No time for encores

‘Try to evolve, not to repeat. Why fall in love with Swan Lake again and again?’ Life is too short for too many encores. Carlos Acosta wants to try everything before checking out, he tells the audience gathered in the plush red seats of the Quays Theatre at the Lowry. He is world famous for his dancing, with a reputation for soaring jumps surpassed only by Nureyev and Nijinski. However,time is passing and he is now forty. More recently he has tried singing – which was not so successful, he says, grimacing at the memory of a sore throat – and now, following the publication of his autobiography, he has moved on to writing fiction.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsoncarlos-acosta-11-297x300 No time for encores

Carlos Acosta, in conversation

He wanted to write a book called “Pata de Peurco” before he even knew the story. With the skill of a politician addressing an awkward question before it is asked, he admits that he knows the book’s title “Pig’s Foot” does not translate well, he smiles. He repeats the book’s title in Spanish several times, yes “Pata de Peuerco” does have a strength about it that is lost in the English translation. Then he needed a story. He visualised a place, and tumultuous times, slaves and war. The novel, influenced by Latin American magical realism- sweeps across generations of Cuban history. ‘I am trying to tell a story and make you laugh, not stretch literary boundaries in anyway,’ Carlos says, in case we think he is hoping to emulate his hero Gabriel Garcia Marquez, ‘but really I don’t care.’ He wrote the book between rehearsals of Swan Lake and Giselle. It is five years’ work, and like so many debut novelists he wonders if anyone will read it. He need not worry on that score. He learned more about Cuban history, though he’s no expert, when researching on Google. The audience gasp at the mention of the internet as if they were being privileged with a guilty secret. He took advice on cutting out parts of the book and then, at the end, put them back in. How many of us struggle with that dilemma?

‘I have done every role with everyone now, let me rephrase that – danced every role.’ But there are things he would still like to do in ballet, choreograph Carmen, for example. Many ballets were created when the world was completely different, he wants to make things fresh, enhance the classics and give them a voice for now.

What does he long for? ‘The sense of community in nineteen eighties Cuba.’ This was before the Soviet Union collapsed in1989, isolating Cuba and exposing the weakness of its economy. Then there was simplicity, everyone would sit down for a meal which lasted for hours. There were no dishwashers, all would help with the washing up and talk. ‘It was all about relationships. That’s all that matters.’ Carlos Acosta sounds wistful for those days, and his nostalgia is accompanied by fears for society in the future. There is a dangerous side effect to technology. ‘Youngsters have a virtual life now, everything is broken and, like fast food, there is no quality. How do you unravel that? There’s going to be a time when you would ask why would you go out? Then you won’t know your neighbours, there are no bonding ties. If we bond I’m not going to harm you, loot you.’

‘All things have to come to an end,’ Carlos answers when asked about retirement. ‘It’s too painful,’ he protests as the audience groans. ‘The truth is retirement is inevitable.’ A fact that the majority of the audience, presumably admirers of the ballet, predominantly female, middle-aged at least must appreciate.

If his novel captures the voice of this dynamic and inquiring mind it cannot fail to be a good read. He has explored the past, it sounds as if he has enough ideas to write about the future.

Carlos Acosta at The Lowry, Salford 19 October 2013.

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Carlos Acosta and eighteen month old daughter, Aila.

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Tristram and Michael in conversation about Friedrich, HS2 and other things Manc

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonmwood-300x155 Tristram and Michael in conversation about Friedrich, HS2  and other things Manc

Michael Wood, on the right, in conversation with Labour MP and historian, Tristram Hunt.

Michael Wood gave his inaugural lecture, or more accurately, inaugural conversation on the broad topic “Victorians, Manchester and the Importance of History in Public Culture”. The member of the audience who complained that he was expecting a lecture on what public history actually is may have been dissatisfied. However, the discourse between the newly-appointed Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester, with Tristram Hunt, MP and historian, demonstrated how relating historical knowledge and ideas to present day issues can be fascinating, enlightening and entertaining. If that’s public history, it has a wide audience.

The discussion focused on the books of the Labour MP; Building Jerusalem – based on his PhD dissertation on British Victorian cities – and the celebrated biography of Friedrich Engels, The Frock-Coated Communist. While Hunt’s books are well known to me I was unaware that he was the Labour shadow spokesman on further education. I was, however, impressed that on Friday afternoons Hunt frequently teaches at an FE college in his Stoke constituency.

Wood and Hunt reflected on the great age of city autonomy, from the 1820s to 90s, before London reasserted itself on the back of Empire finance at the end of the century. At the beginning of this period Manchester was the place to come to see. Nothing before had been like it. The future was Manchester, but it was an ominous future. In 1829 life expectancy in the city was only 29, the lowest since the Black Death. Centuries of progress were being undone by relentless industrialisation.

After the rise of the cities came their demise. The bleeding of the cities was synonymous with the decline of Empire, but cities are rising again. In the 1990s Manchester had only 500 residents in the city centre. Now there are 15-20,000. Culture is important in the resurgence of the modern city, witness Liverpool. Culture and creativity attracts talent and success. Get them by the time they are 29, and here I paraphrase, and they are the city’s for life. As Moss Side born and Manchester Grammar School educated Wood, whose family had lived in one of the peripatetic Engels’ many dwellings, now lives in London we can only assume that the Manc culture did not capture his imagination in the 1970s when he worked at the BBC, although he clearly has an affinity for the place.

