Reweirding London: Authors on the Secret City at the Amersham Arms

'Reweirding' put on interesting talks and events at Conway Hall and elsewhere. Next month they are coming to the Amersham Arms in New Cross for 'Reweirding London: Authors on the Secret City', an event that will feature talks from the authors of three recent books on underground London - physically and metaphorically. 

Speakers include:

Caitlin Davies –  'Queens of the Underworld: A Journey into the Lives of Female Crooks'

Lara Maiklem – 'Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames'

Tom Chivers – 'London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City'

All this plus short films on London from Video Strolls.

24 March 2022 7pm – 10 pm

Venue: The Amersham Arms, 388 New Cross Road, London SE14 6TY

£7 / £5 concessions, advance tickets advised available here.  

Books available from The Word Bookshop, 314 New Cross Road SE14 6AF

David Lodge on bullet holes in Brockley

The novelist David Lodge (born 1935) grew up in Brockley, living at 81 Millmark Grove from 1936 to 1959. He went to St Mary Magdelen Roman Catholic primary school in Brockley, and walking home from school during the Second World War he had a narrow escape:

'One afternoon we were a few hundred yards from the railway bridge that traversed Brockley Road just before Brockley Cross when a German aeroplane flew over our heads firing its machine guns, perhaps at a train on the line, though its main target was said later to be an anti-aircraft battery on Telegraph Hill... Some of the bullets hit the white-tiled walls under the bridge and left pockmarks which were still discernible the last time I looked, about fifty years later'.

I checked myself last week, and yes the bullet holes are still there more than 70 years after the end of the war.

Brickley Central

David Lodge's 2008 novel 'Deaf Sentence' is the tale of a recently retired academic at a north of England university coping with going deaf and his elderly father's dementia. Said father still lives in the house where the narrator grew up, situated in an area named 'Brickley', a 'drab segment of  south-east London' with 'its streets of squat identical terraced cottages on the flat bits, and larger terraced houses and tall detached and semi-detached villas on the hilly bits'.

The father lives in 'Lime Avenue', a setting clearly based on Lodge's childhood home in Millmark Grove:  'squeezed in on rising ground between a main road and the railway, and it leads nowhere except to the main road at each end. The houses on the railway side have back gardens which abut on to an unusually high and wide embankment' whereas on the other side of the street the gardens are 'raised up artificially on landfill contained by a high concrete wall' backing on to the main road.

'Brickley' also features in his novel The Picturegoers set in a local cinema, while his time at the St Mary Magadelen parish youth club - St Ignatius Social Club - inspired an episode in his novel Therapy.

Lodge's portrait of Brockley/Brickley is less than flattering, but as he notes in his recent autobiograpy:  'When I was growing up there after the Second World War Brockley was a declining, unfashionable suburb, though I did not perceive it as such. After I ceased to live there in 1959, as Goldsmiths College in New Cross grew in size and status it began to attract more sophisticated residents - teachers, artists, actors - and lately it has become almost trendy'.

(Source for all above, except Deaf Sentence quotes, 'Quite A Good Time to be Born: A Memoir: 1935-1975' by David Lodge, Random House, 2015).

Ishiguro in Sydenham

There was an article in the Guardian last week about the author Kazuo Ishiguro in which he recalled writing his 1989 novel The Remains of the Day (later filmed starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson) while living in Sydenham.

 

 

 

Kazuo Ishiguro: how I wrote The Remains of the Day

 

'I was then 32 years old, and we’d recently moved into a house in Sydenham, south London, where for the first time in my life I had a dedicated study. (I’d written my first two novels at the dining table.) It was actually a kind of large cupboard on the half-landing and lacked a door, but I was thrilled to have a space where I could spread my papers around as I wished and not have to clear them away at the end of each day. I stuck up charts and notes all over the peeling walls and got down to writing...

On my first Sunday off I ventured outdoors, on to Sydenham high street, and persistently giggled – so Lorna told me – at the fact that the street was built on a slope, so that people coming down it were stumbling over themselves, while those going up were panting and staggering effortfully. Lorna was concerned I had another three weeks of this to go, but I explained I was very well, and that the first week had been a success...

I'd consumed a substantial amount of “research”: books by and about British servants, about politics and foreign policy between the wars, many pamphlets and essays from the time, including one by Harold Laski on “The Dangers of Being a Gentleman”. I’d raided the second-hand shelves of the local bookshop (Kirkdale Books, still a thriving independent) for guides to the English countryside from the 1930s and 50s'

 

 

 

'When Ishiguro  first became a public figure he suffered greatly from  stereotyping by critics and reviewers, who.... nicknamed him the "Shogun of Sydenham" (Kazuo Ishiguro by Barry Lewis, Manchester University Press, 2000)

Ian McEwan - 'the boundless shabby tangle of London south of the river'

I enjoyed Ian McEwan's latest novel, The Children Act (2014), continuing his close observations of the life of the higher reaches of the urban middle class. While Saturday (2005) was centred around a neuro-surgeon living in Fitzrovia, this book's central character is a judge living not too far away in Gray's Inn.

