2nd April 2024 

The two women in the front row

are twins with dyed red hair.

They turned up for the wrong film - 

thought they were seeing My Week With Marilyn,

but it’s The Deep Blue Sea by Rattigan.

I start to relax.

Everyone coughs and whispers.

The trailers finish,

the film starts

with white letters, fire crackers

in London - Somers Town -

where curtains are drawn

over bomb-site windows.

She counts her bracelets

with awkward elegance.

Her fingers mean so much,

because they touch 

survivors.

Excitement and fear

in cluttered pubs.

Alcohol breaks down inhibitions,

until love has permission: red nails on white flesh,

tongues and petticoats,

pills to overdose,

an emetic to restore equilibrium.

The luxury of health, 

and taking it for granted.

Long lean legs and cigarettes.

Let’s smoke and lose the memory.

Pearls and black snakeskin -

symmetry.

Passion flowers, 

passion people -

safety.

Green velvet trees.

A sailor went to sea.

Nicotine depression.

Sex without obsession.

Words and Artwork by Sam Burcher

17th November 2023

In his 1952 memoir, the Poet Laureate John Masefield describes the gardens at St Pancras Old Church as, “The churchyard of romance.” This recollection indicates his awareness of the many poets and writers who, over the years, have wandered there. To mention William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, John Keats, Thomas Chatterton, Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Aidan Dun is to name but a few.

In Masefield’s lifetime, just as in mine, there was a need to make a distinction between two churches with similar names in close proximity, to avoid confusion. One is St Pancras Parish Church built in 1822, which backs on to WB Yeats’s old building in Bloomsbury. And the other, St Pancras Old Church, set in a cemetery garden lined with magnificent London Planes, a stone’s throw from Kings Cross and St Pancras Stations.

It was the poet and novelist Thomas Hardy, once a junior architect, who was charged with re-designing St Pancras Gardens in 1865. A magnificent Ash, now sadly fallen, was named The Hardy Tree by Aidan Dun, a contemporary poet known as The Bard of Kings Cross. The tree stood at the west of the churchyard under which Hardy unceremoniously dumped the scores of gravestones displaced for the expansion of the burgeoning Midland Railways, where they rest today.

Probably the most romantic story surrounding the old church is that of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who happened upon the teenage Mary Godwin, later Mary Shelley the author of Frankenstein, as she mourned at the graveside of her mother, the prima-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. The young lovers famously eloped causing a scandal from which Mary, her father William Godwin, who was already under scrutiny for his radical publications and Shelley, still married to his first wife, would never fully recover from.  

A tragic tale is that of the young poet Thomas Chatterton who fell into a freshly dug grave whilst walking in St Pancras Gardens. His friend who hauled him out said he was glad to resurrect a genius. Chatterton replied that the grave had been troubling him for some while now. Three days later, on the 24th August 1770, Chatterton committed suicide by drinking arsenic. He was just 17 years and 9 months old. 

Another teenager associated with St Pancras is Saint Pancras himself. He was a 14 year old orphan beheaded in Rome in 303AD by the Emperor Diocletian for his intractable Christian beliefs. Pancras, whose name translates as ‘the one who holds everything,’ is the patron saint of children, jobs and health. The cult of St Pancras was spread by the monk Augustine who arrived on the murky shores of Kent with relics from the tomb of the young martyr from Rome. His mission was the successful conversion of King Ethelbert to Christianity around 600AD.

Originally thought to be built on the site of a Celtic shrine or even a Roman place of worship, cogent clues are embedded in the fabric of the church. A 6th Century altar stone, silver artefacts and remnants of Roman tiles were recovered by builders replacing the Norman bell tower in 1847. It is believed these relics were hastily secreted during the Civil Wars before Cromwell’s troops arrived to convert the church into barracks and to rest the horses. 

Tomb Raiders, Footpads and Duals

During the 1700s a dark side to St Pancras was beginning to energe. The churchyard was plagued by a gang of bodysnatchers known as The Resurrectionists. The gang’s headquarters in Battlebridge, later known as Kings Cross, was close enough for them to watch the burials and “fish’ the fresh stream of bodies. The dug up cadavers were sold on to medical schools for surgical dissection. Eventually, a team of fierce dogs were trained to guard the grounds and let loose at night to deter the tomb robbers.

Read more: St Pancras Old Church and The Great Poets

August 29th, 2023

This year marks the 100 year anniversary of a prestigious poetry speaking contest at Oxford in which my grandmother Diana Homer was a prizewinning speaker.

