tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87067950778891341342024-03-11T03:11:06.855-07:00Five Leaves BlogRoss Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.comBlogger603125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-89317131634635825552016-12-18T10:41:00.000-08:002016-12-18T10:41:33.290-08:00Anarchism and bookshops<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The Anarchist Book Fair is the longest-lasting public book event on the left in this country, regularly attracting around 3,000 people from this country and beyond to meet old friends, argue the toss at meetings and to buy and sell books. Other than the smaller regional book fairs - Bristol, Manchester, Sheffield for example - there are few places where anarchist books are seen. Few general bookshops are interested in anarchism (give or take the odd Chomsky) and there are few radical bookshops.</span></span></span></strong></div>
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That has not always been the case. At one time there were 130 radical bookshops in the UK with a public magazine,<i>The Radical Bookseller</i>. Some seemed predestined to fail: Beautiful Stranger in Rochdale and Proletaria in Doncaster, where are you now? Others have lived long and happy lives - News from Nowhere in Liverpool celebrated its fortieth birthday a year or two back, while Freedom Bookshop and Housmans, both in London, are even more venerable. All carry anarchist books and own their own premises. That alone probably enabled them to survive when other radical bookshops were swept away.</div>
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There's always been a creative conflict between radical bookshops wanting to promote ideas and discussion and the necessity to pay the overheads and suppliers and, for those who go in that direction, paying the wages. The anarchist 56a in South London and the Cowley Club in Brighton are run entirely by volunteers and are happy so doing. There are several such shops, which are also social spaces, in membership of the Alliance of Radical Booksellers (ARB). On the other hand Housmans and Five Leaves, in Nottingham, are the only two new-book booksellers in the country signed up to the Living Wage Foundation. </div>
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In the heyday of the radical trade many, if not most, of the bookshops were anarchist-influenced or libertarian/feminist in their structure whilst selling a wide range of books. Operating as co-ops or collectives, they saw themselves as a prefiguritive business model for how an alternative economy could work, together with collectively-run print shops, wholefood shops, community magazines and the like. Mushroom Bookshop in Nottingham (where I worked from 79-95) happily sported linked anarchist, feminist and peace signs on the shop van and was run as a collective. When I left, it was turning over £400,000 and paying better wages than commercial bookshops. Its politics at the time were strong, particularly over anti-fascism and opposition to wars, yet it ran commercially with a thriving school and library side to the business. One of the reasons the bookshop operated in this way was so that we were able to employ people with children and we did not expect workers to live in poverty in order to work there. This was also the view of Silver Moon women's bookshop which operated for some time on Charing Cross Road in London (until rent hikes put them out of business when the government changed the rules to force councils to only charge market rents for premises).</div>
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The collective model was surprisingly controversial with, in 1985, Comedia publishing <i>What a Way To Run a Railroad: an analysis of radical failure </i>arguing, with supporting evidence, that collectively-run businesses were a bad thing. For some years the Federation of Alternative Booksellers refused entry to shops other than collectives, thus excluding Housmans and Freedom as well as shops owned by political groups of the left. This changed after some very fraught debates with the organisation becoming the Federation of Radical Booksellers. The current Alliance has no such concerns.</div>
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Whatever the structure, radical bookshops have often come in conflict with the law and the far right. Grassroots in Manchester, Silver Moon and Gays the Word were only some of the shops which had LGBT stock seized. Mushroom and others had drug-related books taken. Muslim fundamentalists attacked the trade in general over <i>Satanic Verses </i>and in response Bookmarks produced a widely-circulated poster saying Fight Racism, Not Rushdie. The far right were a constant threat - stickers, letter bombs, threatening phonecalls, physical attacks on staff - these were regular occurrences. These included, for example, firebomb attacks in 1973 and 1977 on two Black bookshops in London, both called Unity Bookshop, and in 1994 an attack by fifty fascists on Mushroom in Nottingham. The more recent attempted arson attack on Freedom Bookshop is likely also to have come from the right. But really, every radical bookshop was a target, Fourth Idea in Bradford, Gays the Word in London... everyone had their story to tell.</div>
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But to prove there is nothing new under sun, Christopher Richardson, in his book <i>A City of Light: Socialism, Chartism and Co-operation - Nottingham 1844 </i>describes how in 1826 the local freethought bookshop was besieged by Christians for four weeks before the owner, one Mrs Susannah Wright won the day. During the siege she had to draw a pistol on two of her assailants!</div>
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Radical bookshops have a long history, their names often appearing fleetingly in the records. Anarchist bookshops from the past include a succession of shops run by the IWW supporter Charles Lahr and a number of short-lived anarchist bookshops often described as "The Bomb Shop"! Leicester, for a period, had The Black Flag bookshop, Leamington had The Other Branch and the 121 Centre on Railton Road in Brixton had a bookshop for about ten years, though the opening hours were admitted to be erratic. Much better known was Rising Free, latterly of Upper Street in Islington. There is a persistent rumour that they sourced their stock (being polite here) from other bookshops. True or not, they helped me into radical bookselling by supplying books for a college stall on sale or return back in the early 1970s in Aberdeen before Boomtown Books opened. I've probably got some remaining stock from the bookstall if you want it.... A longer lasting libertarian outlet was the commercially-owned Compendium in Camden which linked the hippy era of Better Books and Indica (in London), Unicorn (Brighton) and Ultima Thule (Newcastle) with the more political era in the wake of 1968. It closed in 2000, still profitable, when the lure of renting out the premises was too strong for its owners to resist. Compendium was famed - in those pre-internet days - for its American imports, and by publishers for its slowness in paying bills! </div>
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Though the London Anarchist Bookfair continues, others such as the annual Socialist Bookfair, the Feminist Book Fortnight the <span style="color: #3b3b3b; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14.994px; line-height: 22.491px;">International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Book ran out of steam. The radical trade was also a significant part of Booksellers Action for Nuclear Disarmament. It was always my dream (not that I did much to bring it about) that there would be a closer alliance of radical bookshops, radical people who worked in mainstream bookselling, radical publishers, radical writers and radical librarians. All the groups mentioned did this for a period, but nothing permanent developed. </span> Not all former staff of radical bookshops stayed on the outside left - Days of Hope in Newcastle (known locally as Haze of Dope) included Mo Mowlam and Alan Milburn who both went on to be a Labour Cabinet Ministers but most bookshop staff are still around and often still have an involvement in the book trade.</div>
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In some ways, despite the number of shops being low nowadays, anarchist books <i>are </i>more available than ever, thanks to the internet but also the major operations (by left wing standards) AK Distribution and Active Distribution, both of whom have huge stalls at the anarchist bookfair but also at festivals and other suitable events. Both have an extensive mail order operation. There are also a number of second-hand book dealers selling anarchist books. The best of them is probably Northern Herald books, owned by the anarchist Bob Jones. Their stall is always the busiest at the anarchist bookfair and you can find them at many conferences of the cooperative and trade union movement. Frustratingly Northern Herald has resisted putting its stock online but they have never failed to have the book I wanted in stock!</div>
