Posted on by Derek Turner

“The North for greatness”

Barnoldswick and nearby Yorkshire from Weets Hill by Dominic Nelson. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Lancashire: Exploring the Historic County that made the Modern World

Chris Moss, London: Old Street, 2026, hb., 364pps., £25

DEREK TURNER admires a survey of an amazingly inventive and influential county

In his classic 1902-1904 Collecteana, folklorist Vincent Stuckey Lean cites a proverb which has since passed into cliché – “Lancashire thinks today what all England will think tomorrow”. Travel writer Chris Moss’s task in this highly personal book is to show how his home county helped make modern England – and so the wider world.

Until late medieval times, much of the future Red Rose County was remote and sparsely inhabited, its moors and uplands unsuited to agriculture, and too near Scotland for safety. In the Domesday Book, the county was referred to as merely the land “inter Ripam et Mersam” (between Ribble and Mersey), and accounted under Cheshire; it was not named until 1182. But the Dukedom of Lancaster, first created in 1351, became increasingly powerful and was ultimately merged in the Crown in 1413. There was even a folk-tradition that King Arthur had been Lancastrian, Lancashire supposedly a corruption of ‘Lancelotshire’. The combative nature of the inhabitants is suggested by an anonymous fifteenth century poem ‘The Shires’, listing the supposed characteristics of each county, which describes Lancashire as “a fair archer”.

By Tudor times, the county was increasingly integrated into the national mainstream, despite a reputation for Roman Catholic recusancy. The mother of William Camden, author of the nation-shaping 1586 chorography Britannia, came from Poulton. Alexander Nowell of Read was Dean of St Paul’s during Elizabeth’s reign – and the inventor of bottled beer! As Archbishop of Canterbury, Farnworth’s Richard Bancroft oversaw production of the King James Bible.

Michael Drayton hymned Lancashire in his 1612 loco-descriptive poem Poly-Olbion for its cattle, the “deepest mouth’d” of hunting hounds, silvery rivers, and women “who beare away the Bell” for beauty. There were seventeenth-century sayings alluding to regional power – “The North for greatness” – and cleverness – “He’s too far North for me”. The county was nevertheless rent by the Civil Wars, its north and west for the King, the rest for Parliament. The 1648 battles of Preston and Winwick were the last of the Second Civil War, and Preston would also be the locale of the last battle on English soil, during the 1715 Jacobite rebellion.

But Lancashire’s most important days began with the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution was largely a Lancastrian creation. County inventors, speculators and visionaries yoked steam power to an array of new technologies and new thinking that would galvanise the globe, and give rise to vast questions which even now remain unanswered.

The world knows of Liverpool, Manchester, the Pendle witches, Stephenson’s Rocket, Lancashire cotton, St Helens glass, the Peterloo Massacre, Frederick Engels, the footballers of Everton, Liverpool, Manchester City and United, the Beatles and the Smiths. There was, or sometimes still is, also steel at Nelson, paint-making at Burnley, brickmaking at Accrington, wire at Warrington, beer at Blackburn, aerospace at Samlesbury (where Donald Campbell’s Bluebird K7 was constructed), submarine-building at Barrow-in-Furness, and fishing at Fleetwood. Peter Paul Roget compiled his Thesaurus at Manchester’s Portico Library.

Within the UK, Lancashire also conjures images of L. S. Lowry, Blackpool Tower, George Formby, Liverpool’s “Three Graces”, black pudding and pies, Eccles cakes, treacherous but magnificent Morecambe Bay, Coronation Street, Boys from the Blackstuff, Anthony Gormley’s Another Place, Bernard Manning, Les Dawson, Peter Kay, and a host of other bands, from Gerry and the Pacemakers to Joy Division.

It also connotes decline, division, ugliness, motorways (England’s first motorway was the Preston Bypass), harsh weather and a proverbial dourness of temperament. The author acknowledges that the county is often not conventionally beautiful, with exceptions like the Forest of Bowland, but even its least prepossessing locales “engage the mind”.

He is acutely aware of the hardness of life for many Lancastrians both during the Industrial Revolution – famously fictionalised in Hard Times – and in its wake – as documented in Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier. As he observes, “Lancashire was the first to turn the engines on, and the lights out.” Dickensian-style Gradgrinds, grasping though they were, at least sometimes gave back to their communities, leaving many magnificent public buildings, museums, schools, charitable bequests and a bittersweet memory of gritty civic pride. Later neoliberals merely shuttered still viable industries, hollowed out communities, and filled characterful quarters with soulless glass and steel.

Social suffering accounts for local traditions of radicalism – from seventeenth century Dissenters and Enlightenment intellectuals like Joseph Priestley via the Luddites and Chartists to the beginnings of Mass Observation (in 1930s Bolton), the first meeting of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (in 1971, in Burnley) and contemporary anti-racism. Moss sees radicalism as a key county characteristic, although perhaps not every reader will share his admiration of the decor of Roughlees Clarion House, a country hostelry furnished with photographs of Labour MPs, copies of the Morning Star, and a banner exhorting “Workers of the World Unite”. But unlike some enthusiasts he realises the impossibility of erasing inconvenient facts (like slave-trading legacies) from cultural memory. He is open to all, but never uncritical.

The book is filled with little-known facts – such as that the American Civil War really ended on 6 November 1865, when the sole remaining Confederate Navy vessel, CSS Shenandoah, surrendered at Liverpool Pier Head. He also honours now unjustly forgotten local dialect poets. The Lancashire dialect was the first English dialect to be treated with cultural seriousness, thanks to writers like John Collier (‘Tim Bobbin’) whose 1746 comic tale View of the Lancashire Dialect, by way of Dialogue between Tummus o’ William’s o’ Margit’s o’ Roaf’s and Meary o’ Dick’s o’ Tummus o’ Peggy’s was one of the first books of its kind. Another was “the Lancashire Burns” Edwin Waugh, who sold shoes on Rochdale market and resided in a cellar, but whose 1855 Sketches of Lancashire Life and Localities impelled Thomas Carlyle to pronounce him “a man of decided mark”.

Moss greatly regrets the brutal truncation of 1974, when two-fifths of the historic county was reallocated arbitrarily to Cheshire, ‘Cumbria’, ‘Greater Manchester’ and ‘Merseyside’. The rump became a backwater, notwithstanding a richly suggestive – even sacral – heritage. Gawain sought the Green Knight in nearby Wirral Forest. An early seventeenth century sect called the Grindletonians was sure the Ark of the Covenant was hidden in Grindleton Chapel. George Fox, founder of the Quakers, climbed Pendle Hill in 1652 and was enraptured, writing in his journal: “When I was come to the Top of this Hill, I saw the Sea bordering upon Lancashire: and from the Top of this Hill the Lord let me see, in what places he had a Great People to be gathered”. The 1961 film Whistle Down the Wind, in which children mistake an escaped convict for Jesus, was shot in the Ribble valley. The ghosts of Scottish Royalists killed in 1651 have been ‘seen’ on the M6.

So long a stranger to his shire, the author ‘finally’ wanders closer to home and his heart – finding his own past amid landscape irreducibility and a septentrional poetry of placenames – Fair Snape, Goosnargh, Hail Storm Hill, Oswaldtwistle, Prickshaw Slack. He closes with conflicting feelings – “Lancashire lets me down, but I can’t compare it with anywhere else”. This is not just an overdue survey, but an unusually enquiring one – an admirable examination of an incomparably important county.

This review first appeared in Country Squire, and is reproduced with permission

Posted on by Stuart Millson · 1 Comment

Vernal verve

Puccini orchestral works, Chandos, CHSA 5385

Strauss and Beethoven, SOMM-Beecham33

Elgar from the Archives, SOMM Ariadne 5046

Vaughan Williams. Albion Records, ALBCD070

STUART MILLSON ranges from Manon Lescaut to Mystical Songs

Sumptuous sound – yet with pin-sharp detail – is the order of the day in the new Chandos issue of orchestral works by Puccini. Scaling the heights of dazzling audio-demonstration-level engineering, the Chandos engineers bring John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London into sharp focus – highlighting the brilliant solo playing of sections and section leaders (musicians all handpicked by the conductor) and the sheer unanimity of a sound that truly gels and sparkles. Puccini is just the right choice of composer for artists who set out to re-create what is, possibly, a lost style of orchestral playing – or at least, that resonant richness associated with the large London ensembles of the 1970s and ‘80s.

Listen out for the immaculate, tenderness of the woodwind at the opening of the Act II Prelude to Manon Lescaut, with graceful violins leading us on to the emotional blaze at the height of the piece. Likewise, a soft breeze from the Italian coast wafts through the Prelude to Act III of Edgar, a Puccini opera we hear very little. An old-world charm, reminiscent of Grieg’s Holberg Suite, is to be found in the Tre Minuetti (from about 1881, revised seven years later). This gem of a sequence started life in string quartet form, but John Wilson saw its potential for larger forces and so duly orchestrated it. From the thrilling, orchestral ‘attack’ in the short Scherzo (18812-83) to the famous, nostalgic, sepia, bittersweet Crisantemi, the Puccini collection will greatly appeal even to those who are not naturally followers of opera, but who nonetheless relish a tug of the heartstrings.