If McEwan is a London novelist though, he is certainly a north London one (I believe he lives near to the Post Office Tower). And The Children Act features a terrible diss of South London - whether the character's view reflects the author's perspective, you can judge for yourself:

'She had a north Londoner's ignorance of and disdain for the boundless shabby tangle of London south of the river. Not a Tube stop to give meaning and relation to a wilderness of villages swallowed up long ago, to sad shops, to dodgy garages interspersed with dusty Edwardian houses and brutalist apartment towers, the dedicated lairs of drug gangs. The pavement crowds, adrift in alien concerns, belonged to some other, remote city, not her own. How would she know they were passing through Clapham Junction without the faded jokey sign above a boarded-up electrical store? Why make a life here?'

In defence of Clapham Junction

Obviously this description could just as easily - and probably just as unfairly - be applied to many parts of north London. As for Clapham Junction, I found myself at the station there for the first time in years last week, and thought it was a vibrant convergence point of all the currents of London life on a late Saturday afternoon. There were football fans, wedding parties, shoppers returning from the West End, people heading home from doing sports (I'd been running  cross country). I was up the junction, and it was great.

South London marches on Westminster - John Henry Mackay on the World Metropolis in 1880s

John Henry Mackay (1864-1933) was a Scottish-born, German-raised individualist anarchist. His novel, 'The Anarchists: A Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth Century' was written in German and published in English translation by Benjamin Tucker in Boston in 1891.

The novel draws on the author's time in London in 1887, and includes some great descriptions of the city. It opens with the author crossing from Waterloo on what must have been the Hungerford bridge:

'In the Heart of the World-Metropolis:  A wet, cold October evening was beginning to lower upon London. It was the October of the same year in which, not five months before, had been inaugurated those ridiculous celebrations which gave the year 1887 the name of the “Jubilee Year,” — celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the rule of a woman who allows herself to be called “Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India.” On this evening — the last of the week — a man coming from the direction of Waterloo Station was wending his way to the railroad bridge of Charing Cross through labyrinthine, narrow, and almost deserted streets. When, as if fatigued from an extended walk, he had slowly ascended the wooden steps that lead to the narrow walk for pedestrians running beside the tracks on the bridge, and had gone about as far as the middle of the river, he stepped into one of the round recesses fronting the water and remained standing there for a short time, while he allowed the crowd behind him to push on. Rather from habit than genuine fatigue, he stopped and looked down the Thames. As he had but seldom been on “the other side of the Thames,” notwithstanding his already three years’ sojourn in London, he never failed, on crossing one of the bridges, to enjoy afresh the magnificent view that London affords from them.

It was still just light enough for him to recognize, as far as Waterloo Bridge to his right, the dark masses of warehouses, and on the mirror of the Thames at his feet, the rows of broad-bellied freight boats and rafts coupled together, though already the lights of the evening were everywhere blazing into the dark, yawning chaos of this immense city. The two rows of lanterns on Waterloo Bridge stretched away like parallel lines, and each of the lanterns cast its sharp, glittering light, deep and long, into the dark, trembling tide, while to the left, in a terrace-shaped ascent, the countless little flames which illumine the Embankments, and the Strand with its surroundings, every evening, were beginning to flash'

John Henry Mackay

The novel includes an account of the 'Bloody Sunday' demonstration in Trafalgar Square in November 1887. The demonstration against 'coercion in Ireland' and unemployment ended in violent clashes which resulted in the death of Deptford's William Curner (buried in Brockley Cemetery). Mackay reports the arrival of the South London contingent across Westminster Bridge:

'Before him stood an English acquaintance. His collar was torn, his hat soiled. He was in a state of the greatest excitement. After a few hasty questions back and forth, he said that the long procession from the south had also been dispersed...

“We gathered at Rotherhithe: the radical and other societies and clubs of Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, etc., met on our way the Peckham Radical Club, the associations of Camberwell and Walworth, and in Westminster Bridge Road also those of St. Georges — it was an enormous procession, with numerous banners, music bands, adorned with green, accompanied by an endless mass of people on both sides, which in the best of order crossed the entirely vacant bridge of Westminster.

“As was agreed, we were to meet with the procession from Lambeth and Battersea in Bridge Street at Parliament House. Then we were to march in a straight line from south to north, up Whitehall, to this place. Just imagine: a single great procession of imposing length, representing the entire south of London, the entire section of the city on the other side of the Thames — from Woolwich and Greenwich to Battersea and Wandworth! ...

“But our two processions had not joined each other, we had not reached Parliament Street, when the battle began. I was pretty far in the front ranks. Ah, the brutes, galloping on their horses into our ranks, breaking and tearing our flags, knocking down whatever comes in their way!”

