Issue 0 Features: Marsha Arnold / Oliver Balch / Finn Beales / Tom Bullough / John Bulmer / Billie Charity / Dix / Beth Evans / Duncan Fallowell / Soma Ghosh / Mark Harrell / Dylan Jones / Nina Lyon / Ben Rawlence / Owen Sheers / Robert Wyatt / And more‌
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conte nts Special sample of our launch Issue 0, 2016 List of the full contents and contributors below:below 6
Th e S i l k Butte rf ly Co l l e cto r by Tracy Thursfield
34 Th e C hu rc h Of M e rthyr I s su i At Patri c i o by Mark Harrell
Born again in the body-confidence of threads
A pilgrimage by Mark Harrell to a little hermit
sewn to fit, Katherine Sheers stitches an
church in the Black Mountains reveals its
independent career as a lingerie designer and
architectural mercies and spiritual mysteries
an artist in embroidery
from medieval times to modern days
10 W h e re Th e We stb ou rn e M e ets Th e Wye by Duncan Fallowell
38 Bu l m e r: Th e S i g n i f i c ant Mo m e nt by John Bulmer
Welsh border street names in Notting Hill
Retrospectively, John Bulmer shows and tells
intrigue Duncan Fallowell, who contrasts
how he brought fresh colour and a new vision
privileged urban preservation with the poly-
to the North of England during his long career
despoliation of his Golden Valley Arcadia
as a pioneer of photo-journalism
12 Th e Pote nt G re e n by Soma Ghosh
5 0 U n d e r Th e Tu m p by Oliver Balch
On the trail of the Green Man, Soma Ghosh
In an extract from his new book, Under the
walks and talks spiritedly with Nina Lyon, author
Tump, travel writer Oliver Balch makes the
of Uprooted, about creating “punk religion” and
longest journey of all, homewards
getting to grips with the “God-thing”
58 R ic h Boy, Po or Boy by Soma Ghosh 20 Th e B e st R e stau r ant I n A S mal l Tow n by Dylan Jones
Escaping from schizo Herefords along Offa’s Dyke, Soma Ghosh falls in with ex-city teenage
Escaping the stress and status anxiety of ‘event
boys on the run from posh country boarding
dining’ in London, L.A. and New York, Dylan
schools and rural rehab crisis centres
Jones relaxes in the quiet riverside pleasures of the best little restaurant in his world
60 E x i l e s & San ctuary by Ben Rawlence
22 A d d l an d s by Tom Bullough
Whether they seek political shelter in a
Introducing an extract from his new novel,
Kenyan refugee camp or religious sanctuary in
Addlands, set in the Edw Valley, Tom Bullough
a Black Mountains parish, Ben Rawlence learns
regrets the loss of Radnorshire from Welsh
their old lesson: “hope sustains the exiles”
history and restores it in his own imagination
64 Bo rd e rtown by Dix 32 On Th e S ea’s Lan d by Owen Sheers
To enter Bordertown “from off ”, strangers
Owen Sheers’ ‘Prologue’ introduces a poetic
have to leave their trousers with Squid, the
coastline journey through the real, imagined
Gatekeeper. Dix patrols the border on a
and linguistic landscapes of the Southern Gower
mobility scooter. With vegetables
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The Silk Butterf ly Collector by Tr acy Th u rs f i e l d P h oto g r a p h s by Mars h a A rn o l d
A strong narrative thread of memory and memoir runs through the delicate and beautiful
was emerging from the chrysalis of the corset. In conversation, Katherine and I wonder whether
garments hand-made and hand-sewn by Katherine
it is the loss of that knowledge and the ability to
Sheers. The care and attention to detail in the making
fashion our own garments which contributes to the
recalls to the modern mind the deftness of fine,
sense of alienation from our own bodies. Does she
traditional handwork; the elements of autobiography
make her own lingerie? She does. The job of a
implicit in the eleven sewn pieces she has made
garment, she says, is to fit your body. Garments can
this year for exhibition are explorations of the ideas
be measured, constructed, changed and altered to fit
and expectations surrounding female identity, seen
a woman. The art of designing for yourself allows an
and unseen.
intimate knowledge and an objective understanding
Six of the pieces, individually created from antique silk and cotton, are hand-stitched as samples in
of your own shape. It instils confidence. Many of us exist in ignorance of our own shape.
miniature of 1920s and 1930s underwear, flattened and
Online, we order mass produced garments, one
fashioned into two-dimensional form. They represent
shape fits all, in the season’s latest chemical colours,
the shared knowledge and skills of generations of women,
made by unknown designers for the idealised,
harking back to an era when they still made their
objectified woman.
