believable. But perhaps Curtis’s strongest trick is to write a thriller with genuine suspense, and credit his reader with the intelligence of picking up his political point on the way. He is a missing novelist who deserves to be found.

Jew Boy

12-Oct-2007 by Young Billy Curtis

I’ve got an American edition here, The Iron Garden. A great book

JewBOy

12-Oct-2007 by anonymous

Just looked on Antiquebooks and JewBoy is going for £200! Here is an obit of the author: Simon Blumenfeld, who has died aged 97, was unique in several fields: in revolutionary politics, and as a novelist, playwright and journalist. For more than 40 years, he was a columnist for the Stage and last year, he entered the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest columnist. He remained his own man until the end of his long life, a Jew who was proud of his race but remined aloof from its religion, a confirmed Marxist happy to mingle when necessary with royalty and capitalists, a lover of the fine arts at home with pop stars and champion boxers. Article continues -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- He often hinted that his background was mysterious and that was true. There is some doubt as to whether his forebears were even Jewish; his father's family came from Sicily, where they grew olives until a volcanic eruption destroyed their business. They moved to Bavaria, where they were known as Catholics. His grandfather was a sailor, suspected of being a pirate. His father was born in Izmir, Turkey; his mother came from Odessa in the Ukraine. Towards the end of the 19th century they came to London and settled in the East End. The family was reasonably prosperous, yet Simon became involved in revolutionary politics, about which he was as uncommunicative as he was about other aspects of his life. His main ambition was to be a writer, following the example of Israel Zangwill. In his 20s and 30s, he wrote plays, and published four novels, of which the best known was Jew Boy, about the East End; it originally came out in the US as The Iron Garden in 1932, was published in Britain in 1935 and was republished over 50 years later. Simon's 1937 novel, Phineas Kahn, was republished in 1988, with an introduction by Steven Berkoff. Little is known about his plays, except The Battle Of Cable Street, which surfaced at the Edinburgh Festival in 1987. Simon supported himself in journalism in the 1930s, becoming a correspondent for a French news agency; he also wrote western novels under the name Huck Messer, from the Yiddish term for a carving knife. Despite his political beliefs, he willingly accepted call-up in the second world war, and was posted to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in the Midlands, having somehow become an authority on German ammunition. Then he was transferred to the script department of Stars In Battledress, an army talent show; he supplied it with material, and was stationed in some style in Grosvenor Square. This was his introduction to show business, which he took up after his release. In the army he met his mentor, South African Norman Kark, who started a publishing business. The titles included Band Wagon, an entertainment magazine printed on exceptionally high quality paper considering the austerity of the era. Blumenfeld wrote for it under several aliases, the best known being Sidney Vauncez, after the Yiddish term for moustache; he had acquired a fine facial growth in the army. He then went into publishing himself, with a newspaper, Weekly Sporting Review, combining entertainment and sport, particularly boxing, another enthusiasm. The paper came to a sudden end when it was taken to court for libel by the managers of Tommy Steele. By this time, Blumenfeld had made strong freelance connections, including ghostwriting a Sunday newspaper column for nightclub proprietor Harry Meadows, whose Churchill's Club was at the time a fashionable venue. In the early 1960s, Simon became the light entertainment editor of the Stage. As variety gradually disappeared, Vauncez, as he was by then known, realised that its successor was the thriving club scene, based in the north but gradually moving south. Such was his advocacy of this new entertainment that he gave up writing about theatre and became its acknowledged authority. He did not give up writing until a few weeks before his death, continuing to contribute a weekly column for the Stage. His wife, Deborah, predeceased him by 45 years. He is survived by his son, Eric, a doctor, and his daughter, Sheba, a pianist. · Simon Blumenfeld, journalist and author, born November 25 1907; died April 3 2005

Simon Blumenfeld

12-Oct-2007 by anonymous

Any thoughts about publishing his pre-war "Jew Boy"?

The Gilt Kid

10-Oct-2007 by Dean Street Dan

I have just finished reading The Gilt Kid and it is brilliant. Well done for bringing this lost gem back into print. The introduction by Paul Willetts is informative and the interview with the author’s daughter is very moving. Do you have any plans to print more James Curtis novels?

