Alan Brooke, David Brandon, Pitkin 2010, £4.99

Pitkin aren’t known for their in-depth analyses of any subject, but that’s not what you buy ‘em for.  They’re cheap and cheerful introductions to a place you visit on a day trip, with just enough info to entertain the casual visitor and pique the curiosity of the relatively few who decide to go further.

Having said that I have a Pitkin Guide to the Cutty Sark from the 1960s positively crammed with information – far too much for the MTV generation of today (admittedly including me)  brought up on soundbites and sidebars. Grainy black and white photographs and large blocks of text don’t look particularly inviting, but they’re certainly substantial, and if memory of my parents grumbling serves, they were comparitively pricey back then.

I’m not aware that I have ever noticed Pitkin for years – certainly I haven’t bought anything (new, obviously – obscure second-hand volumes about weird things still make my spectral fingers itch) but my eye was drawn by Under London in Waterstones the other day.

Pitkin has hipped-up. Admittedly the subject matter was the thing that grabbed me about Under London but when I flicked through I was seduced by the glossy pages, the full colour illustrations – and yes, okay, by the fact that I needed something to read in the coffee shop and I could do this one cover to cover in the time it took to slurp a cappuccino. Oh – and the price. £4.99. You can’t really knock that…

What is it about things that are either very high up or buried beneath your feet? I guess it’s the lure of the unknown but it always seems to be the towers or the tunnels that sell out on Open City (this year on the weekend of the 18th/19th September – put it in your diaries now if you haven’t already…)

London seems to have as much underneath her as on top, and that’s where a guide of this size starts to run out of puff. It’s a really good looking book – lots of shiny photographs (I love George Formby singing about his little stick of Blackpool rock to sheltering Blitz Londoners) and quirky snippets, loosely gathered into themes – cemeteries, underground stations, murder, ghosts, plumbing and sewers – and there are things obscure enough to entertain an Underground London fan, but at 48 pages, this can only ever be a brief overview.

Greenwich, sadly, hardly comes into the picture at all – a fleeting mention of the Foot Tunnel, but nothing about the Swiss cheese that the town becomes further up the hill. I guess that’s forgivable since it’s a London-wide book, and it necessarily has to concentrate on the centre.

So. A handsome paperback, well-priced and with fun, funky facts and a breezy style. It’s not going to replace Antony Clayton’s Subterranean City(which itself could do with a bit of an update) and there is still a big yawning gap for a specifically Underground Greenwich book, but as a shiny intro to the delights under your feet in the City and beyond, it’s an entertaining light read.

Stephen Moreton-Prichard, 1998

Now here’s a book I’ve been searching for for a long, long time. I’d heard of it, I’d even seen it – at a distance. Unfortunately, I’d never actually had a chance to see its contents. And I was desperate to.

I knew it had an afterward by Neil Rhind, which was good enough for me, and in my mind I’d built it up to be an in-depth history of the theatre from Crowders days, all the way through to sad times, as drawn so poignantly by Geoffrey Fletcher in the 1960s. In my imagination, it logged the valiant fight in the 60s to save the building, covered the people who were active in the campaign, and the rebuild – all the way through to its glory days in the 1970s and 80s when pretty much every British actor who was to become anybody trod its hallowed boards.

And it is a handsome volume. However if I’d had a chance to even leaf through it before I bought it, I probably wouldn’t have lost sleep trying to get a copy for myself. For this is a book that although fascinating in itself, wasn’t written for me. Instead it is a (literal) snapshot of the those glory years for the people who were involved in the place’s saving – people who knew Stephen Moreton-Prichard and Ewan Hooper, and wanted a keepsake of their efforts 30 years on.

It’s essentially a book of photos of the productions, as Stephen Moreton-Prichard turns out to have been the theatre photographer. And they are rather wonderful pictures – from the days when Greenwich was a full producing house and clearly a serious force in British theatre. There are some truly heroic-looking productions – brave choices as well as the old favourites. I’m sure the pictures were chosen to show the breadth of famous actors who worked there, but virtually every photo has some household name in it – sometimes several. For a pure theatre lover, it’s gold.

