My Desert Island Discs #3

Posted on 30 August 2026 by Lynn Steinson

About six months ago I resolved to update my desert island discs selection. Choosing my favourite tracks started at a dinner party (what happened to them?) twenty years ago.  I revised them ten years ago and, as another BIG birthday looms, it is time to review them again…but with a day to go I still have not finalised my selection. 

I saw Paul McCartney only last year. It was a memorable concert. I recognised every song – some heard for the first time on the radio at Nana’s when I was about five and not immune, even then, to Beatlemania. Others as an undergraduate student listening to my friend Rosemary’s Wings album as Band on the Run played again and again on her record player. But despite my enjoyment of the octogenarian scouser I am afraid the Beatles’ In My Life will not survive. I recently heard Echo and the Bunnymen’s Ocean Rain on Radio 6. It still sounded fresh. I did see them (I think during the last decade – though maybe it was the previous one) at Manchester University Students’ Union- though ‘see’ is perhaps not an accurate description because there was so much dry ice wafting around the stage is was like viewing through a London fog. The sound was still incredible though. Ian McCulloch you are replacing the Fab Four.


Ocean Rain https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/3r92A6qjrG4sihvzl2nZDi?utm_source=generator&si=77362b4824a1469b

One of the best acts I did see before the pandemic was Earth, Wind and Fire at Manchester’s Apollo. They were still a great visual spectacle. Philip Bailey’s son takes over the vocals in the second half of the performance now. They struck me as a band who know how to age gracefully. Got to Get you into My Life would be my nomination, but it is not an easy choice. There are so many memorable songs. 80s rapper Melle Mel, creator of White Lines (Don’t Do It) was also in the frame. I saw him with the survivors of the Furious Five pre-pandemic – twice within a few weeks because they were so good. They greedily occupied two tracks on my 2006 desert island disc and Melle was also under consideration along with Chaka Khan, having rapped on the intro of I Feel For You. But the competition is fierce and Melle Mel, like Pharrell Williams (NERD) is giving way to funk in this year’s choice of top discs.

Earth, Wind and Fire. 2018.

Got to Get You Into My Life https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/4vGQNeWAh2WKPYsqhp5wSg?utm_source=generator&si=03c7d9996e994bdb

Also seen recently at the Apollo is Paul Weller – always a great concert. I have enjoyed his music as a member of The Jam and Style Council as well as his more recent solo career.  I did contemplate the Style Council’s You’re the Best Thing but I am afraid, as I was compiling this list, I heard a track on Radio 6 which pushed Paul out of the contest. Mark E Smith’s The Fall singing Hit the North always makes me want to dance – I think that is the influence of Brix Smith on the video. The Fall it is.

Paul Weller at the Apollo

Hit the North https://open.spotify.com/track/0XciPb5F3Sm9eDOfUVLDhO?si=a6292d7e094a47b4

David Bowie survived the last edit albeit singing Life on Mars rather than Ziggy Stardust. I went to see the immersive video exhibition You’re Not Alone at Kings Cross and was struck by how young he was when he sang Heroes. In fact, it looks like the 1978 concert I saw him play in Newcastle- a mesmerising performance. He just seemed to magically appear on the stage. That was in the days when top performers appeared in concert halls. I had a very different experience a few years later at Milton Keynes. I can now see from the footage that I was relatively near the front, but I could see nothing. I am sure I am not the only one who connects Bowie’s performance of Heroes to Live Aid in 1985. Since its release in 1977 so much has happened – no Berlin Wall – no David Bowie, either. Tony Visconti, Woody Woodmansey and Glenn Gregory are touring for the last time as Holy Holy performing the Bowie catalogue and I was lucky enough to see Mike Garson’s band including Corey Glover performing A Celebration of Bowie just a month before the pandemic. But David himself carries on in my final eight, this time singing Heroes.

Mike Garson’s A Tribute to David Bowie 2020

Heroes https://open.spotify.com/track/0WkxEasbtL1Z6KKxerPDtG?si=aa0fd92e6b3d4c52

I still love the Kinks’ music but somehow David Ruffin and Eddie Kendrick’s Temptations have previously escaped selection. My choice is Ain’t Too Proud To Beg. I must admit that this is influenced by a Live Aid performance. I recall one of the highlights from the American leg was Daryl Hall and John Oates introducing Eddie Kendricks and Jimmy Ruffin onto the stage. They were incredibly slim – a legacy of ill health and prison time I think. The voices were still captivating though. They had performed at the New York Apollo a couple of months earlier with Hall and Oates so their moves were well rehearsed.

