The Rings of Saturn

I recently finished reading The Rings of Saturn by the late W G Sebald, a book I had seen referred to on many occasions, but which I've only just got around to looking at. It's a wonderful read, not as heavy-going as I had expected, dealing with weighty and often depressing topics in a detached and quizzical way: it's basically a travel diary around the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts, with disquisitions on numerous topics, some of which I am already interested in such as Swinburne's life and other which I was introduced to, such as the history of silk cultivation and aspects of Chinese history. Many of the places mentioned we have visited over the last few years - he made Lowestoft sound as dismal as we found it - also the magic of Dunwich which has largely disappeared into the sea. Highly recommended.

Robinson in Ruins

I notice from the BFI London Film Festival brochure that Patrick Keiller has made a third film featuring his character 'Robinson' - Robinson in Ruins. His other films London and Robinson in Space are essential viewing for anyone interested in the politcal, economic and aesthetic landscape of Britain in the last thirty years or so. This new film apparently follows its predecessors in fixing the camera's gaze for a number of minutes at one scene, while the witty and erudite narrator puts it into context. As the previous narrator Paul Scofield is no longer with us, Vanessa Redgrave has taken his place. I won't be able to get to the screenings at the festival but I hope I can catch the film somewhere when it emerges briefly into cinemas.

In a similar vein, the latest book by Owen Hatherley A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain looks like it will have to be added to my reading list for the next month - his entertaining blog is amongst the list opposite.

Subterranean City Talks

A busy couple of days, with a talk for the Camden Local History Society at Burgh House Hampstead on Thursday night and another for the Stuart Low Trust in Upper Street Islington on Friday night. The last date of this tour will be on Thursday 11th November at the South East London Folklore Society. I shall not be delivering the same talk that I have at previous events as I'm also speaking with Scott Wood, who wrote the final section of the Folklore of London book; I would imagine the talk will centre around the folklore of underground London.

Over 60 people turned up on Thursday at what is probably my favourite venue for a talk: a lovely room, fully operational equipment, no microphone required and a lectern with a light - luxury. Friday was quite a contrast, although very well organised, around 50 people I would say; afterwards amidst the barrage of questions I briefly met some interesting people: one had worked on the demolition of the Took's Court entrance to 'Kingsway' and another, by strange coincidence, worked in the office block that was built in its place. Another elderly man had worked on the underground and had visited such ghost stations as York Road.

Incidentally, another man was rather annoyed that I hadn't mentioned the fact that York Road abandoned tube station was an air raid shelter during the war and had received a bomb down the lift shaft - I said I knew nothing about this and was he sure he had the correct station, to which he replied emphatically 'yes'. I checked today and there is no record of any such incident occurring, in fact York Road is probably the only abandoned station that wasn't used as a shelter. I've found at these type of events, when you can be put on the spot, that the questioners are often not as well apprised of the facts as they think they are, but it's difficult to know for sure in some cases unless you check it out later, so you sometimes end up looking as if you don't know what you're talking about; fortunately this doesn't happen too often.

Hastings Jazz

For a few years now a jazz club has been running on the first Monday of the month at the Hastings and St Leonards Angling Association on the seafront. Although I own a few jazz records and cds I've never been a huge fan and hadn't gone to many jazz concerts. What's good about the UK jazz scene is that it's still a minority interest - most musicians, even quite well known names, have to play in small clubs.

The Hastings club is a good size, most times you can get a seat with a table and the drinks are cheap - entrance was £5.00 but recently went up to £7.00. I've seen quite a few shows here: John Etheridge, Don Weller, Greg Abate, Jamie Cullum's band (without their leader), Steve Grossman (one of the many Miles Davis sidemen), Gwilym Simcock, Liam Noble, Byron Wallen, the late Bheki Mseleku and many more.

The best for me have been: a riproaring gig with Alan Barnes and Guy Barker, the adventurous Robert Mitchell trio, Gilad Atzmon and Polar Bear who were one of the few bands to use electronics and live sampling. A lot of the crowd is pretty elderly and traditional in their tastes, so the most packed houses are for bebop and post-bop musicians playing standards.

The gig on Monday by the Asaf Sirkis Trio was excellent, but not as well-attended as most of the shows there, probably because the music was much more rock influenced. Guitarist Tassos Spiliotopoulos was very impressive, coming up with some imaginative solos that would switch effortlessly from jazz runs to out and out rock playing. His plangent arpeggios hanging in the air, with much use of a chorus pedal and volume control, were not that far removed from Robin Guthrie's guitar sound in the Cocteau Twins. Asaf Sirkis is an amazing drummer - Bill Bruford has sung his praises - he can provide a subtle backing with brushes or pound away on the kit like Keith Moon - he also writes all the songs. Standout songs for me were 'Life itself' with a mesmerising circular bass line and 'Letting go' the title song of the new cd.

