The Launch For ‘On Christmas Day’
I am thrilled to announce that Jonathan Pryce will read my short story ‘On Christmas Day’ at the launch at Burley Fisher Books in Haggerston on Thursday 23rd November at 6:30pm.
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
The Gentle Author picks up the threads of Christmas fiction from Charles Dickens, Dylan Thomas and George Mackay Brown to weave a compelling tale of family conflicts ignited and resolved in the festive season.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY FOR £10
“Over successive Christmases, as I was growing up, I witnessed the disintegration of my family until today I am the lone survivor of the entire clan, the custodian, charged with carrying the legacy of all their stories. Where once I was the innocent child in the midst of a family drama unknown to me, now I am a sober adult haunted by equivocal memories of a conflict that only met its resolution in death. Yet in spite of this, whenever I examine the piles of old photographs of happy, smiling people which are now the slim evidence of the existence of those generations which precede me, I cannot resist tender feelings towards them all.”
A limited edition of 1000 copies as a slim volume of thirty-two pages, co-published with Burley Fisher Books, illustrated with wood engravings by Reynolds Stone. Book design by David Pearson, printed by Aldgate Press on paper supplied by Fenner Paper.
At The Eagle
It was my great delight to come across this precious scrapbook of playbills from the Eagle Theatre & Pleasure Gardens in the City Rd at the Bishopsgate Institute.
Old playbills have a charisma all their own, combining bravura typography with hyperbolic promises designed to send your imagination racing. Once you start envisaging the reality of these extraordinary shows you are spellbound.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
Save Liverpool St Station
Please come to our SAVE LIVERPOOL ST STATION campaign event at 7pm tonight, Tuesday 7th November at Hanbury Hall, 22 Hanbury St, E1 6QR. Speakers include Griff Rhys Jones, Eric Reynolds and Robert Thorne.
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
Courtesy Sellar/Herzog & de Meuron
We invite readers to SAVE LIVERPOOL ST STATION by objecting to the redevelopment by writing a personal letter to the City of London Corporation as soon as possible before 23rd November.
We understand City of London Planning Officers are recommending APPROVAL of the appalling scheme so we need as many objections as possible to stop it.
HOW TO OBJECT EFFECTIVELY
Anyone can object wherever they live. Members of one household can each write separately. You must include your postal address.
Please write in your own words and head it OBJECTION.
Quote Planning Application 23/00453/FULEIA
Email your objection to PLNComments@cityoflondon.gov.uk and copy it to Shravan.Joshi@cityoflondon.gov.uk (Chair of Planning & Transportation Committee)
Or send it by post to:
The Department of the Built Environment,
City of London,
PO Box 270,
Guildhall,
London,
EC2P 2EJ
IMPORTANT POINTS OF OBJECTION
Here are the four material points of objection that carry most legal weight. Please include these in your own words along with any other reasons for objection of your own.
- SUBSTANTIAL HARM TO THE GRADE II LISTED STATION through the demolition of the roof of the existing concourse and replacement with a new structure, compromising the setting of the surviving 19th century train shed over the platforms.
- SUBSTANTIAL HARM TO THE GRADE II* LISTED HOTEL through adding a 16-storey tower cantilevered over the existing building, plus internal alterations to historic fabric to create new entrances to the station concourse, and the change of use from hotel to office use, resulting in the loss of the last continually-functioning nineteenth century hotel in the City.
- SUBSTANTIAL HARM TO THE BISHOPSGATE CONSERVATION AREA through imposing a tall building in an area characterised by low and medium scale buildings.
- HARM TO THE GRADE I LISTED ST PAUL’S CATHEDRAL through the proposed tower which will disrupt views protected under the London Views Management Framework.
QUOTE NATIONAL PLANNING POLICY FRAMEWORK otherwise your objection may be dismissed. Paragraph NPPF 200 states: “Any harm to, or loss of, the significance of a designated heritage asset (from its alteration or destruction, or from development within its setting) should require clear and convincing justification.
Liverpool St before Courtesy Sellar/Herzog & de Meuron
Liverpool St after Courtesy Sellar/Herzog & de Meuron
Liverpool St before Courtesy Sellar/Herzog & de Meuron
Liverpool St after Courtesy Sellar/Herzog & de Meuron
The proposed new entrance to Liverpool St Station Courtesy Sellar/Herzog & de Meuron
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Liverpool St Station In The 20th Century & Beyond
John Betjeman on Liverpool St Station, c1961, photograph by David Sim
Please come to our SAVE LIVERPOOL ST STATION campaign event at 7pm on Tuesday 7th November at Hanbury Hall, 22 Hanbury St, E1 6QR. Speakers include Griff Rhys Jones, Eric Reynolds and Robert Thorne.
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
This is the Liverpool St Station of living memory – the station as I first knew it – recorded in these splendid photographs from the collection of the Bishopsgate Institute.
A vital transport hub through two world wars and, most significantly, the point of arrival for the Kindertransport, children fleeing nazi Germany, this is the station that John Betjeman fought to save, winning a landmark conservation battle which gave us the sensitively restored station of recent years.
At the end of this post, I append my photographs of the beautiful station as we know it today with its luminous marble floor refracting the morning light from the lancet windows high above.
