Issue 22: Winter 2013

MAGAZINE WINTER 2013 / ISSUE 22

NAIRN’S LONDON Gillian Darley recalls a landmark publication on the city’s architectural highlights

THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION Michael Carlson on the best writing to have emerged since the death of the US President

C.S. LEWIS A personal view of the writer and academic by Anthony Curtis

LEAVING THE DOLL’S HOUSE Kitty Corbet Milward celebrates the literary achievements of Nordic women

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE / ISSUE 22

13 Ian Nairn wrote passionately about London’s architectural heritage in his landmark publication, Nairn’s London (1966). Gillian Darley looks back on the life and work of this original and unconventional man, whose exceptional writing talents were acknowledged by his professional peers.

CONTENTS 5 FROM THE LIBRARIAN 6 CONTRIBUTORS 8 BEHIND THE BOOK Photograph by Ian Nairn of 33–35 Eastcheap, from Nairn’s London (1966).

16 The question of whether Lee Harvey Oswald was acting alone or was part of a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy continues to fuel the imagination of historians, novelists and film-makers. Michael Carlson offers a critical appraisal of the literature – both fiction and non-fiction titles – about the event.

11 BIBLIOTHERAPY C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed helps Elisabeth Luard to cope with family bereavement

13 IAN NAIRN’S LONDON Gillian Darley on Ian Nairn’s idiosyncratic views on the architectural highs and lows of the city Presidential motorcade, Main Street at Griffin Street, Dallas, Texas, 22 November 1963.

Courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

20 C.S. Lewis, best known for his Chronicles of Narnia children’s stories, first became famous as a Christian apologist during the Second World War, and taught English at Oxford. Anthony Curtis was one of his pupils, and recalls his encounters with the writer and academic.

16 THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION AT FIFTY Michael Carlson selects the best publications to have emerged since the death of John F. Kennedy in November 1963

20 C.S. LEWIS FIFTY YEARS ON Anthony Curtis offers his personal impressions of the writer, whom he knew in wartime Oxford

22 LEAVING THE DOLL’S HOUSE Illustration by Pauline Baynes © C.S. Lewis Pte Ltd, 1950, from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950).

22 Camilla Collett, Dagny Juel and Cora Sandel are just some of the eminent Norwegian female writers whose work is to be found in The London Library bookstacks. Kitty Corbet Milward believes their books are worthy of wider recognition.

Simon Garfield found plenty of rich source material in the Library for his book on the art of letter-writing

Kitty Corbet Milward shines a light on some literary gems by Nordic women in the Library’s collections

24 MEMBERS’ NEWS

31 EATING OUT

Illustration by Erik Werenskiold from Jonas Lie’s The Family at Gilje (1883), 1903 edition.

•

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 3

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• F R OM T H E LIB R A R IA N

On the cover

Detail of Ian Nairn’s photograph of Battersea Power Station, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, 1932–4, from Nairn’s London (1966).

This and all other photographs by Ian Nairn are reproduced with permission from his Literary Estate.

Welcome to our winter 2013 issue of the magazine. Back in the spring, we promised to make your experience of reading in the Library a more pleasurable and productive one, with the completion of Phase 3A of our 21st-Century Capital Development Project over the summer. While the refurbishment work from June to September undoubtedly made summer in the Library less peaceful than usual, we are delighted with the results. Those members who haunt the Reading Rooms early and late in order to write have certainly taken the new Writers’ Room to their hearts, while others have settled back into the comfortable routine of regular armchair browsing of the latest periodicals. If you haven’t already been in to see the changes, I hope the photographs on pages 24–5 will entice you to visit soon.

Fifty years ago, C.S. Lewis and President John F. Kennedy died on the same day, 22 November 1963. In this issue we explore their enduring legacies, with reflections from Anthony Curtis and Elisabeth Luard on the ways in which C.S. Lewis touched their lives, and Michael Carlson’s assessment of publications on the Kennedy assassination over the past half-century.

Kitty Corbet Milward takes a suitably wintry look at the little-known but fascinating works of the women writers and artists from Norway represented in the Library’s collections while, closer to home, Gillian Darley casts a retrospective eye over the late Ian Nairn’s acute and evocative sense of place in his books about London.

With the season of thank-you letters approaching, the fading art of letter-writing is explored in Behind the Book, in which author Simon Garfield reminds us of the joys of oldfashioned correspondence in the all-too-ephemeral world of email.

Finally, in Members’ News, do find time to read about Helen O’Neill’s explorations in our archives on page 26, and see if you can solve the puzzle of which two great literary minds are shown in a fantasy meeting on The London Library Christmas cards this year on page 29. Our gift ideas for your fellow bibliophiles may provide the perfect solution to that annual Christmas-shopping panic (see page 28). London Library gift vouchers have proved to be a popular way to offset upcoming subscription renewals and, for those wishing to spread bookish cheer, try our Spouse membership offer.

On behalf of all of the Library’s staff, we thank you, our members, for your ongoing support, and we wish you a peaceful, restful and book-filled Christmas and New Year.

Inez T.P.A. Lynn Librarian Published on behalf of The London Library by Royal Academy Enterprises Ltd. Colour reproduction by adtec. Printed by Tradewinds London. Published 15 November 2013 © 2013 The London Library.

The opinions in this particular publication do not necessarily reflect the views of The London Library.

All reasonable attempts have been made to clear copyright before publication.

Editorial Publishers Jane Grylls and Kim Jenner Editor Mary Scott Design and Production Catherine Cartwright

Editorial Committee David Breuer Chloë Brookes Peter Parker Erica Wagner Emma Marlow

Advertising Jane Grylls 020 7300 5661 Kim Jenner 020 7300 5658 Irene Michaelides 020 7300 5675 Development Office, The London Library Chloë Brookes 020 7766 4719

Magazine feedback and editorial enquiries should be addressed to development@londonlibrary.co.uk

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 5

CONTRIBUTORS

Michael Carlson

JOINED THE LIBRARY IN 1994

Michael Carlson has written biographies of Sergio Leone (2001), Clint Eastwood (2002) and Oliver Stone (2002). He writes for various newspapers including the Guardian, the Financial Times and the International Herald Tribune, and presents sport on television, notably American football, for Channel 4 and the BBC.

Kitty Corbet Milward JOINED THE LIBRARY IN 2005

Kitty Corbet Milward works for the Royal Academy of Arts, and is a part-time Ph.D. candidate with the University of Edinburgh. Her research addresses the representation of Norwegian women in Scandinavian art between 1880 and 1913.

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Gillian Darley

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JOINED THE LIBRARY IN 1972

Gillian Darley is a writer, broadcaster and architectural journalist, currently a columnist on Building Design and a contributor to the London Review of Books blog. Her books include Villages of Vision (revd 2007) and biographies of Octavia Hill (revd 2010), John Soane (1999) and John Evelyn (2006). Ian Nairn: Words in Place, written with David McKie, is published this month by Five Leaves Publications.

Simon Garfield

Tuesday 25 February – Saturday 1 March 2014 Photograph © Chris Close.

Full programme online December 2013 lse.ac.uk/spaceforthought

6 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

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JOINED THE LIBRARY IN 1998

Simon Garfield is an author and journalist. His books include Mauve (2000), Just My Type (2010) and On the Map (2012). The End of Innocence: Britain in the Time of Aids (1994) won the Somerset Maugham Prize. His latest book is To the Letter: A Journey Through a Vanishing World (2013).

He is a Trustee of the Mass Observation Archive.

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JOINED THE LIBRARY IN 1959

Anthony Curtis took a First in English at Oxford in 1950. After work as a freelance drama critic for the Times he worked on the staff of the TES, then the TLS. In 1960 he became the first literary editor of the Sunday Telegraph, then arts and literary editor of the Financial Times. His books include biographies of Somerset Maugham (1977) and Virginia Woolf (2006), and Lit Ed, memoirs (1998).

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BEHIND THE

BOOK

The Library’s wealth of material on the subject of letter-writing served Simon Garfield well for his book, To the Letter: A Journey Through a Vanishing World, published last month

‘

Simon Garfield’s To the Letter (2013).

’

I use The London Library pretty much as my office, coming in to research and write at least three days a week.

I’m still taken by the romance of the cast-iron flooring in the back stacks and still get productively lost. For my latest book, To the Letter, I’ve found gems in almost every department. The book is an elegiac rumination on what we’ll lose if we only correspond by email, and writing it gave me the perfect excuse to raid some wonderful collections and crumbling letter-writing guides.

® Marcus Aurelius in Love: Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Cornelius Fronto, edited and translated by Amy Richlin (Chicago and London 2006). L. Greek & Latin Lit., Trans., Aurelius Antoninus.

I was keen to locate ancient Roman love letters to include in my book, but they were hard to come by; rooted in rhetoric and instruction, ancient letters were rarely intimate. But did Marcus Aurelius buck the trend? Richlin is keen on the idea that he may have fallen for his tutor Marcus Cornelius Fronto many years before he became Emperor, and such lines in their correspondence as ‘You have made me dazed and thunderstruck by your burning love’ appear to support her claim. ® Letters of Madame de Sévigné: To her Daughter and her Friends (London 1927), one of many editions. Biog. Sévigné.

The Library shelves contain so many feet of the bubbling correspondence of the French aristocrat Marie de Rabutin Chantal, Madame de Sévigné (1626–96), that they almost merit a section in themselves. Nothing escaped her gaze during the reign of Louis XIV, and her letters – particularly those to her daughter – were witty, scathing, bombastic,

8 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

objectionable and unforgiving. She stands with Voltaire as one of the most enduring and compelling epistolary companions. ® The Art of Letter-Writing, anonymous (London 1762); and The Ladies Complete Letter-Writer, edited by Alain Kerhervp (1763; facsimile version, Newcastle-uponTyne 2010). Both L. Correspondence.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a boom in letter-writing manuals, with many becoming bestsellers. The country became more literate, the postal service more efficient, but correspondents faced many dilemmas. How should one write to a friend to persuade him against marrying?