Ain’t Too Proud To Beg https://open.spotify.com/track/56Hjc2nyNX5JHiO8aV6jVi?si=816129be1c624a3d

There are no women in my chart. Apologies. Joan Armatrading made the cut in the 2006 edit but there have been none since. Yet there are wonderful women- Debbie Harry performing with Blondie is still amazing, as I witnessed last year at Halifax’s Piece Hall. Pauline Black is still a commanding presence in The Selecter. New artists such as Greentea Peng (Stones Throw) and Nadine Shah (Topless Mother) are played on Craig Charles afternoon BBC Radio 6 show. I do like them, but not enough. I also came across Deftones’ last release Infinite Source on this programme, assuming they were a new band but in fact they have been creating music for decades and can sell out Europe’s biggest music arena, Co-op Live, in hours.  I also considered Young Fathers to be a new band until I realised they had been around for over a decade. I do love I Saw, but that does not make my final list either. I guess my selection is based on the memories they evoke as much as the music alone.

I saw Sananda Maitraya at Manchester’s The Ritz earlier this year. He still has the voice though he avoided the moves he made famous as Terrence Trent Darby. Wishing Well– which I first witnessed when he was supporting Simply Red in the eighties was under consideration for the list but I cannot exclude Oasis. I feel there are so many of their tracks I could choose, Cigarettes and Alcohol, Supersonic, Acquiescence…Despite spending a day on the phone a year ago trying to get tickets for an Oasis concert this summer I failed. But I have loved the revival of their music which was also the sound track to my football club’s difficult years in the nineties. Follow Manchester City, follow Oasis. I saw them before they split up at Heaton Park in the nineties. There was a power cut briefly and when they returned to the stage Liam promised everyone a refund against Noel’s exasperated protests. I got a refund.  

I am going to choose Don’t Look Back in Anger again, but this time for different reasons. Following the dreadful suicide bomb attack which killed 22 at Manchester Arena following an Arianne Grande concert in June 2017 this song became very poignant. The leaders of Manchester brought a city together which could have been torn apart. There was a vigil the day after during which poet Tony Walsh read This is the Place. On the Thursday, after a minute’s silence to remember the victims, Lydia Bernsmeier-Rullow spontaneously sang Don’t Look Back in Anger and others joined in. This has become an anthem for the city.

Don’t Look Back in Anger https://open.spotify.com/track/7ppPZa3TRUSGKaks9wH7VT?si=50feab94d6f447f6

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/25/dont-look-back-in-anger-becomes-symbol-of-manchester-spirit

I have come to like The Smiths music relatively recently, I think as a result of seeing Rick Astley and Blossoms perform at Glastonbury on TV. I did consider Johnny Marr singing There is a Light That Will Never Go Out. However, I am still moved by Love Will Tear Us Apart. But equally I never tire of Blue Monday so I will replace Joy Division with New Order.

Blue Monday https://open.spotify.com/track/31MOjWj3CT3dCQsMV2b8Wu?si=3af8993397954b3b

I only ever listen to Teddy Afro singing Minilik when I play it as, of course, it is never on the radio, so I have never tired of being moved by the haunting vocals. I did wonder about replacing it with a Bueno Vista Social Club track such as Chan Chan, which recalls a wonderful holiday in Cuba or Sarkodie, who I saw at the Albert Hall following a holiday in Ghana, but Teddy and Ethiopia win.

Along with the bible, which I would choose to be the Ethiopian version in the expectation that I would be able to study the differences with the English Standard version (but could I?), I would select a collection of Tony Walsh’s poems, Sex & Love & Rock and Roll. I seem to have been very worthy in my choice of luxury item last time- a language course! This time I will choose something more indulgent – a comfy feather pillow encased in a 400 thread Egyptian cotton pillowcase.

Tony Walsh: This is the Place

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-40027816

Not on the list this time. Melle Mel, creator of White Lines (Don’t Do It ) without the Furious Five or Grandmaster Flash.

A link to my 2016 choices below…

My Desert Island Discs
For The 22.

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Lydia Hardy – largely remembered in the endnotes of history books.

Posted on 7 June 2026 by Lynn Steinson

Thomas Hardy, a Scottish-born shoemaker and dissenter, now residing in London with his wife Lydia, founded the London Corresponding Society (LCS) in 1792. Its aims were to extend democracy to working men by establishing universal (male) suffrage and annual parliaments. Gustavus Vassa, also known as Olaudah Equiano, the African, was temporarily a lodger with the Hardys while revising his autobiography which went on to be a much-read critique of slavery, even today. Vassa was also a founding member of the LCS while Lydia Hardy was active in the anti-slavery movement supporting the campaign to abstain from slave-grown sugar. 

