Literary New York City (Mainly)

I may have taken all of these images of New York City, although I'd have been unaware of the existence of most of them without Kevin Walsh's Forgotten New York, a real mine of information on many of the more obscure aspects of New York City's history. One of the most interesting things about this book is that it doesn't just cover what many people – North Americans included – often refer to as New York City: Manhattan tout court: Manhattan, of course, is only one New York's five boroughs: all too often, we forget that Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are also a part of New York City.

Many thanks, too, to my partner Penny Atkinson, who assisted me in finding many of these places.

'We were very tired, we were very merry—

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry'

Edna St Vincent Millay's famous words, from her poem 'Recuerdo', evoke the hedonism of the 1920s. She is speaking, of course, of the Staten Island ferry, still one of the greatest free rides in the world.</> This is a view of Manhattan financial district from the ferry.

It is worth exploring Staten Island itself, and a frequent train service will take you to the bottom of the island in about forty-five minutes.

In the early part of the previous century, the land on which these structures now stand in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, near the town of Flushing in Queens, was an ash disposal heap. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald describes it as 'a fantastic form where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens'. That quotation is my excuse for showing these three weird images. New York's two World Fair's were in 1939 and 1964, and the remains of these occasions still, gloriously, litter the park.

The above structure was part of New York State Pavilion. This was the Tent of Tomorrow, showing the sixteen 100-foot columns which supported the roof. Sky Streak capsule lifts took people to the top.

Rocket Thrower, showing a giant hurling a rocket through a constellation.

Above is Theodore Roszak's Forms in Transit, one of the most difficult exhibits to find.

The bust above is of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and is one of a number of writers, politicians, etc, in the Hall of Fame at the Bronx Community College.

This statue is in a prominent position, in the Literary Walk in Central Park, Manhattan. Here, Shakespeare, Robert Burns and Walter Scott stand: all very famous men. Above, though, is a forgotten man of American poetry: Fitz–Greene Halleck (1790–1867). Rather than paraphrase someone else's description of Halleck's work and life, the reader is best directed to The Fitz–Greene Halleck Society web pages.

A rather odd thing for a person from Nottingham, England, to find a plaque dedicated to fellow Nottinghamian William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, in Battery Park, Lower Manhattan.

This blog supports Barack Obama in his battle to become President of the United States: at least he didn't vote for the war on Iraq, and he represents hope to so many in a deeply divided country. But he has a fine juggling act to perform, and he also supports the neo-liberal ethos which causes poverty: even if he wins two terms, how much will he have achieved in that time?

The photo above and the one below were taken in Alphabet City, Manhattan.

Poe Cottage in the Bronx is the farmhouse where Edgar Allan Poe lived between 1846 and 1849. Now a museum, the building was closed for general renovations when visited in June 2008.

Almost impossible to read because situated so high up the wall, this plaque in the Upper West Side at Broadway and 84th Street marks the site where Poe spent the summer of 1844 on a farm. The building is a café.

Patchin Place, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, once home to several literary figures, among them E. E. Cummings and Djuna Barnes.

Coney Island, Brooklyn, is now a shadow of its former self (and still under threat), but many New Yorkers continue to flock to the beaches. The occasion here was the Mermaid Parade, 21 June 2008. Literary references? How about Styron's Sophie's Choice?

Inevitably, Brooklyn Bridge evokes thoughts of Whitman's ferry crossing and Hart Crane's poem, but also, of course, the wonderful Marianne Moore.

The entrance to New York Public Library, home of, among many others, manuscripts by such diverse writers as Shelley and Kerouac.

Netherwood, Hastings: Lionel Britton Rants

The postcard above shows a drawing of Netherwood in Hastings by ‘Barbara’, and has been posted to a blog entitled ‘Old Postcard Art’. It represents how the house looked after it was restored in the second half of the 1930s. It was then owned by the forgotten actor and playwright E. C. Vernon Symonds and his wife ‘Johnnie’, and their intention was to convert it into a left-wing guesthouse, a place for socialist meetings and trade union conferences. The writer Lionel Britton was one of the people who worked on it for many months, receiving free board and lodging in return for manual work. Britton’s letters to friends express his suspicion that the Symonds are really members of the bourgeoisie posing as socialists, although in the letter extract below he finds an excuse to plunge into a wholehearted assault on the class-based design of the original house itself, and by extension the bourgeoisie as a whole. It is fourteen pages long and addressed to 'Bertski', Britton's nickname for Herbert Marshall, who was working with the film director Eisenstein in the Soviet Union (and which explains the reference to 'no bloody revolution'):

‘Worked terrible hard down here, building up [this socialist utopia]. Not from the raw and virgin forest, you know; merely the bourgeoisie giving place. Big house in 4 acres of ground, built for two people with about twelve servants. Damned interesting to see a house like that, sort of bare [...] inside. Usually you only see it in its separated aspect, as bourgeois or proletarian, and it’s most illuminating to see it with its inside all brought to light dissected and laid out to view like an anatomical specimen. You have the house separated into two portions, with the biggest half [sic] and its spacious rooms shut off for the use of the “quality” with their two ineffectual useless lives, the rest of it being divided into grades among the proletarians, butler and housekeeper being partitioned off from contact with lower mortals, just as they themselves were shut out from contaminating the Great. Then among these lower lower lower orders there were better and best and bloody awful bedrooms for them to crawl up to exhausted and creep out of refreshed as best they might, to take up the labour again of keeping Greatness alive for its fatuous existence. Two baths for Quality to keep their cocks clean, and two W.’s, but not a bath for the whole bloody dozen, and no W. either unless you went outside in the wet. And a cottage in the grounds with an earth-closet! Think of that! Bugger me, we aint particular, we bloody dirty stinking bourgeoisie, we aint. Dirty lot o’ bastards.