We are now witnessing the rise of city regions. The HS2 project is driven by arguments for city regions in Birmingham and Manchester. Hunt reveals, to me any way, that Manchester’s voice is strong in London because the chief executive and leader of the Council whip their MPs in.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonmwood-300x155 Tristram and Michael in conversation about Friedrich, HS2  and other things Manc

The Frock-coated Communist, by Tristram Hunt.

Engels, described by a straight-faced Wood, as a man ‘full of contradictions’ lived in Manchester between 1842-44. His motto was ‘take it easy’ and his idea of happiness was a bottle of Chateau Margaux 1848. He defended his participation in the Cheshire Hunt by arguing that ‘come the revolution, someone would have to lead the cavalry’. Sent abroad by his family, whose purpose was to keep their wayward son out of trouble, Engels arrived in a Manchester alive with radical ideas and discontent which erupted in the Chartist riots. What, reflected the conversationalists, might have been Engels’ political philosophy had he arrived in Birmingham or even Leamington Spa instead of the revolutionary Lancashire city?

Engels returned to Manchester in 1850 for twenty years, working to financially support the London-based Marx, outliving his compatriot. By the end of his life it was clear that the English working class had failed to meet Engels’ expectations of overthrowing capitalism. Hunt commented that, ‘his criticism of capitalism was compelling, the problem comes with some of his solutions’ which assumed a capacity for the spiritual transformation of the proletariat. He noted that Jonathan Sperber had advanced the argument that it was Engels that advocated a positivist path for Marxism, wilfully misinterpreting Marx’s legacy after his death, which led ultimately to the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century.

Onto present day issues and the role of history in the national curriculum. Hunt believed that the conservatives routinely asked parliamentary questions about the history syllabus as a vehicle to discuss the nature of modern Britain – about which they were uneasy. He disclosed that he was comfortable with British history foregrounding the syllabus – the real issue was the space for history within the curriculum, and the access children had to history, which a recent survey ad shown was considerably less in Merseyside’s Knowsley than Surrey’s Epsom.

This was the first of Michael Wood’s trilogy of “lectures”. I look forward to the next.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonmwood-300x155 Tristram and Michael in conversation about Friedrich, HS2  and other things Manc

I found the Frock-Coated Communist on my book shelf next to Asa Briggs’, Victorian Cities (Manchester was the shock city of its age). I certainly enjoyed reading Hunt’s well-researched book, which vividly painted a picture of the era.I think I should put this forward into my “favourite book” shortlist.

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David Miliband Farewell Tour

Guilt by Lynn Steinsondavidmilresized-300x76 David Miliband Farewell Tour
David Miliband stands in front of the ‘one nation’ banners that proclaim his brother Ed’s strategy for Labour. He is in the political spotlight for one last time to thank his supporters, before leaving for a new career in New York. Ed’s speech at the Labour Party conference in September which launched ‘one nation’ has been lauded by the press, not for its content, but because he had spoken without notes for almost an hour. David could easily match that performance but with an intellectual content and vision that his younger brother can only strive to emulate.
Guilt by Lynn Steinsondavidmilresized-300x76 David Miliband Farewell Tour
‘We need to get a mindset for what we stand for,’ he urges. The implication being that the party does not. There are massive issues at stake. There will be a massive fight over the NHS. Every incident will be reported and scrutinised in the press and it will be argued that a universal, free at point of use service, funded by the tax payer does not work. The future of education, the future of Europe, Britain’s role in the world and its foreign policy must all be addressed. The rise of UKIP is about a reaction to tribal party politics not Europe. It will change the nature of politics in an interesting way. He welcomes the change.

‘There’s almost more at stake than beating the Tories, we are fighting for a western economy to provide a better standard of living for the next generations.’ As David fires into the ‘callous, incompetent, backward looking government,’ we know we are listening to the man who should have been the next prime minister. Joking that it is always good to anticipate the awkward questions by answering them first, a lesson young politicians should take on board, he explains that this soap opera – caused by the media attention which hovers constantly over any interaction between him and Ed ‘is damaging me and the party, but it takes a lot to persuade me to leave my profession.’
Guilt by Lynn Steinsondavidmilresized-300x76 David Miliband Farewell Tour
He believes in his new job, an organisation founded by Albert Einstein to help those who were refugees from Nazi persecution, people like his parents. He reveals that he was astonished to learn that every 1.4 seconds there is a new refugee in the world, even though historians say there are fewer wars today than ever before. This conundrum requires new ideas and an intellectual engagement that he can bring to the fore. It’s a challenge he is ready to embrace to make a difference to people’s lives.

David Miliband has great confidence and belief in his intellectual abilities, and his audience believe it, too. What a loss for the Labour Party and this country.
Guilt by Lynn Steinsondavidmilresized-300x76 David Miliband Farewell Tour

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‘We keep being told “we’re all in this together”. But it remains boom-time for the people at the top.’ Owen Jones

Owen Jones, The Independent columnist, political commentator and author of Chavs:The Demonization of the Working Class, presented the Fourth Frow Lecture, organised by the Working Class Movement Library, on 4 May 2013.

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonP1000361-e1367694856869-273x300 ‘We keep being told “we’re all in this together”. But it remains boom-time for the people at the top.’ Owen Jones

The Old Fire Station, Salford.
Arriving early for Owen Jones.