“It was fortunate you did not get farther,” Auban interrupted him, “for I have heard that the Life Guards were held in reserve in Whitehall. I am surprised that they are not yet here, for the situation is getting more serious.”

“But we defended ourselves,” exclaimed the other, “with my loaded cane I gave one —”'

Bloody Sunday 1887

As with much writing from that time there is a very strong sense of a class-based division between East and West London, with areas like Deptford and Rotherhithe treated as part of the former. Mackay writes in a chapter entitled 'The Empire of Hunger':

'The East End of London is the hell of poverty. Like an enormous, black, motionless, giant kraken, the poverty of London lies there in lurking silence and encircles with its mighty tentacles the life and the wealth of the city and of the West End: those on the left side extending over the Thames and embracing the entire Embankment on the other side — Rotherhithe, Deptford, Peckham, Camberwell, Lambeth, the other London, the South separated by the Thames; those on the right side stealing round the northern limits of the city in thinner threads. They join each other where Battersea runs into Chelsea and Brompton across the Thames...

The East End is a world in itself, separated from the West as the servant is separated from his master. Now and then one hears about it, but only as of something far off, somewhat as one hears about a foreign land inhabited by other people with other manners and customs...'

The final chapter sees its main character reflecting again on London, this time from London Bridge:

'Two immense human streams surged across London Bridge; back and forth rolled, rattling and resounding, two unbroken lines of vehicles. The black waters of the Thames flowed lazily. Auban stood against the railing of the bridge, and, facing the east, contemplated the grand picture which presented itself: Everywhere, on both sides of the stream, towers, pillars, chimney-stacks, church steeples rose above the sea of houses... But beneath him a forest of masts, poles, sails... On the left Billingsgate, the great, famous fish-market of London... Farther, where the four towers rise, the dark, dismal structure of the Tower. With a reddish glare the setting sun, the pale, weary sun of London, lay on its windows a few minutes; then also its light was suddenly extinguished, and a gray twilight drew its streaks around the dark masses of the warehouses, the giant bodies of the ships, the pillars of the bridge...

By the clock on the  Adelaide Buildings it was already seven, but still the task of unloading the great ocean steamer at Auban’s feet was not yet completed. Long lines of strong men carried boxes and bales over wavering wooden bridges to the shore. Their foreheads, heads, and necks protected against the crushing pressure of their heavy burdens by strangely shaped cushions, they looked like oxen in the yoke as they staggered along under their weight...

A strange feeling crept over Auban. Such was London, immense London, which covers seven hundred miles with its five millions of human beings; such was London, where a man was born every fifth minute, where one died every eighth... Such was London, which grew and grew, and already immeasurable, seemed to aspire to the infinite...Immense city! Sphinx-like, it stretched on both sides of the river, and the clouds of smoke, vapor, noise it belched forth, lay like veils over its panting body...

Lights after lights began to flash and mingled the warmth of their glow with the dampness of the fog. Their reddish reflections trembled through the twilight. London Bridge thundered and resounded under the burdens it bore. Thus day after day, week after week, year after year, raged that mighty life which never grew tired. The beatings of its heart grew ever more feverish, the deeds of its arms ever mightier, the plans of its brain ever bolder. When would it reach the summit of its aspirations? When would it rest?'

Virginia Woolf - A Dog's view of London (& Robert Browning of New Cross)

One of Virginia Woolf's lesser known works is Flush (1933), a biography of Eizabeth Barrett's spaniel. It's partly a whimsical parody of Victorian biography, but it does include a dog's eye (or rather dog's nose) perspective of London:

'For the first time he heard his nails click upon the hard paving stones of London. For the first time the whole battery of a London street on a hot summers day assaulted his senses. He smelt the swooning smells that lie in the gutters; the bitter smells that corrode iron railings; the fuming, heady smells that rise from basements - smells more complex, corrupt, violently contrasted and compounded than any he had smelt in the fields near Reading; smells that lay far behind the range of the human nose'.

The dog is stolen and a ransom demanded, leading to a disagreement between Barrett and Robert Browning about how to respond: 'What would Mr Browning had done if the banditti had stolen her: had her in their power; threatened to cut off her ears  and send them by post to New Cross?'

The reference to New Cross comes from the fact that the poet Robert Browning was living in New Cross at the time he and Elizabeth Barrett exchanged romantic letters prior to their marriage and elopement to Italy in 1846. A plaque on Haberdashers' Aske's school at the bottom of Jerningham Road is near to the site of  Browning's 'Telegraph Cottage'.

photo from London Remembers

See previously: Virginia Woolf and the Elephant and Castle

Music Monday: Coil - Lost Rivers of London

An oldie from 1996, one of the great evocative London pyschogeographical tracks from Coil (RIP Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance). With the exception of the opening and closing 'drown myself' lines, the words come from  Hubert Montague Crackanthorpe's Vignettes (1896), actually from several pieces in that short book.