In a different era of recording, yet with an equally striking sound, but finely remastered, is SOMM Records’ Sir Thomas Beecham archive. Sir Thomas was one of a group of great inter- and post-war British conductor-knights, often known for their biting wit and somewhat authoritarian presence on the podium. At one rehearsal with the Royal Philharmonic, the position of the chair and music-stand on the conductor’s rostrum was not to Sir Thomas’s liking, and he became a little irritated by the arrangement. “Do you think I’m Samson?” he remarked, as he tried to adjust the heavy podium apparatus. “Sometimes, we do wonder, sir?” replied a brave member of the orchestra. Beecham saw the funny side, fortunately. Yet the conductor was a musical titan, as can be heard in Richard Strauss’s grand symphonic odyssey and autobiography, Ein Heldenleben.

For Strauss, his music rooted in Wagnerian willpower, the ‘Hero’s Life’ of the title referred not to a sword-wielding Siegfried, but to the German artist himself – fighting battles for recognition, for artistic truth, against sniping and snarling critics (Das Helden Widersacher – The Hero’s Adversaries). Heldenleben is, perhaps, Strauss’s version of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, although the work ends not in exultation, but in the sense of the artist having satisfied many of his desires. Sir Thomas Beecham revels in the almost operatic texture of the music – the grand sound of French horns and martial trumpets; the music striding on as if accompanying both Zarathustra and Don Juan, all in one. Once again with SOMM, Lani Spahr’s audio restoration leaves us in no doubt as to the mission of this record label: to establish for all-time, one of the most remarkable conductors’ and composers’ sound archives to be found anywhere in the catalogue. Also on the CD is Beethoven’s Eighth, a work of beauty, lightness, diversion – a recapitulation of all the good things we find in the Symphony No. 1 – and just the prelude needed before the mighty Ninth, the Choral Symphony. Lovers of vintage records will enjoy the mid-1950s sound, and it is truly enriching for us to be able to reconsider and re-assess the legendary musicians of 70 years ago.

But SOMM’s musical exploration of the past goes even further back in time: their first volume of Elgar from the Archives presenting two recordings from the 1920s of the Enigma Variations – one conducted by the composer himself; the other by the founder-conductor of the Proms, Sir Henry Wood. Given that the recording techniques here involved the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra – and Wood’s own Queen’s Hall Orchestra – performing in front of what looks like a large Trinity House foghorn, the sound quality is remarkably clear. Again, sound-supremo, Lani Spahr has done a wonderful job of “French-polishing” this (English) music, and because of it, we can enjoy the glorious playing of the orchestras’ woodwind and string principals in this most famous symphonic warhorse.

The Elgar disc is completed by delicate and sensitive recordings of the Violin Sonata and String Quartet, both works the products of Elgar’s stay in the woodland of West Sussex at the end of the First World War. For Lady Elgar, the slow movement of the Quartet captured the essence of sunshine; and Sir Edward’s chamber music from this southern sojourn was often generally referred to as showing a mysterious “wood magic”. Marjorie Hayward, violin, and Una Bourne, piano, are the soloists in this 1919 acoustic recording, while the String Quartet in E minor recorded two years later, shows the virtuosity and understated English emotion of the London String Quartet.

Finally, again from our own land, the words and music of Easter, and poet, George Herbert, set by Ralph Vaughan Williams. In Five Mystical Songs we sense the growth of flowers, of the daffodil – the Lent lily – and experience the quiet revelations of resurrection and renewal, although not through the usual choral and orchestral forces associated with the work, but in the composer’s own arrangement for baritone, piano and string quartet. The songs were first performed in Worcester at the 1911 Three Choirs Festival, that gathering so associated with such masters of our musical renascence as Howells, Elgar and ‘RVW’ himself. On a new recording from Albion Records and the Vaughan Williams Society, Roderick Williams, baritone, gives a warm-hearted, clearly-articulated interpretation of the songs, accompanied by the Sacconi Quartet – a performance of intimacy and reflection, reminding the listener a little of the atmosphere of Butterworth’s song-cycle A Shropshire Lad. Here, England at Easter-time lies before us: “Rise heart, thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise without delays, / Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise, / With him may’st rise…”

Posted on by Nicholas Booth

Home Front horrors – and beauties

A Town Destroyed, Poplar 1941, by John Minton. Art.IWM ART 15910

Beauty and Destruction: Wartime London in Art

Imperial War Museum, March 20 – November 1

NICK BOOTH is impressed and moved by images of London under attack

Critics tend to rush by British art of the Second World War: for them there is no contest with the art of the First World War, which was revolutionary and packed with their favoured ‘isms’ – futurism, vorticism, cubism, the aesthetic fallout from Roger Fry’s post-impressionist movement in the years before Western civilisation’s headlong dégringolade to slaughter in 1914.

The art of the 1939-45 war has been judged unambitious and even, in the case of Edward Ardizzone’s work, ‘cosy’. This is unfair. This rather too small exhibition at the Imperial War Museum makes no effort to mount a counter-argument but nonetheless contains many good and affecting things. Probably there wasn’t space to lay out key conversions away from abstractionism and surrealism in the interwar period: that having hymned the world of machinery and progress some artists recoiled from the realisation that technological advances could have very nasty side effects. Thus the world of humans and nature came back into focus.

Then the war cut off Britain from the Continent, and her artists inevitably fell back towards an English tradition for the particular and the romantic. Beauty and Destruction: Wartime London in Art settles for paintings as record, sometimes almost as journalism – but many of the works operate on a much higher level. The show is worked up from Suzanne Bardgett’s excellent Wartime London in Paintings, which came out a few years ago and which is worth getting hold of if you are interested in this subject.

Two beautiful John Minton ink drawings appear early, A Town Destroyed, Poplar, and Looking Down on a Bombed Building by the Thames, Poplar 1941, are small and dreamlike, taking blitzed London and turning it into an inner landscape of melancholy emotion, a sort of visual analogue to Elizabeth Bowen’s wartime stories such as Mysterious Kôr, in which wrecked London ‘is drenched in moonlight’ and looks like ‘the moon’s capital, shallow, cratered, extinct’, and The Demon Lover, in which the evil ghost of a soldier – symbolic stand-in for the malign spirit of war visiting twice in a life – terrorises a woman in her closed-up London home.

A Concert in a Shelter, St. Pancras Borough (1941) by Olga Lehmann. Art.IWM ART LD 1900
A Shelter in Camden Town under a Brewery: Christmas Eve, 1940 by Olga Lehmann. Art.IWM ART LD 1899

Two ink-and-wash paintings by Olga Lehmann portray the subterranean experience of sheltering from air raids. In the swift, brilliantly realised A Concert in a Shelter, St Pancras Borough (1941), the distant stage is a flash of colour in dark, overcrowded cellar. You can almost hear the ‘shelter cough’. Lehmann’s A Shelter in Camden Town under a Brewery: Christmas Eve, 1940, evokes the dingy grimness and looming terror endured under the streets.

Incendiaries in a Suburb (1941) by Henry Carr. Art.IWM ART LD 1518

The prolific, technically brilliant and now largely forgotten Henry Carr gets a good showing.  St Clement Dane’s Church on Fire after being Bombed crackles away – Carr lights up the Aldwych with the eerie glow of a big blaze. The newspaper publisher Cecil King saw the church burning on the night of May 10, 1941, and said the flames and sparks shooting from its spire was “an odd and rather beautiful spectacle”. Familiar Silhouettes shows squaddies lighting up fags in Piccadilly Tube; A Railway Terminus, a tour de force rendering of St Pancras Station vast and dimmed for the blackout, is blown up to wall size; and Incendiaries in a Suburb conveys the horrific surrealism of war without recourse to actual surrealism. There are the silent, blacked-out, deeply usual London homes but the horizon is orange with a demonic inferno, a searchlight roams the sky in which snarls AA fire, a church and its crucifix stands in silhouette, and piercingly bright alien incendiaries land in gardens, the UFOs of 1941. Humans scramble in the gloom. It is more strange and affecting than Magritte’s Empire of Light.

Priscilla Thorneycroft’s tiny ink drawing from the London Underground, Soldier with Child in the Tube (1940-1941), shows the weariness and strain of the Blitz in the soldier’s face. Kenneth Rowntree’s CEMA Canteen Concert, Isle of Dogs, London, E14 (1941), memorably records the tea-and-sandwiches collectivism of wartime entertainment. Graham Sutherland’s The City: A Fallen Lift Shaft (1941) is more fascinating in the flesh than it ever is on the page. When he saw the broken shaft in a ruin near St Paul’s Cathedral Sutherland said it “suggested a wounded tiger in a painting by Delacroix”.

