Blog Archives

Michael Foot and Lower Marsh

30/3/2011

I've worked just north of Waterloo Bridge for many years, and I like to think that I know the area around quite well - The Temple, Lincoln's Inn, Covent Garden, St Giles, Holborn and beyond. But my jaunts south of the river rarely take me further away than the riverside walk and the South Bank Centre.

Today for the first time I explored Lower Marsh, just south of Waterloo station. A lively part of north Lambeth - with a great crepe stall. My destination was Jane Gibberd's second hand bookshop which, a friend told me, had bought up part of Michael Foot's library.

Indeed it has - the proprietor said they had bought a few job lots at auction. Nothing all that special, though Foot himself was special so that makes anything from his library prized. And as I browsed, I found a dozen or more volumes, all very reasonably priced, which bore Michael Foot's ownership signature, and a handful which had presented to him.

I bought just a couple of titles inscribed by Foot - the one featured is from Robert Blatchford's What's All This? (1940), an anthology of Blatchford's socialist journalism and essays from earlier decades. Foot's inscription, in pencil, reads (I think): 'Michael Foot / Concluded March 1955'. Below are scribbled notes with pages references, and the pages themselves are marked and underscored.

Foot was himself a great essayist - rather more considerable than the author of Merrie England. But he obviously enjoyed Blatchford's robust, populist style. Well worth my outlay - £5.

Tom Foot, Michael's great nephew, adds: The vast majority of Michael's library was given to various archives and libraries across the country. Some were left to the appropriate friends and family in his will. After he died last year, we inevitably had to sell some of the rather random remainder at auction. As you say, nothing spectacular but interesting because of the scribbled markings and date of reading. He also used them as a kind of filing system and some have interesting cuttings and notes etc. Having sifted through all of his books, there were tens of thousands, I was amazed how many he actually read. Most people buy books and they sit collecting dust on their shelves for a lifetime. He also had an encyclopedic knowledge of where in the house they were. "Men of power have no time to read; yet the men who do not read are unfit for power." he is often quoted as saying. I'm very glad to hear they've turned up in a second hand book shop and that they are also reasonably priced.

Nice blog - thanks. I'd love to hear more from people who pick up one here and there.

1 Comment

648 and out

27/3/2011

0 Comments

No, it's not England's score in the last one dayer. It's not even the Sri Lankan total. It's the medium wave frequency on which the World Service was broadcast - until this weekend.

You can still get the World Service in the UK on DAB digital audio and via the internet - if you go to the world page on the BBC News website, there's a listen live button for the World Service on the right towards the top. But 648, which has served the south-east of England, and parts of the continent, so well for decades is dead - a victim of public spending cuts.

I have a very nifty old portable radio in my bathroom wonderfully aligned so that if I press the FM button I get Radio 4, and press the MW button, it's the World Service - with no further fiddling required. Today the MW button produced just static mush. I tried in the car where 648 is pre set - the steady hum of nothing in particular.

So I've bought myself another digital radio - they're not exactly cheap: one in the kitchen, a portsable for my jacket pocket, and I guess I'll have to get one of those plug-ins that should work in the car. So sorry to see you go, 648.

0 Comments

Can history and fiction collaborate?

13/3/2011

1 Comment

A question prompted by Mirza Waheed's stunningly powerful debut novel, The Collaborator - set in the Kashmir valley in the early 1990s, during the worst violence of the separatist insurgency.

My answer is, broadly, yes - and it's a theme I have pursued in a little more detail for a blog on the History Workshop Online site.

Novels are worthy of attention and an audience in their own right, but they also illuminate a historical as well as a creative truth.

1 Comment

Susie

6/3/2011

4 Comments

I hadn't seen Susie for 35 years. We were friends for a few months in the spring and summer of 1975. She was an art student at Oxford - American, exuberant, enjoying life. I was a shy, long haired first year undergraduate.

This photo of Susie - from just the time I got to know her - was taken by Leslie, her inseparable friend that Oxford summer. 'It's totally art directed. We noted the lovely afternoon sun coming in and quickly posed Susie with her sketchbook and draped my scarf over her shoulders.'

The setting was Leslie's bedsit on Walton Street. 'Suz and I both loved this picture', Leslie recalls, 'because it captured our feelings about the sweetness of meeting and getting to be a couple of wayward American art students in Oxford. It looked nostalgic even when it was newly developed.'

I got in touch with Susie again through Leslie, and a chance internet search. We exchanged a few e-mails - never met, never spoke. But the connection was there. There are moments when you are young - friendships, adventures - that stay with you. Susie stayed with me.

Leslie sent this photo of Susie a few days ago - taken in 1978. It captures her well, tho' it's a slightly more reflective Susie than the lively woman I remember.

You may have sensed by now why I am writing. Susie died last week at her Maryland home, with her partner, Chas, and her oldest friend at her side.

I mourn her passing and remember her with huge warmth and affection.

LATER: a website has been set up - the link's here - with a selection of Susie's art, and videos and remembrances.

And I am adding a photo of Susie from her year in Oxford which really does capture her - taken just outside the 'Lamb and Flag'.

4 Comments

Tufnell Park - now trending on Twitter

5/3/2011

11 Comments

This site achieved a milestone yesterday - more than 500 page hits on a day. And all thanks to Twitter!

Yesterday morning, someone I have never met, Alex Smith - though I am now following him on Twitter and he's in pursuit of me too - tweeted about a blog entry I wrote five months ago. It was a lament about the abrupt closure of the newspaper stall at Tufnell Park tube station - more than that, it was illustrated by a very fine painting of that stall by Fermin Rocker. I am posting that again below.

Anyway, Alex (part of the Ed Miliband posse, which has adopted Tufnell Park - see here) has a large social media footprint, he was quickly retweeted, and by the end of the day the blog post had, almost, gone viral.

Alex wants to know when Fermin painted this city scape, and whether any prints are available. And I'll be putting that about on Twitter too!

STOP PRESS: Fermin's son Philip believes this painting was much later than one might imagine, and was sold at the Stephen Bartley gallery in Kensington in the 1980s or '90s. 'As everyone says - it looks more like the 1950's - but then my dad's work froze at about 1960 and if anything went slightly backwards in his last years.'

And the amount of interest sent traffic to thie site soaring on Saturday to not far off 1,000 page impressions in a day! But then it is a terrific piece of art.

Fermin Rocker - 'Newspaper Kiosk, Tufnell Park'

11 Comments

Andrew Whitehead's
Blog

Michael Foot and Lower Marsh

648 and out

Can history and fiction collaborate?

Susie

Tufnell Park - now trending on Twitter

Andrew Whitehead's blog

Archives

Categories

​Andrew Whitehead'sBlog

Michael Foot and Lower Marsh

648 and out

Can history and fiction collaborate?

Susie

Tufnell Park - now trending on Twitter

Andrew Whitehead's blog

Archives

Categories

Andrew Whitehead's
Blog