And how best ‘to induce a Gentleman of the Army to read History’? All is revealed in these guides, and you will even learn how to complain about an ill-fitting coat.

For women with time on their hands, the Ladies Complete instructs how to address a female friend ‘who had gone home late the night before, from a visit’, to check she has not suffered from a lack of sleep. ® Letters of Ted Hughes, selected and edited by Christopher Reid (London 2007). Biog. Hughes.

As his many regular correspondents attest (from his lovers to the Queen Mother),

Hughes was a master letter-writer. You can trace the source of several great poems in his mail, and it is no surprise that his last great work was Birthday Letters (1998).

Hughes never used email; he had found his perfect form of communication when young, and it never failed him. Reid was his poetry editor at Faber, and his collection is both sympathetic and insightful. ® England’s Mail: Two Millennia of Letter Writing by Philip Beale (1998; revd edn, Stroud 2005); and Masters of the Post: The Authorized History of the Royal Mail

by Duncan Campbell-Smith (London 2011). Both S. Post Office.

With privatisation now a reality, the Royal Mail has marked another milestone – and there have been many. The journey from private mail delivered by horsemen shouting ‘post haste!’ in the sixteenth century to Rowland Hill’s Universal Penny Post in 1840 is a rollicking ride.

Only Campbell-Smith takes the story on to the troubled strike-ridden present, but both authors delight in the mid-1600s, when almost every letter was opened by a Spymaster General in a room in Westminster. Wouldn’t happen now with emails, of course.

HENRY JAMES, autograph letter, signed, to Charles Hagberg Wright, Librarian of the London Library, May 1914 James writes to his friend after an attack on his portrait at the Royal Academy by a militant suffragette: ‘I … really owe the vicious hag & her ravage a good mark for having led to my hearing from you …’

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 9

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BIBLIOTHERAPY

Elisabeth Luard on the book that helps her cope with her feelings of loss

A GRIEF OBSERVED C.S. LEWIS C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed (1961) should be shelved in a special section of every library labelled ‘Literature of Use When Nothing Else Will Do’ . Shoulder to shoulder might be placed a little booklet containing Sydney Smith’s ‘Advice to a Young Woman in Low Spirits’; Virgil’s Aeneid with special mention for King Priam’s lament, ‘Sunt lacrimae rerum’ ; Christopher Logue’s Selected Poems (1996) with a bookmark slipped into ‘O come all ye faithful’ .

All these are effective first-aid. But Dr Lewis is the man to turn to thereafter, when you think it’s all over but it isn’t. I have lost two of my own before their time, a full-grown daughter and a husband of 40 years. The trigger, the reason for the return of grief, is never anything out of the ordinary. A photograph of a gaptoothed six-year-old in uniform among her classmates, a dark-haired young woman with a swing to her step on a London street, a gaunt old gentleman wearing a jaunty hat standing by the kerb with an anxious look on his face. Writing this piece.

Experience of death, bearing witness to the process of dying, is not something any of us would wish to remember with clarity. Clarity is not necessary for grief.

Grief is a presence, a shape without substance. It’s there at dawn, retreats in daylight, returns at nightfall. Absence, nonpresence of the beloved, is public property, a reason to mourn, hold memorials, weep at gravesides, share memories. Grief is inarticulate, refuses consolation, won’t see reason, can only make sense of itself through the words of others.

Lewis traces the path of his own great grief, the loss of a beloved wife, referred to with old-fashioned courtesy only as ‘H’, and all the more poignant for the briefness

‘

“No one ever told me that grief feels so like fear … the same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning”

’

C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed (1961), 1966 Faber and Faber edition.

of their life together. An unfinished love affair, being unfinished, is as perfect as any human relationship can be. This is consolation of itself – few of us can look back with such simplicity, certainly not me.

These things I recognise: ‘No one ever told me that grief feels so like fear … the same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. ’ And again, as the author struggles through maudlin tears to reach reality: ‘Her mind was lithe and quick and muscular as a leopard … scented the first whiff of cant or slush; then sprang, and knocked you over before you knew what was happening. ’ This in particular: ‘I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet … To some I’m worse than an embarrassment.

I am a death’s head. ’ I recognise, too, the sweetness in keeping the final vigil: ‘It is incredible how much happiness, even

how much gaiety, we sometimes had together after all hope was gone. How long, how tranquilly, how nourishingly, we talked together that last night!’

So that’s enough of that. Humankind, as Mr Eliot pointed out, cannot bear very much reality. The path to reconciliation for a man of deep religious faith led back, through many a railing, to a benevolent Almighty. I have no such certitude. But the feelings described are my own, the path to acceptance equally stony, the signposts just as bewildering.

The consequence of loving – husband, child, wife, parent, beloved friend – is pay-back time in the Garden of Eden. And when the bill comes in, there’s no gentler guide than the great Christian apologist, Clive Staples Lewis, first line of defence for those of us in need of useful books at times of grief.

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 11

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IAN NAIRN’S

LONDON Gillian Darley describes the inspiring figure of Ian Nairn, the highly original writer whose book Nairn’s London includes recollections of pub banter alongside passionate writing about the city’s architecture

With the cover showing the author jauntily leaning out of the driver’s seat on a Routemaster bus, Nairn’s London (1966) suggests from the first moment that it will be an idiosyncratic view of the capital. It was, Ian Nairn wrote in the Preface, ‘simply my personal list of the best things in London’, a somewhat grandiose aim, he admitted.

Thirty years after his death, little is remembered of Nairn’s short and meteoric career except the prompts offered by occasional clips of his television films to be found on YouTube and, above all, his book, which has an honoured place on the bookshelves of many, like me, who were students in the late 1960s. The companion volume, Nairn’s Paris (1968), guided me around when I first visited that city. Ian Nairn (1930–83) is now beginning to attract a new following, a generation or more younger, most of them writing in blogs and online exchanges.

Nairn was an only child, brought up in wartime suburban Surrey, by turns a truculent grammar-school pupil, an irascible redbrick-university student (of mathematics) and a Flying Officer in the RAF. He soon concluded, despite the easy glamour that flying jets and wearing uniform afforded, that the armed services were not for him.

Instead, he decided to make a new career out of writing about buildings and topography, subjects that had become his passion. He approached published architectural historians, including Nikolaus

Nairn’s London (1966), published by Penguin Books.

Pevsner and John Betjeman, and then, with remarkable chutzpah, used ‘his’ RAF Meteor jet to comb Norfolk for the early country houses of John Soane. He sent the results to Dorothy Stroud, the so-called Inspectress of Sir John Soane’s Museum and John Summerson’s deputy.

By then Nairn had set his heart on a job at the Architectural Review and in 1954 he secured one, a vague role in production.

This was due largely to the patronage of

the eccentric editor-proprietor, Hubert de Cronin Hastings, who immediately spotted, and secured, this maverick with a remarkable turn of phrase. In addition, Nairn’s pilot’s licence and access to Percival Prentice planes, which he rented from the Surrey Flying Club, offered ‘H de C’ an aerial view for his staff photographers when they needed one.

For the next decade, following the publication of Outrage (1955) and CounterAttack Against Subtopia (1957), two books that were originally supplements to the AR, Nairn was the enfant terrible of the architectural world. From the world of British architectural journalism, driving a campaign about the degradation of the built environment into a state he named ‘subtopia’, Nairn then moved to wider pastures. He visited the USA, where he stayed with Jane Jacobs, soon to become famous with The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961. He then began writing as a mainstream newspaper journalist in the UK (in succession for the Daily Telegraph, the Observer and the Sunday Times), as well as contributing to the Listener, the weekly magazine published by the BBC, for which he was also to make numerous television films in the late 1960s and 1970s. Surprisingly, he was also a writer on the Buildings of England series, and was Pevsner’s right hand for the volumes on Surrey and West Sussex. He was to be defeated by the need for close research and detailed recording of information, neither THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 13

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of which suited his temperament or his style of life, in which sustained beer drinking was already the key factor. But Pevsner acknowledged in a valedictory note in the introduction to the volume on Sussex that Nairn wrote ‘better than I could ever hope to write’. Nairn looked for different things, in a different way, seeking out what he often called the essence of places or buildings, and in Nairn’s London he combined his entirely personal view of the capital with a campaigning fervour against what he described in his introduction as ‘developers’ greed, planners’ inadequacy and official stupidity’. As a close colleague, Gordon Cullen, wrote of Nairn after his death from cirrhosis of the liver aged 52, ‘he wore his emotions like varicose veins’.

David Piper’s Companion Guide to London (1964) came out two years before Nairn’s London. The contrast between Piper’s comprehensive, informative guidebook approach to central London and Nairn’s subjective, will-o’-the-wisp handling of some 450 favourite spots that stretched to the extremities of the city, could hardly be greater. Reviewing Nairn’s London in the Guardian, Piper coped well. Despite the cavalier handling of facts, overlooked in the stated quest for ‘essence’, Piper admitted Nairn was ‘compulsively readable’, leaving him see-sawing between ‘rage and admiration’ since this was the work of ‘our one and only, the inimitable, Ian Nairn of “Outrage”, of blood and, yes, guts, and beer, in full swing’.

The capital was big enough to take a hundred different interpretations, even in the 1960s. Piper began with the Tower of London, which also featured as the cover illustration. Nairn thought the Tower of London greatly overrated, and grossly overcrowded. But he did not consign it to square brackets (as he did the Royal Festival Hall), which would have denoted its importance but his own lack of enthusiasm, and allowed himself one exultant description, amid the ‘stage-set or comic opera character’ of the site. The little Chapel of St John, he wrote, conveys ‘an overwhelming effect of early Norman steamrollering mass, the force that produced Domesday Book and fixed the shires. It seems as if it were all hollowed out of one solid block and had always been in the block waiting to be hollowed, from the heavy plain capitals to the tunnel vault.’ It would be unfair to compare Piper’s entry, 14 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

‘

Pevsner acknowledged, in the introduction to the Buildings of England volume on Sussex, that Nairn wrote “better than I could ever hope to write”

clear and evocative as it was, with that.