With a collection as large as the IWM’s it seems strange the show is quite modestly sized. Space should have been found for Charles Mozley’s vivid The Thames Embankment (1940) a favourite of mine. Through misty blue winter London light, we see the view from the Savoy above Embankment Gardens with the National Liberal Club and Parliament in the distance underneath insect-like barrage balloons. A tram whirrs up the road, in the gardens below another barrage balloon is tethered, and to the right looms the ghostly dome of the National Gallery. This was London at the start of her agonies. The pre-war city would take many terrible blows and sustain heavy losses in every sense of the word. Mozley’s ‘monument to a moment’ in time, to use the great David Bomberg’s phrase, is the beginning of the end of the old capital, the city that was so brilliantly brought to life in Vaughan Williams’s London Symphony. The absence of Mozley’s painting is a glaring omission. You can see it here: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/19851

Ardizzone’s large Shelter Scenes, Tilbury, is on show but a few of his pictures from blitzed Silvertown, in the East End, would not have gone amiss. You can see them here: https://www.iwm.org.uk/search/global?query=Ardizzone+Silvertown

The Haberdashers Hall, 8th May 1945, by C. Eliot Hodgkin. Art.IWM ART LD 5311

Eliot Hodgkin’s wonderful The Haberdashers’ Hall, 8th May 1945, appears, though not at the end of the exhibition where logically it should be. This quiet, almost ironic view of the ruins of the hall with the lantern of St Paul’s rising behind is a sort of understated companion to Paul Nash’s 1918 We Are Making a New World. In Hodgkin’s painting here is the end of the European war, the last day; overgrown with weeds and littered with rubble and bent iron; huge and terrible things have happened; nothing will ever be the same again; meanwhile there is silence save for, perhaps, the faint merry singing of VE Day celebrants in the distance. The future will be along in due course.

On that point it’s a shame the IWM does not possess Carl Giles’s prophetic cartoon from the Sunday Express, August 5, 1945, (the uranium atom bomb ‘Little Boy’ was dropped on Hiroshima the next morning) called It’s Quicker By Rail showing the first appearance of his soon-to-be-famous Family trudging towards or back from their first peacetime holiday along a trainless railway track. https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/specialcollections/files/2020/08/ga5447.jpg The British were moving out of the ruins and into new challenges.

Posted on by Lawrence Freiesleben · 1 Comment

Blackheath

LAWRENCE FREIESLEBEN takes a psychogeographic trip through south London

Nobody wanted proper light they want to be in the dark, they liked it, they liked

the little cupboards.  To live a story written in invisible ink, painted in

abstract arcs, but atmospheric, poignant, calm, devastating . . .  Perhaps this

could never happen except in some strange half-apprehension inside?

Hurtling the elevated course[i]

viaducts arching forwards

headlong,

cable-ducting streaming a frantic pulse

while gantries blink at signals vanishing 

gaps before speech

no time to question

twelve tracks in unison, dividing, merging,

aimed reckless

– a geometric exaltation –

at the sharp radius, weed-ragged triangle

of Borough Market Junction

(slow thunder amongst the attics),

braking will have its moment, but now is not it,

now is acceleration,

exploding through the jumbled visual inundation

of miraculous panoramas vaunting the compass

to praise and shun

from slum to gentrification’s skyward balconies

skewed bridges over stalled clutter

horns accusing each other  

St. James’ Bermondsey[ii] – foregrounded – is granted time,

Tower Bridge Road is not.

Scaling steel and dazzle of glass, mirror and kaleidoscope

the solid eras from which they took insolent flight,

splintering visions into the grey-green river’s tidal swell.

Cannon Street or Charing cross . . . default to London Bridge:

this sublime chaos has been overripe for a century,

between the essence of specific words

changing with the hour

the light, the region of Europa, the confident stairways.

Did the bombing try to neaten things or only add another density?

Followed by two or three decades of hopefulness[iii]

(in retrospect overstated, deluded),

soon came the point where things went subtly

yet more incurably wrong. 

More than anything, landscape had always given him freedom. Uninsistent.

It had no care for the human world.

All that dialogue, phrasing, signature, soundwave, all that need and frustration:

it made no impression. It missed almost everything.

Censor the didactic rant to puzzle on the outpourings of runic graffiti

ipton’s Tea, the finest the world produces

disrupting or expanding Deptford Broadway

bloated Arabian Nights or a portal to secret cults

conspiracy conflations overrunning all others

horror sunflowers with erotic intent

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik[iv] is not the genre

nor boombox cars racing their decibels

no wardrobes or courtyards conceal the past

for the hangars of wire are all a-rattle with nothing 

nothing visible

and the indulgence expanding from self-control,

intensifying experience to give a purpose,

rings artificial,

yet undoubtably the ancient and the medieval

exhale through every area of wood or raven black

and transitory 21st century towers alike suggest demise and the diagonal

upon which the air itself will carry their dust

their stone tapes[v] into the clouds and colours

as though history is more than dead structures and the fabrications of books

is rather the ether itself (as some claim love is truth and truth is love)

behind and above all terminal, worn out, buzzing industry

this daily to and fro of mindlessness

the impatient global death-wish.

Take Courage at the Amersham Arms by the double red lines:

I did and I didn’t – no alcohol passed my lips

chalk on the wet wood around the shadow of alphabets

all of these corrections

and all of these failings[vi]

echo from the mesh fence over New Cross station

expectant platforms freed from rush hour below

looking south to Hastings (theoretically),

taste the wash of the tide and the rush of shingle

briefly fade the queue of danger lights shining on bin bags

the pierce of brakes . . .

what first impressions from a precarious pushchair!

boys will be . . . what we teach them to be[vii],

as this mental brass rubbing, struggles corridors into distances

angles waking from the dormant

tries staves to support a cloven harmony.

Obviously, it wasn’t good to have all this contempt. It wasn’t kind.

Even to wish for a magic wand to wave up another life . . .

the lodge house on a disused drive . . .

Only he would ever open the gates between the trees. High ornate gates that would

symbolically exclude or welcome –

if occasionally he felt expansive towards the outside world.

Roadworks now upon the winding hill

funnel the yellow box junction overlooked

by that endless fight of George and Dragon

good versus evil or more complex alchemy?[viii]

From a smile to the left, other soundscapes flow

reducing plastic vehicles to a whispering haze

mind-manacled time zones intersect and cancel

hint forms, images, prospects

even narrative

from tilted rooms fumed with exhaust

from fenced corridors under bamboo screen and radar dish,

stunted palms and arrowslit windows

from country villas stranded in their rowdy future

dilapidated, behind railing and creeper

preceding 40s flats . . . perhaps? (they have a rectilinear austerity).

The projection may be drab 

but climbing Blackheath Hill toward the grass, drought-widening common 

its balconies are not stale,

filled with town and country,

their musics drift above the heavy traffic

the stop and start of hybrid buses

the slant of dreams and aspirations in many languages . . .

“If you can’t satisfy yourself, how can you satisfy anyone else?” runs the wise phrase,

the target of self-knowledge, bow and arrow, individualist parade.

The only trouble being: who but the ignorant, the arrogant or the lucky, can ever

satisfy themselves?

Higher, as the plateau begins to break,

wooded commons buffer zones of peace

where red shuttered bays remember green wartime garages,

until a siren sounds from 80 years past

loud enough to wake Wat Tyler[ix] from his abysmal mooring

reduced to a road sign,

loud enough to date other more recent subjectivities

garnered from artists, writers and characters who preferred art to living,

half-dead or lost, fascinated perhaps 

and wishing to stay that way –

forgetting that at its most vivid, art is life multiplied

or aware that such a level or spiritual leap[x], is too great a risk or challenge

and prudence often worse than a toxin.

Gestures and beauty gone –

You had your chance

and mine is nearly done

there is never finally any way to turn

but take port duty free on the link span[xi].

Is history the attempt of spirit to conquer matter[xii]

or no more than an accretion of grime?

something we should try to learn from but forget,

the circles through which we overlap or not . . .

our one-way flow with no option but to follow

– or a topological map with infinite directions and choice?

Here, the country church[xiii]

invisible tock upon the bookshelves . . .

red bus through the trees and fences that reach backwards and block

all diagonal pursuit

no sleep ever seems just

only a pause between enigmas

unless you switch off to it all and dream of Wales, or a remote coast

or a vineyard in Chile  

as if the dream were all.

That dream could be the dream of the lodge, off the map, disused, forgotten,

but self-sufficient – as in the end we must all become, unless (or even if) we can

rekindle love. Our own fracture is enough, only the landscape or the lover can heal,

not the peer group or the distant friend.

Once it becomes impossible to tolerate life as it is, there is only the light inside. 

The gates opened into woodland sun and shade.

All human drivel died between the avenues

all ambition drowned on the unspoilt riverbanks which followed.

And through the lines, words, shapes, the movement arose,

becoming tastes and notes and colours.

At New Cross station, Sutherland[xiv] asked “Do you think I’ll ever be an artist?”

This was the late 1920s – before the primeval incursion of Pembrokeshire

shattered his mould,

“Or shall I get my father to find me some other kind of work?”

Do such assumptions, signifying class structure, still remain?

Should I have been a meter reader[xv], musing on life’s paradox as I walked my round . . .

never troubling to scrawl any of it down,

never disturb the peace

for anything beyond style or template originality may be too cruel.