Glass was removed from the roof in World War II
Photograph by Malcolm Tremain
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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In Old Liverpool St Station
I am delighted to announce publication of my short story ‘On Christmas Day’ in collaboration with Burley Fisher Books
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY FOR £10
The Gentle Author picks up the threads of Christmas fiction from Charles Dickens, Dylan Thomas and George Mackay Brown to weave a compelling tale of family conflicts ignited and resolved in the festive season.
Please come to our SAVE LIVERPOOL ST STATION campaign event at 7pm on Tuesday 7th November at Hanbury Hall, 22 Hanbury St, E1 6QR. Speakers include Griff Rhys Jones, Eric Reynolds and Robert Thorne.
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
Let us take a stroll through old Liverpool St Station as it was in the nineteenth century, courtesy of this magnificent gallery of photographs from the Bishopsgate Institute collection. Like a journey through the stomach of whale that swallows humans by the score, did the wondrous behemoth ever appear as awe-inspiringly labyrinthine and majestic as it did then? Tomorrow, I will publish pictures from the twentieth century.
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at
Publication Of ‘On Christmas Day’
I am delighted to announce publication of my short story ‘On Christmas Day’ in collaboration with Burley Fisher Books
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY FOR £10
The Gentle Author picks up the threads of Christmas fiction from Charles Dickens, Dylan Thomas and George Mackay Brown to weave a compelling tale of family conflicts ignited and resolved in the festive season.
A limited edition of 1000 copies as a slim volume of thirty-two pages, illustrated with wood engravings by Reynolds Stone. Book design by David Pearson, printed by Aldgate Press on paper supplied by Fenner Paper.
We will be announcing a launch with a reading shortly. We will be sending out complimentary copies next week to everyone who became a patron, friend or supporter of the crowdfund to relaunch Spitalfields Life Books.
“Over successive Christmases, as I was growing up, I witnessed the disintegration of my family until today I am the lone survivor of the entire clan, the custodian, charged with carrying the legacy of all their stories. Where once I was the innocent child in the midst of a family drama unknown to me, now I am a sober adult haunted by equivocal memories of a conflict that only met its resolution in death. Yet in spite of this, whenever I examine the piles of old photographs of happy, smiling people which are now the slim evidence of the existence of those generations which precede me, I cannot resist tender feelings towards them all.”
Tony Bock On The Railway
Please come to our SAVE LIVERPOOL ST STATION campaign event at 7pm on Tuesday 7th November at Hanbury Hall, 22 Hanbury St, E1 6QR. Speakers include Griff Rhys Jones, Eric Reynolds and Robert Thorne.
A mischievous trainspotter changes the departure time at Liverpool St Station
“I have always liked railway stations, a focal point of the community – the start and finish of a journey,” Photographer Tony Bock admitted to me, introducing these elegant pictures. “Often the journey was a daily chore, but sometimes it was an occasion,” he added, in appreciation of the innate drama of rail travel.
Tony’s railway photographs date from the years between 1973 and 1978, when he was living in the East End and worked on the East London Advertiser, before he left to take took a job on the Toronto Star, pursuing a career as a photojournalist there through four decades.
“Although plenty has been written about the architecture of railways and the industrial ‘cathedrals’ – from the perspective of the twenty-first century, it is easy to forget the great change the railway brought when it first arrived in the mid-nineteeth century. Liverpool St Station was opened in 1874 and survived largely unchanged into the nineteen seventies.
So, in 1977, when proposals to redevelop the station were suggested, I decided to spend some time there, documenting the life of the station with its astonishing brick and iron architecture. I loved the cleaners, taking a break, and the young lad taking it upon himself to reschedule the next train – ‘Not This Train’! Meanwhile, the evening commuters heading home looked as if they were being drawn by a mysterious force.
Next door to Liverpool St was Broad St Station, only used for commuter trains from North London then and already it was looking very neglected. Only a few years later, it closed when Liverpool St was redeveloped.
Over in Stratford, the rail sheds dated back to the days when the Great Eastern Railway serviced locomotives there. Surprisingly, British Rail were still using some of the sheds in 1977, maintaining locomotives amongst the rubble that eventually became the site of the Olympic Park.
Finally, from the very earliest days of railways, I found three posters on the wall in the London Dock, Wapping. The one in the centre is from the Great Northern Railway, dated 1849, the other two from the North Union Railway Company, dated 1836, and it is still possible to read that one hundred and twelve pounds or ten cubic feet would be carried for three shillings according to the Rates, Tolls and Duties. The North Union operated in Lancashire and only lasted until 1846. How did these posters survive, they were likely one hundred and thirty years old. I wonder if anyone was able to salvage them?
I suppose there is an irony that I am writing this today in my home which is a village railway station built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1904. The building now sits in woods, since the local branchline is long gone. Yet any station – grand or modest – will always carry a significance for the community they are part of.”
Farewells at LIverpool St
Ticket collecting at Liverpool St
Cleaners, taking a break, at Liverpool St.
Commuters at Broad St Station.
Waiting for a train at Victoria Station
Wartime sign in the cellar of Broad St Station, demolished in 1986.
Stratford Railway works, now engulfed beneath the Olympic site
Repair sheds at Stratford
Engine sheds at Stratford
Railway posters dating from 1836 in London Dock, Wapping
Photographs copyright © Tony Bock
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