own garments, and when the softer female silhouette
Read the complete feature in our launch Issue
Page o4
Where the Westbourne meets the Wye By D u n c a n Fa l l ow e l l
It’s raining haphazardly. My umbrella is up and tilted against icy blasts from the west. With the other hand I am trying to complete the buttoning of my overcoat, not easy in thick gloves. A variety of cloud forms, saggy with water, are dashing across the sky; and I realise I am wearing inadequate footwear: black suede and mud are not ideal bedfellows. But with a defiant, untidy swagger I lurch into the Ledbury Road where someone, head half down, says ‘Lovely day’ as we pass each other, and Kevin the Postman is disembowelling his little red van. Here’s the Ledbury Restaurant, once voted the best in the world and still stratospheric. One of my publishers, Peter Carson, took me there. We had pebbles on our table. I asked the waiter if they were connected to food and he said no, it’s décor; so I suggested he take them away. Peter said ‘I can’t stand anywhere that’s piss-elegant.’ Turning right into Talbot Road, I purchase The Times from Nahal’s Newsagent, and skip on to Powis Square where number 25 is the house used externally in the film Performance. Not many people know that the internal scenes were filmed at Lenny Plugge’s house in South Kensington. Lenny was a great friend of famous Hay resident April Ashley whose biography I wrote. The biography was published by Tom Maschler at Jonathan Cape – does Tom still have his cottage near Llanthony Priory? I cross the Portobello Road which is quiet today. Last Saturday I wanted some architectural prints but the stall was shut. I bumped into Charlie Barnett,
Page 5
whom I’d last seen at a Sheep Music shindig in
gurgling somewhere beneath the feet, will eventually
Presteigne - he is now selling sepia photographs in
return us to where I live; but let’s pause in
Portobello’s Jones Arcade - and I asked him why the
Northumberland Place, where at number 39 there
print stall was closed. ‘The owner was that man
is a blue plaque for A.E.Housman who lodged here
killed by a maniac in Poundland in Abingdon,’ he
in 1885-6. This was after three years living with
said. Charlie knows a lot. He told me that Princess Di
the Jackson brothers nearby at 82 Talbot Road.
almost bought Court of Noke from Mrs de Quincey.
That ménage had broken up when Moses Jackson
Why didn’t she? ‘Flooding probably,’ he said. I
realised that Housman was deeply in love with him.
think: because it’s too near the road. Eventually it
Thereafter Housman froze something in himself,
was bought by Edward Bulmer. There are Bulmers
and never loved so deeply again. Was The Shropshire
everywhere - John Bulmer has a house in Notting
Lad his compensation? Butterworth, who wrote a
Dale on the other side of Ladbroke Grove.
symphonic poem inspired by the book, was born a
A squall jerks my umbrella inside out, but the rain’s stopped, so I close and roll it, and turn left
few streets further east, in Paddington. Northumberland Place, with its Regency
into Kensington Park Road, sail by the Lutyens &
ironwork, is still one of the prettiest streets round
Rubinstein bookshop. Some months ago I went into
here; but 82 Talbot Road was demolished along
the Hay ironmonger Jones Home Hardware, opposite
with surrounding terraces and replaced by a lumpen
the Blue Boar, to ask about sonic vermin repellents,
council estate. I first lived in Notting Hill in 1970
and there was Felicity Rubinstein having a rummage.
and can remember walking in North Kensington
Had the shock of my life, so much so that I forgot
before the street clearances began. Fortunately
to say ‘Make more of your window, Felicity!’ A bit
people woke up, the demolitions were halted; the
further on, at the corner with Westbourne Grove,
area largely saved, restored, protected.
I pass the house where painter Penny Graham lives.
I first visited Hay in 1972 as a guest of Richard
She’s not in. Penny lived at Whitfield for ages and
Booth; and the stretch between the Golden Valley
still pops up all over the county.
and Knighton became part of my life. Eventually
Take a left into Chepstow Villas, a right down
I found the perfect Arcadian spot, in a lush valley
Pembridge Crescent, and into Pembridge Square
below Hergest Ridge; and when one day a young
which has recently reproduced its original smart
man confided in me ‘I hate going down to Kington,
railings, lost for scrap during World War Two. These
I can’t stand the traffic,’ I knew I’d found paradise.
