Meeting 15 March 2019: Murder for Fun and Profit by Laura Wilson

Thanks to Bill Doherty for the  following account of the Society's March meeting:

Scene setting is vital in detective fiction and as the Lit. Soc. membership milled round the Court Hall, wine glass in hand and bon mot à la bouche, a black-clad figure slid through the throng and deposited a large suitcase in the corner of the room. Before anyone could scream “Not now, Cato!”, Tony Moore had clicked the lock and the sinister figure was introduced as Laura Wilson, prolific author of internationally acclaimed detective fiction who sat poised to induct us into our very own “locked room” mystery, revealing the secrets of her trade.

Background checks came up with a childhood love of books and an ambition to be a librarian, albeit one who dressed as a “bunny girl”. Beatrix Potter’s” Fierce Bad Rabbit” was her gateway drug to the world of Agatha Christie and the arid desert of English Lit. was memorably enlivened by Chaucer’s bod- meets- bawd “Miller’s Tale”. She arrived at Somerville College Oxford in time to surf the Post-Modernist wave  and admitted to wearing a black polo-neck and wandering round with a volume of Derrida under her arm. Initially, writing for a living was a prosaic affair – scripting catalogue captions with a word limit of 19. Stage 2 of forging a rigorous literary discipline came with writing 250  word pieces for children’s history books which taught her to master the narrative arc. In her spare time she wrestled with “A Little Death”, a structurally ambitious crisscrossing of 3 first person narratives.

Death intrigued her and she describes helping her doctor mother lay Granny out and Mum explain that a woman’s role was to be present at the beginning and the end of life. This drew a silent tear from the  Scottish History Nicodemite in the audience, paraphrasing as it does Mary Queen of Scots’ valediction “En ma fin gît mon commencement – in my end lies my beginning.” Few murder victims were so unwise as to throw themselves on those all- too- ethereal tender Tudor mercies. Quentin Crisp’s unsolicited testimonial  that murder shows real commitment helped her focus on a specific kind of death. After discussion with her publisher, she opted for crime fiction as it was a smaller pool,  a stronger genre and the sleuth satisfyingly sets the world to rights.  When a series was proposed, she created D.I. Stratton – male, happily married, an allotment and no destructive vices. She set him down in the Second World War and its aftermath explaining how this facilitated plotting by removing complications like mobile phones and allowing characters to be conveniently eliminated by random "Doodlebugs”.  

A much-remarked feature of Wilson’s work is the wealth of accurate period detail which contributes to the atmosphere she successfully summons and is the product of hours of research at Sussex University’s Mass Observation Unit. Her muse thrives on real–life crime but she avoids well-trodden paths like the Kray and Richardson gangs. Her most recent work has drawn on the Madeleine McCann case,  age-progressed photos and the contemporary cult of celebrity. Earlier novels used the Rillington Place murders and the 1958 Notting Hill riots. Laura’s mastery of her field has been acknowledged in her appointment as Crime Fiction Editor of  “The Guardian”, winning the Prix du Polar Européen and an Ellis Peter Award and being officially designated a Killer Woman.  

The evening closed with our speaker patiently fielding a range of audience questions and all relieved to find the suitcase contained a selection of Laura’s books rather than the mortal remains of D.I. Stratton as apparently authors come to hate their most popular characters; Conan Doyle hated Holmes and Christie Poirot.

Three Local Luminaries Talk by Howard Norton on 15 February 2019

Many thanks to Bill Doherty for this account of our February meeting:

Beached and battered by the tsunami that is contemporary feminist literature, the Lit. Soc. rejoiced in the opportunity to once again sit at the feet of its favourite patriarch, Howard Norton, for an edifying exposition of a Trinity of literary luminaries blessed with the good fortune of being Winchelsea residents.  

First out the blocks was the Hastings-born Malcolm Saville, the prolific author of 80 books, mostly adventure novels for children. 57 of these formed ‘The Lone Pine’ series and so devoted were the post-war acolytes of these works that  ‘The Lone Pine Club’, sadly now an ageing band of aficionados, had even visited Winchelsea where Saville’s ‘The Gay Dolphin’ was set. The format usually involved a wholesome bunch of plucky teens thwarting the malevolent plans of a sub-Bond villain whose evil schemes were hatched behind the veil of charming rural locations in Shropshire or Sussex. Although normally acknowledged as a repository of Enthusiasm, our speaker was distinctly lukewarm on the merits of Saville’s oeuvre although allowing that the otherwise dull, worthy novels succeeded in creating a strong sense of place. The author lived in ‘Chelsea Cottage’ until his death in 1981. His funeral was held in St. Thomas’ church.   