Outlaw

09-Oct-2007 by Jamie Bell

Have just seen the film Outlaw starring Sean Bean and Danny Dyer. I was looking forward to it but finished watching feeling thoroughly bewildered. Firstly, a jerky camera was employed throughout which may be trendy/different but for me was thoroughly annoying and disturbed my affinity with the film. Secondly, the characters were not really believable and not enough care was taken in explaining how and why they had reached the point of becoming vigilantes. The QC in character particular was a bit mad. Plot was confused and weak; people turning up in warehouses where they could not have known the others were gathered, connections made between 'hits' which would not have been made, were the whole country up in arms about this gang? seems like the plot goes there and then backs off. Danny Dyer dream scenes borrowed straight from The Football Factory. Much else borrowed from Death Wish, stereotypical drawn drug dealers and gangster. Bob Hoskins underused in a confusing role,. All in all one has the sense that the footage had been cut together sloppily and that an opportunity to make a great film at the right time has been missed.

James Curtis on Facebook

25-Sep-2007 by Eyesteel

If any of you Curtis fans are on Facebook, I've set up a James Curtis group there, with some rare photos. Here it is: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5058823907

The Body

24-Sep-2007 by Steven Hindmarsh

The blurb on the back: The Body is a study of jealousy. From the moment when Henry Bishop a middle aged hairdresser, sees a stranger gazing up at his wife's bathroom window, he is obsessed by a belief that she is unfaithful to him. Feeding on a few slight clues — &n entry in a diary, a whiff of tobacco in an empty room — this obsession finally blazes up into the .very ecstasy of hate. Its theme is admirably suited to Mr Sansom's talent for revealing the normal world as it appears in the distorting mirror of a mind under abnormal stress. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- opening lines: To hold the syringe gently, firmly but delicately – not to squirt, but to prod the sleeper into wakefulness with the nozzle, taking care to start no abrupt flight of fear. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- God, this is a horrible book. And I mean that in a good way. It’s beautifully written, and thoroughly convincing, but the subject is so nasty that you rather wish it weren’t quite so good. In essence, Henry Bishop tells us the story of his mental collapse and breakdown, as he becomes increasingly obsessed with the idea that his wife is having an affair with the car salesman next door. And, er, that’s it. But the remorseless journey into self-destruction is terrible to behold: there are few novels that stare so unflinchingly into the horrors of the human mind. When in 1984 Anthony Burgess drew up his list in the New York Times of the 99 best English language novels of the previous 45 years, he wrote that ‘Reading pleasure has not been the sole criterion’ and promptly included this in his list. ‘Pleasure’ certainly ain’t part of the experience – I had to put it down for a few days to gather my strength before going for the last few chapters – but I’d unhesitatingly recommend it to anyone seeking out the highest quality examples of the novelist’s art. Accessible, intelligent, unbearably intense, this is about as good as modern literature gets. Just in case it sounds intolerably bleak, I should also add that it also captures the atmosphere of suburban London at the turn of the 1950s perfectly, giving it a certain nostalgic and historical appeal. But, to be honest, even this is fairly desperate. Here he is on a typical young woman of the period, looking for salvation through cosmetics: Her all-consuming interest was beautification - her world was of varnishes and creams, astringents and lotions, unguents and oils and powders and perfumes. The newer they were, the more clinical the design of containers - the better she liked them. Hers was no study of quality but of novelty, so that a new cream approximated the latest film or dance-tune. Films and jazz were secondary to this main cosmetic interest; for although the cinema's fabulous star-creatures provided the dream paradise which in the first place stimulated these cosmetics - it had progressed beyond that, the cosmetic had become the real, practical means of approximating some resemblance to the star, and the star, though a guide, shone with a more distant and less urgent light. (p.86) A wonderful, wonderful book. But horrible.

The Body

22-Sep-2007 by anonymous

Sounds good, what’s it about?

William Sansom

22-Sep-2007 by Steven Hindmarsh

Check him out guys. 1948 novel The Body long out of print but writing at its most brilliant. A sizzling London novel if ever there was one. Good luck with London Books

Films, books etc

20-Sep-2007 by Wild Billy Curtis

You have to look at the motivation for these things. Green Street was made solely to make money and ripped off The Football Factory left right and centre. Rise Of The Foot Soldier will be similar. Do we need another Essex Boys? Look at the book trade and the way it has gone. Shelves stacked with junk books - celebrity and easy reading. The hooligan genre - two or three good books at the start and then scores of rip-off follow ups where any idiot caught on a camera swearing becomes a hooligan general. Middle aged men see a chance to cash in and lose any dignity they once had posing for the cameras and thinking they are famous. This is the dumbing down the papers talk about, public school film producers and publishers cashing in on the plebs and highlighting the violence and degradation. Quality is what matters, life beyond the profit motive.