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The number of bookshops in the Alliance is steadily growing. Some are glorified bookstalls, some are second-hand, some are social spaces, some - I am thinking of the socialist People's Bookshop in Durham - are central to the local labour movement. The London Radical Bookfair (LRB), an initiative of the ARB, complements the Anarchist Bookfair (and includes some of the same exhibitors) and has found a supportive venue at Goldsmiths in South London. The LRB will have its fifth year next year. The Alliance also has set up the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing and the Little Rebels award for children's books. Having been initially funded by Five Leaves, the current sponsor is the General Federation of Trade Unions. There is more confidence in radical bookselling now than for some time and some effort has been put into creating this skeletal structure for the movement. A lot of that is down to Housmans, which has put itself at the centre of the radical bookselling revival.</div>
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Not that it is easy to run a radical bookshop... city centre rents are prohibitive. Five Leaves survives in its city centre spot because we are in an alleyway whose only other tenant is a bookies, but this also means we are unlikely to be swept away by rent hikes. Trade discounts are better than they used to be and publishers large and small are keen to support independent bookshops. With the closure of Books Etc and Borders, Britain's publishers are very dependent on the one chain, Waterstones. Even though the number of independent bookshops fell below 1,000 for the first time in 2013 our collective contribution to the booktrade is more than the sum of its parts and it is in every publisher's interest that the indie sector survives. It used to be said that the only way to make a small fortune in bookselling is to start with a large fortune... certainly nobody expects to get rich in this business. Not least because unlike, say, a cafe, bookshops need to carry a lot of stock to be attractive and it probably takes about three years to find your feet economically. </div>
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From almost the start Five Leaves has paid the Living Wage (not the Government's renamed minimum wage, the pretend "national living wage"). That's not been easy and we have to be fairly ruthless at business decisions to manage it. Whilst I have nothing against shops being entirely run by volunteers, I felt that I could not expect people to work for the business for less per hour than the cost of a standard paperback novel. It's also a good selling point as to why people should shop with us - we pay our staff properly. This has a resonance with many customers but particularly trade unionists. Our own annual mini-festival (Bread and Roses) has been trade union sponsored and we regularly work with unions such as UNISON, NUT and the former NUM on meetings and projects. </div>
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Five Leaves also has a big events programme, at least weekly events in the shop, political talks, poetry readings, Irish history, transgender, anarchism, Middle East, Corbynism... you name it, we've had talks on it. Often these are in conjunction with outside groups. The talks - not all book-related - being people in and make the bookshop a significant part of the local political and literary scene. These complement our main job, which is, and always will be, offering books for sale as radical bookshops have been doing in Nottingham since 1826!</div>
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Ross Bradshaw</div>
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Ross set up Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham in 2013, which grew out of Five Leaves Publications, which has been publishing since 1995.</div>
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This article first appeared in <i>Freedom</i> (Winter 2016/17) </div>
Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-16951287967908620922015-12-16T04:29:00.001-08:002015-12-16T04:29:36.881-08:00Roses and Revolutionaries<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Big spread in today's <i>Newcastle Journa</i>l about <i>Roses and Revolutionaries</i>, the story of the Clousden Hill colony by NIgel Todd (pictured). The book is launched tomorrow at Newcastle Library with Rob Turnbull's book about the Plebs League in the North East. http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/how-clousden-hill-communist-agricultural-10602306</span></div>
Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-19885688442889464082015-10-07T12:46:00.000-07:002015-10-07T12:46:30.371-07:00Bread and Roses 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-42158704596532521812015-07-21T12:01:00.000-07:002015-07-21T12:01:53.143-07:00These Seven - now available<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-40239145173236078672015-07-20T03:25:00.002-07:002015-07-20T03:25:40.066-07:00Colin Ward and Five Leaves<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I started reading Colin Ward in, I think, 1973, at Aberdeen People's Press. APP was a magazine with its own print-shop, one of many such papers throughout the country such as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Leeds Other Paper</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rochdale Alternative Paper</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. One table at APP was devoted to “swaps”, magazines exchanged with APP, and some national magazines for sale or reference. It was there I came across </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Peace News</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which I hooked up with for many years, and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Freedom</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The latter listed many local anarchist groups across the country and, tantalisingly, its appeal fund often listed significant donations collected at anarchist picnics in America, sometimes from groups with foreign language names. For a young man living in the north east of Scotland in those pre-internet days this was heady stuff.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Freedom </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was respected (and criticised) for being the journal of record of the anarchist movement, the paper of “official anarchism”. There were brasher papers, with more exciting layout, but often with only brief lives. With </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Freedom </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you got tradition and continuity and you had access to the work of Vernon Richards, the scarily pedantic historian Nicolas Walter and, the subject of this magazine, Colin Ward. I found some copies of Colin Ward's </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anarchy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which, though it closed in 1970, was still thought relevant, certainly more so than the second series produced by the group that succeeded him as editor. I've spent years trying to complete the set of 116 issues he edited.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over the years I got to know Colin's work, starting with a wonderful series of books on work, on vandalism and on utopia for Penguin Education and of course his </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anarchy in Action. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is still the book I recommend to people wanting to understand what anarchism is all about. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anarchy in Action </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">remains in print from Freedom Press, even if the Freedom empire no longer really reflects Colin's view of anarchism.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I got to know Colin – he spoke at one or two meetings in my later and current hometown in Nottingham - and found him as good company in person as his books were to read. The long defunct Old Hammond Press published pamphlets by him on housing and on William Morris and, in 1995, I became a “proper” publisher when Mushroom Bookshop published his </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Allotment: its landscape and culture </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(jointly written with David Crouch), buying paperback rights from Faber. Typically, Colin said he did not want any royalties, simply being glad the book was again available. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Allotment</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> kept Five Leaves Publications afloat for many years after we took over Mushroom's publishing side. We reissued several of his other books including </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Arcadia for All,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a new title </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cotters and Squatters</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and a selection of his essays, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Talking Green</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Colin preferred to emphasise the positive, with no time for “tittle tattle” about the anarchist movement. The nearest he came to that was the extended interview with David Goodway, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Talking Anarchy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which we published and is now with PM Press. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately the last few years of Colin's life were not kind to him. He was unable to complete his last commission, to edit a set of essays by other writers whose ideas chimed with his. I last saw Colin at the relaunch of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anarchy in Action</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at Housmans Bookshop in London. I'd been asked to speak and was proud to do so. My guess is that everyone at the launch already had the book, but everyone wanted to see Colin again and to honour one of British anarchism's most influential figures. It was, I think, his last public appearance. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our last Colin Ward publication was </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Colin Ward Remembered</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a collection of the speeches given at his memorial meeting – funded by those who generously chipped in to hire Conway Hall for the event. People sent so much money we were able to publish the memorial volume from the surplus.</span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-e063affc-aafc-b811-ee50-252bfdfc0ab0"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The meeting was attended by hundreds of people Colin had influenced. In my own case the Five Leaves publishing firm and the more recent Five Leaves Bookshop would not have happened without his early encouragement and his infectious belief in doing positive things, not just damning what is wrong with the world.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>This article first appeared in Anarchist Voices Volume 9 number 1</i></span></div>
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-78953965304521897622015-06-20T05:51:00.001-07:002015-06-20T05:52:14.204-07:00Five Leaves Bookshop, the story so far<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If there was any doubt that Five Leaves is a radical bookshop it was dispelled the day after the General Election when a stream of Labour voters, Greens and assorted lefties drifted into the shop seeking comfort after the storm. We found ourselves providing an open therapy group for the forlorn (as we were ourselves). We printed up some badges – Don't Blame Me, I Voted Labour/Green/I'm an Anarchist, as well as a set carrying the Joe Hill slogan, Don't Mourn, Organise...</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But how can a political bookshop survive on the high street? We were, in November 2013, the first independent of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">any</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> description to open in a city centre this century, and there are not many radical bookshops around. Like any good independent, we prioritise customer service – we offer next day supply for most UK books and one or two weeks for most books from the USA. Overall, our stock might be different to most other independents but for week after week our recent bestseller list included </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">H is for Hawk </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and we've sold masses of Penguin Little Black Classics. We make sure that there is enough choice for anyone coming into the shop, regardless of their views. We have one very regular customer, for example, who only buys books on Buddhism. Others head straight for our cityscape and landscape sections and quite a few other regulars never get further than poetry. Poetry is important to us, not least as it is a strong interest of one member of staff, and we regularly put on readings.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But in any case, radical books do shift – we sold over a hundred copies of Owen Jones </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Establishment</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in hardback and the paperback hit the national best-seller charts. Many of our customers, however, come for the specialist areas of the shop – Beat writers, Travellers/Roma, Anarchism, Jewish interest (our best selling magazine is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jewish Socialist</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">!), Transgender, Black History... We might not stock celebrity biographies but for some of our customers it is more important that 20% of our fiction is in translation, with its own dedicated section.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Five Leaves Bookshop works with dozens of local community groups including trade unions, the Quakers, Nottingham Irish Studies Group, Nottingham Women's History and various departments at our two local universities. We run an events programme with at least one meeting in the shop every week. Our own mini-Festival, Bread and Roses, attracted 850 people in its first outing, with packed events for Owen Jones, Natalie Bennett (leader of the Green Party) and cult-writer Iain Sinclair. Bread and Roses is probably the only book festival funded by trade unions. As we are not yet two, we are still taking baby steps in bookselling but the business model is working well enough to pay staff the living wage.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The bookshop grew out of the longstanding Five Leaves Publications, which has been publishing literary, social history and political books since 1995. One of our staff also works at Nottingham Writers' Studio, heading the current bid for Nottingham to become a UNESCO City of Literature. The two sides of the business are getting closer – this summer we publish a 5,000 print run book of commissioned stories by local writers including John Harvey, Alison Moore and Paula Rawsthorne as part of a literature development project in the city. It's being launched at Nottingham Waterstones, reflecting the way that everyone in the industry locally pulls together [update - had to move because of a double booking!]</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If there was ever a time when independent bookshops simply waited for customers to show up we feel that is long gone. We work hard to involve and be involved with as many groups in the city as we can. And not just in the city – from its previous publishing base and now from the bookshop we work with the Leicester Centre for Creative Writing to run the annual States of Independence celebration of independent publishing. Five Leaves also set up the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing and, with Housmans Bookshop in London, initiated the London Radical Bookfair.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">City centre rents make it difficult for any small businesses to survive. Fortunately our city has many alleyways and cut-throughs which provide spaces for “destination” shops. Five Leaves could not be more central to Nottingham. We are one minute from the city's main square and City Council offices and happily occupy an alleyway next to a bookies! </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now that we have been going for eighteen months we can compare like to like sales. Nottingham is a multi-cultural city and many of our customers are new to the city, joining those who have long been involved in the local literature or political scenes. We've doubled the stock since opening. Our staff has increased including appointing a part-time events workers. We are doing fine.</span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-a2f9e135-1102-5959-d071-8eb87adc686e"><span style="font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nottingham increasingly seeing itself as a “rebel city”. In literature terms we draw on the tradition of DH Lawrence, Lord Byron and Alan Sillitoe. The first radical bookshop in the city was opened in 1826 by one Susannah Wright and there were several others in our local history. Nottingham's radical bookshop tradition lives on!</span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>A slightly different version of this article will appear in Booktime magazine</i></span></div>
Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-69687644493403215462015-05-17T12:01:00.001-07:002015-05-17T12:01:42.556-07:00Remembering David Lane<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<h1>
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px; font-weight: normal;">David set up the Nottingham radical bookshop Concord Books. After the shop closed Concord became a</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px; font-weight: normal;"> national wholesaler for vegetarian/vegan and green books which David supplied to bookshops and wholefood shops. After he retired he moved to Bakewell where he remained active in the peace movement. David was a vegan when it was hard enough to be a vegetarian. A pacifist, he refused conscription but accepted alternative service as a hospital orderly, a period he always looked back on fondly. The years before his death were not kind to him but he continued to distribute </span><i style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px; font-weight: normal;">Peace News</i><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px; font-weight: normal;"> with the help of others and was always keen to know what was going on in the booktrade, at Five Leaves and Housmans.</span></h1>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Remembering David Lane</span></h1>