'I'm gonna drown myself in London's lost rivers
I will walk down to the rain

I have sat there and seen the winter days finish their short-spanned lives; and all the globes of light — crimson, emerald, and pallid yellow — start, one by one, out of the russet fog that creeps up the river. But I like the place best on these hot summer nights, when the sky hangs thick with stifled colour, and the stars shine small and shyly. Then the pulse of the city is hushed, and the scales of the water flicker golden and oily under the watching regiment of lamps.

The bridge clasps its gaunt arms tight from bank to bank, and the shuffle of a retreating figure sounds loud and alone in the quiet. There, if you wait long enough, you will hear the long wail of the siren, that seems to tell of the anguish of London till a train hurries to throttle its dying note, roaring and rushing, thundering and blazing through the night, tossing its white crests of smoke, charging across the bridge into the dark country beyond.

In the wan, lingering light of the winter afternoon, the parks stood all deserted, sluggishly drowsing, so it seemed, with their spacious distances muffled in greyness: colourless, fabulous, blurred. One by one, through the damp misty air, looked the tall, stark, lifeless elms. Overhead there lowered a turbid sky, heavy-charged with an unclean yellow, and amid their ugly patches of dank and rotting bracken, a little mare picked her way noiselessly. The rumour of life seemed hushed. There was only the vague listless rhythm of the creaking saddle.

The daylight faded. A shroud of ghostly mist enveloped the earth, and up from the vaporous distance crept slowly the evening darkness. A sullen glow throbs overhead: golden will-o'-the-wisps are threading their shadowy ribbons above golden trees, and the dull, distant rumour of feverish London waits on the still night air. The lights of Hyde Park Corner blaze like some monster, gilded constellation, shaming the dingy stars. And across the east, there flares a sky-sign, a gaudy crimson arabesque. And all the air hangs draped in the mysterious sumptuous splendour of a murky London night.

I'm gonna drown myself in the lost rivers of London
I am gonna drown myself in the lost rivers of London'

Crackanthorpe (1870–1896) was born in London and drowned in the Seine in Paris. His 'Vignettes : a miniature journal of whim and sentiment' (1896) also feature a Christmas Day 'Reverie' which express a rather snooty sentiments about the residents of what is now SE5:

''I dreamed of an age grown strangely picturesque -  of the rich enfeebled by monotonous ease; of the shivering poor clamouring nightly for justice; of a helpless democracy, vast revolt of the ill- informed; of priests striving to be rational; of sentimental moralists protecting iniquity; of sybaritic saints; of complacent and pompous politicians; of doctors hurrying the degeneration of the race; of artists discarding possibilities for limitations; of pressmen befooling a pretentious public; of critics refining upon the 'busman's methods; of inhabitants of Camberwell chattering of culture. And I dreamed of this great, dreamy London of ours; of her myriad fleeting moods; of the charm of her portentous provinciality; and I awoke all a-glad and hungering for life'.

See previously: Coil in Clink Street SE1

Shadows from Norwood

Author David Hambling has transplanted HP Lovecraft's horror mythos from New England to SE19 in his collection  'Shadows from Norwood'. The seven stories features local landmarks including the Crystal Palace ('The Monsters in the Park') and the underground River Effra ('Two Fingers'). Inevitably there's a story called the Dulwich Horror of 1927 ('The Dunwich Horror' is one of Lovecraft's most famous stories)

You can download the e-book for free this weekend (normal price £2.49) from Amazon. A paperback version will be out soon. Shadows from Norwood also has a Facebook page with has a Google map of the locations mentioned in the stories and a few bonus extra features.

London: City of Resurrections and other Machen wisdom

You can never have too many London quotes by Arthur Machen (1863-1947), he had a great appreciation for the mysteries to be found in wandering the streets of the city. Here's a few favourites:

'Villiers had emerged from his restaurant after an excellent dinner of many courses, assisted by an ingratiating little flask of Chianti, and, in that frame of mind which was with him almost chronic, had delayed a moment by the door, peering round in the dimly-lighted street in search of those mysterious incidents and persons with which the streets of London teem in every quarter and every hour.  Villiers prided himself as a practised explorer of such obscure mazes and byways of London life, and in this unprofitable pursuit he displayed an assiduity which was worthy of more serious employment.  Thus he stood by the lamp-post surveying the passers-by with undisguised curiosity, and with that gravity known only to the systematic diner, had just enunciated in his mind the formula:  “London has been called the city of encounters; it is more than that, it is the city of Resurrections" (The Great God Pan, 1894).

'I searched for Mrs. Beaumont in the dark waters of the life of London... assuming, as I had to assume, that her record was not of the cleanest, it would be pretty certain that at some previous time she must have moved in circles not quite so refined as her present ones. If you see mud at the top of a stream, you may be sure that it was once at the bottom. I went to the bottom. I have always been fond of diving into Queer Street for my amusement, and I found my knowledge of that locality and its inhabitants very useful' (The Great God Pan, 1894).

