Catching Up

Time to catch up somewhat. Short holiday.

Yesterday at 12.30 I was standing on top of Mount Snowdon. We had to take the (very expensive) train as it would have been a difficult walk with my three-year-old son.

Also paid a visit to Porthmeirion - costs £9.00 if you go before 15.30 - we went later when it's half price. I'd never been before. The money has probably gone towards sprucing it up - my wife said it was looking shabby when she was last there 20 years ago. Memories of The Prisoner were unavoidable - I'd like to see the early episodes again, but I think it became unwatchable towards the end.

The National Slate Museum at Llanberis is more interesting than it may sound. A short stay in Manchester to see the Ford Madox Brown exhibition and the murals in the incredible Town Hall, designed by Waterhouse.

In Liverpool I visited some old haunts, the magnificent Philharmonic and atmospheric Ye Cracke pubs and for the first time went to the Ship and Mitre, nearest equivalent to a comprehensive Belgian pub I have found in England - massive selection of beers.

The Philosophy Town talk the previous week went well - a thoroughly worthwhile venture I think. I particularly enjoyed 'How to be an Existentialist' by Gary Cox, a talk that briefly explained a philosophy I had been wrestling with in a very difficult book earlier this year.

Rogue Male

One of the strangest news stories to catch my eye this week concerns the Queen obsessive who constructed a hide on an island in St James's Park so as to constantly have Buckingham Palace in his sights; his desiccated bones have only just been discovered. Coincidentally I have been reading some old obituaries of John Symonds, one of the literary executors of Aleister Crowley. In 1966 he wrote the novel 'With a View of the Palace' 'about a man obsessed with the Royal Family who spies on King George V from the lavatory of his flat overlooking Buckingham Palace.'

Philosophytown

It appears that I am going to be speaking at the Philosophytown Festival in Malmesbury after all.

If you happen to be in that delightful edge-of-the-Cotswolds town on the morning of Sunday 16th October at 9.30 (!) then you can come and hear me talk about the history of the London coffee house with added contribution about Joseph Addison from the festival organiser Michael Cuthbert.

The full programme is here.

Addison helped set up his wife's former servant Daniel Button in an eponymous coffee house in Russell St Covent Garden, just a few doors down from where Johnson and Boswell would meet many years later. He also visited coffee houses to get material for The Spectator.

Much more can be found in my book London's Coffee Houses. A short extract below:

'Some of the flavour of debate in London coffee houses is captured in Joseph Addison’s account of his visit, during the course of a day, to a variety of popular establishments, where he hoped to determine public opinion regarding a (false) rumour of the death of the king of France that was spreading across the capital. He started at the St James’s coffee house where,

“I found the whole outward Room in a Buzz of Politics. The Speculations were but very indifferent towards the Door, but grew finer as you advanced to the upper end of the Room, and were so very much improved by a Knot of Theorists, who sat in the inner room, within the Steams of the Coffee Pot, that I there heard the whole Spanish monarchy disposed of, and all the line of Bourbon provided for in less than a Quarter of an Hour.” '

Folkestone Triennial

Last week we camped for a couple of days at Little Switzerland just outside Folkestone. The weather and light conditions were such that France seemed a short swim away - see my photo above including the artwork Out of Tune by A K Dolven, a suspended bell on the shore that could be rung; although when we went to make it chime in the evening it was 'closed' - presumably so that people living nearby aren't kept up at night.

We were there on an Art Trip to investigate the Folkestone Triennial and nearby towns. Favourite works: Huw Locke's suspended model boats in the church, Cornelia Parker's Mermaid (my photo above), Towards the Sound of Wilderness where Cristina Iglesias created a window onto an almost unrecognisable Martello Tower completely covered in vegetation, and a video installation in a Masonic Hall by Olivia Plender, although the setting was more impressive than the work - Martin Creed's 'soundwork' in the Leas lift wasn't working. Tried to get into the GHost House (not officially on the list) but it was closed.