Nairn prepared his readers for his style. The book might be viewed, he wrote pre-emptively, as no more than ‘a collection of subjective maunderings’ and there were (and are) those who would concur.

However, he offered it as ‘a record of what has moved me, between Uxbridge and Dagenham. My hope is that it moves you, too.’ He dedicated it to John Nash, his supreme architectural hero, Lambeth-born, and his publisher, Tony Godwin, at Penguin.

Various threads fed into the fabric of Nairn’s London. Although his heart was in the north of England, Nairn never lived there, being born in Bedford and raised in Surrey. He had moved to London in

’

1954, living first in Swiss Cottage and then in Pimlico. In 1961 he provided a set of notes, published in the Architects’ Journal (the sister magazine of the AR), for those architects visiting London for the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Annual Conference. He grouped the highlights into neat geographical areas (lettered A to H), weighed historic buildings and areas against contemporary work, and rehearsed descriptions of favourite buildings that would be expanded in Nairn’s London.

He was also on the trail of new and recent architecture for Modern Buildings in London (1964), commissioned by London Transport. There he pronounced the ongoing development of the Elephant and Castle

Above Trafalgar Square. Opposite, from left Courtenay Square, Kennington; Rye Lane, Peckham; Royal Hospital Chelsea Stables, by Sir John Soane, from 1814. All photos by Ian Nairn.

IAN NAIRN’S LONDON

a ‘Deadly Serious Business’ (Nairn was not averse to 1066 and All That phrasing), although Ernö Goldfinger’s high-rise office complex there, Alexander Fleming House (listed in 2013), had potential in its dour rigour, reminding him of the work of Auguste Perret. Two years on, in Nairn’s London, he judged the redevelopment of the Elephant, still unfinished, ‘mediocre’, and hurried his readers round to a little residential quarter in nearby Kennington, Courtenay Square (1913), where ‘this dolls’ forum’ had brought ‘marvellous’ formality, trees and gravel south of the river.

He had introduced the visiting architects to the Soane Museum, ‘one lonely man’s probing of space’, suggesting if they were short of time, that they ‘ask for the breakfast room and see more spatial thought and imagination than most architects achieve in a lifetime’. In Nairn’s London he hits his stride. He accords Soane’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields a page and a half, befitting ‘a series of meditations on space which go as deep as any more orthodox mystical experience.

After a visit here, four walls and a ceiling can never look quite the same.’ He ends with the Breakfast Room, which he describes rhapsodically, prefacing his words with a wry aside: ‘God knows what the breakfasts must have been like.’ I first visited the museum as a student, clutching Nairn’s London, and it was, I suspect, under his influence that I later worked on Soane’s papers and published his biography. Now David McKie and I have published Ian Nairn: Words in Place, to remind us all to look hard and write with critical passion about what we see.

Nairn could always be critical, even of his heroes. Pitzhanger Manor, Soane’s country house in Ealing, West London, by

that time a municipal building, was dealt with in those deadly square brackets, and writing about Dulwich Picture Gallery, he judged it ‘One of Soane’s most original, least satisfying designs’. He felt that it had been subtly chilled by unsympathetic post-war restoration and that it was an essentially ‘intellectual solution’ (yet he revelled in ‘the rules of scale and proportion’ at the Stables designed by Soane for the Royal Hospital Chelsea). Judging Dulwich ‘a great curiosity, not a masterpiece’, he offered dissenting readers an alternative judgement of the art gallery. John Summerson in Georgian London (1945) had written ‘one of the most incisive and brilliant descriptions of a building that has ever appeared in print’.

With his taut, elegant prose allied to a superb grasp of architectural and social history, Summerson unwittingly made Nairn selfconscious – of being an autodidact, a nonprofessional and, above all, an outsider.

But beyond the Tower of London and Soane’s house-museum, Nairn revelled in the kind of imagery, observation and even folksiness that would never have been countenanced in orthodox guides to London. Nairn believed London became ‘first-rate by accident ... Southwark Cathedral jammed next to Southwark warehouses’. In Rye Lane, Peckham, despite war damage and dispersal, he still detected something of the ‘cockney’. He enjoyed telling how a stallholder had ordered a vodka and tonic, as it was the fashion, at the bar in the Hope (Nairn always named pubs) only for his ‘mates’ to strike up a rendition of the Volga Boat Song, ‘because all fashions are a bit of a giggle’. He painted the vignette of the pub as a kind of necessary pressure valve to London life, and as an insight into

the kind of people to whom he felt most drawn, despite his preference for keeping his own company with a drink in the corner.

As the book moves on to outer London, Nairn includes a particularly satisfying scene at Hanwell in West London, the viaduct spanning a ‘small valley with eight superb elliptical arches, the shape coiling and storing energy like an acrobat. Behind, the ground rises gently, still green, to the spire of the small Victorian (George Gilbert Scott) church.’ Here he characteristically celebrates the relationships between disparate structures and their setting, to neat effect.

How ironic that Nairn’s grave should be nearby, with the epitaph ‘A Man without a Mask’ (quoting Samuel Palmer’s description of William Blake) stamped on the standardised metal plot-marker, in Westminster City Council’s most westerly cemetery, a place singularly without either poetry or beauty. Overhead is the continual thrum and whine of flights into Heathrow.

Writing the very year in which his pilot’s licence was withdrawn (on health grounds), Nairn could not muster anything positive to say about the airport, describing it as ‘squalid, messy, cluttered, a sea of cars’ (precisely the ‘subtopian’ mess he had fought against), but he celebrated the fact that its final effect is to augment ‘those astonishing 600-m.p.h. packages, each one costing as much as Coventry Cathedral.

This is still all raw material, like Clapham Junction or Tilbury Docks. But to realize it will take an imagination miles removed from the traditional idea of architecture.’

Nairn’s London included its fair share of prescience, along with romanticism, poetry and, often, breathtaking prose.

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 15

THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION AT FIFTY

STILL HAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS Michael Carlson selects the most significant writing to have emerged about the circumstances surrounding John F. Kennedy’s death in November 1963 If you are of a certain age, you will remember. It was 50 years ago, 22 November 1963 and, with respect to Philip Larkin, a moment more influential than the Beatles’ first LP. We were sent home from school that Friday afternoon: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been killed in Dallas. We watched Sunday’s live television news coverage as Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, was gunned down by Jack Ruby.

Life magazine declared Oswald guilty, its cover in February 1964 showing him posed with rifle and Marxist pamphlets: JFK had been struck down by a misfit would-be communist defector.

The commission appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren endorsed that simple explanation. But rather than calming the nation, the Warren Report raised more questions than it answered.

Over the past half-century, the debate has become a mire of investigation, speculation and disinformation, with more than a thousand books written on the subject, some of them bizarre. Were shots fired from an umbrella? By a gunman from a manhole?

By a Secret Service agent? In the movie JFK, the director Oliver Stone put Winston Churchill’s words into the mouth of Joe Pesci, playing David Ferrie, the pilot alleged to be part of the conspiracy: ‘It’s a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.’

The literature of the Kennedy assassination has appeared in a series of waves, each reflecting the tenor of its times.

The first was a reaction to the Warren Report of 1964. The second was inspired by the House Select Committee on Assassinations 16 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

(HSCA) investigation, begun by the US House of Representatives in 1976. The third was prompted by Stone’s film, released in 1991. Now, the fiftieth anniversary of the killing has inevitably prompted more writing, including a great deal of material published electronically. Much of it is simply rehashing the work of others, sometimes indiscriminately.

Sylvia Meagher’s Accessories After the Fact (1967) catalogues the evidence buried within the Warren Report’s 26-volume appendix. Meagher’s title reflects the reaction of that first wave of books to the Warren Report, the two most important being Mark Lane’s Rush To Judgment (1966) and Harold Weisberg’s Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report (1965).

The Warren Report (1964).

Lane, a lawyer, was appalled by the Dallas investigation; he wrote an article about it and ended up being hired by Oswald’s mother to represent her dead son. Weisberg was a former Congressional researcher who kept chickens on his Maryland farm; whenever his work was derided he would be called a ‘chicken farmer’.

The first researchers were described as ‘critics’ because they were really investigating the anomalies and questions left unanswered by the Warren Report, which seemed to be designed to validate the theory of the lone, crazed assassin, Oswald, firing three shots from the Texas School Book Depository. Testimony that didn’t fit that scenario was dismissed, overlooked or discounted – from the dozens who rushed up the grassy knoll because they were convinced shots had been fired from that area, to Texas Governor John Connally, seated in front of Kennedy, who insisted he and the President were hit with separate bullets. His claim would invalidate the ‘magic-bullet’ premise, that one shot went through both Kennedy and Connally and cause multiple wounds in both men, before the second, fatal bullet also fired by Oswald.

Then there was the enigma of Oswald himself, the Marxist Marine with Intelligence training, who defected to the Soviet Union and returned with a Russian wife at the height of the Cold War without attracting the suspicion of the US government. Oswald agitated on behalf of communism and Cuba, as he did publicly in New Orleans, while surrounding himself with fervent anti-communists. The Warren Report simply ignored any possible links

between the murder and the Mafia, which had ample reason to want Kennedy dead.

Ruby’s mob connections went back to his childhood, and the possibility he knew Oswald before he assassinated him was another unexamined loose end. Ruby died in jail, before he was able to tell what he called the real story; in his two-volume work, Forgive My Grief (1966–7), Penn Jones, editor of a local paper outside Dallas, catalogued the unusual number of suspicious deaths of assassination witnesses. The case was fertile ground for the roots of conspiracy.

Early fiction books approached Kennedy’s murder metaphorically: Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1965), Loren Singer’s The Parallax View (1970), and Winter Kills (1974) by Richard Condon, whose stand-in for Kennedy is assassinated on the orders of his mob-connected father.

In fact, the idea of a conspiracy was nothing new: a Kennedy-like US president had been overthrown by a military coup in the 1962 novel Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II. Ironically, the movie of the book was made with Kennedy’s co-operation, overriding protests from the Pentagon; it would not be released

until 1964.

The assassination has been examined in court only once, when New Orleans District Attorney James Garrison prosecuted a local businessman, Clay Shaw, director of the International Trade Mart, as part of a conspiracy to kill the President.

