Jazz Jews - the movie

Well You Tube anyway. This is the book launch. I'm the guy in the blue shirt doing the introduction. When I put this up the counter on You Tube said the introduction had not been viewed, which is a mistake, as of course the man in the blue shirt has viewed it several times:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jews+jazz&search_type=&aq=f
Clare Shaw is the singer - the canary in jazz parlance. There is still one song from the launch to go up, her arrangement of Strange Fruit, written by the Jewish Abel Meerepol in 1936, and introduced to Billie Holiday in 1939 by the integrated night club owner Barney Josephson, and recorded by Milt Gabler on Commodore in the same year, which history in itself makes some points about jazz Jews and their relationship to the black community.

World Book Day - Berlie Doherty

Congratulations to Berlie Doherty on being appointed as the first Derbyshire Reading Champion, tomorrow on World Book Day. The appointment is for two years and during this time Berlie will act as an advocate and champion reading within Derbyshire and beyond, raising the profile of reading and libraries. She will participate in a number of high profile events with children and families as well as training events for staff and partnership activities.

Berlie is a Five Leaves' "irregular" - most of her books are with other publishers but we were pleased to publish her crime novel for young adults, A Beautiful Place for a Murder. The beautiful place in question is Derbyshire of course. Indeed the book is set in her home of Edale, and some real local residents happily have walk on parts in the book. The book started as a short story in our regional young adult fiction anthology In the Frame, before it grew into a full size book. It was shortlisted for the Bolton Book Award and is in its second printing already.

We will be publishing a Five Leaves' edition of Berlie's picture book Blue John, also set in Derbyshire. By tomorrow would be good, but it might be a little longer.

Ricahrd Hollis joins Five Leaves

Richard Hollis has been in publishing, or on its fringes, for 50 years. He has worked as a printer, art editor, production manager, teacher and lecturer. His first complete book designs were for Weidenfeld and Andre Deutsch. This was in the early 1960s, a time when he went on to design a series of covers for Penguin and, after a year in Paris in Galeries Lafayette's publicity studio, became art editor of New Society. As well as teaching at the London College of Printing and at the Central School of Art and Design, he was art director of Pluto Press and for a short time design and production director at Faber and Faber. In the 1970s he worked with John Berger on several books, which began with his Booker-winning G and included his best-seller Ways of Seeing. Hollis has designed art catalogues for Bridget Riley and the Whitechapel Art Gallery. This summer he worked on a book for the British artist Steve McQueen at the Venice Biennale. For forty years Richard Hollis made the layout and covers for Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort’s quarterly Modern Poetry in Translation. He does the typesetting for his wife Posy Simmonds’s graphic novels including Tamara Drewe, now being filmed by Stephen Frears. His first three books appear under his own name, but under the umbrella of Five Leaves. Two are connected with Ted Hughes and with a single London house. The memoir of Ted Hughes is written by Daniel Huws, the tenant of the flat where Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath stayed. Susan Alliston, the author of the second book, for which Ted Hughes wrote an introduction, at a later date, also lived in the house. The third book, a memoir of his experiences in the Holocaust is by Romek Marber, designer responsible for the basic style across most of the Penguin covers in the early 1960s and in the following twenty years.

States of Independence

March of Time - London

Another chance to see Ken Worpole talking about Alexander Baron, and Ray Banks takes his Gun to a reading more exotic than normal:

Wednesday 10 March: 8.00pm
The Classic Slum? Fiction, myth and history on Hackney's wild borders. A new edition of Alexander Baron's novel, King Dido, published by Five Leaves, brings the shocking history of the 'Old Nichol' slum in Shoreditch to life again. For the Victorians and the Edwardians this handful of streets on Hackney's borders represented everything that was evil and unredeeming in decent society. Yet were they quite as bad as they were thought to be? In this joint talk, historian Sarah Wise, author of The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum, and Ken Worpole, who has written the introductory essay to the new edition of King Dido, discuss the many ways in which journalists, social campaigners and novelists have sought to provide a definitive picture of these once notorious streets.Stoke Newington Bookshop, 159 Stoke Newington High Street, London N16 0NY
Tickets: £2 (includes a glass of wine and discount on featured books).
Info: 0207 249 2808
Fri 12 March: 7.00pm
AVANT! NOIR
Music from Led Bib & Get The Blessing, Dark fiction from Toby Litt, Cathi Unsworth, Courttia Newland & Ray Banks (author of Gun, published by Five Leaves). Visuals from Huzzah!! Noir
A night of criminal fiction, comic art and music of a darker hue. Enter a world where murder smells like honeysuckle and lunch is drunk from a bottle. In Toynbee Theatre’s art deco, velvet auditorium, four authors present a selection of bleeding-edge crime stories, intercut with animated chapters of online, collaborative comic strip Huzzah!! Noir.
Toynbee Theatre £10 / £12 door
Info: www.londonwordfestival.com
Tuesday 16 March: 7.30pm
Alexander Baron - novelist of London's street life and politics. The Guardian described Alexander Baron (1917 - 1999) as 'the greatest British novelist of the last war and among the finest of the postwar period.' Jewish-born in Hackney, Baron was amongst those idealists who tried to fight in Spain, who got caught up in political and literary life in London, fought in several major wartime battles, and who, after the war became the author of a series of gripping novels about war and London life in the East End, and in Soho. Three of the most famous are From the City, from the Plough (1948), The Lowlife (1963) and King Dido (1969).This talk will be given by writer Ken Worpole, who knew Baron.
Upstairs Room, The Wheatsheaf Pub, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1.Tickets: £3.00
Info: http://www.sohemians.com/SOHabout.html

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.

You've lost that loving feeling

Walking down Marchmont Street in London it was encouraging to see the Camden Council street signs saying "Love Your High Street", and offering a website for further information. And there on www.camden.gov.uk/love you will find a great promotion for Gay's the Word Bookshop. Here it is in full:
Internationally renowned, this small independent book shop and community hub has been providing textual orientation to London’s gay community for 30 years. The shelves, which are sponsored by the shop’s supporters, hold books on gay history, advice on coming out and gay and lesbian fiction.
66 Marchmont Street WC1N 1AB020 7278 7654 http://www.gaystheword.co.uk/.

Fantastic. Surely this then can't be the same Camden Council that is trying to put up Gay's the Word rent by 25%, threatening its existence?


The second hand and remainder shop Marchmont Books has suggested it is unlikely to continue trading, and Camden Council is also trying to whack up the rent of Maghreb Books, a small specialist bookshop carrying books on the Maghreb, www.maghreb-studies-association.co.uk/en/shophome.html. Keep reading Camden New Journal for developments.