I’m looking forward to this evening as I’m introducing Victor Rodriguez Nuñez, a Cuban poet whom I met at the Stanza Festival last year in St Andrews, to give a reading at Manchester’s Instituto Cervantes.

Victor is a fine poet who work is full of colourful imagery and with a talent for linking earthy detail with a visionary scope. I was charmed and impressed by the vitality of his work and by his excellent reading of it when I heard him at St Andrews, and he turned out to be a friendly and really delightful person. So I proposed him as a guest for the Manchester Literature Festival, and now here he is.

Victor teaches at Kenyon College, Ohio in the USA but insists he is not a political exile from Cuba, just a wandering intellectual to whom geographical boundaries don’t mean a great deal.
To my amazement, he and his co-translator Katherine Hedeen have done me the compliment of translating a group of my own poems into Spanish, something I never expected and which came as a complete surprise. It will be great to see him again after so long, and the reading should be memorable.

 

Had a great night out on Saturday – good old rock and roll with one of Britain’s legendary guitarists. 

We went to see Wilko Johnson at the Manchester Academy. Wilko has a unique guitar style that blends what used to be called  ’lead’ and ‘rhythm’ – basically, he plays both at once in a percussive, economical way that owes something to Chuck Berry (and before her to Sister Rosetta Tharpe – see my post on her from way back) but is really all his own.

Wilko’s name may not mean much to you if you’re under 40 but he is still remembered as the star attraction of a sensational rhythm and blues band called Dr Feelgood back in the 1970s – just before the punk era dawned. Wilko was famous for the way he would go whizzing around the stage while he played – he never seemed to keep still and he would slide and tear around as if he was on skates, with a weird hypnotic glare on his face.

More recently the band - and Wilko above all – have been the subject of a fascinating film by Julien Temple called Oil City Confidential about the band, its history and the highly individual Wilko, who is a natural star – quoting Shakespeare and Milton fluently (he read English at Newcastle under my old friend Robert Woof, later curator of Dove Cottage – another crazy genius), demonstrating his highly personal guitar technique, and climbing onto the roof of his house in Canvey Island, Essex, where he has a high-grade astronomical telescope. In fact, he’s such an expert that there’s a Facebook group campaigning for him to take over on The Sky at Night when Patrick Moore finally has to retire!

Amanda and I had a quick chat with Wilko in the dressing room and he told us that he’s now got a solar telescope, which has darkened lenses so you can look directly at the sun, so he’s able to watch the solar flares erupting.

But mainly we listened to Wilko and his band performing a classic set of blues numbers and Dr Feelgood songs.  Exciting, energising and great fun.  And if you want to meet one of British rock’s great characters, or learn about a key episode in British popular culture, or just see a fine documentary film which I guarantee you’ll enjoy, do get hold of Oil City Confidential .

Rose Castle is a gem of northern Cumbria – a beautiful house centring on a pele tower built in the 1340s and once the palace of the Bishops of Carlisle.  It belongs to the Church. But there is now a threat that within about one week it will be sold to the highest bidder with no arrangements for public access and little protection for its future. Yet there is a plan to take care of its financial liabilities and allow public access to this beautiful and tranquil place.

Please read the information below and sign the petition at www.friendsofrosecastle.org  NOW before it is too late.

I first discovered Rose Castle when I was researching my Literary Guide to the Lake District: Coleridge and the Wordsworths went there on their way to Scotland in 1803 and Coleridge wrote in his notebook:

“We are delighted with Rose Castle, the thickset green Fence to the garden, the two walls, the lower making a terrace / the House, the Orchard crowding round it – The Chestnuts – the masses of Ivy over the gateway, from one great root. This stands on the other side of the wall to my left as I face the gateway – Go in, the ivy over the Coach-House, belonging to the same mass – the horns of the dark old mulberry Tree among it – the Swallows & their Shadows on the Castle-House walls – the green shaven Bank, like the roof of a House between the main Building & the Castle, properly so called / the great Nets on this castle, to cover the fruit Trees – all, all perfect – Cottage Comfort & ancestral Dignity!”  – Coleridge, Notebooks, 1427.

Here is what my friend Philippa Harrison has written about the house and its peril:

LAST CHANCE TO SAVE ROSE CASTLE FOR THE NATION?
Only one building represents the unique history of the establishment of a Border between Scotland and the North West of England, Rose Castle, created for the Bishopric of Carlisle to administer the “lands which were Scottish”, before Cumbria finally became English a hundred years later than the rest of the country. Also the preeminent English castle in the medieval Scottish wars and reiver skirmishes in the North West, Rose is the only remaining monument to our turbulent border history there. Its retention, with public accessabilty and as an educational resource, is vital for the maintenance of any sort of national historical perspective.

Although today Rose, its land and gardens, have a wonderful, indeed exceptional, sense of serenity and calm, it mirrors the development of national and dynastic struggle, architectural taste and the role of the Church in England since the Norman Conquest. Now the castle mainly reflects the Gothic Revival style, its chapel well recognised as an outstanding example. But there remain the pele towers and the crenellations of the fourteenth century when Rose was burnt three times within twenty-five years only to rise again each time, phoenix-like, to become a symbol of triumph over adversity. Later besieged, taken and burnt in the Civil War, Rose was rebuilt by the Cumbrian people yet again while secular castles were abandoned and left wasted.

