David Peter - Longer Essays

2011-11-21T08:09:00.000-08:00

Trick or treat?

Trick or treat? Trick or treat?
C’mon mister, trick or treat?
Here’s ten pence now go away
And don’t come back another day!

Trick or treat? Trick or treat?
C’mon missus, trick or treat?
Here you are dears, fifty pence,
Please don’t paint things on my fence.

Trick or treat? Trick or treat?
There’s no-one in. Ring it again.
Someone’s there, bang on the door.
Through the letter-box, he’s on the floor.

And there’s a dog, licking its chops
What shall we do, call the cops?
No, let’s get on, we want some sweets
And we need more cash to buy some treats.

Trick or treat? Trick or treat?
We have to go back, see if he’s moved.
Ring the bell, the floor’s all red,
Try the door, I’m sure he’s dead.

Where’s your ‘phone? We’ve got to help
Hello, Police? We’re at the house
Someone’s still upon the floor
We need your help, open the door.

The dog, tell ’em about the dog.
It’s too late, they’re on their way
Gosh! two police cars, what a sight!
And an ambulance with flashing light.

The door succumbs to a mighty kick
The dog is caught and tied up
The old man rushed to hospital
“Well done, boys”, the copper says
“Here’s a fiver, that’s your treat.”

October 2010

Emotional Storm

2011-02-07T01:02:00.000-08:00

He had put the phone down slowly and deliberately. He wasn’t used to receiving declarations of love out of the blue like that. His best friend’s wife, what on earth was going on? Not just his best friend’s wife but also his sister-in-law. He needed to think. This was crazy, there’d been no inkling that this might happen, no hints, no signs, no secretive smiles, nothing. He reviewed those occasions when their families had been together recently, searching for any action, smile, touch, silence even, that he could have missed. Anything at all, but no, he couldn’t think of anything that might have forewarned him of this. It just didn’t make sense. What had she said? Something about him not knowing what this was all about. Well, she was right about that, and about wanting to talk, but refusing to say what she wanted to talk about? He should have twigged then that something was up, but it was all such a shock. He’d been foolish to agree to meet her, he could see that now. Not just foolish, downright stupid.

Now here he was, waiting outside the locked pavilion in the gathering gloom. Odd flashes of lightning pierced the black sky and the wind gusted through the trees making the distant street lights appear to flicker. He put up the hood of his anorak and sought the lee side of the building but the swirling wind made it difficult to be sure about which side was, indeed, the lee side. If she didn’t come soon, he would be soaked for the rumble of thunder could be heard above the noise of the traffic on the distant road and he felt the first spots of rain on his hood. He stared through the gloom towards the park gate from which she would approach but there was no sign of her, and as he turned away the ornamental ironwork was briefly illuminated by a flash of lightning. He counted the ‘chimpanzees’… and at ‘three’ the bang of thunder, it was close. Now he could hear the rain drumming on the pavilion roof and the wind came in sudden gusts, leaves bounced along the footpath and another flash revealed a figure approaching, struggling against the wind with a hand hanging grimly onto the coat collar. Should he simply walk away now? She hadn’t seen him; he could just slip to the other side of the pavilion and head for the other gate. No, that’s a coward’s way out and what would he do when they next met, when he collected the children or she collected theirs. This was impossible, he must settle it now.

More lightning and more thunder, and the rain was trickling down his neck. She had reached him now.
“Judy, there you are.” Well, that was a tame beginning.
“It’s John, she said. “He’s got to go into hospital tomorrow, they have to do some tests. The thing is…” she paused searching for the right words, “… the thing is you know how close they are, John and Beth, more like a secret society than brother and sister. Well, I wondered if you would tell Beth, you know, break it to her gently, be there with her because she’s bound to take it badly.”
The rain was easing now and the wind slackened. He mumbled, ”Yes, of course, if you think that’s best.”
“I couldn’t ask you on the phone, I felt I had to see you, to make sure you understood.”
“What’s wrong with him? Is he very ill?” This is all very confusing he thought. John? Tests?
“Oh no,” She exclaimed “He absolutely fine, it’s my aunt who’s ill, it’s likely that she will need a transplant soon and he wants to see if he could be a suitable donor. By coincidence they have the same blood group. You know what he’s like, always eager to help. It’s just that Beth will freak out at the thought of her little brother doing something like this.”
“Right,” he said cautiously, ”I understand, it’s just that your phone call left me a little confused.”
“Oh forget about that, I was just a little emotional, what with Aunt Charlotte and John and the thought of telling Beth and you… well you have always been so kind and I knew you would understand.”

The storm had passed and the traffic had lessened, and so had the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. So she hadn’t been declaring her love for him in that way, that was a figment of his over-ambitious imagination. Well, that’s a relief. Or was it? Perhaps he had been harbouring feelings for Judy that he hadn’t previously acknowledged? Perish the thought! Oh why is life so complicated? They walked to the park gate together and he mused that the storm was over, in more ways than one. Then again, there were likely to be more storms to come at sometime or other