Lydia was the daughter of Nathaniel Priest, a carpenter from Chesham, Buckinghamshire. She sojourned in her home town from time to time, reporting on the success of the boycott of slave-grown sugar. Her six children died in infancy although Elizabeth survived until at least seven, George until three and Solomon was baptised in March 1794. Lydia does feature in the margins of accounts of the reform and anti-slavery movements and some letters to her husband and Gustavus Vassa survive in the National Archives. On her death a poem was written to commemorate her sad life. Her last months were certainly tragic. Over two hundred years later supporters of Fairtrade Chesham commemorated her life. 

Lydia’s letter to Thomas from Chesham commenting on the campaign against the slave trade.

Political representation in Georgian Britain was restricted to a small group of rich men but this concentration of power was being contested during the 1790s as the revolutionary ideas from America and France had a growing influence. The publication of Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man in 1791 inspired the establishment of many societies like the LCS which called for constitutional reform. 

1793 was tumultuous. In January the French King was guillotined and France declared war on Britain. The British government used agents provocateurs and spies to infiltrate working people’s organisations and mobs were stirred to attack those who were perceived to support foreign revolutionaries or religious dissenters. At the end of the year two leading members of the LCS, including its chair, were arrested following their attendance at a convention in Edinburgh. Life for the radicals was hard. Suspicions and distrust were rife in a daily life which was infiltrated by spies and informers. In addition, the interception of letters by the authorities was common and the leaders’ reputations and characters were trashed in the press especially The Times. Penalties for those accused of agitation were harsh in a world where calls for democracy could be equated to treason. LCS members Maurice Margarot and Joseph Gerald, were found guilty of sedition as a result of their attendance at the Edinburgh convention and were transported to New South Wales the following May.

On 12 May 1794 at 6.30 in the morning Lydia was at home with her husband when he was arrested. He was subsequently committed to the Tower of London charged with high treason.  She was, like other distressed LCS family members, given financial support by the society. Two weeks later a Church and King mob, celebrating the British naval victory over the French, attacked the Hardy house and shop in Piccadilly. They had suspected that she was sympathetic to the revolutionary French.Lydia had to escape through a small back window with the help of neighbours. This was only done with some difficulty due to her pregnancy and the child did not survive as a result. Despite her poor health she continued to visit her husband in the Tower where he awaited trial. Both knew that if he was found guilty the punishment was to be hanged, drawn and quartered. On 27 August Lydia, exhausted by life, died shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. 

The Crown had suspended Habeas Corpus thus enabling the accused which also included John Thelwell and John Horne Tooke to be imprisoned for some months. Usually trials for high treason were conducted over a day. Hardy had to face a 9 hour speech by the prosecution and a nine day trial but it only took the jury 3 hours to acquit him. His co-defendents were also acquitted. On November 5h he left the court feted by his supporters, but a broken man, having lost his wife, shoe shop and home. His legal fees had left him with little money.

He wrote his memoir some six years after the trial although it was not published until thirty four years later. He writes in the third person and although he explains this is to avoid using “I” repeatedly I wonder if this is to create some distance between him and the sad events of his life. 

Some years ago I was at a writing workshop and we were asked to choose the name for a protagonist in a story. I chose “Lydia Hardy”. Another participant said she thought the name rather “vanilla”. I think this was a term rarely used at the time but I suspected it was used derogatorily and I now know it was! Lydia was anything but vanilla and a drama about her would be fascinating.

Bibliography

Chesham Fairtrade History https://fairtrade.org.uk/chesham-fairtrade-history

An Account of the Seizure of Citizen Thomas Hardy Secretary to the London Corresponding Society. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/why-was-radical-writer-thomas-paine-significant/why-was-radical-writer-thomas-paine-significant-source-2/

Testaments of Radicalism: Memoirs of Working Class Politicians, 1790–1885 (1977) Ed.  David Vincent.

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A roam around my books -12 – the attraction of academic papers

Posted on 6 June 2026 by Lynn Steinson

This gallery contains 2 photos.

A collection of lever arch files stands along the bottom shelf of my bookcase. Although they contain a few photocopies made in the university library during my undergraduate years most contain print-outs of academic papers, sourced through a digital library … Continue reading →

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A roam around my books 11 – the missing narratives from history

Posted on 20 March 2025 by Lynn Steinson

The scope of the historian is potentially everything which has gone before. If the scholar has any chance of recounting, or even understanding a fragment of the past, they must be selective in the remit of their research. Perhaps a tendency to create silos is inherent in the discipline in order for the past to become manageable.  Gloria Steinem has commented on the media’s pre-occupation during the sixties with labelling activists as either civil rights or feminist campaigners even though many were both. The women saw  a commitment to both causes as part of the same struggle. Often lives can be intertwined but their historical reputations are viewed through the prism of different lenses.

