A friend showed me an article in a recent Oxford Gazette about Maurice Bowra, the legendary Warden of Wadham College, Oxford. I was lucky enough to be a student there when he was head of the College (I started there in 1966) and it brought back memories that seemed worth recording.

I remember him as a stocky man, not very tall, always in a smart grey suit. He had a broad chest and a thick neck, so his head seemed to join his body without transition – the outline recalled a sea lion. The slightest remark made in his deep, resonant voice would rumble around the quad like a brief clap of thunder. And he often was in the quad, because his home – the Warden’s Lodgings – was in the corner on your left as you entered the College.

Always interested in undergraduates, he would invite all new students to dinner in small groups of four or five. It wasn’t an easy evening: most of us were tongue-tied and petrified with nerves in the great man’s presence, so unless one of the guests was exceptionally precocious even by Oxford undergraduate standards, the Warden had to keep the conversation going almost single-handed (which he was well able to do). I don’t recall a single thing about my first-year dinner with him, except that I was paralysed with shyness throughout. In retrospect, I feel it was a little sad. Bowra genuinely wanted to know the students, but his personal charisma actually put a barrier in the way. He was dauntingly impressive, and – I now guess – just a little shy himself.

On further acquaintance, he turned out to be exceptionally kind and generous. He would encourage students in financial or academic difficulties; he supported student writing and drama keenly; he would bend the system as necessary for anyone who had been ill or notably unlucky. And – unlike many impressive university grandees – he was notably liberal – even left-wing.

He had long advocated co-educational colleges, and lobbied energetically to see that Wadham was the very first men’s college to admit women (just he had previously seen to it that the College went out of its way to admit talented grammar school boys when others were still focusing on the independent schools). Of course it was self-interest too: he was making sure that the College stayed ahead. But that was part of his genius – to find ways of combining generosity with his task of nurturing the College.

And in the wider world he did his best to support decent people and politics against tyrants. Once I saw him at an undergraduate play about Savonarola, which featured graphic on-stage scenes of torture. Bowra stayed until the interval, then slipped away. I heard him muttering ‘No, no. Don’t like torture.’ He didn’t come back. Too many of his friends, in the 1930s and since, had suffered or died at the hands of despots.

Not that he was a rigid egalitarian. Once when I won a University prize, I got a note of congratulation from the Warden, adding ‘To him who hath, shall be given’ and telling me that I’d find £100 to my credit at Parker’s bookshop, to spend as I chose. (I still have several of the books I bought.) Again, he was encouraging what he thought was good for the College and its status.

Once you overcame your nervousness enough to appreciate it, he was a memorable, aphoristic talker. His favourable judgment on an undergraduate was ‘That man’s not just clever. He’s intelligent!’ And his comment on desiccated literary theory, years before it wrought havoc in English schools, was prescient: ‘Books about books? All well and good. But beware of books about books about books!’

When we had our celebratory dinner with him, undergraduates en masse, after our final exams (‘Schools’), conversation turned to famous people he’d known. We began throwing names at him. Mao Tse Tung? T.S. Eliot? Chamberlain? EM. Forster? It seemed he’d met everybody. The climax came when someone asked ‘What about Lawrence?’ Bowra barked back, ‘D.H. or T.E.? Knew them both!’

When he prepared to retire and move to smaller lodgings (it must have been in 1969 or so, just before I left for Wolfson College) he gave most of his books away to students. I’ve still got Henry Vaughan’s Poems, the bulky and excellent volume he gave me. He died not long afterwards.

And of course there are the stories. Like Swift and Charles Lamb, like Wilde and Socrates, he was a magnet for anecdotes. No doubt many of those that gathered to his name were centuries old, the common adornment of many previous ‘characters’. It was generally assumed, in my time at least, that he was gay. But he was said to have been engaged, once; when someone commented on his fiancée’s homely looks, the reply had been ‘Buggers can’t be choosers!’ Apocryphal? Perhaps.

Then there was the story of how he and a group of friends had been surprised drying themselves at Parsons’ Pleasure, the male skinny-dipping pool on the river, by a misdirected boat full of ladies. His naked companions hastily wrapped towels around their waists. Bowra put his towel over his head. When the boat had departed, his explanation was ‘Don’t know about you chaps, but around here I’m generally known by my face.’

And of course there was the tale of the undergraduate, climbing into college one night long after hours (colleges were locked at 11 pm in those days and lateness cost a fine or worse) who, slipping in the darkness along a side-passage beside the Master’s lodgings, heard footsteps approaching. He dived through a convenient doorway to find himself in a lamplit sitting-room. But – horrors! Other steps were approaching, this time from inside the lodgings. Our hero duly took refuge behind a sofa. In came an insomniac Bowra, clad in pyjamas and dressing-gown. He sat down at a desk on the other side of the room and spent several hours reading and writing, whilst the fugitive tried not to breathe too loudly, and to be stoical about the effects of beer on an overtaxed bladder. At length the ordeal drew to a close: Bowra stood up from the desk and padded to the door. The fugitive, it seemed, had escaped detection. Then, in the doorway, the Warden paused; and the familiar voice growled: ‘Would you mind turning the light out when you leave?’