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<span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1420095356" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">Sunday 7th June 2015</span></span></h2>
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Starts <span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1420095357" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">14:00</span></span></h3>
<span>Details from <a href="http://www.veggies.org.uk/event.php?ref=1556" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://www.veggies.org.uk/<wbr></wbr>event.php?ref=1556</a></span> <span><a href="http://www.veggies.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/david.jpg" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><img align="right" alt="http://www.veggies.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/david.jpg" border="0" class="CToWUd" hspace="10" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEjr5Zs4Nsmn2fCg_q_qoD8Zu7vvXYHj7HF4YLCBXuUd220FcrqsKuB8DWmfRgatDV0CyfRLMR_aGTUx1zxU_WPT47mp2m2R7jyp7FIjnZaAUcpkD14M9OHDGsQImwkSeadRJeqK3vAq5tuJWGIQCbaOXdcnsvxe=s0-d-e1-ft" title="click to view image" width="278" /></a><br /></span><span>On <span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1420095358" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">Sunday June 7th</span></span> at the Sumac Centre there will be an informal memorial meeting for our late supporter, life-long peace activist, conscientious objector and vegan, David Lane [1934 – 2014].<br /><br />David's friend & follow campaigner, <a href="http://www.intellidatasystems.com/bkcms/index.php?page=80th-birthday" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">Bruce Kent</a>, honorary vice-president of CND, will join us, as will a number of people who worked alongside David in the book trade and on many campaign trails over the years.<br /><br />Vegan catering will be provided Veggies Catering Campaign, whose very existence, let alone 30 years of campaigning, came about through David's constant support.<br /><br />Further information from Moyra, Chesterfield CND [<a href="mailto:moyra_jean@yahoo.co.uk" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">email moyra_jean@yahoo.co.uk</a>] or phone 07732 128480<br />or <a href="mailto:pat@veggies.org.uk" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">pat@veggies.org.uk</a>: 07870 861837<br />or Ross, Five Leaves Bookshop: <a href="mailto:bookshop@fiveleaves.co.uk" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">bookshop@fiveleaves.co.uk</a></span></div>
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">
<span>Please pass this </span>on to others that will wish to remember David<br /></div>
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-32329847867290457482015-04-19T12:45:00.000-07:002015-04-19T12:45:26.198-07:00The programme for Bill Fishman's memorial meeting on the 25th April<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-82875058757316690552015-03-30T09:54:00.002-07:002015-03-30T09:54:31.984-07:00Five Leaves, the movie<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88k_x-ywzKw</div>
Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-60507217608257808432015-03-27T06:54:00.000-07:002015-03-27T06:54:28.477-07:00We need to talk about Nigel<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-65058202750886575982015-03-09T13:22:00.002-07:002015-03-09T13:22:57.441-07:00Bill Fishman memorial meeting - all welcome<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-55726611610787346412015-03-08T15:32:00.000-07:002015-03-08T15:32:19.825-07:00Five Leaves and the strike year<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On Saturday I travelled up to Wakefield by train with more boxes than is sensible for a bookstall at With Banners Held High, a celebration of the end of the strike year, thirty years after the defeat of the National Union of Miners strike against pit closures. There were hundreds of people there - a thousand maybe over the day - packed into the old Co-op stores, now reinvented as the Unity + Works centre. As at all the other celebrations it was as if the NUM had won. I talked to and joshed with old comrades and friends - from the Orgreave Truth and Justice Committee, from the Notts minority who struck, to miners who'd written about their experience, to young people who were not even born when the strike took place, to women whose lives changed forever during the year...<br />
Thatcher destroyed the mines but she did not defeat the spirit of those who stayed loyal to their union. The Cabinet documents released on the thirty year rule showed the NUM was right in saying that the Government always planned the massive pit closure programme.<br />
The journey back was a lot easier - not least as the Durham miners cleaned us out of Dennis Skinner books and all our Pride DVDs were sold. In the past, could anyone have believed that a best seller at a miners' event would have been a lesbian and gay film?<br />
Our involvement with the NUM has been one of the highlights of the last period for Five Leaves. With the anniversary coming we commissioned the rock journalist Harry Paterson to write a short book on Nottinghamshire and the miners' strike. Harry came from a mining family and his father-in-law was out the full year, his mother involved in a women's support group. There had been a handful of books about Notts in the strike, personal experience books, but nobody had told the full story of the minority who struck and the subsequent rise (and fall) of the UDM. We'd previously published David Bell's <i>Dirty Thirty</i> about the Leicestershire strikers, a tiny minority, but here we wanted to publish the definitive story, or as near to it as we could. The book was unashamedly pro-strike but interviewed everyone who would speak to Harry to create the narrative. The book grew and grew (and is still growing, the new e-book editon includes some additions) becoming <i>Look Back in Anger - the miners' strike in Nottinghamshire, thirty years on</i>. This was Harry's first book and, if not blows, we certainly traded a lot of emails. Harry is still scarred by my comment on his first draft that this was like a Mills and Books novel written by Lenin. We are proud of the result and became good friends over the duration which means I have to now support his football team, if that is what Alloa Athletic really is!<br />
We did not have a book launch somehow, but Harry went on tour to union branches including Notts County UNISON, UNITE and even Ayrshire UNISON. The book was well reviewed and well received and was reprinted quickly.<br />
If ever we had any doubt about the book it would have been dispelled at the Notts Retired and Ex-Miners celebration of the strike when Henry Richardson, former General Secretary of the Notts NUM, said to the 400 people at their event in Kirkby that <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">"This is your story. Every striking miner should have a copy of the book in their house to tell your children and grandchildren what you did." </span>That, shall we say, helped sales on the night. It was a grand night anyway. Not least as the Notts NUM brought in a vegetarian alternative to their (meat) pie and pea supper, giving me a doggy bag of fifteen more veggie pies to freeze and bring back to other NUM events! We sold a lot of Coal Not Dole T-shirts on the night too - mostly XXL. As one miner said, we were all medium size once. The outside speaker was Owen Jones (who would later come to our own Bread and Roses weekend) who started by saying he looked like a minor rather than a miner. The most applause came when he mentioned the Government's then current advertising campaign against immigrants. This touched a chord with a 99% white audience and, like the Pride CD showed how much the militant minority in Notts know the word solidarity.<br />
The Kirkby event was really for NUM members and their families, so Five Leaves took on organising a Nottingham city commemoration. Harry spoke, the Clarion Choir sang, Joyce Sheppard from Women Against Pit Closures, Bianca Todd from Left Unity, Keith Stanley from Notts NUM and the <i>Guardian</i>'s Seamas Milne all spoke too. 150 people packed the Friends Meeting House. We sent a donation to the Doncaster Care Workers, then out on strike, who were at our evening. This was an important event for Five Leaves as we had only opened a few months beforehand and we wanted to see if we could pull off the sort of event we thought Nottingham should do to remember the strike. It was another great night.<br />
As a result of the Nottingham event the Retired and Ex-Miners booked Seamas to speak at an event in Mansfield, which we supported, and at Christmas two of the staff were honoured to attend the NUM Christmas dinner with Dennis Skinner as the speaker. Another occasion when we ran out of books.<br />
Over the summer two of the team also set up stall at the big event commemorating Orgreave, using our new gazebo (which did not survive its second outing, but that's another story) coming back again with big sales but also hearing lots of miners saying "got that one, read that one, I'm on the cover of that book, there's a picture of me in this one..." We also did a bookstall for Derby People's History at which our local NUM colleagues Alan Spencer and Eric Eaton spoke, the Clarion choir sang... And recently we did a stall for the Notts and Derby Labour History Group with Huw Beynon speaking, Huw gave the clearest presentation on the Ridley Report and government preparations for the strike - a strike they provoked, yet (read Harry's book!) came so close to losing.<br />