Garrison became involved when he looked into Oswald’s time in New Orleans. His investigation received no co-operation from federal authorities and was undermined actively by some of them. Playwright James Kirkwood, in his non-fiction book American Grotesque (1970), cast Garrison’s trial as a persecution of Shaw because he was gay.

But Garrison did manage to show the Zapruder film in court. Abraham Zapruder’s home movie of the assassination was purchased by Life magazine immediately after the killing, and promptly locked away.

When Life printed stills from the film, frame 313, showing the impact of the fatal shot on Kennedy, was out of sequence, making it appear that Kennedy’s head was driven forward, not back, by the impact. A similar genuine mistake occurred when the stills were reprinted in the Warren Report.

To anyone viewing the film it is obvious that the fatal shot forced Kennedy’s head

President and Mrs John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, moments before the assassination in Dealey Plaza, 22 November 1963.

backwards violently, and that frame 313 shows the impact spray at the front of the head, while the supposed point of entry in the back remains untouched. The best early work on the Zapruder film was done

by Robert Groden, whose two illustrated books, The Killing of a President (1993) and The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald (1995), remain valuable reference works.

By the early 1970s, despite polls showing that most Americans doubted the Warren Report, conspiracy theories might well have been forgotten were it not for Richard Nixon (who was in Dallas himself on the day of the assassination) and the Watergate scandal. In the wake of this, three separate government investigations probed America’s Intelligence services; one of them, the House of Representatives’ Pike Report, included the revelation, as shocking in 1975 as it was again this year, that the National Security Agency was spying unlawfully on the communications of American citizens.

This rising distrust of government prompted Congress to form the HSCA in 1976, and a second wave of assassination literature, THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 17

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Left Lyndon B. Johnson taking the oath of office, November 1963.

Above Aerial photograph of Dealey Plaza taken on the afternoon of 22 November 1963.

which studied conspiracy on a wider level, emerged around the same time. Key books were Robert Sam Anson’s They’ve Killed the President: The Search for the Murderers of John F. Kennedy (1975); Carl Oglesby’s The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate (1977); and Government

by Gunplay: Assassination Conspiracy Theories from Dallas to Today (1976), edited

by Harvey Yazijian and Sid Blumenthal. An important later addition on the same theme was Peter Dale Scott’s Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993).

The HSCA concluded the ‘likelihood’ of a Kennedy conspiracy, but was notably reluctant to blame anyone but the Mafia, as detailed in The Plot to Kill the President (1981)

by HSCA chief counsel G. Robert Blakey and Life journalist Richard N. Billings, who was one of the men who bought the Zapruder film. Committee investigator Gaeton Fonzi described the derailing of other avenues of HSCA’s investigations, and its original chief counsel, Richard A. Sprague, in The Last Investigation (1993); Fonzi attributed Sprague’s removal to his insistence on establishing the involvement of the Intelligence community in the assassination.

The HSCA hearings prompted more suspicious deaths, most notably mobsters Sam Giancana, killed before he could testify, and Johnny Roselli, found floating in an oil drum in Miami’s Dumfoundling Bay the day before he was due to make his second appearance before the committee.

A possible connection between Oswald and the Intelligence community is established in the two best novels written 18 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

about the assassination. Often labelled ‘the American le Carré’, Charles McCarry was a former spy, and his Tears of Autumn (1975) links the killing to the CIA-backed assassination of South Vietnam’s President Diem, while Don DeLillo’s Libra (1988) features an obsessive DeLillo protagonist endlessly researching the ultimately unknowable: ‘Think of two parallel lines … One is the life of Lee H. Oswald. One is the conspiracy to kill the President. What bridges the space between them? What makes a connection inevitable? There is a third line. It comes out of dreams, visions, intuitions, prayers, out of the deepest levels of the self … It’s a line that cuts across causality, cuts across time. It has no history that we can recognize or understand. But it forces a connection. It puts a man on the path of his destiny.’

Anthony Summers’ book, Not in Your Lifetime, published this year, is the most recent of five updated versions of his 1980 book, Conspiracy ; informed by prodigious original research, it is the best single-volume study on the subject. Summers alleges that Kennedy’s killers were a mix of the Mafia,

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disaffected CIA agents and Cuban exiles.

All three groups wanted Kennedy out of the way, because of his failed attempt to overthrow the communist Fidel Castro in the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. The mob had lost its hugely profitable casinos and whorehouses in Cuba, and the CIA and Cuban exiles wanted to eliminate Castro.

The official investigations in the 1970s revealed that the CIA and Mafia had worked together, not least to get rid of Castro. Even Lyndon Johnson had complained about the ‘goddamn Murder Incorporated’ the CIA was running in Latin America. Summers suggests that Murder Inc. had come home.

That view of conspiracy was somewhat at odds with those who believed the assassination was, in effect, a coup sponsored by the military and the CIA. David Lifton, in Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (1981; updated 1988), examined JFK’s autopsy, which was carried out by military doctors at Bethesda Naval Station rather than forensic specialists at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, and concluded not only that evidence was faked, but that there were

Stephen King’s novel 11-22-63 dismissed doubters of the official verdict as being unable to accept Kennedy’s death as an act of random absurdity

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THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION AT FIFTY two separate coffins shipped from Dallas to Bethesda. The alleged motive, detailed best in John Newman’s two books, JFK and Vietnam (1992) and Oswald and the CIA (1995), was the CIA’s and the military’s fury at Kennedy’s reluctance to pursue the Vietnam War and his willingness to sign a nuclear treaty with the Soviets.

Such a conspiracy would have required organisation high up in the military command, a theory often at odds with the notion of a low-level plot by the CIA and FBI to cover up their own mistakes or embarrassing secrets. A cover-up can often take the form of conspiracy itself.

Newman was an adviser to Oliver Stone on JFK, which sparked the third wave of assassination literature. Based on Garrison’s experiences, with Kevin Costner playing the DA, and with Garrison in an ironic cameo role as Earl Warren, the movie began attracting mainstream denunciation even before filming was finished. Stone brought the two conspiracy strands together: on the ground the mix of oddballs, former spooks, Cuban exiles and mobsters suggested by earlier research; and behind the scenes the military coup, which is revealed to Garrison by the mysterious ‘Colonel X’.

‘X’ was based on Fletcher Prouty, a former Air Force intelligence liaison to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and author of two books, The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World (1973) and JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (1992).

JFK: The Book of the Film (1991) by Stone and Zachary Sklar is a remarkably balanced volume that refutes accusations of Stone’s ignorance of history. There are many reasons to disagree with some of the theories explored in the film, but its impact forced through the passage of the JFK Records Act in 1992, which released a mass of previously classified documents.

The Establishment response to the film was Gerald Posner’s Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993), a prosecutor’s selective brief against Oswald and in defence of the Warren Report, which was highly publicised and praised in the mainstream media. Even Norman Mailer, despite calling Posner’s book only ‘intermittently reliable’, used it as the basis for his biography Oswald’s Tale (1995). Mailer portrayed Oswald as an unhappily married man who shot Kennedy in a fit of jealous rage. In 2007, former Los

From top Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment (1966), 1967 edition; James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he Died and Why it Matters (2008), revised 2013 edition, courtesy Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York.

Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi published Reclaiming History, a 1,612page work, with footnotes on CD, which covered similar ground to Case Closed but also attacked the more absurd conspiracy theories and denigrated many of the Warren critics. Bugliosi also produced a condensed version of his book, Four Days In November (2007), which gives his version of the assassination in narrative form.

The most significant new fiction came from James Ellroy, chronicler of America’s dark underbelly. In The Cold Six Thousand (2001), Ellroy, who never sees America as innocent, describes a conspiracy that oozes with the sleazy reality of mobsters and

ex-intelligence agents, and includes Howard Hughes and the FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover.

More recently, Stephen King’s novel 11-2263 (2012) dismissed doubters of the official verdict as being unable to accept Kennedy’s death as an act of random absurdity. King sends a Maine schoolteacher back in time, to stop Oswald. He presents a brief but powerful imagining of the butterfly effect of Kennedy’s survival in an alternate universe, where small acts have unforeseen consequences. King concludes: ‘It was almost certainly Oswald. You’ve heard of Occam’s Razor, haven’t you? … all things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one.’

But what is simple about Oswald?

His portrait, as detailed by Warren, Posner, Mailer, Bugliosi and King, is most convincing in proving he was uniquely qualified to be a scapegoat. Ray and Mary LaFontaine’s Oswald Talked: The New Evidence in the JFK Assassination (1996) makes a strong case for Oswald as a failed government informer, ripe for the set-up.

And in 2008, James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he Died and Why it Matters puts forward the strongest case yet for a conspiracy, including details of an earlier, similar plot derailed only by the President having cancelled a trip to Chicago.

Douglass’s research marries conspiracies large and small. His ‘unspeakable’, in the end, is ‘not far away. It is somewhere out there, identical with a government that became foreign to us. The emptiness of the void, the vacuum of responsibility and compassion, is in ourselves.’

Should the actual gunmen still be alive, and confess publicly to their crime, at this point it is unlikely they would be believed.

Most of the protagonists of the story are dead, and 9/11 has become the ‘Crime of the Century’ for this century, as Summers asserts, replacing the assassination as ‘a new milestone of national trauma’. We may never know the truth. Meanwhile Oswald remains in death what he most likely was in life, a patsy who reminds us that history is not random, but may be beyond our control. As Don DeLillo wrote, in an essay while researching Libra: ‘The valuable work of theorists has shown us the dark possibilities, prodded us to admit to ourselves the difficult truth of the matter.

No simple solution, no respite from mystery and chronic suspicion. Conspiracy is now the true faith.’

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 19

C.S. LEWIS FIFTY YEARS ON

Anthony Curtis was taught by the writer and Christian apologist at Oxford during the Second World War, and recollects his learned wit as well as his scholarship The death of C.S. Lewis on 22 November 1963 was eclipsed at the time by the gunning down of President Kennedy and the death of Aldous Huxley. The three died on the same day and Lewis lost out on the media coverage. Yet, 50 years on, Lewis’s posthumous career in terms of biographies and reassessments remains highly active.