'London in September is hard to leave. Doré could not have designed anything more wonderful and mystic than Oxford Street as I saw it the other evening; the sunset flaming, the blue haze transmuting the plain street into a road 'far in the spiritual city'' (The Shining Pyramid, 1895)

'And it is utterly true that he who cannot find wonder, mystery, awe, the sense of a new world and an undiscovered realm in the places by the Gray's Inn Road will never find those secrets elsewhere, not in the heart of Africa, not in the fabled cities of Tibet. 'The matter of our work is everywhere present', wrote the old alchemists, and that is the truth. All the wonders lie within a stone's throw of King's Cross Station" (Things Near and Far, 1923)

OK I would have preferred 'All the wonders lie within a stone's throw of New Cross station' but the same principle applies!

See also: Arthur Machen: South London 'Behind the Scenes of the Universe'

Iain Banks and the Battle of Lewisham

Sad to hear that the Scottish writer Iain Banks is very seriously ill with gall bladder cancer. Banks has written some great books including The Wasp Factory, The Crow Road, the Culture series of science fiction novels (published under the name Iain M. Banks) and a fine appreciation of whisky 'Raw Spirit: in search of the perfect dram'.

When we were doing the Lewisham '77 event in 2007 I corresponded with Banks' friend the Scottish science fiction writer Ken MacLeod who mentions the 'Battle of Lewisham' in his novel The Cassini Division.  Ken confirmed that he and Banks had taken part in that famous anti-National Front demonstration in New Cross in August 1977. Ken recalled:

'I went to Lewisham in the back of a big van rented for the day by the local branch of the left group I was in at the time. That group had decided to send one lot of members to Clifton Rise and the other to the march, with the intention of encouraging as many marchers as possible to go to Clifton Rise after the march officially ended - which they did. Our little squad went to Clifton Rise. Not all of us were in the left group but we all knew each other very well and had a good natural leader, an experienced bloke called Joe.

When we got there I was surprised by the size of the crowd. There was a fair while of standing around, and then the fascist march came up the road, the sticks and stones started flying, and the police rode horses into the crowd. I remember quite vividly the fury and fear and the sense that it was a case of fight or be trampled. After that I remember a sort of running battle, pushing up against lines of police, and seeing the fascists cowering under the pelting. After we had them on the run I urged people around me not to go chasing after them and getting into fights with the police. A belated salute to Joe, who managed to keep us together all through the riot and got us safely home. ... I remember Iain Banks turning up at the place where I lived with a bunch of other lefties in Hayes, Middx. He'd come down specifically for the demo and went there with us in a big van'.

Police escorting National Front march through New Cross, August 1977

Darcus Howe (with megaphone) speaking during the demonstration (photo by Syd Shelton)

Ken also got in touch with Iain Banks and passed on this short message from him:

'I was there, though all I can recall is the general feeling of prevailing unexpectedly, the sight of the fascists squeezed into a corridor going round a street corridor with half bricks and bits of car exhausts raining down on them and the cops protecting them and the motorbike on fire'.

Anyway Iain thanks for doing your bit that day, and all that you have done since. I will raise a glass of Lagavulin to you tonight.

(Update Sunday 9 June 2013: Iain Banks died today)

Kate Tempest wins Ted Hughes prize

Well done Kate Tempest for winning the Ted Hughes award for innovation in poetry last night. The prize was awarded to her by Carol Ann Duffy in a ceremony at the Saville Club.

The award was in recognition of her work Brand New Ancients, which relocates old gods to modern London. Brand New Ancients was co-commissioned and presented last September at the Albany in Deptford and Battersea Arts Centre.

Kate, who started out performing locally as Excentral Tempest, grew up in Brockley and has a long association with the Albany. Her latest work, the play Glasshouse, was performed at the Albany by Cardboard Citizens theatre company earlier this month.

Charles P. O'Conor: An Irish Poet in Deptford

A little St Patrick's Day post:

Charles P. O'Conor's collection of poems, Songs of a Life, was printed at the Kentish Mercury office in Blackheath Road in 1875 and reviewed by Matthew Arnold in the Pall Mall Gazette in June 1875.

In Arnold's essay, A Deptford Poet, O'Conor is described as 'an Irish workingman settled at Deptford' whose poetry 'has gaiety, tune, pathos; it invigorates...We are told that Mr O'Conor's songs are sung by Irish workmen, and we are not surprised at it. He is best when his themes are Irish, drawn from his native country and his intimate experience... here is a poor Irishman with a soul for refinement and delight, whose lot is to work with his hands down at Deptford, with frail health, work uncertain, and a wife and children to maintain; yet he managees to feel and to illustrate the truth of Schiller's excellent saying that "all art is dedicated to joy".

