Lynn Steinson's Blog

A roam around my books – 3

Posted on 3 June 2015 by Lynn Steinson

I love to travel, venture into the unknown. Two shelves of travel books represent my worldwide quest for understanding the world we live in a little more, questioning ‘knowledge’ which had hitherto been taken for granted, or learning and seeing something completely new. The well-thumbed pages of these books accompanied me as memories of five continents were formed.

My yearning to travel began in gentile Lytham St. Annes. As Uncle Frank and Auntie Irene’s slide projector threw images onto the sitting room wall of Austrian fountains playing beneath cascades of baroque steps. I resolved that I would holiday abroad when I was grown up. I did not have to wait that long. Fortunately my mother also had the travel bug. She had once holidayed in Interlaken with the afore mentioned Irene, and she was intent on returning to Switzerland. So when I was ten we flew to Basel and then took a train to Lugano. As we made our way around Italian speaking Ticino I became obsessed with all things Swiss, collecting chocolate bar wrappers and till receipts. This all-consuming passion and commitment was usually only reserved for Davy Jones of the Monkees. I remember my mother was rather disappointed with the Coca Cola. She remembered sipping a glass near the summit of Mont Blanc on her previous visit, but it was not quite as she remembered it. I suspect there had been a major change in the recipe during the intervening years.

Guilt by Lynn Steinsoncoke-300x198 A roam around my books - 3

26 years old, Irene and Edna first and second on the left, on their first holiday abroad. 1952.

Looking back our arrival in the Alps was remarkable as the last 15 miles of the 260 mile journey to Gatwick airport was made via Reigate General Hospital in an ambulance, while our Triumph Herald was towed to a garage where it took several months to repair. My father, never seen without cap and glasses, had to spend the early days of his first excursion outside Britain with limited vision until the local opticians were able to provide a new pair of spectacles. I can imagine that was a big dent in the holiday budget. His blurry vision did not seem to dampen his mood, maybe he was just grateful he had managed to react quickly and save his family from obliteration. The taxi driver who hit us, overtaking on a narrow road, was later charged with dangerous driving. Looking back we were lucky to get to Switzerland at all, but even as the hours ticked away at the hospital my mother never once considered that we might not be boarding the Swissair flight to Basel.

For some reason, perhaps to avoid travelling the length of England to an airport, our next holiday was a package to Lloret de Mar from Ringway, still under Franco’s fascist rule at the time. This was not considered a great success, I think, and my mother was soon organising a more challenging itinerary to yet another dictatorship, Caetano’s poverty-stricken Portugal. The purpose of most of our fellow holidaymakers in Figueira da Foz was to visit the shrine at Fatima. Maybe the name of the tour company Pilgrim Travel might have been a clue. Despite the inclement weather during the first week, the terrorist bomb in the harbour and the stink of the meat market I had the travel bug by the time we got back.

Paddling in the Atlantic. Figueira da Foz. c1970.

I am not going to find my favourite book amongst the travelogues but certainly these books trigger memories of extraordinary experiences: prayer flags flying over the stupas in the Himalayan Buddhist state of Bhutan; animist shrines and rock tombs in rural Dogon country, Mali; pondering the similarities between the conquistadors, Spanish Inquisition and bloodthirsty Aztecs while in a church in Mexico City. All these recollections and more permeate my imagination and ultimately my writing.

Often the biggest surprises have been found where they are least expected. This often happens in The States. In the John Paul Getty Museum I overheard an American asking if the likenesses on the thousands years-old Roman-Egyptian funeral masks were so good -though how would he know?- because they had been taken from photographs. In Colorado I encountered men wearing big Stetsons. ‘Are they being serious?’ I asked my travelling companion, as I wondered if the men were on their way to some mad hatters stag party. For some reason I had thought only television characters in Dallas actually dressed like that. Conversely my media-induced perception that historic Native Americans only lived in tee-pees was disproved by the awesome cliff dwellings of the Mesa Verde in New Mexico.