Owen Jones, brought up in nearby Stockport, an Oxford history graduate and now Hackney resident has a polemical style and engaging wit. Jones famously caused Iain Duncan Smith to lose his temper on Question Time when he raised the issue of disabled benefits claimants who had died after being passed fit to work. Unfortunately, the programme came to an abrupt end before Jones could continue his argument. There is more time today, the hall has been full and overflowing since the doors opened, so the lecture begins 15 minutes early in front of, one suspects, an audience of like-minded souls from the political left who are eager to find inspiration, and hope.

Jones first reminded the audience about the historical struggles against injustice: the peasants’ revolt against the poll tax; the Levellers and Diggers demand for democracy and common land during the civil wars; the martyrs of Peterloo and Tolpuddle; the Chartists; the suffragettes and those who, more recently, struggled and sacrificed for the LGBT and anti-racism movements. ‘Those who are aware of the injustices inflicted on this country have a responsibility to fight back,’ Jones declared. I seem to recall that many of the Chartist orators had links to the non-conformist churches. Injustice is the main theme today, but guilt and duty are also on the agenda.

‘They are air-brushing out of existence the injustices that have been suffered.’
Turning to the present day, Jones said that the Tories have hi-jacked the financial crisis and turned it into a crisis of public spending. They have used the crisis to push politics that they would never have got away with – the privatisation of the NHS; the assault on education; the dismantling of the welfare state. The current crisis grew out of the unregulated financial sector in the 1980s.‘We keep being told “we are all in this together”, but it remains boom-time for the people at the top.’

The Tories are cleverly deflecting anger from those who caused the crisis. They are turning communities against each other, neighbour against neighbour. The low paid worker against the unemployed; British-born against immigrant – they are scapegoating immigrants – but it was not the Indian doctors or the Polish cleaners who brought us into this. It was the bankers. It’s the age-old politics of divide and rule.

The right have lots of out-riders who are not necessarily affiliated to the Tories but are continually pushing right-wing polices, creating more political space for their agendas. The traditional media is dominated by journalists with a narrow background, it’s a closed shop for the middle class. The rise of social media -‘citizen’s journalism’- especially Twitter, is the biggest counter to the mass media.

The average Briton is facing the biggest squeeze in living standards since the 1920s. They have a right to be furious. The surge of UKIP is showing the huge potential for anger people have at the political establishment.

There is a shortage of housing because of the failure to replace the housing stock which was sold under the Right to Buy legislation. 760,000 households will be hit by the “bedroom tax” and required to pay an extra £80 a month. Two-thirds of these homes are occupied by people with disabilities. They are the most vulnerable people, often isolated and unlikely to be in a trade union. There are few one bedroom flats to downsize to. They will be forced into a private sector where rents are higher and the benefits bill will increase.

But the one thing missing is hope. Unless people have hope their anger will be directed at their neighbour. The task facing any movement taking on austerity is to provide hope and an alternative. The coherent alternative is to build social housing to stimulate the economy and give people homes – not foot the bill for expensive private rents; to provide a living wage and reduce the billions spent on tax credits and to develop an industrial strategy as Germany has done to reduce unemployment, not wait for market forces.

The limits of tyrants
Quoting former slave and celebrated American abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue til they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress”.

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonP1000361-e1367694856869-273x300 ‘We keep being told “we’re all in this together”. But it remains boom-time for the people at the top.’ Owen Jones

Jones advocated the need to link up individual struggles and build momentum in the broad anti-austerity movement which is being led by the People’s Assembly and up the fight for justice and equality.

Owen Jones is a speaker at a meeting of the People’s Assembly Rally in Manchester on 21 May 2013.

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonP1000361-e1367694856869-273x300 ‘We keep being told “we’re all in this together”. But it remains boom-time for the people at the top.’ Owen Jones

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Guilt by Lynn SteinsonP1000361-e1367694856869-273x300 ‘We keep being told “we’re all in this together”. But it remains boom-time for the people at the top.’ Owen Jones
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A roam around my books – 2

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My new pine bookcase runs along almost the entire length of the dining room. It was almost filled within an hour of delivery, with a selection of political and travel books and many of my biographies, an eclectic collection which includes Fidel Castro, Dorothy Wordsworth and Angie Bowie. I wander into the dining room more frequently now, just to admire the books. Sometimes I rearrange their order and, from time to time, I will open a much loved volume and savour a paragraph or two. Perhaps on one of these shelves there is at least one book which will merit consideration as my new “favourite”.

Guests sitting at the dining table often ask, ‘Hmm, are you interested in the Kennedys, by any chance?’ Almost every book on the first three shelves has the word “Kennedy” in its title.

The Kennedys have always had a special place in my life. When I was small I frequently used to go the White House to play with John and Caroline in the afternoon; some time after Watch with Mother and before Robin Hood. Well, okay, the White House was a large fireguard which was propped against the dining room wall and covered in a sheet. At least it seemed large to me at the time, but then I guess I could probably stand comfortably under the dining table. Clearly, I had absorbed my mother’s enthusiasm for the new president and his family, creating my own Camelot in a small part of Lancashire.

Those visits to a mythical Washington DC were to be curtailed cruelly one Friday night, just before the Harry Worth show. Time stood still as, following the ominous announcement of a newsflash, we waited to hear what dreadful news could warrant an interruption of the television schedule. Then we heard that John F Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas. A few days later, as I was watching the news with my mother, we saw Lee Harvey Oswald shot by Jack Ruby, live on black and white TV. At least that’s how I remember it. The news was becoming more spectacular than television films, with more shootings than Rawhide or Cheyenne.