And throughout the year our miners section in the shop has been popular - especially Harry's book, Seamas's latest edition of <i>The Enemy Within </i>and the DVD <i>Still the Enemy Within</i>.<br />
Thinks will be much quieter now - but in the coalfields people still organise. At Wakefield there was a big present from those who organise the "Big Meeting", the Durham Miners Gala - now bigger than ever, as the NUM remains committed to community organising and social change. This was instanced by the "Darlo Mums" NHS march when it passed through Mansfield to a tremendous welcome organised by the Retired and Ex- gang.<br />
It's been a great year. My only regret is that so many involved in the strike are no longer with us. I've mentioned before four women who did so much to support the strike but who died, in some cases well before their time. The Nottingham meeting was dedicated to them: Ida Hackett from Mansfield, Liz Hollis and Pat Paris from Nottingham and Joan Witham whose book <i>Hearts and Minds</i>, sadly now unavailable, recorded the activities of the Nottinghamshire Women's Support Group.<br />
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-92165781918036944662015-02-15T09:57:00.000-08:002015-02-15T09:57:03.375-08:00Allotment launch invite!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-36262814873050646052015-02-15T09:55:00.002-08:002015-02-15T09:55:39.865-08:00New allotment book from Five Leaves<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-24116489921137898632015-02-13T05:22:00.000-08:002015-02-13T05:22:22.987-08:00New ebook from Five Leaves: David Jackson on the Bulger case<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;">Another e-book only title from Five Leaves. <i>Destroying the Baby in Themselves: why did the two boys</i> <i>killed James Bulger</i>? by David Jackson. This is a reprint of one of the first titles published by Five Leaves in 1996 and is an examination of the actions of James Bulger's killers in the light of the culture which pressurises boys to be ever more agressively manly, harder, stronger, more commanding yet these two boys had chaotic backgrounds which led to the paralysing horror of the event.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><i>Destroying the Baby in Themselves</i> has been unavailable for many years but consistently in demand as a course book. It is available at 99p</span><br />
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from all e-book platforms.</div>
Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-3981385078521774192015-02-12T07:32:00.000-08:002015-02-12T07:32:08.330-08:00New from Five Leaves: David Jackson on the killing of Stephen Lawrence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Now available as an e-book, as an ebook only to be precise. <i>The Fear of Being Seen as White Losers: white</i> <i>working class masculinities and the killing of Stephen Lawrence</i>, by David Jackson. 99p from all ebook platforms.<br />
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This essay extends anti-racist debates by taking a close look at some of the possible reasons for the murder of Stephen Lawrence. His murder was a part of the rise of extremely violent racism in Britain (particularly in south-east London) and in Europe over the preceding decade. The neglected links between Stephen Lawrence’s murder and the wider issues of English national and young white working-class masculine identities are explored, to more clearly understand the complex reasons for the killing.</div>
Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-30415026142062345502015-02-08T08:20:00.000-08:002015-02-08T08:20:13.210-08:00A message from Alan Gibbons about National Libraries Day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Four
years after I called for a National Libraries Day, an event that is now an
annual celebration, I fear for their future. On May 25th that year I
said:</span></div>
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“We are delighted to launch National Libraries Day, a week of events in
early February leading to a day of celebration of reading, libraries and
librarians around the United Kingdom. A reading child is a successful child. A
child who goes to the library is twice as likely to be a good reader and that
child becomes a literate adult, a lifelong reader. There are 320 million visits
a year to our libraries but we can make them even more popular,”<br />Four years
on, the annual number of visits has fallen by forty million. The fall has been
steepest in deprived communities, according to research by the House of Commons
library commissioned by the Labour Party. The research follows the Cipfa figures
in assessing that there were 282m visits to libraries in England in 2013-14,
compared with 322m four years earlier.<br />In deprived areas, the percentage of
people using libraries has dropped by more than a fifth from 46.2 per cent to
36.8 per cent.<br />A third of people aged 16 and 24 had visited a library in the
last year, compared with nearly 40 per cent four years earlier.<br />There are now
at least 330 fewer libraries open for 10 hours or more a week, a fall of eight
per cent.<br />A few months ago William Sieghart, author of an independent report
on libraries, warned the network was at a “critical moment.” Even the
prestigious Birmingham of Library faces devastating service cuts.<br />Add the
number of library closures to branches being handed over to an uncertain future
in the hands of trusts and volunteers, book stock reductions and ever shorter
opening hours and you have a recipe for possibly irreversible decline.<br />During
my years of campaigning to save our libraries, I have debated with MPs,
councillors and the Culture Secretary. I have yet to hear a single comment from
any of these people to reassure me that the service is safe in their hands. So
let’s celebrate National Libraries Day, but we will have to fight for them if it
is to mean anything.</div>
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Alan Gibbons, Campaign for the Book</div>
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-68062951034441935772015-01-19T12:07:00.000-08:002015-01-19T12:07:13.348-08:00Is there a siffleur in the house?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If you were listening to the radio today and heard a new word - siffleur - referring to Ronnie Ronalde who has just died, you have not yet read the Five Leaves' book <i>A Brief History of Whistling</i>. Ronalde is of course covered in the book. A siffleur is a professional whistler. The female version is siffleuse, and our book was launched with a siffleuse, Sheila Harrod, who knew Ronalde, stealing the show. The book also retells John Gorman's story of Ronalde appearing on Sundays at a bar in Hackney, deserted during the week, but an upmarket bar with drag queens on Sundays. This was in the 1950s. Ronalde's whistling was popular in the 1940s and 50s, when he was regularly on the radio, had best-selling records and you could even by a Ronnie Ronalde whistling aid which looked like a polo mint but made of tin.<br />
As far as we know, our book is the only book on the history of whistling!</div>
Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-36516817607630784002015-01-17T02:12:00.001-08:002015-01-17T02:12:33.953-08:00Five Leaves next title - a return to allotments!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-91313456662023477352015-01-13T12:39:00.000-08:002015-01-13T12:39:22.906-08:00Mike Marqusee<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Five Leaves is sorry to read that Mike Marqusee has died, aged only 61, after being ill for several years with cancer. He was a great supporter of the NHS and in his writings often talked about the number of people who'd kept him alive and the way the NHS is being abused by this government.<br />
Mike could be correctly described as unique in that he was the only London-based American Jewish Marxist who wrote about cricket, including for the Indian newspaper <i>The Hindu</i>.<br />
Though I knew of his political, music and sporting writing I'd never met him until he rang to ask if I could put together a team of people to help him leaflet Trent Bridge announcing the formation of an anti-racist cricket organisation. I was happy to help as long as nobody asked about cricket! Later Mike came to Lowdham Book Festival, then jointly organised by Five Leaves, to talk about Bob Dylan, the subject of two of his books.<br />
His other books included the important <i>If I Am Not Myself: journey of an anti-Zionist Jew</i> and, recently, <i>The Price of Experience: writings on living with cancer</i>.<br />