A 21st Century Obsession

2011-02-06T09:06:00.000-08:00

Mark is sitting at his desk, struggling with the report he has to write for the community panel meeting tomorrow and reflecting on Jefferson and the shooting of the teacher. Of all the clients that Mark has dealt with since he has been seconded to the youth offending service, Jefferson is by far the most enigmatic.
They had first met at the police station about two hours after the shooting. Mark had had a phone call from Sergeant Hughes telling to come to the station as a matter of urgency. In the custody suite, about half an hour later, Sergeant Hughes had been brief and to the point.
‘We’ve got a young lad in a cell and he’s refusing a solicitor. As his appropriate adult can you advise him to let us call a solicitor? I don’t like charging a minor unless there’s a solicitor present.’
PC Evans, the arresting officer, let Mark into the cell. Jefferson was sitting on the bench, leaning forward, his arms resting on his knees. He didn’t look up.
‘Hello, I’m Mark, I’m here as your appropriate adult.’ Jefferson sat perfectly still, as if he hadn’t heard what Mark had said. ‘I’m here because you’re under eighteen and in the absence of your parents, I will do my best to support you. However, I’m not allowed to give you legal advice, only a qualified solicitor can do that. Do you have your own solicitor or do you want us to call the duty solicitor?’
Jefferson looked up, flicked his hair out of his eyes and then looked directly at Mark.
‘I’ve told them I don’t want a solicitor. I did it. I shot Mr Griffiths and I told them that when they cautioned me. What’s the point of a solicitor?’ Mark could see that Jefferson was adamant – no solicitor. For a thirteen year-old accused of such a serious offence, he was remarkably composed and quite unlike any of Mark’s other clients.
“OK, I’ll tell the sergeant.” Mark hammered on the cell door and was let out. He went to the desk and passed on the message.
‘Right! PC Evans, take him to the interview room and get his statement.’ Sergeant Hughes’ patience had finally run out. Mark followed them to the interview room and while PC Evans was setting up the tape recorder, Mark noted down Jefferson’s personal details.
‘Everyone ready?’ PC Evans asked.
Jefferson and Mark nodded. They all stated their names for the record and PC Evans formally cautioned Jefferson for a second time.
‘You needn’t say anything when questioned, but anything you do say will be taken down and…’ It’s just like an episode of ‘The Bill’, Mark thought.
Mark observed Jefferson closely, he was a strange character, so calm, so accepting, so matter-of-fact. Blond hair cut in a style reminiscent of the 1960s, about average height and build but with the awkward bulk of someone who didn’t do much exercise. Not obese, not yet, but you could see the way he was going. He was dressed in a rather scruffy school uniform, open-necked white shirt, dirty grey trousers and a equally dirty blazer with what looked like a striped school tie dangling from one of the pockets. Jefferson answered all the questions put to him with a kind of doleful concentration, always to the point, never evasive, never elaborating. Jefferson had got up that morning, washed and dressed, had some breakfast, returned to his room. He had taken the pellet gun out of his drawer, loaded it, put it into his school bag and walked to school. He’d skipped class assembly and gone straight to the games teacher’s office and waited in the corridor until the teacher had finished speaking to a colleague. Then he had taken the gun out of his bag, gone to the door of the office, waited until the teacher looked up - apparently he’d bent down to tie a shoelace - and then pointed the gun and fired. The pellet had glanced off Mr Griffiths’ chin. When the teacher had recovered from the shock and realised that his wound was no more than a scratch, he’d chased after Jefferson who was by that time walking away and down the corridor. Jefferson heard the teacher approaching, turned around, raised the gun but did not fire as the teacher had dived for cover but started screaming for help. Jefferson put the gun back into his bag and put the bag on the floor in front of him. Eventually, PC Evans had arrived, Jefferson was pointed out to him as the culprit and Jefferson had allowed PC Evans to take the bag, apparently saying: ‘You have it, I’m not going to shoot anyone else.’ Jefferson refused to give any indication as to why he had shot the teacher, it was the only question he had refused to answer. Jefferson had signed his statement without reading it, and they had all traipsed back to the desk where Jefferson was formally charged and bailed on condition he did not go within half a mile if the school grounds. Mark stayed with him until the social worker came to take him to temporary accommodation.
When Mark saw Jefferson next, it was in his capacity as his case worker, and to assess Jefferson’s risk to the public and his risk to himself. Mark rated both as ‘low’. Initially there had been some question as to whether Jefferson was fit to plead, but although the child psychologist had found him a bit of a social isolate, he was considered fully capable of understanding what he’d done.
The press had reported on the incident with the usual lurid headlines, they ranged from the simple: “Boy Shoots Teacher”, to the more descriptive:” Boy, 13, shoots Teacher In Face For Making Him Play Rugby”. Jefferson had been described as a loner, obsessed with guns and very quiet, and much was made of what were little more than childish doodles on his school exercise books, drawings of guns, of knives and odd phrases such as ‘I am going to kill you’ and ‘You’re going to get it”. Mark was sure that these were of far less significance than the reporters had tried to make out. Moreover, Mark felt that the teacher had been branded a bully without a shred of evidence. The press had got even more excited when rumours began to circulate about the ‘arsenal’ of weapons which the police had confiscated from Jefferson’s family home together with ‘stockpiles of horror movies and violent computer games’.
What continued to puzzle Mark was, why Jefferson had shot the teacher. As far as Mark could tell Jefferson didn’t object to rugby, in fact he didn’t seem to object to anything and he certainly didn’t seem to be obsessed by guns. Surprisingly, what the papers hadn’t reported was that the couple who Jefferson called his ‘Mum and Dad’ were actually his grandparents. They had brought Jefferson up since he was about three months old. His mother had either not wanted him or hadn’t been able to cope with him, the story was never consistent. More bizarre was that Jefferson’s natural mother lived next door with her new partner and their two daughters. It was all very strange but, even taking all that into account, Mark was still at a loss to explain why Jefferson had shot Mr Griffiths.
He was no wiser after the trial. Jefferson had pleaded guilty, Mark had given his risk assessment report, the psychologist’s report had been read out, and that was it. First offence, early guilty plea, minimal risk to society and to himself – the magistrates had done the only thing they could do according to the sentencing guidelines – a twelve month referral order, reduced by a third because of his prompt guilty plea.
Mark was beginning to dread the panel meeting, the panel members will want to know why Jefferson had shot the teacher and Mark is sure they will get no more out of Jefferson than he had done. Moreover, he is equally sure that they are unlikely to accept the idea that he’d done it simply to get out of playing rugby as the newspapers had suggested. One of the positive things he could report is that Jefferson seemed to be responding well to the programme of complementary education that Mark had arranged for him. The telephone rings, Jefferson’s tutor, Jane, has left a package for him at the front desk. Mark goes down to collect it. It is the education report on Jefferson that he had been expecting, together with a note with a scrap of paper attached. The note read:
‘Mark, I found this piece of paper after Jefferson left yesterday, I don’t know if it’s relevant but I thought you’d better see it. Regards, Jane.’ Mark examines the scrap of paper, on it is scrawled in a rather childish hand: ‘You stupid, fat bastard, you didn’t have to shoot Griffo to stop us seeing your man-boobs.’
‘That’s it!’ Mark thinks, ‘the shooting wasn’t about Jefferson being forced to play rugby at all, it was simply a fear of undressing in front of his mates, but to shoot a teacher? That is a desperate cry for help.’

Theatre of Dreams

2010-11-11T00:22:00.001-08:00

Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United
A place of pilgrimage for soccer fans
From around the world and called by them
The Theatre of Dreams.

Seventy six thousand gather for big games
In anticipation of triumph yet fearing disaster
Red, the predominant colour in this,
The Theatre of Dreams.