For me, though, who had been hoping to read some history of the theatre, and its place within the town’s bigger story – and whose knowledge of its recent story is shaky to say the least – it felt a bit like peering through the Play School Arched Window at Derek Griffiths in jazzy dungarees or dressed as an Indian chief rather than seeing the whole picture. Neil Rhind, in just a hundred words or so, manages his best – I found out that Ewan Hooper seems to have been the driving force behind the regeneration of the theatre and that Stephen Moreton-Prichard, as photographer, was in the right place at the right time, turning out to be perfect for the job.

As I say, this book wasn’t created for us – it was made for people who knew first-hand the struggles the place went through, so I guess to reiterate what they’d achieved might have felt like boasting or something. But for me, who wasn’t around at the time, the context is a bit lost. Neil Rhind says that Moreton-Prichard was present at rehearsals, and I’m sure he took photos of the fabric of the building, the rebuild and the people, but this book is just polished production shots and only half the story – however very, very lovely they are.

The only picture of the building itself is on the cover. I’m suspecting it’s of one of the Old-Time Music Hall nights that were very popular in the 1970s, but it’s taken from behind the MC’s back, showing the audience – who are in themselves very fascinating. Whatever happened to dressing up like Margot and Jerry Leadbetter to go to the theatre?

Don’t get me wrong. This is a lovely book, especially if you’re a theatre fan/star spotter, and it’s very, very rare. You may be luckier than me, and find it in less than four years. Just don’t expect to know much more about what has to be an absolutely fascinating story after reading it than you did before.

I have a plea to make – perhaps to Neil. Please will you write us one of your specials about the history – both ancient and recent – of Greenwich Theatre? It seems to me to be important that it’s written by someone who knows first-hand. It’s especially timely now that the theatre is making its first tentative steps into producing again (Duchess of Malfi and Volpone are both on now.) I will order my copy today, if that helps….

In the meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a roll-call of just some of the people you could have expected to see if you visited Greenwich Theatre in the 1970s and 80s:

• Max Wall
• Susan Hampshire
• Martin Shaw
• Tom Conti
• Barbara Windsor
• Michele Dortrice
• Derek Griffiths
• Mia Farrow
• Bernard Bresslaw
• Andrew Sachs
• Julia Mackenzie
• Alfie Bass
• Derek Jacobi
• Nicholas Lyndhurst
• Glenda Jackson
• Pehelope Keith
• Tom Courtney
• Geraldine McEwan
• Michael Gambon
• Kenneth Branagh
• Rupert Everett
• Edward Woodward
• Felicity Kendal
• David Wood
• Bill Kerr
• Freddie Jones
• Fenella Fielding
• Nicola Pagett
• Robert Stephens
• Maria Aitken
• Ian Ogilvy
• Roy Hudd

I am currently wading my way through Peter Ackroyd’s prose ‘translation’ of the Canterbury Tales. I haven’t got very far, mainly because stuff keeps happening in Real Life, but also because it is not a work to be rushed, but sipped and savoured in small doses. It may not be ‘verse’ but it is still poetry.

Because I want to enjoy every moment of it, I started with the introduction (I’m normally very bad for skipping introductions)and I was very surprised to discover that it’s likely that a good part of Chaucer’s masterwork was written in Greenwich or Deptford.

Though the Tabard Inn, where the pilgrims set out on their journey, is in Southwark, the merry band passes through Deptford on their way to Beckett’s shrine, and Chaucer’s own hostelry is mentioned by the host – as ‘an inne of shrews.’

Looks like we’re back to the Greenwich Birds again – I’m beginning to get quite an image of the female population of Greenwich in medieval times. Or maybe it was the entire population, full stop – apparently, Chaucer was mugged twice in the same day (though other accounts I’ve read have placed him in Westminster and Hatcham for his total of three robberies) Being mugged seems a bit ironic since he was a Justice of the Peace at the time(annoyingly all the books I can find just say ‘in Kent’ so I don’t know if it was actually at Greenwich.)

