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On 20 February I joined a large congregation of mourners at Golders Green Crematorium. We had gathered to mark the death and to celebrate the life of Alastair Brotchie, who very sadly died on 27 January 2023. Looking around the garden at one point, an old friend and I reflected that we didn’t think there was anyone else who could have brought such a broad group of fellow travellers together.
It was an auspicious event, in the saddest of circumstances. During the service there were a number of very touching and memorable addresses from Alastair’s family, friends and collaborators.
Milie von Bariter of the Collège de ’Pataphysique, spoke of Alastair being ‘Behind the scenes, where he now resides.’
It was a powerful image: Alastair’s longstanding career as a scenic painter offered as metaphor for the persistence of a lost loved one in our thoughts, in face of death’s cruel vanishing act.
Alastair Brotchie’s scene-painting work had continued alongside his more public work as a publisher at Atlas Press, author, collaborator and Oulipo expert, ’Pataphysician, Jarry biographer, and bookseller, in what was a remarkably productive and extraordinarily energetic life devoted to arts and letters, to literature in translation, and the ‘anti-tradition’ of avant-garde literature in particular.
Read Peter Blegvad’s obituary of Alastair Brotchie here…
Von Bariter’s words reminded me of a couple of visits I’d made to see Alastair, literally behind the scenes, in his studio. (Click-through to see these hi-res images in magnificent detail.)
In September 2013, Alastair invited me visit the ‘paint frame’, his studio in the stage house of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. At that time he was painting a gauze for the Verdi opera, The Corsair.
A paint frame is a special type of theatrical scene-painting workshop, as tall and wide as the stage itself, but with deep drops either side. Here, cloths and gauzes can be stretched onto large wooden frames, and those frames raised and lowered at will, so that all parts of the cloth can be reached from a fixed ‘ground’ level. At the time of that visit, I was in the very earliest stages of writing what would become my novel The Fountain in the Forest. I had been looking for a way to write about a revolution in policing that had happened in the immediate aftermath of the UK Miners’ Strike of the mid-1980s, and also riffing on Oulipo, performance, the Battle of the Beanfield, and the French Revolutionary Calendar. I was immediately struck by this huge space, and the deftness with which the frames could be raised and lowered; like great lumbering wooden guillotines. And by the magic of theatrical gauzes, which can conceal or reveal depending how you look at them. I realised that this paint frame, on a historic, theatrical site that predated the French Revolution by a century or more, would make an excellent crime scene.
If there was a murder here, I figured, there would need to be a detective to investigate it. And so Detective Sergeant Rex King of serious crime at the nearby Holborn Police Station was born.
The Fountain in the Forest would not exist in the form it does without Alastair’s friendship and generosity. The opening chapters feature a lightly fictionalised version of both theatre and paint frame (see in particular pp5–11).
After that first visit, Alastair and I went for a pint in the Coach & Horses on Wellington Street, where we traded gossip and stories of largely forgotten artists and writers; forgotten by most, that is, but not by us. Something of the pleasure and velocity of that chat and the setting also made it into the novel, in the character of scene-painter and raconteur Terence Hobbs, closest friend and confidante of DS Rex King:
Terence Hobbs had a good memory, too, which coupled with his raconteur’s knack for spinning out epic tales involving local names and faces long forgotten by the rest of the world, made him very entertaining company. A Mark Twain of the Thames, you could buy him a pint or two and Terry would pick up this Aldwych Iliad where he’d left off last time, whether that had been a week ago or a couple of years. […] Terry’s stories conjured up a pre-regeneration Covent Garden that, if they were to be believed, must have been populated almost exclusively by legendary drunks, entertainers and artistes both celebrated and forgotten. It was different now. Gone were the days when you’d more than likely bump into Danny LaRue walking his ‘golden palomino’ chihuahua in the Phoenix Gardens of a morning. The props men, the wig-makers and costumiers, the makers of fake noses and other prosthetics had all left.