Was post-war optimism also when culture began to slither more generally trivial,

relaxed too far?

or can such impressions be blamed on the inevitable drought,

the scrap to maintain one’s personality in the face of the world? . . .

However –

since the developed temperament and will

can banish or dialectically justify all negative reality,

or dissolve material into metaphysical

today’s dull light is more than enough to make us content

avoiding the fairground and the ever-flashing blue lights

of ambulance and fuzz

as we walk, expecting rain, flippant but uplifted,

crossing the parched August space of

Blackheath.

NOTES

[i]    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge_%E2%80%93_Greenwich_Railway_Viaduct

[ii]    Neo-classical. This image seems to exaggerate both the height of the viaducts and the closeness of St. James’ Church to the railway: blackcablondon.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/near-bermondsey-church.jpg

[iii]   From 1945 – 1975: arguably the maximum period of post-war hope – during which (for one example) ecological concerns were fully realised but insufficiently acted upon. During which, global corporations became too powerful and greed became a virtue.

[iv]  Both the music and specifically (in the line above this one), Dorothea Tanning’s painting of 1943: https://www.dorotheatanning.org/life-and-work/view/64/

[v] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069316/  1972 British television horror drama film written by Nigel Kneale.

[vi] https://genius.com/Songs-ohia-travels-in-constants-lyrics  (paraphrased) lyrics written and performed by Jason Molina: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTcNpD1YyoI&list=RDbTcNpD1YyoI&start_radio=1  at 12.46 – 13.39

[vii] Slogan on a screen or billboard?  [visible but small in the top right of the roadworks photo –21st August 2025]

[viii] From https://brill.com/view/journals/rt/13/2/article-p195_4.xml  :

“It is the purpose of this paper to interpret the legend of St. George and the Dragon in terms of alchemical symbolism. While the victory of the Christian hero over the Dragon is traditionally interpreted as symbolic of the triumph of good over evil, it is argued that both combatants represent the four alchemical elements: air, water, earth and fire. Instead of a duel of opposites their combat transmutes the coiled-up energy of the dragon into solar light, which manifests as the beautiful princess of the myth. The conclusion is drawn that there is a dialectical movement of force in the battle between St. George and the dragon. The hero releases the antithetical power of the dense, dark matter symbolised by the dragon so that the elements of a polarity do not remain contrasted but are resolved creatively.”

[ix] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Tyler

[x] Søren Kierkegaard et al

[xi] Link Span, BTF film of 1956, directed by Michael Clarke. See: www.imdb.com/title/tt1754135/  “This documentary from British Transport Films, follows 24 hours in the life of three British Railways Channel ferry services.”

[xii]  Colin Wilson paraphrasing Arnold Toynbee in Religion and the Rebel (1957) reprinted by Aristeia Press in 2017, page 130.

[xiii] Charlton village is the one here of many.

[xiv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Sutherland  While Sutherland’s Pembrokeshire landscapes may not be “realistic”, personally, I wouldn’t think of them generally as “surreal” – which word to me indicates an element of attitude, even a degree of literary willing, more evident in (for example), Paul Nash’s gently surrealist, Landscape from a Dream, or in Dorothea Tanning’s, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music) www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/tanning-eine-kleine-nachtmusik-t07346

Sutherland’s best Pembrokeshire work celebrates the mystery and reveals the hidden power and primeval qualities of the landscape. However, I can see how, given that his landscapes are often ‘more real than reality’, this can easily be associated with surrealism, and at times he does utilize a more surreal approach. In fact, it could be argued that the most relevant aspect of surrealism, is not the exaggerated drama of melting watches and so on, but simply an ability or a moment in which one sees and notices things more vividly. Walking through a suburb of Heysham yesterday, gradually moving into a heightened sense of seeing, I was reminded how ‘surreal’ so many houses and gardens can look in bright daylight, the layout of shrubs and pots, the window surrounds and porches etc – all those aspects of daily life it is so easy to take for granted or disregard. Down on the prom, I was reminded of Paul Nash’s short essay Swanage, or Seaside Surrealism published in The Architectural Review (Volume LXXIX, April 1936, pp. 161-4). Nash himself distinguished between the work of artists belonging to a Surrealist group, distinguishing their work by a capital ‘S’, and “artworks, situations, objects or locations that have a dreamlike character or incongruous settings that evoke disquiet or the uncanny. These, he describes, as surreal with a small ‘s’.” See: www.paulnashdorset.co.uk/timeline/1936#

[xv] https://internationaltimes.it/?s=meter-reader  Obituary for my father, 2024.

Posted on by Christopher Sandford

Six for 2026

Image: Ralf Roletschek, Wikimedia Commons
CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD anticipates some of this year’s likely literary successes

As I write this it’s the tail end of January, and I sit at home on the edge of a Pacific Northwest rainforest, which means that it’s one of those times when the miseries of the world threaten to engulf us and the precariousness of the human condition, far from appearing a worthwhile and even noble struggle, seems an infinite rebuke.

Meanwhile, we’ve collectively at least survived the traditional blizzard of Christmas review roundups, and no doubt – unless we’re all blown to smithereens in the meantime – we’ll soon have the inevitable Easter reading recommendations and summer beach-book lists in our sights, until before long the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness rolls around once more, and with it yet more critical effusions, and so on, ad infinitum.

If for no other reason than to get a head start on the whole craze, I offer here a brazenly subjective midwinter lineup of half-a-dozen worthy candidates culled from among the many thousands of our publishers’ new or forthcoming titles, any one of which is guaranteed to warm the reader’s heart in these otherwise unremittingly bleak days and nights.

Matt Haig, The Midnight Train

Like several million others around the world, you may know the basic outline of Haig’s breakthrough 2020 novel The Midnight Library. In short: the book’s protagonist, Nora Seed (even great writers sometimes struggle with names), in her mid-thirties, single and childless, feels useless. Her cat is dead, she’s alone, and she’s been fired. Late one night, she tries to kill herself. Unpromising, I know, but this is where Haig lifts the whole thing out of itself and into the sort of energetically sustained parallel universe that C.S. Lewis might not have disowned. Instead of death, what Nora finds is a library in which each volume represents a version of her life where she made different choices. All she has to do to step into that life is to open the book. You may possibly recognise some of the plot ingredients of the 1998 film Sliding Doors, itself a product of the so-called many-worlds theory in which a new universe beckons from our every choice and decision.

The whole enterprise possibly sounds a bit strained, but in Haig’s hands it delivers the goods as a serviceable get-away-from-it-all novel that works both on the level of a good yarn and a speculative rumination on what we’re really doing during our brief tenancy of the planet. What’s the best that can happen in your life, and what’s the worst? Those are the questions. Without spoiling the treat, The Midnight Train is broadly speaking in the same vein as its predecessor, only – as the title rather implies – translated from a library onto, well, a train. I’ve slightly furtively read about three-quarters of the new book in what publishers like to call uncorrected proof form, and I can confirm it’s well up to par with its distinguished prototype; both have interesting things to say about how hard it sometimes is for any of us to completely accept ourselves for what we are – and, like the eponymous train itself, it all rattles along at a brisk clip.

Canongate Books, April 2026, £20

Malcolm Galfe, Near Horizons

The author here knows his technology and he knows his psychology, and the two combine in seven wonderfully engrossing stories which themselves incorporate elements of horror, sci-fi, mystery, dystopia and good old-fashioned (it never seems to go out of style) human drama.

That said, I’m pleased to report that we’re not exactly in Stephen King, let alone Stranger Things country in Near Horizons. Without exception, Galfe’s tales have a rich, understated texture to them, weaving together a patchwork of tropes and allusions to create something that feels consistently exciting and new. He achieves his effects by tweaking our anxieties and using the suggestive power of good dialogue, not by the sudden arrival of a race of invading pod-people or their like. It’s the literary equivalent of the way in which the best Hitchcock films play with cinematic techniques to tease and torment us, and in its way just as delectable.

As a matter of fact, it’s not entirely illogical to review this title in close physical proximity to the aforementioned Matt Haig; both are neatly crafted, elegantly written, sharp, shocking and often mordantly funny. What raises Near Horizons above the pack of lesser tech-themed morality stories is Galfe’s wise and pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, his grasp of the elements of suspense, and the way he weaves fictional characters into recognisably true-to-life crises in consistently gripping ways.

But if Haig’s book stands as a just slightly over-manicured front lawn, complete with reassuringly familiar garden gnomes and even a fluffy household pet or two on hand, Galfe’s has an authentic touch of the jungle to it: it feels exotic and a little dangerous, often disarming the reader with a page or two of seemingly casual exposition before blindsiding them with a sudden plot twist. Or put another way: these are the sort of stories tailor-made for those of us who like to be both entertained and shocked, and perhaps also secretly comforted by the fact that it’s the characters in Near Horizons, not themselves, being manipulated in this way. There’s something inherently reassuring in the notion that nothing here could ever, surely, happen to us – an almost physically soothing sensation, like a welcome descent into a warm bath when the door is firmly locked and bolted against a storm raging outside. I confidently predict that we will be hearing much more of this supremely assured author in the future.