Lewis is known nowadays as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia children’s stories, set in that other-worldly kingdom governed by a saintly lion and tyrannised by an evil witch. In wartime Britain he became famous as a popular Christian apologist, thanks to his regular ‘Thought For the Day’-type broadcasts on the BBC Home Service, and as the author of two sciencefiction novels, Out of the Silent Planet (1938) and Perelandra (1943), in which Wellsian fantasy is blended with theological themes.

In academic circles he made his reputation with The Allegory of Love (1936), a study of the poetry inspired by the cult of courtly love, and with his book English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1954). His lasting importance as a thinker and imaginative writer is, surely, beyond doubt.

Like many people of my generation, I first became aware of him when I read in 1942 The Screwtape Letters, a bestseller of that time. In it Screwtape, a senior devil, instructs his nephew Wormwood, a novice devil, in the art of temptation. My delight in Lewis’s gift for irony, so abundant in these letters, was increased by encountering him face to face when I went up to Oxford in 1944.

During my first six months there I was an officer cadet in the Royal Air Force leading a double life; half the week I donned my RAF uniform to go to the air squadron for training and during the other half I wore my academic gown and led the life of an 20 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

Illustration by Pauline Baynes for The Chronicles of Narnia, © copyright C.S. Lewis Pte Ltd 1950.

undergraduate. As such I took a short course in English Literature before active service in the RAF, not returning to Oxford until 1948.

Lewis said of this course for servicemen: ‘It’s like giving a man an enormous meal just before he is about to be hanged.’

Lewis had suffered a similar experience in 1917 when he had been an officer cadet in the Army at Keble, where he shared a room with an Irishman, ‘Paddy’ Moore.

Lewis promised Paddy that in the event of him being killed in action, he would look after his mother, Jane Moore. It was a pledge he fulfilled, after Paddy was killed, by living with her until her death in 1951.

Some people who knew Lewis well think that he became her youthful lover, but this has never been proven. Certainly he was

her assiduous carer and nurse during her bedridden old age.

Wartime Oxford was an enchanting place for an 18-year-old fresh from a boarding grammar school. The intellectual life of the university was intensified by the war. The ultimate questions – is there a God and what happens after death? – acquired a particular urgency, and where better to discuss them than at the Oxford University Socratic Club? It had been founded in December 1941 by Stella Aldwinkle, a remarkable woman of South African origin who had read Theology at St Anne’s Society (later College) and had joined the Oxford Pastorate as chaplain for women students.

Miss Aldwinkle was the secretary of the Socratic Club and Lewis was its president. Its aim was to create ‘an open forum for the discussion of the intellectual difficulties connected with religion and with Christianity in particular’. The club was where Lewis expressed his view, later fully explained in his autobiography Surprised by Joy (1955), that the myth of the dying god, common to so many different cultures, on one occasion actually happened. It became history at the Crucifixion.

The most famous (or perhaps most notorious) meeting was when the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe read a paper, ‘A Reply to Mr C.S. Lewis’s Argument that “Naturalism” is Self-Refuting’, and Lewis responded. He had recently published Miracles: A Preliminary Study (1947) and Anscombe focused on chapter 3, where ‘You say that “naturalism” includes the idea that human thought can be fully explained as the product of natural (i.e. non-rational) causes, and it is this idea you maintain is self-contradictory because it impugns the validity of reason, and therefore

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Lewis said of the Oxford undergraduate course for servicemen: “It’s like giving a man an enormous meal just before he is about to be hanged”

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necessarily of any thinking by which itself is reached’. In destroying this line of argument she appeared to pull away the lynch-pin of Lewis’s entire apologetic. (A.N. Wilson in his 1990 biography of Lewis claimed that Lewis was so traumatised by her paper that he gave up apologetics altogether and turned to writing for children.) At the meeting Lewis replied by saying that she had misunderstood him but that it was his fault for his misuse of the word ‘valid’, and he rewrote the relevant chapter of his book, published in a revised form in 1960. The whole question is abstruse, but Anscombe’s paper and Lewis’s reply may be read in The Collected Philosophical Papers of G.E.M. Anscombe, Volume Two: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind (1981), a copy of which is in The London Library.

Miss Aldwinkle occasionally held meetings where an undergraduate read a paper and another replied. I was the respondent for a discussion of ‘Poetry and Truth’ for which Lewis stayed away with a cold. At the next meeting Aldwinkle read the minutes and asked: ‘Is it your pleasure I sign these minutes as correct?’ Everyone including Lewis raised his or her hand. ‘Mr Lewis,’ she said, ‘how can you raise your hand when you were not at the meeting?’

‘On hearing the minutes my conception of Truth has been so altered I think I can,’ he replied.

In a class Lewis held on Milton for a few of us RAF cadets in his rooms in Magdalen’s New Building, he went through Paradise Lost, asking us to explain the biblical and classical allusions in the text. When we arrived at the moment in Book Three when Satan passes Limbo on his way to Eden, Lewis said: ‘One is not supposed to expound the doctrine of Limbo in case it becomes

From left C.S. Lewis, courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers; the Kilns, Headington Quarry, Oxford, Lewis’s home from 1930 until his death in 1963. © Art History Images.

too popular, but you’d better listen to this because it is probably where you’ll go. It is a place for people who die untimely.’

Milton’s poem (downgraded by Dr Leavis in Scrutiny, his influential Cambridge journal) was central to the Oxford English syllabus at this period and to Lewis’s view of English literature. His admiration for Milton he shared with his great friend Charles Williams, the senior editor at the Oxford University Press, and author of an introduction to the World’s Classics edition of Paradise Lost much praised by Lewis.

Williams was a poet, critic, biographer and novelist. His supernatural thrillers, lauded

by Lewis and T.S. Eliot, include one entitled The Place of the Lion (1931). In this mystery novel, the platonism enjoined by Williams and Lewis manifests itself in the form of an enormous lioness wandering through the streets of a Hertfordshire village. She represents the platonic idea of lionhood and the novel goes on to describe what happens when, through the lion and other archetypal creatures, the ideal world of Plato invades the real world of England. This lion must have been a forerunner of the godlike lion Aslan in Narnia (1950–6).

When I was literary editor of the Sunday Telegraph (1960–70), I was able to commission reviews and articles from Lewis.

In 1962, the year before his death, already a sick man, he reviewed Sir John Hawkins’s Life of Samuel Johnson, John Jones’s On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy and Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of the Odyssey. I went to see Lewis at the Kilns, his house in Headington Quarry, Oxford, where he lived with his older brother and Jane Moore and, after the latter’s death, with his wife, the Jewish American convert to Christianity, Joy Davidman. I asked him if he had ever thought of turning his remarks

on the hero, mentioned as an aside in one of his lectures on the Renaissance, into a book, and writing a history of the hero in English literature. ‘Several people have suggested that,’ he replied, ‘but I’ve turned it down because it would involve me in a great deal of reading of the literature of the modern period I would find uncongenial.

I am always full of plans for new work, but I never quite know what it will be till I start.

I was toying only this morning with writing a version of Ring of the Nibelung, a prose narrative; there are all sorts of things you have to leave out of an opera, things I’d like to go into. Trouble is at the mention of the word “Ring” a lot of people might think it was something to do with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings – which, incidentally, I much admire.’

The conversation turned to heroes and heroines of Henry James. He launched into a spirited attack on James and the convolutions of his style. I said that Lewis’s strictures did not apply to the earlier James of, say, The Portrait of a Lady. ‘Listen to this,’ he retorted: ‘“Under certain circumstances there are few hours in this life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.” But James writes well when she is suffering.’ He was able to quote from memory the opening sentence of The Portrait of a Lady, as he could quote by heart at length from so many different authors.

Before I left he asked me to come and see him again but, to my great regret, there wasn’t another opportunity before he died.

I wrote a letter of condolence to his brother Major Lewis who replied: ‘Of my own loss I can hardly bear to speak, for it is not merely a matter of the death of a brother, but of one who was my most intimate friend for more than 50 years.’

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 21

HIDDEN CORNERS

LEAVING

THE DOLL’S HOUSE An exploration of The London Library shelves has uncovered some illuminating titles reflecting the literary achievements of Norwegian women, as Kitty Corbet Milward reveals If some London Library members are dismayed by the news that the forthcoming third series of Borgen, the Danish TV hit featuring that feisty Prime Minister, is to be the final one, they might find solace in the Library’s largely untouched nineteenthcentury Scandinavian treasure trove, which contains overlooked charms that elevate the Nordic woman to equal heights. Located on the fourth floor just next to the model of the old owl, concealed at the back of the History labyrinth and dotted across the art shelves, are books, pamphlets and catalogues by and about Scandinavia’s fair sex.

A large number of these volumes were accumulated by the Secretary and Librarian, Sir Charles Hagberg Wright, during an appointment that lasted from 1893 until his death in 1940. Wright’s particular interest in the Nordic region may have been triggered by his Swedish mother, who was the daughter of Nils

Camilla Collett, illustration from Henrik Jaeger’s Illustreret Norsk Litteraturhistorie (1896).

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Wilhelm Almroth, Governor of the Royal Mint in Stockholm. Wright’s years at the Library roughly coincided with a dramatic period in Scandinavian history. The second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century was a time of nation-building, cultural rivalry, scientific innovation and social revolution, a jostling for authority between two formerly great empires, Denmark and Sweden, and two smaller subjects, Norway and Finland.

By 1880, Sweden was on the brink of losing Norway, which King Frederick VI of Denmark and Norway had ceded to the Swedish King in 1814 at the Treaty of Kiel. Finland was growing increasingly discontented with Russian rule; Denmark was still weakened by its bankruptcy following the Napoleonic Wars; and Norway was resolute in maximising her shipping, timber and fishing industries in order to wield independence. Her sovereignty was eventually achieved in 1905. A mere eight years later, she became the second country in the world after Finland to offer women the right to vote in national elections.