The Taj Mahal was so familiar, and so exactly as I imagined it, that I was unmoved. I felt I had already been there a hundred times. Unexpectedly arriving in Villahermosa in Western Mexico, to avoid a Zapatista uprising, I took an unscheduled tour of the previously unheard of, La Vente. The local guide stood before a large stone head, its African features carved several hundred years before Christ, and dismissively said the likeness was of a slave, ‘of course’. The tour group silently compared their knowledge of transatlantic history and the evidence before them. Many scholars claim the Olmec statues have no connection with Africa. I just don’t believe them.

In Peru my two companions from Surrey, decided to educate me on the dietary habits of Manchester. They were insistent that the fish and chip shops in Manchester sold deep-fried Mars bars, and were well known for this. I explained that actually it was Glasgow that I thought had the dubious honour of being famous for this delicacy. They could not be persuaded. As our small plane accelerated down the runway at Nazca I finally agreed. ‘Yes, yes Manchester is known for its deep-fried Mars Bars,’ fearing that any further argument would interrupt my enjoyment of the mysterious Nazca lines which were about to unfold before me. I still wonder at their insistence that this incorrect fact is true. I guess it must have been crucial to the establishment of their cultural superiority.

But usually it is the local people, not the tourists who are memorable. Near the source of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia I met Mermer who was able to talk with great authority about all the Arsenal players who had ever transferred to Manchester City. If there is an Ethiopian Mastermind he would surely win with his specialist knowledge of Arsenal Football Club. I hope he achieves his ambition to be an engineer.

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Historians make history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing…

Posted on 31 October 2013 by Lynn Steinson

Edward Palmer Thompson’s selected works

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under circumstances of their own choosing, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past”, Karl Marx.

Edward Palmer Thompson was a product of his time and circumstances. He was born in 1924 in Oxford to Methodist English missionaries. After a private education he was called up, at just 17, to fight in the Second World War, first in Africa, then in Italy at the battle of Cassino. His older brother Frank, a British officer, was executed fighting fascism in Bulgaria, a story Edward recounted in “Beyond the Frontier: The politics of a failed mission to Bulgaria 1944”. After the war Edward went up to Cambridge where, like many of his generation, he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain.

If one of his children had become leader of the Labour Party he would surely be the subject of a vitriolic campaign by the Daily Mail to be outed as a man who hated Britain. As it is, he is now remembered by the media in the book reviews of the broadsheets as the author of “The Making of the English Working Class”. The book is celebrating a landmark anniversary this year. It has been in continuous print for fifty years. Thompson is one of the 250 most frequently cited authors of all time, and the most cited historian. His seminal book is largely responsible for the attention given, during the late twentieth century, to the histories of neglected, or forgotten peoples, including the attention given to black history. The book is grand in many ways although its author may be charged with a serious omission – women are largely absent from the pages of the book.

The Making of the English Working Class

Thompson rejected the rigid base/superstructure definition of class advocated by Marxian economic determinists. His paper in the New Reasoner No 1 Summer 1957 pp 105-143 “Socialist Humanism, An Epistle to the Philistines’ rigorously attacks Stalinism. Values were important to Thompson. He left the Communist Party following the Soviet invasion of Hungary. With Trevor Huddleston, A.J.P. Taylor and J.B. Priestly he shaped The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the late fifties and was a prominent leader of the peace movement until his death.

The sixties was a time of change when bright and creative men and women from the north were influencing national and international culture. For the first time in the media regional accents were not merely accepted but were fashionable. These young men and women did not “know their place” and if they did they were not going to accept it. Thompson’s “Making” was born at this moment unveiling the traditions, intelligence and ideas of this part of England which was suddenly in the public eye.

