By chance I got speaking with a near neighbour earlier this week whilst we were both walking in opposite directions along the Wimbledon Station railway footpath that leads to/from the road upon which we both live.
After talking politics for a while; we had both been members of the sadly now defunct Social Democratic Party which subsequently merged with the Lib/Dems a party which neither of us relate to; we went on to discuss books.
He is currently I believe, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, It turned out during our conversation, that he has written a detailed treatise about The East India Company (his wife is of Indian extraction) entitled "The Corporation That Changed The World" by Nick Robins and published in 2012.
Nick was described in his book then, as a historian by training who currently works on sustainable investment in London. Almost amusingly, the acknowledgements section opens with this remark:
"This book started with a walk..."
I swapped him my own rather more prosaic work, the autobiography The Wandering Soul after we had gone walking our separate ways, up/down the railway footpath.
However Nick also gave me a copy of his small shared book of poetry entitled "Plague Poems" written by Nick and two friends (Andrew, Nicky and Nick) on themes set during the height in the UK of the coronavirus pandemic.
He told me that the three authors had not met in person prior to publishing their work but only through social media.
One of the poems would appeal to my grandson Henry, who will be four years of age in couple of days, is by Nicky and reads:
A tardis bone chamber of fear
Tiny fragile vole skull head on
But glimpsed from the eye's corner
In the small cold hours of the night
The looming terror of Tyrannosaurus Rex
Henry collects or used to, until a couple of weeks ago, dinosaur models/toys.
Dear Jerry,Rather late in the day, I have just started reading The Wandering Soul, and just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying it. My goodness, you've got a good memory! I'm afraid I'm very slow both physically and mentally these days and haven't yet got beyond the end of your time at Ladycross, but what strikes me very vividly is how much your experience mirrors my own, allowing of course for the fact that I'm 5 years older than you. In fact, by the time you went to Ladycross I had: already moved house three times (always in Suffolk and always in the depths of the country; had been to three different boarding schools, and spent a year in Tripoli in Libya. My stepfather, too, was in Germany (Mönchen Gladbach in North Rhine Westphalia), but I seem to remember our spending a winter holiday in the Harz Mountains in the days before the Berlin Wall went up.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I was one of the poorer brethren at my prep schools, the last and nicest of which was St Richards in Little Malvern. This, like all the other schools I attended both before and after did not long survive my presence!)If it's alright with you, I would like to write short commentaries on your book from time to time, and you are most welcome to include them in your blog - or not, as you prefer.Many congratulations on your book!
Best regards Barnaby
Greetings again Barnaby and thank you for your kind comments.
ReplyDeleteVery happy for you to comment on The Wandering Soul. Interestingly although my own parents were from London's East End and not well off there was never any difficulty about that with the boys at either school despite my uniform always being out of date.
Mum wrote her biography (East End Memories) which inspired mine years later.