In the spring of 1923 the future Poet Laureate John Masefield made an announcement to The Times that he would be holding a verse speaking contest at Oxford. Masefield was an orphan sent away to sea at thirteen by an aunt who disapproved of his compulsive reading. A distressed seaman abroad and almost shipwrecked, he used his awe-inspiring voyages to inform much of his early writing, including Salt Water Ballads (1902) and Dauber (1913). Now, his plan was to discover a raft of beautiful speakers passionate about poetry to create a mainstream tradition for its performance.

As the principal organisers of the contest, John Masefield and his wife Constance sought help from their circle at Oxford. Gilbert Murray, the Regis Professor of Greek, George Gordon, a Professor of English Literature, Sir Herbert Warren, the President of Magdalen, and two winners of the Newdigate Prize: Laurence Binyon and Heathcote Garrod, a Professor of Poetry, all agreed to act as judges. George Gordon named the two day festival The Oxford Recitations, and gave the opening speech at The Examination Schools on July 26th 1923.

Over five hundred contestants entered, exceeding all expectations. But, after hearing the first dozen or so speakers, Masefield wondered had he made a mistake in pushing for the contest, when a young woman began to speak in a way that made him hold his breath. He later recalled, “I had heard nothing like it. What I had not imagined was the power of such speech upon an audience, which sat as if in a trance.”

A recital by Diana Homer, the daughter of the Unitarian Minister F.A.Homer, would have a similar effect upon John Masefield. Diana was my grandmother, then a teenager drawn to Oxford with a headful of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton set by the judges as test poems in the syllabus mailed ahead of the competition. She would be a constant winner in the women’s division until 1929. More about that later.

On the whole, the first year of the Recitations revealed impressive talent and application. Each judge selected two favourites from amongst the trained speakers, talented amateurs, up and coming actors and students competing in the ballad, lyric, dramatic and narrative classes to battle it out in the Oxford Prize Class Finals. Highly coveted silver and bronze medals were awarded to the first and second place men and women with prizes of around £200 in today’s money for the exceptional speakers.

The contest took place at the Schools from morning until late into the evening. Door stewards ensured the recitals went undisturbed and prevented the audience from questioning the judges about their decisions or asking them for autographs. Clapping was restrained during the day in case of exams elsewhere in the building, but on Finals night the crowd was roused into rip-roaring song, ending with a resounding, “Three cheers for Mr and Mrs Masefield!”

A Choir of Nightingales

John Masefield was guided by the revolutionary impules of WB Yeats, whose lecture in Lincoln’s Inn on new ways of speaking poetry he attended as a young man in 1901. Yeats’s methods, with his emphasis on the vowels and the beats, was a step towards realising the poet’s intention and a challenge to the stuffy Victorian drawing room approach to recitation. Masefield became a regular visitor to the Monday evening gatherings for poets, writers and painters held in what he described as, "the most interesting rooms in London" in which Yeats overwintered every year between 1895-1919.

By 1924, Masefield had resolved the earlier problems of his contestants shrieking, whispering, going prone or falling off the stage. A third day was added and most speakers were displaying the poems with their voices rather than outlandish gestures. He declared the effect of probably the best speakers in these islands gathered together was that of, “A choir of nightingales.” The excitement and delight of the poetry touched all present with a new feeling for poetry and a new understanding of the principle of speaking it

Read more: The Oxford Recitations

February 2023

The Painted Rocks 

I spy chipmunks scampering over the rocks on the road to Tafroute. It’s been so long since I saw this striped, squirrel-like creature that for a second it’s hard to remember its name. Back in the 1970’s, chipmunks were caged pets in schools and households across Britain. But roaming free in Morocco, they are released from the karma of captivity. I comfort myself with this thought as we speed towards the Rocher Peinture, a group of brightly coloured granite boulders strewn intermittently amid the desert plains of the Anti-Atlas Mountains. 

The largest rock is the size of a small hillock, and resembles a strong, muscular organ, rather like a giant heart or a lolling tongue. The land artist Jean Verame (1939-) originally painted it a deep azure blue in the mid -1980’s, but time has weathered its surface to a lighter cerulean. Smaller rocks washed in bubblegum pink and acid green squat like unfamiliar blobs in the landscape. There is spacious desert as far as the eye can see, periodically interrupted by the bright protuberances. It looks and feels like a film set, especially when my lover walks off into the distance, a lone figure in the landscape. As I hang back at the big blue rock, I have a premonition he will soon walk away and not turn back.

