The Work of Lionel Britton: Bibliography and Appendix

The Open University has now put my entire thesis online, which makes it much easier to read - without the lost attributes - here.

Please note, though, that the final paragraph of the second Introduction has now been found to be completely incorrect: Lionel Britton, the writer of Hunger and Love, never wrote a will: The University of Texas got the wrong Lionel Britton!

Key:

LBC — Lionel Britton Collection, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

HB — in the possession of Harry Berberian.

n. pg. — no page reference.

The place of publication of all reprints cited, unless otherwise stated, is the same as the first place cited.

Unless otherwise stated, all references in the ‘Southern Illinois University Sources (Unpublished)’ section are to Series 1: Correspondence.

Official Certificates — Births, Marriages and Deaths

Catherine Erskine Smith, birth certificate, 16 January 1839, 13 Caroline Street, Birmingham, Warwickshire, scanned copy

John James Britton (solicitor) and Catherine Erskine Smith, marriage certificate, 20 January 1858, ‘the Parish Church’, Handsworth, Staffordshire, scanned copy

Richard Waddams Nimmo Britton, birth certificate, 28 February 1859, Gravelly Hill, Erdington, Warwickshire, certified copy

Samuel Thomas (needle manufacturer), death certificate, 6 September 1878, Prospect Hill, Redditch, Worcestershire, certified copy


John James Britton (solicitor) and Maud May Coward, marriage certificate, 13 April 1882, St Paul’s Church, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, certified copy

Richard Waddams Nimmo Britton (solicitor’s clerk) and Irza Vivian Geraldine Thomas, marriage certificate, 17 August 1885, Register Office, Birmingham, Warwickshire, scanned copy

Kathleen Ethel Ivy Britton, birth certificate, 13 June 1886, Astwood [Bank], Feckenham, Alcester, Worcestershire/Warwickshire, certified copy

Lionel Erskine Nimmo Britton, birth certificate, 4 November 1887, Astwood [Bank], Feckenham, Alcester, Worcestershire/Warwickshire, certified copy

Cyril Lancelot Douglas Britton, birth certificate, 31 May 1891, 207 Holdenhurst Road, Springbourne, Christchurch, County of Southampton, certified copy

Richard Waddams Nimmo Britton (solicitor), death certificate, 1 December 1894, Bradwardine, Branksome Terrace, Bournemouth, County of Southampton, certified copy

Francis Le Breton (gunner, Royal Navy, 3rd Company) and Irza Vivien [sic] Geraldine Britton, marriage certificate, 30 October 1897, Register Office, Portsea Island, County of Portsmouth, certified copy


Lionel Nimmo Erskine [sic] Britton (author and playwright), death certificate, 9 January 1971, Isle of Thanet District Hospital, Ramsgate, Kent, certified copy

Southern Illinois University Sources (Unpublished)

Acheson, Sinead, letter to Lionel Britton, 11 February 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 13 February 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 16 May 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 6 August 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 3


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 11 January 1941, LBC, Box 2, Folder 15


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 3 February 1941, LBC, Box 2, Folder 15


Albery, Bronson, letter to Lionel Britton, 11 June 1935, LBC, Box 2, Folder 11


Andrews, H. M., letter to Lionel Britton, 19 February 1960, LBC, Box 2, Folder 21


Angus, Alfred H., letter of reference about Lionel Britton, 4 September 1929, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


Assistant Comptroller [name obliterated], Lord Chamberlain’s Office, letter to Lionel Britton, 18 December 1933, LBC, Box 14, Folder 9


Attorney General [name illegible], letter to John Parker, House of Commons, 1 June 1970, LBC, Box 2, Folder 23


Beckett, John, letter to Lionel Britton, 24 January 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


Britton, Cyril, postcard to Irza Britton, [n. d.], LBC, Box 2, Folder 27


Britton, Irza, letter to Richard Britton, [n. d.], LBC, Box 2, Folder 29


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 6 August 1931, LBC, Box 2, Folder 4


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 18 June 1936, LBC, Box 2, Folder 13


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 17 September 1953, LBC, Box 2, Folder 18


Britton, John James, letter to Irza le Breton, 28 September 1897, LBC, Box 2, Folder 1


Britton, Lionel, ‘Caution to the Reader’, [n. d.], LBC, Box 6, Folder 1


——, ‘Hunger and Love’, mimeograph (hereafter MG), Volume 1, LBC, Series II: Drafts, Box 2, Folders 3–4


——, ‘Hunger and Love’, MG, Volume 2, LBC, Series II: Drafts, Box 3, Folders 1–3


——, ‘Hunger and Love’, MG, Volume 3, LBC, Series II: Drafts, Box 3, Folder 4 (one of two)


——, ‘Hunger and Love’, MG, Volume 4, LBC, Series II: Drafts, Box 4, Folder 1, (two of two)


——, ‘Hunger and Love’, typescript, LBC, Series II: Drafts, Box 4, Folders 2–3


——, ‘O. H. M. S.; or, How to Make God’, unpublished typescript, [n. d.], p. 15, LBC, Series II: Drafts, Box 10, Folder 9


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, 5 February 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, 11 February 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, 13 February 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, 18 February 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, 1 March 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, 2 May 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


——, letter to Herbert Marshall, 5 December 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 3


——, letter to H. G. Wells, 26 September 1931, LBC, Box 2, Folder 5


——, letter to Lord Chamberlain’s Office, 27 December 1933, LBC, Box 14, Folder 9


——, postcard to Sinead Acheson, 2 August 1934, LBC, Box 2, Folder 10


——, postcard to Sinead Acheson, 3 August 1934, LBC, Box 2, Folder 10


——, postcard to Sinead Acheson, April 1935, LBC, Box 2, Folder 11


——, postcard to Sinead Acheson, April 1935, LBC, Box 2, Folder 11


——, postcard to Sinead Acheson, April 1935, LBC, Box 2, Folder 11


——, letter to Herbert Marshall, 9 May 1935, LBC, Box 2, Folder 11


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, 17 July 1935, LBC, Box 2, Folder 12


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, 26 October 1935, LBC, Box 2, Folder 12


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, [1 November 1935], LBC, Box 2, Folder 12


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, dated 12 December 1925 [1935 (?)], Box 2, Folder 12


——, postcard to Sinead Acheson, 16 January 1936, LBC, Box 2, Folder 13


——, letter to Herbert Marshall, 18 January 1936, LBC, Box 2, Folder 13


——, postcard to Sinead Acheson, 21 March 1936, LBC, Box 2, Folder 13


——, postcard to Herbert Marshall, 25 April 1936, LBC, Box 2, Folder 13


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, 6 May 1936, LBC, Box 2, Folder 13


——, postcard to Herbert Marshall, 18 May 1936, LBC, Box 2, Folder 13


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, 26 May 1936, LBC, Box 2, Folder 13


——, letter to Herbert Marshall, [17 December 1937], LBC, Box 2, Folder 14


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, [1937 (?)], LBC, Box 2, Folder 24 (14?)


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, [1937 (?)], LBC, Box 2, Folder 24


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, [1937 (?)], LBC, Box 2, Folder 24


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, 3 May 1941, LBC, Box 2, Folder 16


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, May 1941, LBC, Box 2, Folder 16


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, 14 July 1941, LBC, Box 2, Folder 16


——, postcard to Sinead Acheson, 23 September 1941, LBC, Box 2, Folder 16


——, letter to Ivor [surname not given], 2 September 1942, LBC, Box 2, Folder 16


——, day book, 1944[–45], LBC, Box 8, Folder 2


——, scrapbook about the Society of Authors, [c. 1950s], LBC, Box 8, Folder 3


——, application for Civil List funds pension or grant, 4 January 1951, LBC, Box 13, Folder 13


——, ‘Lionel Britton’, manuscript, [c. 1960s], LBC, Box 1, Folder 1


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, 20 September 1967, LBC, Box 2, Folder 22


——, letter to the Clerk of the County Court, 9 August 1969, LBC, Box 2, Folder 23


——, letter to Sinead Acheson, [n. d.], LBC, Box 2, Folder 24


——, ‘Lionel Britton’, typescript, [n. d.], LBC, Series II: Box 6, Folder 1


Brown, A., letter to Lionel Britton, 4 February 1949, LBC, Box 2, Folder 17


Buttitta, Anthony J., letter to Lionel Britton, 5 November 1931, LBC, Box 2, Folder 5


Dubowski, A., letter to Lionel Britton, 28 June 1932, LBC, Box 2, Folder 7


Edbrooke, John, letter to Lionel Britton, 14 January 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