My mother had been a great fan of JFK and, now I think of it, with her dark hair, wide smile and sense of style, she had a passing resemblance to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, although I doubt they would have had anything in common. My appreciation of politics at the time extended to Robin (Richard Green) and his band of merry men redistributing wealth from the Normans to the poor. I had a hazy idea that the Russians, who were mainly beautiful fur-hatted women, were the enemy. They weren’t dangerous; they always seemed to be quickly disarmed and usually changed sides. However, my parents, having recently lived through the Cuban missile crisis, must have been terrified that the Russians or Cubans were behind the president’s death and anxious about the consequences. I had no idea though. They hid it well.

Although I did not know it then, we had our family bunker prepared “under-the-stairs”. There there was a radio and a stockpile of canned luncheon meat, peaches and carnation milk to keep our family going in the event of a nuclear winter. I recall my mother once saying that if there was a nuclear war then being a survivor would be worse than being dead. Some years later she must have decided that world peace was assured and the canned contents of the emergency food store slowly emerged to grace the tea table on Sundays. Quite.

1968 has acquired the moniker “the year of revolt”. It was hard not to be aware of politics. The Vietnam war dominated the news and Martin Luther King had only recently been buried when I remember discussing Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy’s prospects of survival with my school friends. He had been shot in L.A. the day before. We quickly concluded, sadly, that there were none. By the age of sixteen, my appetite for American politics, fueled by the media frenzy about Watergate, had grown. I have acquired autobiographies of most of the players in the scandal. I was delighted when some American girls came on a visit to our school and eagerly interrogated them about their opinion on the guilt, or otherwise, of Richard Nixon. They feigned to know nothing about politics and certainly not of Watergate, which could well have been true. However, if they did they must have felt personally humiliated that their president was seen by the world as a liar and a crook. As my passion for all things American continued, I packed my suitcase with library books, including Ted Sorenson’s book on JFK, for a school trip by train to Preston’s twin-town, Nimes, in the south of France. I have travelled light ever since.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsondining-room2-214x300 A roam around my books - 2My Kennedy collection includes serious political appraisals, family sagas, Hollywood sleaze, a Mafia mistress’s kiss-and-tell and quotations and speeches. I found William Manchester’s book which described JFK’s assassination and its aftermath compelling. The book was responsible, I think, for the deliberate construction of the myth of Camelot, even though it resulted in Manchester falling out with his friend Jackie Kennedy.

I enjoyed every word of Arthur Schlesinger’s weighty biography of RFK when I first read it. Indeed, I think I have read it twice. As I look at the tightly printed sentences on the thin paper I realise that it will not be read again, not by me, anyway.

It wasn’t until I was at university that I read, for the first time, a book which alleged a conspiracy about JFK’s assassination. Over the years I collected many tomes on the subject. Although many included spurious clues and dubious coincidences, it was clear to me that there was a second gun man on the grassy knoll. I really thought everyone knew that, and was shocked when an American colleague told me such ideas were only held by wacky conspiracy theorists. Well, I don’t think that 9/11 was a government plot, but I do think there was a conspiracy to kill JFK, although by whom I am not so sure.

My library of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King assassination stories has grown, my interest often re-ignited by a documentary or film. The assassinations can’t fail to intrigue lovers of a good mystery. An unknown girl in a polka dot dress running away from a murder heard giggling and shouting, “We shot him! We shot him! We shot Senator Kennedy” would be a great way to start a crime novel. On the other hand it seems to be rather odd behaviour from someone supposedly involved in a complex political murder. So many of the theories around the assassination of RFK seem to belong in the land of fiction, not least, perhaps, in the pages of the Manchurian Candidate. Whether there was a conspiracy to murder all three politicians or not, one clear outcome of the three murders was to remove the leaders and political hopes of a generation, long before the unrelenting prying into their personal lives was to tarnish their reputations and legacy.

Some of these books are fading from my memory, now, though I enjoyed a recent acquisition about the Kennedy women. The great mystery is why these women put up with so much bad behaviour on the part of their menfolk, although in Jackie’s case the solution seems to be money, and lots of it. The Kennedys still sell, new books are still being written, but I have no plans to purchase any more. I don’t want an interest to become an obsession. Besides, is there anything very new to say? There are a lot of new books on new topics and ideas out there which are waiting to be read.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsondining-room2-214x300 A roam around my books - 2

Postscript
Two Amazon purchases fell through the letterbox following an impulsive few moments on the internet a few days earlier. David Talbot’s “Brothers: the Hidden History of the Kennedy Years” which, after tediously repeating that by “brothers” he really means that all the aides were like brothers, delivers some interesting new insights. JFK speechwriter, the Unitarian Ted Sorenson; the gung-ho attitude of some of the American generals; the JFK administration’s later dealings with Cuba, Khrushchev and Vietnam and JFK’s “American University” speech all make this book worth a read. The villains in this book are the Cuban mafia in exile with various rogue elements of the government.

I confess I couldn’t resist C. David Heymann’s “Bobby and Jackie, a Love Story”. I felt it demonised Bobby’s wife, Ethel, whether deserved or not, in order to romanticise and validate the affair of the brother and sister-in-laws. All the elements of crime fiction, complex political intrigue, who done it, (in this case LBJ and the mob) and a romance are here. Presented as fiction, this would all seem quite improbable and, really, it includes no leading characters that you could actually like. As biography it serves as an easy-to-read guilty pleasure.

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A roam around my books – 1- in search of my “favourite” book.

