Visiting George Orwell In Sutton Courtenay.

George Orwell's Grave.

The original plan for yesterday was to go to Winchester to see Jane Austen’s grave and other places of historical interest. I changed my mind at the last minute though because I thought Winchester might be too touristy at this time of year. Also, the weather forecast wasn’t great, and I didn’t fancy plodding around the streets of Winchester in the rain. Jane can wait for another day. Instead, I thought it would be better to go and see the grave of another author who I admire, namely George Orwell. I think he was one of the greatest and most influential writers of the 20^th century. I have read several of his books, including Animal Farm, Nineteen-Eighty-Four, Homage To Catalonia, Down And Out In Paris And London, and Keep The Aspidistra Flying. 

David Astor.

It didn’t take that long to get to the village of Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire. We went via Devizes, Avebury, Marlborough, Hungerford, Newbury, and Didcot. It was a bit tricky finding the right road out of Didcot and when we arrived in the village, we found the road was closed. It looked like they were putting in a new drain or something. We had to do a long detour and approach the village from the other side. Finally, after asking about three people for directions we arrived at the picturesque churchyard of All Saints Church. It was quite a large churchyard with hundreds of gravestones, and we didn’t have a clue where to start looking. I spotted a lady who must be a church volunteer, she was doing some topiary on a tree.

All Saint's Church.

 “Excuse me, we are looking for the grave of George Orwell, do you know where it is please?”. “Yes”, she cheerily replied, “Go right down to the end and you will find it three rows back, it has a red rose on it, the grave has his real name on it which is Eric Blair”. “Yes, I knew that, thank you very much”. It was beginning to drizzle rain quite steadily now, and despite the ladies’ instructions we still couldn’t find the grave. I was getting fed up and a bit damp. Luckily, we met a couple of people who were also looking for the grave, and between the four of we finally found it. As you would expect with a democratic socialist like George Orwell the grave is very simple, it just says, ’Here lies Eric Arthur Blair, Born June 25^th, 1903, Died January 21^st, 1950’.  That is it, plain and simple, no bragging about his achievements or quotes from his books or anything. A friend of mine who knew I was coming here said I should leave some little plastic pigs, horses, sheep, and cows on the grave to create a miniature Animal Farm, but I didn’t have any, and that would have been very disrespectful. 

Asquith's Grave.

Nearby, I spotted the memorial stone of another great man who was Orwell’s friend David Astor. He was at one time the owner and editor of The Observer newspaper and the son of Nancy Astor the first woman to take her seat in the House Of Commons. Despite being a multi-millionaire, he lived very simply and was a great philanthropist and civil rights campaigner and friend of Nelson Mandela.  It was Orwell’s wish to be buried in a simple English churchyard and it was his friend David Astor who arranged for Orwell’s burial in this quiet spot. Astor’s stone  is just as simple as you would expect.  It was placed here by Astor's wife Bridget. David Astor's ashes were actually scattered in the grounds of his home Sutton Courtenay Manor. We also came across the grave of Herbert Asquith who was British Prime Minister from 1908-1916. He was the man who took this country into World War 1 in 1914 but had to resign two years later. His grave is much more flamboyant, more like a tomb, with lots of inscription on it. I much prefer the simplicity of Orwell and Astor. 

Inside The Church.

Inside the church we also found a wall memorial to George Orwell. I think it was put there by the Orwell Society. There is also a cabinet with lots of information about him. As we left the churchyard, I said cheerio to the nice topiary lady. “Thank you very much, we found it ok, mission accomplished. I expect you get a lot of people looking for George Orwell’s grave”. “Oh yes,” she replied, “I think you are the fifth people to ask today”. I think that is great, 71 years after he died people are still interested in George Orwell. I think the reason is partly because the subjects that he wrote about are still relevant today, especially such books as Animal Farm, 1984 and Homage To Catalonia where he warned about the dangers of totalitarianism and fascism. Expressions that Orwell used, such as in 1984 Big Brother. Thought Police, Room 101, memory hole, Newspeak, doublethink, and thoughtcrime, or in Animal Farm, ‘All creatures are born equal, but some are more equal than others’ have become part of the language. Many things he warned against have come true, you only have to look at China, North Korea, Myanmar, Belarus or many other places to see that. Another thing that I like about Orwell is that he practiced what he preached, such as when he went to The Spanish Civil War to try and help stem the rising fascist tide. He almost died when he was shot in the throat by a sniper during the battle for Barcelona.