Welsh Border names in this part of Notting Hill
I rented there for years. Even Border people were
are because the area was developed in the 1840s by
amazed when they visited. ‘Not a speck of shit in
W.K. Jenkins. He was of Welsh origin but also had
any direction,’ gasped James Hanning. Then one
property in Herefordshire. The land throughout
day I went there and was stabbed through the heart:
London W11 was not expensive, which meant
my secret valley was covered with polytunnels. I
that developers, putting up their large houses in
shouted and shouted No! like a wounded animal.
the classical style, could be generous: wide streets,
Notting Hill has been saved, but the Marches
gardens front and back, large squares, or houses
are being destroyed: the most beautiful farming
backing on to shared paddocks, many trees, rus
landscape in Europe, a thousand years to create,
in urbe with a hint of Claude Lorrain. Pembridge
thrown away as though it is nothing, murdered by
Square is where the Princess of Wales used to take
plastic. So driving westward from London these
William and Harry to school and they would stop
days, instead of an approach to tranquillity, I now
off at a small café round the corner which is now
have mounting fears: what new catastrophe awaits
called the Café Diana.
the eyes? . . . Yes - the ground suddenly gives way at
Advancing north up Hereford Road, the Westbourne
the picnic – and you are reeling.
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The Potent Green ‘U p ro ot e d ’ auth o r N i na Lyo n i n c o nve r s ati o n w i t h S o m a G h o s h Ph oto g r ap h s by B eth Eva n s
I am kneeling behind my son on the bridge over
Castle. Here, beside the lofty figure of the Green Man,
the river Clun. Trailing foliage, banging a staff, he
we become living gods to the masses. A single whoop,
whispers, “Of the green, of the potent green!” It’s
possibly from Nina and the kids, is worth the real
May Day at the Clun Green Man festival. He’s
danger of Freddy’s dad being toppled by his weighty
playing a Sapling, supporting the Green Man, a.k.a.
costume down the cliff. A vertiginous power streams
Freddy’s dad, against the Ice Queen, in a ritualistic
through us; we yell and caper around the samba
battle between summer and winter. Unfortunately
band. The girls bob and spin; the boys are utterly
the sound system is floundering. Cues are lost.
arrhythmic, dancing to something in the eyes of the
Freddy’s dad, in his enormous Green Man’s head
spectators, the sunshine or perhaps in themselves.
of leafy, horned branches, has difficulty moving, while the Ice Queen and her shimmering Frostettes,
Nina’s book steps into this gap between make-
ranked across the bridge, chat merrily. With no
believe and what we feel to be real. Locals feel
communication between our figurehead and his
the Green Man has been around forever. But the
people, winter might triumph. The crowd on the
British Green Man myth was birthed by Lady
riverbank waits silently – a silence that drips into the
Raglan in only 1939, influenced by Frazier’s work
children, spreading stage fright. Molly, the smallest
on folk religion, The Golden Bough. She presented
Sapling, starts crying. It’s up to the five-year-olds –
the carving of a leafy, shaggy face, disgorging vines,
and me, their unbidden prompter – to keep hope alive.
mysteriously repeated in early medieval churches, as
I distract my son by asking him to spot Nina Lyon
“a focal point of religious ideals.” Innumerable global
and her children, who are meeting us after the battle.
versions of a similar archetype include Dionysus, Osiris and the Indian Kirtimukha fusing gods, man
I have seen them already: on the island below
and lion. Did Raglan and Frazier invent a British
that rises every summer and vanishes in the winter
mythical personage? If so, Nina writes in the vein of
floods. Nina, in her customary skintight black,
these intellectual chancers. On its surface, Uprooted
jiggles fair-haired Lara, four, on her hip. Felix,
follows a quest to resurrect the Green Man as a
almost seven, slithers around one leg. The white
figurehead for contemporary Nature worship. The
pentagon of Nina’s face is topped with a black hat
narrator falls asleep, gets sidetracked by witchcraft,
that on any other woman might suggest cowboy,
fails to prompt an orgy and thinks fleetingly and
but on Nina looks like a Quaker’s, until she sees my
lengthily about our Nature-denying ways of holding
son looking for her and cracks a smile. If this were
the world. The book is a festival of philosophy,
an incident from her book, Uprooted, on the Trail of
scientific speculation and Nature writing, with a
the Green Man, it’d be proof of her mischievous hints
high-visibility cast of Dionysian stewards – shamans,
that she’s a witch. For, suddenly, the sound system
Saracens, Tinkerbell – ushering us towards the real
kicks into life and the battle commences….
access point.
