Every day of the week: a celebration of the life and work of Alan Sillitoe

Around 150 people attended the British Library celebration of Alan Sillitoe last night. There was an impressive line up of speakers including Margaret Drabble, Alan Jenkins (from the TLS), Miranda Seymour, DJ Taylor, Elaine Feinstein, Peter Chasseaud (who shared a love of WW1 trench maps with Alan), Richard Bradford and Tansy Davies (who had written a requiem for Remembance Sunday which was influenced by Alan). With a fairly short event none of the speakers could go into too much detail, but Margaret Drabble's contribution emphasised how much Alan wrote about nature, in a quite natural way as a backdrop to his writing. DJT said that "[Sillitoe] managed never to separate himself from those things which are worth writing about" while Elaine Feinstein reminded us about Alan's work in support of Soviet Jewry and his address to a Soviet Writers' Union conference, in the presence of Brezhnev, about human rights abuses in the Soviet Union. But Alan was not a "political writer" - "I tell stories" was the phrase he used.

The formal setting in the BL Auditorium precluded the kind of rumbustiousness seen at the Nottingham event held a few months ago, but it was well worth attending, particularly to catch up with Michael and Ann Sillitoe, Alan's brother and sister-in-law.

Little mags # 1

Some time ago I posted - somewhere - an article reporting on a talk DJ Taylor gave on the history of the little magazine. He quoted sales figures of some literary magazines that are now considered to be historically of great import. Sadly google lets me down in tracing my article. From memory he referred to certain important mags as having had circulations of around 2,000-3,000. Many's the modern lit mag that would envy such heights. Few people can subscribe to more than a handful of magazines, and since the demise of Borders there is only a handful of outlets where you can buy, or browse, the current range. I mention this having had a heartfelt plea recently from a lit mag to take out a sub, and thinking, yes, well, the only way to afford another is to drop one. So instead, as a very minor promotion I'll post, shortly, some comments on the latest issue of Ambit, in the hope that someone might take the plunge. It could have been Penniless Press or Dream Catcher or The London Magazine...
The two places you can see a range of mags are the Poetry Library in London and the Scottish Poetry Library. Some are stocked by Inpress (www.inpressbooks.co.uk) where you can buy individual titles as well as subscribe. I've just received their attractive new print catalogue. If you are interested in the literary indie world why not email them for a copy... enquiries@inpressbooks.co.uk