I better stop now before this post turns into a political rant. After that we went to nearby Abingdon where we sat in the van and ate fish & chips while looking at the rain. Then drove home slowly as we kept getting stuck behind tractors and their wisps of hay and got back to The Crown for a well-deserved drink. I’m pleased we made the effort to go and visit the great George Orwell whose work is as important today as it ever was.

Postscript: I am very grateful to a native of Sutton Courtenay Arthur Hutt for providing me with extra information about George Orwell & David Astor. Much appreciated.

Jazz Of The Beat Generation.

This is turning into jazz week in my house. It is Wednesday, showery and quite cold. The heat wave is well and truly over. I am listening to an album called Jazz Of The Beat Generation which I came across on eBay recently. It only cost £3.50 inc p&p, a bargain. It arrived in a neat little box containing a booklet and the CD. I recognised the tasteful artwork on the front cover immediately. It is from the UK Pan paperback edition of On The Road by Jack Kerouac. I had a first edition of this paperback many years ago. I see copies of that book change hands for £75 these days, so I wish I hadn’t sold my copy. The booklet is packed with information. There is an introduction by Keith Shadwick who did a great job of compiling the 22 tracks on this album for the Jazz fm label in 2003. 

He explains why Jack Kerouac was the Beat writer most enthused by jazz. Jack’s books are littered with references to the jazz sounds of the 1940s & 50s. Keith relates where the music and artists are written about by Jack in such books as On The Road, Desolation Angels & The Subterraneans. Some of my favourite passages in Jack’s books are descriptions of seeing musicians performing live, such as when Sal and Dean see Slim Gaillard and George Shearing in On The Road. Van Morrison fans might recall seeing Van read from On The Road accompanied by Slim playing bongos. The booklet also contains two great essays written by Jack. The first is the eponymous Jazz Of The Beat Generation first published in 1955 which later was adapted as part of On The Road. It shows how Jack’s spontaneous bop prosody (as he called his writing style) was literatures equivalent of Jazz, and Jack’s instrument was the typewriter. The second essay called The Beginning Of Bop first appeared in Escapade magazine and was later included in a book called Good Blonde & Others. Jack recorded this essay for an album released in 1960. The recording is divided into sections and included on this album. I must say Jack’s reading voice perfectly compliments the jazz music included here.

The opening track The Beat Generation is Jack reading a piece that later became chapter 77 of book 1 of Desolation Angels. Then we have The Gasser by Roy Eldridge recorded in 1943. I won’t mention every track because I’m no expert and there are 22 tracks here. I’ll just mention a few I particularly like, such as In A Little Spanish Town by Lester Young, Salt Peanuts by Dizzy Gillespie, Scrapple From The Apple by Charlie Parker, Slim’s Jam by Slim Gaillard who is the only one of all these musicians who I had the good fortune to see playing live which was in Plymouth back in 87. The only song included here is I Only Have Eyes For You by the great Billy Eckstine recorded in 1946. I also like Hackensack  by Thelonious Monk featuring the great drumming of Art Blakey. There is a track called Sub-Conscious Lee by The Lennie Tristano Quintet recorded in New York in 1949. I saw a photo recently of Jack Kerouac at a Lennie Tristano gig in New York. I wonder if this number might have been recorded that night? Stella By Starlight with Stan Getz is also wonderful, as is Line For Lyons by Gerry Mulligan, and the final track Nutty by Thelonious Monk. I have really enjoyed listening to every track of this music on this rainy Wednesday afternoon and hearing the bop sounds that so inspired the writing of the one and only Jack Kerouac. 

Wind Of Change by Julian Bahula.