Visiting teams with exotic names and fearsome
Reputations have foundered here
Vanquished mercilessly by the Reds in
The Theatre of Dreams

Bayern, Real, and Benfica, all came
With baying supporters eager for blood,
All left chastened and defeated in this,
The Theatre of Dreams

They also have dreams, the visitors
They dream of beating the best,
The mighty Manchester United in
Their Theatre of Dreams

And on New Year’s Day, 1992
Came the unfashionable west Londoners,
Queens Park Rangers and won 4 – 1 in
The Theatre of Dreams.

The Dying Rules of Poetry

2010-10-31T14:04:00.001-07:00

Iambic pentameter, is that what he said?
Or epic hexameter? it’s over my head.

Free verse with rhythm or cadenced speech?
What happened to scansion? Gone to the beach?

Now anything goes, our verse is not dead,
Rules must be broken, lines must be read.

How do we know what is right or is wrong?
Does prosody matter when all is now song?

Now anything goes when composing our verse,
And bardic silence is definitely worse.

Flight from Cilmeri

2010-10-30T02:05:00.001-07:00

“Llywelyn is dead! – the Prince is dead!”
Mortimer’s men gathered around the body, staring incredulously. Their early morning patrol had happened on a group of Welsh riders heading west near Cilmeri. Their challenge was not answered and so the short skirmish had begun. It was over in minutes, one Welshman run through by a lance, a clash of swords and another fell from his horse, a page captured and two had escaped west, towards Llanafan.
“What is your name, page?”
“I am Huw ap Rhys, servant of the Prince, my lord.”
“And is this the Prince lying here?
“Yes, my lord.”
“And where were you riding to so early?”
“To the house of the Lady Maud at Llan-ym-ddyfri, my lord.”

The leader of the Marcher troops was caught in two minds, if this really was the acknowledged Prince of Wales lying dead, then Sir Roger must come to claim his victory, but if the boy was lying then could it be a King’s man he had just killed? Plenty of Marcher Lords employed Welsh servants, either way, Sir Roger had to be told.
“John of Clun, stay here with the men, I will fetch Sir Roger from Llanfair. Guard the boy well and keep a sharp watch, the Welsh may try to retrieve him. Here’s some mead to keep you warm.”

Huw unsaddled his pony and spread the dead captain’s cloak over his back against the morning chill. The winter sun rose slowly from the direction of Aberedw and the cave where they had spent the night. The boy lay down on his own cloak and wrapped it around him, careful to keep hold of the pony’s reins. The English soldiers watched disinterestedly as they sipped the mead and basked in the thin rays of the sun. The tracks in the frost made by Pedr and Llwyd were beginning to disappear. Had they gone to fetch help? More likely they had seen the Prince struck down and run away to save their own skins. In any case, where were their Welsh troops in sufficient number to take on Mortimer’s Englishmen?

The mead was having an effect among his guards, they had stopped talking and one was even beginning to snore. Huw sat up and looked about him, he was about twenty yards from the ford which was screened from his guards by their tethered horses, now peacefully grazing on the thawing grass. If he could gain the other side of the river there was a chance of escape. He stood up and pretended to inspect the pony’s hooves. The guards didn’t stir. Huw edged towards Llywelyn’s body and on an impulse took the ring from the Prince’s finger, it would make it more difficult to confirm Llywelyn’s identity and buy him time. Huw knelt by the body of his Prince and said a silent prayer for the Prince and for himself for forgiveness for stealing the ring.

Still the guards did not stir, Huw pulled on the reins and led the pony stealthily towards the ford. One of the English horses neighed softly as if in encouragement. There was no going back now, gently through the ford and turn upstream. Now behind the willows and still leading the pony he skirted Hendre, they were for Mortimer there, and headed to the ford near the bend at Llanafan Fychan. Again he was careful to avoid the house, more Mortimer people there, but he was soon north of the Irfon again. Huw was sure they would think he’d made for Mynydd Eppynt and the safety of the mountain, but he was intent on getting to the abbey at Cwm Hir to get help to bury the Prince.

By midday, Huw had crossed the Chwefru and could see the Gwy from the high ground near Llanfihangel. From here he could either cross the river, pick up the Eithon at Disserth and follow it to Y Groes, or he could stay this side and work his way up the Gwy to Rhaedr. Both routes were fraught with danger, Mortimer held sway throughout this land and his castle at Cefnllys watched over the Eithon securely. Better to stay this side and high, and try to cross below the falls at Rhaedr under the cover of darkness. He kept off the tracks and stayed in the woods, the going was more difficult and exhausting but the pony was sure-footed and willing. The early moon helped them find the ford and by midnight he was at the door of the abbey. One of the lay brothers agreed to wake the Abbot when he was shown the ring. The old man immediately recognised him as the Prince’s page and greeted him warmly and Huw knew he was safe at last.

It turned out that a Christian burial was out of the question for the Prince, he had been excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury on the insistence of the King. Under these circumstances the Pope would allow a Christian burial only if Llywelyn had received the last rites from a priest. The Abbot did however agree to send a party of lay brothers to fetch the body to the Abbey, at least he could be buried close to consecrated ground.

Two days later the brothers returned accompanied by Lady Maud, the Prince’s cousin. The Abbot gave instructions for a grave to be dug outside the abbey walls, near to the eastern gate. Huw had told Lady Maud of the Prince’s last moments and gave her the ring, he had also told her of his hurried prayer before he took flight from Cilmeri. Lady Maud called for the Abbot and said: “If Huw ap Rhys takes holy orders, would the prayer that he said over Llywelyn’s body count as the last rite?” The Abbot thought for a long time, went to the Lady Chapel to pray, and finally gave the order for the grave to be dug in front of the high altar.

Huw ap Rhys never left the beautiful, remote, high-sided valley of Cwm Hir until he became the Abbot of wealthy abbey of Strata Florida, thirty years later.

Thunderstorm

2010-10-27T04:00:00.001-07:00

A distant rumble, darkening sky
Presage a storm that is hovering nigh
The air feels heavy and the tension fills
The storm is gathering in those brooding hills.

Small puffs of wind swirl round and round
Lift dirt and grit from the dusty ground
Flashes of light pierce the pregnant gloom
We count the seconds ‘til following boom.