Green Street (cont.)

19-Sep-2007 by Herr Rathbone

Green Street was an awful film if one is mining for authenticity. Football hooligans tend not to like it. Kids, on the other hand, love it. Maybe real American soldiers - ones that had seen action - detested The Green Berets. I have heard anecdotally that it has been a great success on DVD despite the it be leaden with stereotypical characters that bring to mind Dick Emery's skinhead character from the seventies. The Firm, ID and The Football Factory were all better films, far better, but the mass audience is not as discerning as the critical audience. The Carry Ons were not Fellini but the people loved 'em.

Green Street?

19-Sep-2007 by Junco partner

You have to be joking. This film was one of the worst I have ever seen and is only redeemed by the contender for the worst London accent in a film since Dick Van Dyke award by the actor Charlie Humman. Terrible shit waste of celloid.

Sorry

18-Sep-2007 by Alan Harvey

Event below is at : LONDON REVIEW BOOKSHOP 14 Bury Place, London, WC1A 2JL. 020 7269 9030

Forthcoming London Books event.

18-Sep-2007 by Alan Harvey

North Soho 999, Patrick Hamilton, Gerald Kersh and James Curtis Thursday 27 September at 7PM £6 Spiv City: London low-life writing by Patrick Hamilton and others Presented in association with the Sohemian Society Three actors, fresh from spells at the Globe Theatre and London's Old Vic, star in this series of readings that evoke the West End underworld of the 1930s and 40s, a smoke-filled milieu awash with teenage gunmen, deserters, and snappily dressed spivs. Hosted by Paul Willetts, author of Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia (Dewi Lewis), the acclaimed biography of Soho literary legend and dandy Julian Maclaren-Ross, the evening will feature extracts from three newly reissued classics. These comprise Patrick Hamilton's The Gorse Trilogy (Black Spring Press); Gerald Kersh's Night and the City (London Books), which provided the basis for a memorable film noir; and The Gilt Kid (London Books) by James Curtis, a cult writer whose fans include Jonathan Meades. The evening will be rounded off with extracts from Willetts's topical non-fiction story of postwar gun crime, North Soho 999 (Dewi Lewis), described by critic Philip French, writing in the TLS, as “a tour-de-force that provides a fascinating account of a vanished Britain.”

Night and The City

18-Sep-2007 by Nick

Got my copy from the site. Thanks. Excellent cover and high quality book. Feels nice and looks good on the shelf. John King's introduction helps click the novel into its rightful place in the literary lineage. Well done, London Books!

Essex Footsoldiers

17-Sep-2007 by The Turnpike Lane Tearaway

Very good film. Genuinely interesting, well acted, and dare I say it, realistic. Funny though how the stuck-up critics never take these kind of British films seriously - always dismissing them as mockney or macho rubbish. All too close to home maybe, too white, too working class. On the other hand if the very same film had been a Brazilian import set in Rio you can bet they'd love it. How daring and cultured of them.

Re: The Rise of the Foot Soldier (sp)

17-Sep-2007 by killing joke

did you miss the little boy? Green St was lowest common denominator, pulpfiction for the voyeur. 'i dont wanna'

The rise of the foot soilder

17-Sep-2007 by The man in the Know?

Ive just seen the excellent Rise of a Foot Soilder, and although its a great British flick it is still not as good or a patch on the classic Dougie Brimsons Green Street, 3 cheers for Doug.

Northern Rock

15-Sep-2007 by anonymous

I was queing at the ATM today in Kingston. There was this blind chap in front of me and he asked me to check his balance, so I pushed him over.