Edwards, Kathleen, letter to Lionel Britton, 27 March 1935, LBC, Box 2, Folder 11


Ejov, A. G., letter to Lionel Britton, 23 January 1936, LBC, Box 2, Folder 13


Foyle, Christina, letter to Lionel Britton, 3 November 1931, LBC, Box 2, Folder 5


Gielgud, Val, letter to Lionel Britton, 17 June 1947, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


Gordon–Campbell, D., letter to Lionel Britton, 16 February 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


Gorski, Rebecca, ‘Scope and Content Note’, ‘Hunger and Love Materials’, 2004, LBC


——, ‘Biographical Sketch’, p. 3, [2004], LBC


Hamilton, James, letter to Lionel Britton, 2 November 1931, LBC, Box 2, Folder 5


Heaton, S. W., letter of reference about Lionel Britton, 18 November 1918, Box 2, Folder 2


Henle, James, letter to Lionel Britton, 22 October 1931, LBC, Box 2, Folder 5


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 16 November 1931, LBC, Box 2, Folder 5


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 25 November 1931, LBC, Box 2, Folder 5


Hoare, Frederick A., letter to Lionel Britton, 6 June 1967, LBC, Box 2, Folder 22


Huntington, C. J., letter to Lionel Britton, 2 June 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 3


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 11 November 1931, LBC, Box 2, Folder 5


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 24 June 1940, LBC, Box 2, Folder 14


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 12 April 1945, LBC, Box 2, Folder 17


[Huntington, C. J.], ‘Hunger and Love’, typed Introduction (fragment), [c. 1930–1], LBC, Series II: Drafts, Box 2, Folder 2


Jones, Gwyn, letter to Lionel Britton, 29 October 1938, LBC, Box 2, Folder 14


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 27 September 1939, LBC, Box 2, Folder 14


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 29 February 1940, LBC, Box 2, Folder 14


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 5 March 1940, LBC, Box 2, Folder 14


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 31 March 1940, LBC, Box 2, Folder 14


Looker, S., letter to Lionel Britton, 19 December 1929, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


Marshall, Herbert, letter to Lionel Britton, 20 July 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 3


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 1 October 1936, LBC, Box 2, Folder 13


Martin, David, letter to Lionel Britton, 17 April 1934, LBC, Box 2, Folder 10


Mayhew, A. H., letter of reference to Irza Britton about Lionel Britton, 18 November 1918, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


Morton, A. L., letter to Lionel Britton, 27 May 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


Mourilyan, John, letter of reference, 15 March 1890, LBC, Box 6, Folder 1


Perkins, Thomas, letter of reference, 13 February 1888, LBC, Box 6, Folder 1


Richardson, Maurice, letter to Lionel Britton, 14 May 1945, LBC, Box 2, Folder 17


Rust, William, letter to Lionel Britton, 31 July 1931, LBC, Box 2, Folder 5


Sadleir, Michael, letter to Lionel Britton, 11 January 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 7 March 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


Selver, Paul, letter to Lionel Britton, 12 May 1932, LBC, Box 2, Folder 7


Shaw, Bernard, letter to Sir Barry Jackson, 16 September 1929, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


Spielmann, M. H., letter to Lionel Britton, 5 January 1932, LBC, Box 2, Folder 6


Symons, Leonard J., letter to Lionel Britton via The Film Guild of London, October 1929, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


Thomas, Cecil, letter to Lionel Britton, 6 June 1964, LBC, Box 2, Folder 21


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 16 June 1964, LBC, Box 2, Folder 21


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 7 August 1964, LBC, Box 2, Folder 21


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 12 August 1964, LBC, Box 2, Folder 21


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 3 September 1964, LBC, Box 2, Folder 21


——, letter to Lionel Britton, 18 November 1964, LBC, Box 2, Folder 21


Tilsley, Frank, letter to Lionel Britton, [1930s], LBC, Box 2, Folder 28


Tommy (‘the penny roll’), 24 April 1923, LBC, Box 2, Folder 2


Tresgrave, S. A., letter to Lionel Britton, 24 June 1932, LBC, Box 2, Folder 7


War Damage Commission, letter to Irza Britton, 24 October 1958, LBC, Box 2, Folder 20


Warman, Erik, ‘Life and Lionel Britton’, typescript, [1932(?)], [pp. 2–3], LBC, Box 6, Folder 1


Whitmore, George G., letter to Lionel Britton, 10 September 1930, LBC, Box 2, Folder 3

Southern Illinois University Sources (Published)

Acheson, Sinead, letter, ‘Is Genius Androgynous?’, Everyman, 1 April 1933, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10


Aldington, Richard, ‘Books of the Play’, Sunday Referee, 8 June 1930, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 13, Folder 15


Alistair, cartoon, ‘Not The Editor of the Review: Comrade Lionel Britton’, Granta, 20 November 1931, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 6, Folder 11

Anonymous, ‘Dramatist Condemns his Own Play: “Back to Methuselah” Criticised by “G. B. S”: “Crude”: Young Playwright’s Name Commended in a Letter’, Sunday Referee, 16 March 1930, p. 1, Box 12, Folder 11

——, ‘Young Playwright’s Romance: Work in Factory at Age of 13; Fame at 30: Mr. Shaw’s “Find.”’, Daily News and Westminster Gazette, 18 March 1930, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, F11

——, ‘I’m Going to Be a Great Man — Greater Even than Shaw’, Pearson’s Weekly, 22 October 1930, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 11

——, flier, ‘Hunger and Love: The Great Proletarian Novel by Lionel Britton with an Introduction by Bertrand Russell’, [1931], LBC, Box 4, Folder 3

——, ‘Censorship Act: Latest List of Banned Books’, Cork Weekly Examiner, 14 March 1931, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

——, ‘Spate of Hate: Views of a Young Anarchist’, Morning Post, 17 March 1931, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

——, ‘“Hunger and Love” and the Critics’, Black Hat, May 1931, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

——, ‘G. B. S. and Eve in a Play: The Audience Requested to Laugh at It: Road Smash Symbol: Lionel Britton, the Author Who Won’t Be “Cut”’, Star, 3 August 1931, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

——, leaflet advertising Spacetime Inn, [1932], [n. pg.], LBC, Box 8, Folder 5

——, leaflet, ‘The Arts Theatre Club Presents Spacetime Inn by Lionel Britton’, [1932], [n. pg.], LBC, Box 8, Folder 11

——, ‘Mr. Lionel Britton’, Pitman’s Journal of Commercial Education, 2 June 1934, p. 395, LBC, Box 6, unnumbered folder

——, Left Theatre, [n. d.], p. [7], LBC, Box 6, unnumbered folder

——, ‘Lionel Britton Ran — P. C. Suspected’, Daily Herald, [n. d.], [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 11

——, ‘Mr. Shaw as a Critic: Cryptic Comment on Work of Fellow Author: Potted History’, [n. pub.], [n. d.], [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

Bennett, Arnold, ‘Young Man’s Novel Slaps your Cheek: Ferocious Hatred’, Evening Standard, 26 February 1931, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 18, Folder 3

Britton, Lionel, ‘An Errand-Boy’s Philosophy’, Star, 29 April 1930, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 11

——, letter, ‘Should Authors Be Paid?’, Everyman, 4 December 1930, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

——, ‘Anarchists at Whiteway’, Contempo: A Review of Books and Personalities, 15 November 1931, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 6, Folder 11

——, ‘The Mind of a Ragamuffin’, Clarion, May 31, p. 139, LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

——, ‘Hunger and Love’, Stork, [c. 1931], pp. 12–14, LBC, Box 6, unnumbered folder

——, ‘Politics for the Higher Animals’, Forge: Towards Socialist Culture, October 1932, pp. 8–10, LBC, Box 6, Folder 11

——, ‘The Theatre in Revolt’, New Clarion, 27 May 1933, p. 492, LBC, Box 7, Folder 1

——, ‘The Current Theatre’, New Clarion, 3 June 1933, p. 504, LBC, Box 7, Folder 1

——, ‘Workers’ Art on the Theatre’, New Clarion, 9 September 1933, p. 223, LBC, Box 7, Folder 1

——, ‘Lionel Britton Sees “On the Rocks” — Shaw’s New Play’, New Clarion, 9 December 1933, p. 7, LBC, Box 7, Folder 1


——, ‘Shaw’s On the Rocks II: So This Is Downing Street!’, New Clarion, 23 December 1933, p. 42, LBC, Box 7, Folder 1