We are certain now, rain comes our way
Edging ever closer like a bird of prey
Odd spots at first, like blots of ink
Stain the paving and make us shrink

In doorways, or under awnings pinned,
Shelter we seek from the gusting wind,
More cracks of lightning echo around
As rain ever heavier drums on the ground

The jagged lightning and torrential rain
Send rivers of water down the drain.
After a few short minutes, it begins to ease
And the wind subsides to a gentle breeze.

Pavements glisten in the eerie light.
A fine-spray drizzle, a rainbow bright.
Weak sun reflected in window panes
Only leaf-drops spatter the lanes.

Thunder now distant and brighter sky
The storm now passed, we say good bye
To our brief shelters and resume our way
To home or work for another day.

Fleeing not Flying

2010-10-26T06:59:00.001-07:00

To flee, to runaway from someone or something, is something that at sometime in our lives we will all contemplate and some of us will actually do. The strange thing about this is that it can be either a voluntary or an involuntary act. We can flee because our perception of our circumstances are such that we feel that there is either no alternative, or that the alternative to not fleeing is too uncomfortable to contemplate. In the extreme, we could find ourselves in a position where flight is the only way of preserving our lives, we flee from danger towards safety. Either way, flight is undertaken at times of severe mental, and sometimes physical, distress.

I became aware of the notion of flight, in the context of fleeing rather than flying, quite early in life. Most children try to see some sort of significance in their initials, and some are disappointed or bemused by what they find. ‘A.B.’ able seaman; ‘V.C’ Victoria Cross – corrupted by Idi Amin Dada, the former President of Uganda into Victory Cross which he didn’t hesitate to award to himself. The two-letter state codes in the USA are rich opportunities for finding significant meaning in the chance decisions of parents when naming their children. With me the letters ‘D.P.’ were a profound disappointment, when I consulted the abbreviations section at the back of my dictionary, all I could find was ‘Displaced Person’, indeed it had become my unwanted nickname long before I understood what it meant to be a displaced person, before I had even an inkling of the vast disruption of civilian lives that had resulted from the fighting and destruction on the European mainland during and after the Second World War.

I have long found difficult to imagine the privations suffered by people, especially women and children forced to flee from advancing armies. Battlegrounds softened up by indiscriminate bombing and long-range artillery, the sheer terror must have been debilitating. Fleeing men could expect short shrift and with little chance of escape could only hope for a quick bullet. Women must always have been aware of the possibility of rape and worse, frequently sacrificing themselves for the sake of their children. For the peoples of central Europe, flight from advancing German armies in the early part of the war would have been bad enough, but then to have to flee all over again in advance of the Soviet forces towards the end of the war must have been doubly traumatic. Much has been written about these massive shifts of population both by military analysts and responsible agencies, most harrowing are the accounts of individual survivors, most of whom suffered mental tortures long after the event.

At the end of the conflict countless thousands of people found themselves unsupported and destitute in a strange country and often having no country to return to, even if return was physically possible as a result of the political agreements made between the dominant powers. For many, previous political activism precluded a return to their homeland, and for others exile was infinitely preferable to the return to a country where a democracy had been replaced by totalitarianism. Better to live freely in a foreign country than under oppression in one’s own.

Nowadays, the term ‘refugee’ has largely replaced ‘displaced person’ and suggests one actively seeking refuge rather than one who has simply found him- or herself in a different place when the fighting has stopped. When it is used, ‘displaced’ implies that a national boundary has been crossed in contrast to ‘internally displaced’ which refers to a refugee in some part of their own land. Terms are qualified now, an ‘economic migrant’ is someone who crosses national boundaries in search of a more prosperous life and ‘political refugee’ is someone seeking to escape persecution or the threat of such in his own country. We talk now of the various brutalities by the powerful towards the weak in terms of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’, forgetting that underlying these fairly innocuous terms lies a range of human suffering that those of us living in stable and prosperous states can’t begin to imagine. We talk about ‘fleeing from poverty’ as if it were a crime, as if to exist on nothing and without hope is simply the unfortunate and inevitable lot of people by accident of their birth. What is worse is that our religious, cultural and racial prejudices seem to inform our attitudes, somehow it is all right for us to ignore the obvious plight of the modern ‘displaced’ because they subscribe to a different religion or have different cultural norms or have a different skin colour.

To be displaced is to be cut off from family, home, friends. To be separated from all that one has previously known and loved. It is to be stateless and frequently, disowned, to be without the support of friends and community. It is to be without hope or expectation of any kind of future. Our modern society seems willing to allow this state of displacement to be the lot of increasing numbers of people all over the world and our most raucous and intolerant politicians make political capital out of the fear of the consequences of extending the hand of friendship to people who are often simply the victims of our collective inhumanity. Think hard when next the TV news features ‘refugees’, and pause a moment to reflect what it must be like to be in their shoes.

Flight

2010-10-25T07:16:00.001-07:00

Icarus, Icarus! What have you done?
Glided and soared too close to the sun,
The wax on your wings has melted away
And you’ll not fly again today.

Icarus, Icarus! Why didn’t you heed
Your father’s advice in this perilous deed?
Daedalus warned you again and again
Flying like birds is a dangerous game.

Icarus, Icarus! Flapping your arms
Won’t keep you aloft and safe from harm.
And the labyrinth’s secret will never be known
Now you dive to the sea, to drown all alone.

Icarus, Icarus! The lesson we learned:
Flying’s for eagles, sparrows, and terns.
If you want to rise into the sky
You’ll need a plane in which to fly.

50 Ways...

2010-10-24T09:24:00.000-07:00

50 Ways To Impress Your Lady. What a title! thought Hugo. It wasn’t that he had always been sceptical about self help books in general so much as the idea that any man could be coached into improving his ability to impress members of the opposite sex. Should he say ‘sex’? Surely it was ‘gender’? What was he doing in this section of the bookshop anyway? He’s been looking for a copy of Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter and not finding one, had drifted into self-help.

But it set him thinking, do women really want to be impressed? Do women need to be impressed? Surely they want to be noticed rather than impressed? And having been noticed, they want to engage, they want to talk and to be listened to, not to be impressed. No, that sounds much too competitive. Then again, it is a competition – to win a woman. No, that’s not right, women aren’t trophies to be won, they’re human beings to be wooed. But doesn’t wooing involve impressing? Well yes, he supposed it did.