Mike was a committed socialist activist, involved in the anti-war movement who went public on how the Socialist Workers Party abused their position within the Stop the War group. His socialism was ethical, inclusive and visionary. I was pleased, then to include his essay Let's Talk Utopia as the editorial essay in the Five Leaves publication <i>Utopia</i>. In that essay he wrote "We need to find ways to connect to the utopian yearnings that move millions of people, and which the right-wing and the advertising industry know too well how to exploit. We have to offer something more participatory, concrete and the same time more dynamic, more of a process, a journey than an end product polished by the intelligentsia. In doing that, we can draw on a rich tradition going back to the Biblical prophets and found in almost every society." In a sentence he summed up his argument "We need the attraction of a possible future as well as a revulsion at the actual present. ... we don't 'talk utopia' nearly enough."<br />
Mike helped make the left more inhabitable and his influence was widespread.<br />
Typically he asked for contributions in his memory to go to Medical Aid for Palestine and to St Joseph's Hospice which looked after him towards the end.<br />
Our condolences to his partner, comrade and co-thinker, Liz Davies.</div>
Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-62406525538659529372015-01-07T09:40:00.001-08:002015-01-07T09:40:53.332-08:00Allotment publishing, then and now: this blessed plot, this earth, this realm... <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I used to work in a radical bookshop in Nottingham called Mushroom Bookshop. Somehow I'd missed buying Colin Ward and David Crouch's book <i>The Allotment: its landscape and culture </i>when it came out as an expensive Faber hardback before it went out of print. In 1994 I got fed up waiting on the paperback and suggested to Faber that Mushroom buy the rights and that we publish in paper ourselves. This seemed a bit excessive as I only wanted one copy (the internet had not been invented yet) but needs must. Colin - a friend of mine as it happened - and David were keen to see new life breathed into the work. Faber set a reasonable price and, hey presto, I was a publisher of real books under Mushroom's name. I'd previously published pamphlets under various guises, but this was a 311 page book of some import.<br />
It turned out a lot of people had been waiting, and waiting, and we had a steady seller on our hands. It was one of the very few books that came up on searches for allotments and was particularly popular among those new to allotmenting who wanted to know their history. At the time I had two plots myself on the famous Hungerhill site in Nottingham. The book was reviewed, mentioned, referred to, sent to John Prescott when he was in charge of allotments, drawn on for everything anybody else was writing on allotments and bits were lifted without permission or credit by one Sunday newspaper!<br />
In 1995 I left Mushroom and their publications went with me (we'd published a few other books by then) and <i>The Allotment </i>became the book that underwrote the rest of what was now Five Leaves' list. It was not long before Five Leaves became the world's biggest publisher of books on allotments. We became so when we published our second such book, <i>One Woman's Plot</i> by Geraldine Kilbride. It sold out. Indeed, if anyone has a spare copy I'd like one as our file copy here has some missing pages! Then came <i>City Fields, Country Gardens</i>, a collection of allotment essays that first appeared in the <i>Guardian</i> from Michael Hyde. <br />
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The book was edited by David Crouch and Martin Stott, with wonderful photos by Martin. We learned that Michael was very ill and brought publication forward. He received copies just in time, in hospital where he presented a copy to his favourite nurse, and though he was far too ill to attend the launch he said a few words down the phone. Michael had kept allotment writing alive during the dark periods and we were proud to have published him. That sold out too.<br />
We added <i>The Art of Allotments</i> by David Crouch and couldn't help but feel a BIG book on allotment art and photography would be a good thing.... but that is for others, because by now allotment publishing was not uncommon and it was time for Five Leaves to move on, our job done on that front. Yet Crouch and Ward kept selling and we kept reprinting it, thinking it was time for that book to leave the stage but still nobody else had written an accessible yet well researched book on allotment history.<br />
Until we met Lesley Acton. It was time to let Crouch and Ward go and, after a decent interval, replace the book. Sure, there are one or two others, but aimed more for a popular market (and we don't do popular) rather than social history. How did we meet Lesley? Not sure, because she normally writes on ceramics but had moved on to allotments and runs www.allotmentresources.org.<br />
So... on March 14 in Leicester and March 16 in London we launch <i>A Growing Place: a history of the allotment movement</i> by her. You can't order it yet, but will soon.<br />
This history investigates how changing economic, political and cultural conditions have affected the demand for plots. Allotmenting is far from being a benign activity for the poor but a highly politicised issue reflecting debates on land use, good food, planning and, now, "redevelopment". In tracing the ups and downs of the movement and its culture the book discusses whether allotments will continue to survive.<br />
And Five Leaves returns to its roots. In more ways than one.<br />
ps - this blessed plot quote is from Shakespeare's King Richard II</div>
Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-19802693054451786882014-12-30T13:50:00.001-08:002014-12-30T13:50:09.615-08:00Radical bookselling update and prospects<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The
big debate in the general booktrade - featured heavily in the
</span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Guardian</span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">
- is about whether the day of the celebrity biography has finally
come to an end or is simply slowing down. At the other end of the
spectrum even commercial publishers have started noticing that left
wing books sell, and sell well, with Allen Lane publishing </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The
Establishment</span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">
by Owen Jones. This book topped the Christmas best-seller charts at
Nottingham's Five Leaves Bookshop and at News from Nowhere in
Liverpool, coming second at Housmans in London only to Housmans' own
annual </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Peace
Diary</span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">,
despite it being a £16.99 hardback. Allen Lane, the top end of the
Penguin empire, also published Naomi Klein's </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">This
Changes Everything</span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">,
the one book that really might have an impact on climate change and a
book which places the blame for climate change right where it belongs
- with capitalism.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Five
Leaves has just completed its first full year trading as an
independent and radical bookshop. Looking at our December
best-sellers, ten of the top fifteen were political books. The only
novel was John Harvey's </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Darkness,
Darkness</span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">
which was set during the miners' strike of thirty years ago and in
modern times. Indeed, three of the fifteen were related to the
miners' strike. The strike remains a defining part of our common
history. We're pleased with our first year, but just as pleased that
News from Nowhere had a record Yuletide and a record year. The
publicity around their fortieth birthday helped as did the
unfortunate closure of a Waterstones' branch in the same street. Many
people, in person and online prefer to "shop with the real
Amazons" at this women-run bookshop. The radical book-trade is
nothing if not tenacious! News From Nowhere, London's Gay's the Word
and Housmans are positively venerable; Wordpower in Edinburgh and
the two anarchist distributors Active Distribution and AK
Distribution have passed out of their teenage years but there is a
range of younger projects that seem to be sustaining themselves. All
strive to be part of their local community, working with campaign and
other groups. It can only be positive that members of the Alliance of
Radical Booksllers are sprinkled around the country - it's not a
London-centric membership. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">AK
Distribution report that their best selling titles includes books on
feminism and economics and in Scotland Wordpower had large sales for
books related to the Scottish referendum. Another trend is the
renewed interest in "people's history". In Nottingham Chris
Richardson's </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">City
of Light</span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">,
a book about radical life in the city in the year of 1844 has sold
over 500 copies while Spokesman Books and Merlin Press offer a
different history of World War One that that pursued by our
Government. For those of us keen on pamphlets it is s good to see
Stop the War Coalition's pamphlet on WWI, </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">No
</span></span></em><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Glory.