Beware the coming storm

14-Sep-2007 by COFFINDODGER

Northern Rock is safe - that's what we are being told but they cannot say anything else. Even a 'not sure' would trigger a bigger panic than the one we currently see. I say, few of our financial instuitutions are safe because although experts and insiders are trying to paint the crisis as a problem in the US Prime market, they mislead. US sub-Prime market is the mortgage lending to people who can't really afford it; people with records of default; people in patchy employment. In short people who companies did not used to grant mortgages to. That 'sub-prime' market exists here too. It is the one targeted by Carol Vorderman in those horrible TV ads that have been dominating the commercial breaks of the marginal TV channels for the last 10 years! You know the ones Picture This and Borrowmoreyouthickcunt.com etc. This lot will be defaulting by now and it will snowball as rates rise and fixed rate mortgages expire. Lenders will be calling on their security (people's houses) very soon and will find that security will be worth less than the loans outstanding. The little ones will go down first but undoubtedly we'll see some big ones go. Savers withdraw your money but put it where?

McCann misery

12-Sep-2007 by Laura

The McCann case holds a grim fascination for all and Do you they think they didit? has taken over from My house went up by £45,000 last month as the mainstay of pub and afterdinner talking topics but watching the shift in the media and presumably public opinion from support for the McCanns to condemnation is quite surreal. It may take the suicide of Kate McCann to banish these latest notions of guilt and then she will be feted like Princess Diana and you wont be able to get into Leicestershire due to beds of flowers everywhere. Makes me sick.

GOD FORBID

26-Aug-2007 by COFFINDODGER

WHAT NEXT, I ASK? THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IS ALLOWING INDIVIDUAL CHURCHES TO DECIDE THEMSELVES IF THEY WISH TO ALLOW MOBILE PHONE COMPANIES TO PUT RECIEVERS ON THEIR SPIRES AND TOWERS IN EXCCHANGE FOR MONEY. THERE HAS BEEN SOME HANDWRINGING IT IS EXPLAINED HOW THIS SITS MORALLY WITH THE FACT THAT PORNOGRAPHY FLIES ACROSS THE MOBILE NETWORK BUT THEY (THE CHURCH) ARE SATISFIED THAT THE COMPANIES DO THEIR BEST TO CONTROL THIS. OH YES! AND THE FEAR THAT HAS YET TO BE PROVEN OR DISPROVEN THAT MASTS CAUSE CANCER THAT DOESN'T COME INTO IT? I THINK NOW THE CHURCH HAS DEMONSTRATED DIVINE CYNICISM THE GAME IS UP. WE DESPAIR OVER CHILDREN KILLING EACH OTHER BUT IF WE HAVE NOW REACHED A POINT WHERE THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND'S MORAL COMPASS CAN BE COMPROMISED BY MONEY WHAT REALLY DO WE EXPECT? NO, REALLY? IF I WAS A CHRISTIAN I'D SAY THE DEVIL HAD WON

ITV hypocrisy

21-Aug-2007 by Jamie Bell

Yes, you only just noticed. ITV is the flagship cynical, hypocritical and plain money-grabbing TV station. After midnight they have devotde their schedules to a lottery type phone in 'game'. Since when did we allow broadcasters to become online casinos?

crimewatch tonight

21-Aug-2007 by Paul Hyams

How come all the "wanted faces" appealed for all jumped bail? The offences they commited included rape, aggravated burglary and gbh. Why were they on bail?

Good News, Bad News

16-Aug-2007 by NW1

The worst news of the week is that Dawn French is retiring to the country to write her memoirs. The best news is that she thinks she will dies soon, possibly before she finishes said book. Fingers crossed.

ITV hypocrisy

16-Aug-2007 by Hope and Keen

I watched Midnight Express the other night on ITV 4. I know the film well as I have seen it several times and it never loses it power for me. Therefore I was surprised to see that a number of pieces had been cut/censored. These included the girlfriend's breasts squashed up against the window when she visits. This is my favourite moment. My point is though that in every commercial break there was a plethora of soft porn ads for sex lines. So ITV made a decsision that certain valid scenes in the film were unsuitable for viewers but its ok to try and persuade us to spend our money on sex lines and using women caressing themselves as lure. What a bloody cynical world we live in!