According to Catherine Reilly's 'Mid-Victorian Poetry, 1860-1879' (1999): Charles Patrick O'Conor was born  in County Cork in 1837 to 'poor parents'. He 'went to England in his youth, writing verse for newspapers and songs for music. Appointed to a government clerkship in Canada, but soon retired owing to ill health. Known as 'The Irish Peasant Poet'. He lived in Lewisham for many years and was often thought of as a Kentish poet. Received a civil list pension of £50 a year'. As well as 'Songs of a life: Wayside chants; Fatherland' publsihed in 1875 (96 pages), he had a collection called 'Wreaths of fancy' published by George Vickers, London, 1870 (92 pages)

So clearly there's a large body of work, only a little of which seems to be available online at present. I did though come across one of his songs that was included in a 1932 anthology LYRA CELTICA

Maura Du of Ballyshannon by Charles P. O'Conor

Maura du of Ballyshannon!
Maura du, my flower of flowers!
Can you hear me there out seaward,
Calling back the bygone hours?
Maura du, my own, my honey!
With wild passion still aglow,
I am singing you the old songs
That I sung you long ago.
And you mind, love, how it ran on--
"In your eyes asthore machree!
All my Heaven there I see,
And that's true!
Maura du!
Maura du of Ballyshannon!"

Maura du of Ballyshannon!
Maura du, my soul's one queen!
Big with love my heart is flying,
Where the grass is growing green.
Maura du, my own, my honey!
That I love you, well you know,
And still sing for you the old song,
That I sung you long ago.
And you mind, love, how it ran on--
"In your eyes asthore machree!
All my Heaven there I see,
And that's true!
Maura du!
Maura du of Ballyshannon!"

Maura du of Ballyshannon,
Maura du, the day is drear!
Ah, the night is long and weary,
Far away from you, my dear!
Maura du, my own, my honey!
Still let winds blow high or low,
I must sing to you the old song,
That I sung you long ago,
And you mind, love, how it ran on--
"In your eyes asthore machree!
All my Heaven there I see,
And that's true!
Maura du!
Maura du of Ballyshannonl

Maura du of Ballyshannon!
Maura du, when winds blow south,
I will with the birds fly homeward,
There to kiss your Irish mouth.
Maura du, my own, my honey!
When time is no longer foe,
By your side I'll sing the old song,
That I sung you long ago,
And you mind, love, how it ran on--
"In your eyes asthore machree!
All my Heaven there I see,
And that's true!
Maura du!
Maura du of Ballyshannon!"

(*asthore machree, "The darling of my heart.")

Lots more Transpontine South London Irish history and culture posts here

James Elroy Flecker, Lewisham-born Poet

On this day (January 3rd) in 1915, the poet James Elroy Flecker died at Davos in Switzerland from tuberculois. He was only thirty years old.

A plaque in Lewisham at 9 Gilmore Road SE13 commemorates his birthplace in 1884 (the plaque was placed there by the Greater London Council in 1986). According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: 'He was the elder son of the Revd William Herman Flecker DD (b. 1859), sometime headmaster of Dean Close School, Cheltenham, and his wife, Sarah Ducat. Both of his parents were of Jewish descent'. He doesn't seem to have stayed in Lewisham for long, as at the age of two his family moved to Cheltenham when his father became head of Dean Close School.

photo from London Remembers entry on this plaque

One of his poems, Ballad of the Londoner, deals with that age old London romantic problem - a lover on the other side of the river (from his collection Forty-Two Poems):

BALLAD OF THE LONDONER

Evening falls on the smoky walls,
And the railings drip with rain,
And I will cross the old river
To see my girl again.

The great and solemn-gliding tram,
Love's still-mysterious car,
Has many a light of gold and white,
And a single dark red star.

I know a garden in a street
Which no one ever knew;
I know a rose beyond the Thames,
Where flowers are pale and few.

Much of his other work could be described as orientalist - an extract from his verse drama 'Hassan : the story of Hassan of Bagdad, and how he came to make the golden journey to Samarkand' features on the regimental clock at the headquarters of the SAS:

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further; it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow
Across that angry or that glimmering sea

Also sometimes remembered is his poem 'To a Poet A Thousand Years Hence':

I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along....

Trading Tatiana

'Trading Tatiana' by Debi Alper (2005) is very much a South London novel. The main character is Jo, an ex-heroin user living in 'Boddington Heights', a tower block on the Old Kent Road. She gets involved with helping Tatiana, a Ukrainian sex worker running in fear for her life.

If that sounds a bit grim, the book is actually quite lightly written with comic touches and a plot that keeps the pages turning. Among other SE London elements the novel includes:

- a circus on Peckham Rye;
- a friendly housing co-op in the Kirkwood Road/Gordon Road area of Nunhead/Peckham (not named but described as 'running from a low-rise estate at one end down to Nunhead Green at the other');
- a stall on Greenwich market;
- an agorophobic candle maker in New Cross;
- a dramatic encounter in the National Maritime Museum.