Woodbridge Publishers, November 2025, hardcover £16.12, paperback £13.05

Cheryl Hines. Image: David Torcivia, Wikimedia Commons

Cheryl Hines, Unscripted: A Memoir

This book shouldn’t work. A memoir written by a 60-year-old actress, who, frankly, has never threatened to become a major film star – you may know her best as Larry David’s foil on the TV series Curb Your Enthusiasm – hardly sounds promising. Then there’s the author’s personal baggage. Since 2014, Cheryl Hines has been married to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the raspy-voiced US cabinet minister who served as one of Donald Trump’s chief surrogates during his last presidential campaign. Rarely has a book been written that straddles the worlds of Hollywood and conservative politics, let alone those as embodied by the current administration in Washington DC. Yet, against the odds, Unscripted turns out to be an enthralling read.

Essentially, what’s on offer here is a well-told and often deftly comic account of a working-class Florida girl with dreams of doing something in life other than following in her father’s footsteps as the manager of a local Burger King outlet. In time, Hines goes on to catch the acting bug, makes her way to the Universal Studios in Orlando, and promptly finds herself staffing a sex chatline. Next she’s offered a part in a cable-TV show called Swamp Thing, where the script calls on her to do little more than emerge from a large manmade puddle on the studio floor and stand there for a while, topless. Another time she appears on an episode of American TV’s The Dating Game, but isn’t chosen to go on a date.

Life was a bit like that for Hines in the 1990s. This may have been her nadir as a working actress, but it’s the high point of her book, which passes over the serial rebuffs and setbacks in breezy, vernacular fashion, with none of the professional biographer’s tendency to choke the pages with a flat-footed account of names and dates. Things slow down a bit once we settle into the groove of Hines’s long and apparently blissfully untroubled run on Curb, and her equally happy marriage to RFK Jr., but the first act of the show is itself worth the price of admission.

Skyhorse, March 2026, £21.59

Sir Anthony Hopkins. Image: Elena Torre, Wikimedia Commons

Anthony Hopkins, We Did OK, Kid: A Memoir

According to its publisher, this book is a ‘raw, honest and moving account’ by one of our foremost living actors. It’s certainly raw. Hopkins lays out his early life in unsparing detail, as the son of a tough, hard-headed Port Talbot baker who didn’t have much time or sympathy for a son with an alarming tendency to slap on makeup and hang out with the local amateur dramatics society. ‘My mother and father were both prone to depression and black moods,’ we learn. ‘They fought and wept. My father drank heavily, which only fueled his heightened emotionality.’ Anthony Hopkins himself liked a drop in later life, to put it no stronger than that, and proved a less than stellar National Service recruit as a result, often brought up on charges of brawling with his fellow soldiers. The fractious reputation followed him back into civvy street, first in the world of semi-professional provincial theatre, and then the more refined halls of RADA in London.

Hopkins assesses his talent in these days modestly. ‘I could barely speak, and had the posture of a camel,’ he writes. But he worked hard, and never turned down a job. In time he came to the notice of Laurence Olivier, who made him his understudy in a production of Strindberg’s The Dance of Death. After standing in for the great man one night, Olivier complimented him for having ‘walked away with the part like a cat with a mouse between his teeth.’ Even so, the young Hopkins was soon bored by the repetition of the stage, one of those people who always seem to want to be elsewhere, doing something else. ‘I began to feel that acting was just a by-product,’ he writes. ‘I wanted to find value in the rest of my life.’

As with the aforementioned Cheryl Hines memoir, this book most comes alive when charting the uphill struggles of the author’s early career, and rather settles into a holding pattern once we come to see him triumph in The Silence of the Lambs and all the rest. Anyone hoping for rollicking Hollywood scandal à la Bette Davis or David Niven may be disappointed, although Hopkins does allow himself a few disobliging remarks on the late actor Paul Sorvino, with whom he worked unhappily on Oliver Stone’s Nixon. In the absence of gossip, there’s a good deal of what’s-it-all-about rumination on the author’s part, some bits of it more compelling than others. The takeaway message of the book is of the essential strangeness of the acting profession, which, like any intelligent observer, the author sometimes struggles to take entirely seriously. For all the money and awards, I grew to feel quite sorry for Anthony Hopkins as I finished We Did OK, Kid. But that’s because he knows how to tell a story.

Simon & Schuster, November 2025, £25

Bob Spitz, The Rolling Stones: The Biography

Ah, the Stones. By now there have been almost as many books on the old devils as records and concerts by the lads themselves over the course of their sixty-plus year career. In no particular order, we’ve had the late Stanley Booth’s fly-on-the-wall account of the band’s notorious 1969 tour of the United States, ending with their disastrous concert at Altamont; an enjoyably gossipy romp through the narcotic days of the 70s by their factotum and sometime heroin dealer ‘Spanish’ Tony Sanchez; formidably brainy group biographies by the likes of the journalists Stephen Davis and Philip Norman; and, not least, the necessarily sanitised but still quite lively first-hand accounts by Keith Richards, Bill Wyman and Ronnie Wood themselves, all of them estimable enough in their own right, if perhaps betraying the hand of a ghostwriter. Back in the dark ages, there were even biographies of both Richards and Mick Jagger, and a third book (a glutton for punishment, that author) on the band collectively by a character named Sandford, but we needn’t linger on them.

Now Bob Spitz, an American journalist known for his previous works on pop-cultural figures like the Beatles and several lesser groups, as well as his juvenile nonfiction books (in so far as there can truly be said to be a difference between the two genres), brings us this ‘definitive’ account of rock’s bad boys, which he stretches out to the gatefold triple-album length of 700-plus pages. Does it actually say anything new? Yes and no. The basic story is present and largely correct: an initial eighteen months of struggle, followed by ten years of inspired music and personal debauchery – and in turn by five decades of meticulous decline management – might sum it up. Spitz is at his most engaging when he abandons the weary chronological plod, and instead follows the template of Ian Leslie’s triumphant recent dual-biography John & Paul in putting the Jagger-Richards relationship under the microscope. The author takes on the tired polarities – Mick as the uptight details guy, Keith the agreeably wrecked one – by reframing the story as a volatile bromance: ‘passionate, tender and tempestuous, full of love, riven by jealousy.’ However much they were at odds, seems to be the message, Mick ’n Keef were, or are, still an indivisible twosome, the driving force of the Stones, with the others, even the band’s original wayward genius Brian Jones, mere talented add-ons. The cast and basic plot may be familiar, but Spitz has at least succeeded in giving a recognisably human face to the whole star-crossed saga.

Penguin Press, April 2026, £26.14

1918 – Children play on a captured German field artillery gun exhibited in the Mall, London. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Alwyn Turner, A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars

It’s always good to find a readable and well-researched variant on the standard schoolroom account of events, which in this case would have had us see the UK of the years 1918-39 as a uniformly grim place, grey, soupily lit and generally austere, somewhere the Great Depression set in like a chill Channel fog and lifted again just in time for the arrival of the Luftwaffe. What’s most striking about Alwyn Turner’s new book, by contrast, are the similarities between those sepia-toned times, seemingly out of some vanished Jurassic social order, and our own. Consider that, in 1922-24, Britain managed to get through four prime ministers; that politicians as a class were said to be ‘uniquely unpopular’, occupying a place in the nation’s affections only slightly more elevated than that of child molesters; that London itself was a soiled, sad place whose inhabitants habitually murdered, stole, lied and cheated as they slithered around in a sea of immorality; that the UK was drowning in debt while simultaneously undergoing the Spanish Flu epidemic that killed an estimated 40-50 million people worldwide, roughly three times more than Covid; and that ‘tariff reform’ divided the nation much as Brexit did a century later.

For that matter, many of the products and institutions of our current daily lives entered service in the 1920s or early 30s. Among other goodies, Turner lovingly catalogues the new confectionery brands manufactured in Britain: ‘Aero, Black Magic, Chocolate Digestive, Chocolate Orange, Crunchie, Fruit and Nut, Kit-Kat, Maltesers, Mars Bars, Quality Street, Rolos, Roses and Smarties.’ That’s not to mention such establishments as the BBC, Butlin’s holiday camps, British Home Stores, NAAFIs, Wembley Stadium and London Transport, or the last’s iconic diagrammatic tube map and double-decker buses.

Maybe the book as a whole tends to be long on lists of this sort, as opposed to locating the human narrative that generally makes a social history come alive on the page, but, that minor cavil aside, A Shellshocked Nation is still a bracing and well-paced read, set against the ever-louder ticking clock of international events, which reminds us why the author’s devoted fans admiringly refer to him as ‘Page’ Turner. You could do much worse than to treat yourself to a copy this winter.

Profile Books, January 2026, £17.99

Posted on by Michael Yost

The Red Knight of the Red Lands

MICHAEL YOST is a poet and essayist living in rural New Hampshire with his wife and children. His essays and poems have been published in places like Modern Age, First Things, The University Bookman, Dappled Things, The Brazen Head, and others. He substacks at The Weight of Form

The Red Knight of the Red Lands

“I say móre: the just man justices; / Keeps grace”

– G. M. Hopkins, As Kingfishers Catch Fire

Against the sky he saw the sycamore

The girl Lynet had screamed of in the night,

And red the dawn, and red the plain before.