I am thinking of African-born former slave, Olaudah Equiano (aka Gustavus Vassa), and Thomas Hardy, the Scottish shoemaker who lodged in the same house at Piccadilly, London during 1791.  For those who digest their history from the big screen rather than books, Equiano was played by Youssou N’dour opposite Rufus Sewell’s Thomas Clarkson in the film “Amazing Grace”. Both were supporting actors to Ioan Gruddudd who took the lead as William Wilberforce. Wilberforce, the voice of the anti-slavery movement in parliament, is probably the name most widely recognised today as a campaigner against the trade. Equiano and Clarkson were the activists on the ground, traveling the British Isles to gain support from ordinary men and women for abolition.

Youssou N’Dour and Rufus Sewell as Equiano and Clarkson in the film ‘Amazing Grace’.

Although the name of the Tory MP is widely associated with the anti slavery movement I do not recall any black campaigners being mentioned, nor the role of slave rebellions which contributed to the ending of the trade and ultimately the institution in British colonies.

In 1792 Thomas Hardy founded the London Corresponding Society which agitated for the democratic reform of parliament. Hardy’s Society was an established part of my grammar school syllabus, as was the contribution of founding member Francis Place. Equiano was an early founding member of the Society, too, but his role in eighteenth century politics is usually assigned exclusively to the anti-slavery movement and his involvement with advocating for British democracy is overlooked. Hardy is singularly associated with the struggle for parliamentary reform rather than abolition.

One activist rarely mentioned in either struggle is Lydia Hardy, the Chesney-born wife of Thomas Hardy and mother of his six children. She was a leader in the campaign for the abstention of slave-grown sugar and was also lodging in the Piccadilly household with her husband and Equiano. As far as I am aware there has been no attempt to bring Lydia’s story to the big screen although her life was very dramatic and tragic. Perhaps, arguably, Equiano is today acknowledged as a black abolitionist in Britain, but he was not alone. He was one of a group known as the Sons of Africa who used to correspond with the London papers to advocate on behalf of the enslaved.

 

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A roam around my books 10 – the empty spaces

Posted on 19 March 2025 by Lynn Steinson

Now there are empty spaces on bookshelves which were once densely populated and over-flowing.But some books have escaped the cull for years, and probably always will.  Their spines crowd the shelves with memories of years gone by, as evocative as the fading photographs in my albums.

Books studied earnestly for uni seminars and essays – which I have noticed also still populate the bookshelves of my contemporaries – sit alongside biographies and autobiographies of politicians and favourite celebrities. An interest in the presentation of the lives of others seems to have permeated all my book-reading decades.

 

Yet the attraction of dialectical materialism seems to have given way to a fascination with magical realism in my later twenties. Columbian fiction, native american shamanism and handbooks for the tarot sit a short way from Marx and Engels. Perhaps these political thinkers’ faith in the miraculous “withering away of the state” was not that far removed from the dreams of the shamans.

Then there are the empty spaces occupied by the missing books – those that perished in the cull and were deported to Oxfam. These spaces largely belong to the forgotten plots of novels. Their browning pages, crammed with fading text served only to deter all but the most determined reader.

 

There is a shelf which should rarely be disturbed. The books that recline here are a displacement activity for writing. If you are reading about writing why aren’t you actually doing it?  Get in your writing practice! But perhaps I’m being unfair. I have found Stephen King’s book On Writing a good read.

 

Other shelves are packed with tour guides to countries spanning all five continents.  All but a few are well-thumbed. The few pristine books unfortunately now surplus to requirements due to the alarming changes in the  geo-political landscape. Their tenure is likely to be terminated shortly to make way for guides to places soon to be visited.

I suspect a visitor might deduce something of my character and interests, and even my career, from a trawl of my bookshelves. This is less likely in the future, as more spaces appear. The successors to the discarded paperbacks now hide in a virtual library on Kindle or even as an audible book. As i-tunes devoured our music  collections so Kindle usurps the printed page. Perhaps our wardrobes, if still cluttered with outfits from previous decades, will be the only tangible clues to our own life histories.

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Guilt – the gripping new psychological thriller.

Posted on 1 March 2021 by Lynn Steinson

Manchester is enjoying a long hot summer but Lisa hasn’t noticed. She’s dreading being called as the chief witness in a murder trial. That’s after she has attended the funerals of the victims.

In London her colleagues at Bergers advertising agency are horrified to hear rumours that they are to be relocated to Manchester.  Rory is dispatched to the north on a mission to keep Lisa and her ambitious manager Corinne in line – at all costs.  

Lisa thinks she is keeping it all together, until colleague Tasmin asks, ‘Lisa, have you seen this? I think you should know what’s been Tweeted about you. You have a troll and not a very nice one.’ 