Alper has written a number of books and seems to have led an interesting life, including a spell in the actual Shangri La Housing Co-op in Peckham in the early 1990s (the Co-op in the novel is called Nirvana instead). An earlier novel, Nirvana Bites (which I haven't yet read), is also set around the fictional Peckham co-op.

Swandown

Swandown at Dilston Grove (Cafe Gallery) in Southwark Park is an installation to accompany the film 'Swandown' about Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair's journey, in a swan-shaped pedalo, from Hastings to Hackney - a journey described by Sinclair as a kind of mute 'counter grand project' to the Olympics and similar initiatives. It is on until July 29th.

I went along a couple of weeks ago (1st July) to a talk featuring Sinclair and the writer Marina Warner in conversation about the complex mythology of the swan - as both graceful and violent, pure and terrifying, creature of the water and the sky. The many swan names in the river city of London were referred to (and indeed, though not mentioned, there is a Swan Road in SE16 and Swan Street SE1, as well as numerous Swan pubs).

Marina Warner and Iain Sinclair talking in the swan

Dilston Grove - built in 1911 as the Clare College Mission Church, this early concrete building
is now Grade II listed. The church itself closed in 1966. Clare College Mission was a philanthropic
settlement linked to the Cambridge University college.

Among the documents in the exhibition is this 1987 flyer for an appearance by
Sinclair and Brian Catling at Rasp - seemingly a poetry night held at 67 Balfour Street, SE17

Actual swans in Southwark Park

Panel Borders in Brockley

Panel Borders is the comics show on Resonance FM, presented by Alex Fitch. In the recent Brockley Max festival he brought together people involved in comics and living in the Brockley area for a conversation at The Talbot, including:


 - Kieron Gillen (Marvel Comics' Uncanny X-Men - he recently set a Mr Sinister scheme in Greenwich Park);
- Sarah Gordon (The Peckham House for Invalids); 
- Howard Hardiman (Badger, The Lengths); 
- Simone Lia (Fluffy/Please God, find me a husband!); 
- Gary Northfield (Derek the Sheep in the Beano) - children's comic illustrator operating from a studio at the Old Police Station; 
- Woodrow Phoenix (Nelson); 
- Julia Scheele (69 love songs, illustrated).

You can listen to it here, with some interesting reflections on the local area and how people have used SE London scenes in their work. Funnily enough in view of my post last week on Quality Comics/Weird Fantasy Comics in Lewisham Way, some of the panellists mention that place too.  Woodrow Phoenix recalls that his first tips in lettering comics came from Weird Fantasy Comics, from Garry Leach (Warrior/2000 AD etc) who used to live in Crofton Park and now lives in Forest Hill. Alex Fitch chips in 'V for Vendetta originated in New Cross'. 


Woodrow also mentioned another lost local comic shop - Skinny Melinks at 66 Loampit Vale.


Lots more to follow up from this programme, but I was particularly interested to hear about Howard Hardiman and Sarah Gordon's The Cooperage, set in Deptford and Brockley (image below)

South London: Behind the Scenes of the Universe

In his entertaining shaggy-dog tale of a book 'The London Adventure or the Art of Wandering' (1924), Arthur Machen (1863-1947) mentions having 'some mission to execute in waste portions of the world down beyond the Surrey Docks. I took an omnibus at the other end of London Bridge and went, I think, by way of Tooley Street, into something unshapen that I had never visited before; into places that might have been behind the scenes of the universe; bearing, indeed, much the same relation to the ordinary London view as do the back of the backcloth and the backs of the wings to the gay set that the audience admires from the stalls. Everything was shapeless, unmeaning, dreary, dismal beyond words; it was as if one were journeying past the back wall of the everlasting backyard'.

Machen's whole point is that even here 'in this arid waste', his spirits were lifted by an unexpected fig tree , 'a veritable verdant mountain'. But his rather snotty attitude to South London is fairly typical of many writers on the matter of London in that period, and indeed in most periods. Still the idea of South London as 'behind the scenes of the universe' is not entirely inaccurate, since it was certainly true in Victorian and Edwardian times that much of the wealth which enabled Westminster and the City of London to flourish was created in or travelled through the factories, workshops and docks of  East and South London.

If London is a theatre, the eyes of writers may generally have been on the stage of royalty, 'high culture'  and parliament, but it is precisely 'behind the scenes' where the work is done that sustains the illusion.

Stewart Home Live in Peckham

Writer Stewart Home is heading a series of readings/performances at the Hannah Barry Gallery in Peckham next Tuesday 12th June (7 pm start). Others on the bill include Katrina Palmer and Iphgenia Baal. Admission is free.

The event forms part of the Minstrel & Chronicle exhibition.

Address in Unit 91, Copeland Road Industrial Estate, 133 Copeland Road, SE15.