Gareth’s heart quickened as he knew the sight;

For he had journeyed to avenge the dead,

And meet the Red Knight in his Lands of Red.

Old knights whose beards were traced with cunning grey

Hanged with their squires who still were counted boys

And nevermore would snivel, steal, or play,

Nor find in songs of honor short lived joys;

For he had found them, and they died in fear:

The Knight of Red who held the Crimson Spear.

Upon their armor shone the bleeding sun

As, like ripe fruit, they turned in driest wind;

For they had sought him and their prize had won,

Nor could they know how against him they had sinned.

For they had fought, and bled beneath his hands

And met the Red Knight in his own Red Lands.

The tree’s roots were black with relics of their blood

Who fought for Arthur and his royal name

And pled for mercy, kneeling in the mud,

Whom he had hanged to magnify their shame.

For in love’s madness, he had sworn a vow

Who hanged them there upon the leafless bough.

Then Gareth found, beside that tree, a horn

Of ivory, and blew one hard clear note

That broke the humming scarlet of the morn

And sounded deeply from the horn’s pale throat;

For glory drove him with its stern demands

To kill the Red Knight in his own Red Lands.

With groans of ancient wood and rusting steel,

The wide portcullis and the gate began

To open. No surrender, no appeal

Could save him from the sword and hand of man.

Beneath the shadow of his palisade,

The Red Knight rode, in armor all arrayed.

His roan destrier shook its crimson trap.

His shield was crimson, crimson was his helm.

His eyes were shot with red. Each plate and strap

Was crimson, for blood crimson was his realm.

He slew for love, his heart in passion’s chains;

The Red Knight, master of those wasted plains.

“Know, boy, that I have slain both dam and babe;

I have unbodied souls a thousand-fold,

And neither compass, map, nor astrolabe

Can chart my bosom. I am old and old.

It has been long since sleep has closed my eye.

I kill and kill; yet I can never die.”

“Christ mercy” uttered Gareth. Then he set

His spear. He gripped his shield and dug his spur

Into his horse’s flank. God saw him, yet

Their contest had but steel for arbiter.

So joined they in the morning on that plain;

The sun besmirching all in blood-red stain.

Their spears were shattered with a thunderclap,

So they dismounted, drawing each their blades

And striking fast at each and every gap.

Gareth sought vengeance for the hanged men’s shades

Who swung unseeing, knocking knee to knee

Upon the branches of the dying tree.

“Know this;” the Red Knight panted; “I shall grow

In strength until the noon; and then the power

Of seven courses through my frame; and know

That you will hang before that burning hour.”

“Then speak no further. Fight me to end.
Our wounds shall speak, and let our blades contend.”

They fought in sweat; each angry thrust and blow

Drew life’s own blood from each. The grass was wet

And steel rang out on steel, their eyes aglow

Beneath their visors. There they were well met.

Their swords grew hot with blows as fire-brands

As they did battle there in those Red Lands.

Time passed. They drew apart to catch their breath,

Each leaning on his sword, both weak with pain

And in the other’s eyes each saw his death.

They cried aloud; and crossed their blades again.

Three times they joined, three times they fell apart;

Their chests both pounding with a beating heart.

Gareth felt fire burn along his arm;

He dropped his sword and clutched his wounded limb.

The Red Knight pressed him; hot to work his harm;

And blow on vicious blow he dealt to him.

But Gareth would not fall, nor would he yield

And took the sword’s edge hard upon his shield.

Leaping, he reached and clutched again his battered sword

And gave again the strokes he had received.

His wrath was fire. Now his man was gored;

His edge fell fast, and as it fell, it cleaved.

He struck the Red Knight well about the head;

The red helm split. His foe lay like the dead.

Stooping to slay him, Gareth drew his dirk

Unlaced the helm, and pressed his throat, laid bare,

Swelling to catch at breath. The bloody work

Was nearly done. The Red Knight choked; “Christ: spare. . .

Please, spare me; for I can no longer fight.

I yield. . . I yield, myself, at last, to might.”

Then Gareth spoke: “No, murderer. In shame

You die, as you have killed those noble men

Who prayed for mercy in our Savior’s name

And hanged. Now pray. This blade shall say ‘Amen’”

“For love I swore. For war’s own sake I wrought

Evil on innocence. Pray, slay me not.”

“I will repent, and live to pray and fast,

And will to Arthur swear my loyalty.

And when this body meets its death, at last,

From fire my contrite heart shall set me free.”

“I spare. I spare. But much against my will.

Though it is noble to pay ill for ill;

Yet this waste land and others must revive,

And wrath and blood will only clear the weeds

But will not keep the crops and trees alive.

Justice demands your death. Yet mercy pleads;

And I give mercy. Strength must conquer strength;

But mercy lord it over wrath at length.”

Posted on by Derek Turner

The importance of ephemera

The Lost Folk

Lally MacBeth, London: Faber & Faber, 2025, hardback, 340pps., £20
DEREK TURNER finds a well-meant quest for authenticity obscured by Angst

Britain’s folk culture is world-famous, and perennially popular – the Abbot’s Bromley Horn Dance, Padstow’s ‘Obby ‘Oss, Lewes’s Bonfire Night, and Lincolnshire’s Haxey Hood Game, to name just some of the rituals that even in a digital age help anchor the English to their earth. In recent decades, a young generation of “new countryphiles” have become involved in folk culture, joining in with traditional festivities and activities like Morris dancing and well-dressing, yet also exploring new ways of expressing identity and strengthening community.

Lally MacBeth is a representative figure among these countryphiles, as founder of the Folk Archive to foster interest in new forms of folk culture, and co-founder of the Stone Club, which celebrates Britain’s Megalithic monuments. In this, her first book, she builds on her Folk Archive work to call for greater recognition of folk objects that too often go unnoticed, and to help formulate a folk culture fit for the future. She is herself a Morris dancer, and an apparently indefatigable collector of curiosities – trawling charity shops and car boot sales in search of whatever is autochthonous, personal and locally distinctive, from church hassocks to horse brasses, pieces of old costume to tourist ware tea-towels, and shop fittings to pub signs.

Her own interest was sparked when she came across a photograph of her great-great aunt, taking part in a 1934 Ludlow pageant of Milton’s Comus – such pageants a form of folk culture now extinguished, and not even generally considered as being aspects of folk culture. She has concluded that folk culture, as conventionally defined, is too categorically confining – the filtered choices of a particular class at a particular period, now become stale and tired.

Folk culture builds community by formulating folk memory and repeating rituals that can link classes and generations to each other, and all classes and generations to particular places. MacBeth is right to aver that folk culture can be fostered by institutions as well as by individuals; churches can be repositories of folk beliefs and folkish items, and county councils can be custodians of local character. The author pays overdue tribute to many different kinds of people – dance teachers, event organisers, gravestone carvers, preservers of vernacular buildings, signwriters, topiarists, and yet others – whose largely unsung activities have helped perpetuate local distinctiveness.

Folk items can be reassuringly solid – like the eleventh century reindeer antlers used at Abbot’s Bromley, shell grottoes, ships’ figureheads, or model villages like Buckinghamshire’s Bekonscot. But they can also be disconcertingly ephemeral – badges, costumes, posters, or even sandcastles that only stand for a day. They can even be ideas – like the piquant folk-memory that a statue of Pan was once carried in church processions in the Gloucestershire town of Painswick.

The only locally distinctive items she wants to exclude from her ethnographic catalogue are “problematic and offensive historical language.” She accuses the folksong collector Cecil Sharp of recording “incredibly racist dance practices,” and creating “a folk world that suited him: sanitised, classist, racist and very, very male.” She loathes the blackface traditionally used by some Morris sides, for reasons that until the 1970s were considered more or less innocent (albeit infra dig). She expends anguished paragraphs on one solitary Morris side which has so far resisted pressure to whiten up its act. One can understand why such things make the author uneasy; yet is this not ‘sanitisation’ of the kind of which she accuses Sharp? Sharp, it should be noted, was a Liberal and a progressive, who for several years collaborated productively with the socialist collector-dancer Mary Neal (although they later fell out).

Morris dancer at Rochester Sweeps’ Fair. Image: Derek Turner

The author’s well-intentioned wish to embrace folk objects of all kinds from all kinds of marginalised or newly-arrived communities carries the obvious risk of ultimately overwhelming globally unique native objects. Folk culture allows communities to define and defend themselves – as the author says, to “feel a sense of home, and a sense of belonging.” But if everyone is to ‘feel at home,’ can anyone actually be at home? Authentic folkish manifestations are spontaneous responses to specific situations in space and time, as ‘instinctive’ and enjoyable as treading the measures of a Morris; should they also be objects of anthropological Angst?