P</span></span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">eople</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">
will read pamphlets if they are stocked by bookshops - something
commercial bookshops are loathe to do. Five Leaves is a
publisher turned bookseller and having a shop has enabled us to
return to being a pamphleteer too. Our first two titles will be
available shortly, one being a forgotten essay by Edward Said on
Jerusalem, sadly as appropriate now as when first written, the
second on the Communist </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Doctor
Who </span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">writer,
Malcolm Hulke, whose existence we came across in the </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Morning
Star</span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">!</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Radical
bookshops are not the only side of the business with claims to
venerability. Merlin Press will shortly be sixty and its publishing
arm is run in tandem with Global Book Marketing, representing
many publishers from home and abroad while the main distributor
of radical publishers and magazines, Central Books, has been
in business since 1939. Nobody rests on their laurels
though, and the Russell Press (set up in the heady days of 1968) has
been at the forefront of digital printing and reports more and more
groups using this affordable technology to publish local and people's
histories.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Bookshops,
publishers, distributors, printers... and prizes and bookfairs. The
Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing is four in 2015 and will
be funded by the General Federation of Trade Unions while in
Nottingham the mini-festival of the same name was established in
November also with trade union support. The number of local anarchist
bookfairs continues to grow while the London Radical Bookfair is now
the major date for the whole radical booktrade to come together. This
year the Bookfair will again be at the Bishopsgate Institute, on 9th
May.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">So
what are the big radical titles going to be for 2015? We too are
finding a lot of interest in feminism, especially from young women,
but the publishers are a bit slow to catch up. An exception is the
short book </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">We
Should All Be Feminists </span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">by
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The Green MP Caroline Lucas should get a
lot of attention in March with her </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Honorouble
Friends? </span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">discussing
her work inside and outside of Parliament while Paul Mason's </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Post
Capitalism </span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">will
be a summer best seller. Looking at the lists of dedicated left wing
publishers, Pluto is bringing out David Rosenberg's </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Rebel
Footprints</span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">,
a walking guide to the capital for lefties, due in March (the author
first got to know he byways of London as Central Books' van driver)
while the Verso paperback of </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">A
Philosophy of Walking </span></span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">by
</span></span><span style="color: #7c706c;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Frédéric
Gros might enable us to think about walking without, you know,
actually doing it.</span></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #7c706c;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">And
Five Leaves? Well, there is the small matter of an election coming.
One of our big books in 2014 was Harry Paterson writing on
Nottinghamshire during the miners' strike where, among other things
he discussed the UDM. In 2015 we are letting him loose on the
the political equivalent of a scab union, UKIP, with </span></span></span><em><span style="color: #7c706c;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">We
Need to Talk About Nigel</span></span></span></em><span style="color: #7c706c;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">.