From The Fountain in the Forest, Chapter 1
These two photos were taken by Chris Dorley-Brown on a later visit, in 2016. With the novel finished, I had asked Alastair if I could come to the paint frame again, but this time take some photos. Chris is known among other things for his extraordinary photographs of East London architecture, and I thought that the rare opportunity to see this highly unusual and historic space in central London would appeal to him. I’m grateful to Chris for going back into the files now, to find these two wonderful extra photos from that shoot in 2016.
Welcoming us in, Alastair said that he needed to continue working while Chris took the photos, so we were not to get in the way. He was on a tight deadline, this time painting an enormous theatrical cloth for what was a then highly-anticipated forthcoming production of Blood Brothers. The imagery was commercially sensitive at the time, so Alastair also asked that the cloth not be shown if we used any images from the shoot before the show opened.
I still find it awe-inspiring; not only the paint frame itself, this archaic, cathedral-like space, and the centuries-old tradition of scenic painting on this site, but also the sheer visual virtuosity at scale of Alastair’s paintings, produced by hand and eye alone. The scenic artist’s unique perspective; their ability to work on a cloth so close-up, but to also see it as if from ‘the gods’, the highest, farthest, cheapest seats in the auditorium.
Vale Alastair.
Alastair Brotchie, 20 July 1952–27 January 2023
The event is part of the Modern Cockney Festival (March 3rd to April 4th) featuring a programme of events, academic lectures, and family fun.
Free to attend. Book via this Eventbrite link: https://evolvingcockney.eventbrite.com Once registered you will receive a Zoom link.
The Modern Cockney Festival 2023 is organised by Cockney Cultures, a partnership between social enterprise Grow Social Capital and the Bengali East End Heritage Society.
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More about Tony’s events and bookings…
Buy Tony White’s latest novel The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber…
It was a great pleasure to read at Brixton Book Jam on Monday 6 March. Along with compere Dennis – a poet in the Ranting Poetry tradition – the packed audience enjoyed readings from featured authors Rose Servitova, Eamon Somers, Deidre Shanahan, Adam Connors, Zelda Rhiando, and me; plus music from Alex and the Wonderland.
Held in Brixton Book Jam’s usual venue of The Hootananny – once-upon-a-time the George Canning, and more recently The Hobgoblin pub on Efra Road in Brixton – this Book Jam was dedicated to the Irish literary tradition and diaspora. I read my short story ‘Plain Speaking’, which was written to mark the 110th anniversary of the birth of Brian O’Nolan, aka Myles na gCopaleen, aka Flann O’Brien. First premiered at David Collard’s online salon Carthorse Orchestra, the story was first published by 3am Magazine, and the Irish Literary Society, and is now collected in Nicholas Royles Best British Short Stories 2022 from Salt Publishing.
At some point in the evening, I realised with a shock that this Brixton Book Jam reading was my first gig or appearance IRL (‘In Real Life’) since February 2020. I usually do lots of live readings and appearances, and I have really missed that part of my work. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the various UK lockdowns and their aftermath, all of my talks and readings have been online — until now. I don’t know if this is other people’s experience, but I’ve also felt that the live literature scene has not quite bounced back for prose fiction in the way it has for poetry. This is partly why I started the irregular radio programme Literature Live, which we piloted on Resonance a few weeks back, to provide a spoken word gig on the air: live literature with the emphasis on authors reading live from their fiction. See more of my event archive here…
I really enjoy doing online gigs, David Collard’s wonderful weekly online salons A Leap in the Dark, Carthorse Orchestra, and Glue Factory, kept many of us going over the past three years. I am also a fervent supporter of the #KeepFestivalsHybrid campaign, as I know all too well that an online component to an event makes it more accessible to both authors and audiences.
Hyrid and online-only events have made it possible for me to attend book launches and memorial events at City Lights in San Francisco, or e.g. to give the opening lecture in the American University Sharjah’s Ramadan Lecture Series without the costs (in every way) of air travel.