I live in a house which is occupied by battalions of books. My study has a wall lined with them, the living room hosts a bookcase, the landing another. Books are scattered on occasional tables and bedside cabinets, recipe books line the shelves on either side of the oven. Recently, I have acquired a new bookcase which runs along the length of the dining room. For a few years I will be able to see the spines of all my books again, and be able to find each one, many familiar friends, before a row of newcomers is added in front of them and they are obscured again.

I used to be able to boast that I had read nearly every book, that there were only a few recently purchased books whose pages were tantalizingly untouched. Now the pile of the unread seems to be growing alarmingly. It’s not just the ones I can see and touch, but the free sample chapters and downloaded books on Kindle which are making another, rapidly growing, virtual stack which irritatingly sits in the back of my mind like an ever-growing to-do list, demanding attention. One reason the unread has increased is because it is so easy to impulsively buy them on Amazon. A bad habit for many reasons, I know. I have also acquired quite a lot of books which have been the choices of others, for a reading group or for a course reading list. These have been dutifully read, sometimes with enjoyment, sometimes not. Reading them has, however, displaced the time I had for reading the books that I would choose myself. I like to be on familiar terms with the books around me, but now so many of them are still strangers.
Guilt by Lynn SteinsonOptimized-fave-books-300x187 A roam around my books - 1- in search of my "favourite" book.
Given the scope of my personal library it is rather odd that, when recently asked to name my favourite author or book, I was momentarily dumbstruck. I looked rather blankly and mumbled unconvincingly “War and Peace” which it truly was. Once. However, it is now so long since I read the epic that I can barely recollect the enjoyment I felt when I was an eighteen year-old. I have to confess that the images from the BBC adaptation of the book, starring Alan Dobie as Prince Andrei and Anthony Hopkins as Pierre, seem to have survived longer than those evoked by the book itself. Sadly, this loss of memory applies to another Russian masterpiece and favourite book, “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov. I savoured every page in my twenties. I tried to read it again a few years ago, but soon spurned it in favour of a new novel. There is so much to be read that it seems extravagant to re-read a book, or perhaps magical realism is just more compelling in one’s twenties.

As it is so long since I read both books I feel a fraud to claim either as a “favourite”. But which book merits that title? I decide to survey my book collection to discover which book I can open to-day with anticipation, knowing that I will savour each word, enjoy turning each page and finally put it down, eager to read more just like it.

I begin the quest to find my favourite book on the landing.

The bookcase on the landing is a memory repository. There is no need to open the books stored here and I rarely do. The title on the spines, the paintings on the dust cover trigger as many memories as the photograph albums on the bottom shelf.

Nestled between my paperbacks by the Queen of Crime – including my favourite Agatha Christie “The Seven Dials Mystery” – and my Ladybird history books is a much culled collection of childhood favourite stories. I am not sure why the Ladybird books have survived. I recall that Hans Christian Andersen’s and The Grimm brothers’ fairy tales were read far more, their gruesome, magical stories endlessly fascinating. A parent-sanctioned window into an unsafe world where untold horrors lurked and handsome princes patrolled, always on hand to save the day and provide a happy ending. I suspect the books’ spines were bent and pages torn. Too much love from a seven year-old does not longevity make, for books anyway.

The titles of the Ladybird books confound me. I had a theory that Michael Gove had based his ideas for the new history syllabus on the subjects covered by the Ladybird history series. Sure enough, there is Florence Nightingale, the First Queen Elizabeth and David Livingstone but what about Marco Polo and Alexander the Great? No, they are just not British enough. I revise my theory. The new syllabus is based only on the Ladybird books Gove has actually read.

Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore have made it though the years but not Paddington bear. The Abbey girls made it but missing are Angela Brazil and Enid Blyton’s “Mystery” books which told the adventures of the Five Find-Outers. For some reason Fattie and his friends are not as well-known as the Secret Seven or the Famous Five, although they seem to have partaken in the same amount of ice cream, lemonade and cycling around the English countryside solving mysteries. I can remember many a night turning the pages in the half-light of an open bedroom door, anxious to solve a mystery when I should have been in bed. Whatever her detractors might say about her, Blyton was very good at plotting.

The settings for the books I chose to read, although perhaps there was little choice, were not remotely like my own environment. I lived in the suburbs of a cotton town on an estate of semi-detached houses built between the wars, where everyone you knew went to either the local state school or local catholic school. The world of my childhood self was mainly populated by English fictional schoolgirls who were living in a world just as remote from mine as that of the American “Little Women” or Katie (“What Katie Did”).

These schoolgirls’ parents were often thousands of miles away in the colonies – a voluntary separation I never understood – while their children attended boarding school and were farmed out to relatives in the holidays. The girls were impetuous and resourceful with strong moral values. They entertained themselves with midnight feasts and solving mysteries, frequently breaking rules but, as the rules were set by their boarding schools, this was no defiance of parental authority. Think Harry Potter, but without the magic and with a couple of hockey-stick wielding girls in the lead roles.
Guilt by Lynn SteinsonOptimized-fave-books-300x187 A roam around my books - 1- in search of my "favourite" book.
A favourite series was Jane Shaw’s “Susan” books. Susan was brought up in Glasgow where ‘the Spring, late and reluctant, had a hard job to struggle through at all’, but she was fortunate because, during the school holidays, she lived with her cousins, the Carmichaels, in a lovely picturesque village near London which was full of sunny blossom-filled orchards. We are introduced to Annabel in the first line of “Susan’s Helping Hand”.

