FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
A Dandy in Aspic - A Letter from Derek Marlowe
11.14.2010
12:06 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
I originally wrote this elsewhere, but want to share it, in remembrance of a great writer, Derek Marlowe, who died today in 1996.

Marlowe was the author of nine novels, ranging form the Cold War spy thriller A Dandy in Aspic, the historical A Single Summer With L.B., about Byron, Shelley and the creation of monsters and the partially autobiographical The Rich Boy from Chicago. Marlowe started as a playwright, before moving to prose.

When I interviewed him in 1984, Marlowe told me the story of how his career really started with a bet. A bet between three young writers, who lived together in a flat in London. Nothing unusual there, except these young writers were Tom Stoppard, Piers Paul Read, and Derek Marlowe. One day, as they watched Mick Jagger on Top of the Pops, the three wagered a bet on who would make a million first.  It was decided Stoppard would, but Marlowe pipped him to it, with his first novel, A Dandy in Aspic.

I started reading Marlowe in my early teens and he focussed my thoughts about writing. This then is the story of a fan letter I wrote Marlowe and his reply.

Someone, somewhere, has probably written a thesis on fan letters, showing how the turn of phrase, spelling, sentence structure and language, reveal the psychology of the writer.  I can guess the flaws my three or four fan letters reveal about me, both good and bad.  That said, the replies always pleased - a signed photograph, a message from a secretary, a written response.  The reply that meant so much to me came from the brilliant author, Derek Marlowe.

Marlowe inspired me to see the beauty of writing and the power a novelist has in telling their tale.  His books took me away from the comfort of Sherlock Holmes, Alistair MacLean, and the dog-eared ghost stories, into a world of shifting ambiguity, complex relationships, through his dark, witty stories told in his remarkable style.

Marlowe’s response to my Biro scribbled missive was a typed, two-page letter, in lower case and capitals.  It is a letter I cherish, for it gave me a sense of what can be made of a life. Derek Marlowe was more than just a novelist, he was a successful playwright, a screenwriter, and an award-winning writer for television.  In the letter, he explained how he had started his career after being sent down from University:

“I was thrown out of Queen Mary College, London, for editing and writing an article in the college magazine.  The article was a parody of The Catcher in the Rye reflecting the boredom of college seminars.  Not very funny or special but times were odd then. Besides, I hated University and I think I’d made that rather too clear.

“I began writing plays since I had started a play for the College which took a surprising course.  Continued with plays for about four years, went to Berlin, came back and then I realised, after writing A Dandy in Aspic (I was then a clerk) that I preferred prose to theatre. Besides, the person I was sharing the flat with and had done for six years, seemed better at theatre than me.  He was and is Tom Stoppard.”

Marlowe’s first novel A Dandy in Aspic, published in 1966, was the story of a double-agent, Eberlin, sent on a mission to assassinate his alter ego.  Dandy, as the jacket blurb said:

After a beautifully arresting plunge-in, a spy is assigned - savage irony! - to hunt himself down. And now, hot on his own trail…

Dandy fitted into the sixties’ pre-occupation with suave secret agents and was made into a so-so film starring Laurence Harvey, Mia Farrow, Tom Courtney and Peter Cook, of which Marlowe wrote:

“Regarding the film Dandy.  The director, Anthony Mann died during the filming (a superb man and great director) and it was taken over by Laurence Harvey, the badly cast Eberlin.  He directed his own mis-talent, changed it and the script - which is rather like Mona Lisa touching up the portrait while Leonardo is out of the room.”

 
More on Derek Marlowe, plus bonus clip after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
11.14.2010
12:06 pm
|
Discussion
The Trial of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’
11.10.2010
06:05 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
It is surprising to think that fifty years ago today, D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover was published and sold legally in British bookshops for the very first time.

The initial print run of 200,000 sold out, and within a year a total of 2m copies were sold, outselling the Bible. As was reported by the BBC at the time:

London’s largest bookstore, W&G Foyle Ltd, said its 300 copies had gone in just 15 minutes and it had taken orders for 3,000 more copies. When the shop opened this morning there were 400 people - mostly men - waiting to buy the unexpurgated version of the book.

Hatchards in Piccadilly sold out in 40 minutes and also had hundreds of orders pending.