A big full moon is strung over the Anti-Atlas as I pick out the Hotel Salama in the middle of Tafraoute's main square. For me the sign is an easy spot as it pokes above the low rise shops and businesses nestling under the looming mountains.The hotel breakfast bar serves particularly good coffee, the butter is excellent, and there is an egg. Later, we barter for blankets and shoes, and when I express how good it is to see the mountains from the town, a small group of traders complain the mountains get in their way!

The sheer beauty of Morocco’s physical geography abounds from the deserts of the Anti-Atlas to the snow striated Atlas Mountains. As the road winds from one place to another, a varied palette of stones create swirly textile-like patterns across the undulating hills, producing a breathtaking variety of ever-changing landscapes. A mountain in the shape of giant tagine cooking pot rises up to the sky along the way. On the ground, pebbles and larger stones have been arranged in piles by the roadside to communicate a myriad of messages; no entry, a place of prayer, a boundary marking the road’s edge, a sheer drop, and other possible alerts left by and for travellers and nomads. The hooded cloaks of the sun wizened men of the Maghreb seem to mimic the mountain peaks. And, late in the day, these pixie-like men sit in groups to appreciate the mountains, which all too soon will block out the rays of the evening sun.

Read more: Notes on Morocco Part II

July 2022

For the past twenty years  Christiane Kubrick, the widow of the film director Stanley Kubrick, has hosted an arts fair in the grounds of Childwickbury Manor, their magnificent estate near St Albans http://childwickburyarts.com. The three day festival, an inspiration for artists and would-be artists alike, is held over the first weekend of July and showcases artisans from around the UK:painters, printmakers, metal workers, jewellers, clothes designers, potters, woodcarvers, leatherworkers and stonemasons come to meet the public face to face and sell direct to them.

Christiane Kubrick is an established artist of many years standing. Her richly decorated paintings adorn several scenes in Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 movie Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and partly filmed at the nearly by Luton Hoo Estate. Christiane was previously an actress and met her husband on the set of his film Paths of Glory (1957) Sadly, he died shortly after completing Eyes Wide Shut, and is buried at Childwickbury. A peaceful feeling permeates the fern forest beside the green fields where the artists are invited to camp overnight.

Not content to watch the crowds wandering in her gardens, Christiane sets up her easel and favourite painting chair and paints surrounded by winnowing plants. Her flow is only interrupted by people asking for a signed copy of her book Paintings, or curious onlookers taking photographs. Plants, trees and flowers appear in many of her still lives and landscapes with prints and originals on show or for sale in her tent. https://christianekubrick.com . Amongst several other paintings which feature her husband, Remembering Stanley is a touching image of him relaxing by a lily pond. 

The fair resvolves around Childwickbury’s impressive stables yard, once used as a stud farm, where luxurious lotions hand-made in nearby Harpenden are a tempting purchase. The aromas from the tasty street food and coffee stalls waft about the impeccably manicured gardens: sweet and savoury crepes, a bistro in a bun, or the South African delicacy "bunny chow," washed down with artisanal Ice creams and ales. There is an interactive art space especially for kids, who are entertained by the riotous antics of performer Johnny Slap.

Read more: Childwickbury Arts Fair on the Kubrick Estate

February 2022

Simon Astaire is well known for his four novels, starting with Private Privilege (2008) and more recently The Last Photograph (2013), from which he adapted the screenplay for the film of the same name directed by and starring Danny Huston. Now his collaboration with Bill Jacklin RA has produced the illustrated novella Cressida’s Dream, currently on show at Ordovas, Savile Row. 

The bright yellow jacket of Cressida's Dream alerts you to the bright and interesting contents within it’s covers. Here, as with Simon Astaire’s previous novels, he is tackling life’s big themes of love, grieving, loss and death, all distilled into a delightful narrative that speaks to us of sensory worlds. We savour his favourite scents and flowers as he hones these sensitive subjects with pinpoint accuracy, humour and grace.  

The book's illustrations are by Bill Jacklin, whose prior graphic works and paintings of urban New York landscapes have long been critically acclaimed. Utilizing his unfailing grasp of light, shade and movement, his illustrations bear great effect on the train journey that Cressida’s father takes from a cathedral like station to an unknown destination with the mysterious characters he meets along the tracks.