It is Monday morning; the sun is shining, and my kitchen is filled with the sound of African rhythms. I am listening to an album called Wind Of Change by Julian Bahula featuring Chico Freeman. I bought this album because Julian Bahula has lived in my town of Westbury for the best part of 20 years. It was only in the last few years that I found out that he is a famous musician. I looked on Wikipedia to find out more about him. Julian was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1938. He came to prominence in South Africa in the 1960s as a drummer and percussionist in a band called Malombo playing a form of African jazz. Because of the situation with Apartheid in 1973 he moved to London where he formed the group Jabula with Ernest Mothle, Lucky Ranku and Eddie Tatane. As well as making their own albums the band appeared on three albums by Mike Oldfield, Ommadawn (1975), Incantations (1978), and Amarok (1990). Julian played on a Stevie Wonder album in 1987. He also founded the band Jazz Afrika, and in the 1980s he played with Dick Heckstall-Smith’s Electric Dream group. 

Julian also established a regular Friday night featuring African bands at the London venue The 100 Club. He booked a lot of musicians who were also political refugees; his series began to symbolise a movement for change. Players such as Fela Kuti, Miriam Makeba, and Hugh Masekela were among the performers whose early British appearances were organised by Julian. With the Anti-Apartheid Movement, he also organised in 1983 African Sounds, a concert at Alexandra Palace to mark the 65th birthday of Nelson Mandela, drawing a 3,000-strong audience and raising the international profile of Mandela and other political prisoners. I have shared Julian’s Jazz Africa song about Nelson Mandela to this page. Jerry Dammers of The Specials has said this song was the inspiration for the song Free Nelson Mandela.

When Nelson Mandela was finally freed, Julian made a return trip to South Africa which was the inspiration for the music on the Wind Of Change album of 2001 which I discovered only last week. In the sleeve notes Julian says, ‘Music was my only weapon, and I wanted to use it for the struggle of my people’. You can feel that optimism in the joyful infectious rhythms of the music. Julian composed all the music of the eight tracks. As well as his drums and percussion there are tenor, alto and soprano saxophones, trumpets, flugelhorn, keyboards, synthesizers, Hammond organ, guitars, and bass. All the tracks are instrumentals. I have really enjoyed hearing this album. I bet this music would sound even better played live on a sunny day at a festival. In 2012 the President of South Africa presented Julian with the Order of Ikhamanga (Gold) which is the highest honour in South Africa awarded for artistic achievement, so I think we are privileged to have such a great musician living in our town and I’m pleased I discovered his music.

Mandela - Julian Bahula's Jazz Afrika

Bright Phoebus by Mike & Lal Waterson.

After months of looking, I finally managed to acquire a copy of Bright Phoebus by Lal & Mike Waterson. It cost me deep in the purse though. I saw a 2CD copy in the auction on eBay. I bid and bid, but to no avail. I finally stopped bidding when it reached £45. “This is ridiculous”, I thought to myself. It sold for £51. I was so disappointed I looked on Amazon and saw a copy for sale for £36 and bought it. That is the second highest price I have ever paid for an album. The record is held by In Gardens Where We Feel Secure by Virginia Astley which I paid £44 for. I think Bright Phoebus has become much sought after since being mentioned in Richard Thompson’s book called Beeswing. Anyway, I am pleased I managed to find a copy. The album was originally released in 1972 in an edition of only 1,000 copies. The copy I have is a remastered re-release by Domino Records in 2017 and became the subject of a copyright dispute which might account for it being quite rare these days. 

I must say they did a wonderful job with the design and packaging. It has a triple gate-fold sleeve and contains a fabulous booklet with the lyrics, an extensive essay by Pete Paprides which explains everything you might need to know about Lal & Mike Waterson and the story of how the album came into being, and some splendid photos, including one of Anne Briggs which I had not seen before. Martin Carthy had a lot to do with bringing the songs to the attention of Bill Leader who produced the album. It was recorded in one week at Cecil Sharp House in London. The list of musicians who played on the album reads like a Who’s Who of the British folk scene of the 70s. Richard Thompson, Norma Waterson, Tim Hart, Ashley Hutchings, Maddy Prior, Dave Mattacks, Martin Carthy, Bob Davenport, and many others appear on the twelve tracks along with Mike and Lal. Let us have a look at the songs.