'If they did get diseases serve the buggers right. Ought to be executed, dirty rotten sods.

'No place to wash in, no light, no fire, bit o’ candle and a pisspot p’raps, and work your bloody guts out to keep these stinking lumps of fat alive. And no bloody revolution, either: now what d’you think of that? There’s a bloody world to live in’ (1).

Netherwood is today perhaps best remembered as the last home of 'The Great Beast' Aleister Crowley, who was looked after by Johnny and Vernon Symonds. The building has since been demolished.

(1) Lionel Britton, letter to Herbert Marshall, 20 May 1936, the Lionel Britton Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Southern Illinois University, pp. 12–13.

Cyril, Mary, and Ivy Britton and Children

This photo shows Cyril and Mary (née Hunt) Britton at an unknown outing in 1924, with Cyril's sister (Kathleen Ethel) Ivy below Ida. I now more or less copy from the comment below by Cyril's oldest granddaughter, Valerie Ruth Britton:

'In the picture the centre girl is Mildred (my aunt Milly), their eldest surviving daughter, and the chap bottom left their eldest surviving son, Douglas, my own father. The lad in Cyril's arms is Herbert (uncle Bert) and bottom right is Leslie, I guess, still a baby.'

Cyril was a younger brother, and Irza the mother, of the working-class writer Lionel Britton.

Many thanks once again to Helen Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image, and to Valerie Morris for filling in the pictures and doing a little correcting.

British Mills, Redditch

British Mills in Redditch was a large needle and fishing tackle factory on Prospect Hill founded by Samuel Thomas senior – the great-grandfather of Lionel Britton – who used to live with his family in a self-contained house (part of which is visible to the left of this photo) attached to the facade. Of note is the painted 'S. THOMAS & SONS LTD' towards the top of the building. Today, virtually all that remains of the factory is this facade.

Many thanks once more to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

St Stephens School, Redditch, and 6 Hewell Road, Redditch

St Stephens School in Redditch was where working-class writer Lionel Britton was educated. He stayed there until he was about twelve, later saying that the headteacher told him that he had learned all they could teach him. He later found a job sandpapering fishing rods, although didn't do this for long: he went to Birmingham for several days before finding various poorly paid jobs in London, where he would briefly make his name as a writer.
6 Hewell Road was the home of Samuel Thomas junior and his wife Marie Antoinette. It was where Lionel, Ivy, Percy (or Bob) and Cyril Britton lived for several years after the death of their father, Richard Britton.

Many thanks to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

John James Britton (Probably)

The above photo is probably the poet and solicitor John James Britton, although it is by no means clear.

Many thanks to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

Cyril Britton

Cyril Britton was born in Bournemouth and died in London. He was the son of Richard and Irza Britton and the brother of Lionel Britton.

Many thanks to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

Ivy Britton

Ivy Britton was born at Astwood Bank, near Redditch, and died in Islington. She was the daughter of Richard and Irza Britton and the sister of Lionel Britton.

Many thanks to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

Irza Britton and Companion (detail)

Irza Vivian Geraldine Britton was Lionel Britton's mother and the daughter of Samuel Thomas junior of Redditch, Worcestershire.

The date of this photo is unknown.

Many thanks to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image, a copy of which is also in the Lionel Britton Collection, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois.

Lionel Britton: Portrait of the Writer as a Young Man

This is the earliest known photo of the working-class writer Lionel Britton, when he was in his twenties. The bizarre thing is that he is wearing a tie and what appears to be a three-piece suit: Britton later shunned formal wear for an open-neck shirt, shorts, plimsolls, and an uncombed mop of hair.

Many thanks to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

John James Britton (1832–1913) at Halford, 1912, and a Back View of the House by Elizabeth Hilda Dorothy Britton (1889–1966)

The photo above is a rare picture of the poet, journalist and solicitor John James Britton, the father of Richard Britton and the paternal grandfather of the working-class writer Lionel Britton. In various posts below, I have mentioned more things about John James Britton and his family, so I leave a comment on the above from a recent email I received from Robert Hughes, a great-nephew of Lionel's:

'I don't know whether this shot was actually taken by Cyril [Britton, Lionel's brother], although it was in his collection. I could hardly make out the figure of J[ohn] J[ames] at all in the original, but scanned by Jane [Matthews, Dorothy Goodbun's daughter] it has come up extremely well [...]. [T]he house is clearly the same house as in the postcard from the Stratford records office, showing the front elevation rather than the rear elevation. The chimneys and roof line are distinctive, and the beads in the windows are clearly the same, as is the shape of the windows themselves.'

Many thanks to those mentioned above for making possible the publication of this photo.


The above sketch is a representation of the back garden of The Yews (or Maryland), Halford, Warwickshire, drawn in 1913 by Elizabeth Hilda Dorothy Britton, the year of John James Britton's death. The Longfellow poem is form 'The Open Window'.

Many thanks to Paul Eyres Britton and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

Flora Hughes (née Britton), 25 October 1919 – 13 May 2008

Last night, Robert Hughes told me that his mother, Flora Hughes (née Britton), died yesterday morning. She was the daughter of Reginald Percy Leopold Britton (a.k.a. Bob to his family but usually Keebah to Robert) and Maisie Britton. This is Robert's comment:

'She was a wonderful mother to us and she will be sorely missed.

The attachment I am sending is a cutting from the Daily Sketch of April 1937.

My mother fell ill shortly after eating a bite from a packet of nuts and raisins which she bought at the cinema. Realising there was something wrong with the taste, she had a close look at the contents and saw that there was evidence of gnawing by a mouse.

Within a few hours she had lapsed into fever and delirium.