Selfridges sold 250 copies in minutes. A spokesman told the Times newspaper, “It’s bedlam here. We could have sold 10,000 copies if we had had them.”

Lady C, as it has become known, has also become a bestseller in the Midlands and the North where demand has been described as “terrific”.

Originally published in Italy in 1928, Lady Chatterley’s Lover had been banned in the UK on grounds of obscenity, though a limited, expurgated and heavily censored imported version had been available, where words, such as ‘penis’ were replaced by ‘liver’, and sections of sexually explicit “purple prose” removed.

All this was to change, when in 1959, the Obscene Publications Act stated that any book considered obscene by some but could be shown to have “redeeming social merit” might still published. This encouraged Penguin Books to prepare 200,000 unexpurgated copies of Lady C for release in 1960 (to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of Lawrence’s death), in a bid to test the novel’s merit against the Act. This led to a now infamous trial in October 1960, where a host of established authors lined-up to give evidence in defense of the Lawrence’s novel, including T. S. Eliot, Doris Lessing, Aldous Huxley, Dame Rebecca West. Defense lawyer, Michael Rubinstein had cleverly contacted over 300 potential witnesses, ranging from writers, journalists, teachers, politicians, academics, TV celebrities and theologians. Many writers wrote letters in support to Rubinstein including:

E. M. Forster wrote:

‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a literary work of importance, written by a leading 20th-century novelist. It is surprising that such a work should be prosecuted here, and if it is condemned, our country will certainly make itself look ridiculous in America and elsewhere.

I do not think that it could be held obscene, but am in a difficulty here, for the reason that I have never been able to follow the legal definition of obscenity. The law tells me that obscenity may deprave and corrupt, but as far as I know, it offers no definition of depravity or corruption.

I am certain that it is neither erotic nor pornographic, nor, from what I knew of the author, would there have been any erotic or pornographic intention in his mind.’

Graham Greene, August 22 1960:

‘It seems to me to be absurd that this book should ever have been classed as obscene and I should say that its tendency as Lawrence intended is to treat the sexual side of a love affair in an adult fashion. I can’t Imagine that even a minor could draw any other conclusion from the book than that sexual activity was at least enjoyable.

I am myself dubious how far Lawrence was successful in his intention. I find some parts of the book rather absurd and for that reason I would prefer not to be called as a witness in case I was forced into any admission harmful to the Penguin case.

Yours faithfully

Graham Greene’

Aldous Huxley, October 9 1960:

‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover is an essentially wholesome book. Its treatment of sex is at once matter-of-fact and lyrical. There is no prurience in it and no trace of that sadistic perversion which is such an odious feature of many popular novels and short stories that, because their authors prudently avoid the use of certain four-letter words, are permitted to circulate freely.

That a beautiful and serious work of art should run the risk of being banned because its creator (for aesthetic and psychological reasons into which I need not enter) chose to make use of certain words that it is conventional to regard as shocking – this surely is the height of absurdity.

Aldous Huxley’

Evelyn Waugh, August 21 1960:

‘Your MBR/VS of 18th. I have not read Lady Chatterley’s Lover since it first came out. My memory of it is that it was dull, absurd in places and pretentious. I am sure that most of its readers would be attracted by its eroticism. Whether it can “corrupt” them, I can’t tell, but I am quite certain that no public or private “good” would be served by its publication. Lawrence had very meagre literary gifts.

Kindest regards,

E.W.’

Not everyone was happy about supporting the book, Doris Lessing wrote: “I don’t think this novel is one of Lawrence’s best, or a great work of art, I’m sorry, if there is to be a test case, that it will be fought over this particular book.” Likewise, Iris Murdoch tempered her support with “Lady Chatterley’s Lover certainly may strike one as an eminently silly book by a great man.”

Surprisingly, support came from unlikely sources, the Bishop of Woolwich supplied a written deposition, which stated:

‘Archbishop William Temple once said that Christians do not make jokes about sex for the same reason that they do not make jokes about Holy Communion – not because it is dirty, but because it is sacred.

‘Lawrence did not share the Christian valuation of sex, but he was always straining to portray it as something sacred, in a real sense as an act of Holy Communion. I believe that Christians in particular should read this book, if only because Lawrence believed passionately, and with much justification, that they have killed and denied the natural goodness of creation at this point.’