‘When Annabel’s father and mother were killed by terrorists in Kenya’ she and her siblings are sent to live with Aunt Evelyn. There is worse to come. Annabel is told that they are expected to go to the elementary school round the corner.‘Annabel was aghast.
“But-but- Aunt Evelyn,” she stammered. “I must go back to school and get my matric_ I don’t know what they call it in English schools. I want to go to the university and be a doctor.”’  
Fortunately for Annabel her aunt isn’t her aunt at all, and by the end of the book Annabel’s lies and deceit (all done for the greater good) are rewarded and she enrols at Susan’s boarding school. Phew. I must have been really pleased for her.

It does occur to me though that Maria Hutchings. the Conservative candidate for Eastleigh, has been brought up on Jane Shaw books. “William is very gifted which gives us another interesting challenge in finding the right sort of education for him – impossible in the state system. He wants to be a cardio-respiratory surgeon.”

My absolute favourite books were the Chalet School series. I would wait with excitement for the publication day of each new paperback. My mother was not fond of these books, I don’t know why. These were tales of schoolgirls set against an ever changing landscape as the school moved round the world. Austria, Switzerland, North Wales; each new location to be explored in our imaginations. Brent-Dyer’s books swept over decades including the rise of the Nazis and war. Unusually there was also a preoccupation with religion, and various characters converted to Catholicism or became nuns. The traditional schoolgirl narrative was at the heart of most books; an impetuous girl finding her mature inner soul when tested, often through severe injury or illness. There was frequently a love interest in these books, usually a doctor. Heroine Jo (Josephine) eventually married young doctor, Jack Maynard – why do I remember that after all these years? – I think he rescued her from a blizzard when she was a schoolgirl. I wonder if there was an equivalent genre for boys where the music teacher had an affair with the pupil?

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonOptimized-fave-books-300x187 A roam around my books - 1- in search of my "favourite" book.Sandwiched between my photograph albums are the annuals – traditional Christmas presents – which were based on popular weekly comics. “Tina”, “Diana” and “Schoolfriend” are still intact. Children today cannot possibly imagine the excitement that a children’s magazine could create as the delivery boy dropped it though a letter box. A whole morning could be spent immersed in its stories, especially the serials which would finish on a cliff hanger to be continued the next week.

There was a continuous progression through the children’s weeklies from pre-school until we finally bought our first women’s magazine. “Jack and Jill” was my first comic, then “Diana” I think. At some point a decision would be made to turn away from familiar characters and stories to another magazine more appropriate for one’s age and interests. It must have been a volatile market. New titles would be launched with a free plastic gift, old titles would merge. I was devastated when “June” merged with “Schoolfriend”. I can’t remember now which one I was so fond of, but I do recall being a fan of the “Silent Three” which featured in the new title. This was a surprisingly hard-nosed story about three girls who were in a secret society, unusually shown as a comic strip in the annual.They wore cloaks, masks and navigated secret passages at midnight to resolve unexplained puzzles, often for the benefit of the entire nation. I always loved a good mystery.

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonOptimized-fave-books-300x187 A roam around my books - 1- in search of my "favourite" book.

Don’t be fooled by the cover. There’s serious crime-fighting inside

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonOptimized-fave-books-300x187 A roam around my books - 1- in search of my "favourite" book.

Taking on the lower classes and foreign spies.

Everyone read Jackie in the third and fourth year but, I seem to recall, that it’s reign was short-lived. I can’t recall any stories or characters. The graphic story had limited appeal and we quickly tired of the problem page which had once seemed so daring. So, on to the next popular magazine. “Fab208” was my favourite I recall, embodying all that was cool, or perhaps I should say “hip” in that era, although I don’t recall that any of us ever actually uttered that word. Fab was fabulous and, in the post-pirate radio years, paid homage to a newly-fashionable Radio Luxembourg 208. As music and fashion replaced stories of schoolgirls pitching their wits against bullies and villains, fleeing rampant bulls and surviving the icy waters of frozen ponds we gravitated to adulthood and the pages of “Nova” and “Honey” about which I remember nothing.

The mystery stories celebrating the resourcefulness and intelligence of girls captivated me, despite taking place in a world which was totally unlike anything I had experienced. Then again, girls living at home with their parents really could not have had the independence and adventures that these feisty girls enjoyed without coming to the attention of the Social Services.

Despite the fond memories it is clear that my favourite book is not in this bookcase! On to the next.

Guilt by Lynn SteinsonOptimized-fave-books-300x187 A roam around my books - 1- in search of my "favourite" book.Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2013 Lynn Steinson
Guilt by Lynn SteinsonOptimized-fave-books-300x187 A roam around my books - 1- in search of my "favourite" book.
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William Wells Brown – Impressions of Harriet Martineau and the English Lakes 1851

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William Wells Brown was a Kentucky-born fugitive slave touring the anti-slavery lecture circuit in the British Isles during 1849-1851. In two letters to Frederick Douglass, which are now included in Wells Brown’s memoirs “Three years in Europe”, he records his … Continue reading

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Reading to write

About a year ago I abandoned my blog when I realized that it had become a displacement activity for writing my novel – along with surfing the internet and polishing my new granite worktop. I realised I needed to focus on the main goal which was to finish my book. Mission accomplished, I now have 80,500 words of psychological thriller.

The next goal is to get ‘Deluded” published. I decided to invest in a seminar on pitching to agents. It was money well spent, Danuta Kean is an enthusiastic and well-informed tutor with great connections in publishing. I now know the importance of a credible writer’s CV and social media presence.