In this sense Rose belongs to its people, a people easily ignored by the distant centres of governance. Since Rose was decommissioned as the Bishop’s see-house , it has been made clear to the Church Commissioners that there is a local plan for removing all financial liabilities for the castle from them if they so wish, a plan which will preserve the spiritual, historic and educational value of Rose for future generations. To achieve it, everyone needs to work together. However within ten days the Church Commissioners appear to be intending to recommend that Rose goes under the hammer with no stipulations about public accessibility, educational use, use of the chapel or the great public rooms.

This situation is of paramount importance for the North of England, a travesty of natural justice and a betrayal of eight centuries of care from the bishops of Carlisle and the Cumbrian people.

Only public protest about disposal without any guarantee of the preservation of a unique resource for the public good has any chance of affecting the outcome. A petition at friendsorrosecastle.org has been hastily set up. Every press comment about the importance of Rose for the national heritage will count.

The Bishop of Carlisle has written that he very much hopes “ that a really worthwhile use for Rose can be found”. Amen.

Looking around for something to read recently, I spotted Alan Hankinson’s biography of Geoffrey Winthrop Young. It had been on my shelf for years and I didn’t even recall clearly who Young was. What the heck, I thought, I’ll give it a try.

It turned out to be totally gripping. Young had been a pioneer of mountaineering and a brilliant climbing writer, a heroic ambulance driver in World War I (where he lost a leg) and after the war pioneered mountaineering with an artificial leg. He had many German friends, and worked secretly with Germans opposed to Hitler to try and bring about the dictator’s downfall. His exploits were incredible, literally, and Hankinson’s book brought the whole thing to life, telling the story with such verve that I couldn’t stop reading.

But also the book reminded me of Alan. I first met him when I gave a talk on Thomas De Quincey in Cockermouth in 1981. Alan was a deep-voiced, jovial, lionlike chap with a mane of white hair: hugely well-read, deeply friendly, vastly intelligent and entirely likeable.

After that I bumped into him quite often around Cumbria (he lived in Skiddaw Street, Keswick); we talked about this project and that, and I was delighted when he won prizes for his wonderful book Coleridge Walks the Fells, in which he retraced the course of Coleridge’s great 1802 walk around the Western Lakes, comparing how places are now to how they were then. The book is a classic.

When I came to write my own Literary Guide to the Lake District he took a great interest – and showed it with practical help. One day I phoned him and asked if he remembered whether a particular plaque was still at the top of Grisedale Hause – because last time I was up there, I’d forgotten to check, and I needed to know for the book. There was something similar that I’d neglected at the summit of Great Gable too. The upshot was that Alan said ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go up and take a look, and let you know.’

When my book came out I was able to thank ‘Alan Hankinson, who with memorable generosity volunteered to climb both Grisedale Hause and Great Gable to find things I had forgotten to look for.’

Alan was himself of course a fine climber and The First Tigers, his history of the beginnings of british rock-climbing, is another classic and fascinating even if you’ve never set foot on a mountain. In fact, it’s hard not to keep throwing in the word ‘classic’ when writing about Alkan: he wrote so well, telling so many stories that needed to be told, and produced the perfect book on each one.

He was loyal too. Towards the end of his life he turned up more than once at poetry readings I gave at Dove Cottage and elsewhere, although he clearly wasn’t well and admitted that he was finding it difficult to write. And yet really I must have been someone he knew only peripherally, an occasional contact. But the thing about Alan was that when you met him his warmth and interest made you feel that you and he had always known each other.

Alan died, sadly, in 2007 and I didn’t hear about it until some time afterwards. Only when I read the obituaries and found out abaout his amazing career in TV, film, radio and journalism, and his war service with the Gurkhas, did I realise how many other aspects he had besides those I’d seen.

Earlier this year I was asked to run a course on English Literature for trainee Blue Badge Guides. It turned out that my predecessor in the job had been Alan. I felt proud, as well as a bit intimidated, to find I was stepping into his shoes. It certainly gave me something to live up to, though I didn’t do the job with a pint always at my elbow, as I’m told Alan used to!

Sadly his books (apart from two US publications on American Civil War battles – yes, he was an expert on that as well!) seem to be out of print. A bit of a scandal really when you know how good they are. Alan deserves to be better known. Some enterprising publisher should at least put out digital reprints of The First Tigers, Coleridge Walks the Fells, and his biography of Young. Meanwhile, I never go to Keswick without thinking of him and missing that deep-voiced laugh, and that encyclopedic knowledge of literature and the Lake District. Here’s to you, Alan, and thanks for telling so many great stories.

This is a very quick and brief post for any salsa freaks who don’t know that Ruben Blades, one of the greatest singer-songwriters in the genre, is playing a rare gig in London on 28 July. He’s a legendary performer and may never get to the UK again so if you can make it, do! He’s backed by what looks like an excellent orchestra so it should be a great night. This is probably our last chance to see an all-time great of the salsa tradition and you should do all you can to be there.

To book tickets, go to:http://www.o2shepherdsbushempire.co.uk/event/27695/ruben-blades-tickets

I’ll add a clip below of his classic song ‘Plastico’.