We could hardly not.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #7c706c;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #7c706c;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>A shorter version of this article will appear in the Morning Star</i></span></span></span></div>
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-19774067458780203142014-12-10T13:56:00.002-08:002014-12-10T23:42:13.518-08:00Nairn's London by Routemaster<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0oI_e45VGnOypUTcSQXpCcoAd9OokJ61dHeC4wUMfJzXxsf8k_aU7140jPxWlsmuAnvw7kJIn89V5To7gcl9W7Gzt8CKe3TJZ6mkuO_20xISrm0gdZHvY-QqgeOYpedohWFPbshF8XmZq/s1600/Driver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0oI_e45VGnOypUTcSQXpCcoAd9OokJ61dHeC4wUMfJzXxsf8k_aU7140jPxWlsmuAnvw7kJIn89V5To7gcl9W7Gzt8CKe3TJZ6mkuO_20xISrm0gdZHvY-QqgeOYpedohWFPbshF8XmZq/s1600/Driver.jpg" height="320" width="239" /></a></div>
That's Ross Bradshaw, posing as if he was Ian Nairn on the front cover of <i>Nairn's London</i>, just re-issued by Penguin Books. Five Leaves basks in the glow of this as our <i>Ian Nairn: Words in Place </i>helped launch Nairnmania on November 10th 2013, which led to a TV programme and the release of the Penguin book. Indeed, we planned to release it at one stage before discovering that Penguin still owned the rights.<br />
On 30th November fifty Nairnites boarded this bus - the same one that Nairn pretended to drive in 1966 - though with a different driver than Ross, for a guided tour round places dear to Ian Nairn.<br />
The tour started on the Mile End Road in the Foxcroft & Ginger trendy cafe (two coffees - £6.19) which had been carved out of Wickham's department store of 1920. The building still has its doric columns interrupted by the remains of Spiegelhalter's the jeweller. How annoyed Wickham's must have been to have to have built round the little jewellery shop. By the way, if you ever go down the Mile End Road stop off at the 1695 alms houses for decayed ships' captains.<br />
The next stop was The Whitechapel Bell Foundry, established in 1570 which, well, founds bells. The current founder in chief is a woman, the first in 450 years, striking a blow for women bell founders everywhere. Whitechapel made the bells of Big Ben, one small example of their work.<br />
We then moved to the Bevis Marks synagogue "[A] great luminous room, compassionate light streaming in through big clear glass windows on to a set of curly brass chandeliers from Amsterdam that are almost at eye level. Nothing has fretted it or worried it for two hundred and fifty years... " said Nairn.<br />
On further into the city to Leadenhall Market where once it was "... a riot of fish and fowl with row after row of turkeys and chickens on hooks right up to the cornice and the glass roof". Nowadays the fish and fowl have all gone, being replaced by bankers, plotting evil financial deeds in their wine bars as Leadenhall is next to the Lloyds building, which, I was pleased to see, is starting to look tatty.<br />
Onwards to the Hill & Evans vinegar warehouse "Victorian wildness... demonaic" but now looking quite cuddly in front of the scary "cheesegrater" building that looks like it is going to flatten us all in its collapse.<br />
Cheapside... West Smithfield... St Bartholemew-the-less... and a baked potato in a Chinese cafe that caters to taxi drivers. Past St Pauls, and off at Hawksmoor's Christ Church,. Spitalfields, looking naked without its pews. Up Fournier Street to see the Huguenots houses. The Five Leaves author Bill Fishman was once offered one for a thousand pounds. He did not have a thousand pounds. The buildings are now worth a couple of million each.<br />
Back from the East End to the back of Kings Cross for talks and films. The panels included Gillian Darley, co-editor of our Ian Nairn book and Gavin Stamp, a contributor who also wrote the intro to the new <i>Nairn's London</i>. Our venue was The Cock Tavern in Somers Town, an Irish pub with a real fire, hanging on against the developers. The highlight for me was the talk by Travis Elborough on the Routemaster, which included some great film clips including the most ghastly performance by Tom Jones.<br />
It was here that the event organiser David Collard sat on the bookstall table, and went through it, his Guinness doing a perfect parabola to go splat on twelve copies of our book. It somehow seemed appropriate that drink would provide a final focus, given the impact of the stuff on Ian Nairn. His death certificate was referred to in one of the discussions. People can imagine it. The table in question, now also deceased, is, Michael Rosen tells me, the very same table at which the executive committee of the Communist Party of Britain would sit round while plotting their revolution. I won the prize for the most battered copy of an original <i>Nairn's London</i>, the prize included a now drink-sodden copy of our own book, a new edition of <i>London</i>, a bottle of London Pride (declined) and a fine box of Nairn's Oatcakes. David was unharmed and is planning a rerun for all those who tried to get on the bus but will have to wait for the next one coming along in a year's time.<br />
<br /></div>
Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-63738834964154035582014-12-10T00:29:00.000-08:002014-12-10T00:29:27.701-08:00Sonofabook<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This note from David Collard, one of the contributors to Sonofabook. I'll echo that It's a Good Thing. And it will be on sale at Five Leaves Bookshop.</div>
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Please excuse this impersonal email. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
I'm sending this to everyone I know who is likely to be interested in <span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Sonofabook</b></span>, a new literary magazine launching in March
2015. This includes you, my anonymised friend.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
<b>Sonofabook</b> assembles an illustrious roster of contributors living
and dead, yet also finds room for an essay by myself. Click on this link to see
the striking cover. Go on. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.cbeditions.com/magazine.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy;">http://www.cbeditions.com/</span><span style="color: navy;">magazine.html</span></a></div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Subscribe now and you'll not only get the first three numbers but can
choose a free book from CB editions, including their forthcoming reissue of
Agota Kristof's novels <i>The Proof</i> and <i>The Third Lie.</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<br />
<div>
(If you haven't yet discovered Kristof you're in for a big and beneficial
shock. The main obstacle to British readers is her name - but a writer more
unlike the creator of Hercule Poirot is impossible to imagine.)<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Do spread the word about <b>Sonofabook</b>. It's a Good Thing.</div>
</div>
</div>
Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706795077889134134.post-3966528085205331582014-11-12T04:45:00.002-08:002014-11-12T04:45:43.962-08:00A brace of launches for Curious Kentish Town at Owl Bookshop<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<td class="mcnTextContent" style="color: #606060; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: 125%; padding: 9px 0px 9px 18px;" valign="top"><strong>Announcing another launch event for
Curious Kentish Town on Monday 24th November at 6.30pm</strong><br />The launch of
Curious Kentish Town on Monday 17th November 2014 at 6.30pm is now fully booked.
Please email <a href="mailto:owlbookshop@gmail.com">owlbookshop@gmail.com</a> if
you would like to attend the 24th November event.<br />Entry is free but is by
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Town Rd<br />London NW5 2JU<br />Tel 020 7485 7793
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<span style="color: black;"><strong><span style="font-size: 18px;">Curious Kentish Town</span><br />Martin Plaut & Andrew
Whitehead<br />Book Launch<br />Monday 24th
November<br />6.30pm</strong></span><br /><br />Please join us to celebrate the
publication of a new book about Kentish Town<br /><br />Where did Oswald Mosley
first lead his fascists after the Battle of Cable Street?<br />Which Kentish Town
rent strike inspired a Peggy Seeger song? Where does the long lost Fleet river
break cover? Or followed, quite literally, in the tracks of the
piano industry?<br /><br />Do you know about the horse tunnels at Camden Lock...the
ghost sign advertising maids’ caps and aprons in Dartmouth Park... the African
revolutionary who made his home near Tufnell Park?<br /><br />Curious Kentish Town
explores more than thirty locations across this part of north London and brings
to life the remarkable stories attached to them, with the help of a wealth of
photographs and illustrations. An artist-designed map will help you follow in
the authors’ footsteps.<br /><br />Martin and Andrew, both journalists who have
lived in the area for decades and love it, will discuss the book, followed by
questions and
answers.<br /><br /> </div>
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<td class="mcnTextContent" style="color: #606060; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; line-height: 150%;" valign="top"><strong>PLEASE READ IF YOU HAVE REQUESTED
TICKETS FOR THE EVENT ON THE 17TH NOVEMBER.<br />The event on the 17th November is
fully booked and will be very busy with limited seating. If your email request
has been acknowledged and you would prefer to attend the second event on the
24th please let us know and we will move your reservation. </strong><br /> </td></tr>
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Ross Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16566217025078523575noreply@blogger.com0