At the fascinating talk between the author and the painter at Ordovas earlier in February, Simon revealed he dreamt of going to heaven on a train since he was a boy. “Then I had a daughter, I liked the idea of a man going to heaven on a train and looking out of the window and not seeing the countryside he’s expecting to see, but looking down on earth and sees that his daughter is in trouble.”

Despite his physical change and uncertainty, Cressida’s father watches over her from the privileged position of simultaneously considering his other-worldly state and reflecting on the earthly life he has left behind. His travelling exploration of dual states is reminiscent of Emmanuel Swedenbourg’s visions of the afterlife in De Telluribus (1758) which shook the establishment in Sweden at the time. 

Read more: Cressida’s Dream by Simon Astaire

February 2022

The Joy of Addiction: The Confessions of a Teenage Wastrel launched to a full house at West End Lane Books in West Hampstead in February 2022. In it’s first week it hit No.1 on Amazon’s on hot new releases list, and came third in the treatment and addiction bestseller chart — tucked happily behind Alan Carr’s Easy Way To Stop Smoking and Russell Brand’s Freedom. Its author, Sebastian Wocker, or as I know him Basti, says the joy comes when you get free of addiction. And this time round, he’s been free for 13 years, previously for seven and a half years, before a relapse in 1995. He was just 22 years old when, in 1987, he first came into a 12-step recovery programme, where he learned to embrace his pain and to heal and grow. 

The book’s often hilarious anecdotes reflect on his teenage adventures busking around Europe and touring in a production of the musical Hair and, as he puts it, hurtling into the abyss. Wocker's lively, comedic, and soul-searching style brings light to the dark, desperate and sometimes tragic consequences of addiction. 

Like many of his generation, the experience of growing up in London during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s felt bleak, like living in black and white. But, after jumping on a Freddie Laker flight to New York with his earnings from Hair, he discovered girls who said things like ‘Oh my God you’re so cute, I could eat you’ and would ‘pounce’ on him. As he points out in the book: “Once you’ve had a taste of that sort of hospitality, frankly, British realism can go fuck itself.” 

The first and most obvious thing about Basti is that he is tall. Standing at 6ft 7, this rare attribute failed to endear him to classmates at Hampstead School, who bullied him for being “Tall, skinny and posh.”  Rejection, rebelling against education, detention, and running away from skinheads, helped him spiral into the pain of being an addict, enslaved to alcohol, cocaine, cannabis, sulphate, solvent and LSD binges.  

Read more: Sebastian Wocker - The Confessions of a Teenage Wastrel

2nd October 2021 

The remarkable Léonie Scott Matthews founded Pentameters Theatre in Hampstead in 1968. Her fifty years of services to British theatre and to the community of Hampstead have been rewarded with a British Empire Medal (BEM) in the Queen’s New Years Honours list 2020. The presentation, deferred because of Covid, went ahead at Westminster Abbey on 27th September 2021.

In the hallowed halls packed with the somewhat subdued 129 recipients and their guests, Léonie miscalculated the number of steps off the platform after receiving her medal and ended up half in the laps of two burly soldiers in the front row. As she exclaimed,“I always do it! Drama queen!“ the gathering erupted into foot stamping, relieved, hysterical laughter. 

A break in encouraging the work of aspiring actors, poets and musicians due to the enforced closure of theatres has given Léonie time to publish a monologue, a play and her first collection of poetry called Excelsior. The poems have been set to music and appear on her brand new double CD entitled Give Me More, a captivating compendium of spoken word and music. 

Since the re-opening of theatres Léonie is back expertly running Moon at Night at Pentameters, a relaxed Sunday evening open mike event with Godfrey Old, her partner of 36 years. The couple had provided an hour of socially distanced entertainment every day over the lockdowns to their community. Godfrey, a doyen of experimental electronic music and a mean harmonica player, was hand picked by Léonie along with several regular Sunday night Pentameters performers to set her hauntingly beautiful words to music, the results of which are mesmerising.  

Her poems with themes of life’s fragility: addiction, depression and death blend with the metaphysical journeys to redemption and resurrection making each track unforgettable. But if I had to single out one, it would be the raw emotion of the titular track Give Me More with music and vocals by Zimmy van Zangt. However, the opening song Love Was set to music and sung by actress Zoe Aronson is worthy of the soundtrack to any good romantic comedy. And, the quirky Locked Ward performed by Frankie D, gives an insight into mental illness and is a tribute to the poet Sinclair Beiles.

Read more: Léonie Scott Matthews