Most of the women he had initially found attractive soon revealed features which he then found distinctly unattractive, too much make-up, too giggly, too coarse, too shy, too dull, too confident, too brash, too... What he wanted was a soul-mate, but what exactly was a soul-mate? Well, someone who liked the things he did – adventures, travelling, good food, good wine, easy conversation, art, music, motor bikes, no I’ll forego the motor bikes, too much leather and petrol fumes.

What was really important? Laughing, yes that was important, laughing together and laughing at each other in a kindly sort of way. No, that sounds too wimpish, but laughing generally, that was it. Of course, that’s why all these lonely-hearts ads had GSOH as a requirement, a good sense of humour. What about height? Was that important? Well, as he was only five feet and six inches high himself, he certainly didn’t want anyone taller than him. But then again, Jamie Callum and Sophie Dahl seemed to manage all right. So height wasn’t really that important. Intelligence, now that was important, if art and music and literature were so important to him, then they had to be important to the woman who might become significant in his life. Yes, he wanted someone cultured. That sounds awfully pretentious, nevertheless it was important. He didn’t like going to exhibitions or concerts on his own, they were really only enjoyable if they were shared with someone who appreciated them.

Perhaps he should put an ad in a lonely-hearts column? After all if you know what you want and state it, you’ve a better chance of finding your so-called soul-mate. Then again, do you really want to go through all that rigmarole: red carnation-in-the-buttonhole, meet-under-the-clock business. Well, you’ve got to start somewhere. What about a dating agency? His former sister-in-law had tried a dating agency but seemed to get only frogs, yes, that’s what she said, frogs. Frogs? As opposed to Princes, he supposed. Perhaps she was aiming ever so slightly high, princes were surely a bit much to expect for even the liveliest of widows.

They have dating agencies on the internet now, that’s an idea, internet dating. Fill in the form, upload a photograph and sit back and wait. What could be simpler? Possibly too easy and too impersonal, and definitely too precarious. Think of all those Eastern European beauties allegedly dying to meet American or English men. Perhaps not, motives are important after all, don’t want someone who merely wants a different passport.

So, 50 ways To Impress Your Lady, might as well have a look at it. What’s this?

“When a man meets a lady and want to impress her there are things that he needs to know. Women tend to have a good sense of smell and one of the big turn offs is body odor, as well as bad breath. Shower at least once a day, and brush them teeth at least twice. Make that head of hair of yours look nice, hat or no hat. Wear clean clothes, not the same thing every day.”

Who on earth was this written for, a Neanderthal? An Alaskan trapper? An Australian gold-miner?

“Women love compliments, they spend a lot of time trying to look good. Tell them, not in a cocky, or sexual demeaning manner. A little, "Hair looks nice", or "Your perfume smells good" goes a long way. Do not over do it, that is a turn off. Smile, and be cheerful, do not take yourself serious, we are all humans and are imperfect. Manners are of great importance. Open doors for them, if they drop something on the floor pick it up for them, say "Hi". DO NOT strip them with your eyes, look them in the eye when talking to them. Show yourself confident and sure of yourself, not in an arrogant or cocky way. Big turn off.”

Yes, Hugo got the idea but he wasn’t a sixteen year-old hill-billy with straw in his mouth.

“If by chance they come go for a ride in your automobile or come over to your house, make sure it is clean. Clutter is okay but make sure it is clean and smells good. Garbage and beer/soda cans every where is not a good thing. A clean kitchen will always impress a lady. If you have a pet make sure it does not jump on them.”

No, this wasn’t written for a Neanderthal, it was written by a Neanderthal, and a semi-literate one at that.

“Oh, hello Hugo!” It was Liz, his former sister-in-law, “What are you doing here?” she asked. “And what’s that book you’ve got there?” “Just a book I found on the floor” stammered Hugo, wishing the ground would open up and swallow him. He put 50 Ways To Impress Your Lady back on the shelf with as much nonchalance as he could muster.

“What are you doing for lunch, Liz?” he asked, “There’s a very nice Italian Restaurant around the corner.” “Yes, I know,” she said, “I’m meeting someone there in a few minutes. Someone I met on the internet. It’s our first date!”

The Perferct Martyr

2010-08-01T01:32:00.000-07:00

Life is sometimes short, but it can also be lived at a frenetic pace. One such short, frenetic life, now largely forgotten, is that of John Cornford. I first came across references to him fairly recently in a biography of the art historian and spy, Anthony Blunt. However, as I was carrying out further research for this essay, I realised that I had met him before, metaphorically speaking. I had seen a stark and rather poetic photograph of John Cornford and Ray Peters now in the National Portrait Gallery. I am not entirely sure that this is where I first saw this image, I may have seen it reproduced elsewhere, nevertheless, once having seen it, it is difficult to forget.

The basic details of John Cornford’s life have been well documented. He was born in Cambridge in 1915, attended one of England’s better public schools, Stowe, won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge at the age of 16, went to London for the summer of 1933 where he met Rachel (Ray) Peters and attended London School of Economics. He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge later in 1933 to read history. He was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and, together with James Klugmann a post-graduate student also at Trinity, set about recruiting Cambridge students and dons to communism with an almost messianic fervour. Although he came from a privileged background, he is described as having working class pretensions. He dressed rather shabbily for Cambridge at the time, and he lived openly with Ray Peters, the daughter of a Welsh miner. Later, after their son James was born, they separated by mutual consent and John took up with Margot Heinemann, a member of the well-known publishing family. He was a fervent anti-fascist and supported the unemployed hunger marchers as they came through Cambridge on their way to Parliament in London to bring their desperate plight to the attention of nation. Cornford graduated in the summer of 1936 and almost immediately went off to Spain to fight in the Civil War as a member of the XIV International Brigade. He was killed near Cordoba in December 1936 at the age of twenty-one. Yes, it was a short life but a spectacular one, and has to be judged in the light of its impact and legacy.

For those who knew him well and for those who met him he made a huge impact. He was a big man with stunning good looks, in a recent radio programme, it was said in reference to photographs of him that he had “the look of James Dean about him”, or “a touch of the gypsy about him”. Writing in 1973, Anthony Blunt described him thus:

“… a glamorous figure, a romantic, fanatical character and a very remarkable speaker… a vehement orator who would carry an audience with him; he was also highly intelligent but his intelligence was much more imaginative than the cold clear mind of Klugmann. It may sound a callous thing to say but it was in a way appropriate, though tragic, that he should have gone to Spain and been killed. He was the stuff martyrs are made of, and I don’t know at all what would have happened to him if he had survived. He was a highly emotional character and I strongly suspect that he might have gone back on his Marxist doctrine, and if so I think he would have suffered very acutely.” Miranda Carter in her biography of Blunt, says that “Cornford [at Cambridge] was a Galahad figure: nineteen years old, a poet, single minded, charismatic, a little humourless, and utterly devoted to building the Party.” Clearly there was an intensity about Cornford that either attracted or repelled, it would seem that no-one could remain neutral about him. Another contemporary thought him a strange and very unattractive boy, but conceded that: “He was an extremely clever, forceful, merciless, rather inhuman boy”.