The trial lasted 6 days and marked the demise of one generation, and the arrival of another. This was most notable when the Prosecuting Counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones asked:

“Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters – because girls can read as well as boys – reading this book? Is it a book that you would have lying around in your own house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?”

If there was a line that negatively affected the Prosecution’s case then this was it. For it revealed Griffith-Jones lived in an archaic and class-divided world where everyone apparently had servants; a world separate from that of wives and servants, and this the majority of Britons. It was the clearest picture of the two worlds that existed back then - the world of “class, rank and privilege, ranged against ordinary people.”

Griffith-Jones’ comment highlighted this divide, and re-enforced the notion Penguin was on the side of “the common man.” In his closing speech, defense lawyer, Gerald Gardiner said:

“I do not want to upset the prosecution by suggesting that there are a certain number of people nowadays who as a matter of fact don’t have servants. But of course that whole attitude is one which Penguin Books was formed to fight against, which they have always fought against…

“Isn’t everybody, whether earning £10 a week or £20 a week, equally interested in the society in which we live, in the problems of human relationships including sexual relationships? In view of the reference made to wives, aren’t women equally interested in human relations, including sexual relations?”

Penguin’s success was a victory for all publishers, and the release of the Lady Chatterley’s Lover, on November 10 1960, marked the start of the cultural and political change that defined the decade.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
11.10.2010
06:05 pm
|
Discussion
Dangerous Minds Radio Hour episode 8
11.08.2010
11:05 am
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Due to a busy schedule and various life interventions, this week’s episode of Dangerous Minds Radio Hour is a pair of half hour mixes which I made and posted here earlier this year. They’re new to our large new podcasting audience though, so here ya go !
 
To Blast Away The Fungus In Your Ears:

Runzelstirn and Gurgelstock- Bei Abwesenheit….
Wolfgang Dauner/ Etcetera - Lady Blue
I.D. Company - Bum Bum
Pedro Santos - Sem Sombra
Chrome - TV As Eyes
Fleetwood Mac - Albatross
Jon Anderson - Transic Tö
Angel Rada - Upsadesa
Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band - Paper Shoes
Taj Mahal Travelllers - July 15,1972 part 3
Matching Mole (w/ Robert Wyatt & Brian Eno) - Gloria Gloom
Brian Eno (w/ Brad Laner) - Faraway Suns (unreleased)
 
Man Can Now Be Boxed And Bunched (all 7” singles):

Portsmouth Sinfonia - Also Sprach Zarathustra Op. 31 (excerpt)

Annie Anxiety - Cyanide Tears

Jimmy Smack - Untitled
Keith Rowe - Scratch Music
Joe Colley/Crawl Unit - Clay Sound

Princess Tinymeat - A Bun in the Oven

Eazy Teeth - Her Blade

The Flying Lizards - All Guitars
Minimal Man - She Was A Visitor
Stefan Weisser (Zev) - Poextensions
Sun City Girls - Eye Mohini
Project 197 - Plastic Straws

Jimmy Smack - Untitled

Caroliner - The Cooking Stove Beast
Johnny Ace - Pledging My Love
 

 
Download this week’s episode
 
Subscribe to the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour podcast at Alterati

 

Posted by Brad Laner
|
11.08.2010
11:05 am
|
Discussion
The Great Spot the Ball Swindle
10.27.2010
07:14 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
The story originally came to me via a friend, who had a friend, who had a film script – that’s how things happen, like ‘Chinese Whispers’, they start off as one thing and become something else. It was a good script, and would have made a fun wee movie, the kind Bill Forsyth or Charlie Gormley made about Glasgow in the 1980s, you can Google the type, Comfort and Joy meets Heavenly Pursuits, something like that.

I hocked it around but no takers, one to put down to experience. But I was still intrigued and thought there was maybe something more here, especially as the story was loosely based on real events. So, I’ll start with how it ended and then tell you how it began and where it all went wrong.

It should have been the best of times, but just weeks after 19-year-old, James McCreadie won £1500 on the Scottish Daily Express Place the Ball competition, three men, who claimed to be from the newspaper, turned up at his door and demanded he hand over £1300 of his winnings. If he didn’t pay up, then the men would put him in a concrete overcoat and dump him in the River Clyde.