Guilt is about the surviving members of The Sun pub quiz team. It is the sequel to Deluded. 

Buy GUILT at Amazon

‘Good story, humour, suspense and fabulous dialogue. 
A veritable love letter to Manchester.’ 

Listen to the Spotify playlist

GUILT playlist on Spotify

What’s going on? Marvin Gaye

Hit the north The Fall

Suffragette city David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars

This charming man The Smiths

Don’t you forget about me Simple Minds

Say it isn’t so Daryl Hall and John Oates

Never forget Take That

Blue Monday New Order

Long hot summer Style Council

Every day hurts Sad Cafe

Like a prayer Madonna

You really got a hold on me The Miracles

Back to life Soul II Soul

I’m doing fine now The Pasadenas

Back stabbers The O’Jays

Teenage kicks The Undertones

Please don’t go KC and the Sunshine Band

Going underground The Jam

The killing moon Echo and the Bunnymen

You really got me The Kinks

I feel for you Chaka Khan

There is a light that never goes out The Smiths

Even after all Finley Quaye

Always the sun Stranglers

This is how it feels Inspiral Carpets

You get what you give The New Radicals

The changing man Paul Weller

The message Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

Our lips are sealed Fun Boy Three

Unfinished sympathy Massive Atttack

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A roam about my books 9 – in search of postmodernism

Posted on 23 February 2021 by Lynn Steinson

Postmodernism- what is it?

‘You’re not a post-modernist are you?’ enquires my tutor accusingly, in a tone that suggests I might be trouble.  
          ‘Uhh, I do not…know,’ I reply slowly, trying to express some gravitas in my voice, as if my response was based on intellectual grounds rather than ignorance.

The next day, on my way to a seminar on critical thinking I see lots of posters have suddenly appeared advertising a series of seminars on “Postmodernism-what is it?  Wednesday 24 September 2.00 pm and then every other week”’  I will have to change my plans but this seems fortuitous so I head over to the postgraduate office. From behind the counter a girl peers through a crenel in the battlement of computers which divide students from those appointed to help them and she quickly dispatches me to see Paul in another office. I ask Paul if he knows anything about the seminar which is due to happen this afternoon.         
            ‘Oh, yes,’ he replies confidently, ‘I do.’
            ‘Yes?’
            ‘It’s cancelled today. There was a timetable clash. The lecturer had research to do in Ireland’.
            ‘Well, can you tell me anything about it?’
            ‘Just put your name on this list and you will be e-mailed… ‘
           So I return to the first plan and head off to ‘Critical Thinking’.
           ‘And so what is critical thinking?’ the Professor asks in perfect English which has a beguiling quality bestowed by an alluring French accent. No one responds. I search my brain for a definition. Intelligent questioning? I am still pondering when he surrenders to the collective silence of the group and turns to his next slide,  ‘Critical thinking is the process defined as the hermeneutics of suspicion.’ 
            Later, after spending some time looking up the meaning of various words used in his lecture, I understand that the key message was that if you want to appear scholarly you have to learn and use your subject’s jargon, sorry its tropes, with confidence.

Almost a week later and I try and find out if the ‘Postmodernism-what is it?’ seminar has been rearranged. First I check the notice boards so that I do not needlessly bother the office.  The notices are still up. I head for the office. A head briefly darts out from behind a computer.
            ‘Hi, please can you tell me what has happened to the seminar “Postmodernism -what is it?” It was supposed to be held last Wednesday but it was cancelled. Is it going to run tomorrow?’
            ‘Well I have the tag list here.’ Indeed she does have a list of everyone’s name and e-mail addresses by her right arm.
            ‘Yes, that is the list we were asked to add our details to so that we could be contacted. It was thought it might run tomorrow.’
            ‘I will try and find out for you.’ Busy activity at the computer. ‘Yes the problem with the timetabling has been resolved and it will run as the notice says.’
            ‘So it will run a week on Wednesday then?’
            ‘No, the 24 September.’
           ‘But it is 2 October today. That was last week. It was cancelled. It did not happen.’ 
            She looks at me as if I am being needlessly awkward. ‘Oh so, aahm, I will e-mail Stephen to find out and then e-mail you’.
            ‘Thank you. I think everyone else on that list would like to know as well.’ I offer helpfully, though I know, pointlessly.

Wednesday, two weeks after I saw the posters about the seminar, and having received no e-mails, I return to the postgraduate office in search of the Holy Grail. Three heads quickly flit back behind the computer parapet and the chatter abruptly stops and is replaced by the tappetty-tap of typing as I enter the room. By veering to the left and crouching a little I manage to catch the eye of the girl and she reluctantly offers assistance.

