Journal Of a Man Unknown By Gillian Tindall
It is with a heart full of emotion that I write to you today. I have two announcements. The first piece of news I have to impart is that my good friend the historian Gillian Tindall died on Wednesday aged eighty-seven. The second disclosure is that Gillian came to see me in February and asked me to publish her final work, Journal of a Man Unknown, which comes out on 6th November.
When Gillian and I met for a drink in the Great Eastern Hotel at Liverpool St Station on that cold night early in the year, she revealed she was terminally ill and that she had written a novel which she would like me to publish. Gillian was a talented writer, celebrated both for the quality of her writing and scrupulousness of her research. She had a distinguished record of more than sixty years publishing books and was a contributing writer to Spitalfields Life. So, of course, I said yes.
I was fascinated that, culminating her career as a historian, Gillian had chosen to write a piece of fiction as her final statement. In an astonishing feat of literary imagination, she projects herself back onto one of her forebears to conjure a compelling vision of seventeenth century England.
Journal of a Man Unknown is an eloquent first person narrative. The protagonist is a Huguenot iron worker, an occupation that leads him from the Sussex Weald to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, and beyond to the North Country. While in London, he lives above a coffee house in Brick Lane and the book conjures a vivid evocation of Spitalfields at the time of the Huguenots.
Gillian’s novel serves as a personal manifesto expressing her belief in the true nature of history as composed of the lives of working people, those who pass through life not leaving a trace, except in the hearts of those into whose lives they have been cast. It is a sentiment with which I am fully in sympathy and makes Journal of a Man Unknown a poignant and heartfelt final statement.
All summer, as Gillian’s health declined, I worked with designer David Pearson to prepare a beautiful edition of her novel in the hope and expectation that she would be here to see it published. But it was not to be. My last contact with Gillian was when she approved David’s splendid cover design above and selected this blue and yellow version from the different options that David proposed.
It was a shock to learn of Gillian’s death this week just as her book was at the printers, but on reflection I think there is also a certain poetry in the notion of an author passing from this world knowing that her final work is to be published within weeks. In this sense, we never truly lose writers because they stay with us through their books.
We will be announcing a book launch presently, but in the meantime you can preorder a copy of Journal of a Man Unknown which we will send out at the end of this month.
CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER ‘JOURNAL OF A MAN UNKNOWN’
CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER ‘JOURNAL OF A MAN UNKNOWN’
I was so sorry to hear of the death of Gillian Tindall. I have read several of her books and always enjoyed her articles on Spitalfields Life. I have just ordered a copy of Journal of a Man Unknown.
Dear Gentle Author,
I am most sorry to hear this.
I am genuinely sad to hear this. During lockdown I spent a lot of time researching the various past inhabitants of the houses on our (Victorian) street. From the results I made a quilt illustrating some of my findings. Through all of this I kept handy a quote from Gillian Tindall’s The Pulse Glass (p.153 for anyone interested) about our very real connection to those who had lived in our houses before us. I still have a photo of the relevant page on my phone.
Condolences on your loss. It’s wonderful that you’ll be publishing what sounds a very appealing novel, and that this was her wish.
Sad to hear of the death of Gillian Tindall. I am suddenly aware of the large contribution she has made to the pages of Spitalfields Life, and that her contributions will be another way that Gillian will be remembered.
Through the pages of Spitalfields Life The Gentle Author has enabled more of us to know her work and join in his memories of her.
Another working diligently at her craft she will be remembered through it .
Her legacy is in very good hands.
I’m very sorry for the loss of your good friend and kindred spirit.
Onward and upward.
It is very sorry to hear this but wonderful news that she asked you to publish her new novel.
I am so sorry to hear of Gillian Tindall’s death. I have read several of her books and purchased one ‘Three Houses, many lives’ as I knew one of the houses in the book (the seventeenth century merchants house in Hornsey). I always looked forward to her articles on the Spitalfields Life site so coffee in hand I sat down to read the latest only to open the mail and read the sad news. I hope to purchase a copy of her novel.
I have a much cherished copy of The House by the Thames, in hardback, whose dustjacket has an elegant picture of St Paul’s Cathedral as framed by a riverside window of the House.
This panders to the plaque on the frontage of the House, which claims that Wren stayed there while building the Cathedral. She knew that the plaque was incorrect, but nevertheless Gillian used it as a starting point for her investigations. By the end of the book we have learnt that while St Paul’s was completed in 1710 the present House was not built until c1720. Also that what preceded it was not where Wren would have stayed.
It is quite near the end of the book that she describes the Plaque, which she dates to the early post-WW2 years, and prints out what it says. She feels that the plaque has had a part in preserving the house at a time when much good housing stock was being demolished.
It is possible that Wren did see the house as his death was in 1723.
Richard
I am sad to read of Gillian Tindall’s death. She was literally a household name as I was growing up – my grandmother worked for her father ‘s publishing company in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Her book, The Streets Beneath, was later avidly read by my mother and I as our family had lived in Kentish Town in the 1890s. The book had a great influence on my own approach to local history.
I now volunteer in a second hand bookshop and was delighted to receive donations of 2 of her books recently.