One of the reasons he was living in Greenwich seems to have been financial. When his wife died, he was sued for debt – the days when he was granted a daily pitcher of wine by the king must have seemed very distant – and presumably innes of shrews in Greenwich were cheaper than nice houses in the City of London.

In 1390, while he was writing the Canterbury Tales (though he never really actively ’started’ them – or indeed, finished them – they were more organic than that – he wrote short stories that he later assigned to sundry pilgrims when he had the portmanteau-volume idea for bringing them together. Some were specifically written for characters; others were just doled out to the boring characters that were left, which is why some really suit the teller and others really don’t…) he was doing all manner of odd jobs.

He arranged for scaffolding to be built for jousts at Smithfield, and landed himself the job of Commissioner of Walls and Ditches – with special responsibility for the Thames wall between Woolwich and Greenwich.

But Chaucer’s real job was entertaining – in English. I didn’t know that the Tales were written here, but I’m delighted that they were, even if Chaucer had a bit of a rough time with the Greenwich shrews whilst composing them. So we can claim the father of the English Novel for our own, too (sort of…)

Now all I have to do is work out why there used to be a banner with a picture of Sir Walter Scott hanging in the old Visitor Centre. As far as I can see, the most we can boast of him is a couple of brief mentions in The Adventures of Nigel, one of the minor Waverley Novels and the worst book I have ever read by a long chalk…

Over the weekend I acquired a book that is exactly 200 years old this year. I’m always shocked at how cheaply it’s possible to buy literary antiques if you keep an eye peeled – I mean I have been known to send my credit card into a spin in an antiquarian book shop, but some of my favourite purchases have been less than a tenner – I mean – what other 200 year-old objects would fetch such low prices?

It baffles me why these beautiful artifacts are so little prized – so little so that if you go to ebay, there are pages and pages of ‘original prints’ – which are where people have wantonly vandalised books to strip them of the illustrations – the only parts that seem to command any kind of cash these days. In the process, huge amounts of knowledge are lost.

I never buy loose prints.

My particular find was cheap because it was a single volume from a long-lost set – the London part from the Middlesex Survey, 1810. Presumably it’s survived intact because it has no line drawings. It’s beautifully bound, in immaculate condition and every page is filled with charming facts – did you know, for instance, that “the richest grassland in the whole county is that of the Isle of Dogs, which has been lately reduced to 500 acres by the West India Docks”? The book spends three pages on haymaking in London, describing the embankments that were built up around the Isle to prevent the tide overflowing the grass – “it is kept sufficiently dry by sluices, which empty themselves into the Thames at low water.”

But the bit that has fascinated my most so far (I’m not very far into the book-proper yet) is the bibliography at the end. I have no idea if these volumes still exist – but some of the titles alone are precious.

Some are still widely used today – Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, for example. But whatever happened to Certaine Rules, Directions or Advertisements for this time of Pesitlential Contagion (which, apparently, contained a very useful caveat warning “those that weare about their neckes impoisoned Amulets”)? Or, indeed, Certain necessary Directions as well for the Cure of the Plague, as for preventing the Infection, with many easie Medicines of small charge, very profitable to His Majesty’s Subjects?

The Fire of London is a large subject. The History of the Damnable Popish Plot, in its various Branches and Progress, published for the Satisfaction of the present and future ages,” by the author of the Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome, for example, is, I am sure, a very balanced account. Or how about Jesuites Fire-Works; The Burning of London? And don’t you just love the irony of a book titled A narrative and Impartial Discovery of the Horrid Popish Plot? You could have also read Trap ad Crucem; or The Papists’ Watch-Word.

Natural disasters are well-covered. An Account of a Strange and Prodigious Storm of Thunder, Lightning and Hail, which happened in and about London on Friday, May 18, 1680, perhaps? Or A Short and pithie Discours concerning the engendering, tokens and effects of Earthquakes in general, (by Stukely, for all you Druids out there…) or another, rather more eclectically titled book about the London earthquake of 6th April, 1580, A Warning for the Wise, A Feare to the Fond, a Bridle to the Lewde, and a Glasse to the Good.

