Mr Whitehead`s Ghosts

Andrew Whitehead is a journalist, historian and collector, connected with the History Workshop website.

I might never have hear of Mr W except that someone I know had a couple of reviews posted on that site and I decided to check them out.

With one thing and another, I got sidetracked and ended up finding these rather excellent items posted online by this Whitehead chappy, who seems to be a denizen of some place called London ;

The Ghosts of Junction Road - 17 Feb 2012 and

Redfern`s Rubber Mats - 22 May 2012, both at  www.andrewwhitehead.net/blog.html

And also ;

A Tale of Two Shop Signs - 19 Feb 2012 at www.historyworkshop.org.uk/category/blog .

I don`t specially have anything witty or unusual to say about these, but I thought they were so good they were worth sharing.

Matlock Bath Grand Pavilion to Host Wildlife Photography Exhibition

This rather fetching little character reaches us with the excellent news that Matlock Bath Grand Pavilion will be hosting the Wildlife Photographer of the Year touring exhibition during the period 14 July - 2 Sept 2012.

It`s apt that this venue should be hosting an event aimed in part at encouraging an interest in wildlife as the Mat Bath Grand Pav itself was at one time looking rather endangered.

Thankfully, it`s cause is being championed by a determined group of local people intent on restoring the building to it`s former glory.

To learn more, see my article of a few days ago at http://angpav.blogspot.com .

Avarice and Greed

I like to introduce an element of avarice and greed into proceedings now and again, so in a spirit of naked self-interest, perhaps I could mention that this month`s Hoonaloon Books newsletter is now online and can be found at http://hoonaloon.blogspot.com.

Quotation Station

Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation.

Jane Addams

A Dagger in the Library

The Crime Writers Association `Dagger in the Library Award` (formerly known as the `Golden Handcuffs`) is one of a number of awards given by that organisation as it seeks to propogate a taste for mystery and murder among the populace.

The award has certain distinctive qualities that set it apart from the others.

As the title would imply, the award is given to crime writers nominated by library users and chosen by a panel of librarians.

It is given to the "living author who has given the most pleasure to readers". However, that has been refined over the years and the award is now given not to the authors of bestsellers, but to up and coming authors and/or library favourites who are felt to deserve wider recognition. The award is given for the author`s work taken as a whole and not for one individual title.

 The flyer reproduced above relates to a planned Dagger in the Libray event in Heanor, Derbyshire on 5 July, but no doubt other libraries will be hosting their own events at round about the same time.

Regular visitors to this blog and to The Sexton Blake Blog will no doubt be aware of my fondness for literary criminality so I`m happy to give this award a plug.

Further info ;

www.thecwa.co.uk

More About Books May 2012

John J Eddlestone - Murderous Derbyshire .  A fairly workmanlike non-fiction crime collection. The author and his researcher/partner Yvonne (surname unknown) drew heavily on court records in compiling this collection and it can be a little dry. It is at it`s best where a case has some ambiguities and/or some unusual and intriguing aspect that makes it out of the ordinary. Occasionally, the author does let his own personality show through and in my view the book would have been better if he`d had the confidence to do so more often. Here and there, we catch glimpses of how people in Derbyshire used to live - their housing, their occupations, their general attitudes and values. It may be that this aspect could have been explored a little further. In the end, it did win me over and for that reason I`d say it is worth a read.

J B Priestley - The Carfitt Crisis and Two Other Stories  (The Carfitt Crisis/Underground/The Pavilion of Masks) 

  `Carfitt` and `Pavilion` were originally conceived by Priestley as plays and he regarded them as "entertainments embodying some serious ideas", whilst Underground is a short horror story. A tricky collection to review, so I shall content myself with a few general observations.

The character of Engram in The Carfitt Crisis may be seen as a descendant of the Inspector in An Inspector Calls, as, arguably, is the unnamed `tall man` who appears towards the end of Undergound.  The characters of Marion and Joyce in `Carfitt` are well-observed but the dialogue of some of the younger characters is unconvincing. `Pavilion` plays host to one character`s description of a new age that he believes  is just beginning;

"An age when appearance will defeat reality, when what is said is more important than what is done, when the shadow will be accepted for substance, and more and more people will stop living their own lives to dream of living somebody else`s life". 

Sounds a bit like the present day !

 I don`t want to get into too lengthy a discussion of this collection, so I`ll close by saying that as a whole it doesn`t really work for me, but others may get more out of it.  I have reviewed other Priestley works on this blog (and no doubt will review others in the future) and it`s fair to say those were more to my taste.

Stephen Hines (compiler), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and others - The True Crime Files of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A compilation of contemporary comment, including correspondence from the letters pages of the press of the time, on two cases of apparent wrongful conviction, cases in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle involved himself personally.

The first of these cases concerned a young solicitor named George Edalji and the second concerned a rather different character, a criminal named Oscar Slater.

For the most part Stephen Hines chooses to stay in the background, only occasionally interjecting his own observations. I can understand that, but at the same time the Edalji case generated a great deal of correspondence and in that part of the book I felt that certain exchanges could usefully have been summarized rather than being reproduced in full.

In the case of Slater, Conan Doyle`s The Case of Oscar Slater is reproduced without any additional material and I must admit I breathed a sigh of relief for that reason.

Nevertheless, this is an invaluable volume in many ways and I would recommend it.

Vampires Visit Yorkshire Coast

Many photographers have taken pictures of the blue Bram Stoker plaque at Whitby, and I`m sure many of them have done it better than me.

That doesn`t matter as I wanted a picture of my own, even if, as happened on this occasion, I was slightly hampered by a sign directly in front of the plaque advertising a flat to let.

This is my third attempt to get a picture of the plaque. On each of the previous occcasions, something went wrong - once a camera went missing, on another the relevant image was missing from the camera on our return. Pretty spooky, yeah ? Well, no I suspect it had more to do with human error than undead forces.

Anyway, Dracula remains a personal favourite of mine. While Bram`s non-Dracula work contains one or two gems I`d have to admit that not everything he wrote was of a uniformly high standard.

But judge for yourself. For Bram completists, the site to visit has to be www.bramstoker.org , but there are other online places of interest and here are just a couple ;

www.bramstokerdracula.co.uk

www.bramstokerestate.com

(Indulging in a little lateral thinking for a moment, if you`re keen on literary plaques etc, you might wish to visit Nottingham writer Tony Shaw`s blog at http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com.)

Returing to vampires and other such matters, can I also take this opportunity to recommend this article ;

Matthew Coniam - Did a Vampire Really Haunt Highgate Cemetery ? No, of Course it Didn`t ! - posted Tues 17 April 2012 at http://carfaxabbey.blogspot.co.uk , an article which outlines an odd and rather obscure series of events which took place in Highgate circa 1970 and which provided yours ruly with a great deal of amusement.