But the performer in me really relished the immediate contact and feedback that came from sharing a physical space and human connection with the audience. It was great to be back.
My old friend the photograph David McCairley came along. These are his photos.
You can see more of David’s photos of last night’s Brixton Book Jam here…
Dave is an old friend and former Hackney neighbour of mine from Beck Road days. He took the incredible photo of the fire artist that was used on the cover of my first novel Road Rage!
I can’t think of a better gig to celebrate a return to real life performances than the wonderful Brixton Book Jam.
What a great night. Thank you to my fellow authors, compere Dennis, to Brixton Book Jam’s Zelda Rhiando, and everyone who came along. Thanks all!
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More about Tony’s events and bookings…
Buy Tony White’s latest novel The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber…
I’m pleased to be talking about my 2003 novel Foxy-T for this online panel as part of the Modern Cockney Festival 2023.
ICYMI, Foxy-T is still available in Faber paperback, as well as in ebook formats.
Here’s the info:
Is Cockney dying, with reports that it will disappear from the streets of London over the next 20 years? Or is it evolving, going from strength to strength, an evolving 660 year-old cultural identity of the ‘common Londoner?
A fascinating free online event at 12noon Thursday March 9th – brings together three experts and voices to investigate these questions and more, in a fascinating, engaging and interesting discussion.
* Discover what Jonnie Robinson from the British Library who will be sharing treasures from their sound archive of how Cockney has evolved over the generations.
* Meet Dr. Johanna Gerwin who runs ‘London Talks’ that investigates the language of everyday Londoners
* Hear author Tony White read from his cult classic novel ‘Foxy-T’, a story of love, jealousy and murder that captures the streetwise verve and linguistic gusto of modern-day London.
The event is part of the Modern Cockney Festival (March 3rd to April 4th) featuring a programme of events, academic lectures, and family fun.
Free to attend. Book via this Eventbrite link: https://evolvingcockney.eventbrite.com Once registered you will receive a Zoom link.
The Modern Cockney Festival 2023 is organised by Cockney Cultures, a partnership between social enterprise Grow Social Capital and the Bengali East End Heritage Society.
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Read more posts about Foxy-T by Tony White
Buying options for Foxy-T from publisher Faber and Faber
Buy Tony White’s latest novel The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber…
Piece of Paper Press is delighted to publish new titles by two leading artists and writers working at the interface between visual art and literature. THE INCORRUPTIBLE by Sharon Kivland (POPP.041) is published simultaneously with BOOK DRAWINGS #1–12 by Andrea Mason (POPP.042). Each is distributed in a numbered limited-edition of 150 copies.
These mostly left the building yesterday. The photo above is of two bundles of the finished books by the respective artists, which as usual were wrapped in offcuts of the printed sheets. Sharon Kivland’s THE INCORRUPTIBLE emulates the house style of French publishing house Gallimard. And that face! Don’t you just love that drawing of Beckett by Andrea Mason?
THE INCORRUPTIBLE was written on a single day, one of mourning, on 10 Thermidor – it is the date, in Year II, on which Robespierre and twenty-one others were guillotined without trial in the Place de la Revolution, Paris. It is a short (and angry) account of unbearable loss, in which I speak for Éléonore Duplay, known as Cornélie, a daughter of the radical household in which Robespierre lodged. After his death, she was known as his widow, though the truth of their relationship is unknown.
These book drawings – presented here in the order in which I posted them on Instagram – are a near-alphabetical inventory of novels I choose to keep, within the process of which there is a sifting and sorting, as well as an intimate process of revelation. This shelf of books largely contains books bought long ago. More recent piles of books sit elsewhere. As I continue the drawings, I will need to choose whether to disrupt my system further, or whether to divert across to books housed elsewhere, non-alphabetically, which reflect a more up to date self-portrait.
See full info and author bios etc. below.