However, she vividly recounted to us how she had fought for life for the sake of her parents who had earlier lost Rob her little brother: she could not bear the thought of them losing her as well.

The illness was subsequently diagnosed as Mouse Meningitis.

She defied death that time and lived for seventy more years, giving us life, and despite many hardships, leading a very fulfilled life herself.

But she never forgot Rob.

As her mind progressively failed over the last few years, many things slipped away from her, but she would point to his photograph on the wall opposite her sofa and ask "Do you know who that is?"

"I do," I would reply, "but do you?"

The withering look she gave me was pure RADA, pure her; transcending amnesia, laughing to scorn the passage of eighty years since this searing event.

The bombing to smithereens of the family home in 1941, the loss of Granny, Keebah, my father; her own struggles with the debilitating condition Polymyalgia, which struck overnight just as she was trying to make a living selling windows in her sixties, (she conquered it and went on to be a prize-winning member of the sales team); her motor accident in 1998 where she came within one inch of death: none compared with the heart-rending loss of her little brother and playmate.’

The following paragraphs are from Flora Hughes’s website, where several more of her poems are published:

'Born in England and trained at RADA as Flora Britton, Flora abandoned a promising career as a classical actress on the West End stage for her husband and, in time, her two sons. Her dramatic instincts have remained with her. These and her love of people, animals and the natural world shine through these entertaining collections, written over many years.

Flora enjoys painting, gardening and verse speaking. "I started writing poetry as soon as I had discovered it because I love words and rhythm," she remarked. "My work is influenced by my observations and my style is varied between classic and humorous. I would like to be remembered as someone who was kindly, entertaining, understanding and sympathetic.

Flora is a widow with two sons, Robert and David. "My biggest fantasy is to be transported by magic to visit fabled places and people," she said. "I have written over 100 poems and had many published but I am most proud of these two books". Flora now lives near Ross-on-Wye, entertaining family and friends whenever the opportunity arises, and tending her beautiful garden teeming with flowers and wildlife.'

Flora's father was a younger brother of working-class writer Lionel Britton. From time to time, Robert would feed me snippets about Lionel which he'd gleaned from Flora – mainly concerning his craziness or his scruffiness. I shall miss these. Robert and his family, of course, will miss much, much more.

Lionel Britton's Distinctive Signature

Lionel Britton inscribed the above on the f.e.p. of his Spacetime Inn (1932) to his niece, Flora Britton (later Hughes), when she was 13 years old. She is the first daughter of Reginald Percy Leopold Britton, a younger brother of Lionel's. As a science fiction play, Spacetime Inn is highly unusual. And as this is a space where Eve (of Adam and Eve), the Queen of Sheba, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, Napoleon, Karl Marx, Bernard Shaw, and two interchangeable members of the working classes of the 1930s all converse with each other, the content is also a little out of the ordinary.

The quotation is from page 96 of Spacetime Inn. After learning that Bill and Jim have lost their money, Eve says ‘Is it so wonderful? What can be more than the delight which breathes through all the world? There is a thrill which quickens every limb, there is a yearning answered through the eyes watching the light of other eyes wake softly like a happy day as we come near them, there is a music underneath a word which kisses the ear of one who listens for it coming from those we love. These things make life wonderful, as sun and moon colour the day and night. Let me give you these!’

Flora's son Robert Hughes comments: 'The full quotation makes a deal of sense in the context of my mother's life, for most of which she either had no regular income at all, or had to work damn hard to produce one. The philosophy behind those few lines helped her through it all and she was certainly a light to us.'


The image on the right shows Harry Peter Smolka's stamp on the first prelim, with another inscription by Lionel Britton (1). Lionel Britton's first play, Brain (1930), concerns the building of a giant brain in the Sahara Desert. This too is a science fiction play, and frequently cited as one of the first plays in which a computer is represented. From Smolka, this book passed to Flora Hughes.

(1) Harry Peter Smolka was born in Austria in 1912 but educated in England. He later became a British citizen and changed his name to Smollet. In 1937 (still as Smolka) he published Forty Thousand Men against the Arctic: Russia's Polar Empire (London: Hutchinson).

Again, many thanks to Robert Hughes for providing me with these images.

The Art of Karl Salsbury Wood

Karl Salsbury Wood was born at Kings Newton, Derbyshire, in 1888. He later moved to Nottingham for several years, where he worked as a packer in a warehouse at Short Hill in the Lace Market; his boss was Louis Oram Trivett, an enthusiastic boy scout leader from West Bridgford. By the time Wood left service in World War I, he was a self-taught artist, and spent most of his adult life at his studio at Gainsborough, England. He is best known for his many paintings of windmills of the British Isles, and for some years spoke about writing a book called 'The Twilight of the Mills'; unfortunately, the book was never published, although he wrote many articles in the Gainsborough Standard which bore this title. Soon, I shall be publishing these in a re-write of my Windmill Wood: A Biography of Midlands Artist Karl Salsbury Wood.

Many thanks to Karl Wood's cousin Ann Hatton for sending me these images of his artwork. The dates are unknown.

Abbey Farm, Renhold, Bedford. This was Ann Hatton's home, where she and her three siblings were brought up. Watercolour.

Manaccan, Cornwall. Tinted linocut.

Cley next the Sea, Norfolk. The lettering showing through the image on occasions is because Wood did this on the back of an advertisement for an optician. Tinted linocut.

Alveston, Derby.

Unknown location.

Unknown location. Watercolour.

Unknown location. Watercolour.