I find it hard to work out what else might be left to include in a book with a title as all-encompassing as A Full and True revelation of a dreadful Hurricane that happened on Saturday last, giving a true Revelation of several Houses that were blown down in and about the City of London, and Persons killed, besides several Trees blown up by the roots, and off in the middle; like wise of several Ships that were cast away at Seas&c. and of much Riches found near Deptford, with an Account of the Arches of London Bridge being Dry. (1701)

Ahem. Moving on, another book I would have loved to read is A Catalogue of most of the memorable Tombs and Gravestones, Plates, Escucheons or Achievements in the Demolished or yet extant Churches in London.

All London life is represented. Another candidate for the bestseller lists is Wonderful and strange Sights in the Element over the Citie of London and other places on Monday, being the seconde day of September, beginning betweene eight and nine of the clocke at night: increasing and continuing till after midnight, most straunge and fearfull to the beholders, and though I’m less sure about A Protestant Monument Erected to the immortal Glory of the Whiggs and the Dutch, if nothing else, I bet it’s a curious read.

Good Lord, I could go on for ages about those pages at the back of the Middlesex Survey. Perhaps a little investigative journalism – A Short and True Relation concerning the Soap Business? Or a whodunnit – Murder will out; or a clear and full Discovery that the Earl of Essex did not feloniously murder himself; but was barbarously Murthered by others, both by undeiable Circumstances and positive Proofs. Some reportage, maybe – An Account of the great Mischiefs done by the Mob on Tuesday 28th and Wednesday the 29th of May 1717, with a list of the killed and wounded.

Of course the chances of me actually tracking down many of these volumes is slim – not least because the bibliography doesn’t often mention who wrote them, or, indeed, when – but happily the titles are enough to make me thrill to the visceral nature of life 400-200 years ago.

Things weren’t so different then either. Another, undated, but at least 200 year-old book in the list bemoans the way everything’s changed for the worse round these parts – London, what it is, not what it was, or the Citizens’ Complaint against Public Measures, including A Remonstrance against the great Numbers of Shops &c. that sell Geneva and other drams to the Poor and the evil Consequences thereof.

Plus ca change.

While the snow has been falling and I’ve not wanted to venture out for more than a pint of milk, I’ve been amusing myself with the shamefully-out-of-print Greenwich and Blackheath Past by Felix Barker, and found myself fascinated by a chameleon-like character of the sort you just don’t get to see these days. John Major famously ran away from the circus to join another one but he was such a grey character that he was probably a changeling anyway. John Townsend, on the other hand, ran away from the theatre to become an MP but was a character so full of life and colour that the House was never going to keep him completely amused.

Townsend may not have been born in a trunk in 1819 but I’ll wager his dad sold a few. If my experiences down at Greenwich Auctions are anything to go by, you need to be a bit of an actor to do that kind of work and although barking out prices on secondhand furniture wasn’t for Townsend Jr, he would have learned projection from his old dad, if nothing else.

The lure of the greasepaint touched him even as a lad, and he appeared on stage from a very early age. He went on to lease the Theatre Royal Richmond straight after Edmund Kean had vacated the premises, then went on the road with his own company. His forte was Shakespearean tragedies, which somehow makes his brush with politics even more surreal.

Perhaps seeing Britain with a jobbing actor’s eye gave him his compassion because when his father died and the 33 year-old had to give up acting to take over the family business, Townsend became a Poor Law Guardian and the next thing he knew he was fighting for dockers’ rights. I get the feeling that he was elected MP for Greenwich almost by accident.

But once the limelight is in your blood, it’s hard to give it up, and John Towsnend MP, even whilst sitting at Westminster, couldn’t resist treading the boards. He played Shylock at Marylebone Theatre “to deafening applause” and received “long and prolonged cheers” when he gave his Richard III at Rochester. Ever the showman, he went one better at Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre by being the last actor ever to play the doomed king on horseback (presumably not whilst speaking the line about being willing to part with his kingdom for a steed…)

Can you even imagine Nick Raynsford as a Shakespearean character? I’ll look forward to hearing your suggestions for parts he might be suitable for. I guess today we’re not completely without parliamentary clowns appearing on inappropriate media vehicles – witness George Galloway making an arse of himself on Celebrity Big Brother for that one – but actors?