Suddenly, it was the worst of times, and while most would have coughed up the money to avoid the fish, McCreadie had a problem - he didn’t have his winnings, he’d spent them on drinking, gambling, and a new £95 color TV for his gran. In fear for his life, the teenager went to the police - and this is how the cops uncovered biggest fraud in British newspaper history.

It began with Catherine McChord. At twenty-seven, she felt her life was over and could only dream of escaping the deprived housing estate in Baillieston, on the outskirts of Glasgow, where she lived with her husband, Eddie, a twenty-seven—year-old taxi driver. When the couple discovered, two years into their marriage, they could not have children, they decided to set their sights on the top, as Cathy later told the Glasgow Herald:

“I don’t really know why I became involved in this.  Maybe it would have been different if we could have had children. I don’t know.”

McChord worked as an office clerk at the Scottish Daily Express, where she earned £35 a week.  For Cathy, it seemed that her future life was all around her - older women who had worked at the same job in the same office, year-after-year, until they retired, received their handshake, and had nothing to show for it but a few happy thoughts and the faint memory of a fling at the Christmas party. That wasn’t for Cathy, she wanted a taste of the good things in life - holidays, a car, a new home.  That was the dream, and in 1973, the dream became a little closer when she was appointed Deputy Competitions Clerk, to the new Head of Competitions, Colin Hunter.

At thirty-six, Hunter was very similar to Cathy.  He’d spent a life working hard at a job as a middle management accountant, who knew his promotion to Head of Competitions, with a salary of £80 a week, was as high up as he would ever go. 

Like Cathy, Colin wanted more from life.  He hated living in Castlemilk.  He felt it wasn’t a safe place for his family to grow up in.  The sixties promise of a modern Glasgow was now a grey reality of bleak new towns, housing estates and high rises.  Hunter felt his best years were over and just wanted to give his wife, and especially his two children something of value, something that would change their lives for the better, and now here was that chance.

In the 1960s and 1970s Britain was addicted to a newspaper competition called Spot the Ball.  Each week, the Scottish Daily Express, amongst others, would publish a photograph from a soccer match and invite readers to guess the position of the ball, which has been removed from the picture.  In its day, the Scottish Daily Express’ Place the Ball was as popular as the National Lottery today. Unlike the lottery, individuals used mathematical theory, random algorithms, body language, lines of sight convergence, and a considerable amount of potluck to pin-point the exact position of the missing ball.

The Express offered a weekly cash prize of £1,500 – the equivalent of the average workers’ yearly wage.  This was later increased to £5,000 and then to £20,500 and £22,000 – the equivalent of a £1,000,000 win today.

Too great a temptation for Cathy, who realized, when it was rumoured the Scottish Daily Express was to close, and the staff made redundant, she had found a way to have those things she had always wanted.

On hearing her suggestion, Hunter turned a blind eye, but later claimed he joined the criminal cartel after he heard redundancy money was being offered at Express departments, and he and his colleagues hoped to collect as well. “But in March 1974, we were told we were being retained.  That was the final trigger for the involvement.”

It was a simple plan. Cathy and Hunter ran a syndicate, made up of Eddie McChord, and friends John Smith, Thomas Hutton, and Donald Williamson. These friends located a suitable winner – someone who needed a small sum of money.  Once the bogus winner was selected, a winning entry form would be submitted in their name, which then won the £15,000 Place the Ball prize.

The bogus winner kept £200 of their winnings, returning £1300. 

The £1300 was divided three-ways: £500 each to Cathy and Hunter; and £300 for the other members of the syndicate.

From March 1974, until April 1977, Cathy and Hunter fixed 67 Place the Ball competitions.  They also twice rigged two major jackpots of £20,500 and £22,000, collecting two-thirds of these winnings for themselves.

As Cathy and Hunter did the hardest part of the swindle, they took the lion’s share of the loot.

“I enjoy spending money I like good things, wine, food, travel.  And I love clothes, particularly trouser suits. I did make flights to London to buy clothes but not as people made out.

“Whenever I had money from the competitions, I would take it to two building societies.  I would put between £100 and £300 in one and about the same amount in the other.  I did this several times and never once let Eddie know.”

Amongst the first winners, was Cathy’s mother.  The syndicate believed they were modern day Robin Hoods, who gave money to those who needed it most.  Winners were found from all over Glasgow, as Eddie McChord used his taxi to find and vet suitable winners; whilst his friends, Smith, Hutton and Williamson sought winners from a network of bars and social clubs.