‘C’, ‘Philosophic Drama: A Very Extraordinary Play’, Sheffield Telegraph, 6 June 1935, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

Empson, William, ‘Proletarian Literature’, Scrutiny, March 1935, 332–38, LBC, Box 12, Folder 11

The Film Guild of London, newsletter, [n. d.], LBC, Box 6, ‘other programs, newsletters’

Garry, Stephen, ‘“Hunger and Love”: The Story of a DEAD Worker’, Daily Worker, 28 March 1931, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

Henderson, Philip, ‘The Crisis in Twentieth-Century Literature — IV: Middle-Class Communists and Proletarian Writers’, Eleventh Hour, 12 June 1935, pp. 91–92, LBC, Box 12, Folder 11

Horrabin, J. F., letter, New Clarion, 18 November 1933, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 9

‘J. L. L.’, ‘Hunger and Love: By Lionel Britton’, Johannesburg Sunday Times, 19 April 1931, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

Joad, C. E. M., ‘Future of the Human Race: “Brain” — A Brilliant Dramatic Philosophy of Life’, Sunday Referee, 27 April 1930, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 11

Kelly, Harold, ‘At Spacetime Inn’, City Mid-Week, 12 October 1932, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 18, Folder 2

Languish, Lydia, ‘A New Utopia: Mr Lionel Britton’s Ideal Civilisation: All Exceptional Men: Bishops, Bourgeoisie, and Booksellers’, John O’ London’s Weekly, 21 February 1931, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

Marshall, H. P. J., ‘Towards the Human: Lionel Britton — A New Force in the World of Thought’, New World, May 1930, p. 10, LBC, Box 12, Folder 11 (also Box 6, unnumbered folder)

Nicolson, Harold, ‘Nightmare Novel of an Author Who “Likes to Snarl”’, Daily Express, 19 February 1931, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 11

Norman, C. H., ‘The Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Literature and Drama — xii’, Saturday Review, 26 November 1936, p. 3, LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

Porter, Vernon H., ‘Lionel Britton’, Centurion, October 1930, pp. 8–9, LBC, Box 6, Folder 11

Rees, George, ‘An Epic of Hatred’, Egyptian Gazette, 28 January 1932, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

‘R. H. T’, ‘Brain’, Manchester Guardian, 26 June 1930, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 13, Folder 15

Suthers, R. B., ‘Big Noises off — and on: Spacetime Inn at Hoddesdon: Lionel Britton’s Waxworks Spend a Week-end at the Youth Hostel’, New Clarion, 2 December 1933, p. 421, LBC, Box 7, Folder 1

Swaffer, Hannen, ‘Play to Be Read in Commons: Whole Action in Flash: Only Clever M. P.s Will Know What It’s About!’, [n. pub.], [c. 1932], [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

——, ‘Yes, I Meet Some Queer [Folk (?): cutting incomplete]: The M. P. Who Was a Lion-Tamer’, People, 14 June 1931, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 10

Swinnerton, Frank, ‘A Hero of Colossal Cheek!’, [n. pub.], [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 11

Various, flyer, ‘Lionel Britton’s Spacetime Inn’, LBC, Box 6, other programs, newsletters

West, Rebecca, ‘The Exasperating Egotism of Lionel Britton’, Daily Telegraph, 20 February 1931, [n. pg.], LBC, Box 12, Folder 11

General Sources (Unpublished)

Britton, Lionel, letter to Winifred Holtby, 29 January 1933, Winifred Holtby Collection, Hull Local Studies Library

——, note to Winifred Holtby, [c. 1933], Winifred Holtby Collection, Hull Local Studies Library

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, [n. d., 1950s (?)], HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 28 November 1955, HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 30 January 1956, HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 11 February 1956, HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 14 February 1956, HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 18 February 1956, HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 19 March 1956, HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 21 March 1956, HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 2 April 1956, HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 20 April 1956, HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 22 May 1956, HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 10 July 1956, HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 16 August 1956, HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 10 June 1969, HB

——, letter to Bertrand Russell, 18 June 1969, HB

Croft, Andrew, ‘Socialist Fiction in Britain in the 1930s’ (doctoral thesis, University of Nottingham, 1985)

Macleod, Alison, letter to the present author, 2 January 2003

Morris, Mollie, ‘When All the Trees Were Green’, typescript, c. 1980, in the possession of Barbara Cast

Russell, Bertrand, letter to Lionel Britton, 6 March 1930, HB

——, letter to Lionel Britton, 26 April 1930, HB

——, letter to Lionel Britton, 21 October 1933, HB

——, letter to Lionel Britton, 23 May 1948, HB

——, letter to Lionel Britton, 16 June 1948, HB

——, letter to Lionel Britton, 21 June 1948, HB

——, letter to Lionel Britton, 3 December 1948, HB

——, letter to Lionel Britton, 13 December 1948, HB

——, letter to Miss Barber, 8 February 1956, HB

——, letter to Miss Barber, 15 February 1956, HB

——, letter to Lionel Britton, 20 March 1956, HB

Primary Sources

Anand, Mulk Raj, Untouchable (London: Wishart, 1935; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1940)

——, The Coolie (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1936; repr. as Coolie, May Fair Books, 1962)

——, Two Leaves and a Bud (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1937; repr. New York: Liberty Press, 1954)

Barclay, Tom, Memoirs and Medleys: The Autobiography of a Bottle Washer (Leicester: Backus, 1934; Coalville: Coalville Publishing, 1995)

Barke, James, The World His Pillow (London: Collins, 1933; repr. Bath: Chivers, [n. d.])

——, The Wild Macraes (London: Collins, 1934; repr. Bath: Chivers, [n. d.])

——, Major Operation: A Novel (London: Collins, 1936)

——, Land of the Leal (London: Collins, 1939; repr. Edinburgh: Canongate, 1987)

Bates, Ralph, Lean Men: An Episode in a Life (London: Davies, 1934)

——, The Olive Field (London: Cape, 1936; repr. The Hogarth Press, 1986)

Beauvoir, Simone de, L’Invitée (Paris: Gallimard, 1943; repr. 1977)

——, Le Deuxième sexe, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1949; repr. 1975)

——, Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (Paris: Gallimard, 1958; repr. 1976)

Bell, Ann Olivier, ed., The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 vols (London: The Hogarth Press, 1977–84), ii: 1920–1924 (1978)

Blumenfeld, Simon, Jew Boy (London: Cape, 1935; repr. Lawrence & Wishart, 1986)

——, Phineas Kahn: Portrait of an Immigrant (London: Cape, 1937; Lawrence and Wishart, 1988)


Boden, F. C., Miner (London: Dent, 1932)

——, A Derbyshire Tragedy (London: Dent, 1935)

Bone, Andrew, The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, 29 vols (London: Allen & Unwin, and Routledge, 1983– ), XXVIV: Détente or Destruction 1955–1957 (2005)

Brierley, Walter, Means Test Man (London: Methuen, 1935; repr. Nottingham: Spokesman, 1983)

——, Sandwichman (London: Methuen, 1937)

Britton, Herbert E., The Visions of a Dreamer: Sonnets, Poems and Lyrics (Kidderminster: Edward Parry, 1912)


Britton, John James, Carrélla: Lyrics, Lays and Sympathies (London: Bennett, 1867)

——, The Lay of the Lady Ida: And Other Poems (London: Remington, 1883)

——, Flight (London: Trischler, 1890)

Britton, Lionel, Brain: A Play of the Whole Earth (London: Putnam, 1930)

——, Hunger and Love (London: Putnam, 1931)

——, Spacetime Inn: A Play (London: Putnam, 1932)

——, Animal Ideas: A Dramatic Symphony of the Human in the Universe (London: Putnam, 1935)

Constantine, Murray, Proud Man (London: Boriswood, 1934; repr. as ‘Katharine Burdekin’, New York: Feminist Press, 1989)

——, Swastika Night (London: Gollancz, 1937; repr. 1940)

Coombes, B. L., These Poor Hands: The Autobiography of a Miner Working in South Wales (London: Gollancz, 1939)

Davies, Rhys, The Withered Root (London: Holden, 1927)

——, Rings on her Fingers (London: Shaylor, 1930)

——, Honey and Bread (London: Putnam, 1935; repr. Bath: Chivers, 1970)

——, My Wales (London: Jarrolds, 1937)

——, Print of a Hare’s Foot: An Autobiographical Beginning (London: Heinemann. 1969)