Published in Norwegian in 1896, Henrik Jæger’s two-volume Illustreret Norsk Litteraturhistorie (Illustrated History of Norwegian Literature), located in L. Norwegian Lit., Hist. of, will be unreadable for most, yet its lengthy index indicates how significant the writer had become during this era. In volume two, after entries on the romantic poets Henrik Wergeland and Johan Sebastian Welhaven, is a section on Camilla Collett (1813–95). Collett’s novel, Amtmandens Døtre (translated into English as The District Governor’s Daughters), was published in two parts in 1854 and 1855,

‘

Camilla Collett referred to her novel The District Governor’s Daughters as her own life’s “long suppressed scream”

’

and earned the author a reputation as Norway’s first feminist, and the harbinger of a new style of Norwegian literature that presented a realistic, albeit critical view of modern-day society. The Library has an 1879 edition, as well as a translated English-language version by Kirsten Seaver (1991). Collett referred to The District Governor’s Daughters as her own life’s ‘long suppressed scream’. Aptly so, for the story provided a popular model for other female writers such as Amalie Skram, by exploring the constrained upbringing of girls in gentrified families who were restricted by the prejudices that informed prevailing attitudes towards femininity.

Collett’s story is told through the eyes of Sofie, the youngest of four daughters of a disappointed mother, as she struggles against common precepts to be allowed to make decisions of her own when choosing a partner and lifestyle. Sofie’s provincial surroundings offer unappealing female models in the form of disillusioned and cynical wives, small-minded spinsters and elderly maids.

Collett was well positioned to write such a saga. Her father, Nicolai, was one of the signatories on the Norwegian Constitution of 1814; Wergeland was her older brother; the politician and critic Peter Jonas Collett her husband; and Welhaven, once the object of her own unrequited love. Collett’s career as a writer progressed well, and she went on to write copious essays that principally addressed the prominence of Norwegian women in everyday situations. Her status as a campaigner for female equality earned Collett friends in literary circles, including those whom the publisher Gyldendal dubbed the ‘Four Greats’ of Norwegian literature: Henrik Ibsen, the nationalist Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, and the novelists Alexander Kielland and Jonas Lie. One of the finest books by Jonas Lie (1833–1908), The Family at Gilje, which was originally published as Familien paa Gilje in 1883, has recently been translated

by Marie Wells (2012; Fiction). Lie’s novel is perhaps best described as a male take on Collett’s masterpiece; it, too, addresses the narrow opportunities available to daughters of gentrified families in an economically challenged country. At the centre of the story stands the heroic ‘Ma’, worn out from keeping up appearances and pacifying her pugnacious husband, Captain Jæger. Comparable to Collet’s Sofie, the couple’s eldest daughter, Thinka, is forced to renounce the man she desires and marry for convenience, while her younger sibling, Inger-Johanna, is destined to make a good match on the basis of her beauty. Lie queries whether a ‘good marriage’ can ever result in life-long happiness, and employs female protagonists to promote the benefits of free will and individual choice.

Believed to be looking over his shoulder was Lie’s adored wife and cousin, Thomasine, known as a formidable presence in the family home and conceivably a model for Ma. A 1903 edition, located in L. Norwegian Lit., 4to., features charming illustrations by the celebrated artist, Erik Werenskiold (1855–1938), who was a friend of the author. He also illustrated an edition of Norwegian folk tales, which can be found in Pat Shaw Iversen’s translated version, in S. Folklore &c., 4to.

The tragically short life of the writer Dagny Juel (1867–1901) is the stuff of Norwegian legend. Born into a cultivated family in the fortress town of Kongsvinger,

where Werenskiold also spent his youth, Juel was the niece of the co-founder of the Norwegian Association for Women’s Rights, Randi Blehr, and in her early twenties lived a bohemian existence in Berlin. There she befriended the painter Edvard Munch, the dramatist August Strindberg, and the Polish writer Stanisław Przybyszewski, whom she married in 1893.

In Berlin she socialised with fellow radical Scandinavians at the notorious tavern, Zum schwarzen Ferkel (the Black Piglet). In the Library’s four-volume catalogue raisonné of Munch’s ‘children’, as he named his paintings, is a tender portrait of Mrs Dagny Juel Przybyszewska, of 1893. Munch depicts his flame-haired friend in a dark dress with bat-like shoulders, her tall slim figure set against a murky background. The picture is a testament to the close friendship that the two enjoyed, until Dagny’s murder in 1901 by her jealous lover Władysław Emeryk at the Grand Hotel in Tiflis, now Tbilis.

What might be termed the ‘Dagny’ effect on numerous admirers is outlined in Strindberg’s arresting though embellished autobiographical novel set in Berlin, The Cloister, published posthumously in 1969 and located in Fiction. Strindberg cruelly afforded Dagny the nickname ‘Aspasia’, yet Mary Kay Norseng has since endeavoured to revise her reputation in Dagny Juel Przybyszewska: The Woman and the Myth (1991), which can be found in Biography.

Norseng sets Dagny’s life in the context of the day, revealing a woman whose facility with the written word perhaps jarred with her physical beauty, rendering her both alluring and intimidating to other writers and suitors.

Besides her debut play, Den Sterkere (The Stronger), printed in the Norwegian periodical Samtiden in 1896, Dagny wrote three dramas, five prose works and a collection of poems, first published posthumously in 1975. These works are not in the Library, although Norseng’s book contains excerpts of Dagny’s poems that dwell on women’s self-image and their relationships with men.

Another eminent Norwegian, the artist and novelist Cora Sandel (1880–1974), explores the tribulations of an ambitious adolescent living in Norway and France in her autobiographical Alberta trilogy (1926–39). Growing up in Tromsø, Sandel was anxious to exchange her tedious

Illustration by Erik Werenskiold from Jonas Lie’s The Family at Gilje (1883), 1903 edition.

and provincial surroundings for the excitement of a capital city. After training in Christiania (now Oslo) at Harriet Backer’s school of art, Sandel moved to Paris in 1906, where she joined a group of Scandinavians, marrying then divorcing the Swedish sculptor, Anders Jönsson, and launching a new career as a writer at the age of 46. Sandel’s three Alberta books, translated by Elizabeth Rokkan and published between 1962 and 1965, can all be found in Fiction. The second volume, Alberta and Freedom, includes fascinating, semi-autobiographical descriptions of a small-town Scandinavian woman on the fringes of the expatriate artistic community seeking work in Paris.

How did the soon-to-be enfranchised Norwegian woman of the early twentieth century appear to outsiders? In Home Life in Norway, a survey of the country by the English tourist H.K. Daniels (1911), the author singles out the particularly optimistic, nice-looking and accomplished female folk. ‘The Norwegian woman merits some degree of attention,’ he begins, moving on to marvel at her ability to speak several languages, work a telephone, become a policewoman, ski and still bring up the babies. But how, Daniel ponders, can she do all this yet ‘remain so irritatingly feminine and so aggressively womanly’?

Perhaps the answer is somewhere among the shelves of The London Library.

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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 23

MEMBERS’ NEWS THE RE-OPENING OF THE READING FLOOR A small reception on 3 October marked the end of Phase 3A of the building development programme with the transformation of the Reading Floor. Trustees past and present, donors and other friends of the Library gathered in the beautifully refurbished Reading Room, and admired the new furniture, lighting and improved reader spaces.

Careful thought went into the renovation so that the historic character of the Reading Room was maintained while improving and updating

24 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

facilities for members. The new Writers’ Room met with universal admiration and approval, and is already a firm favourite with members. The transformation of the former North Bay into a modern and attractive working place provides the best of new technology while retaining the historic sense of the building.

The Librarian, Inez Lynn, thanked trustees of a decade ago for their courage and foresight in endorsing the ambitious plans, and all those who have helped achieve thus far the realisation of those plans. She noted that significant gifts from three foundations, one given anonymously, made possible these improvements to the Reading Floor, and thanked the trustees of Sir Siegmund Warburg’s Voluntary Settlement for their generous support. She also expressed delight that the Sackler Study will honour the gift of the Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation. Philip Hook, a Trustee, also thanked all donors, particularly to the early stages of the campaign, whose generosity and confidence in the Library ensured those first phases were achieved, as well as this important renovation.

Opposite, top and below The Reading Room.

This page, left and below The Writers’ Room.

Photographs © Philip Vile.

To find out more about donating to the Library’s Capital Campaign or for further information on the Library’s capital development plans, please contact the Development office (development@londonlibrary.co.uk; 020 7766 4719; londonlibrary.co.uk/capitalcampaign).

JOIN THE FOUNDERS’ CIRCLE The Founders’ Circle is a group dedicated to supporting the Library to ensure that it continues to be of service and benefit for generations of readers to come.

Named in honour of the first 500 members who were instrumental in founding The London Library in 1841, Founders’ Circle members enjoy a host of exclusive benefits and events throughout the year.

Benefits include: • Private events with celebrated authors • Visits to other libraries and collections of interest • Invitations to the Library’s Annual Literary Dinner & Christmas Party • Invitation to an annual Chairman’s Lunch • Guided ‘behind the scenes’ exploration of the Library and its collections • Access to private hire of the Library for your own events • Exclusive events for Dickens and Thackeray members Annual membership of the Founders’ Circle: Dickens: £10,000 Thackeray: £5,000 Martineau: £1,500 londonlibrary.co.uk/founderscircle If you are interested in joining the Founders’ Circle, please email bethany.mcnaboe@londonlibrary.co.uk or call +44 (0)20 7766 4719

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 25

•

TWELVE MONTHS IN A BUSTLE What do the following people have in common? Henry Irving, the actor and theatre manager; Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman educated in Britain to have her name entered in the Medical Register; Edward Cecil Guinness, the brewer and philanthropist; William Morris, the iconic designer of the industrial age; and Edward Coley Burne-Jones, the painter.

Having just returned to The London Library after 12 months of research on the Library’s institutional archive at University College London, I can tell you that they are just a handful of past London Library members. Over the last year I have transcribed and collated data from a range of at times seemingly impenetrable manuscript archival sources on 7,000 Victorian members of the Library. While not wholly complete (there are still records I need to revisit), the data I have assembled is a unique record of the Library’s historical membership and illuminates the significance of the Library in Victorian London’s bustling literary, intellectual and cultural landscape.