Most of my posts about the Lakes have been celebratory. This one isn’t. We are facing a risk that a huge dump for nuclear waste will be created in the Lake District, specifically in and under Ennerdale, the quietest and one of the most beautiful valleys in the Lakes.

The plan is to dig a vast underground cavern in which massive quantities of lethal waste will be stored, which will remain immensely dangerous for the next million years or so. Even the plans put forward by those in favour show that the foothills of Great Gable and Scafell will be permanently scarred by construction and maintenance buildings.

Other counties have already turned down the idea of becoming the world’s nuclear dustbin. The nuclear industry hopes that the lack of jobs in Cumbria will persude the local authorities to give in.

But Bill Jefferson, Chair of the Lake District National Park authority, warns of ‘potentially disastrous effects’ on both landscape and tourism.
He said: “Tourism brings in far more than Sellafield [nuclear processing complex] ever would, and let’s face it, there are going to be more than enough jobs in dealing with the clear-up and improvement of above-ground storage which is happening there.
“We have 15 million people coming to the park every year, and the prospect of having the world’s largest nuclear waste dump could make that considerably fewer.”
On 30 January, three Cumbrian councils will decide whether to agree a full preliminary planning proposal for an underground storage facility four times larger than the vast Sellafield complex from where the waste will be transported.

This lunatic scheme needs to be stopped now for everyone’s sake and for the sake of the future. What you can do at once is to sign the petition at

http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/no-nuclear-dump-in-the-lake-district

We need signatures, and we need them right now. It will take about a minute.

And if you are able to be in the Lakes, please join the protest walk at Ennerdale on Saturday 26 January. The organisers say:

“Ennerdale Protest Walk – 12:00hrs Saturday 26th January 2013
We have organised a protest walk in Ennerdale on Saturday 26th January 2013.
This is the potential route that heavy lorries and site equipment could take through the Ennerdale valley. The walk will start at Bowness Knott Carpark and continue beside the lake and end at the River Liza Delta just below Ennerdale Fell. This would be the anticipated site for the temporary Drilling HQ if seismic testing is to be carried out in MRWS Stage 5.
The closing sequences of the movie 28 Days Later (2002), directed by Danny Boyle, were filmed around the Ennerdale area and people will remember the message laid on the grass and viewed from above. We have arranged for the walk to be photographed from the air, weather permitting. It is our intention to recreate the final scene and provide footage and stills for use by the media.
The proposed walk will be a gentle stroll of 1.5miles each way and is easy enough for families and walkers of all ability. Please make sure all your friends, family, colleagues and anyone else who will listen comes along and supports this protest. We need as many people as possible to create media interest.”

Delighted to say that I’ve just brought out my first e-book! The Opium-Eater, my biography of Thomas De Quincey, the great Romantic essayist and author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, is now out from Crux Publishing, an independent publisher specialising in high quality non-fiction e-books. It’s been well-recived, as you can see from the reviews on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk, which are all 5*.

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) is world-famous for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, the first book to explore the experience of addiction and the states of mind – both alienated and visionary – to which it gave rise.

The archetypal bohemian, at seventeen De Quincey was living penniless on the streets of London. Later, as a pioneering journalist, he spent a wandering life of poverty and debt whilst writing for the great magazines which were the mass media of his day.

A close friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, he shared the lives of the Romantic poets in the Lake District and wrote vivid personal accounts of them which caused a storm of controversy.

Recognised as a genius by authors as diverse as Virginia Woolf and William Burroughs, De Quincey analysed the alienation of the city, the aesthetics of murder, and the paradoxical nature of the self at the very dawn of the modern age. He is a founder of modern biography, a subversive thinker, an innovative crime writer and above all a master of English prose.

I’ve been able to incorportate in my biography of this remarkable figure, all the new discoveries that where made when I was General Editor of De Quincey’s collected works. My book traces him from the affluent Manchester childhood which he fled for poverty and the streets, then through addiction, literary success, and the dramatic tensions of his later debt-ridden years in Edinburgh when he produced his last masterpieces. The book has been fully revised and updated for this new edition.

To order, just put one of the following into your browser:

Crux publishing:
www.cruxpublishing.co.uk/books/opium.html

Apple iBookstore:

http://bit.ly/XpWvR8

Kobo:

http://bit.ly/QsTTz7

Amazon.co.uk:

http://amzn.to/TdmrAK

Amazon.com:

http://amzn.to/REcRBx

With the recent news that M&S have chosen Seb White, a little boy with Down’s Syndrome, as a model for their children’s clothes, it seemed a good time to draw attention to the likelihood that William Wordsworth probably wrote one of his finest poems about a Down’s Syndrome child.

