Today a hundred years ago, Henry James became a British citizen. He had been living in England, in Rye, Sussex, since 1897, but by becoming British citizen he hoped to express his solidarity with his adopted country during the struggle of World War I. He died a year later in Chelsea – but his ashes were taken back to Cambridge Massachusetts for internment.
July 4, tomorrow, is said to be the 150th anniversary of the publication by Macmillan of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The date of publication was itself the third-year anniversary of Dodgson’s famous boat trip on the Isis at Oxford with the three daughters of Dean Liddell of Christchurch, including, of course, young Alice.
Today is the anniversary of Oscar Wilde’s release from Reading goal in 1897. David Freeman’s excellent Wilde in America, published 13 February this year, reminds us of happier days before Wilde’s persecution and confinement. There’s a good review by Neil Hegarty in the Daily Telegraph, which outlines Freeman’s account of Wilde’s contribution to the ‘invention of modern celebrity’ during his tour of the Untied States in 1882.
The Guardian of 1st April has an excellent review by Dr. Paul Davies of The Flora and Vegetation of Shropshire, compiled and written by Sarah Whild and and Alex Lockton and published by YouCaxton Publications: ‘The Flora was produced from 350,000 records collected by more than 1,000 volunteer naturalists … a wonderful collection of botanical records, distribution maps, illustrations and photographs … the diligent and heart-felt work of amateur naturalists and conservationists is easily lost in the noise of human progress. However, I see each bite of data, each act of witness as bright and vital as a lesser celandine flower, humble in its title but brilliant in its presence – a collective joy.’
The Great War Birmingham, published by the History Press, September 2014, describes life in Birmingham during the ’war to end all wars‘. This beautifully illustrated book describes local reaction to the outbreak of war and follows the experiences of individuals who enlisted. It looks at the changing face of industry; the work of the many hospitals in the area; the effect of the conflict on local children; and the women who defied convention to play a vital role on the home front. The picture is of Birmingham ‘aliens’ in an internment camp of the period.
Publication of Martin Stoakes’s Travels of a Hard-Rock Mining Engineer is due shortly. The book is a chronicle of the travels and experiences of one of Britain’s most successful mining engineers during the last half of the Twentieth Century. It gives a vivid and an instructive insight into the generally little known subject of hard-rock mining (the excavation of hard materials such as gold, nickel or lead and a source of conflict in some countries), often in remote locations. Various mining projects are described in detail and provide a fascinating insight into the complexities of mine design and evaluation.
Martin Stoakes worked on 125 mining projects in thirty-seven different countries over a forty-four year period. His graphic account of the sometimes nerve-racking conditions and locales that he experienced includes encounters with Shining Path guerrilla fighters in Peru, MNLF Islamic fundamentalists in the Philippines and the RPF guerrillas in Rwanda/Uganda. Hard rock mining was never for the faint-hearted.
YouCaxton’s list of works of local history has been building steadily and writers often approach us with interesting, well-researched projects. Two particular problems sometimes delay publication. The first is caused by the, understandable, reluctance of some writers to exclude hard-worked-for research in the interests of a coherent narrative; the second lies in a tendency on the part of some writers to indulge in a little too much ‘telling’. The rules of fiction apply to non-fiction as much as to fiction if the writer, too frequently, attempts to ‘tell’ the reader how he or she should respond to things related in the text. In general, we prefer it if the facts are left to speak for themselves.
An excellent introduction to a much-changed town. Chris Upton’s A History of Wolverhampton makes an invaluable contribution to the story of Wolverhampton’s evolution from the rural Saxon settlement of Wulfruna through to a power house of the industrial Revolution and beyond.