Davison, Peter, ed., The Complete Works of George Orwell, 20 vols (London: Secker & Warburg, 1986–98; rev. and updated 2000), A Patriot After All: 1940–1941 (1998)

Dickens, Charles, Dicken’s [sic] Dictionary of Paris: An Unconventional Handbook (London: Macmillan, 1885)

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, Notes from Underground and The Double (repr. and trans. Jessie Coulson, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972)

Eliot, T. S., Collected Essays (London: Faber and Faber, 1932; enlarged 1951)

Evans, Caradoc, My People: Stories of the Peasantry of West Wales (London: Melrose, 1915; repr. (with short title only) Bridgend: Seren, 1987)

Gibbon, Lewis Grassic, The Thirteenth Disciple (London: Jarrolds (as ‘J. Leslie Mitchell’), 1931; repr. Edinburgh: B&W, 1995)

——, Three Go Back (London: Jarrolds (as ‘J. Leslie Mitchell’), 1932; repr. Edinburgh: Polygon, 1995)

——, Sunset Song: Book One in the Trilogy ‘A Scots Quair’ (London: Jarrolds, 1932; repr. Pan, 1973)

——, Cloud Howe: Book Two in the Trilogy ‘A Scots Quair ‘(London: Jarrolds, 1933; repr. Pan, 1973)

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Appendix

Hunger and Love: The Chapter Titles and Numbers

Key:


TL Title list

TL(R) Title list revisions


TS Typescript

TS(R) Typescript revisions

Om. Omission

< > Deletion

Below I list the chapter titles of different states of Hunger and Love. The first of each of the titles listed, contained within the closing square bracket, is that of the chapter of the FC as it appears on the chapter header; the chapter number precedes the title. The titles outside the bracket apply to any variants of the chapter titles in earlier states of the novel, and where a state (TL, TL(R), TS or (TS(R)) is identical to the FC, it is not included in the list. Britton provisionally numbered the ‘Paradise’ chapter (later re-titled ‘Columbus of the Mind’) ‘3a’, and also omitted to re-number his chapters following the insertion of the final chapter he actually wrote, ‘Romance and Reality’, between Chapters 29 and 30, thereby giving two chapters numbered ‘30’ in both the TL(R) and the TS. For these reasons, I have numbered the earlier chapters below in accordance with their true sequence, using square brackets from Chapter 3a (now [4]) onwards. Where more that one chapter title and number is given with the FC this is usually because Britton has created one or more divisions from within the chapters of the earlier states. All significant punctuation differences have been included.


1 The Rat Comes Out of his Hole] Poetry, Pot’erbs and Smells TL

2 Mind-Mining] Mind Mining TL

3 The Sack] Om. TS The Sack. TS(R)

4 Columbus of the Mind] [4] Om. TS

5 Dust 6 Come and Kiss Me] [5] Come and Kiss Me TL Om. TS Come and Kiss Me TS(R)

7 Nose Drip and Knowledge] [6] x and y TL Om. TS x and y TS(R)

8 Into the Night] [7] Om. TS The Other World TS(R)

9 A Song of Sixpence] [8] Om. TS A Song of Sixpence TS(R)

10 Mind Where you Tread] [9] Mind Where you Tread….. TL Om. TS Mind where you Tread! TS(R)

11 The Space-Time Franchise] [10] Om. TS

12 A Couple o’ Bob] [11]

13 Knackered] [12] Where we Stand TL Where we stand TS

14 Love in the Lavatory] [13] W. C. TL Om. TS W.C. TS(R)

15 Second Order Differences] [14] Being Artful TL Om. TS Being artful TS(R)

16 The Timescape] [15]

17 Gap] [16] Om. TS

18 Pilf] [17] Om. TS

19 Fourth Dimension] [18] The Fourth Dimension TL Om. TS The Fourth Dimension TS(R)

20 That—is Life] [19] That, – is life TL Om. TS That, – is life TS(R)

21 The Gentle Dust from Heaven] [20] Four foot per century TL Om. TS Four foot per century TS(R)

22 A Bit of Cant] [21]

23 Off the Chain] [22] One Damn thing after another TL Om. TS One damn thing after another TS(R)

24 Contact] [23]

25 The Recipe for Greatness] [24] How it is done TL Om. TS How it is done TS(R)

26 Raison d’Etre] [25] If I had Dreams to sell TL TS(R)

27 Why?] [26] Dans cette galère TL Om. TS Dans cette galère TS(R)

28 Criterion] [27] Om. TS

29 The Electric Torch of Diogenes] [28] Om. TS

30 Lamp-Post Sniffing] [29] Om. TS

31 All Balls 32 Unidimensional—or Super- Dimensional? 33 Sinister] [30] Sinister TL Sinister TS

34 Romance and Reality] [31]

35 WhatEvolution is Up to] [32] Hunger & Love TL Rolls through all things TL(R) Om. TS Rolls through all things. TS(R)


36 The Origin of Will 37 The Human 38 Belly and Sex-Organ] [33] Hunger & Love TL Hunger and Love TS

39 The Mass Production of Genius] [34]

40 Lost 41 The Relativity of the Ego] [35] Relativity of the Ego TL

42 Towards Infinity] [36] Om. TL

Pubs of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Associated with Literature

The White Horse, Ilkeston Road, Nottingham, famous as the pub where a scene in the film of Alan Sillitoe's novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning took place, in which the character Arthur Seaton (played by Albert Finney) gets very drunk.

ADDENDUM: This is what has happened to the pub – it's now the white Horse Café:

The Chesterfield Arms in Bingham, Nottinghamshire, which remembers the Earls of Chesterfield, who owned much of the land in the area. The fourth Earl, Philip Stanhope, is noted for his Letters to his Son.

Byrons on North Sherwood Street, in the centre of Nottingham, showed the most famous Lord Byron - the poet - on its inn sign. The pub, once a Shipstone's tied house, has now been demolished. It stood very near to where the Dolphin Brewery was.


Gatsby's on the corner of Huntingdon Street and Convent Street, Nottingham, is now known as The New Gatsby's, which is a gay bar, and the title no doubt is intended to evoke the heady atmosphere of Long Island, New York, where much of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) is set. This was originally known as the Central Tavern after Nottingham's Central Market, which stood opposite the pub. Before Gatsby's, it was called Niche in another incarnation.