Activist, poet, soldier, Cornford was all of these, distinguished himself in them. He became politically aware as early as fourteen. His brother Christopher who followed him through school recalled that:

"Already, by the time I joined him at Stowe in the autumn of 1930, he had begun to be critical of the school, as indeed of everything else. He was already anti-militarist and atheist - one of his favourite pastimes was to tie up the school chaplain in metaphysical knots during the Tuesday afternoon religious talks… As young as fourteen and a half he became sympathetic to Socialism. As we strode together through the school grounds, among the great beech trees and lakes, the rotundas and monumental obelisks, in shiny blue serge Sunday suits and stiff collars unloosed, he explained to me the principles of the nationalisation of industry and the injustices of our economic system."

When he got to London, early in 1933, he joined the Young Communist League, eventually stepping up to full membership of the CPGB, and became an associate of the then General Secretary of the Party, Harry Pollitt. On going up to Trinity in the autumn of 1933, John Cornford worked extremely hard at both the study of history and recruitment to the CPGB. He organised demonstrations, he supported the hunger marchers, he wrote for whatever journal would accept his contributions, he spoke, he argued, he cajoled, he persuaded. The horrors of Nazism and the firm belief that the British government was supine in the face a real and obvious threat seemed to motivate him as much as his passion for socialism. He was a man on a mission, a mission he pursued with evangelical zeal.

In an article that he wrote in “The Cambridge Left” journal in 1934 Cornford argued: "Fascism strives to cripple the working-class movement by murdering and torturing its leaders, suppressing its legal organisations and press, removing the right to strike in defence of wages and conditions, and all political rights whatsoever. Fascism exploits the Nationalist feelings of the petty bourgeoisie to divert their hostility towards the existing regime by whipping up a chauvinist frenzy against some foreign scapegoat - in Germany the Jews; in Poland the Ukrainian minority."
In another article of the time, Cornford sought to explain why so many university students were joining the Communist Party. "The last few years have seen a considerable growth of Communist influence in the universities... It is no longer a phenomenon that can be dismissed as an outburst of transient youthful enthusiasm. It has established itself so firmly that any serious analysis of trends in the universities must take it into account... Communism in the universities is a serious force. It is serious because students do not easily or naturally become Communists. Communism has to fight down more prejudices, more traditions, more simple distortions of fact, than any other political organisation. It would not have gained ground without a serious appeal."
Looking at these statements now, over twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and when there seems to be growing apathy towards politics and politicians throughout the West, it is difficult for us to imagine the very real threat posed by totalitarianism, be it fascist or communist in origin, that existed from the 1930s through to the 1990s. In our current perceptions, the War on Terror doesn’t seem to be quite of the same order of magnitude, or is it simply happening further away?
As a poet, John Cornford is best remembered for the poems he wrote in late 1936 in Spain, although he wrote much poetry while at school and some at university. At school his was a precocious talent, and according to Jonathan Galassi, editor of Cornford’s Collected Writings, his early poems were at once a rejection of his mother’s admiration of Tennyson and Browning and embracing of the style of Robert Graves. Thereafter, his poetic style comes under the influence of W H Auden and T S Eliot and much more overtly political. According to an entry in the British Dictionary of National Biography by Michael De la Noy: "During his three years at Cambridge he wrote only nine poems, for he was spending fourteen hours a day on political activities." There is a distinctly political feel about the university poems including a tribute to Sergei Mironovitch Kirov, the assassinated leader of the Leningrad Communist Party, the order for which, allegedly came from Stalin.
The three Spanish poems: Letter from Aragon, Full Moon at Tierx: Before the Storming of Huesca and Heart of the Heartless World are all wonderfully poignant. Letter from Aragon tells of the simple, almost chaotic burial of a comrade and has the haunting refrain: “This is the quiet sector of a quiet front.” That quietness is shattered by the sudden shelling of the far end of the village, and a visit to a hospital ends with the lines: “But when I shook hands to leave and Anarchist worker/ Said ‘Tell the workers of England/This war is not of our making/We did not seek it/But if ever the Fascists again rule Barcelona/It will be as a heap of ruins with us workers beneath it.”
“Full Moon at Tierz: Before the Storming of Huesca is a three verse contemplation of the past, the present and the future, and ends with a chilling premonition: “Time future, has no image in space,/Crooked as the roads that we must tread,/Straight as our bullets fly ahead/We are the future. The last fight let us face.”
“Heart of the Heartless World” which has the alternative title “To Margot Heinemann”, is a heart-wrenching love poem that also serves as a farewell and uncannily echoes Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier”. It ends: “And if bad luck should lay my strength/Into a shallow grave,/Remember all the good you can;/Don’t forget my love.
Cornford’s first visit to Spain in August 1936 seems to have happened on impulse as he was visiting the south of France. Apparently he had plans to meet Margot Heinemann in Paris towards the end of the month but went to Barcelona out of curiosity. His attempt to join a German Communist force that was supported by Moscow was rebuffed because, without his Party card, he couldn’t prove his commitment to the cause. Undaunted he joined a rival militia (POUM) that was Trotskyist and therefore not approved by the Party, and some rudimentary training, fought with them on the Aragon front. Some time in September, Cornford became ill and was sent back to England to recuperate. On his return to Spain in October, he was accompanied by several more men whom he had recruited to the cause and they joined a machine gun section attached to a French battalion. After some basic and training in Albacete, they took part in the battle for Madrid in November where Cornford was briefly hospitalised after having received shrapnel wound to the head. One story goes that it was while he was reading one of the collection of Everyman Classics in the university library that he was hit.
Having recovered, Cornford returned to the front line in December with the newly formed No 1 Company of the Marseillaise Battalion of XIV International Brigade, a company made up entirely from British and Irish volunteers. They were deployed to Andujar the main action taking place around the village of Lopera. It was there that Cornford was killed on either the 27th December 1936, his twenty-first birthday, or on the following day - Anthony Beevor, in his book “The Battle for Spain”, states that the battle commenced on the 28th December.
Life certainly was short for John Cornford, but he packed a great deal into it. How do we assess his legacy? I think a good starting point is this pithy assertion from Miranda Carter: “John Cornford’s death in the Spanish Civil War in the last days of 1936, when he was not quite twenty-one, made him such a tragic and perfect martyr that it is hard to disengage his life from the myth that has surrounded him since his death.” As an activist, he was clearly effective as is evidenced by Blunt’s admission that his eventual decision to work for the NKVD, the Soviet Intelligence service, was due to three people: John Cornford, James Klugmann and Guy Burgess, who eventually defected to the Soviet Union in 1951. The fact that Cornford was able to recruit a dozen other Englishman to accompany him to Spain and volunteer to fight for the Republican side in the autumn of 1936 at extremely short notice tends to suggest that not only did he have a shrewd idea of potential recruits, he was able to persuade them to risk their lives for the communist cause.
As a poet, he made an important contribution to the poetry of the Spanish Civil War, and his poems have been included in anthologies of British and Irish poets who served in that conflict. I am in no way qualified to judge the literary merits of his poetry, but I certainly think that the three war poems are both painfully poignant and moving. Certainly, for one so young, Cornford exhibited a remarkable talent for using poetry to reflect the extremes of emotion that he experienced. An interesting point to note is that Cornford was named Rupert John in homage to the First World War poet, Rupert Brooke and some have said that he felt oppressed by the weight of his parents’ expectations of him implied by this homage. Yet both suffered a similar fate at a relatively young age, both, in their most famous poems, seem to have had a clear premonition of what their fate was to be. For Brooke, The Soldier opens: “If I should die, think only this of me, that there’s some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England…” and for Cornford, Heart of the Heartless World ends “And if bad luck should lay my strength/Into a shallow grave…” For Brooke, the sacrifice is for his country, England and he wants England to remember him. For Cornford the sacrifice is for the Party and he wants his love Margot, to remember him.
Finally, since Cornford’s death many have speculated as to what his future might have been had he survived both the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Anthony Blunt writing in 1973, thought that Cornford might have gone back on his Marxist doctrine and suffered acutely for it. However, in the BBC Radio 4 programme “Great Lives” in 2009, the maverick Member of Parliament, George Galloway who clearly idolises Cornford, thought that he might have become one of a significant number of former members of the CPGB, who entered the House of Commons as Labour MPs in 1945, and he anticipated a quite brilliant political career for John Cornford, had he survived. Like many other great imponderables, we shall never know. Neither do we know precisely how he was killed for his body was never recovered.