            ‘The seminar “Postmodernism, what is it?” Do you know if it will run?’
            ‘Are you on the list?’
            ‘Yes, I am on the list but I have not been told about anything.’
            She sighs and gets up, walks round the counter and out of the door and disappears. I wait listening to the clatter of fingertips on keyboards. A few minutes later she returns.
            ‘No, sorry we do not know anything.’ 
            ‘Nothing?’
            ‘No, nothing at all.’

 

Robert Eaglestone’s book Postmodernism and Holocaust Denial is the only reference to postmodernism on my bookshelves. It reminds me that there are no volumes by the French political philosophers who shaped the generations of arts, humanities and social science undergraduates who followed me. Unlike the books about mid-twentieth century politicians which were allowed to grace my bookshelves for a few years before giving way to newcomers, the postmodernists never materialised in physical form in my bookcases at all. My curiosity about the writings of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu was satiated by Google and Wikipedia. Eaglestone’s book reminds me of my attempts to find out more about postmodernism as I began the first term of a Masters course.

Postmodernism- what is it?

‘You’re not a post-modernist are you?’ enquires my tutor accusingly, in a tone that suggests I might be trouble.  
          ‘Uhh, I do not…know,’ I reply slowly, trying to express some gravitas in my voice, as if my response was based on intellectual grounds rather than ignorance.

The next day, on my way to a seminar on critical thinking I see lots of posters have suddenly appeared advertising a series of seminars on “Postmodernism-what is it?  Wednesday 24 September 2.00 pm and then every other week”’  I will have to change my plans but this seems fortuitous so I head over to the postgraduate office. From behind the counter a girl peers through a crenel in the battlement of computers which divide students from those appointed to help them and she quickly dispatches me to see Paul in another office. I ask Paul if he knows anything about the seminar which is due to happen this afternoon.         
            ‘Oh, yes,’ he replies confidently, ‘I do.’
            ‘Yes?’
            ‘It’s cancelled today. There was a timetable clash. The lecturer had research to do in Ireland’.
            ‘Well, can you tell me anything about it?’
            ‘Just put your name on this list and you will be e-mailed… ‘
           So I return to the first plan and head off to ‘Critical Thinking’.
           ‘And so what is critical thinking?’ the Professor asks in perfect English which has a beguiling quality bestowed by an alluring French accent. No one responds. I search my brain for a definition. Intelligent questioning? I am still pondering when he surrenders to the collective silence of the group and turns to his next slide,  ‘Critical thinking is the process defined as the hermeneutics of suspicion.’ 
            Later, after spending some time looking up the meaning of various words used in his lecture, I understand that the key message was that if you want to appear scholarly you have to learn and use your subject’s jargon, sorry its tropes, with confidence.

Almost a week later and I try and find out if the ‘Postmodernism-what is it?’ seminar has been rearranged. First I check the notice boards so that I do not needlessly bother the office.  The notices are still up. I head for the office. A head briefly darts out from behind a computer.
            ‘Hi, please can you tell me what has happened to the seminar “Postmodernism -what is it?” It was supposed to be held last Wednesday but it was cancelled. Is it going to run tomorrow?’
            ‘Well I have the tag list here.’ Indeed she does have a list of everyone’s name and e-mail addresses by her right arm.
            ‘Yes, that is the list we were asked to add our details to so that we could be contacted. It was thought it might run tomorrow.’
            ‘I will try and find out for you.’ Busy activity at the computer. ‘Yes the problem with the timetabling has been resolved and it will run as the notice says.’
            ‘So it will run a week on Wednesday then?’
            ‘No, the 24 September.’
           ‘But it is 2 October today. That was last week. It was cancelled. It did not happen.’ 
            She looks at me as if I am being needlessly awkward. ‘Oh so, aahm, I will e-mail Stephen to find out and then e-mail you’.
            ‘Thank you. I think everyone else on that list would like to know as well.’ I offer helpfully, though I know, pointlessly.

Wednesday, two weeks after I saw the posters about the seminar, and having received no e-mails, I return to the postgraduate office in search of the Holy Grail. Three heads quickly flit back behind the computer parapet and the chatter abruptly stops and is replaced by the tappetty-tap of typing as I enter the room. By veering to the left and crouching a little I manage to catch the eye of the girl and she reluctantly offers assistance.

            ‘The seminar “Postmodernism, what is it?” Do you know if it will run?’
            ‘Are you on the list?’
            ‘Yes, I am on the list but I have not been told about anything.’
            She sighs and gets up, walks round the counter and out of the door and disappears. I wait listening to the clatter of fingertips on keyboards. A few minutes later she returns.
            ‘No, sorry we do not know anything.’ 
            ‘Nothing?’
            ‘No, nothing at all.’