Trust your Genius! Follow your Gut!: An appreciation of Gabriel Duffy

by Adam Daly

My friendship with Gabriel has been an unusual one, in just one very obvious respect: I never actually met him. Though I knew him, in the sense of corresponding with him, speaking with him on the telephone, sending and receiving books and manuscripts for comment, for over eight years. And in that long period of time we often said we must meet - and yet we never did. He lived in Brighton and I lived in London, which didn’t make things all that easy I guess - though a daytrip to Brighton is scarcely an ordeal – and now that he has died in such very sad circumstances I perhaps inevitably feel a bit guilty for not having made more of an effort to drive down to Brighton to meet him. I last spoke to him in November, and he seemed as full of high spirits as ever: his debts dealt with, his web-site up and running, numerous writing projects in progress or near to completion, and a very positive belief in his, and my, publishing prospects in 2009. His praise for my work was so effusive, it was embarrassing - ‘You are the Supreme Genius!’ was one of many OTT compliments he paid me - as I’ve often had profound doubts about the merits of what I’ve written. But at least he never, ever, damned with faint praise - unlike so many mealy-mouthed, so-called critics of today. He could still be critical, and with unfailing honesty, but if he saw real quality in a writer’s work he was never less than generous in his praise. I came to regard him not just as a literary, but as a personal friend - fully in spite of our constant long distance communication - for all sorts of reasons, his generosity of spirit being the main one I suppose. But his infectious love of life and laughter, his indefatigable - if exasperating - loquacity, his humorous play on his own Irishness, his vast, quirky erudition and prodigious poetic memory, and even the beguiling stream of Celtic melancholy revealing the fault-line that ran through his psyche, at any time either erupting into manic exuberance or else plunging him into deep chthonic depression, were also immensely hypnotic qualities. After a time I found we were so strikingly similar in our ways of thinking in so many areas, that I was almost slipping into the habit of writing my books with his response in mind - and usually he would be the first person I’d send manuscripts to. And now that he’s been so suddenly and prematurely taken from us, I’ve been weirdly thrown into disarray in my efforts to tie up the final loose threads in my long-faltering book, The Resurrection Men, as well as obviously being very deeply saddened on a purely personal level. I so much wanted him to read this book, and was so looking forward to his comments on it I almost feel there’s no point in my even bothering to finish it now -though this feeling will doubtless pass, and I may well end up dedicating it in part to his memory. So, I’ll have to damn well finish the bloody thing after all! And when it came to swearing he was no prude, the f- and c-words liberally littering his conversation, and even his introduction to mybook, The Minotaurs of Terror, when he wrote ‘How the fuck do I review this? Husserl is Harry Potter comparatively, on a density scale.’ He then on reflection, with characteristic sensitivity, said the ‘fuck’ could be removed if I wished - but I kept it in, as a true expression of the man. Also I alluded above to his exasperating loquacity, which took the form sometimes of his literally keeping me on the phone for anything up to two hours, even in the evenings when I was about to eat. And occasionally he’d ring me back a few minutes after we had finished speaking, because he had had a further thought which he wanted to add to the previous one, or else he was worried that he’d upset me or caused a misunderstanding, whereupon another long conversation ensued - my food getting stone cold! And once he rang up when I was out, and kept my girlfriend on the phone for an hour talking to her about quantum physics - a subject she knows next to nothing about and has even less interest in! But she was too polite to point this out - assuming she could have got a word in edgeways in any case. And afterwards, she always referred to him as Gabriel Quantum Duffy. But whereas I would have slammed the receiver down on virtually anyone else of my acquaintance who behaved in that way, Gabriel was such a loveable character I couldn’t have brought myself to do that to him. He was always totally well-meaning - and of course lonely, since he spent a lot of his time in his flat with only his books for company in the last few years, and so was obviously at times desperate for the reassuring presence of another human being, albeit only at the other end of a phone-line, and somebody he couldn’t have recognized had he passed me in the street, for he never saw a photograph of me. Though I should have recognized him, as I’d seen his photograph on his blog and more recent web-site - an avuncular-looking face, with a kindly, Cherubic beam masking a hint of Gravitas. (Not that I’d follow suit with my promotion, for I share the same approach to celebrity-culture as the writer David Britton, who has only ever permitted just one of his photographs to be released: of his face as a two-year-old baby!) But of all the memories of Gabriel I shall retain and treasure, a few stand out. His autobiography, Sham to Rock, was a wonderful evocation of a childhood and adolescence spent in post-war Dublin, more in the line of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man than Angela’s Ashes. He had I think finished a second volume, as well as his novel, Inga, and essays on subjects as diverse as the Concept of Infinity and Humour, all of which I hope will see the light of publishing day, as I am sure they eminently deserve to. His tireless championing of the Four Musketeers of twentieth century Thought, Husserl, Buckminster Fuller, Maslow and Colin Wilson[*], finally won me over to the cause. As a student I gave up Husserl’s Logical Investigations after a hundred pages, and settled wrong-headedly I now think for Wittgensteinian pieties emphasizing arid coherence at all costs. But Gabriel recommended The Crisis instead, Husserl’s last, and he claimed, best book. Thus I saw wisdom in Wittgensteinian nonsense! Though literature and poetry were Gabriel’s first loves. And his tastes seemed close to my own, inclining strongly to a very dark, rich vein of Romanticism and Gothicism, that can only have a resonance surviving mockery today by dredging up more diabolism than the likes of Lovecraft and Poe could ever have fathomed. Otherwise it’s just risible, a sop to post-modernists. He exhorted me to continue furrowing this lonely literary path. And I aim to do so now, with a renewed self-conviction - even though I shall miss my conversations with him and his stirring encouragement greatly. Odd remarks stay with me: ‘Never let the bastards get you down!’ or ‘Don’t let anybody put you down!’ evinced ribald laughter and triumphal affirmation in equal measure. He even said to me once that if we ever met and he found me totally bizarre, it wouldn’t bother him in the slightest. What more could a burdened outcast metamorphosing into a terrible Minotaur wish for from another soul passing like a proverbial ship in the night? But his best tribute was when I discussed with him the difficulties I was having with the last part of The Resurrection Men, and I asked him if I ought to alter my approach altogether or else further my researches in some particular direction. But he simply cut across me with the words ‘Trust your genius! Follow your gut!’ And so I’ve endeavoured to do just that, and I hope that somewhere in the Paradisical Ether he divines the results with a mile of ultimate acknowledgement. So long, old friend - and if wherever you are, you can still reach for the brown stuff, at least you'll know you can drink it with immortal impunity!

adamdaly54@btinternet.com

[*] This article expresses personal views: Dr Tony Shaw, the owner of this blog, wishes to make it very clear that he is definitely not a supporter of Colin Wilson, and that he considers the idea of Wilson as an important thinker to be wholly incomprehensible. Of importance here (among other things) is Wilson's cavalier approach to detail: for example, his most well known book, The Outsider, is remarkably sloppily written and abounds in (often significant) errors that Wilson never bothered to correct – not, that is, that this ragbag of juvenilia was worth correcting. This sloppiness is just one reason why Colin Wilson has never been – and never will be – taken seriously by the academic world. (For a scholarly account of The Outsider fiasco, see Stefan Collini's Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain (2006), pp. 415-422.). For Harry Ritchie on Colin Wilson, read here; for Lynn Barber on Colin Wilson, read here; and for Colin Wilson taking very seriously an article by holocaust denier Richard Verrall posing as an academic (the non-existent Richard E. Harwood), read here, from p.119.

I've not mentioned Wilson's hare-brained notion (and I apologise to hares) of devising a 'non-pessimistic existentialism': existentialism is by no means a pessimistic philosophy anyway, as Sartre underlined, but of course Wilson couldn't understand that.

Oh, and Colin Wilson also described the Nobel-prize-winning author Samuel Beckett as 'half-witted' and Beckett's brilliant Waiting for Godot as 'fucking shit': and this from Wilson, a man who manufactured the substance. That says an awful lot about Colin Wilson (and that's without mentioning anything about his really right-wing views, his regularly writing for the, er, Daily Mail, etc) : let's just draw a permanent curtain over the disaster area that is Colin Wilson, because he's absolutely not worth bothering with.

NEVERTHELESS, AN ADDENDUM: This 15 February 2017 review in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) by Phil Baker, as opposed to Colin Wilson's worthless efforts, is priceless: the review. I have to add that Baker is extremely kind in simply considering Colin Wilson as a mere eccentric though.

Robert Hughes Delves Further into His Past

Robert Hughes, great-nephew of Lionel Britton, reports:

'This is a very welcome record. It shows the old lady, Elizabeth Harding herself; in the last month or so of her life.

'With her is Catherine Erskine Nimmo, the older sister after whom Elizabeth Smith named her daughter Catherine Erskine, (my great-great-grandmother); and a whole bunch of Nicholsons including (almost certainly) Robert Nimmo Nicholson who later married Elizabeth Mary Smith, and died even before she did.

'Apart from the fact that this is the first great-great-great-great-grandparent I have found on any of the census forms, (and I'll be lucky if it isn't the last!), it's also the first record from Ann St that has come up in that year, and believe me I've looked for lots of them, to the point where I was beginning to suspect that some stuff was missing.

'Also bizarre is that I wasn't searching on Nimmo, (it wouldn't have come up: the Ancestry database suffers from what seems like a pretty crude search system and won't allow wild cards in a surname until after 3 characters, so you couldn't simply search on N***o).

'It was actually Nicholson which did come up: I was hoping to locate the records for Auchenblain itself, as it's still not clear what happened to the property after Thomas Nimmo died, and his heir Dr Robert died in Messina, Sicily two years later. Scrolling through the results I noticed the one for Greenock and had a look at it. It turned out to be right even though I was under the impression that Ann St was in the Middle parish, so that's something else to be looked into, as all the Thomas Nimmo/Elizabeth Harding children were born in the Middle Parish.

'Taking this at face value, Elizabeth Nimmo née Harding was born in Scotland rather than anywhere else, somewhere between June 7th 1756 and June 6th 1761.

'This is very much what we might have expected, but it tends to rule out other theories, e.g.: she was a rather older, previously married woman; she was a teenage bride; she was born in India, Ireland or England, (or even...Wales!). Notably, it almost certainly rules out that she was a Greenock girl and that the reason Thomas Nimmo came to Greenock was on account of her being a native of that town.

'In the last couple of days I've also found two separate wills for brothers of Thomas Nimmo. John, whose birth is on record, (1773-1819), and William for whom we only have the evidence in his will: he died in 1814. In each will there is copious evidence of the relationship between them and Robert Nimmo of Auchenblain, their father, and Jean Nimmo, their mother, as well as sisters Agnes and Charlotte.