The Boys

15-Aug-2007 by Titchy

Was there doubt he administered the fatal blow? I thought he admitted it in court? One problem with this film was the casting of Dudley Sutton as a teenager even though he was around thirty at the time and looked older than say Roy Kinnear

The Boys

15-Aug-2007 by COFFINDODGER

Smashing little film on TV earlier that I cannot recall seeing previously. The Boys was a courtroom drama against a backdrop of Teddy Boys and adult prejudices against teenagers. Made in 1962 it featured as "the boys" Dudley Sutton (more recent incarnation being Bill Farrell in The Football Factory), Tony Garnett (who went on to become producer and co-writer of 'Kes', Ronald Lacey (who became a big Hollywood character actor) and Jess Conrad, who I had always wondered how and what he became forever marginally famous for. Now I know. The opposite barristers were played deliciously by Robert Morley and Richard Todd. Wilfred Brambell (Albert Steptoe), Roy Kinnear and Rita Webb (the fat lady off the Morecambe & Wise show) all put in cameos as witnesseses. Who could ask more of a British film? There was a panic around this time about British youth and Teddy Boys in particular and this film captures that moment in time stylishly. A few years before a boy had been murdered on Clapham Common in a fight between Teds and there had been a national outcry. The culprit that was fingered was sentenced to hang although there was always doubt who delivered the fatal blow. His case was taken up by many including Lord Longford, if I remember correctly, and he was reprieved at the moment. That boy would now be nearly 70 and I like to think he was sat down at home, sipping his tea and watching that film (which may have been inspired a bit by his case) in the safe knowledge that his neighbours and friends know nothing about his past.

More children's books of yesteryear

14-Aug-2007 by Frank Bryant

I can remember reading the Jennings' books as a young adult! I'm in my 70s now - a real life silver surfer. As a teenager I read adventure books like Coral Island by RM Ballantyne, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson and numerous titles by Geoffrey Trease. Trease wrote about the Lake District where we lived in those days. Its a shame how tastes shift but there's no getting away from it. Coral Island, for example, and Children of the New Forest were considered classics up there with Treasure Island but although RLS's work survives you rarely hear of the former two. On the other hand I dipped into a Billy Bunter book recently and could not believe I ever sat down and wolfed down such rubbish.,

Jennings

11-Aug-2007 by Eyesteel

I think the genius of the Jennings books comes from the fact that they're character-led, and those characters are very well drawn. The fact that they take place in a well-to-do school is just the springboard for various comic episodes - and the books are brilliantly funny. Buckeridge was a prep schoolmaster, so he was writing about what he knew. Interestingly, though, he was a confirmed socialist.

Big houses

09-Aug-2007 by Bunter

There is a template for this sort of book and it runs across the generations. Harry Potter is the same. Three basic desires are satisfied - a big rambling house or school to move around, endless adventures and freedom from parental control. Most kids want these things I reckon irrespective of their background

Jennings

08-Aug-2007 by Kismet

I was a big fan of the Jennings books when I was a lad, as were most of the boys of my generation. Anthony Buckeridge, a former schoolmaster, was the author and they centred around the adventures of Jennings and sidekick Darbyshire. They were a synthesis of Billy Bunter and Just Wiliam in a way. In the 1950s Buckeridge sold bucketloads and became very comfortably off courtesy of his schoolboy character. What amazes me now is that kids like us, working-class lads, who had no experience of the sort of schools (private and public) these books depicted. We identified strongly with all the protaganists yet we were never likely to recieve a hamper from pater or come across a mortar board. Strange.

Tosser’s

07-Aug-2007 by Chanelle

It’s in WC1, Alan. Thirty pound to get in but worth every penny. Cracking sounds played by DJ Desmond and his good pal Barry The Bandit. No draught lager but Japanese beer is a snip at a fiver a pop. Get off at Bond Street and follow your nose

Agent Zigzag

06-Aug-2007 by anonymous

A good read this one. About a bounder from the war years and before who got up to just about everything and has the qualities of a real-life Gorse. I have not reached the end yet but would not surprise me if he ends up being hung by Mr. Pierrepoint. Also just read another book about the criminal Jimmy Moody. How this chap stayed under the radar of the True Crime writers I'll never know. He was at the infamous shoot out at Mr Smiths with the Richardsons in 1966, escaped from prison with IRA man Tuite in the 1980s, shot one of the Brindle family in the 1990s and allegedly was a one-man hit man business for years. Inevitably he ends up 'hit' himself but an interesting, if deeply fearful, character.

I'm a tosser though

06-Aug-2007 by Alan Harvey

bearing that in mind where would you recommend?