Also went to the Turner Gallery in Margate - impressive building but the acres of space inside had very little to fill them - the work that impressed me most was by Russell Crotty, a series of globes, maps, documents and starcharts. Hastings' own contribution to hopelessly optimistic 'regeneration through art', the Jerwood Gallery, has announced that as works are running a little behind schedule it will not be opening this summer - too late anyway - but next summer instead - not a good sign. Again, however good the building, is there any interesting art to put in it? I feel it should have been placed somewhere in the New Town - there's plenty of empty shops and a warehouse-like empty newspaper office - rather than in the already crowded area at the beach end of the Old Town.

Another interesting place was Morelli's ice cream parlour and cafe in Broadstairs - apparently pretty much unchanged since the 1950s.

Horse on the House

I've been painting the front of our house over the summer - finished in August and it looks wonderful. When we returned from our holidays this magnificent beast had appeared on one of the walls - I don't intend to paint over it. It's probably the work of an artist who has left animal stencil pictures around the town.

Underground Magic

Recently read 'Grimoires' by Owen Davies on the history of supposedly magical books. I found one passage of particular interest which I quote below. Hope the publishers won't mind - I do heartily recommend it as an academic study of a fascinating subject. It concerns the study of the 'Black Arts and Magic' in underground locations, in this case beneath Toledo [see pages 27-28]:

“…Italian monk Francesco Maria Guazzo, writing in the seventeenth century, recounted the cautionary tale legend of the friar and physician Blessed Giles (d.1265) of Santarém, Portugal. This vice-ridden scion of a rich family, while on his way to study at Paris, fell in with a demon in human disguise who persuaded him to visit a vast cavern in Toledo. Here he met demons and their worshippers and signed a pact with the Devil. For the next seven years he ‘deeply studied the Black Arts and Magic’ before eventually seeing the error of his ways. The legend of a cave in Toledo where magic had been practised for centuries, and where a powerful grimoire lay hidden, seems to have developed in the medieval period. One of the stories written by Don Juan Manuel, a fourteenth-century Spanish nobleman from the province of Toledo, who unusually becomes a pupil of a great magician of Toledo called don Yllán who has an underground library and workshop. The deacon eventually becomes Pope and ungratefully threatens to imprison his old master for practising sorcery.

The Toledo legend was developed and given further legitimacy in the seventeenth century by the historian Christóbal Lozano. He wrote a fantastical account of how during the Roman period there existed under the city a vast subterranean palace of Hercules where magic was studied and practised. This occult underground world collapsed and for centuries lay buried until, according to Lozano’s take on history, in 1543 the Archbishop of Toledo organized an excavation and found an altar decorated with bronze statues. A loud noise was heard when they entered and some of the party died of fright. The archbishop ordered that the entrance be sealed once more to prevent its evil manifestations from spreading. One source of the legend is the archaeological remnants of a short subterranean passage flanked by two Roman columns, which was probably intended to act as nothing more magical than a sewer or drain. Similar stories circulated regarding the city of Salamanca, where the second oldest university in Spain was founded in 1218. The earliest reference to a cave-school of magic there is from a French chronicle from the mid-fifteenth century. It is clear that Salamanca, by now considered the major centre of learning, was mistakenly or deliberately associated with the old Toledo legend. It proved enduring. The Jesuit theologian Martín del Rio (1558-1608), who studied at the university wrote,

‘I have read that, as a result of the Moorish occupation of Spain, the magical arts were virtually the only subjects being taught in Toledo, Seville and Salamanca. When I was living in Salamanca, I was shown a secret vault which had been blocked off with rubble on the orders of Queen Isabella. It was a place where forbidden knowledge was taught.’”

Back home

Returned from hols - missed the summer riots while sitting on a beach at Saundersfoot. On our way home we stopped off at Laugharne to visit Dylan Thomas's grave, boathouse and writing shed - lovely place that hosts a small but impressive literary festival.