End of the Pier

It was very sad that Hastings pier was destroyed by fire on Tuesday morning. Around midday I looked out of the window and it seemed very foggy - didn't realise it was smoke - a helicopter was hovering over the pier but I thought that a boat might be in trouble. It was only when I turned on the radio that I heard what had happened on the news - we hadn't heard anything during the night.

Before it closed in 2006 I liked walking along the promenade and then out over the sea to the end of the pier - the view when you looked back was spectacular. The ballroom at the end also hosted some famous gigs: The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, The Sex Pistols - I saw a great show by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds there a few years back.

I walked past it last week and actually thought at the time 'this is an arson attack waiting to happen' - it was very easy to get on to the pier despite some fencing and there have been a number of unfortunate precedents around our coast. At least the arsonists appear to have been caught. Sadly, Hastings has an unusually high number of stupid residents and a stupid number of high residents thanks to the pervasive drug culture, a hangover from the Thatcherite policy of 'decanting' troublesome families and the long-term unemployed to its B&Bs in the 1980s. The fabric of the town has definitely been improved over the last few years, so this is a major setback. If only a multi-millionaire would step in and fund a rebuilding.

Ayrton, Stross and Crowley

First published 2/10/2013 UPDATE 5/7/2013 For addtional information on this topic see this excellent post from the Richard Warren blog in the list opposite.

I’ve recently become interested in the art of Michael Ayrton (1921-1975), painter, sculptor, printmaker, author and radio and television personality,. His Minotaur was once a powerful brooding sculptural presence in Postman’s Park near the Museum of London, where I worked for a while in the 1980s; during my lunch break on sunny days I would sometimes sit in this haven of peace in the City. Iain Sinclair writes about it in his essay ‘Bulls and Bears and Mithraic misalignments: Weather in the City’. Then, some years ago it disappeared - too off-putting for the lunching workers? I’ve now discovered its current whereabouts and intend to track it down in its new lair as soon as I have the time.

While dipping in to Justine Hopkins Michael Ayrton: a Biography (1994) I came across the following passage (p86):
‘Cecil [Gray, composer and music critic] had known the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley, in the days of his power, and on one occasion introduced him to Michael, although the latter was little impressed by the bloated, boastful charlatan that Crowley had become since his fatal experiments in Paris. He was, however, the cause of a confrontation between the Beast and Barnett Stross, GP, MP and white wizard. Hearing through Cecil that Crowley had some particularly inventive and unpleasant devilry in mind he protested violently, and summoned Stross to the battle across the aether with his dark counterpart. Stross apparently triumphed, and Crowley threatened revenge on Michael in no uncertain terms; the fact that no disaster befell him only went to confirm the scepticism which was an essential part of his involvement with the spirit world.’

Ayrton and Stross were friends, the artist using the potteries as subject matter, in particular an old marl pit near Stross’s house, where he used to stay. Stross [quoted on p89] wrote that it was, ‘a dumping ground for old shards. Beneath the crockery there is a colony of rats, for when the potters empty and tip into this hole there is often food in the way of bread mixed up with the fragments. [Stross] took Michael to see this place one summer evening before dusk, and he saw the rats come up for an airing. Little ones and large ones, brown and badger and some were scabrous…He took Constant Lambert to see it, and Constant was very frightened…he thought no painter could paint such a subject and do it justice.’ The resulting oil painting ‘The Tip, Hanley’, executed in 1946, is in the collections of Stoke-on-Trent Museums; another work ‘The White Country’ painted the previous year is listed in a 1978 catalogue published by the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery as ‘Present whereabouts unknown; formerly in the collection of Sir Barnett Stross MP’.

Sir Barnett Stross does not appear in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. According to his Times obituary (15 May 1967 p12) he had enjoyed a distinguished career. Born in 1899, he was brought to Britain by his Polish political refugee parents at the end of the First World War. He got a degree in medicine at Leeds and started practice as a GP in the Potteries in 1926 – he became an expert on diseases associated with pottery workers, such as silicosis and warned of the danger of contracting lung cancer from smoking. In 1930 he joined the Labour party and at the 1945 election he was elected MP for Stoke on Trent’s Hanley division.

During the Second World War, the building in which he was giving a lecture for the Ministry of Food received a direct hit and Stross was later pulled out from the rubble seriously injured. He was the founder of the movement which rebuilt Lidice (now in the Czech Republic); the village was destroyed and its population massacred by the Germans in 1942 in reprisal for the murder of Reinhard Heydrich – for this he was honoured by the Czech government.

According to his entry in Wikipedia:
‘Two years after Stross' death, the Czech intelligence defector Josef Frolik named him as having been an agent of Czechoslovakia. According to Frolik, Stross (code-named "Gustav") had provided "interesting information about the domestic and foreign policies of the Labour Party while it was in opposition". Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay's book "Smear! Wilson and the Secret State" [p194] claims that such information as Stross supplied could have been obtained by writing to Transport House (the headquarters of the Labour Party)’.