Social Media
I’m reasonably social media savvy as an habitual user of facebook, twitter and WordPress, but given my ambition to get my novel published and read by others, strangely reticent to share my writing, especially with anyone I know. My twitter activity has largely been confined to retweeting comments on my football team and one incredulous tweet when an Observer arts journalist claimed Christopher Marlowe had written “The Duchess of Malfi”. (It was John Webster). I have a page on facebook and a blog under my pen name, which I have even concealed from my friends. My blog, predictably, has had few readers and my author’s facebook page no “likes”, well, except from the fictional characters in my book. They were under no pressure to do so, I promise. Now, however, I have learned that prospective agents are likely to check out my presence on social media and will be impressed if I have a large following. I suspect, that does not mean a large following of football fans. I realise that any literary gems I may tweet will be submerged among retweets about the latest football news.

I had originally intended to use my blog to upload some short stories and flash fiction but I realise that, if I’m to enter competitions, I need to ensure that my submissions have not been published before. This is another activity I discounted last year because it was a distraction from the main goal, but achieving a prize or being shortlisted will enhance my writer’s CV.

I do a quick investigation of the social media I have not used; google+, Tumbler and Pinterest. I consult with an IT literate friend about Pinterest. No, she doesn’t get it, either. I quickly create a google+ account and see a few friends there. I look at Tumbler, it looks like another blog.

Decisions.
Too much social media can be a bad thing. Park the idea of Pinterest for now.

Create a separate twitter account for my pen name. This will be used only for writing-related activities so I can distinguish between leisure and writing tweets.

Research writers’ competitions and schedule the most important ones.

Use my blog mainly for scribbles relating to the process of writing and history or reviews.

Blogging
I upload a couple of posts on my blog which reflect my interest in history. My blog name “Scribbles from the Shock City” was inspired by Asa Briggs’ description of Manchester, the first industrial city, as the shock city of its age. I think the name still applies. Well, Manchester just bought Stansted airport.

The post on anti-slavery was inspired by the film “Lincoln”. Like “Amazing Grace”, which purported to tell the story of the early UK abolition movement, it focussed on the role of a white male legislator, downgrading the roles of Africans, women and the activists to supporting actors at best in both the anti-slavery movement and the film. My other blog post is a transcription of Chartist prisoner Joseph Shawcross’s correspondence with his daughter, Alice. As far as I know no-one has transcribed these letters, which I discovered in the records office in Chester. I dare to presume that I am following in the mighty footsteps of social historian E.P. Thompson by rescuing Joseph from the condescension of posterity.

For the first time my “real-me” facebook page provides a link to my author’s page and to my blog and, hey, already a friend in Australia “likes” it.

I know I also need to spend time keeping up-to-date with trends in the publishing industry and reading novels. Oh yes, and somehow I need to fit in some time to immerse myself in my fictional world and write creatively. In fact, that needs to come to the top of the list. So don’t expect too many blogs! But first, I must just write about Preston Bus Station.

Since I wrote this blog some of the posts referred to above have been re-posted to http://lynnrawlinson.wordpress.com which is now the home for Scribbles from the Shock City, including some political analyses. This blog now focuses on the written word, reviews and forgotten histories.

August 2017

 

Guardian Masterclass run by Danuta Kean

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian-masterclasses/pitching-your-book-course1
Guilt by Lynn SteinsonOptimized-books Reading to write

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1832: Africans and Missionaries pitched against Planters and Church

Meeting of the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, 3 October 1832, Friends Meeting House, Manchester

Long before the time appointed for the lecture, carriages were seen rolling up to the gates discharging their gay inmates…it is doubtful whether ever such an assemblage, purely feminine in its character, burst at once upon the eye of a lecturer, on any occasion and certainly never such as one was collected together in Manchester; an assemblage properly of ladies – comprised of persons of all persuasions, – met on a common cause – the cause of humanity – a cause in which everything human is interested – and none but the inhumane can oppose; nearly two thousand females, not one in mean attire- members of the first families of the town and neighborhood…mingling with the commonest drab, which have concealed the carnation tints of quakeress beauty…with eyes beaming with intelligence.

Manchester Times and Gazette October 6 1832 issue 208

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonfriends-meeting-house 1832: Africans and Missionaries pitched against Planters and Church

Friends Meeting House, Manchester

The slave trade was abolished in 1807 but, in the British Empire and America, Africans were still the property of their masters. Calls for slave emancipation thrived on fertile ground in Manchester, not least amongst its female residents. The meeting at Friends Meeting House was a fashionable, social occasion involving women of many religious persuasions. Agitation for universal suffrage had influenced some women, who were barred from taking a role in many of the suffrage societies, to create their own in the summer months of 1819. In the 1820s they continued to organise separately and joined their own female anti-slavery societies.

With the slave trade abolished, a new organisation was required to campaign for the end of slavery in the colonies. Wigan-born Quaker, James Cropper, established the Society for the Amelioration and Gradual Abolition of Slavery in Liverpool in 1822. Through his lobbying the London Anti-Slavery Society was formed in 1823. He attacked the ‘impolicy of the slavery in the West Indies appealing to reason and to free trade principles to show that a system of plantation cultivation by slave labour was inefficient, costly to the consumer and in the long run not in the interest to the planter.’ In 1831 the London Committee set up a system of agents to argue that colonial slavery was a Christian crime and should be abolished immediately. Liverpool-born George Thompson, whom the ladies of Manchester had come to see at Friends Meeting House, was their most celebrated lecturer.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonfriends-meeting-house 1832: Africans and Missionaries pitched against Planters and Church

