Stanley Middleton May 8

The memorial event for Stanley Middleton, being held in Nottingham on May 8th (date corrected following comment!) is now full up. A report will follow on this blog in due course.

Three dozen

Slightly advance congratulations to News from Nowhere bookshop in Liverpool , which will be 36 years old on 1st May (vegan truffles are promised). Mandy and the gals will be featured this Sunday in the Sunday Telegraph. (http://www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk/)

Give that man a prize

Peter Mortimer is short-listed for the Arab British Culture and Society Award for the second year running, last year for his play RIOT (playscript published by Five Leaves) and this year for his Shatila project. This involved setting up a children's theatre group in Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, with ten children coming to the north east to tour the play. We have just reprinted Mortimer's Camp Shatila: a writer's chronicle, giving us the chance to do that final edit we had to miss (when producing the first edition in three weeks) and to add a postscript covering the theatre tour.
Peter has now organised a second tour, with a new cast, coming to The Sage in Gateshead and Saville Exchange in North Shields in February. The play will also be shown for a week at a theatre in Christian East Beirut before coming here.
Peter needs to raise money to bring the children over. On July 18th a bunch of writers, actors and others will be doing a sponsored Shatila ramble through North Tyneside and in June Tyneside Cinema will be showing a film of the first tour "The Palestinians are Coming". Peter Mortimer can be contacted on 0191 253 1901 by anyone wishing to become more involved, including setting up a Shatila Trust to create closer links between the north east and Shatila. Meantime one of the camp football teams is playing in Whitley Bay FC shirts - Pete's local team, currently Wembley bound for the final of the FA Vase.
Other shortlisted projects for the Arab British award include the BBC 2 series The Frankincense Trail.

Housmans

I've been a customer of Housmans Bookshop, round the corner from Kings Cross in London since about 1973 or 4. The long defunct "Housmans Peace Packets" mailing being essential reading in rural Aberdeenshire all those years ago. I've spent a small fortune there over the years, and from time to time become more closely involved, including, in 1995 drawing up a report for its Board advocating closure! Nobody ever pays any attention to me, which is just as well as Housmans is still there. You can see more of the shop on http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/09/return-of-radical-bookshops, including a long interview with the rather louche-looking Malcolm Hopkins. Malcolm's own career indicates that some radical bookshops can survive in the long run - some of his previous commercial employers Fagins in London (who remembers them?) and Borders both having gone bust. The video includes a nice snippet of someone browsing through our Jazz Jews - Housmans stock most Five Leaves' books.

Yesterday I joined the Board, not as a way of securing a belated agreement on my 1995 proposal, but to be part of Housmans modest revival. The shop is again trading at a profit, there is an excellent events programme, website hits on http://www.housmans.com/ are rocketing and the Housmans ethical alternative to Amazon is working well. The Board is spending some money shortly on new floor covering, new lighting and there are plans afoot to attract new custom from the now-thriving Kings Cross area.

What can you do to help? Buy books there, obviously. Order any book in print via their website. But also donate books - part of the regrowth of the shop has been underpinned by the £1 book box (pictured on the video) which attracts the passing stranger, recycles books economically, and brings several hundred pounds a month into Housmans.

Nat Hentoff on Jazz Jews

http://jazztimes.com/articles/25939-jews-in-the-family-of-jazz

First cuckoo of summer

Lowdham Book Festival in Nottinghamshire - jointly organised by Five Leaves - runs from 18-26 June. We're keeping the programme under wraps for a while yet, or possibly we have no programme to unwrap yet - believe what you will. But we can announce that the Bloomsbury Reading Day on the 19th is open for business, to allow attenders time to read their chosen books. This year's line up is Barbara Trapido, whose books will be pretty well known to readers, plus debut novelists Louise Levene (the ballet correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph, since you ask) and Jane Rusbridge.
The deal is £15 a head, which brings you a glass of Pimms on arrival, group discussions, a smashing afternoon tea with the authors, a Q & A panel and the book of your choice by one of the writers. If you want all three books you can get the other two at 15% discount.
The event takes place at the nice new village hall in Hoveringham, a brisk walk or short car journey from downtown Lowdham.
More details from janestreeter@thebookcase.co.uk.

Two men on the Metro

Andy Croft and Bill Herbert are off to The Smoke, to Pushkin House, to read from their collection Three Men on the Metro, on 19th April. A free event starting at 6.00pm
www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/three-men-on-the-metro