Dadaism, Lionel Britton, and Anarchism

May 2008 of course marks the fortieth anniversary of les événements, the often violent protests which spread across France in reaction against the consumer society, the perceived bankrupcy of capitalism, stultifying conformity, the segregation of the sexes, and numerous other things. The protests also spread to many other countries in the western world, picking up many other causes in their wake, and the media have – inevitably – eagerly sought opportunities to indulge in an inkfest of nostalgia and revisionism: many living journalists, French or not, are soixante–huitards in memory if nothing else. The latest hors–série issue of Le Magazine littéraire re-publishes several pages from the May 1968 issue, four of which are from an interview the magazine had with Daniel Cohn–Bendit, a German with no belief in nationalities who was a major spokesperson for the movement which began at Nanterre University (1).

In the interview, one of the questions put to Cohn–Bendit concerns the interest of contemporary student protesters in the surrealist movement of the 1920s. He says, 'The student movement is certainly not a revolution, but a rebellion. We are in agreement. About surrealism, especially about Dada. Because Dadaism was more radical and it is influencing a part of the movement' (2).

Of obvious note here is the association of revolt with Dadaism or surrealism, as is the fact that the anarchist Cohn–Bendit (who, unlike many anarchists, did call himself that) saw the link as a positive thing. I have already noted Lionel Britton's interest in surrealism, although I have not previously mentioned anything of Britton's anarchism: it is normal, and some might argue obligatory (of which more in a later post to this blog), that the literature of the working class align itself to left-wing causes; but with the exception of the Scottish working-class writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon (a.k.a. Leslie Mitchell for his 'English' novels) who is best known for his trilogy A Scots Quair, Lionel Britton is almost certainly the only other British working-class anarchist writer of this period (3).

Cohn–Bendit's ideas seem to have mellowed somewhat in the last forty years, although by no means as much as those of some politicians who once belonged to Britain's now almost non-existent left wing.

(1) 'Quand on critique radicalement on construit', Le Magazine littéraire, 18, May 1968, pp. 20–24; repr. Le Magazine littéraire collections, Hors–Série 13, pp. 42–45.

(2) pp. 44–45. (The translation from the French is by me.)

(3) Grassic Gibbon refers to 'Saint Bakunin', and sent his son to A. S. Neill's radical Summerhill School (which continues today, in spite of the many efforts which New Labour has made to close it).

Mary Thomas and Irza Britton

The photo above shows Mary Ann Elizabeth Thomas, née Quartly (1866–1943) on the left, and Irza Vivian Geraldine Britton, née Thomas (1866–1959) on the right. It was taken in about 1890, and the photo below obviously dates from the same period. The daughter of Samuel Thomas junior of Redditch (son of Samuel Thomas the needle and fish-hook manufacturer), Irza was born in Paris, France, and in her later life lived at 38 Saville Street (later to become 11 Hanson Street), Marylebone, and 66 Tufnell Park Road in the Borough of Islington. She was the mother of the working-class writer Lionel Britton (1887–1971).

(Many thanks to Janet Adcock for providing these images via Robert Hughes, who doesn't provide a photo of himself, perhaps because he says that he was once described as a cross between David Essex and an armadillo.)

In Defence of Working-Class Literature

James Kelman is one of the most important living British novelists. If not the most important. Theo Tait interviewed him for the Guardian Review last Saturday (12 April 2008), and appears to have had a difficult time, I’m pleased to say (1). After cruising through an introductory paragraph in which Tait name checks Kelman’s ‘Glasgow-set’ (The Busconductor Hines (1984)), A Disaffection (1989) and of course the booker-winning How Late It Was, How Late (1994)), then tossing off the names of three writers influenced by Kelman – all Scottish, because you have to keep difficult writers within the parochial boundaries of their perceived influence, of course – the problems start: ‘At the rendezvous under the clock at Glasgow Station, fresh off the train from Euston, Kelman is punctual and polite’. As I understand it from what Tait has written here, Kelman has just arrived off the Euston train: yes? No, I don’t think we’re supposed to understand it like this: James Kelman is the Glaswegian, not Theo Tait; but then Tait seems to have a problem with understanding as well as writing, as his article reveals.

To skip a little of Tait’s argument for the moment, Tait seems to think that Kelman should in some way have something in common with Alan Sillitoe or Barry Hines, both of whom are also working-class writers. Tait ignores the fact that both Sillitoe and Hines would otherwise have little in common with Kelman, perhaps because he is unaware of it, and moves on to appear to be claiming to score points over Kelman because Kelman hasn’t read Sillitoe.

The really odd thing about Tait’s article is that he seems to believe that society has progressed from the days of Conservative Party rule, that it has moved towards a society that has more understanding of class problems and social issues in general, towards a more enlightened society. Kelman puts the record straight on this: ‘I would hope […] that people around the world don’t think of people in Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales as being represented by the fucking Queen or something, or Gordon Brown or any of these fucking people – or as being supportive of a right-wing state like the Labour Party’s.’

Kelman’s argument is perfectly intelligible: since 1979 (OK, since the world began, but let's start with recent history) there have been increasing, and increasingly brutal, systematic attacks on the working class: Gordon Brown represents a relentless right-wing attack on the working class which began with Margaret Thatcher, continued with Tony Blair, and appears to be without end. The main difference between then and now is that Thatcher's government had an opposition: the Labour Party; the present New Labour government is not only imitative of the previous Conservative regime, but more ruthless because it can carry out right-wing atrocities that the previous Conservative government could only dream of. There is no opposition, there is only pretence. Even The Guardian, which during Thatcher's era supported the (admittedly increasingly right-wing) Labour Party, is now in general support of the full-blown right-wing New Labour Party. Is Kelman's anger at all surprising?