James Cropper

Insurrection
The traditional arguments for and against slavery were now being enacted against a backdrop of slave insurrection and increasing disregard by the Jamaican planters for the amelioration legislation which had been enacted in London. A slave revolt had occurred after Christmas 1831, and resulted in the massive destruction of property of ‘whites and brown’. It was ruthlessly quashed, resulting in the reported deaths of thousands of slaves and three whites. Baptist and Methodist ministers were accused of incitement and attacked, their churches and property destroyed and tried for sedition. The Bishops who had voted against parliamentary reform at home were now seen to be aligned with the planters against the sectarian missionaries in Jamaica. The acrimony between dissenters and the established church which was now being played out in the colonies, and Jamaica in particular, was widely and graphically reported in the British press. The dissenters in the north-west would have read, with outrage, the report from the Jamaican Courier, ‘We hope he will award [the three Baptist ministers taken into custody] fair and impartial justice. Shooting is however too honourable a death for these men whose conduct has occasioned so much bloodshed, and the loss of so much property. There are fine hanging woods in St James and Trelawney and we do sincerely hope that the bodies of all the Methodist preachers who may be convicted of sedition may diversify the scene.’

In July William Knibbs, one of the Baptist ministers charged with sedition, came back to Britain from Jamaica and gave a first-hand account of his experiences to audiences in Liverpool and Manchester. He argued that the planters wished to ‘absolve themselves from the crown’, and would not allow the gospel to be spread in the West Indies. In Manchester he spoke to a horrified audience about a Methodist missionary being tarred and feathered.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonfriends-meeting-house 1832: Africans and Missionaries pitched against Planters and Church

William Knibbs, centre


East India Connections
The missionaries’ agitation for immediate emancipation and their oppression by the planters fired the populist movement. George Thompson and the agent for the West Indian planters, Borthwick, participated in a series of rowdy lectures in Liverpool. Borthwick caused outrage when he charged the Baptists missionaries with having instigated the slaves to rebellion. He also accused Thompson and the other anti-slavery leaders of self-interest, rather than humanitarian motives, in opposing the colonial system due to their connections with the East India trade. He argued that the plantation owners had the wishes of the slaves, ‘their children’, at heart and wished to develop the slaves gradually so that they could be placed ‘in the condition of English peasants’.
Guilt by Lynn Steinsonfriends-meeting-house 1832: Africans and Missionaries pitched against Planters and Church

George Thompson


An alignment of causes
The 1832 Reform Bill extended the franchise to male ‘forty-shilling freeholders’, although most people, including all women, still had no vote. Elections took place at the end of the year. As candidates for parliament, including dissenters for the first time, took to the hustings anti-slavery was seen as a vote winner. At Knibbs’ Manchester meeting prospective parliamentary candidate, Mark Philips, stood up and pledged himself against the union of church and state, tithes and the corn laws and announced himself a convert to immediate abolition. He was to become one of the first MPs for Manchester.

Anti-slavery was a fashionable cause amongst the middle classes. Some charge it was to ease their consciences for the treatment of workers at home, who were treated no better than slaves. However, the movement was a populist one with its roots in the democratic agitation championed by Walker and Cooper over 30 years earlier. Seymour Drescher’s work analyzing the 1832 Methodist anti-slavery petition signed by 1.3 million men and women shows that ‘abolitionism burst into the public arena just as its artisanal social basis was rapidly expanding in the various mining and manufacturing regions especially Lancashire.’ As the address from the Free Trade Hall on New Years Eve 1862 was to show it was the working, industrious classes who were equal leaders in the humanitarian movement.

As reports of the rebellious proceedings of the West Indian planters and condemnation of their treatment of British Christians continued, it was generally perceived inevitable that more insurrections would continue as long as slavery persisted. The new Parliament voted through the Emancipation Act in 1833.

Since 1828 dissenters were no longer barred from political office, and those with wealth were enfranchised. There was now a new focus for the political campaigners of the north-west and a new generation of liberals leading the way. Most still had no vote, and many were living in conditions they felt were no better than those endured by the slaves. In America slaves continued to produce the cotton that was spun and weaved in Lancashire. Parliamentary reform and slavery continued to be emotive political issues.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsonfriends-meeting-house 1832: Africans and Missionaries pitched against Planters and Church

A glimpse of the hidden histories of the black servants in Liverpool

I have just seen Django Unchained. The dining scene in the plantation house reminded me of Prestonian Samuel Leach’s (1829-1923) memoirs.

In his reminiscences of Liverpool in the first half of the nineteenth century Samuel recounted that the three Moon brothers had black servants from the Brazils whom they would take with them whenever they were dining out. Once all three had been together at a family’s birthday celebration. At the dinner table each brother had a black servant standing behind his chair ‘of course lightening the work for the servants of this family’.

He also recalled dining at the Cross Hotel in Bowness, in the Lake District, some years later ‘with Jefferson Davis, the President of the Southern Republic, who after his overthrow was touring with his family in Europe, when he had a splendid black man standing behind his own, his wife’s and his children’s chairs exactly in the same way- I don’t know why, but Darkies at that time used to be more common in the streets of Liverpool than they are today, [1915] one used to brush past them quite as an every day thing.

Samuel Leach, Old Age Reminiscences 1915.
Lancashire Records Office.

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The rights of man, woman, African and unitarian

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October 28 1787, Manchester Collegiate Church ‘When I went into the church it was so full that I could scarcely get to my place; for notice had been publicly given, though I knew nothing of it, that such a discourse … Continue reading

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