Sort of. It’s more exciting when, having somewhat improbably defeated the Ice Queen, we clamber, en masse, up the escarpment under the ruins of Clun
Page 7
Read the complete feature in our launch Issue
Addlands
A n e x t r a c t a n d i n t r o d u c t i o n by To m B u l l o u g h Ph oto g r a p h s by F i n n B e a l e s
An increasingly long time ago, when I was a kid, we
because Idris, a dogmatic Methodist and traumatised
lived on a hill farm in a county called Radnorshire,
survivor of the First World War, has turned his back
which is, in fact, not really a county since it was
on the modern world. In fact, nothing much has
absorbed into Powys in 1974. Officially, having been
changed here since the Enclosure Acts and, this
born in 1975, I have never lived in Radnorshire at
close to the English border, the loss of the Welsh
all – which was a curious discovery whenever I made
language, back in the 18th century.
it. Local people still see Radnorshire quite clearly, in
But the Funnon is no island, no matter how Idris
spite of the edicts of the likes of Edward Heath. From
might wish it to be. Etty has arrived, and her
our house we looked across hedges, fields and patches
son Oliver has arrived with her. Mechanisation
of woodland at Hergest Ridge and, out to the west,
is becoming irresistible, and with mechanisation
Colva Hill and Caety Taylow – hills I always loved
comes everything else: all of the various other
particularly. They were tall and stark and purple
technologies, rural depopulation, the demise of
when the heather flowered, and they concealed
religion and local dialect, the changing roles of men
villages like Rhulen and Bryngwyn, which seemed
and women, the changing relationship between
somehow always to figure in stories – perhaps
people and the natural world...
because my parents lived over there just before I was
Sometimes I think Addlands is a book about
born. It was over there, on Glascwm Hill, that a
feminism.
woman lost her way one night and drowned in one
Sometimes I think it’s about the sacred in the
of the mawn pools. It was over there, on some
landscape, about what is left once the church and
destitute farm, that a man would shoot crows off the
the chapel have gone.
backs of his ewes, doing for both of them more
One thing I can say for sure about Addlands
often than not. The hills around the Edw Valley,
is that it is an absolute assertion of Radnorshire.
and the Valley itself – in late spring, with the
Radnorshire is here in the corrupted Welsh place
hawthorns in blossom, as beautiful a place as I have
names, in the ‘unkind’ landscape, in the wealth of
ever seen: those were the places beyond the horizon.
local dialect words (I particularly like ‘weepy’, meaning
Which is my best explanation for the setting of
wet), and it is here in Oliver, Etty’s son, who for me
this novel. Radnorshire: a place of history, but
cannot be told from his place. Mostly, indeed, he is
also, literally, a place of the imagination. And, in
referred to as ‘Funnon’. It was perhaps the only other
Radnorshire, where else but the Edw Valley?
thing I knew before I started, that Oliver would
I didn’t know much about Addlands before I sat
grow into a vast, belligerent peacock of a man, the
down to write it – except that it would take place
winner of more pub fights than he can remember, a
over seventy years, from 1941 until 2011. It took me
farmer around whom legends would cluster, even if
several months of thinking and drafting to figure out
five miles away nobody has heard of him.
that it is the story of a young woman, Etty, who (in
I love Oliver. I’ve lived with him for years. It is
1941) has become pregnant out of wedlock, married a
Oliver whose life Addlands follows. He is a hero
much older man named Idris and moved to his remote,
and he knows it, and he is nobody and he knows
unforgiving farm several miles up the Edw Valley.
