Santa arrives yet again…

More fascinating books in the post today. Thanks to the generosity of David at World of Books, I've acquired three more Left Book Club volumes, and one from it's bastard evil twin, the Right Book Club.

Russell's Colour, Race and Empire (1944) is a good socialist discussion of how to hand over the Empire at the end of World War Two, and to end racism. Anti-fascist war-hero Andre Malraux's Days of Contempt is a translated novel of the 1930s underground German resistance to Hitler (translated by Haakon M. Chevalier: what a name), and Rats! is an insider's guide to the British war profiteers by 'The Pied Piper' (actually Joseph Mallalieu, a Labour politician).

The Right Book Club volume is environmentalist and canal revivalist L. T. C. Rolt's Narrow Boat, an account of a leisurely trip through the Midlands, including many places I grew up in or worked in, with illustrations. RBC books are rare because it wasn't a successful venture, specialising mainly in 'conversion' memoirs and scare stories about those evil socialists who were intent on sapping the national spirit by, er, founding the NHS and other evil statist institutions. Narrow Boat is interesting because it tries a subtler tack: evoking the romance of the canals and 'old England', then claiming that all these things are being subverted by those pesky Communists. Conservative undoubtedly, but an interesting read and not really deserving of being tarnished by association with the Right Book Club's ultra-reactionary stance.

The final book is Dai Smith's In The Frame: Memory in Society 1910-2010. It's also interesting as a 'personal history' of South Wales, and liable to be rather dubious. I say this with considerable reluctance: Smith is a hard-lefty like me, though one who has climbed several greasy poles in his time to become part of the Welsh establishment. However, in the course of my PhD I came to distrust his academic approach. For his own political reasons, he canonised Lewis Jones's Cwmardy and We Live as simple propagandist Communist novels, when in fact they're much more slippery and complex than he admits. Then when the novels were republished in the Library of Wales recently, he silently amended characters' names to make them more Welsh: editorially and politically dishonest, as far as I'm concerned. Finally, despite being Gwyn Thomas's literary executor, he edited his Sorrow For Thy Sons massively to make it a simple story of proletarian deprivation and political enlightenment, but won't let anyone see the material he discarded: I know, because I wrote two unacknowledged letters to him.

Right, I'm off to beard Mr Uppal in his den. Full report on Monday.

Looks like we got ourselves a feeder

The book diet is temporarily broken, thanks to the generosity of Imaginary Friend, who has sent me two Left Book Club volumes (a series I collect):

Oscar Paul's Underground Europe Calling
and
John Maynard's The Russian Peasant and Other Studies (book one).

If you ever see them, get them for me and I'll bung you some of the folding. They're bright orange in paperback and pinkish red in hardcover, embossed with the LBC logo on the front and (usually) Gollancz on the spine. It was an attempt to provide a political library for the working classes at an ultra-low price. Members formed reading groups down mines and up chimneys (The Dark Place's LBC met in a hay loft) and went on to lead their generation: 9 of the crusading 1945 Labour Cabinet were LBC authors, and most were subscribers.

Au revoir, Stereolab

My favourite Marxist French krautpop retro-futurist electro-poppers Stereolab have split up, or at least gone into hibernation. I am genuinely saddened by the demise of a band which have soundtracked my life since the early 90s. Their albums lost a little something when Mary Hansen died, but they're still wonderful.

Dear All,

As we recently made #51 with Emperor Tomato Ketchup in the Amazon 100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums of all Time we feel that our work is done for the moment.
We have had to cancel the last two shows that we were scheduled to play, apologies to all that had bought tickets, and there are no plans to record new tracks.
Duophonic are working on the release of Chemical Chords 2, we also have plans for a new Switched On and remastering of the back catalogue.
We are are all going to have a bit of a rest now after nearly 19 years and work on a few other projects.
The website will still be updated and disks released but there won't be any new Stereolab product for a while.

Cheerio

Meanwhile, I'm sure you're all dying to know what books I acquired yesterday. Well (deep breath): Lucien Laurat's Marxism and Democracy (Left Book Club 1940 - I collect this series), Political Allegory in Late Medieval England by Ann Astell, two Sheri Tepper novels, The Fresco and The Companions (I really rate her thoughtful eco-feminist science fiction), Jane Austen's Poems, padded out with her 'favourite poems', which is a bit of a cheat, a collection of Jonathan Swift's Major Works that aren't Gulliver's Travels, The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse, Jeff Noon's Nymphomation (Manchester cyberpunk, yeah), Njal's Saga (Icelandic, good miserable stuff), Robertson Davies's The Rebel Angels, another copy of Richardson's Pamela to replace a 'borrowed' one, Gwyn Jones's Short Stories, Langguth's Patriots (studies of the Fathers of the American Revolution, Postmodernism: a Very Short Introduction, an amusing bullshitters' guide called The Eng. Lit. Kit, and Sean Latham's Am I A Snob? Modernism and the Novel.