Checking these records against the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, I produced a subset of over 800 individuals whose contribution to national life is significant enough to be recorded in this nationally relevant resource. They are an impressive and captivating group: from suffragists to Sanskrit scholars, they count among their number playwrights, poets, publishers, artists, illustrators, academics, theatre managers, medics, novelists, philosophers, economists, politicians, prime ministers, publishers, editors and scientists. I should mention, too, that George Murray Smith, the founder of the Dictionary of National Biography, and its first and second editors, Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, were also all members.

In addition to investigating the breadth of the Victorian membership (and the literary and intellectual networks indicated by nominees in the records), I also asked questions about the significance of membership in a detailed analysis of John Stuart Mill. One of the towering intellects of the Victorian age, Mill was not only an active user of the Library (borrowing in excess of 400 volumes between 1842 and 1849 and during 1856), but also a generous donator of books across 32 years of life membership. Three specific donations are identified in the Library Committee Minutes of 26 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

the day. The first in 1841 included 249 volumes of ‘French Histories and Memoires’, notably on the French Revolution. They are followed in 1857 by a ‘choice collection of works on Logic’, and in 1866 by ‘65 books and numerous pamphlets mostly on America’. The American donations, many inscribed to Mill by the authors, testify to Mill’s role on the world stage. With the assistance of experts within the field of digital humanities, I was able to show a direct link between books that Mill borrowed from the Library and some of his published output.

So what does all this archival bustling, transcribing, collating and interpreting mean for the Library? Well, it provides a research kick-start to the process of analysing the significance of the Library to literary and intellectual life from the records contained within in its own institutional archive. It speaks eloquently about the significance of the Library’s past not only as an interpreter of the present but as a driver for the future, particularly in fundraising, marketing and development activities, and it also points the way for further research. This type of research is richly interdisciplinary: it sits at the intersections between library history, literary history, historical bibliography and the history of ideas, and it allows for the most longlensed comparisons over 170 years of Library and literary life. To give just one example: the playwright, translator, theatre critic and ‘accomplished literary man’ John Oxenford joined the Library in 1843. He wrote over 100 plays, one of which, A Day Well Spent, was staged at the Lyceum Theatre in London in 1836. The play was adapted by Johann Nestroy in 1845 as Einen Jux will er sich machen and staged in Vienna at the Theater an der Wien. The Library’s current President adapted Nestroy’s play as On the Razzle, which was first performed in 1981 at the National Theatre in London.

The Library’s history as told through its archival records is wholly unique and incredibly powerful, and plays a strong role in the life of the Library today, to engage, explain and enrich.

Helen O’Neill From top The ‘accomplished literary man’, John Oxenford, from the Illustrated London News (10 March 1877); Tom Stoppard’s On the Razzle (1981); the brewer and philanthropist Edward Cecil Guinness joined the Library in 1879.

In January, Helen returns to UCL to continue her research part-time at Ph.D. level. She is now The London Library’s Archive, Heritage and Development Librarian, a new role that puts the Library’s past at the heart of initiatives for the future.

MEMBERS’ NEWS t: +44 (0)20 7862 8675 | e: IESevents@sas.ac.uk

LEAVING A LEGACY TO THE LONDON LIBRARY A gift in your will is a fitting way to acknowledge the scholarship, the literary refuge and the pleasure that the Library has offered to so many readers and writers over the years.

As a registered charity the Library depends on donations and legacies to continue its work. By leaving a gift in your will you can play a direct and vital part in helping to ensure our long-term survival and success.

Legacies of any size are greatly appreciated and are acknowledged in our Annual Report and in other ways as appropriate.

The London Library received a legacy of £5,000 from the late Glenys Dean in June this year. Thanks to her kind forethought in wishing to help the Library continue its work, we were able to purchase some 200 new books.

Acquisitions are central to maintaining our collection, and we are immensely grateful to Mrs Dean, a retired Civil Servant, for her generous support of the Library in this way and to all who have made bequests or pledged future legacies.

For details of how to leave a gift to The London Library, please contact Bethany McNaboe in the Development Office (tel. 020 7766 4719; email bethany.mcnaboe@londonlibrary.co.uk).

w: http://ies.sas.ac.uk | Twitter: @IES_London

AUTUMN CONFERENCES 2013 16 November 2013: ILLUSTRATING DICKENS A conference investigating the significance of illustrations for the novels of Charles Dickens, in association with the Imaginative Book Illustration Society (IBIS) and the Charles Dickens Museum.

23 November 2013: GEORGE ELIOT: ROMOLA & FELIX HOLT Romola is a narrative experiment, inventing a new language remote from the reader’s speech. Eliot said she began it as a young woman and finished as an old one. Felix Holt takes us back to the Midlands of the early fiction, anticipates the Reform politics of Middlemarch, and is probably her most neglected novel.

23 November 2013: BLACKBURN’S “WORTHY CITIZEN” A COLLOQUIUM ON THE R. E. HART COLLECTION Papers will address: Late Victorian and early 20th century collectors and their collections; the contents of Hart’s collection; the role of such bequests in their communities.

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23/10/2013 11:15

Dame Juliet Wheldon 26 March 1950 – 2 September 2013 We were deeply saddened to hear Dame Juliet Wheldon, DCB, QC, died on 2 September 2013. Dame Juliet was a Life Member of The London Library. An alumna of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, she will be remembered for her exceptionally distinguished legal career in the fields of government, finance and human rights. In 2000 she was appointed first ever female Treasury Solicitor and Head of the Government Legal Service, and after retiring in 2006 became General Counsel to the Governor of the Bank of England. Dame Juliet’s formidable intellect, spirit and wisdom will be greatly missed at The London Library.

The Royal Literary Fund

Financial Assistance for Writers The Royal Literary Fund (est.1790) helps published authors in financial difficulties.

Last year it awarded grants and pensions to over 200 writers.

Applications are welcome throughout the year.

The London Library is delighted to announce the appointment of Mary Gillies to the role of Deputy Librarian. Mary joined the Library as Reader Services Manager in October 2012.

For more information contact: Eileen Gunn Chief Executive The Royal Literary Fund 3 Johnson’s Court London EC4A 3EA Tel: 020 7353 7159 email: egunnrlf@globalnet.co.uk www.rlf.org.uk Registered Charity no 219952

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 27

Royal Literary Fund to use.indd 1

23/10/2013 11:16

CHRISTMAS GIFTS FROM THE LONDON LIBRARY Spread the Library cheer to book lovers in your life with our Christmas gift ideas, large and small.

GIFT MEMBERSHIP Give someone you love a million books for Christmas and share the experience of being a London Library member. Whether a full membership or a half-price Young Person’s membership, you will be sent a new member pack to present to the recipient; or, if you prefer, it can be sent to them directly.

SPOUSE MEMBERSHIP Don’t forget that Spouse/Partner Membership is now half price (£230, or £19.16 per month)! The Membership Office will be happy to help you arrange Library membership for your significant other this Christmas.

LONDON LIBRARY GIFT VOUCHERS Contribute to someone’s London Library membership, or their membership renewal, by giving one of our London Library gift vouchers. Vouchers are available in denominations of £50 and £100 and are valid for two years from the date of purchase.

LONDON LIBRARY MERCHANDISE – from £5 Our striking canvas bags make an excellent stocking filler, or can be used as a stocking with a difference! With gift card packs starting at £5, there are plenty of small, tasteful gifts in our online Shop, including our Gift Pack (£35 including postage and handling) which gathers together one canvas bag, one note book, one pack of note cards, one pack of pencils and a copy of the Library Book by Tony McIntyre, a fascinating history of the Library and its buildings.

ADOPT A BOOK Ensure that a book, or books, inscribed with your loved one’s name will be on the Library’s shelves by adopting a book on their behalf. An original and lasting gift, as well as a wonderful way to support the Library.

Books can be adopted via the Support Us section of the website (click on Adopt Schemes), or for more information contact Bethany McNaboe in the Development Office (tel. 020 7766 4719; email bethany.mcnaboe@londonlibrary.co.uk).

28 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

MEMBERS’ NEWS

CHRISTMAS CARD 2013 Show your pride in being a London Library member and raise funds for the Library by sending our delightful Christmas card to friends and family.

This year’s card is designed by Lucy Henzell-Thomas. Lucy left Kingston University in 2003 with an MA in Illustration. She specialises in mixed-media paintings, often including stitch and beadwork in her finished work. For The London Library Christmas card she chose past members as her inspiration.

Drawing on her love for early twentieth-century detective novels, she has imagined a meeting between two masters of the genre with their Christmas reading material from the Library.

Cards are printed in full colour on high-quality card at a standard size (181 x 121mm).

The cards are available in packs of 8, together with high-quality peel-and-seal envelopes.

GIVE A MILLION BOOKS THIS CHRISTMAS Treat your favourite bibliophile to a year of bliss with a London Library Gift membership.

With over two thousand subjects spanning Aesthetics to Zanzibar, The London Library has something to spark every imagination.

Membership of The London Library – the perfect Christmas present.

Gift membership & Gift vouchers available online www.londonlibrary.co.uk/join

The price is £5.00 per pack, including VAT, postage and handling. Cards are available to purchase via The London Library website or by returning the order form below. Cards will also be on sale in the Library at £4.00 per pack.

MESSAGE INSIDE CARD READS: With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year

Please return this form to: The London Library Christmas Card Orders 14 St James’s Square London SW1Y 4LG

ORDER FORM PLEASE SEND ME: ______ pack(s) of Christmas Cards, at £5.00 per pack: £______ TOTAL: £______ Please make your cheque payable to ‘The London Library’ YOUR NAME (BLOCK CAPITALS PLEASE) _________________________________________________________ ADDRESS ________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________

Stacks of inspiration

____________________________ POSTCODE ________________

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 29

HEYWOOD HILL

by Nicky Dunne, Executive Chairman Independent bookselling is alive and kicking. Bookshops, like libraries, have always been sacred places. This feels particularly true at Heywood Hill. Sometimes a single visit is enough to begin a life-long connection.