The Joke's On Me

2009-10-14T04:18:00.000-07:00

A week-end visit to see both our daughter and her family and our son and his family afforded me an opportunity to take in Anish Kapoor’s engaging exhibition at the Royal Academy. It left me in some doubt as to whether he is an artist, an engineer or even a creator of optical illusions.

Wendy Anderson of the Education Department of the Royal Academy describes Kapoor thus: "He is one of the most influential sculptors of his generation due to his ambitiously scaled works that engage not only with the gallery and museum spaces but also with the public realm." This recommendation alone justifies a visit to this show and it didn’t disappoint.

In the courtyard as you enter the Royal Academy stands one of Kapoor’s new sculptures, Tall Tree and the Eye, comprising a fifteen metre high collection of highly polished stainless steel balls seemingly balanced precariously on top of each other. In a way, they suggest DNA molecules or even a stream of soap bubbles that so fascinate young children when a soapy solution is blown through a hoop.

In the first room you are confronted with a number of abstract shapes of vivid colour, predominantly red, it is a piece entitled 1000 Names and dates from 1979-80. One is both attracted to and simultaneously slightly repulsed by the starkness of the primary colours used, they seem almost brutish, nevertheless, they prepare you for passing through to the next room where you are confronted with a huge, square block of yellow that occupies almost the entire wall.
The work is entitled Yellow and from a distance could be a two-dimensional painting in oils, however as you approach it, you realise that it is in fact three-dimensional containing a concave circular shape, sun-like in its intensity.

Another room contains an installation entitled Shooting into the Corner in which a crude cannon-like machine from which pellets of red wax are ritualistically fired against a wall. Gradually the wall is splattered with the wax which is left to dribble, blood-like, down the wall and accumulate on the floor. I was minded of horror of Mark Urban’s description of the Seige of Badajoz in his book The Man Who Broke Napoleon’s Codes.

You then move into a room containing a number of curved, stainless steel mirrors, with which visitors engage both visually and acoustically, all seemingly fascinated, childlike, by our warped and distorted reflections. Kapoor seems to be having a joke at our expense. Through then to a room that seemingly struggles to contain Hive, a massive steel structure reminiscent of a ship under construction. Indeed. The structure is so large and apparently confined in relation to the room, that it is difficult to engage with it.

Running through main galleries of the Academy is the train-like Svayambh, a huge, block of red wax, allegedly weighing 40 tons, that is propelled along a trackway and is shaped by the archways through which it passes. Foe me it has references to the partition of India and Pakistan and evokes the bloody massacres of train passengers as they fled across the new border, but it could equally well refer to the trains to the concentration camps during the Holocaust, or it could simply be a tribute to Britain’s pioneering railway age.

The only installation that left me completely bemused was Greyman Cries, Shaman Dies, Billowing Smoke, Beauty Evoked. This is a series of concrete piles with contrasting textures, predominantly grey, some hinting at ruins of an ancient civilisation that might interest an archaeologist, others suggesting piles of chains or even a coil of rope. One felt as one had stumbled across a rubbish tip and had to pick your way through something rather unpleasant.

Two other sculptures are worth mentioning, When I am Pregnant, a white ‘bump’ that protrudes from a plain white wall which has been installed is such a way that appears to grow effortlessly out of the wall. Without its title, this piece is simply intriguing, with its title it opens up ideas of the feminine and the possibility of a whole load of activity happening on the inside.

Finally, there is Slug, comprising a huge, red aperture attached to a long tube that twists snake-like across the floor, like a huge intestine. This also hints at the feminine in that it could represent the vulva and internal plumbing of the female body, equally it could suggest a musical instrument such as alpenhorn that escaped from its mountain retreat, or is it an insect devouring plant poised, ready to suck its victim in?