 

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A roam around my books 8 – staying power

Posted on 23 March 2019 by Lynn Steinson

‘There were Africans in Britain before the English came here’ is certainly a great opening line, but for me there’s nothing like a good footnote. Peter Fryer’s Staying Power is packed with them, or I should say endnotes. One hundred and forty pages of signposts to more troves of hidden knowledge. Plus, there’s a whole section on Further Reading. It’s the book that just keeps on giving.

I bought this study of the black presence in Britain a few years after it was published while I was working in Liverpool. At the time I was intending to write a novel set in the eighteenth century port. I am not sure if the book inspired the idea for the story, or if it was acquired as part of my research. I still have a box containing the opening chapters and plan, plus notes and photographs of numerous eighteenth century Liverpudlian doorways in dilapidated buildings. I’m not sure how I knew where to find them, but I did.

Georgian Liverpool photographed in the 1980s

I remember unexpectedly coming across a stray vessel from the tall ships race as I approached the waterfront one evening. It was twilight, the masts were silhouetted against the sky. Black birds crowded its rigging. It was dark and foreboding but majestic, too. A very powerful image, and I’m sure it would have demanded a paragraph in my never-to-be-finished historical novel.

Within Fryer’s endnotes were references to books that I would only be able to acquire some years later, once the Internet had made it easy to purchase out-of-print books and magazines. This included the work of Nigerian historian Folerin O. Shyllon. His books Black slaves in Britain and Black people in Britain 1555-1833, in which the Sons of Africa [1] are rescued from the “enormous condescension of history”[2] are a pleasure.

Finding the Country Life Annual 1967 was also a coup. G. Bernard Wood recounts local folk lore about the use of black slaves in the country houses and quarries of the Lake District and North Yorkshire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The article by G. Bernard Woods was the source for this story in Staying Power.

Other victims were the black children sold as house-boys in Westmorland early in the nineteenth century. The Liverpool merchant John Bolton would pick out young boys from his slave cargoes and transfer them to Greenodd. A local young man would smuggle them up to the Leven Valley to Windermere, where they were taken to Storrs Hall which Bolton owned, and sold to the local gentry. Other victims again were black youths who toiled in the marble quarries at Rigg End, near Dent in the West Riding, by Liverpool slave-merchant, Sill. [3]

Storrs Hall near Windermere

The article also mentions some oral history tapes which were made in the 1960s by a Mr T Wray Milnes of Lea Yeat in Dentdale. Milnes was recording tales from local inhabitants – some of their grandparents would have been alive when the slave trade in the British Empire was abolished by parliament. Unfortunately I have been unable to track down these tapes.

Dent, North Yorkshire

Some years later I also made contact with Kim Lyons, a local history expert of Dentdale.  She gave me a fascinating insight into local folklore about the slave trail in the north west. Slaves were brought into Whitehaven and auctioned in Kelleth Square. She had some very interesting stories, some of them chilling, but I think they are for her and her family to tell, not for me. Academic historians have dismissed much of this folk lore, but it is a verifiable fact that Africans were house servants in the grand houses of England, so there must have been the means to traffic them there.

Footnotes

  1. The Sons of Africa were black agitators against slavery in the eighteenth century. Their letters are reproduced in Appendix II of Black People in Britain. They were led by Olaudah Equiano a.k.a. Gustavus Vassa, associate of Thomas Clarkson and also Manchester’s Thomas Walker.

2.  Quoting from E. P. Thompson’s  epic Making of the English Working Class

3.  Staying Power, Fryer Peter, 1984. p 228 reference to footnotes 2 and 3.

IMG_5515

Peter Fryer’s Staying Power had recently been reissued. It was first published in 1984. My edition is the fourth impression 1989.

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Akala

Posted on 19 March 2019 by Lynn Steinson

When Akala was twelve he was in the top 1% of his age group in mathematics. That was almost 25 years ago and, in these times when political discourse is dominated by obfuscation and hypocrisy, his grasp of statistics and passion for evidencing an argument is refreshing.

Akala at Waterstones, Manchester. May 2018

‘This is the only time I will quote Tony Blair,’ he says referring to  the New Labour mantra education, education, education. Hardly anyone who leaves university at 21 gets shot and goes to prison, he puts out. His thirteen year old peers are all in jail or dead.   42% of people in prison have been expelled from school. 24% have been in care. The statistics show where the problem lies and how resources should be targeted. It costs money to incarcerate people. Why not use the money to address the issue before it is too late?