Howard slipped seamlessly down the Dante scale from Saville’s muscular Christianity to the circle  occupied by the “raffish” Sir Brian Batsford – painter, publisher and politician - who spent the last 4 years of his life (1987-91) at ‘Buckland House’ in Winchelsea.  He had joined his uncle’s publishing firm on leaving Repton and in the 1930s managed to catch two waves. He mastered the Berthé printing process which created bright colourful dust jackets and travel posters, destined to become an art form of their own and seduced the aspiring, car-owning middle classes of Metroland further out into the countryside in search of ‘The Villages of England’ or ‘The Inns of England’. 

In the post-war years Batsford became chairman and then president of the company, roles which he combined from 1958-74 with being Conservative M.P. for Ealing South before he and Edward Heath picked up their knighthoods and rode into the political sunset in February 1974 before you could say “Miners’ Strike”. Batsford’s artistic career flourished as an appreciative cult formed round his poster art and his work formed the subject of an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1985. At this time he was living at Lamb House in Rye and was energetically engaged in restoring the upper floor rooms. Even in his last years in his new build  in Winchelsea he managed to create an instant garden, sufficiently intriguing to draw “The Times” gardening correspondent down to do a feature on it.  

God the Father in Howard’s Trinity was undoubtedly Asa Briggs, owner of but infrequent resident in “Boundary Cottage”. A towering public intellectual, with a C.V. that reads like a character from Anthony Powell’s “Dance to the Music of Time” series: Keighley Grammar School, synchronous Firsts at Oxford and L.S.E., a good war – hut 6 with Turing at Bletchley Park, Oxford don and P.P.E. tutor to Rupert Murdoch, Professor of History at Leeds, started the History Dept. at the new Sussex University, Vice-Chancellor of  Sussex, building on his Labour Party links played a major role in setting up The Open University, becoming its Vice-Chancellor in 1977. He remained true to his Yorkshire roots when he assumed the presidency of  “The Brontë Society”. Our speaker’s fondest words were for Briggs’ extensive body of work on England’s Victorian heritage which particularly focused on the urban, industrial and social aspects.  

Concluding with a gratified audience, Howard doubtless heard echoes of his previous History A-Level classes who after a double period with one of Asa Briggs’ text books would mumble “Please, sir, I want some more.”  Victorian values! You can’t beat them!          

January Meeting: Black Magic

   
 Many Thanks to Cindi Cogswell for this account of our first 2019 meeting, first published in Winchelsea Village Voice in the Rye Observer:

"The actor David Meyer (born 1947) performed in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy as a circus entertainer with a skill for knife throwing, together with his identical twin brother Anthony.   More recently David played the scientist Sir Isaac Newton on tour in the USA and has been working at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London.  Last Friday David gave an interesting talk at the Literary Society’s meeting focussing on the theme of Black Magic in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth.   The making of Macbeth was inspired by King James VI of Scotland who became King James I of England following the death of Elizabeth I in 1603.   It was at the request of this same King that the Bible was translated from the original Hebrew and Greek languages into English in 1611 which was England’s authorised version (the KJV).  King James I also took seriously the matter of witches and in 1604 passed an Act against Witchcraft which made it mandatory to hang someone convicted of being a witch.  The play Macbeth revealed the precarious times in which Shakespeare lived which grew more unstable when in 1605 the Gunpowder Plot was exposed.   The drama which was performed in front of King James in 1606, was driven by the witches’ prophecy that Macbeth would become King of Scotland.   This led Macbeth to eliminate everyone that stood in his way assisted by his even more sinful wife.   Macbeth’s visit to the witches can be compared to King Saul of Israel’s meeting with the witch of Endor in 1 Samuel 28 where he went in desperation to request a course of action against the threatening Philistines.  Both kings ultimately failed in their hopes of success.  In his book ‘Daemonologie’ King James asserted his belief in witchcraft as a dangerous practise and the punishment required to deal with it.  Shakespeare’s perspective is less certain and it is questionable whether his depiction of witchcraft in Macbeth caters to the King’s interests or underlines the King’s involvement with witch-hunting.  It is probably a bit of both.  After the law passed in 1604 against witchcraft over 500 people were believed to have been executed.  Often it was poor elderly women who were accused and the last trials were held in 1717.   In 1736 the laws against witchcraft were annulled but fines would be imposed on people who claimed to use magic powers.  At the time this caused much laughter among MPs who knew there was an interest in the occult amongst prominent members of society including Sir Isaac Newton.  The Act was repealed in 1951 by the Fraudulent Mediums Act which in turn was repealed in 2008 so that there are now no laws banning witchcraft despite ongoing concerns about this practice.   In his talk David’s interest in the supernatural which appeared to stop short of a belief in God, implied that he might have encountered an apparition while working in the theatre, since strange things are said to happen when Macbeth is performed, although it could have been an act."