'Perhaps there are missing parish records for Kirkoswald, and it is even possible that the elusive marriage record for Thomas Nimmo and Elizabeth Harding is among them. There may be sixteen childen of Robert and Jean, and it is not totally impossible that one unrecorded daughter married into the Erskines and provided the link to the Earls of Mar and Kellie which Uncle Lionel claimed.

'If not there, the only other conceivable link which would match his claim exactly would be through Elizabeth Harding...

'So we'll have to go on trying to find out who she was!'

Harold Pinter

The death of the major British playwright Harold Pinter has led to many more articles than when this supporter of the now virtually non-existent British left won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The above link is to his biographer Michael Billington's article in this Saturday's Guardian

Lionel Britton's Brain

Lionel Britton’s plays Brain and Spacetime Inn are are very unusual for several reasons, but in particular because they are science fiction plays. As an indication of the reason for this, Clute and Nicholls, in their Encylopedia of Science Fiction, quote science fiction editor Roger Elwood on the physical limitations which the theatre poses for the genre: ‘Writing an sf play is a bit like trying to picture infinity in a cigar box’; they also state that ‘the first significant original plays appeared in the 1920s and 1930s’, claiming that Shaw’s Back to Methuselah (1921) was the first science fiction play to be concerned with evolution. Back to Methuselah is thematically and structurally similar to Brain, and certainly to some extent Britton took Shaw’s play as his model: he includes a quotation from Shaw’s Preface on the verso of the half-title pageof Brain, and the drama critic Hannen Swaffer — whose review of the play is quoted in one of the advertisement pages at the back of Hunger and Love — notes Shaw’s influence: ‘Fancy a young man starting where Shaw left off!’ (p. [707]).

There are a number of dramatic elements in Brain, such as the light show during the funeral of the Philosopher and the Librarian of the British Museum, the violent change of power at the end of Act II, and the apocalyptic climax of the play, but although some of the dialogue is also dramatic, the general emphasis is on the didactic; there is little character development and most of the characters are types. Of primary importance is the message, which is that without co-operation, as opposed to competition, the world cannot survive.

Brain is the theatrical realization of the ideas outlined or hinted at in Hunger and Love; it isin three acts and is set in several different periods in the future. Act I (c.1950–2100) begins with a conversation between the Philosopher and the Librarian, in which there is an exposition of the ideas in an unpublished manuscript which strongly resembles Hunger and Love, which, following the death of the author, was presented to the British Museum in 1950; both men die in a car accident the same evening and the manuscript remains uncatalogued and unnoticed. The next scene then shifts to 2100, when the earth is still run by the business world and central government; Britton makes use of the animal imagery prominent in Hunger and Love in order to emphasize his points: in the first scene, we are told that ‘private enterprise makes for isolation like wild beasts’, and that ‘the beast type of man is still in control; they occupy all the high places’. The 2100 world of Brain shows Britton’s anti-government ideology in practice; Brookes, a prominent member of the Ideas Club, is preparing to make a proposal after the discovery of the forgotten manuscript, and begins by outlining the problem:

‘Human nature grew by co-operation, private interest is anti-human, it will destroy human nature unless some means can be found by which it can itself be destroyed.’

The main point of interest in these lines is the way in which the tenses proceed from the past, to the present, and to the future. ‘Human nature’ is thought to be the product of many years of co-operation and signifies a more enlightened, and more honest, period in history; the private interest now dominating life is divisive and works against human interest; human nature will be destroyed by it unless its advance can be stopped. Brookes is in effect saying the same thing as the narrator of Hunger and Love, namely that the evolution of humanity is now in reverse: the slow movement towards a utopian society is changing into its opposite. Brookes’s proposal leads to the clandestine establishment of the Brain Brotherhood, the purpose of which is to build a giant brain in the Sahara, containing all the knowledge in the world. An idea similar to this is also put forward in Hunger and Love, and incidentally seems in part to anticipate the Internet, or the Internet of the future: ‘Why can’t all the books be stored in one big building, properly classified and indexed and catalogued, so that anybody who wants anything at all can get it at once: write, telephone, call, — get it immediately’ (pp. 295–96).

Act II is set in the twenty-fourth century and mainly concerns the consternation of the business community and the government over the increasingly powerful Brain Brotherhood, which many doctors, scientists, writers, engineers, and the working classes have joined; members of the organization, who receive no money apart from any needed for use in contact with the outside world, are seriously affecting the efficient running of the business community. Any attempts to prevent a company’s shipping orders from reaching the Sahara, for instance, are blocked by Brotherhood infiltrators. The Prime Minister feels increasingly isolated and, ironically, is beginning to feel like an outsider himself. He says, ‘Laugh at me if you like, but it is as if we are becoming outcasts from the world’, and believes that the existence of an Anti-War League means that the ‘good old days are gone’. But the inexorable power of the Brotherhood is such that even members of the government have applied to join it, although without success apart from one exception: the Fourth Minister (one of the few ‘human’ politicians) has been approved for admission largely because he has written a socialist play and is a lover of the arts. He has a vision of the future world: ‘I have the feeling that in […] ten years […] the life of Ministries and Governments will have passed away, and we who now possess power and eminence will have become outcasts in a darkness outside the human sphere.’ Predictably, the government decides to dispense with his services, although his expectations of the future are realized: by the end of the act, the world outside the Brain Brotherhood is in chaos before the people take over.

In Act III, all the action is in the far future; money no longer exists and crime too appears to be a thing of the past; there are no more wars, no private property or distinct classes, and unpleasant jobs are shared equally between everyone; each individual is working towards the improvement of society; disease has been eliminated, and even a sneeze causes alarm; sexual inhibitions are a thing of the past and monogamy is not the norm, although the few who choose to live in a permanent relationship usually have ‘side-mates’; applications have to be made to begin a ‘propagating union’, and it is unusual for a couple to be allowed to have custody of their own children.

Brain is a centralized computer and has become the new God, as indicated by the capitalization of ‘It(s)’, and It lists tasks from an intricate network of activities more or less freely chosen by the people. Anyone with a strong research project can be chosen by Brain to take a ‘B. C.’, meaning ‘Brain-controlled’ research towards a goal which will benefit society; following that, the highest accolade is to be allowed to work within the Brain itself.

The language used in Brain reflects the changed society; because the emphasis is now on the nature of the activity performed, the play is punctuated by references to ‘Regulars’, ‘Compulsories’ and ‘Playgames’; oaths have changed focus and emotions such as anger, annoyance or surprise are often conveyed by expressions such as ‘Mankind!’, ‘Race!’, ‘Co-operate!’, ‘Humanity!’ or ‘Struggle!’: in a world where the old God has no meaning, blasphemies are replaced by invocations of co-operative activity.

The ageing process, though, has not been arrested, and those unfit for work because too old are painlessly put to death. Wild-Eye is an elderly character in Brain who has to undergo the Death Test (a kind of measurement of people’s readiness for ‘euthanasia’), but he is not in pain and does not want to die: quite simply, he is becoming surplus to the needs of society and although he receives a temporary reprieve, his time to die will soon be ordained by Brain. Towards the end of the play, Brain says that it is imperative to gain ‘spacetime control’ in order for the world to survive and other Brains to continue elsewhere. However, ‘the human’ is too late, and as It says just before a star destroys the earth:

‘A thousand million years life was on earth, there was time for men to come together, the human to have evolved sooner, like beasts they preyed on one another, the human idea was not born. […] all worlds might have worked together, all consciousness grown into a unity, we might have called on other worlds…had we been human sooner…like beasts they preyed on one another, isolated in immensity, one man sapped the strength of another. Where there were two strengths there was less than one. […] Too late, too late!’

In the light of the above, of interest is the article 'UN is Told that Earth Needs an Asteroid Shield: Scientists Call for £68m a Year to Detect Danger, and More for Spacecraft to Defend against It' which appeared in the 9 December Observer of this year:

Scientists tell United Nations that Earth needs an asteroid shield Science The Observer.

Songs of Love and War: Afghan Women's Poetry, ed. by Sayd Bahodine Majrouh

I wouldn't normally pay things like this much mind, but this is so relevant, and so worthy, that I can't not. A short time ago, a message to my last post provided a link to Rubia, a project by Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE). The website says:

'Rubia 2009 Afghanistan calendar features Afghan women's poetry collected throughout the valleys of eastern Afghanistan and refugee camps of Pakistan by the late poet Sayd Bahodine Majrouh.