ICYM, Piece of Paper Press was founded in 1994, designed as a low-tech, sustainable artists’ book project to commission and publish new writings, visual and graphic works by artists and writers. Each miniature copy is made from a single A4 sheet that is printed on both sides and then folded, stapled and trimmed by hand to create the book. There is no schedule; titles are published when they are ready.
It was a very happy accident that these two titles just happened to be ready to publish at the same time.
Piece of Paper Press titles are always distributed free, usually in a limited edition of 150. Fifty copies are distributed by the contributor, and around a hundred to the press’s slowly evolving mailing list, which is gradually displaced by past contributors. Remaining copies are added to the project’s archive. Some titles have been given away at special events, or as larger runs inserted in magazines.
A display of the entire project archive (then to date), ‘Piece of Paper Press: Artworks and Ephemera, 1994-2017’, took place at Site Gallery, Sheffield, in Strong Language curated by Tim Etchells for Off The Shelf Festival of Books, October 2018. See Chris Saunders’ photos of the six-vitrine display here…
Accessible collections holding Piece of Paper Press titles include Arnolfini archive, Bristol; Chelsea School of Art Library; Live Art Development Agency study room; and UCL Small Press Collections, London.
Print nerds might like to know that both titles were printed by Mixam, before being assembled (folded, stapled, trimmed) and numbered by hand. Kivland’s THE INCORRUPTIBLE was printed on 120gsm natural uncoated paper using an HP Indigo 12000. While Mason’s BOOK DRAWINGS #1–12 was printed on 90gsm white uncoated paper on an HP Indigo 7500!
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More info about Piece of Paper Press, including list of past contributors…
Buy Tony White’s latest novel The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber…
Thanks to Chihiro Ono for sharing this great photo of yesterday’s reading for Resonance Extra, in what must be one of the most spectacular yet apt settings for a reading of The Holborn Cenotaph yet: the former chapel on Borough Road that has been the Resonance studio for the past year. At one point the sun flooded in behind me – and Chihiro seems to have caught that moment on camera. Thank you, Chihiro!
I was in the Resonance studio as part of LIVE FROM 82, a live radio event on the final afternoon before the studio moves to a new location. There were performances by Merlin Nova, Kate Carr of Flaming Pines, Steven J Fowler and Benedict Taylor, Miles Luko, James C Oldham, Milo Thesiger-Meacham, Sister Punch, Tony White, Chihiro Ono, Travis Wu, Miles Lukoszeviese. Plus exclusive works by Neil Luck, Agnes Pe, Angela Wai Nok Hui, Trash Panda QC, Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier, Bobby Jewell.
Thank you as ever to Milo Thesiger-Meacham and the Resonance team on the day for their excellent work.
I was thrilled to be part of such a great line-up, and did a short set ‘The Holborn Cenotaph and other stories’. The other story in this case being ‘Plain Speaking’, which was written to mark the 110th anniversary of the birth of Brian O’Nolan, better known as Flann O’Brien, a.k.a. Myles Na gCopaleen.
ICYMI ‘Plain Speaking’ is collected in Salt Publishing’s new Best British Short Stories 2022, edited by Nicholas Royle.
If you know a liberal ecclesiastical setting — or indeed any other venue, festival etc. — where I could take The Holborn Cebotaph next, let me know. So far it’s been to The Mac Belfast, the chapel at Kings College London, Festival Poligon in Mostar B-i-H, The British Library, Blast Theory studio, Turner Contemporary, Housmans Books, London Radical Book Fair, Iklektik Art Space, In Yer Ear, TULCA Festival of Visual Arts Galway, and about forty other spaces and events, from galleries to spoken word nights to supper clubs…
So if you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear from you.
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Buy Tony White’s latest novel The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber
Live From 82. 12-7pm this Sunday 29.1.23 A radio event live from the Resonance studios on Borough Road in South London. Performances by Merlin Nova, Kate Carr of Flaming Pines, Steven J Fowler and Benedict Taylor, Miles Luko, James C Oldham, Milo Thesiger-Meacham, Sister Punch, Tony White, Travis Wu, Miles Lukoszeviese. Plus exclusive works by Neil Luck, Agnes Pe, Angela Wai Nok Hui, Trash Panda QC, Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier, Bobby Jewell.