The author is on easier ground when she asks us to honour undeservedly overlooked figures like Florence Elsie Matley Moore, who devoted much of the 1930s to painting, photographing and restoring Worcestershire antiquities and popularising country dances. Somerset’s Ruth Tongue emerges engagingly as eccentric fabulist-folklorist, who alienated more serious-minded students of folklore by toying with traditions, and claiming to speak with fairies. So too do Pamela Colman Smith, folktale-teller, occultist and Tarot card illustrator – and poor, paralysed Nellie Sloggett, who forged a successful writing career from her bedroom in Padstow, regaling readers with lively tales of ‘piskies’ and other Cornubian conceits.

Raconteurs help perpetuate folk-memory as much as scholars like the 1930s writers Dorothy Hartley and Florence White, who recorded country cooking and other crafts, or the oral historian George Ewart Evans, whose classics Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay (1956) and Pattern Under the Plough (1966) recorded authentic voices of rural Suffolk that were soon to be stilled. Fond fantasies as much as facts help underpin rescue and restoration efforts like those carried out by the too little known “Ferguson Gang” – five admirable women who between 1927 and 1957 helped raise huge amounts of money to save areas of the West Country threatened with development.

Whatever reservations we may have about some of the author’s political stances, she deserves commendation for calling such people to mind. She also deserves credit for raising important questions about the nature and future of ‘folk’ in an age of mass movement and social media shallowness. Yet in the end folk culture may not be amenable to even the most earnest analyses, and will evolve in its own way. As the author herself observes, folk culture is “…inexplicable, something that just is.”

Posted on by Liam Guilar · 2 Comments

The tale of the oldest animals (The freeing of Mabon mab Modron)

LIAM GUILAR is Poetry Editor of The Brazen Head, and the author of several poetry collections, including the series A Man of Heart, Presentment of Englishry and The Fabled Third (Shearsman), set in post-Roman Britain

This is from a translation of Culhwch and Olwen, ‘the oldest surviving Arthurian tale’ from medieval Welsh prose to modern English Verse. The story tells how Culhwch marries Olwen, the giant’s daughter. However, before he can marry her, he must complete forty tasks for her father. Many are obviously impossible; some merely extremely difficult. The tasks are completed not by Culhwch but by King Arthur and his men. What follows is the second and third task.

The complete translation, How Culhwch won Olwen, a verse translation of the oldest Arthurian tale, will be published by Shearsman in 2026. See
https://www.shearsman.com/store/Liam-Guilar-trans-How-Culhwch-Won-Olwen-p767786031

The translation is based on Culhwch and Olwen. An edition and study of the oldest Arthurian tale, by Rachel Bromwich and D. Simon Evans, (University of Wales Press, 1992)

The tale of the oldest animals (The freeing of Mabon mab Modron)

After they’d told Arthur all that had happened,

he said, ‘Which of these wonders should we seek first?’

‘It’s best to seek Mabon mab Modron

And to find him we need his kinsmen,

Eidoel mab Aer.’

Arthur and his knights arose,

and sought throughout Britain

until they came to the outer walls of Gliwi

where Eidoel was a prisoner.

Gliwi stood on the top of his fort:

‘Arthur, what do you want?

Life’s bad enough on this crag 

without you coming to ruin me.

I have neither wheat nor oats,

nor goods nor pleasure.’

‘I haven’t come to harm you,

I seek your prisoner.’

‘You can have him, although

I never intended to give him up.

And on top of that my help and support.

The men said to Arthur: ‘Lord, go home.

You cannot go with your host,

to seek such a petty thing as this.’

Arthur replied: ‘Gwrhyr the Translator,

It is good for you to go on this quest,

You know all the languages of men,

and some of the animals and birds’.

Eidoel, it is good that you go with my men

to seek Mabon, as he is your cousin.

Kei and Bedwyr, it is my hope

that whatever you seek you will find.

Go on this quest for me.’

They went until they found the Blackbird of Gilgwri.

Gwrhyr asked her: ’For God’s sake,

Do you know anything of Mabon mab Modron,

who was taken from between his mother and the wall,

when he was three nights old?’

The Blackbird replied:

‘I was a young bird

when first I came here

and found this anvil.

It hasn’t been touched

except by my beak,

tapping each evening.

Today you can see

all that’s left is the size

of a nut. God’s

vengeance on me

if I know of this man

you ask me about.

However, I will do

what is proper for

Arthur’s messengers.

There is another

creature God made

before me, and I

will take you to him.’

They went until they found the Stag of Redynure.

‘Stag of Redynure, we are messengers of Arthur,

we know of no animal older than you.

Say if you know anything of Mabon mab Modron,

who was taken from between his mother and the wall

when he was three nights old.’

‘When first I came here,

I had but a single tine

on either side of my head.

There were no trees but a single sapling.

That sapling grew into an oak with a hundred branches.

Then it fell to the earth, and now

there’s nothing of it left but a red stump.

Though I’ve been here from that day to this,

I’ve heard nothing of this man you mention.

But because you are Arthur’s messengers,

I will be your guide to an animal God made before me.’

They came to the place

where they found the Owl of Cwm Kawlwyt.

‘Owl of Cwm Kawlywt these are messengers from Arthur.

Do you know anything of Mabon mab Modron

who was taken from his mother on the third night?’

‘What I do know, I will tell to you.

When first I came here

the great valley you see

was thick with trees.

Then came a race of men

and laid waste the wood.

A second wood grew.

You now see the third.

The roots of my wings

are mere stumps now.

From that day to this

I have heard nothing

of the man you are seeking.

But I will be a guide

for Arthur’s messengers

until you come to the oldest

creature in the world

who has travelled the furthest:

the Eagle of Gwern Abwy.’

Gwyhyr said: ‘Eagle of Gwern Abwy

We have come, as messengers of Arthur,

to ask if you know anything about Mabon mab Modron

who was taken from his mother

when he was three nights old?’

The Eagle replied:

‘I came here

a long time ago

and when I first came here,

I had a stone,

and each evening,

from the top of my stone

I pecked at the stars.

Now it is not a handsbreadth in height.

From that day to this I have been here.

I have heard nothing of this man.

However,

when I was seeking my food in Llyn Llyw,

I sunk my talons into a salmon,

thinking he would feed me for a long time

but he pulled me down into the depths.

It was with difficulty I got away.

What I then did,

with all my kinsmen,

was to launch an attack.

We sought to destroy him.

He sent messengers

to me

to make peace,

then came

to me,

in person,

to have fifty tridents

removed from his back.

Unless he knows something

of the man you mentioned

I don’t know of anyone who does.

However, I will take you to him.’

They came to the place where he was.

The eagle said: ‘Salmon of Llyn Llyw,

I have come to you with Arthur’s messengers,

to ask if you know anything of Mabon mab Modron

who was taken from his mother on the third night.’

‘As much as I know I will tell you.

With every flood tide I go up the river

until I come to the bend

beneath the walls of Kaer Loyw.

Never in my life have I encountered,

such misery as I found there.

So you may believe me,

let one of you climb

on each of my two shoulders.’

Kei and Gwrhyr climbed on his shoulders.

They travelled upstream until they came

to the other side of the wall from the prisoner.

They could hear a-weeping and a-wailing.

Gwrhyr said: ‘What man laments

in this house of stone?’ ‘Alas, man,

I have cause for lamentation.

Mabon mab Modron is the prisoner here.

And no one has ever been imprisoned so cruelly,

neither Llud Silver hand nor Greit mab Eri.’

‘Is there hope of obtaining your freedom,

with gold or silver or worldly goods?

Or will it require assault and fighting?’

‘Whatever you can get of me,

will be got by fighting.’

They returned to Arthur

and told him where Mabon was.

Arthur summoned the fighting men of the island,

and they went to Kaer Loyw.

Kei and Bedwyr went upstream

on the shoulders of the salmon.

While Arthur’s warriors were attacking the fort,

Kei broke the wall, fighting with the men inside,

even when he was carrying the prisoner on his back.

Arthur came home with Mabon a free man.

Posted on by Samuel Martin

Art for art’s – and civilization’s – sake

Argonaut (for RC), by Alexander Adams, 2025

How to Start a Dissident Art Movement

Alexander Adams, Imperium Press, pb., 233 pps., £16.23

SAMUEL MARTIN welcomes a valuable ‘handbook’

Alexander Adams starts his book with a warning – “If anyone is in need of a practical manual of how to organise a counter-cultural vanguard, this is not the book you want.”

One may argue that Adams could’ve chosen a more accurate title. That would however be uncharitable. While not a “practical manual,” Adams nonetheless tries to show what works (or doesn’t) as derived from his own personal experience. The work isn’t a manifesto produced at the inaugural meeting of revolutionaries, declaring their intention to begin the world over again, but the progress report of a soldier who has been in the trenches for a while.

Specifically, the book is a compendium of essays, speeches, and letters by Adams in his crusade against ‘State Art.’ The term State Art is never explicitly defined, although it’s immediately clear what Adams is talking about – aesthetically heterogeneous but ideologically homogenous work arbitrarily foisted upon the public it simultaneously despises and depends on for subsidy.

Adams is however not a populist in either a political or aesthetical sense. His writing shows a clear minoritarian, elitist bent – lauding the handful of innovators, dynamos, and deviants who drag society kicking and screaming into the future. Adams regards himself (and the movement) as being revolutionary, and, like all good revolutionaries, seeks to capitalise on popular discontent, especially where it aligns with the movement’s objectives.