All in haul, a fascinating hall, no doubt to be divided into the 'must read now' pile and 'should read one day' stack.

Don't forget: tonight's edition of Who Do You Think You Are? features David Mitchell. I'm hoping my dad doesn't turn up on it.

One of those perfect days

Just a quick hello as I have a quiet five minutes. I've spent the day with Neal, Dan and Georgie, Dan's social worker. Well, girlfriend. We had a wander round my mother's lovely garden, pursued by hens, and then around the Dorothy Clive garden, nodding sagely while Dan and Georgie named various flowers and stuff. I took a few good pictures, including several of a very obliging rabbit, and ate wonderful ice-cream. I'll post some when I get back to the office. 

Then it was off to a antiques craft village (Dagfields Farm), where I managed to spend £30 on books in very little time, despite not having a working cash card yet… it's hard to resist two beautiful 1895/1896 pocket editions of Tennyson ('Locksley Hall' and Other Poems, 'The Spinster's Sweet-Arts' and Other Poems), another Left Book Club edition (Ruth Gruber's I Went to the Soviet Arctic, 1939), Susannah Radstone's Sweet Dreams, about sexuality and gender in popular fiction, a Moomins book I now realise I already have, a good Faber edition of Selected Poems of Louis MacNeice, John Christopher's The Year of the Comet and an M. John Harrison novel I hadn't previously seen, The Committed Men. 

Best of all, I hardly scraped the surface of the place and will have to return again, and again, and again…

Ale and hearty

Morning all. Well, it's 2.30 but feels like the morning to me, as I took half the day off. I didn't even go swimming.

I had a quiet drink in my local, beautiful, Victorian gin-palace last night. Amazingly, pretty much everyone I know turned up, presented me with brilliant, thoughtful presents, and supplied me with as many foaming jugs of ale as I could manage. Laura's Nun Bowling set was pressed into much use, and I also received lots of book tokens, a pristine copy of Harold Laski's Faith, Reason and Civilisation from Alan and Helen (I collect Left Book Club volumes), a compass from Keiti and Co., some ace SF from Gabi, and British Potters' Marks from Emma. The reasoning behind that was my Stoke connections and a determination not to buy a book I already have! My colleagues forsook their partners and children, John came over from Shrewsbury and I was overwhelmed with everybody's kindness, so thanks. I'm especially grateful to the advice on how to meet girls from Gabi and Penny (the university's leading Women's Studies expert, and therefore One Who Knows).

I wasn't, therefore, feeling altogether hale this morning, hence the laziness. Neal and Dan cooked a fine, if unorthodox breakfast of mutton chops, aubergines, mushrooms and poached eggs, then I wandered into university to find that I had to go to union negotiating committee, which really did end the festivities. Now on with my PGCE essay…

Work and play and work and play and work and play

Well, it's been a busy few days - and it's going to be busier this week because I'm off to Poland with the England Youth Fencing Team for Challenge Wratislavia 2009 - a coach at midnight tomorrow, check-in at 4.00 for the flight, then four days of happy children's voices ringing in my ears. Don't worry - free wi-fi at the hotel means I'll try to find time for blogging.

Last week:

Books bought: 18. 12 of those (which annoyingly aren't showing up on the Librarything feed to the left) are Neal's fault for arranging to meet me in a bookshop. Most were more Left Book Club editions (I collect them), and one was signed by William Rust, one of the most Stalinist of the British Communist Party's upper echelons. The Morning Star is still published in William Rust House.

Films acted in: 2

Parties attended: 3

Fencing sessions attended: 2

Dark corners hung around in at parties: 3

Games of table football lost to Deep Space Nine-quoting female student: 1

Lectures and seminars delivered with panache: some

Self-inflicted nose-bleeds at parties: 1

Octopus eaten: 1 (not on my own).

Shirts etc. ironed: 14

Stoke City and Ireland victories: 2

Sophisticated Radio 4-loving single women impressed by any of the above: 0