Becoming Nancy

Becoming Nancy (2012) by Terry Roland is a coming of age/coming out novel set in late 1970s East Dulwich, where the author himself grew up.

The main character, David Starr, is growing up gay, listening to Blondie and preparing to play Nancy in a school production of Oliver. This is a pre-gentrification East Dulwich, with social life centred around places like the 'Lordship Lane Working Men's Club' (presumably a fictionalised Dulwich Working Mans Club which was at 110a Lordship Lane until 2001) and the Crystal Palace Hotel where the mods hang out (the real pub being the Crystal Palace Tavern). Various lost shops get mentioned like Chelsea Girl in Peckham and Follett's record shop in Lordship Lane - in real life the author has recalled in respect of Kate Bush that 'when Wuthering Heights was number one, I ran all the way to Folletts record shop in East Dulwich to copy the lyrics down off the back of the album cover'.

One key chapter 'A Moment of Unity' is set in the 1979 Rock Against Racism carnival in Brixton: 'Brockwell Park is awash with punks, Rastas, hippies, students and all sorts of homosexuals, male and female, under a seemingly endless canvas of azure sky'.

There were actually two big Rock Against Racism events in Brockwell Park in this period - on 24th September 1978, the bands included Aswad, Sham 69, Misty In Roots and Elvis Costello and The Attractions.  A year later on September 2nd 1979 the line up was Aswad, Stiff Little Fingers and Verdict.

History & Literary Events in Telegraph Hill Festival

Lots of events going on in the Telegraph Hill Festival in New Cross over the next week or two. Tamsin has helpfully summarised some of the history, natural history and literary events at South East Central, here's a few of them:

Thursday 15th - 6pm - The White House, Kender Street, SE14 5JQ (free):  A talk by Chris McCaw of Rivers and People on "The Wildlife of Lewisham's Waterways". Part of the regular series of talks given in the White House (usually on the second Thursday of the month - made a week later this time to co-incide with the Festival) by the New Cross Sub-Group of the Lewisham Local History Society.

Thursday 15th - 7.30pm - The New Cross Library, SE14 6AS (free + cash bar): A screening of the film "The Power of Community" about how Cuba suvived "peak oil".

Sunday 18th - 2pm - meeting by the Tennis Courts in the Upper Park (free): History and Architectural Walk around Telegraph  - going east and through Goldsmiths - and along the New Cross Road.

Tuesday 20th - 1pm - the Barnes Wallis Centre, SE14 5LL (free + refreshments):  A screening of the first episode of the 1990s TV documentary "Windrush: the Arrival" and the film John Krish was sacked for making - "The Elephant Will Never Forget" about the last week of London trams and the very last tram coming into the New Cross Depot.

Thursday 22nd - 6pm - The White House, Kender Street, SE14 5JQ (free + refreshments):  "The Elephant Will Never Forget" and "Terminus" - the 1961 John Schlesinger film about a day in the life of Waterloo Station. Both films being shown by arrangement with the BFI - www.bfi.org

Friday 23rd - 10am - meeting by the Tennis Courts in Telegraph Hill Upper Park (free): Chris McGaw back again with "A Wildlife Wander on the Hill"

Thursday 29th - 2pm - Sector J Clubroom, Gately House SE4 2JF (free + refreshments): A repeat screening of "The Elephant Will Never Forget" and "Terminus".

Books and Poetry

Thursday 15th - 4.30pm - New Cross Library, SE14 6AS (free):  Poetry writing workshop for young people (but open to all). Part of a regular Thursday afternoon series.

Sunday 18th - 8pm - Cafe Fed (above the Hill Station), SE14 5TY (£3 + cash bar): "Pleasing Poems Chosen by You" - along the lines of "Poetry Please" - poems and verse on the themes of motherhood (it is Mothering Sunday) and cats - with a quick trot through the whole range of English History, read to a select audience by actors and others.

Monday 19th - 6.30pm - The Hill Station, SE14 5TY (free + cash bar): Writing Workshop and readings by the East Dulwich Writers Group, winners of the National Association of Writers' Groups Awards for 2011, the workshop led by Debi Alper.

Tuesday 20th - 8pm - The Hill Station, SE14 5TY (£4 (£2 concs) + cash bar):  "...and the struggle continues" Poetry, prose and songs by the Strawberry Thieves telling of political struggles around the world, past and present.

Tuesday 27th - 8pm - The Hill Station, SE14 5TY (£2 + cash bar): "Books Quiz" with James Walton of Radio 4's "The Write Stuff" - but he says it won't be quite so difficult.

Thursday 29th - 8pm - The Telegraph, Dennetts Road, SE14 5LW (free): The Festival Book Circle Acclaimed author, Aminatta Forna, will discuss her latest novel, "The Memory of Love", an evocative tale of love, loss and betrayal in Sierra Leone.