London Callin

06-Aug-2007 by Doctor Lager, West London

London Callin is the best I know of - by a mile. Punk and Oi plus rockabilly, psychobilly, whatever the guvnor decides. Good songs in between bands, digging back into ‘glam’ and mod but plenty of contemporary stuff as well. I saw the East End Baddoes and Viva Las Vegas there a couple of weeks back. Barnet runs it, he’s on myspace if you want to see what’s coming up. Its in the West End, off Tottenham Court Road, at least once a month - drink is normal price and it’s a tosser free zone, open till 3.

Best night in London?

06-Aug-2007 by Trash City Rocker

Where’s the best place for music in London these days? Thinking punk and Oi, old and new, and no corporate run venues please

random

05-Aug-2007 by anonymous

this webby is kewl (Y) x

Strummer and Jones

03-Aug-2007 by anonymous

Mick Jones was a laugh - when he was young in the original clips (what a poser) and also when he was interviewed for the documentary, pissed or whatever. He admits his mistakes, which shows class. Was that Trelisck Tower where he lived with his gran, where they showed the band looking down on the Westway? Mick Jones is an old-time London character for sure. He has the style, look, language, origins. I’m surprised he’s never written a biography, specially how he’s done so much since The Clash broke up with BAD and producing the Libertines and this new outfit now.

Strummer Documentary

03-Aug-2007 by ipat

Funniest thing in the film was when Bono came on and everyone in the cinema told him to f off! A well made film!

London films

02-Aug-2007 by Charlie Potatoes

There is agreat old London film I like with Stanley baker and Laurence Harvey. harvey sweet talks baker, an ex boxer, and two other men down on their luck into comitting a robbery. Cant think of the title but its moody and atmospheric.

The Clash

02-Aug-2007 by Doctor Lager, West London

The best book I’ve read so far about the Clash has to be A Riot Of Our Own by Johnny Green who was their road manager as well as a mate. He gives a good insight into the band and those around them with none of the limits of a professional journalist. I’ve got the most recent book as well by Chris Salewicz, Redemption Song, that is about Strummer rather than the Clash. It’s supposed to be good but I haven’t read it yet. Salewicz was also a friend of Joe Strummer and there’s some criticism in there that hasn’t gone down well it seems. Still, it’s better to tell the whole story. Nobody’s perfect. The Clash certainly weren’t, they made plenty of mistakes, but it also shows them as human and they had the guts and imagination to takes chances. I doubt they give a toss about their critics. For me they are the greatest band this country has ever produced, punk or otherwise.

Ramones

01-Aug-2007 by anonymous

The documentary on the Ramones a while back was special as well

Strummer documentary

01-Aug-2007 by Clash City Rocker

I have seen this twice now and could easily see it again. Mick Jones and Topper Headon are in good form - especially Topper after all his drug problems - but it was the way Joe’s radio broadcasts and old interviews were cut in with old and new footage that made this documentary outstanding. The use of old film footage to show the past really works if well chosen. The music was brilliant of course. Well worth seeing it on the big screen while you can. It’s a limited release but viewing these things in a cinema is a million times better than on weedy DVD

London films on TV

01-Aug-2007 by Eyesteel

There's been a good spate of seldom-shown vintage London-based films on TV lately - part of the BBC's summer of British cinema, or whatever it's called. Last week we had John Baxter's The Common Touch and the 1940s Soho spiv drama Noose (BTW were there any of these films that didn't feature Edward Rigby in the cast?). Keep your eyes peeled for more. Oh, and Hell Drivers is on this week, too. Maybe we'll even get a showing of They Drive By Night....

The Future Is Unwritten

01-Aug-2007 by anonymous

Yes, an excellent documentary

Pierrepoint

31-Jul-2007 by Harry Fabian Junior

Just saw the film about the hangman Albert Pierrepoint starring Timothy Spall. Good film, don't recall it coming out, and picked it up on my cable TV library. Spall was convincing but I wondered how much of it was true. In the film he becomes disillusioned after having to hang his friend and Ruth Ellis. I beleive the Ellis theme may be true but hanging his friend? Anyone know?

Spam

31-Jul-2007 by Webmaster

Spam should be sorted now. When you post all that is needed is a unique number to be keyed in and this should clear it all up. Thanks

Skinheads

30-Jul-2007 by killing joke

When is John Kings new book due out? btw, on the This is England post critism about teh film makers not knowing their material, i think the person doesnt recognise that it was set in Hull. Each area had its own sc