But Tait goes on to say that ‘all sense vanishes in [Kelman’s] exaggerations’, without clearly stating what these ‘exaggerations’ are. Previously, Tait stated, somewhat bemusedly, that Kelman regards himself as a post-colonial writer, as one writing within a field occupied by others: the bourgeoisie, of course. Tait attempts to refute this by illustrating – rather pathetically – ways in which he believes that Kelman had been assimilated into the world of bourgeois writing. In the end, Tait simply gives up trying to understand Kelman. If he had in fact read A Disaffection, he might have pointed to a weird and wonderful instance in which straightforward working-class speech meets bizarre middle-class speech. In disillusionment, the working-class protagonist of the novel, Patrick Doyle, abandons his job as a schoolteacher; in many ways he is tired of his current life, but above all he is tired of leading it according to the rules of the Establishment. As he parks his car on his way to visit his brother, something happens to the narrative voice:

‘He patted the car bonnet en route to the pavement where he proceeded to traverse the flagstones up the stairs and into the closemouth. Traversed the flagstones up the stairs and into the bloody closemouth. Is this fucking Mars! Traversed the fucking bastarn [sic] flagstones onto the planet fucking Vulcan for christ sake’ (2).

Patrick is depressed and angry, and becomes even angrier when he finds himself adopting the middle-class discourse, using expressions such as ‘en route to’ and ‘proceeded to traverse’. The comments that follow disrupt this artificiality or pretentiousness and introduce a working-class discourse into the narrative: in so doing, the movement is away from a world which to the narrator appears be on another (even non-existent) planet.

Kelman’s problems are not far removed from those of the forgotten working-class writer Lionel Britton, who fought for years to prevent any publisher from making any changes to what he had written. In the end, with Hunger and Love (1931), he succeeded in having a 700-page book published without the alteration of a single comma: perhaps unique for a first novel. But unlike Sillitoe, both Kelman and Britton write in a modernist style, and both are anarchists (although, like most anarchists, neither would agree with this generalisation).

Theo Tait finds James Kelman’s anger difficult to comprehend, as critics did Lionel Britton’s anger. Whose fault is this? In a review of Kelman's latest novel, Kieron Smith, Boy, Simon Kövesi – who has written a book on Kelman – remarks that 'Censorship of the tongue leads to a sense of a whole culture being suppressed' (3).

(1) Theo Tait, ‘In His Own Words’, Guardian Review, 12 April 2008, p. 11.

(2) James Kelman, A Disaffection (London: Secker & Warburg, 1989), p. 252.

(3) Simon Kövesi, 'Say Aye to Kelman's Best Yet', The Independent Arts & Books Review, 25 April 2008, p. 25; James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2008); Simon Kövesi, James Kelman (Manchester: Manchester University Press, c. 2007).

Ivy Britton of Islington, London

Kathleen Ethel Ivy Britton was born at Astwood Bank, on the border of Worcestershire and Warwickshire, in 1886. She was the daughter of Richard Waddams Nimmo Britton and Irza Vivian Geraldine Britton (née Thomas), and died at 18 Corbyn Street, Islington, London, in 1958. She was the sister of Lionel, Percy (a.k.a. Bob) and Cyril Britton.

Many thanks to Dorothy and Ken Goodbun, and to Robert Hughes, for making possible the publication of this image.

Richard Britton and The Astwood Bank Mutual Improvement Society, Worcestershire and Warwickshire

When Britton & Son, a legal company in Alcester (John James Britton) and Astwood Bank (Richard Waddams Nimmo Britton), went bankrupt in 1888, Richard and his family were forced to leave their home in Astwood Bank, then a hamlet with a tiny population. Richard transcribed several references, of which this, written by the Astwood Bank Mutual Improvement Society, is a fine example. It was written on 24 April 1888, and signed by members of the committee: W. Wright Robinson (President), William Henry Yeomans (Vice-President), Harry Woodward (Secretary), and W. R. John (committee member):

'We, the undersigned members if the Astwood Bank Mutual Improvement Society, desire to express to you, in view of your approaching removal from this neighbourhood, our sincere regret at the prospect of losing so valuable a member. In our debates we have been much advantaged by your conspicuous ability as a dialectitian [sic]; and we acknowledge your courtesy, suavity and good humour in controversy. We wish you success in your own learned profession, and a prolonged life of usefulness and happiness'.

Less than seven years later, Richard died of tuberculosis in Bournemouth.

Hewell Road, Redditch – Home of the Family of Samuel Thomas Junior

These two images are from old postcards of Hewell Road, Redditch, although today most if not all of the houses no longer exist. They're a little indistinct, but that isn't too important; the date is unknown, and that isn't particularly important either. What is important (or at least, what is of interest) is if 6 Hewell Road is shown here: this is where Samuel Thomas junior – son of Samuel Thomas the needle and fishing tackle manufacturer – lived with his family. At the time of the 1901 census, there were eleven people in the house: Samuel Thomas himself (aged 66); his wife Marie Antoinette Thomas (56); their son Newton Thomas (18); their daughter Florry Thomas (21); Samuel's friend Henri Charles Guillaume (35); Henri's wife (also Samuel and Marie's daughter) Rose Guillaume (23); Rose and Henri's daughter Daisy Guillaume (3) and their son Lionel Guillaume (1); and Samuel and Marie's grandchildren: Ivy Britton (14), Percy Britton – later to be known as Bob (11), and Cyril Britton (9); the eldest son, the later writer Lionel Britton (13) had by this time escaped to London to live in poverty.

A middle-class family of this size must have lived in a large house; the only house of any size in the two postcards appears to be the detached one with the portico to the right of the upper postcard and behind the lamp-post, and on the left in the lower postcard. It may well be that this is 6 Hewell Road.

