Dreaming the impossible: Ray Gosling 1939–2013, a guest post from Jeff Cloves

The broadcaster and, for one book only, Five Leaves writer Ray Gosling had a wake last week. I turned up with the after-work contingent just in time to miss Jeff Cloves, all the way from Stroud, who'd just left. Jeff writes a regular column for Peace News, a magazine that Ray used to write for. Jeff has written this column for a forthcoming edition of PN, printed here with thanks.

The last copies of Pomona's Sum Total were given away at the wake. Five Leaves Bookshop (bookshop@fiveleaves.co.uk) has a few of the Personal Copy book left, but they won't last long either.

Ray’s precocious autobiography Sum Total – first published when he was 23 by Faber – has this quote on the cover of the Pomona paperback edition published in 2004: I am for the working classes, for the underdog, for the seedy and the left behind….and the England that seemed and still seems an impossible dream.  In a dim corner of Ray's home from home, the Hard-to-find Café in Nottingham, where I attended his wake, I misread this twice: firstly as for the weedy and then as for the needy. I am certain Ray would have hurrumphed his approval of both readings and, had he been there, drunk his way to a tearfully romantic endorsement of his own life.

 

The photographs displayed told their own story too: young good-looking Ray, slight of build with attempted Tony Curtis haircut and defiant cigarette. Old Ray ravaged by  events and raging against the dying of the light. The singer-songwriter, Dan Whitehouse, came and played a couple of very touching elegiac songs. The first, composed largely from Ray’s own words with a repeated lament for ‘little Ray’, and the second prompted by Ray’s advice to Dan: ‘don’t be scared’. Perfect. 

Peace News has always attracted very good writers to contribute to its pages and in the 60s and 70s these included Ray. His first contribution may have been his magnificent piece about the Cuban missile crisis and although he never had a regular column he was an irregular contributor. He also wrote for  New Society, New Left Review, Anarchy and any other publication with space for a freelancer with unpredictable opinions. One thing I particularly liked about Ray was that he was hard to place in the orthodox Left/Right spectrum and he shed light in rarely illuminated corners. Ray was a favourite Radio 4 broadcaster who spoke his mind without pandering to 'balance'. His programme about the Keeper of the Queen's Racing Pigeons was a gem among many gems. In the 70s he somehow arranged for the rock band I was in to play an open-air gig at a St Ann’s Community festival in Nottingham. He put us up in his rambling ramshackle home and took us all out to a club in the evening. To our unsophisticated surprise it turned out to be a gay club and we loved the music there. Ray was absolutely committed to the ideals of mutual aid, community, and Gay rights. He lived up to all of them. His voice belonged to what increasingly feels like a lost golden age of BBC radio.

Ray never answered letters but wrote to me once after reading a piece of mine in PN in which I mentioned, in passing, shopping in London for yellow socks. Like the pigeons, the socks caught his endless fancy. He was eternally interested in 'the left behind' and fought tirelessly to preserve the St Ann’s area of Nottingham from the worst of ruthless clearance. On the radio his unmistakable regional voice was a rare treat among the very few: John Arlott, Andy and Liz Kershaw, Pam Ayres. There are still too few. In 1980 Faber published his memoir of the sixties Personal Copy which Nottingham's excellent Five Leaves Publications published as a paperback edition in 2010. Like Sum Total it deserves to be widely read. Both books reveal that note of grumbling optimism which distinguished his radio broadcasts and how desperately we need that tone now.

Not making a killing

The day I was proof-reading Ray Gosling's Personal Copy he gets arrested for allegedly bumping off an ex of his. Today our local paper is full of the - presumably - final story, where Ray is all over the front page and pages four and five, about the £45k the police spent investigating the story. Ray has been given a 90 day suspended sentence for wasting police time. His solicitor made a statement saying Ray had engaged in a fantasy that had got out of control. I can't comment, or don't want to comment on the case. Those who know Ray Gosling are shaking their heads sadly, which is a more honest response than that of rent-a-quote MPs who have never met the man, or are using the case to bash the BBC, where Ray's original statement was broadcast.
This might not be the best of days then to take delivery of stock of Personal Copy. Will this fuss lead to lots of sales, or will it be near impossible to sell the book? The book originally came out in 1980 and for the best part of thirty years I wanted to publish this terrific book about the 60s in Leicester and Nottingham, as it only appeared in an expensive hardback form at the time. Maybe my timing could have been better.

New Society not Big Society

The summer issue of the V&A Magazine reminds me that I've only got until the 26th September to go to the V&A exhibition of photos from New Society, of blessed memory. Paul Barker, who edited New Society from 68-86, revisits the magazine and its photographs with an essay for the V&A. If you go you can pick up a copy of his Arts in Society, a book of essays reprinted by Five Leaves a few years ago.
His article (and the book of essays) is a reminder of how important New Society was for leftish of centre people writing and reading in that era. Sadly it disappeared into the New Statesman in 1988. Even more sadly it would be hard to imagine a modern day New Society without the backing of local government and charity job ads, which must have kept the weekly afloat.
A surprising number of New Society regulars have found their way to the Five Leaves list - Richard Boston and Colin Ward, both now sadly deceased; Ray Gosling (our re-issue of his Personal Copy arrived today) and the art director Richard Hollis, now running his own imprint under the Five Leaves umbrella. Richard designed the cover for Paul Barker's book, illustrated here. We have, however, avoided Melanie Philips, however, who is busy ranting from the right in the Daily Mail and other places that should have more sense.

Ray Gosling

This is not the place to rehearse the current story about Ray Gosling, the Nottingham writer who said on television that he smothered a lover who was dying. There have been many stories locally and nationally about this. Last Friday at 6.30pm a reporter from the Mail on Sunday pitched up on my home doorstep, asking my bemused partner if I was publishing Ray's new autobiography. I was in Scotland so she simply took the Mail man's number. I was interested that the chap chose to doorstep, as that home address is not in the public domain. The Mail could easily have rung or emailed the Five Leaves' office.

Yesterday's Mail - under the heading "Police seize Gosling autobiography in 'mercy killing' hunt" said that "It is thought he is in talks with a publisher, Five Leaves, to bring out the book this year. A friend said 'Ray told me about the book. I don't know if there's a name or an account of what happened'". The article goes on to say that "Identifying the victim is a huge challenge".

Perhaps one way of meeting this huge challenge was to nip round to the publisher's house and ask him if the name was in the manuscript? Why didn't the police think of that? Only, we've never read the book, discussed it with Ray, taken part in any talks about bringing it out, or even knew of its existence until reading the article in the Mail.

We are in the throes of re-publishing Ray's book Personal Copy: a memoir of the 1960s. This book was first published by Faber in 1980 and has some wonderful chapters about Nottingham and Leicester, Centre 42 and other aspects of life in the 1960s. Perhaps the Mail is confused.

There was one part of the article concerning Five Leaves that was correct though "Five Leaves was not available for comment". Indeed.