While this might invite accusations of opportunism, it’s clear that if Adams truly is motivated by self-interest, he’s chosen a terrible line of work as an outlet, something he outlines frankly to like-minded artists: “Any dissident arts centre will attract the ire of the governing elite… from media hit pieces and petitions to zoning-regulation alterations and de-platforming from banking systems should be expected.” It is for this reason Adams proposes a Moltke-esque ‘plans never survive contact with the enemy’ approach to dissident organisation.

In conjunction with his disdain for State Art, more cynical and reductive critics may dismiss Adams as speaking out of both sides of his mouth – nominally seeking to remove politics from art while vying to supplant one caste of ideologues with another, utilising art for a different set of political ends. But while Adams states that he’s not part of the ‘Left,’ his work forms a running argument that the enemy is not progressivism per se, but the incremental bureaucratic capture of imagination – the slow domestication of art into a credentialed, subsidised, token-dispensing machine. Progressivism is not so much an eternal enemy, but something that presently, circumstantially, stands in the way of art itself.

In that sense, his criticism of State Art is less a partisan swipe than a structural diagnosis; once art depends on public subsidy and ideological gatekeeping, risk evaporates, and merit is denounced. This is why he can simultaneously praise Old Masters, defend bad folk art, and encourage radical innovation—he sees them all as living vital expressions.

The charge that he is merely swapping one ideological caste for another misunderstands this point. Although he doesn’t seek to equivocate the marginalisation of Right-leaning artists with the liberals of yesteryear, Adams does not offer a checklist of acceptable themes or styles; his ultimate red line is that art be judged on its intrinsic qualities, not on the demographics or politics of its maker. “To be deemed a dissident,” he says, “all it takes (potentially) is being committed to art being judged on its intrinsic qualities and refusing to assess art according to the demographic characteristics of its maker or performer.” Adams’ funniest description of the prevailing art establishment view – and one that is oddly prescient in the light of highly charged current politics – goes as follows  “An arts administrator in the UK would be as likely to programme a stage play – provocative but with artistic merit – that was sympathetic towards white nationalism, as he would place a live explosive in proximity to an audience…”

Self-portrait in full sunlight, by Alexander Adams, 2025

Adams’ determination to avoid sounding like a flippant curmudgeon place his work far ahead of other writers on this subject; he can credibly claim to having a vested interest in art, not merely acknowledging it when it gets caught in the crosshairs of political punditry. In this respect, Adams’ book is timely and useful. It can serve as a powerful counter to the pseudo-profound but popular notion that because art is made in society, and society is a compound of political decisions (past and ongoing), that all art is political.

This really matters. If all art is political, then the distinction between art and propaganda is entirely arbitrary – a figment of power to perpetuate the status quo. This not only makes it legitimate to reject technically sophisticated art for political reasons, but gives licence to work that, if hung in any place other than an established gallery, would be regarded as lowest-of-the-low slop. Just as telling truth in a world of lies becomes a political act, making art in a world of propaganda too becomes a political act – if not political in the eyes of the maker, then in the eyes of those who regard the artist as some kind of ideological enemy.

Adams’ core principle – art first, politics second – means that even when he speaks of “working for your people” or “building parallel institutions,” he is not calling for counter-propaganda but for the creation of conditions in which genuine creativity can flourish on its own terms. The most politically proficient thing one can do create good art – not as political art, but as art itself.

Adams’ twelve ‘rules’ for artists stand out as the work’s backbone: (1) Take yourself seriously (2) find friends (3) look at and talk about art seriously (4) work for your people (5) balance group interest and self-interest (6) make, destroy, monitor (7) keep records (8) write letters (9) art is a social business (10) find homes for your art (11) take risks and 12) take responsibility, suffer well.

There is a refreshing moral seriousness and sincerity to these rules that is rare in either art or politics – perhaps especially in dissident circles, where grifting and Internet histrionics are too often present. Dissecting these rules individually is beyond the scope of this review – which is unfortunate, because they constitute good advice not only for dissident artists, but for anyone with any kind of creative, intellectual, moral or political imperative.

As a writer, the rule to “Destroy a lot” stands out in particular to me. I have known this intuitively for a while, yet never thought to express in such indulgently brutal yet intimate terms:

It does you good to destroy your work and relinquish the substandard. Reuse your material when you can. Without the ability to be ruthless, you will accumulate too much and will be unable to see your achievements clearly. You will incur costs that will burden you with preserving the poor and thereby prevent you from making the better. Take pride in the best you have done and do not become too sentimental regarding the weak, secondary or superseded. Preserve samples of preparatory materials, experiments and unfinished pieces, but preserve sparingly.

These rules are the closest Adams gets to a coherent system of comportment. It’s at this point one begins to realise that Adams’ movement – for all the words he spends justifying its necessity, not to mention shopping list of logistics and strategic pointers – lacks a name.

Drawing on the Impressionists, Adams notes they had no explicit creed or aesthetical guideline beyond opposition to what was ‘the system’ at their time of formation. Here, Adams’ use of Nietzsche and Heidegger on the essence of art could have been tied more explicitly into his views on strategy. Both Nietzsche and Heidegger viewed Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” as emblematic of everything rational, detached, and sterilising we associate with the Enlightenment – contaminating all ensuing intellectual development, including the arts, with a litany of -isms (subjectivism, individualism, scepticism), by presupposing the existence of an “I.”

Adams is determined to avoid punishing self-definition, in order to allow for flexibility. Should dissident artists tell us immediately exactly what they believe and intend to create, they will labour under the pressure to do so, jeopardising their solidarity, and as a result, extinguish themselves.

In the end, we discover that the title isn’t a misnomer but a subtle hint. Adams’ movement isn’t something you announce with a press release. It is something that shows itself gradually in the work, piece by piece, until the proponents of State Art realise it exists. By then, it’ll be too late to stop.

Posted on by Marly Youmans

Ælfstan the Illuminator Begins a Work

MARLY YOUMANS is the author of sixteen books of poetry and fiction. Recent work includes a long poem, Seren of the Wildwood (Wiseblood), a novel, Charis in the World of Wonders (Ignatius), and a poetry collection, The Book of the Red King (Phoenicia).

’Ælfstan the Illuminator Begins a Work’ was the President’s Choice Award
and Runner-up, Formal Verse Contest 2024, The English-Speaking Union (Victoria Branch, Australia)

Ælfstan the Illuminator Begins a Work

A flock of images allures the monk,
Seizing hold of thought, and he remembers
Unburning limbs and leaves that waved in fire,
How branches seemed to sprout and stir in flame
As if in water, how light grew to voice
And spoke to Moses, boy fished from the Nile,
Flame becoming illuminated word,
Sight and hearing jumbled as one in play.
He hesitates and feels a burning catch
At him, his fingers with the brush and paint
Floating above the vellum quires and text…
The parchment maker and the scribe have done
Their tasks and left a space for ornament
And figures framed by snow or greenery.

And so, he thinks, a naked page is like
The Uncreated who sustains the world,
The spheres, the moon, the sky pricked out in stars.
All-things are in his care who is not-thing,
Who is the blossoming causer-to-be,
Who clasps all mortal instants that to us
Are past and present like an arrow flung
Flashing from dark to light and back again,
As if a sparrow fled the ravened night
—so black when winter’s wolves gulp sun and moon!—
Through slots in stone, into the mead-hall cheer
Of feasting, bardic song, and Christmas tales,
Only to make a calligraphic dash
Across the light and toward another gap
And then be lost in inks of mystery.
What will the art in me begin this day?
The cosmos gleams with possibility:
All space, all time, the round of season-flux,
Apocalypse of birth that cracks the dark,
Hoe-scratchings at the ground once past Twelfth Night
With milk and honey, oil and yeast slow-dripped
On turf, with mass and thrice-blessed rowan cross,
And through the cycle of the turning year.
So strange it is, this sparrow-line of us,
The tick by tick of human lives ensnared
By year-long wheels of saints and feasts and fasts.
We are the sparrow with its dark-light-dark
Of arrow flight that’s fletched with pain and joy,
And we are dancers weaving in a ring
Of births and deaths and resurrection days,
Fragrant with the scents of hay and flower.

His hand trembles, the sable hair of the brush
Is blued with azurite, and now he sees
The unconsuming flames of burning bush
And hears sigla and words in hawthorn ink
Begin to scatter notes and sing for him,
Below the blanks that soon will come to be
The rich illuminations of the year,
The glass-locked stream, the flag-decked castle spire,
A prince with hound and hunting tapestry
And board with gold salt cellar and venison,
Some peasants warming their backsides by a fire,
Tunics and gowns a hoisted comedy.
He ponders the hoop of seasons and how it is
The sparrow flies in straightness like a pin…
His hand dips and he makes first marks in blue
As he dreams that linear or rounded time’s
A pin of gold and a jeweled, hammered hoop:
The ring-brooch on a cloak of endlessness,
Abundance of the uncreated light.