From Nottingham, England, to the Co-Principality of Andorra in a Morris Minor Traveller

Well, OK, this was in the 1970s and I was teaching in France at the time (Lycée Technique d'Etat Louis Rascol, Albi, in the Tarn), but I just couldn't let this shot go away. This was taken as the Moggie touched Andorran snow, and (just about) shows the French Pyrenees in the background with my ex-wife Sylvia in the passenger seat and a Welsh teacher called Steve in the back. I took it after we'd crossed the Pyrenees the most difficult way – although the details are a haze – after hours of negotiating treacherous steep hairpin bends without snow chains. I remember that not too long afterwards we bought three two-litre plastic bottles (two of coconut liqueur and one of strawberry) from a huge off-licence for a ridiculously low price in the capital, Andorra la Vella. We were shattered after the terrifying journey, and the samples tasted wonderful. Too tired to go down to the hotel bar that night, we just drank some of the liqueur in Steve's room. The next day we noticed with horror that the (unwashed) plastic camping mugs were burned by the alcohol. Was this just regular firewater? My gut did somersaults as I drove through the rest of Andorra late the following afternoon.

Back at the lycée, we tried a sip of the liqueur but it tasted vile: we were still living, so we figured it was not a great crime to take the rest of it to the next party we were invited to. Unsurprisingly, after a few drinks no one noticed that they were drinking what probably amounted to flavoured paraffin.

Harry Slochower on Lionel Britton

The literary critic Dr Harry Slochower (1900–91) is perhaps better known for his book No Voice Is Wholly Lost (1946) rather than his Three Ways of Modern Man (1937) (1). However, the earlier book contains an interesting paragraph on Lionel Britton's Hunger and Love:

'An unusual prose-work shaped by the war-era is Hunger and Love by the English writer Lionel Britton. The novel is a passionate social and spiritual autobiography of a young worker and intellectual of pre-war England. Britton uses an unsophisticated Joycean technique, producing a sharp, direct and naked naturalism (2). The novel sketches the questionings of young Arthur Phelps, his awakening from a nebulous "cosmic citizenship" to his cognizence of class-restrictions. The worker Phelps is hungry for knowledge as such. He soon learns that most of it has been "interpreted" and disseminated by "Pastors and Masters" for their own group-benefits. This realistic Englishman is not moved from his critical dissidence by vodka, metaphysics or music (3). His "hunger" for bread, he realizes in the end, is a hunger for beauty, love and knowledge. We lose sight of him at the outbreak of the War. But the "whys" he has asked at evey point will prevent him from fighting in the unquestioning way of a Hans Castrop [from Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain]. Phelps' struggle against hunger is part of the battle for the emergence of the human. Britton's hope lies in the fact that "all over the world", the Phelpses are finding this out. The prose of Ralph Bates (Lean Men, The Olive Tree) is the most heartening confirmation of this hope' (4).

Slochower is one of the few critics to realise that Arthur Phelps did not necessarily die at the end of the novel. Slochower's copy of Hunger and Love is held at Brooklyn College.

(1) Harry Slochower, Three Ways of Modern Man (International Publishers, 1937; repr. Kraus Reprint, 1969); Harry Slochower, No Voice Is Wholly Lost: Writers and Thinkers in War and Peace (London: Dobson, 1946; repr. as Literature and Philosophy between Two World Wars: The Problem of Alienation in a War Culture (New York: Citadel Press, 1964).

(2) But if Britton was influenced by James Joyce – as C. E. M. Joad also claims in Under the Fifth Rib: A Belligerent Autobiography (1932) – it was by cultural osmosis: Britton had never read any of the modernists, and hated what he perceived as their elitism. In an unpublished essay, Britton responds to Joad's claims in a typical exuberant manner: '[Joad] specifies writers like James Joyce, Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. Who are these people? What's that to do with me? I don't know anything about these blokes. [...]. I've heard about them, and every now and again I think to myself I ought to know something about this, and I pick up one of their books. And that's as far as it gets. [...] I'm a writer and I don't intend to take poison. If I read this stuff I find I can't think afterwards. It muddles up the speech centre in the brain. [...]. If I force myself a few sentences too far into one of their books, then until I take a mental purgative or emetic I'm done. I might as well be dead. I won't do it.' When Joad quotes a paragraph from Joyce's 'Ithaca' section in Ulysses to illustrate the similarities to Britton's writing style, Britton denies it: 'If I had written that passage it would not be the same. I could never say "On solitary hotel paper she writes". I should say: "She writes. Hotel paper. Solitary hotel." I should not say "In dark corner young man seated." I should say: "Young man sitting in dark corner." I'd run a mile rather than use a word like "seated". Be seated, madam! Not me!' (The above exerpts are from the essay 'Unreason in Modern Literature', a typescript of which is held at the Special Collections Research Center, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (Lionel Britton Collection, Box 75, Folder 1, pp. 4–5)).

(3) Slochower was almost certainly unaware that Lionel Britton was teetotal, or that he was contemptuous of music, although he appears to have guessed as much.

(4) Ralph Bates, Lean Men: An Episode in a Life (London: Davies, 1934); Ralph Bates, The Olive Tree (London: Cape, 1936). Relevant here is the juxtaposition of Britton's work to a noted working-class writer.

Eisenstein Meets Lionel Britton

Below, I have already provided a link to this wonderful photo, although it clearly merits a more direct viewing. The above scene was taken in 1929, almost certainly at the Film Guild of London on the day that Einsenstein's banned film Battleship Potemkin was shown there (1).

In the foreground, from left to right, are Hans Richter, Mark Segal, -------?, and Len Lye.

At the back, again from left to right, are Irza Britton, Sinead Acheson, Lionel Britton, Sergei Eisenstein, -------?, Jimmy Rogers, Frederick Edward Towndrow, Basil Wright, and Michael Hankinson.

