A Facebook post from a far-flung “friend” re- introduces me to a book. He’s looking for an early guide to London and I have several interesting publications including Coming to London.
Red, hardback, gold print on the spine its one of a handful of books I bought when the BBC was selling off various libraries. Its says 12 and 6 on the flyleaf but even I’m not that old. It will have been pence when published in 1957 in “Charing Cross, W.C.2”
I must have bought it for the short essays on the London experiences of Leonard Woolf, J.B.Priestley, Christopher Isherwood and Edith Sitwell. But as I sit reading it one Saturday morning, decades on from my forgotten purchase, I use the internet to explore its contents further. I’m not interested in the geography, I know London and its history pretty well, but I am fascinated with these people who lived there.
The book is brimming with characters I have never heard of; John Middleton Murray, V.S.Pritchett, Jocelyn Brook and Rose Macaulay. Now I had a pretty basic education – destined only for nursing, teaching, banking and a home - so I’m never that surprised by what I don’t know, especially literature and the arts.
But on investigation I realise this is a bohemian set of intellectuals from across the social landscape of Britain and beyond. They were really important personalities at the time. A-listers of their generation; wielding their brains, pencils and wit with confidence.
And they will have known one other. My research reveals this is a bit of an “it” crowd. Some helpful producer from years gone by has helped me connect the dots by scrawling on the inside cover page“Lehmann, John, ed”.
I send myself down a blind alley thinking he is a BBC editor but of course he’s not. Lehmann is the lynch pin bringing these talents together – the man who knew them all. And while the publishers, Phoenix House, didn’t see fit to give him a credit, or even explain the purpose of this book with an introduction - he did appear on BBC radio programmes.
Thinking about being remembered, I am stuck by how many of these souls have been forgotten and how often it happens, even now. You hear an item on the news and think ‘goodness, is he dead – I thought he died years ago’. Then there is Facebook, keeping so many people and their lives alive. Names from your past, which would have slipped from memory if they weren’t friends of friends – liking your pictures from afar.
So now I wonder, would the forgotten Coming to London crowd be using Facebook today?