Rubber Band is the opening song. Some critics have described this album as Folk music’s Sergeant Pepper, and I can see that link with this jolly opening song which has a huge array of instruments including trombone and Jew’s harp. The lyrics are comical, clever word play. The Scarecrow is completely different. One person compared it to an Ingmar Bergman film. It has a pre-Christian pagan feel to it with hints of human sacrifice. It is sung by Mike & Lal with just Richard Thompson and Martin Carthy on acoustic guitars. I know Fine Horseman because Anne Briggs also recorded it. Lal sings and wrote this song. Her hero was the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, and I think you can see the influence in Lal’s sometimes enigmatic lyrics. I wonder if Winifer Odd might have been influenced slightly by Eleanor Rigby. It is a strange song about a lonely tragi-comic person who spends their life waiting for something to happen, and it never does. Danny Rose is a kind of rockabilly song about a gangster who comes to a sticky end. Lal wrote Child Among The Weeds after her son Oliver was born. All the songs on the album are original compositions, but many of them, like this song sound like traditional ballads that have been around for hundreds of years. If this album is Folk’s Sgt Pepper, then I think The Magical Man is the equivalent of ‘For The Benefit Of Mr Kite’ with it’s circus and Victorian Music Hall imagery. There are twelve musicians on this track. 

The next two songs are much simpler arrangements featuring just Lal and acoustic guitars, cello, and bass. Never The Same is a scary vision of a post-apocalypse world. To Make You Stay is a simple song about loss which does stir the same emotion as ‘She’s Leaving Home’. Shady Lady by contrast features lots of singers and splendid lead guitar by Richard Thompson. Lal wrote Red Wine Promises after she went out to the pub for the night. On the way home she tried to leap-frog over a traffic bollard and fell flat on her back. The song is about her telling herself off for her behaviour. Mike was up a ladder working as a house painter when the sun came out. The words of the title track Bright Phoebus came to him there and then. He had to go home and write it all down. I did not know what Phoebus meant, so I looked in Collin’s English Dictionary, and it said, also called: Phoebus, Apollo Greek mythology, Apollo as the sun god, poetic, a personification of the sun. So there!

I have enjoyed listening to the other CD nearly as much as Bright Phoebus, which is demo recordings made the previous year. The quality is surprisingly good, and I liked the stripped back sound of the songs. There are also three songs which were not included on the original album. Sadly, Lal Waterson died in 1998 and her brother Mike Waterson passed away in 2011. They have left a great legacy and I am sure that their legend will continue to grow in the years to come.

John Clare, Born July 13th 1793.

Last week when I was reading about Lucia Joyce the daughter of James Joyce, I found out that she spent decades in St Andrews Mental Hospital in Northampton. This was also the institution where the poet John Clare died in 1864 aged 70. It reminded me that today July 13^th is his birthday, so I thought that I ought to say a few words about him even though I am not an expert by any means. John Clare was born in a small cottage in the village of Helpston near my hometown of Peterborough in 1793. He left school at age 12 to become an agricultural labourer. Because of malnutrition as a child, he only grew to be five feet tall and suffered from poor health all his life. He fell in love with a girl called Mary Joyce who was the daughter of a wealthy farmer but was forbidden to see her because of his poverty. This disappointment had a profound effect on his mental health in later life. 

His book of poems called Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery was published in 1820 by John Taylor who also published Keats. It was an immediate success, as was his second collection called Village Minstrel and Other Poems. He married a milkmaid called Patty Turner and they had seven children. His success was short lived however and his third book The Shepherds Calendar sold poorly. His mental health declined, and he was admitted to an asylum in Essex. He walked 80 miles home from there. One of his delusions was that he had two wives, one of whom was Mary Joyce. He was finally admitted to the asylum in Northampton where he stayed for about 23 years until his death. It was during this time that some critics say he wrote some of his finest poetry.

John Clare's Cottage.

He was almost forgotten by the end of the 19^th century, but in recent decades he has come to be regarded as a major poet. John Clare had a much greater knowledge of wildlife than other famous nature poets such as Wordsworth. For instance, in his poetry he mentions 147 species of wild British birds. He was ahead of his time in seeing the negative effects of the industrial revolution on the countryside where pastures were ploughed up, trees and hedges uprooted, fens drained and common land enclosed. With his love of the natural world there must be a place for John Clare in this age of climate change and destruction of forests and natural habits for animals.
As well as being a great poet John Clare also wrote some very moving prose. In a book called Rare Mankind by Geoffrey Grigson I found this nice piece by John Clare describing the day in London when he happened upon Lord Byron's funeral. I scanned the pages of the book. 