The inevitable tension began to affect Cathy, and she was hospitalized after a serious bout of asthma.

Even so, she continued with the fraud, as for all involved it meant a life of luxury, flash cars, foreign holidays, new houses, lavish furnishings, and expensive jewelry

Cathy bought a new taxi for her husband, a £3,500 car for herself, and made her dream move from Baillieston to an £18,000 house in the suburbs.  She also had £12,000 in a building society account.

Hunter bought a gold watch and bracelet, a new Volvo and was in the process of purchasing a bungalow when caught.  He had £18,000 in various building societies and £500 in his pocket when arrested.

It seemed the perfect scam, until 19-year-old, James McCreadie was chosen as one of the 67 bogus winners.  For the former Tory election agent and son of a bookmaker, blew the whistle on the scam.

McCreadie had originally needed money to pay a fine of £125 for Kirkintilloch Thistle Boys soccer team, an under-13 group that he helped to run.

McCreadie was told that he could keep £200 of his £1500 winnings, but when no one contacted him to collect the rest of the money, McCreadie withdrew a further £200, and bought his grandmother a £95 television.  He then withdrew a further £1,100, and spent the lot.

The turning point for ‘Greedy’ McCreadie came when he was visited by three heavies, who threatened to “Chuck him in the Clyde wearing a concrete overcoat.”

Cathy McChord was jailed for 3 years, along with her boss, Colin Hunter after both admitted defrauding Beaverbrook’s Newspapers Ltd. in Scotland of £143,500.

They also admitted a charge of attempting to defraud a further £1500 from the paper’s Place the Ball competition.

Eddie McChord admitted defrauding the Scottish Daily Express of £4,500.  He was fined £1,000 or 12 months in prison.

Mrs McChord’s mother admitted 2 charges involving £3,000. Presiding Judge Lord Johnston said her part was minor and admonished her.

John Smith was fined £12,000 and 12 months in prison for defrauding the firm of £131,000.  He did not ask time to pay and was taken to the cells.

Thomas Hutton admitted frauds involving £70,000, was fined £4,000 or 12 months in prison.

Donald Williamson was fined £250 or 6 months, when he admitted fraud of £16,500.

Eddie McChord, Hutton and Williamson were allowed time to pay.

After his conviction Hunter said:

“I want to make a fresh start in life when all this mess is over and I want to wipe the slate clean. I suppose I got between £1500 and £1700 of the total money, and I presume Cathy got the same.”

The police recovered only £4224 of the £143,500. £139,000 is still unaccounted for.

Together, Hunter and the McChords stole over £1million in today’s money from the Daily Express.

Sadly, this wasn’t the end of Cathy’s story, just like those misunderstood whispers that change into something different, her life took a dark, and more horrific turn, when in 1982, she was murdered by deranged killer Ian Scoular.
 
No suitable video for this…but here’s Archie Gemmill’s genius goal for Scotland against Holland in the 1978 World Cup
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
10.27.2010
07:14 pm
|
Discussion
Dangerous Minds Radio Hour episode 7
10.25.2010
10:03 am
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Hey everyone, it’s lucky episode 7 of the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour. Dig the dream logic inherent in this latest batch of selections from musical nerdiac Brad Laner and his bottomless well of miniature personal epiphanies. There is nearly too much sonic goodness packed into this one 70 minute session. Please enjoy in moderation.
 
BPeople - “Whether to Worry”
Moonshake - “Coward”
Bubble Puppy - “Thinking About Thinking”
Slapp Happy - “The Drum”
Betty Harris - “There’s a Break in the Road”
Os Mutantes - “Desculpe, Babe”
John Lee Hooker - “Tupelo”
Chris and Cosey - “Raining Tears of Blood”
This Heat - “Health and Efficiency”
Kate Bush - “The Dreaming”
The Beach Boys - “‘Til I Die (Alternate Mix)”
Kim Jung Mi - “Towards The Sunlight”
Dennis Parker - “Like an Eagle”
Heléne Sage - Frissons Dans La Cochlee
 

 
Download this week’s episode
 
Subscribe to the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour podcast at Alterati

 

Posted by Brad Laner
|
10.25.2010
10:03 am
|
Discussion
Page 104 of 118 ‹ First  < 102 103 104 105 106 >  Last ›