The calendar, designed by Beth Gottschling, showcases Rubia embroidery, and photographs by Beth Gottschling, Rachel Lehr, and Anna Lehr Mueser. All proceeds support Rubia's work in Afghanistan.

All of the landays in the calendar are reprinted with permission from Songs of Love and War: Afghan Women's Poetry, Edited by Sayd Bahodine Majrouh, Translated by Marjolijn De Jager, Other Press: New York, 2003.'

Atiq Rahimi and Sayd Bahodine Majrouh

It seems odd to say that someone who is called Afghanistan's 'only great postmodern writer' is obscure, but this is just what the poet Sayd Bahodine Majrouh (1928–88) is in England at least, and I suspect in many other countries too. Atiq Rahimi (winner of this year's Prix Goncourt with Syngué Sabour: pierre de patience) writes about his literary hero in this month's Magazine littéraire. He remembers picking up his Ajdahaï khodi (roughly 'The Dragon of the Self' or 'The Self Dragon') at 15 and greeting it with incomprehension, but nevertheless feeling that it had a magnetic power. He had the same feelings about the banned book after the Soviet invasion, when he was fortunate enough to rediscover it in a cardboard box of his father's: Majrouh had been an active member of the resistance against the invasion; but after being advised to read Carl Gustav Jung's Man and His Symbols, he understood that Majrouh was writing about the collective unconscious.

Majrouh was born in Afghanistan, received his doctorate in Montpellier, France, and taught Literature in Kabul before becoming Governor of the Province of Kapiça. Following the Soviet invasion, he went into exile in Pakistan, where some years later he was machine-gunned to death by Islamists in Peshawar.

Rahimi says that Majrouh lived beyond political, ethnic, linguistic or philosophical barriers. He is most noted for Ego Monstre, a large work in two volumes.

Mahjrouh first wrote Ego Monstre in Persian, re-wrote (not translated) it in Pashto, and almost completely re-wrote it in French. And the books are different, Rahimi says, 'not to adapt his writing and his thought to another culture and vulgarise it. Far from it. He was re-thinking and re-writing his texts to bring out another dimension to his works […]. His intensely visionary writings, though rooted in the contemporary history of Afghanistan, can never be reduced to present-day anecdotes. In everything he wrote, History becomes transformed into ‘epic fable’, and human tragedy into myth. In this way, his works become universal and timeless.’

Unfortunately, virtually none of his poetry is at present available in English. The Library of Congress redirects the name ‘Sayd Bahodine Majrouh’ to Majrūḥ, Bahāʾ al-Dīn, which is the only name the British Library recognises.

(My translation from the original French.)

James Kelman's Kieron Smith, Boy

The Saltire Society's Scottish Book of the Year 2008 went to James Kelman's Kieron Smith, Boy. This novel, considered by a number of critics to be Kelman's best, was not even included on the Man Booker longlist this year, although Kelman's A Disaffection was shortlisted for the Booker in 1989, and his How Late It Was, How Late won the Booker in 1994. Sin comentario.

Robert Burns’s Schooldays

Robert Hughes posts a correction, and an apology:

Several sources are clear that Robert Burns, the Scottish Bard, went to school in Kirkoswald at 17 years of age, and as he was born in 1759, my previous post obviously was wrong on a vital date; so humble pie to be eaten and spank me if you can catch me.

Burns died at 37 years of age after a prodigiously (re)productive career: some accounts suggest that 'By the end of his short life he was to have fathered fourteen children, nine of them out of wedlock, by six different mothers'.

He also gave Scotland hundreds of poems and songs, interweaving traditional tunes, an original use of vernacular dialect, and his own colourful observations of nature; human, animal and social.

Was 'Rabbie' Burns a subversive or a social climber?

Did he make accessible the Scots dialect, or slaughter the English language?

Was he a virile perpetuator of his race and genes, or a vile wanton rake?

Did he deserve an Oscar or an ASBO?

Controversial however he may be, there is a more prosaic question: did he know my ancestors?

He was an almost exact contemporary of my great-great-great-great-grandfather Thomas Nimmo, who was born in the parish of Kirkoswald less than a year before Burns. It might be a stretch to suppose that Thomas could have attended school with Rabbie, but there were enough younger siblings to make it likely that at least one of them studied with him, and in any case it is impossible to believe he did not know of the Nimmos of Auchenblain, whatever may have been his opinion of them.
One Burns-related website tells of a Jean Kennedy, a ‘gentlewoman’ who was running a pub, and William Fergusson inherited Auchenblain by marrying a Jean Kennedy.

Henceforth there is a cascade of names which seems to resonate between the Burns story and that of my Nimmo ancestors, see The Burns Encyclopedia. This link handily indexes many of Burns’s friends and acquaintances.

There are many Fergussons, (and Fergusons), and then Erskines, and Miss Erskine Nimmo.

A rather striking record from the Scotland census of 1861 shows the following people at 9 Brisbane St, Greenock:

Robert Candlish, aged 16, born in St Cuthbert’s, Edinburgh. (A James Candlish was a boyhood friend of Burns, and indeed a best friend.)

Elizabeth Mary Chalmers, aged 32. (This unfortunate woman was to die a month later, and it seems likely that the census achieved a snapshot of a gathering at her deathbed. She was the daughter of Elizabeth Smith, neé Nimmo.)

Richard Chalmers, also aged 32, born in St Cuthbert’s Edinburgh, who was an English teacher. (Four Chalmers are listed in the index, including a close Ayrshire friend of Burns.)

Thomas C. Chalmers, aged 14, a ‘scholar’, born in St Cuthbert’s Edinburgh, described as a ‘brother’, so possibly a young brother of Richard.

Elizabeth Smith, ‘factor’s wife’, aged 62. (My great-great-great-grandmother. She was born Elizabeth Nimmo in 1796, and the little porkie-pie about her age was typical of ladies in her day. On her marriage in 1825 she was approaching 30, and it would have been natural to shave off three years or so. Her daughter and her sister were both called Catherine Erskine, and her grandson Arthur Britton gave Harding as a middle name to his own son. There is no other known candidate to be Elizabeth Nimmo at the relevant time.)

A Catherine Saw and an Agnes Saw were servants in the household.

Apart from Catherine and Agnes Saw, all the others had surnames which figure in the Robert Burns story.

Elizabeth Nimmo of course was a Smith by marriage: to my great-great-great-grandfather James Smith, born in Birmingham. Researching someone of that name is a bit like looking for the third nematode on the left in the Jurassic ooze.

However, another very great friend of Robert Burns was James Smith, a linen draper, and although this guy died young in Jamaica, it is perfectly possible that other family members later appeared in Birmingham.

James Smith of Birmingham was normally described as a ‘factor’, and I would welcome an exact estimation of what that signified at the era in question, but his son Frederick Sutherland Smith is in the 1871 census as a ‘factor and agent in cloth trade’. At the time he was occupying Wickhamford Manor with his own large family, and that property is still notable today as a large country hotel; so he was either going through a purple patch in the cloth trade or doing a nifty line in house-sitting.

Where did Elizabeth Nimmo meet James Smith? I doubt she was down in Birmingham to bask in the bright lights. Her daughter Elizabeth Mary, (whom I have mentioned as suffering an untimely death in Greenock), was first married to Robert Nimmo Nicholson, the son of a farmer near Greenock and his wife Abigail McRae…yes you’ve got it, Nimmo!

They liked to keep it in the family these people, and that is why it seems so probable that James Smith was actually of a Scottish family himself, and perhaps the same family as the James Smith of Robert Burns’s acquaintance. Certainly the trade seems to be the same.

(A small aside: Lionel Britton, who was Elizabeth Nimmo’s great-grandson, wrote Hunger and Love, which could be seen as a tirade against trade; yet not only was James Smith unquestionably in trade, (cloth or not), but another of Lionel’s great-grandfathers – James Britton, also of Birmingham – was in trade, the only doubt being whether he was a leathercutter, an ironmonger or both; and yet another great-grandfather – Samuel Thomas Senior of Redditch – had needed sixteen bodyguards to protect him from stonethrowing townspeople after he had industrialised the needle-manufacturing process there. Trade, trade, trade…it wasn’t about what other people were doing, it was about what his own people were doing.)

Was there a circle involved with Robert Burns who still cohered, (hung out together, if you prefer,) nearly seventy years after the Bard’s death? Or is it just a coincidence that all these names crop up together, and that the common thread of Ayrshire seems to link them?

Robert Burns experts to the rescue here please!