Patricia, a delightful American lady from Connecticut, called in at Heywood Hill in the mid-1970s. She has received a book from us, specifically chosen for her, every month ever since. Patricia trusts us to take her reading seriously.

Another American customer, a young diplomat working at the US State Department, let’s call him Jim, rang the shop earlier this year. Could we find him a ‘rare’ edition of The Great Gatsby? A first edition in an unrestored 1925 dust-wrapper might sell for well in excess of £100,000. Was that what he meant by rare? No. Instead we suggested the Bodley Head edition of the collected works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, published between 1958 and 1975 in six handsome volumes. Jim asked if we could dispatch the volume containing Gatsby by courier to Washington, D.C., so that he could inscribe and return it to us.

Why? He had arranged to meet his girlfriend, Jane, also a US diplomat but stationed in the Middle East, in London a few days later. His idea was to stroll with Jane along Curzon Street and into Heywood Hill, and then for us to find a way to encourage her to pick out his copy of Gatsby from our shelves. As she read the inscription, Jim planned to propose. Jim called ten times or more the

week before to check that every detail was in place. On the morning itself texts arrived practically by the minute.

Finally in they walked: Jim, ashen-white, jittery as a cat at a dog show; Jane, slightly bewildered at Jim’s unease. After a brief welcome I showed them around and explained a little about our shop’s strong links to American readers and writers. Jim looked fit to burst as I droned on.

‘Did Fitzgerald ever come here?’ Jane asked. Sadly not; he had returned to America before our shop opened in 1936. ‘But this book by him has an interesting inscription inside,’ I said, opening our large cabinet before retiring from view. Tears and champagne duly flowed.

Our customers know that we will do whatever is humanly possible to help them discover interesting or beautiful books, new or out of print, humanly being the operative word.

As always there is a lot going on. With the help of some distinguished writers we have created unique ‘Reading Journeys’ on some stimulating subjects, which we think will make the perfect gift for real readers; every month for a year, recipients are sent a book chosen and introduced by world-class authors.

The shop is crammed with an outstanding crop of new books, our much-improved website is up and running (heywoodhill.com), and we have refurbished two of our basement rooms for antiquarian and children’s books. This year too we have once again created some exceptional libraries for customers in a number of countries.

As fellow bastions of the printed word in Mayfair, we revere The London Library in neighbouring St James’s. Heywood Hill’s links with the Library have been growing over the last couple of years. All London Library members are very welcome at Heywood Hill. We look forward to your visit.

UNIQUE CHRISTMAS IDEAS FOR REAL READERS GRAND TOURS FOR THE MIND Receive a book a month chosen and introduced by world-class writers This Christmas choose a Reading Journey from:

Clive Aslet on the American saviours of British heritage William Boyd on the evolution of espionage fiction Jung Chang on understanding modern China Max Hastings on the books that illuminate the First World War

10 CURZON STREET LONDON W1J 5HH + 44 (0)207 629 0647

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enquiries@heywoodhill.com

30 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE

Prices start from £250 and include bookplates, invitations to events and other goodies.

For more information visit www.heywoodhill.com or call 020 7629 0647

27/09/2013 10:49

EATING OUT

This is an advertisement feature. To advertise please call Janet Durbin on 01625 583180

1 AL DUCA Serving modern Italian cuisine, Al Duca focuses on bringing out the very best elements of what is one of the most acclaimed gastronomic regions of the world. Simple fresh ingredients are skilfully combined in a wide range of traditional dishes, offered both in classic style and with a new twist, all following the owner Claudio Pulze’s ethos of reasonably priced good Italian food. Now serving breakfast. 4–5 Duke of York Street, SW1Y 6LA, 020 7839 3090. alduca-restaurant.co.uk

5 CUT AT 45 PARK LANE CUT at 45 Park Lane is chef Wolfgang Puck’s first restaurant in Europe, a modern American steak restaurant serving exceptional food in a contemporary interior. Dishes include prime dry and wet aged beef, panroasted lobster, sautéed whole fresh fish and salads. Breakfasts are another highlight, as are weekend brunches, when you can relax with custom-made Bloody Marys as you listen to live jazz.

45 Park Lane, W1K 1PN, 020 7493 4554.

2 BELLAMY’S RESTAURANT Located in central Mayfair (near New Bond Street), Bellamy’s offers a classic French brasserie menu with an affordable famous-name wine list. The Oyster Bar menu includes Bellamy’s famous ‘open’ sandwiches. Le patron mange ici.

Open for lunch Mon–Fri; dinner Mon–Sat. 18–18a Bruton Place, W1J 6LY, 020 7491 2727. bellamysrestaurant.co.uk

6 GETTI JERMYN STREET A modern Italian restaurant at the fast-paced heart of London’s West End, Getti Jermyn Street is an authentic Italian dining venue in London’s historic tailoring district, dedicated to offering a traditional and memorable Italian dining experience. A splendid destination for locals and tourists alike, Getti Jermyn Street focuses on serving simple, regional dishes from mainland Italy. Private dining available.

16/17 Jermyn Street, SW1Y 6LT, 020 7734 7334. getti.com

9 GREEN’S Green’s Restaurant and Oyster Bar is a truly British institution that serves world-class food: simple, well-presented dishes that everyone likes and that allow you to have meaningful conversation.

The menu includes fresh fish, meat and seasoned game.

36 Duke Street St James’s, SW1Y 6DF, 020 7930 4566. greens.org.uk

12 HIX SOHO HIX Soho opened to critical acclaim in 2009 and won London’s Time Out Award for Best New Restaurant in 2010. The restaurant boasts Mark Hix’s signature daily-changing menu of seasonal British food, and a display of works by celebrated British artists. HIX Soho is offering Library members a complimentary ‘Quick Fix’ cocktail on arrival when dining before 6.30pm. Quote ‘London Library’ when booking.

66–70 Brewer St, W1F 9UP, 020 7292 3518. hixsoho.co.uk

3 BENTLEY’S OYSTER BAR AND GRILL Since 1916, Bentley’s has been serving its fish and chips and feeding the hungry masses. For almost 100 years, the grande dame of Swallow Street has served fresh oysters, grilled fish, shellfish platters and steaks, sourced from around the British Isles. The restaurant is now under the watchful eye of Michelinstarred chef Richard Corrigan.

11–15 Swallow Street, W1B 4DG,

7 THE FOX CLUB Situated a stone’s throw from Green Park and the famous Hyde Park, the Fox Club Dining Room is one of London’s best-kept secrets and a lunch-time essential. The modern European menu changes on a weekly basis, offering refined excellence without being pretentious. The effect is a change from the jaded palate of life. The Fox Club now offers a delightful afternoon tea from 3–5pm.

46 Clarges St, W1J 7ER, 020 7495

10 GUSTOSO RISTORANTE &

020 7734 4756. bentleys.org

3656. foxclublondon.com

ENOTECA This home-style Italian dining room is found moments from Westminster Cathedral and Victoria Station.

Quietly situated and pleasingly intimate, Gustoso is the ideal place to unwind with friends or to enjoy a little romance. Cocktails are served from the bar and the menu is based around the Italian classics.

35 Willow Place, SW1P 1JH, 020 7834 5778. ristorantegustoso.co.uk

13 THE KEEPER’S HOUSE The recently opened Keeper’s House is the new home for artists and art lovers in the heart of Mayfair. Run by renowned restaurateur Oliver Peyton, of Peyton & Byrne, the concept is simple: modern British food, cooked using the freshest ingredients.

Surrounded by casts from the RA Collection, diners can enjoy seasonal dishes in the restaurant or cocktails in the garden bar. Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, W1J 0BD, 020 7300 5881. keepershouse.org.uk

4 BERRY BROS & RUDD Fine Wine Lunches & Dinners Choose between Berry’s Townhouse or the 17th-century London Cellars.

The Townhouse hosts intimate luncheons with fine food and wine.

The atmospheric London Cellars are London’s most exclusive fine-dining venue. Housed within an impressive vaulted Napoleon Cellar, you will be treated to an unforgettable luncheon. Tickets pre-booked.

3 St James’s Street, SW1A 1EG, 0800 280 2440. bbr.com/wine-events

8 FRANCO’S Franco’s has been serving the community of St James’s for over 60 years. Open all day, the personality of the restaurant evolves from a quietly and gently efficient breakfast venue to a sharp and charged lunch atmosphere, to elegance and romance in the evening. The lunch and dinner menus highlight carefully prepared traditional and more modern Italian dishes. The service is always relaxed, friendly and personal.

61 Jermyn Street, SW1Y 6LX, 020 7499 2211. francoslondon.com

11 HIX MAYFAIR This fashionable restaurant offers an outstanding menu of classic British dishes, using local seasonal ingredients. Mark Hix and Lee Streeton offer a full à-la-carte menu alongside a special set-lunch, pre-theatre and dinner menu of £27.50 for 2 courses and £32.50 for 3 courses. Brown’s is also home to the award-winning English Tea Room and the chic Donovan Bar. Brown’s Hotel, Albemarle Street, W1S 4BP, 020 7518 4004. hixmayfair.co.uk

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14 WILTONS Established in 1742, Wiltons enjoys a reputation as the epitome of fine English dining in London. The atmosphere is perfectly matched with immaculately prepared fish, shellfish, game and meat. Choose from an exclusive wine list. Open for lunch and dinner, Mon–Fri. To make a reservation, please quote The London Library Magazine.

55 Jermyn Street, SW1Y 6LX, 020 7629 9955. wiltons.co.uk

THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 31

Books, Atlases, Manuscripts & Photographs including the Aldine Collection of the late Sir Robert Horton Tuesday 12 November 2013 at 11am Knightsbridge, London

+44 (0) 20 7393 3831 books@bonhams.com Pencil portrait of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, drawn from life at Highgate by J. Kayser in 1833 From the collection of Coleridge Family papers and heirlooms in this sale.

International Auctioneers and Valuers - bonhams.com/books