Nora by Nuala O'Connor.

You may recall that I wrote a little piece about Bloomsday on June 16^th. Well, a good Irish friend of mine read it, and kindly sent me a book that she thought I might enjoy. It is called Nora by Nuala O’Connor, A Love Story Of Nora Barnacle And James Joyce. I most certainly did enjoy it, in fact after the Italy v Spain game two nights ago I sat up until nearly 3.00 in the morning to get it finished because I was so enthralled by the story. The author Nuala O’Connor lives in Galway which is where Nora was also born in 1884. Published this year Nora is her 5^th novel. It is a fictionalised account through Nora’s eyes of the love story of James & Nora from their first meeting in Dublin in 1904 when Nora was a chambermaid at Finn’s Hotel. June 16^th, 1904, was their first romantic evening together, which is why that date is always celebrated as Bloomsday. James later asks Nora to move abroad with him, and even though they are not married, Nora agrees. The story follows their lives in Trieste, Zurich and Paris.

James, Nora, Lucia, Georgio.

Their children Georgio and Lucia were born in 1905 and 1907. I found the parts of the story about Lucia particularly moving, from where Nora first noticed what a strange child she was, to her eventual decline into schizophrenia and being confined to a mental hospital. Before reading this book, I did not know that Lucia was a talented dancer, even appearing in a film by Jean Renoir and had an unrequited love interest in Samuel Beckett. What becomes clear is that Nora had an extremely difficult distant relationship with Lucia.

Wedding Day 1931

There are some very explicitly sexual passages in the book. This is not gratuitous but reflects the passionate relationship between James & Nora. When they were apart, they exchanged many erotic letters. I read that one of their letters sold at Sotheby’s for £240,000. I like the humour of this book which appears on many pages. Even when they were living in abject poverty the pair of them would make the most of a bad situation. The wit of James Joyce can be seen in such phrases as when he describes the Atlantic air of Galway as, ‘fresh as a nun’s drawers’. Another thing I like about this book is that I found it very educational. I have learned a lot about the famous and not so famous figures who come to life on these pages. Joyce was fortunate to meet Sylvia Beach at a party organised by Ezra Pound. Sylvia founded the famous bookshop Shakespeare & Company in Paris and she offered to publish Ulysses when nobody else would touch it. I found a fascinating interview with Sylvia when she appeared on RTE Irish television in 1962. It shows what a great and funny lady she was. (I have shared it on this blog site if you want to see it).

It always seemed to be women who kept James Joyce afloat. I learned about his great English benefactor Harriet Weaver from this book. She sent Joyce a huge amount of money which allowed him the time to work on Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. I had not heard of many of the characters in the book, but kept reaching for Wikipedia to find out more and learned about the likes of Robert McAlmon who typed and edited Ulysses, Maria & Eugene Jolas who published extracts from Finnegan’s Wake in their Transition magazine, Tom MacGreevy an Irish poet friend of Joyce’s, Frank Budgen an English artist and friend of Nora & James, Mary & Padraig Colum who wrote a book called Our Friend James Joyce. I have a copy of that book, which I must read soon. There are many other interesting artistic people on these pages. 

Nora.

I found that reading Nora is very inspirational. Paris in the 1920s must have been a wonderful place to be, with all the great artists and writers drawn there from all over the world. I know that James Joyce achieved immortality almost like a 20^th century Dante or Shakespeare, but he couldn’t have done it without his Nora. If he hadn’t had Nora, he might have drank himself to death, he simply would not have coped with life on his own. Nora (to quote Nuala O’Connor) was his harp and shamrock, his tribe and Queen, his turf and bog cotton, his squirrel girl, pirate queen and cattle raider, his blessed little blackguard, his auburn marauder, his gooseen. Congratulations to Nuala O'Connor , and thank you very much to my friend for sending me this wonderful book. 

Sylvia Beach & James Joyce.