Apart from the dubious claims that Stross was a Czech agent, I have found no other reference so far to his other secret life as a ‘white wizard’. None of the biographies of Crowley that I have consulted contain Stross’s name in the index. Crowley did frequent the Café Royal, as did Michael Ayrton and Cecil Gray according to the biography quoted above, so it is possible that Stross and Ayrton met him there.

Ayrton was also, according to the Birmingham catalogue quoted above (p11) part of a 'mystical circle' that included, 'Barnet [sic] Stross, Freda Cavell, James Laver and...Margery Livingstone' [another misspelled person who must be Marjorie Livingston,a psychic who apparently wrote books received clairaudiently, one from Apollonius of Tyana]. According to his autobiography Museum Piece (1963, p228), Laver, an art and fashion historian, Keeper of the Dept of Illustration, Engraving and Design at the V & A and author of a biography of Nostradamus, visited Crowley in his Hastings boarding house (he writes about witnessing him injecting heroin) so it is conceivable that other members of the group met the Great Beast, but the Ayrton connection may just be lazy research or wishful thinking. [I knew of Laver from his Whistler biography but I hadn't realised that he also wrote a biography of Huymans entitled The First Decadent]

Such was the notoriety of Crowley during his lifetime that many writers have attempted to spice up their autobiographies and biographies of contemporaries with alleged encounters with the Great Beast. Master of Villainy, the biography of Sax Rohmer written by his wife Elisabeth and Cay van Ash, states that the two met, although again I can find no other independent evidence for this; Rohmer was not a member of the Golden Dawn despite claims in some books to the contrary. Perhaps in the future more will emerge about Sir Barnett Stross, but I am more interested in the fate of ‘The White Country’.

Addendum: On 14th October I did a book signing at Atlantis Books. While I was there I thought I would ask proprietor Geraldine Beskin, an acknowledged authority on AC, about the Stross connection. I showed her a photocopy from the book, but she knew nothing about it - she also thought it was of dubious veracity.

Charleroi is my darling

This article in The Guardian caught my attention on Saturday. I have visited most of the large towns and cities in Belgium, but was advised by my friend in Brussels never to go to Charleroi - 'Charleroi stinks' was all he would ever say. It seems now that this run down, ugly and depressed town is trying to attract the 'crap towns' tourist; this tour sounds fascinating and I would love to go on it.

(Do the) Charleston

Last night to Charleston, the former Bloomsbury Group country retreat, for an event that's part of a short story festival: Iain Sinclair talking about the life and work of his friend J G Ballard. The train to Lewes from Victoria after work was unbelievably crowded, at Lewes a volunteer-run bus took me to the house - the talks take place in a barn - saw Will Self here last year.

A very interesting talk concentrating on the short stories (which I happen to be reading at the moment anyway). He mentioned Heart of Darkness and by coincidence this morning I read a story entitled 'A Question of Re-entry' which was a definite Ballardian homage to Conrad's tale. At the same time I've been dipping into an anthology of the 'best-ever' SF short stories and on the whole I would say that the Ballard volume despite being by a single author is actually better, certainly better written than most of the other stories.

There were many mentions of the copies of two lost Paul Delvaux paintings that Ballard had paid to be recreated by an artist who also produced his portrait - in the NPG but not on display. On a short trip to Dunkirk a few years back we popped along the coast to the Paul Delvaux Museum, a curious place in a deceptively large underground gallery. Everything you would need to see by the Belgian surrealist is on display - there are very few of his works in British galleries - I love his eerie paintings of railway stations and trains. Sinclair also included an anecdote about William Burroughs telling him that his 'ugly spirit' had been exorcised in a sweat lodge - the shooting of his wife was assuaged by this incident. He says that the house in Shepperton is still intact with all Ballard's possessions, apart from the archive, which went to the British Library (see earlier post) and would make an unusual property for the National Trust to purchase should the family decide to sell it - a nice thought.

Connaught Tunnel

The biggest project affecting the Subterranean City over the next few years is Crossrail. There's an interesting article on London Reconnections (see Down in the Dark: Crossrail,the Connaught Tunnel and Silvertown station) about the Connaught Tunnel, formerly on the North London line docklands section from Stratford to North Woolwich that's been closed since December 2006. It's to be reused for Crossrail as it makes its way from Canary Wharf to Abbey Wood.

Oil Tanks at Tate Modern

I noticed, when overlooking Tate Modern from the Blue Fin Building last Saturday, that work was going on to the south of the old power station. According to the Tate blog former massive underground oil tanks are being refurbished as art and performance spaces (see the blog entry Tate Transformers.