Of the two unidentified men, it is possible that the one at the back is Herbert Marshall, or was he the photographer? (2).

Many thanks to Roger Horrocks for giving me permission to show this photo and for his identification of most of the people in it. It is from Roger's book Len Lye: A Biography (Auckland: University of Auckland Press, 2001).

(1) Lionel Britton was chair of the Film Guild of London, Herbert Marshall the secretary; the studio was in Charing Cross Road in a room that was part of the premises of Foyles bookshop.

(2) The film director Herbert Percival James Marshall (1906–91) – see filmography – was a student of Eisenstein's for several years, and was a close friend of Britton as well as a great admirer of him. He married the sculptor Fredda Brilliant (1903–99). On Britton's death in 1971, Marshall had all of Britton's literary effects moved to Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, where Marshall was Professor and Director of Soviet and Eastern European Studies (Performing Arts), and where they remain today. Fredda Brilliant is well known for sculpting Gandhi's statue in Tavistock Square Gardens, London, although she also sculpted a bust of Britton (who called her 'Freddie'); it is not known if the latter has survived.

Lionel Britton's Letter to Bertrand Russell, 28 November 1955

As I mentioned in a post below, Lionel Britton and Bertrand Russell wrote a number of letters to each other. One dates from about eighteen months after Britton was injured in a car accident in which he sustained multiple fractures and was lucky to escape with his life. He briefly explains his difficulties resulting from the accident, and says that he is now recovering. He also says that he received an undisclosed sum of money in compensation, and hopes that he can 'use [it] to publish my work, & be independent of publishers' readers' (1). Unfortunately, nothing came of this, and for some unknown reason Britton later lost his money.

The letter is also interesting in that it reveals that Britton had recently attended a 'One World meeting' in which he was pleased to see Russell 'standing up to the rowdies'. The last volume of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell has cast light on this comment (2).

Andrew Bone, the editor of the volume, reveals in an Appendix that the occasion took place in at Central Hall, Westminster, on 9 November 1955. The speakers – Russell, Professor Alexander Haddow, Lord Beveridge, and Henry Usborne – had contributed to Gilbert McAllister's The Bomb: Challenge and Answer, and the meeting was sponspored by the British branch of the World Association of Parliamentarians for World Government (3). There was a great deal of heckling because some feared that world government would mean domination by communists, and because of interruptions Russell, according to The Times, was unable to speak for ten minutes.

(1) Lionel Britton, letter to Bertrand Russell, 28 November 1955, in the possession of Harry Berberian.

(2) The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, ed. by Kenneth Blackwell [et al.], 29 vols (London: Allen & Unwin, and Routledge, 1983– ), XXVIV: Détente or Destruction 1955–1957 (ed. by Andrew Bone, 2005), 409–10.

(3) The Bomb: Challenge and Answer, ed. by Gilbert McAllister (London: Batsford, 1955).

Bertrand Russell on Lionel Britton's Hunger and Love, and the Correspondence between the Two Men

Bertrand Russell was very impressed with Lionel Britton's novel Hunger and Love, to such an extent that – very unusually – he wrote a five-page Introduction to it, full of praise. Of course, Britton took as much advantage of this Introduction as he could, as he had done with Bernard Shaw's (rather ambivalent) comment on his earlier apocalyptic science fiction play Brain.

In his Introduction, Russell says:

'Mr. Britton's "Hunger and Love" is a very remarkable piece of work. His hero, Arthur Phelps, who is first a boy and then a young man, possesses a first-rate mind, but nothing else. Every conceivable obstacle is put in the way of his acquiring knowledge; as a bookseller's assistant, he is tempted to read the books in his employer's stock, but when caught doing so, is dismissed with ignominy. He has that difficulty about acquiescing in preventable evil that characterises the best minds, and therefore does not achieve quick success, as a person of a slightly lower order of ability would do. The book relates not only his personal adventures, but the growth of his philosophy and his social outlook. It is filled with a splendid rage against the humbug, the cruelty, and the moral degradation of the possessing classes' (1).

The two final sentences of Russell's Introduction read:

'Mr. Britton has portrayed his world with passion, with vividness, with a wealth of illustrative detail, and with a considerable power of generalising thought. For these reasons, I am convinced that his book deserves to be widely read.'

Russell apparently only wrote an Introduction to one other novel (the title of which is at present unknown to me), but his very positive verdict on Hunger and Love is a very strong testimony to both Britton's ability as a writer and to his persuasive powers as an individual.

Britton and Russell corresponded intermittently from 1930 to 1970. The early letters concern securing a publisher for Britton's books, although the majority of the letters concern Britton's problems with the Society of Authors preventing him from simultaneously publishing Shaw's final play Why She Would Not and Britton's amplification of this (possibly unfinished) work.

A few of the Russell–Britton letters are held at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and a number of them are in the private possession of Harry Berberian.

I have only just discovered about Louise Morgan's interview with Russell, which was originally published in Everyman a few months before the publication of Britton's novel (2). In this article, Britton receives a very brief – although nonetheless significant – mention. McMaster University re-publishes the aticle online under its original, eye-catching title:
'Bertrand Russell Would Imprison All Writers of First Books'

In this article Russell playfully states, 'If a law were passed giving six months in jail to every writer of a first book, only the good ones would think it worth their while to do it.' But this wouldn't have deterred Britton, who, in a reply to Russell's comment in Everyman, equally playfully imagined being imprisoned for the publication of Hunger and Love: ‘I don’t think six months in gaol would stop me. Most of my friends say I shall get twenty years. The unkind ones say I shall deserve it’ (3). (Russell had been imprisoned for inciting pacifism, and Britton for conscientious objection, during World War I.)