it. Addlands is all about this sort of paradox. This is
The farm, incidentally, is called the Funnon, which is
Radnorshire, a place of utmost obscurity so far as
an Anglicisation of the Welsh word ffynnon, meaning
most people are concerned, a place that formally
‘spring’ or ‘well’ or ‘source’. Even for the time this is
does not even exist, and yet for him and Etty and
a backwards place, a place of horses, candles and
Idris – and temporarily, hopefully, for readers of this
bread ovens – in part because of its situation, in part
book – this is the centre of the world. Read the complete feature in our launch Issue
Page 11
He sang along to the wind in the trees, the larches at the Island, the hawthorns on the common and the beeches on the bank above Llangodee, where the dogs were yawling into the darkness. He could have told any place in this valley simply by its sounds, by the movement of the air
By Ow e n S h e e r s ; Pa pe r I l lu s tr ati o n by E m i ly E n g l a n d
Page 13
Prologue This place plays card tricks with the weather, so don’t let a fog-forgotten shore, or storms drawn to water stop you from stepping out and taking that path to the edge. Within two fields crossing the light can lift and anchor the land again, and you, gifted a place in it – alone on these deckle-edged cliffs their stone prows emerging from the mist like armies from a forest. The day grows, swells with air. You are at the height of birds’ backs, a broad wind pulsing in your face, tracing a single pale searchlight of sunlight, patrolling the milling waves What have you lost, sun, that you must search all the time? What have we lost, son, that all the time we must search? But not here. Here, now, on this sudden shore, if you are to carry on the choice is simple. Sea to your left, or sea to your right? Face the waves, feel the wind, breathe out and let the inclination of muscle decide, not thought. Breathe in. Choose. Turn. Walk. This is the prologue to a sequence of poems entitled ‘On The Sea’s Land’, commissioned by the National Trust. www.sightsoundandsea.co.uk
Page 14
Bulmer: The Significant Moment Po rt r ait by B i l l i e C h a r ity
John Bulmer was among the most innovative photographers of the 1960s, documenting workingclass life in the North of England and bringing colour, literally, to his subjects. His rediscovery as a pioneering photo-journalist was always overdue; sometimes it takes a lifetime to be fully recognised as a master of technique and a visionary modernist. Born in 1938 and raised in Herefordshire within the famous cider-making family, Bulmer’s engineering studies at Cambridge in the 1950s were terminally undermined by his photographic experiments and exploits. He was expelled after trying to photograph students attempting the “Senate House Leap”, a daredevil rooftop jump from Gonville and Caius College. For the next two years, he worked for The Daily Express, developing the attitude that defined his work: “I wasn’t interested in art photography. I was interested in photography as journalism. The last thing I wanted to do was put my photographs on the walls of galleries; I wanted them in magazines.” In the early 1960s, London’s cultural creativity was proto-charged by photographers, artists, designers, musicians, actors and writers who had migrated from the North of England. Bulmer was commissioned by the sparky Sunday Times colour magazine to create a photo-documentary about “the new North”. He gave it the best thoughts and shots of his career: “The North was alien to what colour was used for in those days. People weren’t thinking in colour. Art photography was black and white. There’s also a snobbery about colour, which is seen as commercial. Read the complete feature in our launch Issue
Page 15
The North, 1965, The Sunday Times (opposite page)
Under the Tump A n e x tr a c t a n d i n t r o d u c t i o n by O l i v e r Ba l c h I l lu s t r at i o n by Jo e Mc L a r e n Po rt r a i t by B i l l i e C h a r i t y
Under the Tump is a travel book, although in it you’ll find little of the actual act of travel. There are no arduous bus journeys. No sweet whiff of jet fuel. Not so much as a twinge of Delhi belly. Yet a travel book it is. For what is travel after all? Miles covered and passport stamps are the mechanical part; the necessary bit to get to the heart of it. And this ‘it’? It’s encountering the new, surely. It’s waking to a fresh day with the prospect of adventure, of rubbing up against the different. For me, moving to the Welsh Marches provided just that. The experience was novel, exciting, fun, disorientating, weird. As a family, we come, as the local vernacular has it, “from off ”. Arriving from Buenos Aires, via London, via exotic Essex originally, I knew nothing about the place and no one in it. So ‘Under the Tump’ marks the tentative journey towards putting down roots. On the way, I meet a king and his courtiers, publicans, hippies, mayors, old widows and young farmers. To help chart my course, I call on my erstwhile fellow villager, the Reverend Francis Kilvert, a renowned diarist and observant social navigator, who guides me through the complexities of how to belong; warning me of the pitfalls, sharing with me his insights. City-dwellers are usually wary of leaving their busy streets behind. ‘Won’t the countryside be deadly quiet?’ ‘How will village life compare?’ ‘Can we ever become part of the social fabric?’ These are the questions that this book seeks to answer. In doing so, I find myself travelling homewards; the longest journey of all. Read the extract featured in our launch Issue Page 50
“The people of Clyro are still sufficiently Welsh to be suspicious of strangers, and an Englishman would probably not be thoroughly liked and trusted till he had lived for some years in the country. But there is not in Radnorshire the same hostility and bitterness of feeling that is shown towards the Saxon in many parts of Wales.” Reverend Francis Kilvert (Curate of Clyro, 1865–1872)
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With Thanks We would like to thank all those who have supported this pilot issue: notably, Elizabeth Haycox & Richard Booth’s Bookshop, Maria Blake, Ben Richardson & Metro Imaging, Antonia Spowers, Samantha Maskrey, Peter Florence & Hay Festival, Kitty Corrigan, Jasper & Mari Fforde, Val Harris and our printers, Stephens & George. We are very grateful to our contributors for their generosity, goodwill and professionalism. In particular, we thank Julie North for her interview with John Bulmer, Emanation for the Green Man mask, and all those supporting us on social media
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