His beautiful sonnet ‘Surprised by Joy’ was written after he had lost two children, but its most likely subject is Catherine Wordsworth, who was especially dear to her father and used to delight him by playing in his study as he wrote. Here’s the poem:

SURPRISED by joy–impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport–Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind–
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?–That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, 10
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

Sadly, Catherine (1808-12) had died at less than four years old and the poem records a painful moment when Wordsworth instinctively turns to the child and then realises, a split second later, that she is no longer there – something anyone who has suffered a bereavement will be able to identify with.

But how do we know that Catherine had Down’s Syndrome? It’s not certain but it is extremely likely. I noticed the evidence when I was researching the life of the essayist Thomas De Quincey, and a couple of years ago pointed it out to Muriel Strachan, who is writing a book on the Wordsworth children, and suggested she examine the evidence systematically. She did so and the case seems very clear.

Catherine was born when the poet and his wife were both 38. A loveable and delightful child, she was said by Dorothy Wordsworth to have ‘not…the least atom of beauty’, but a wonderful sense of humour and ‘something irresistibly comic in her face and movements’. Wordsworth used to call her ‘my little Chinese maiden’ – probably relating to the epicanthic fold of skin which gives some Down’s children an unusual shape to the eye. She seems to have had heart problems and suffered from convulsions and some problem with swallowing. All these symptoms point very strongly to Down’s Syndrome.

The whole Wordsworth Circle was fond of her, and Thomas De Quincey, author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, loved her especially: so much so that when she died he was heart-broken, and claims to have slept out on her grave in Grasmere churchyard for six summer weeks in passionate grief. It was probably depression following her death that tipped him into full-blown opium additicion, for his addiction took hold soon after she died.
Wordsworth wrote two poems about Catherine: the other, lesser-known poem is ‘Characteristics of a Child Three Years Old:

LOVING she is, and tractable, though wild;
And Innocence hath privilege in her
To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes;
And feats of cunning; and the pretty round
Of trespasses, affected to provoke
Mock-chastisement and partnership in play.
And, as a faggot sparkles on the hearth,
Not less if unattended and alone
Than when both young and old sit gathered round
And take delight in its activity; 10
Even so this happy Creature of herself
Is all-sufficient, solitude to her
Is blithe society, who fills the air
With gladness and involuntary songs.
Light are her sallies as the tripping fawn’s
Forth-startled from the fern where she lay couched;
Unthought-of, unexpected, as the stir
Of the soft breeze ruffling the meadow-flowers,
Or from before it chasing wantonly
The many-coloured images imprest 20
Upon the bosom of a placid lake.

Muriel Strachan presented an outline of her findings at the Wordsworth Museum last autumn. For full details we shall have to wait for her book on the Wordsworth children. Meanwhile, in the new edition of my book The Opium-Eater: A Life of THomas De Quincey (Crux Publishing, forthcoming) I’ve been able to point to the likelihood that Catherine was a Down’s baby, and to explore the part she played in De Quincey’s life.

Down’s Syndrome was not identified as a medical condition until John Langdon Down described it in 1866, so the Wordsworths and their friends simply saw Catherine as a lovely and somewhat unusual child.

Recently I’ve added a new element to my week’s dancing, by going to Michal’s Friday night bachata classes at Cuba Cafe in the Northern Quarter. (8.15 beginners, improvers 9.30 approx.)

I’d tried to learn bachata several times, at classes and workshops, but either the teachers didn’t go at the right pace, or the instructions weren’t clear, or the numbers were out of balance… So I didn’t really persist and never got beyond the simplest rudiments.

But I took some friends to Cuba Cafe for drinks a couple of months ago, and watching Michal’s class I was very impressed by the sheer good time everyone seemed to be having. A week or two later I went along, and found the class exactly right – for me, anyway.

Michal is a cheerful, amusing teacher, who has the knack of expalining things extremely clearly and beginning from a very basic level, yet effortlesly getting people dancing at quite a decent level by the end of the evening. Everyone has fun in the process, and the classes are also very good value – cheaper than many salsa classes in fact. To sum up, this is simply the best bachata class I’ve seen.

I’m now a regular, and while I won’t say I’m dancing brilliant bachata, at least I have a few basic moves, I feel I’m finally getting somewhere, and I’m loving Friday evenings. As a bonus, DJ Les (Mancuban, Salsa Republic) is having monthly party nights – The AfterParty – following on from the class, playing salsa, bachata, merengue, reggaeton from 12 midnight to 3 a.m. And if you’ve been to Michal’s bachata class first, you don’t even have to pay. Otherwise the AfterParty s a mere £3. For AfterParty dates you’ll need to check out Mancuban or Cuba Cafe websites or on Facebook.

As a PS, I hear Michal’s beautiful wife Anna has recently given birth to their daughter, so many congratulations to the whole family. And Michal tells me the classes are going ahead as usual. If you’re around Manchester on a Friday, give them a try.