The article is fascinating in its own right to anyone interested in the way Bertrand Russell wrote.

(1) Lionel Britton, Hunger and Love (London: Putnam, 1931), p. vii.

(2) Louise Morgan, 'Bertrand Russell Would Imprison All Writers of First Books', Everyman, 2 November 1930.

(3) Lionel Britton, letter, ‘Should Authors Be Paid?’, Everyman, 4 December 1930, [n. p.], [n. pg.], Lionel Britton Collection, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL.

The Thomas Family of Redditch

There were several Thomas families in Redditch in the nineteenth century, but the relevant one here has Samuel Thomas senior as the head, a man born in Bitton near Bristol in 1807 who established a large needle and fish-hook factory on Prospect Hill, where he lived. Samuel's great-grandson, Lionel Britton, wrote that Samuel originally set off from Wales with sixpence in his pocket and went on to become a very wealthy man in Redditch.

Samuel was certainly wealthy, but the story of the sixpence is no doubt part of the family myth, as is perhaps also the idea that he came from Wales (although his father Aaron Thomas probably did). Samuel's sister was Mary Jane Thomas (1816–43), and he married Mary Quarterly (1808–83) from Devonport.

The Thomas family is noted for the number and the longevity of its children, and Samuel senior and Mary had at least nine children:

Elizabeth Thomas, b. 1833

Samuel Thomas junior (1834–1912), m. Marie Antoinette Goffin (1843–1928)

Ann Thomas, b. 1838

Fanny Thomas, b. 1840, m. Thomas Tanner

Maria Thomas (1841–60)

Richard Thomas, b. 1844

John Thomas, b. 1847

Mary Thomas, b. 1848

Henry Thomas, b. 1850

Samuel Thomas junior was Lionel Britton's grandfather, and following the death of Lionel's father he and his brothers and sister went to live in Samuel's house on Hewell Road in Redditch. Samuel and Marie Antoinette had at least ten children:

Irza Vivian Geraldine Thomas (1866–1959), m. Richard Waddams Nimmo Britton (1859–1894), m. Francis le Breton, b. circa 1874

Lilas Edith Beatrice Thomas (1868–1949), m. William (a.k.a. George (?)) Warwick (c.1840–1920)

Henri (a.k.a. Henry) John Thomas (1869–1952), m. Mary Ann Elizabeth Quartly (1866–1943)

Rose Thomas, b. 1871

Samuel (a.k.a. George) Thomas, b. 1872, m. Ethel May Morris, b. 1884

Ernest Augustus Thomas (1875–1950), m. Edith Louisa Hill (1872–1954)

Francis (a.k.a. Frank) Thomas, b. 1876, m. Gertrude Morris, b. 1880

Rosa (a.k.a. Rose) Thomas (1877–1971), m. Henri Charles Guillaume (b. 1866–1954)

Florence Mabel Thomas (1880–1972)

Newton Thomas, b. 1883, m. Rosamund Lilian Garood, b. 1886.

Many thanks to Robert Hughes and David Guillaume for compiling the tree, from which this severely truncated record was made.

Sutton on Trent Windmill, Nottinghamshire

Just continuing to root through what I quickly salvaged while the sale of my house on Carlton Road was going through. Did I really pay £7.50 all those years ago for this Sutton on Trent windmill postcard (in the Frith Series)? Yeh.

A Few Interesting Features of Nottingham Pubs – Mainly Non-Literary!

This photo shows one of several speakers in the former Smoke Room of the Vale Hotel, Woodthorpe, Nottingham. Of note is the 'HB' (Home Brewery) logo. The pub is on the corner of Mansfield Road and Thackerays Lane, and is Grade II listed.

The above photo shows the Piano Lounge of the Five Ways on the corner of Valley Road and Edwards Lane, Sherwood, Nottingham. It was a Warwicks and Richardsons tied house, and is now a Grade II listed building. This was one of Alan Sillitoe's favourite pubs when he re-visited the area.

Once a Home Ales pub on Lower Parliament Street, Nottingham, the Stag and Pheasant had some interesting tilework. The pub was demolished several years ago.

The Yews, or Maryland, Halford, Warwickshire

John James Britton, solicitor, minor poet, and the paternal grandfather of Lionel Britton, spent his last years (roughly 1896–1913) in Halford. The postcard above shows his house – Maryland, or 'The Yews' as he called his home in 1912 in his Preface to his son Herbert Eyres's first book, The Visions of a Poet.

Did he call the house after the yew trees there? And here I show my ignorance: if yew trees are evident in the postcard, I would be delighted of someone could let me know of the fact either by replying to this blog (your email as username and a password required), or by directly sending an email to anottsquair@hotmail.com. Thank you.

And many thanks as ever to the Britton family's ancestral power researcher, fuelled by just a naked light bulb, the internet, and a crate of beer – Robert Hughes, John James's great-great-grandson.

St George's Theatre, Tufnell Park Road, London

Directly opposite 66 Tufnell Park Road, the house Lionel Britton owned in London, is St George's Theatre. In 2005, when I visited it with my partner Penny Atkinson, its fate was unknown: it was occupied by squatters, one of whom – Laurence, pictured behind the bar in the above photo – very kindly showed us round and told us that the theatre was in danger of being turned back into a church (1). At the time of our visit, there was a very lively anarchistic atmosphere which, I couldn't help mentally noting, would no doubt have pleased Britton. The ironic thing, of course, is that no play of Britton's has ever been performed at the theatre.

I have since emailed the theatre, and have tried Googling to discover what became of it, but without success. Any information would be very welcome.

(1) The church was built in 1875 partly on a model of one in Salonica, Greece; it ceased to be church in 1963, and continued its existence as a theatre for a number of years.