On the way to Pembroke we stayed at Monmouth: a lot of Georgian buildings and a much better town than you probably think it's going to be. Also Malmesbury, which is branding itself The Town of Philosophy and has recently started hosting a 'philosophy festival' - I was supposed to be talking there about coffee houses in October, but nothing seems to have come of it. Beautiful place with a very pretty Abbey, also home to William of Malmesbury, flying monk Eilmer and King Athelstan.

I'm now working on two books - one hopefully to come out next year and one in 2013 to coincide with an important literary anniversary - hence the fewer posts here. The second will hopefully be a collaborative work with the possibility of some big names getting involved, but until they have committed I don't want to get too excited or reveal anything more.

The Museum of British Folklore

Through one of the other blogs I subscribe to I've just found out about the Museum of British Folklore, set up by Simon Costin, a designer and collaborator with the late Alexander McQueen, who apparently regularly takes part in Hastings Jack-in-the-Green festival. It sounds like a worthy venture. By the usual strange coincidences he is planning an exhibition on witchcraft in Britain in the 1950s called Dark Britannica. Here's the text from their Facebook page:

"In 2011 it will be 60 years since the 1735 Witchcraft Act was repealed in Britain. To coincide with this the Museum of British Folklore is to mount an exhibition in central London, which examines a very particular time in British history. In 1951, while London hosted the forward-looking Festival of Britain exhibition on the South Bank, the Witchcraft Act was repealed with the enactment of the Fraudulent Mediums Act.

Dark Britannica looks at the history of Witchcraft in the UK and at the host of colorful characters who were later to take centre stage in Britain's growing interest with Witchcraft and the Occult from the 50’s onwards. It was a time of 'Witch Wars', involving court cases, dramatic newspaper exposure and quite a lot of self-publicity for some people. Out of this grew an increase in public interest and a certain amount of misinformation as well as much learned and genuine exploration of the subject of Witchcraft.

Using film footage, press reports, artifacts and archival letters, Dark Britannica seeks to celebrate those who were to be the founders of the modern Neo Pagan movement and asks, is Witchcraft the only religion that Britain has given the world?"

Another excuse for a witchcraft pic.

I should also mention the recent release by the BFI of Here's a Health to the Barley Mow, a 2 dvd compilation of British custom and folklore films which sounds absolutely fascinating. There's also an insightful piece by Philip Hoare (who wrote an interesting Decadence-related book called Salome's Last Dance) in this month's Sight and Sound which can be read here.

Bexhill Beano

Been to Bexhill-on-Sea for a couple of events recently: Mogwai at the De La Warr Pavilion - satisfyingly noisy, especially the encore; and a wedding in the lovely church of St Peter's at the heart of the Old Town. Bexhill is not a particularly interesting or exciting place, but I was reminded, when walking around the Old Town, that Alex Sanders 'King of the Witches' lived in Chantry Cottage. The house came up for sale shortly after we moved down here - I have a feeling that the advert in the local paper even mentioned that he had lived there. I first encountered his name in the excellent long-defunct journal Rapid Eye; I also have a paperback by June Johns called King of the Witches. The dvd Legend of the Witches, Their Secret Rituals Revealed is also worth a watch, as I seem to recall that he features in it.

Lost Lyons

Walking along Piccadilly at lunchtime today I was shocked to see a huge gap surrounded by hoardings where an attractive group of Victorian buildings once stood - the whole block down to Jermyn Street has gone; the shops had been shut for some time but I thought they were going to be refurbished, not totally demolished. The alleyway on the west side was very atmospheric, with its old-fashioned tocacconist and newsagent. The most significant loss is the building at No.213 which was once the very first Lyons teashop - see my books London's Coffee Houses and Decadent London - it opened on 20 September 1894. The distinctive fascia has been long gone, but it's a shame nevertheless that another piece of London's past has vanished.

On a similar note, Phil Baker tells me that No.124 Victoria Street, formerly the temple and headquarters of Aleister Crowley's A.A. Order is also about to disappear - I must get down there to take a photo before it's too late.