Akala survived the dangerous teenage years to become an award winning rap artist, documentary writer, founder of the Hip-hop Shakespeare Company and now author. He is promoting his book Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire, a study of how race and class shape lives and which reconciles the sweep of history with individual experience. He describes himself as ‘someone who barely went to college yet who has lectured at almost every university in the country. I come from one of the statistically least likely groups to attain five GCSE passes – white and ‘mixed-race’ boys on free school meals fail at an even greater rate than ‘fully black’ boys on free school do – but I got ten GCSEs, including multiple A* grades. I took my maths GCSE a year early and attended the Royal Institution’s Mathematics masterclasses as a schoolboy…. When I say I could have been a statistic – another working-class black man dead or in prison – people who did not grow up how we grew up probably think that’s an exaggeration. But people that grew up like us know just how real this statement is, just how easily the scales could have been tipped.’

In a GQ magazine interview with Eleanor Halls he says, ‘I think I was very lucky because I went to a pan-African Saturday school. I was taught a community vision of history that was different to the mainstream vision. Mainstream intelligence and mainstream society has a way of presenting itself as the norm. This is history, this is what happened. Any serious student of history knows it’s not exactly that simple, and even the mere act of writing a history book means you’re going to choose what evidence to include, what evidence to not include, what narrative to tell, and what narrative not to tell. It’s like editing a film – there are rushes that get left out. It doesn’t even always mean you’re deliberately being biased – just the act of creating a historical narrative necessitates a perspective.’

He quotes E.P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, Cheikh Anta Diop, Franz Fanon and Lao Tzu as influences but ‘I also read a lot of stuff I disagree with. I read a lot of Niall Ferguson. I don’t like his work, and I completely disagree with [his] historical perspective, but you can’t only read people you agree with, otherwise all you get is bias confirmation.’

On Windrush.

The government has turned British citizens who paid for themselves to come here into immigrants. Why would the Windrush generation register for citizenship when they are already citizens? Race and class are a way of playing people against each other.

On ethnicity

When they say ethnicity is the reason for crime it gives the police who are bigoted licence. Should the Prime Minister be ethnically responsible for white paedophiles who work at the BBC?

On violence

I have one request, going forward can we try to use the appropriate term #seriousyouthviolence rather than just ‘Knife crime’ – I know its a mouthful but ‘knife crime’ seems to have become a dog whistle that does little to encourage serious thought at this point…

Links

 GQ Interview with Eleanor Halls Retrieved 10:50 19/3/2019

Guardian interview with Owen Jones, 18/3/2019

Good Morning Britain interview with Piers Morgan,18/3/2019

Hip-hop Shakespeare Company Retrieved 10:50 19/3/2019

Roots, Reggae and Rebellion, Akala’s BBC documentary 2016 Retrieved 15:23 19/3/2019

Akala was speaking at a Waterstones event in Manchester on 15 May 2018. The review was updated on 19 March 2019 to reflect recent news.

 

Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

The paperback is available on 21 March 2019

 

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Deluded, the gripping psychological thriller

Posted on 20 May 2018 by Lynn Steinson

 

If you are going to The Sun be careful who you might meet. Be very careful. 

The secrets of four members of a pub quiz team are entwined with deadly consequences in this gripping new psychological thriller.

Lisa thinks she has it all – dream job, besotted boyfriend, loyal friends, even her pub quiz team might win. But she’s about to find out that things aren’t quite as they seem. As she pits her wits against charismatic Judith’s wiles her amateur investigations trigger a murderous chain of events. Who is Judith? And just who is deluded?

Buy DELUDED at the Kindle Store or as a paperback from Amazon DELUDED ***Top 3 Book*** A gripping psychological thriller

READER’S REVIEWS

An intriguing read, with some excellent twists and turns. 

Lots of twists and turns. Good characters which were all enjoyable and great pub quiz’s. Thoroughly enjoyed it hence my 5 star review.

This book is a great read. A psychological thriller that draws you in from the first page and keeps you guessing until the very end. Join the members of the pub quiz team and discover all their secrets. Very well written and listen to the playlist on Spotify. I connected to this book on so many levels.

Brilliant book. Enjoyed it thoroughly. Full of twists and turns all the way through it. Kept me intrigued right to the end.

Found this really enjoyable with very believable and well rounded characters holding your attention while the plot moves along quickly and keeps you on your toes as the story progresses! Recommended.

Really enjoyed this book and once I got into it I couldn’t put it down. I don’t read a great deal of books but this caught my eye.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I don’t generally read thrillers but I found it intriguing and gripping and definitely didn’t guess what would unfold as the book went on! The descriptive writing is excellent.

FREE on KINDLE UNLIMITED

You can listen to the DELUDED playlist on Spotify by clicking this link DELUDED PLAYLIST.

INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR 

Follow the link to Altrincham Word Fest website

 

 
 

 

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