The number of undergraduate social scientists and historians expanded following the establishment of the campus ‘plate glass’ universities like York, Kent, Sussex and Warwick. The number of those obtaining first degrees more than doubled between 1960 and 1970, from 22,000 to 51,000. [1] Higher education was now available to a new generation of eighteen year-olds, many were the first in their families to benefit from higher education. Their ancestors may well have been those who were “making the English working class”. They provided an enthusiastic readership for the output of the campus historians of the sixties which included Ralph Miliband, Perry Anderson, Robin Blackburn, Asa Briggs, Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawn, John Saville, Dorothy Thompson -his wife whom he had met at Cambridge- and Raymond Williams.

Marx’s statement that, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it” was a guiding principle. Thompson had a purpose, to rescue the stories of the losers in history from the “condescension of posterity”. Thompson had moved north after Cambridge, working under Asa Briggs in the University of Leeds, leading courses in the Extra Mural Studies department while he was researching and writing the “Making”. He was in the north, just as the north was asserting its cultural identity he was rescuing its cultural history.

I recall hearing Thompson speak in Hyde Park, sharing a platform with Tony Benn I seem to recall. He was a powerful speaker, a man who did not merely write about the theory of Marxism but was also committed to its praxis. He was steeped in literature and philosophy which informed his work, and a Marxism which he redefined. He was a socialist humanist, historian and activist, an intellectual of the New Left and, along with Miliband, a fierce critic of Soviet communism.

I have read “The Making” through at least twice – at over 900 pages, not a book which can be devoured too quickly- and dipped into it many times. My 1975 copy contains many marks in biro, and from a more recent read, in highlighter pen. On pages nine and eleven two quotes have been marked by both.

“And class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men and women whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs.”

To Thompson class was a relationship, not a thing. It was the driver of historical change.

“If we stop history at a given point, then there are no classes but simply a multitude of individuals with a multitude of experiences. But if we watch these men over an adequate period of social change, we observe patterns in their relationships, their ideas, and their institutions. Class is defined by men as they live their own history, and in the end, that is its only definition.”

And for me that is also the definition of history.

[1]House of Commons Library,Education Statistics. SN/SG/4252 Last updated: 27 November 2012. p 20.
http://www.parliament.uk/Templates/BriefingPapers/Pages/BPPdfDownload.aspx?bp-id=sn04252

Posted in Books, Forgotten histories | Tagged E.P.Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class | Leave a comment

No time for encores

Posted on 20 October 2013 by Lynn Steinson

‘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.

Carlos Acosta and eighteen month old daughter, Aila.

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

Posted on 19 September 2013 by Lynn Steinson

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.

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.

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.

Posted in Authors in conversation, Politicians in conversation, Review | Tagged Chartist, Engels, Manchester, Marx, Michael Wood, Shock City, Tristram Hunt | Leave a comment

David Miliband Farewell Tour

Posted on 1 July 2013 by Lynn Steinson

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.

‘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.’

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

Posted on 4 May 2013 by Lynn Steinson

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”.

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.

Posted in Politicians in conversation | Tagged anti-austerity, Manchester, Owen Jones, Salford | Leave a comment

A roam around my books – 2

Posted on 8 March 2013 by Lynn Steinson

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.

My 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.

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.

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

Posted in Books | Tagged Kennedys, Watergate | 2 Comments

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

Posted on 22 February 2013 by Lynn Steinson

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

Posted in Books | Tagged War and Peace | 2 Comments

William Wells Brown – Impressions of Harriet Martineau and the English Lakes 1851

Posted on 20 February 2013 by Lynn Steinson

This gallery contains 8 photos.

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

Posted on 9 February 2013 by Lynn Steinson

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

Posted in Books, Writing | Tagged Amazing Grace, Danuta Kean, Joseph, Lincoln | 2 Comments

Lynn Steinson's Blog

A roam around my books – 3

Historians make history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing…

No time for encores

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

David Miliband Farewell Tour

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

A roam around my books – 2

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

William Wells Brown – Impressions of Harriet Martineau and the English Lakes 1851

Reading to write

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