José Saramago on Democracy

Nobel laureate José Saramago, the 86-year-old Portuguese writer who divides his life between Lisbon and Lanzarote, says in an interview with Maya Jaggi in the Guardian Review of 22 November 2008: 'I'm doubtful of democracy. [...]. Participation in political life is insufficient. People are called in every four years, and in between, the government does what it wants. That's not specific to Portugal'. Saramago describes himself as a 'hormonal communist – just as there's a hormone that makes my beard grow every day', and says of Barack Obama: 'It's a beautiful moment, democracy in action, when millions were mobilised – including people who had never voted before – for a new candidate, and a black candidate at that. It's a kind of revolution.' I doubt if many people saw it as a revolution, but the general idea is understood. Anyway, for an interesting interview on a major writer whose first job was as a car mechanic, this is Maya Jaggi‘s interview with José Saramago.

Auchenblain, and the family legend

Robert Hughes posts on his family history:

My great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Robert Nimmo the Younger of Auchenblain had at least nine children, of whom perhaps the first was Thomas, born 21 February 1758, who later became an apothecary in Greenock.

Thomas was the father of at least eight children himself, the youngest daughter being Elizabeth Nimmo, my great-great-great-grandmother, and the great-grandmother of Lionel Britton, the ‘lost genius of the nineteen-thirties’, who is now receiving renewed attention.

Auchenblane, (which seems to be the preferred modern spelling, another alternative used in the past being Auchinblain), is a property at GB Grid ref. NS 261 079, a mile or so east of Kirkoswald, Ayrshire, in the direction of Maybole.

A Google Earth image shows the property today unchanged from its appearance on a map of 1859, so some things have endured in 150 years of turbulence!

Thomas Nimmo died at Greenock on 3 August 1834, according to the Greenock Advertiser of 7 August 1834, by courtesy of the Watt Museum, Greenock.

Fowler’s Commercial Directory of 1831–32 mentions him as a ‘druggist’ at 63 Dalrymple St, Greenock, with a house in Ann St.

His wife was Elizabeth Harding, although a birth record for one of their children gives her as ‘Hardy’.

Looking at the site Scotland’s People, it would seem that in the eighteenth century ‘Harding’ was almost invariably rendered as ‘Hardie’ or ‘Hardy’, while later the form ‘Harding’ emerges more commonly; or Scotland was invaded by Hardings around the turn of the century, and someone needs to show evidence of that before I would believe it.

My great-uncle Lionel Erskine Nimmo Britton used to assert that he was a fourth cousin of the Earl of Mar and Kellie, so was he?

His grandmother Catherine Erskine Smith was the daughter of Elizabeth Nimmo, and almost certainly named for Elizabeth’s elder sister Catherine Erskine Nimmo.

The Erskines are the family of the Earls of Mar and Kellie, but where is the connection?

It does not seem to be on the Nimmo of Auchenblain line, as none of the likely parents of Thomas Nimmo seem to trace back to the Erskines, but these Ayrshire burial records from Kirkoswald are interesting:

'Robert Nimmo, formerly residing in Auchenblain, died 11th May 1786, Junior/Younger.'

'Robert Nimmo, formerly residing in Auchenblain, died 3rd April 1806, Old/Elderly man'.

Did Robert Nimmo the Elder outlive Robert the Younger by twenty years?

Where then is the elusive Erskine connection?

Elizabeth Harding herself is a complete mystery, as there appear to be no records of her marriage to Thomas Nimmo, or of her birth. She died in Greenock on 19 July 1841, but the 1841 census was taken a few weeks earlier, and there is no trace of her. Furthermore, her daughter Catherine Erskine Nimmo died apparently unmarried on 28 July 1848 at 19 Brougham St, Greenock, but there is no trace of her either. There are some known issues with the 1841 census, but they do not affect this area at all. What does happen very frequently with the census and indeed other records, is that there is a mistranscription; or alternatively people are just not called what we expect, e.g. Thomas Nimmo’s eldest daughter Jean married John Nicholson in 1804, but her marriage record makes her Jane.

(On the other side of my family there is a record of a Jane McCallum, who was my Auntie Jean!).

Could anyone shed light on the mystery of Elizabeth Harding?

There remains the small chance that the link to the Erskines is through Auchenblain, but in any case the story of this property is interesting in itself.

It appears to have once belonged to the Fergussons, but the testament of Thomas Nimmo, recorded on 11 Dec 1834 at Paisley Sheriff Court, suggests that he owned a good part of it at that date.

He leaves, to his son Robert Nimmo, M.D., (who in fact tragically died at Messina, Sicily a mere two years later):

'the forty shilling land of Easter Auchenblain, the ten shilling land of M[---?] and the thirty shilling and fourpenny land of Rottonmiss and Mosside presently possessed by John Nicholson with the Mansionhouse of Auchenblain and h[aile?] houses, luggings, yards, Parks, P[arks?], mosses, muirs, meadows, ...'

He also leaves a hundred pounds a year to his wife Elizabeth Harding, (interesting that she should be named in this fashion: but I have examined the notion that she was in fact married to someone else, and doubt if there’s anything in that), stipulating also that out of the estate his daughters should each be paid a thousand pounds, (and there are four named), apart from the eldest, Jean, who is separately provided for as she is married to John Nicholson, who ‘possesses’ part of Auchenblain.

Without hearing from a Scottish property lawyer who wishes to wade through the eleven pages of the will itself, I surmise that Thomas conceived himself to be a man of substance, even if he wasn’t.

This account of the parish of Kirkoswald from 1837 is interesting.

Note that ‘Dr Nimmo’s heirs’ have property worth about 80 pounds a year, which doesn’t seem much in relation to the disbursements required by Thomas’s will; but perhaps those very provisions depleted the resources of the estate?

I would love to hear from the present owners of Auchenblane, (are you relatives?), and from anyone who can shed light on the issues raised here.

Are there any Erskine anoraks who can tell us how Elizabeth Nimmo was descended from that family?

Other families associated with Auchenblain besides Fergusson (William Fergusson is said to have inherited the property by marriage to the daughter of a John Kennedy), are Leggat or Legat, Hendry, and of course Nicholson.

Note also the Burns connection in the Kirkoswald link. The old Scottish Bard was at school in Kirkoswald in 1786, and knew a Miss Erskine Nimmo in Edinburgh. We suspect Robbie Burns knew the Nimmo family; can anyone corroborate this?

Wolseley, Saskatchewan, and George Albert Thomas

Robert Hughes continues to excavate his past. He writes:

'Wolseley, in Canada's prairie province of Saskatchewan, had a population of something over a thousand in 1916, and was growing rapidly as migrants flooded into the West: two of them my great-great-uncles George and Frank Thomas.

Frank Thomas, born in 1876, arrived in Canada with his wife and two boys in 1911, and by 1916 was established in Wolseley working as a nurseryman in forestry.

George Thomas was officially Samuel, like his father and grandfather, but presumably things had become too complicated when his father could not shake off the "Sam Thomas Junior" handle, and so this young fellow became George.

By 6th March 1920, when he arrived in Saint John, New Brunswick, on the ship "Scandinavian", he was no longer Samuel but also no longer young; proposing to make a new life farming in Saskatchewan at nearly 48 years of age.

In 1906 he had married Ethel May Morris, who had been brought up near Frome in East Somerset, the daughter of a gardener on a large estate; and who was later known by the family as Aunty May.

Ethel May followed her husband across the Atlantic a month later, landing at Halifax, Nova Scotia from the 'Carmania' on 5th April 1920. With her was a five-year old boy called George.

We had thought that there may well have been no children of the marriage between George and Ethel May, but we were wrong: this child turns out to have been George Albert Thomas born Coventry, Warwickshire, on 25th Feb 1915, their son.

My cousin David Guillaume now remembers an occasion, soon after the Second World War, when Aunty May was showing some photographs to his Aunt Louise at her flat in Alcester. He remembers the expression: “he was already in the air force when the war started”.

This was very likely to have been George Albert Thomas, and as I can find no record of him being a casualty, he is quite likely to have survived the war, although that is not certain, and we all know how high was the attrition rate among airmen.

Of Frank Thomas' sons, we know what happened to Cecil, (born 1905): he had no children of his own, but adopted Jason in 1964; eventually dying aged around ninety.

Samuel Francis Thomas, already known as Frank by the 1916 census of Saskatchewan, and born Upper Ipsley, Worcestershire, on 10th Nov 1900, was said to have married the daughter of a pig-farmer, but we do not know if there were any children.

So if we have Canadian cousins out there, descended from either Frank, (Samuel Francis), or George Albert, we would love to hear from you!'