Trouble was, poor old Townsend was a dreadful businessman and I can’t imagine he’d made himself very popular with the local businesses he wanted to make pay their workers decent wages. He was forced into bankruptcy and had to give up his seat. He went back to acting full time and seems to have been much better loved as an actor than an MP, which, I suppose, is hardly surprising.

When he was 40, his health started to deteriorate, and he decided to emigrate. In order to get enough cash to make the crossing, he announced that he would give one last performance, at the Royal Hill Lecture Hall in 1866.

All 900 seats for the evening of “Dramatic Entertainment” had been snapped up faster than a Julie Andrews night at the O2, landing Townsend the princely sum of £200. He, along with his wife and fourteen year-old son (‘unanimously pronounced the most accomplished junior swordsman of the day’), performed for his ex-constituents one last time, then boarded a boat for Canada.

Of course, once he was there, he couldn’t resist acting any more than he could here. He continued until he retired in 1877, and I’m sure he stayed performing for family friends until his death in 1892. If it’s in your blood…

I was given a copy of Brewers Dictionary of London Phrase and Fable for Christmas, after seeing and not-very-subtly coveting it in Waterstones. It’s a great book – one of those lovely ‘dipper’ volumes that you don’t read from cover to cover but return to every so often for a new nugget of curious knowledge.

I didn’t expect to find much about Greenwich that I hadn’t heard of before in a book that was London-wide; but I hadn’t come across the term “Greenwich Barber” before. Greenwich Geese, yes, Barbers, no.

According to the book, it’s “an 18th and 19th Century slang term applied to the people who obtained and sold sand from the Greenwich sandpits.” It would seem that it derived from the idea of their ’shaving’ the sand away from the seams.

I confess the etymology of this feels a bit weird. I tried googling it and found very few references to the term among all the adverts for hairdressers in Connecticut. Most of the references I did find come from people referencing Brewers; Websters claims the original source to be the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. I have no doubt it actually was a phrase then, but how widespread it would have been, I have no idea.

If memory serves, the Greenwich sand pits focused around the Diamond Terrace area (I’m still waiting for my invite to one of those fabled cocktail parties in a back garden ‘grotto’ made from an old sandmine, hint, hint…) though I’m sure the splendid fellows at Subterranean Greenwich will be tacking the subject of sand mines soon.

The sand went to make Greenwich Glass – which, depending on which account you read, was very fine or absolutely awful. Since I have never seen a single example of Greenwich Glass, I have no opinion on the matter, but I did discover that the Duke of Buckingham, who was Charles I’s favourite, was a bit of a science-buff (they called them ‘chymists’ in those days) and got into glass making. His nice-little-earner monopoly ran out when Oliver Cromwell came to power, but Buckingham managed to persuade the Lord Protector to ban foreign imports, which had much the same effect. The duke’s glassworks in Vauxhall and Greenwich thrived.

The death-knell for Greenwich Glass sounded with the invention of lead crystal (or ‘flint glass’) in the 1670s by George Ravenscroft (not that I can find any link with today’s Ravenscroft Glass company.) Suddenly no one wanted boring old normal glass any more, they wanted the funky new stuff made with lead oxide instead of potash, and Buckingham’s Greenwich glassworks had to close (although he continued to make mirrors in Vauxhall.)

Perhaps from the point of view of Greenwich’s health, the closure wasn’t such a bad thing. Apparently glassmaking is a very nasty business – creating toxic black fumes and lots of pollution. In fact I’m surprised that it was allowed at all near a Royal palace – though I guess the smoke could have been a contributing factor to the royals moving out for good around that time…

Certainly Buckingham himself wasn’t daft enough to live anywhere near either of his factories. He lived at York House, on the Strand, and although his son sold it off to developers in the 1670s, the main Water Gate entrance (designed by none other than Inigo Jones) survives. Thanks to Victorian engineering (the Embankment) it’s now nowhere near any water – but if you fancy a little trip, take a right out of Embankment tube into Embankment Gardens. Just past the concert stage and deckchairs, the Water Gate still sits, somewhat stranded (no pun intended) but surrounded by some rather pretty flower beds…

Hmm. I appear to have waffled a bit this morning. That’s what comes from dipping into a book of curious facts about London. Somehow, everything eventually connects.

“The romantic and beautiful side of history is perhaps too much forgotten today in the very proper desire to reach accuracy of detail and the security of the historical basis of things.”

So writes the great Greenwich antiquarian Professor J.E.G Montmorency in his introduction to a very wonderful book written in 1925 by Gerald Baker, Blackheath – The Story of the Royal Hundred.

The professor’s right, of course, and I confess that I find myself rather more in the Baker camp than the Montmorency – it’s much more fun to take the wildly romantic view of things, and write sentences such as “passing over many scenes of less importance” about the boring bits of Greenwich history than to do actual original research. Of course when it comes to books I use, I’d turn to Montmorency every time – but for the look, you can’t beat the spiffing 1920s visions of Gerald Baker’s slim volume.

Take that lovely picture of Nelson Road at the top of this post, for example – complete with ladies in cloche hats and fur stoles. Or this leafy vision of the Paragon, which I understand wasn’t all that well at the time after WWI – though of course worse was to come before it finally reached – well, much the same view as in the drawing here – a few decades ago.

But the most fabulous thing about Blackheath… has to be the very telling advertisements inside the covers – and I thought today I’d share a few with you. They range from ads for hairdressers offering “Permanent Waving – by the best processes with the most up-to-date apparatus (fourteen separate cubicles)” through to F.A. Roberts who declare “here you will always find an attractive hat or toque suitable for any occasion…”

Some were enterprising individuals:

And some local eateries:

Sadly, I’m pretty sure that Alderton’s restful cafe doesn’t exist any more – but the gas showroom in Nelson Road is still here – even if it’s not quite what it was:

Not sure where to see a little bit of Greenwich’s early 20th Century hidden history? Try Joy – in Nelson Road. In between the saucy hen-night accouterments and sparkly gee-jaws, look for the old gas taps, the two beautiful remaining fireplaces – and, best of all, the mosaic-floored, stained glass windowed changing rooms with their wonderful, faded grandeur:

It’s worth trying something on just to get a closer look…

Another survivor is the old Heathview Hotel – now the Clarendon, which, this advert implies, has stones from the old London Bridge incorporated into its walls:

I’m pretty sure Chappells are still going too, though I’d hazard a guess they wouldn’t use a picture quite as – creepy – as this any more:

And what of those Quaint Conceits? Just take a look at this gay blade from Royal Parade.
Don’t you just yearn for a new New Argosy that sells rhyme sheets, Viennese ceramics and Russian dolls?

Has anyone here ever managed to battle their way through this? I bought it some time ago, really, really meaning to read it and have, so far been thwarted. It just seems so disjointed – much more so than other Dickens works. Maybe that’s because the choppiness didn’t show when it was in the Victorian newspapers in serial form, but I’m having problems with it now. I know that Bella Wilfer gets married at the Trafalgar Tavern blah-de-blah, but I just can’t get into it.

Radio Four is coming to my rescue though. They’ve adapted it to a drama serial, and it’s on Woman’s Hour (and 7.45pm for those of us who are out)every day this week. If you miss any of it you’ll be able to find it here, but don’t hang about – it only lasts for seven days after broadcast date.

I really hope I’ll manage to last the course this time. Otherwise I’ll just have to give up, as I confess I have done with Sir Walter Scott’s execrable Fortunes of Nigel, (yes, it’s really called that) which is, apparently, partially set in Greenwich, but, with large sections of it written phonetically in faux Scots ‘braw-bricht-moonlicht-nicht-the-nicht’ brogue is, IMHO, unreadable, even if it does have a pretty cover…