Resonance Extra is the UK’s only 24/7 digital broadcasting platform dedicated to sound art, radio art and experimental musics. Based in London, it broadcasts online via its website, TuneIn and Radioplayer and on DAB+ Digital Radio to a footprint of 4 million people in Brighton & Hove, Cambridge, Greater London and Norwich.
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Buy Tony White’s latest novel The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber
This Thursday evening 26 January at 8:00pm, I’m thrilled to be presenting a new programme for the Clearspot on London’s arts radio station Resonance 104.4fm, called Literature Live on Resonance, with guest authors Mona Dash and Courttia Newland.
Please join us! Thursday 26 January 2023, 8:00–9:00pm
Here’s the blurb:
NEW: London author Tony White presents an hour of readings and chat with some of the best novelists and short story writers around. Literature Live on Resonance is an occasional programme focusing on live literature, with the emphasis on authors reading from their own prose fiction. White invites authors to join him in the Resonance Studio in London to recreate some of the magic of the live literature scene live on the air, as they read short extracts from their fiction and discuss live literature, live.
Tony White is the author of novels including Foxy-T and The Fountain in the Forest (Faber), and a veteran of the live literature scene. In tonight’s episode for Clearspot on Resonance 104.4fm, he’s joined live in the studio by the authors Mona Dash and Courttia Newland.
Resonance broadcasts on 104.4 FM to central London, DAB to Greater London, nationally on Radioplayer and live streamed to the rest of the world. More info at https://www.resonancefm.com/about
Mona Dash is an award-winning author based in London. Her work includes her memoir A Roll of the Dice, a short story collection Let Us Look Elsewhere, a novel, and two collections of poetry. She has been published in various journals and listed in leading competitions. Her work has been presented on BBC Radio 4, included in Best British Short Stories 2022, and in more than thirty anthologies. She also works in a global tech company.
Courttia Newland is the author of eight books including his much-lauded debut, The Scholar. His most recent novel A River Called Time was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award, and longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. He co-edited The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain, and his short stories have featured in various anthologies and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. As a screenwriter, he has written episodes of Steve McQueen’s 2020 BBC series Small Axe.
Literature Live on Resonance, Thursday 26 January 2023, 8:00–9:00pm
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Buy Tony White’s latest novel The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber
I would guess that most of my author contemporaries have already registered for PLR – the Public Lending Right – which was campaigned and fought for in the 1970s by authors including (the great) Maureen Duffy and Bridget Brophy. (Duffy interviewed here by Jim Parker.)
PLR means that authors (illustrators, etc.) get a small payment for every library loan.
Here’s the blurb:
If you are a published author, illustrator, editor, translator or audiobook narrator you could receive remuneration as a result of public library book loans. This could be up to £6,600 per year if you register for the UK PLR scheme or up to €1000 per year for the Irish PLR scheme.
If you follow authors on social media, you may have noticed a flurry of PLR-related posts in the past week. That’s because the UK PLR statements are released in January every year. Payments are usually issued in February.
And even if you’re not a celebrity or a bestseller with hundreds of thousands of loans, at a time when writers’ median earnings are £7,000.00 per year, even a small payment can make a difference. The statements also give a detailed breakdown of loans per title, so you get to find out which edition of your books get the most loans. In the case of The Fountain in the Forest, it’s the blue one!
Whether you are a debut author or an old hand who simply didn’t get around to it yet, the registration process couldn’t be simpler. You just need to get yourself a British Library log-in (if you don’t have one already), and have basic info to hand about the works you need to register. Visit the PLR page on the British Library website to find out more about eligibility and registration…
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Buy Tony White’s latest novel The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber
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