What to make of it all? Well, I find myself disagreeing with an art critic for whom I have a great deal of respect. Jonathan Jones of the Guardian has said this of Anish Kapoor: "His work apparently gives you everything you could possibly want from art. It is beautiful, seductive and immediately satisfying. But it doesn't give you the one thing every real work of art offers – the chance to use your own eyes and your own mind. It's this absence of effort from the viewer, of doing any work, that makes looking at Kapoor so sterile."

I find Kapoor far from sterile, his structures are hugely suggestive and at the same both stimulating and engaging and point to an almost limitless range on possibilities in their interpretation. Ultimately, Kapoor seems to be wanting laugh both at and with his viewers, and I couldn’t help feeling as I went through this exhibition that, like all the other visitors, I was the butt of some practical joke that I didn’t really understand. Suffice to say that if you are in London before 11th December and have the time, pop into the Royal Academy for Kapoor's show, it is well worth the effort.

Lost Letters

2009-08-19T00:39:00.000-07:00

I found the letter between the pages of my father’s copy of Kilvert’s Diary. I had inherited most of his extensive collection of books, the lifetime collection of a teacher of English. Well, I had inherited most of it, those books that had survived the periodic culling by my stepmother who seems to have regarded his books as objects to be dusted rather than read, and thus believed that the fewer books, the better. Some of his rarer books had been stolen after he had moved to the nursing home and his bungalow had been left unoccupied and subject to progressive deterioration from the eternally damp weather and vandalism from various miscreants who had broken in.

The letter from William Plomer was with three other letters, all from publishers rejecting my father’s offer to write a schools edition of the Diary of the Reverend Francis Kilvert, and a pencil-written outline of how my father had intended to structure the book.

William Plomer had been persuaded to edit the diaries of Francis Kilvert by the diarist’s nephew, Perceval Smith. They were published in three volumes in 1938, 1939 and 1940. My father had an abridged version, also edited by Plomer, published according to the authorized economy standards that prevailed in 1944 by The Readers Union in collaboration with Jonathan Cape. Incidentally, this edition contains a frontispiece and title page decoration by John Piper.

My father had initially approached Plomer with the idea of a schools edition, and he had replied with a hand-written letter dated 29th January 1949:

Dear Mr Peter,

Thank you for your letter. I am forwarding it to Messrs Jonathan Cape & am asking them to write to you. The ownership & copyright of the Diary are not in my hands.

As far as I myself am concerned, I congratulate you on your intention. I can imagine that a good selection from Kilvert might help to put the young in the way of using their eyes & their imaginations; that it might help to educate their sensibilities & above all, that it might help to give them that sense of the past, and of the local past, which to my mind is the beginning of the business of making a civilised being.

However, you don’t want a lecture from me, & I only meant to send you good wishes in your projected enterprise!

I can’t think of many other sources of information that might be useful to you, but Mr W H Howse of Ossington House, Presteigne, has a fine “social history” of Radnorshire in the press. It would provide you with valuable notes about all sorts of local matters, & I have no doubt Mr Howse would be a good man to consult about any notes you might want to put into the school edition.

It would be worth saying that Kilvert is now recognised as one of the best of all English diarists. There are some interesting remarks about him in Kate O’ Brien’s English Diaries & Diarists in Collins’s “Britain in Pictures” series. There is also a neat critical essay on Kilvert & his Diary by V S Pritchett in a book called In My Good Books (published originally I think by Chatto & Windus).

Well, good luck to you,

Yours sincerely,
William Plomer

A charming letter, full of encouragement and revealing a degree of enthusiasm for the idea for a schools edition, however Jonathan Cape and other publishers were rather less than enthusiastic.

The first of the publishers’ letters is from Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd, Edinburgh and dated 7th February 1949.

Dear Sir,

I thank you for your letter of 3 February offering a series of selections from Kilvert’s Diary. I regret that the demand for our existing diary volumes has not been sufficient to warrant doing another. On this account I regret that your kind offer must be declined.

Thanking you for the courtesy of approaching us.

Yours faithfully,

AJJR [the signature is indecipherable but the initials are taken from the reference]

Editor

The next response on the part of a publisher was from J M Dent & Sons Ltd and dated 14th February 1949.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for offering to prepare a school edition of Kilvert’s Diary for our “Kings Treasuries of Literature” series. Messrs Jonathan Cape would, naturally, either require a considerable sum of money for permission to reprint the selections or a royalty on every copy sold and this would have to be added to any remuneration given to the editor of the book. We should think the only chance of preparing an edition at a price that schools would be willing to pay would be for it to be published by Messrs Cape themselves.

Thanking you for the offer,

Faithfully yours,

J M Dent & Sons Ltd
P J [hand initialled]

From the third letter, dated 29th March 1949, it would appear that my father was sufficiently encouraged by Plomer’s letter and by the response from J M Dent to approach Jonathan Cape a second time. This is their reply:

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your letter of March 24th. We ourselves are not educational publishers, and are not, therefore, equipped for handling educational books.

As explained in our letter of February 2nd, while it is not impossible that arrangements might be made through an educational publisher for a school edition of portions of the Diary, such arrangements would have to be made by the publisher concerned with us. If, therefore, you are able in due course to interest an educational publisher in your project, and will put him into direct touch with us, we shall be prepared to discuss the matter further with him.

Yours faithfully,

G. Wren Howard
DIRECTOR

Stalemate. It seems rather a shame that this project was not pursued, but I suppose that post-war austerity still loomed large in the minds of publishers and so they would only be prepared to back projects that had a fair chance of producing a commercial return.

Nevertheless, my father’s intended structure of the proposed schools edition is interesting and seems to reflect the standardised ‘textbook’ form of the early to mid 20th century. Here is a rough draft of what was intended:

Kilvert 1840 – 1879 (Diaries 1870 –79)

1. Biographical Note
2. Diaries: Pepys, Evelyn, Woodforde
Their value – historical, social
3. Qualities of Kilvert’s [Diary]
4. The locality and its people
Radnor/Clyro/St Harmon/Hardenhuish
5. Extracts: Kilvert K.
Places Pl.
People P.
Country C.
Anecdotes A.
Church Ch.
6. Notes.
7. Questions.

My father did not pursue this project any further and I am not sure whether or not he became aware of the edition of the Diaries that was published by Jonathan Cape in 1976, abridged for children by Elizabeth Divine and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone.