Still with the lights on. Finchley Road, London
Newcastle Bookshops: Robinson's
W. Robinson in the Grainger Market (opposite the Cheap Tab Shop) is a long established Newcastle bookseller with the atmosphere of a Parisian bouquaniste. Today it seems to concentrate on cheap paperbacks but in the 60s had antiquarian stock on the shelves above the desk at the south end and, indeed, was once also a publisher of local material. It used to be a good place for Frank Graham reprints and still has a decent enough local history section.
Newcastle Bookshops: Newcastle Bookshop
(photograph by Allan Glenwright)
The Newcastle Bookshop was on the Quayside (the address was 1 Side). The proprietor was Brian Mills who had previously been a lecturer in film studies at Newcastle Polytechnic. Drif said it was "great" book shop (because, unlike so many, it had opening hours that were easy to remember - 10.30 - 5.30). George Ramsden described it: "The shop consists of one room, fairly small and square, of which the front is entirely window, its panes rattled by passing lorries. It smells exactly how a bookshop should; along one wall stands a handsome bookcase, unlocked, with some interesting-looking books inside; the stock is well-chosen and enticing, the specialist stuff [applied arts] upstairs viewable on demand. Decorative touches are rare in secondhand bookshops, but in this one the ceiling is painted a rich blue colour, while the elaborate plasterwork of the cornice and above the old gaseliers is white - the jolliest bookshop ceiling in England". Brian Mills sold the Newcastle Bookshop in 1992 and it moved to Haltwhistle in 2002.
From TheBookGuide 28.04.10: I was saddened to read today that Brian Mills is suffering from dementia, and that his partner is collecting material for a memory book. I remember Brian from his days in the Newcastle Bookshop, and his brilliant trade card which featured a gas mask wearing audience. And I still have some of the wonderfully quirky ephemera which used to be a feature of his catalogues.
I was very sorry to read about Brian's illness. I remember well his shop at Side in Newcastle, and how when we visited him one morning, he took us in his car to his favourite lunch place, which we thought might be something special. We didn't realise at the time that we knew nothing about his tastes in food, so imagine our surprise when the lunch venue turned out to be a transport cafe! Brian was always such good company and so knowledgeable a bookseller who really understood his market. If you can, please pass our kindest regards, and this email, to Anne, who we also remember warmly. - Gordon & Gillian Hill 10.06.10.
Brian Mills died on 13 January 2011
Brian Mills died on 13 January 2011
Pirate radio
The Boat that Rocked is Richard Curtis's new film about the off-shore pirate radio stations of the mid-60s. In France, where I tend to see these things, it is known as Good Morning England (in English).
In those days the North East had its very own pirate station, Radio 270, although it was also just about possible to hear Radio Caroline North (anchored off the Isle of Man) and Radio Scotland (in the Firth of Forth). Radio 270 was usually off Scarborough, but occasionally drifted to a spot off Bridlington. It was owned by Wilfrid Proudfoot, a Yorkshire supermarket magnate, whose nephew was a grammar school boy. 270 was a former Dutch herring drifter called Oceaan 7.
Radio 270 went on the air in June 1966 and closed just before midnight on 14 August 1967, minutes before the Marine Broadcasting (Offences) Bill became law. A little 'secret' of 270's last hours is that an RAF helicopter attempted to drop to the ship tapes and messages from the off-duty crew who were stranded on land because of bad weather. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, demanded an enquiry. The story is told in Paul Harris's When Pirates Ruled the Waves (1968), the definitive account of 60s free radio (which gave 270, rather than the more obvious choice of Caroline, the honour of the dust wrapper illustration).
The pirate's record collections were not very big and when they got hold of a new 45 they would play it repeatedly (or were they paid to do so?). 270 seemed to play Traffic's Hole in my shoe over and over again in the last weeks. Maybe they thought imagining a hole in my shoe letting in water would magically ward off a hole in the hull letting in water.
James Kirkup 1918 - 2009
Kirkup is here pictured in 1936 around the time that Laurence was joining the grammar school and Kirkup leaving South Shields High for Durham University. His shirt collar is also pointed, but there the resemblances cease. Kirkup's appearance is dandified. His coat lapels are peaked - always correct for a double-breasted jacket, but a 'fashion-statement' on a single-breasted one; his tie is patterned like those of the young men of 1974; his pocket square is flamboyantly puffed. In later life he took to wearing a kimono.
James Kirkup
James Kirkup died on 10 May 2009 aged 91. He wasn't a grammar school boy - he went to South Shields High School - but he was well-known to Novocastrian poets. On 3 September 1971 several of us went to hear him read at Hancock's Museum and enjoyed the sherry afterwards. Kirkup achieved some notoriety for his poem 'The Love that Dares to Speak its Name' which was published in Gay News and led to the private prosecution of that paper for blasphemy by Mary Whitehouse. He was as the Times obituary says a 'flamboyant' character and might have become a Tyneside Quentin Crisp had it not been for his academic and literary achievements. In his memory I post here the covers (by Stephen Ross [Russ?]) of two of Kirkup's (many) autobiographical reflections. Both books were purchased from Brian Mills at the Newcastle Bookshop on the Quayside.
School outfitters
Raymond Barnes was, I think, exclusively a school outfitters (what do they mean by uniforms for leading 'colleges'?), while Isaac Walton was out to get you for life. I got my uniform from Barnes but I bought a vintage Isaac Walton tweed jacket at a retro shop only a year or so ago. It fits perefctly. Isaac Walton still exists in Newcastle, albeit on a much smaller scale and no longer as school outfitters. Still, I can't think of anywhere else in town to get a decent hat or a detachable collar.
Young gentlemen in tweed coats
The point about this not very good picture is that it shows grammar school boys at a social occasion outside school hours dressed identically to the masters on Sports Day. Furthermore the picture was taken as late as 1970 as if the 60's had never happened.
School books: The Thicket
The Thicket (1967) by David Boll is the essential Novocastrian novel because it is actually set at the grammar school in Jesmond. It is a story of trolley-bus rides, teas, books, friendship, first love and the fight against the conventional. Read it for yourself and discover where the thicket is.
Newcastle bookshops: Ultima Thule
Ultima Thule had a brief life (c1969 - c1973) in 'Arcadia' - as the Handysides Arcade had been unofficially renamed in the Summer of Love. It was run by the poets Tom Pickard and Tony Jackson (a Ginsburg look-alike) along the lines of the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco and Shakespeare and Company in Paris (which reminds me there was a 'Shakespeare etc' bookshop in Jesmond around the same time).
Ultima Thule was originally on the south side of the north passage of the Arcade and then moved to the north (of the north - if you follow). I remember the humiliation of mispronouncing 'Kerouac' in front of the local beats, and being told by Jackson that I didn't need a paper bag because he wasn't going to accuse me of stealing the book. (Maybe the brown paper bags were reserved for the books under the table.) For some reason I also recall a sign saying 'More nice books this way'.
Pickard ran at least two other bookshops in the arcade at different times but they rarely seemed to be open. Arcadia also contained a cafe called the 'Witches' which you had to crawl to enter (or am I dreaming?).
(In 2012 I re-read On the Road and The Dharma Bums (which I preferred) and discovered from the introduction to my new edition that there is no consensus on how Kerouac should be pronounced or spelled.)
It seems Jon Silkin was also involved in setting up Ultima Thule.
(In 2012 I re-read On the Road and The Dharma Bums (which I preferred) and discovered from the introduction to my new edition that there is no consensus on how Kerouac should be pronounced or spelled.)
It seems Jon Silkin was also involved in setting up Ultima Thule.
Newcastle bookshops: Thornes
There were also several others which disappeared long before I thought of pointing my Brownie at them. I bought my three-volume Lord of the Rings in the closing down sale of Dring's in Savile Row. The SPCK round the corner in Ridley Place was more than just a church supplier. The rather grand Mawson, Swan and Morgan at the Monument had a large book department in the basement. T G Allan across the road in Blackett Street was a large newsagent and bookseller which became a John Menzies before it shut. In Grainger Street the oddly-named North of England School Furnishing was a long, narrow shop selling books and stationery. Thorne's had several shops on Percy Street serving the university and was probably the town's main bookshop before the chains arrived.
For what is left see: www.inprint.co.uk/thebookguide/shops/north_east/tyne_&_wear.shtml
Newcastle bookshops: Davis Books
Davis's bookshop in Westgate Road was the largest second-hand bookshop in Newcastle in recent years. Mr Davis had previously run the SPCK shop in Durham so it is not surprising his own shop was strong on theology. Most of the stock was remainders - particularly in the latter years - but there was always a good selection of local history. Davis's also published reprints of regional classics. Looking up at my shelves I see Sopwith's Mining Districts, Wallace's Alston Moor, Fynes's Miners of Northumberland, and Forster's Strata. These were produced in a variety of bindings. Mr Davis optimistically told me he thought the better ones might be suitable for school prizes. I don't remember seeing any among the paperbacks on the table in the City Hall on Speech Day.
Photo from City Archive collection via Howard.
Newcastle bookshops: Steedman's
Steedman's has gone. I found the shop empty with a card in the window simply saying the shop was closed and giving no indication of whether the business had been moved elsewhere. You can see from the picture why Drif in his 1992-93 Guide said the shop is disguised as a building society "which has decided old books are the image of the month".
As a grammar school boy (like the Steedmans themselves) I sometimes called in here at the end of the day on my way to the Lit and Phil - though only for a few minutes as it kept old fashioned 9 - 5 hours. I remember the day I was admitted for the first time to the real stock kept in glass-fronted cases in the back room behind the little swinging gate.
George Randall records a visit here in the 1980s: "The customer enters a hushed, heated orderly shop, in an atmosphere somewhat like a bank. Decent copies everywhere. Only a typewriter in a back office impinges on the silence. Young Mr Steedman, dressed in a suit and looking like a football manager, leaves his look-out position at the front and, with perfect tradesmen's' manners, asks whether he can help. Steedman pere trundles about on vague errands. . . . During the course of my visit not a single customer came into the shop and the telephone never ran. At 4.20 a cup of tea appeared on young Mr Steedman's desk. Clearly the art of bookselling has been mastered here."
As a grammar school boy (like the Steedmans themselves) I sometimes called in here at the end of the day on my way to the Lit and Phil - though only for a few minutes as it kept old fashioned 9 - 5 hours. I remember the day I was admitted for the first time to the real stock kept in glass-fronted cases in the back room behind the little swinging gate.
George Randall records a visit here in the 1980s: "The customer enters a hushed, heated orderly shop, in an atmosphere somewhat like a bank. Decent copies everywhere. Only a typewriter in a back office impinges on the silence. Young Mr Steedman, dressed in a suit and looking like a football manager, leaves his look-out position at the front and, with perfect tradesmen's' manners, asks whether he can help. Steedman pere trundles about on vague errands. . . . During the course of my visit not a single customer came into the shop and the telephone never ran. At 4.20 a cup of tea appeared on young Mr Steedman's desk. Clearly the art of bookselling has been mastered here."
More here
Basil Bunting
The Monk's Stone stood in a field to the west of Beach Road on what became the Marden Estate, near Preston Village, North Shields. There's a 'Monkstone Avenue' thereabouts today and the stone appears looking a termites' nest on the badge of the nearby Monkhouse School. It was moved to Tynemouth Priory grounds in the late 1950s or early 1960s. It was probably originally a boundary stone of the priory, but had a later inscription apparently commemorating a robbery with murder: "O Horrid deed to Kill a man / For a Pig's head".
The Monk's Stone is not to be confused with the Laughing Stone, described by Basil Bunting in Briggflats, which stands in Tibet. Those who gaze on the Laughing Stone are thrown into fits of uncontrollable laughter which drive them to death (Tibetans are immune because they have no humour). According to Richard Caddel and Anthony Flowers in Basil Bunting: a northern life (1997): "In a curriculum vitae, produced in 1952 Bunting writes that he attended the Royal Grammar School . . . from 1909 to 1911. He was to repeat this claim in later life; however the school has no records to support this". His son Tom certainly did, and was a contemporary of mine.
coast train blues
As a black blazer I preferred to travel to school by electric train rather than the bus. They followed more or less the route of the modern metro but ran into the old Jesmond station which still remains as a restaurant. When the electrics were replaced by diesels in 1967 Iain McGill wrote this elegy.
coast train blues
them electrickal trains as i done ride upon
the electric trains i did ride upon
aint there no more an the girl she's gone
that electric girl wi'the kandy lips
ma ' lectric woman wi'them kandy lips
sat wi'me i'the coach with her week old chips
on that whole coast route the one sound i heard
was the greasy kisses of ma electric bird
ma only love was ma electric bird
a diesel woman dont much sound ma scene
them electrickal trains as i done ride upon
the electric trains i did ride upon
aint there no more an the girl she's gone
that electric girl wi'the kandy lips
ma ' lectric woman wi'them kandy lips
sat wi'me i'the coach with her week old chips
on that whole coast route the one sound i heard
was the greasy kisses of ma electric bird
ma only love was ma electric bird
a diesel woman dont much sound ma scene
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