Lionel Britton

[lionel]

Originally Posted by George

For anyone who can prove to me that they have met [Harry] in the flesh, I will offer a thousand shares in Gordon Brown Futures. Hurry, hurry while stocks last!

You see, George, you're not exactly being rash here, are you? Remember he phoned me from New York at 23:20 one evening, then had to go as his mother had arrived; then I phoned him back later and he had to go as his grandmother had come? And who sent me all the photocopies of the Bertrand Russell-Lionel Britton letters?

Anyway, someone believes in Harry: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-1595671281.html Kenneth P. Neilson might take you up on your offer, if he's daft enough .

[Colette Jones]

I just can't follow the "Harry" line of this thread. Is it some "in" joke? Is this supposed to be an exclusive thread? Inquiring minds want to know.

[lionel]

Originally Posted by Colette Jones

I just can't follow the "Harry" line of this thread. Is it some "in" joke? Is this supposed to be an exclusive thread? Inquiring minds want to know.

Ah, Harry, of course, is Harry Berberian, from New York, who did all those things I mentioned in my previous post. Apart from myself, he's the only person I know who's visited the archive in Carbondale, IL, where he spent a week a few years before I went there. He said he'd been studying Lionel Britton for years, and was obviously, as the link above shows, still talking about Britton a few years ago. But he just seems to have disappeared. You can Google a few Harry Berberians, but the main one is indeed a comedian, although this is not the same Harry (but I did wonder at first). He doesn't respond to his last known email address, and his phone number, which I put on the envelope he sent me with the Bertrand Russell photocopies, has been inadvertently thrown away. It would be interesting to know if he's got any more information: he even went to Canada to check out the Russell-Britton correspondence. I know he's out there somewhere though .

[Colette Jones]

But I don't want to sign up for a free trial to "Highbeam" to read about Harry who may or may not exist by Kenneth P Neilson, of whom the same could be said. I don't understand the significance of phone calls cut off because his mother and grandmother arrived. I guess I just don't understand!

[lionel]

Originally Posted by Colette Jones

But I don't want to sign up for a free trial to "Highbeam" to read about Harry who may or may not exist by Kenneth P Neilson, of whom the same could be said. I don't understand the significance of phone calls cut off because his mother and grandmother arrived. I guess I just don't understand!

Ha. Oh, the guy exists, as I've spoken to him - or, I certainly spoke to someone! No, I don't want to sign up to Highbeam either, and anyway you wouldn't be reading about Harry, you'd just be reading a review of Hunger and Love by Kenneth P. Neilson. I don't understand the significance of the phone cut offs either, but I'd say he was just being evasive for some reason that defeats me. The point of all this is just to try and bring him out of the woodwork, although I feel he may just be burrowing deeper underground!

[George]

Colette, this is of course not a site exclusive to the small number of Lionel Britton initiates, but yes, Harry could be an in-joke: it depends if he exists or not.

At times I have been accused of being Harry, Lionel has been accused of making me up, and Eric has suspected that we're all made up. Pathetic? Probably, but as I said a few posts back, the number of living people who have read Hunger and Love, let alone any other of Lionel Britton's works, is, shall we say, fairly small. When one of our little band vanishes, it is cause for some grief.

Don't be taken in by those Gordon Brown futures by the way. The underlying commodity has a decidedly limited shelf-life!

[lionel]

The photo below shows Lionel Britton between his cousin Cecil Thomas and Adam Stanley Keith, both of Tweedsmuir Ave, Toronto, Canada. It was taken in London on 26 May 1964, on the occasion of the signing of a contract between the three men. The aim was to establish a publishing company - later known as the Park Group Ltd after Park House House, 66 Tufnell Park Road, where Britton lived - to re-publish all of Britton's out of print works, and many of his unpublished ones. They all had great hopes that Britton's name would be written large on Broadway. Unfortunately, Britton insisted that his amplification of Bernard Shaw's play, Why she Would Not, be published first, but the other men obviously feared legal recriminations, as The Society of Authors refused to allow publication. And Britton had had a very long and bitter, almost insane, feud with the Society over this.

Cecil later adopted Adam as his son, and he became known as Justin Thomas. Justin had been abused by his parents, and although illiterate until well into his twenties, went on to gain a PhD in Psychology. He wrote an autobiography with the glorious title How I Overcame My Fear of Whores, Royalty, Gays, Teachers, Hippies, Psychiatrists, Athletes, Transvestites, Clergymen, Police, Children, Bullies, Politicians, Mothers, Fathers, Publishers, and Myself, which gives several pages of informaton on Britton's ancestors. Justin established Label Liberation and still lives in Canada. When I had a long telephone conversation with him last year, he told me of how Britton rode to the above occasion on a bicycle, and that he met Herbert Marshall and his wife Fredda Brilliant in London shortly after Britton's death in 1971, when they were arranging to have all of Britton's literary effects shipped to Southen Illinois University, Carbondale, where Marshall was a professor.

Interesting to see, despite the loss, that Britton's hair is still wild as though he still cuts it himself, that he still refuses to wear a tie in spite of the formal occasion, and in fact that he just seems to have slung anything on. But he nevertheless looks overwhelmed, frightened even, and he's a very funny shape, of is it just the picture?

[George]

Lionel, that's a fantastic picture of Cecil and Justin with Lionel Britton!

And Colette, just because some information has been exchanged here about a writer who is known to me, (he was my great-uncle), and to Lionel, (who has been working on this author for seven years and has a PhD based on his study of him), it doesn't mean that this guy is too obscure to bother about.

After all, if someone is obscure, what do they have to do to become less obscure? If all publicity is denied them on the grounds that they are too obscure then we are in the farcical position that the only books which will ever be read will be those piled high in the shop doorway and hyped by a massive marketing campaign. Surely this is not what literature is all about, and I wouldn't have thought it was what World Literature Forum is all about!

[Colette Jones]

Originally Posted by George

And Colette, just because some information has been exchanged here about a writer who is known to me, (he was my great-uncle), and to Lionel, (who has been working on this author for seven years and has a PhD based on his study of him), it doesn't mean that this guy is too obscure to bother about.

After all, if someone is obscure, what do they have to do to become less obscure? If all publicity is denied them on the grounds that they are too obscure then we are in the farcical position that the only books which will ever be read will be those piled high in the shop doorway and hyped by a massive marketing campaign. Surely this is not what literature is all about, and I wouldn't have thought it was what World Literature Forum is all about!

What? I didn't say that. I said I didn't understand what's going on in this thread. I still don't - you're making it worse by trying to put words in my mouth. Does anyone other than George and Lionel understand what is going on in this thread? If not, it's not helping Lionel Britton out of obscurity.

[lionel]

Originally Posted by Colette Jones

What? I didn't say that. I said I didn't understand what's going on in this thread.

Yes, I agree completely.

Originally Posted by Colette Jones

Does anyone other than George and Lionel understand what is going on in this thread?

Others certainly know what's going on at the moment in the world of Lionel Britton, and Rone (pronounced 'Ron E.') Waugh, the contemporary Australian artist and great admirer of Lionel Britton - who actually named his son after the writer - has made a brilliant abstract painting of the man. To view this, and our discussion of Britton's aesthetic versus the socialist realist aesthetic, look here.

[lionel]

I first bought Britton's Hunger and Love in a dusty bookshop for £3 in 2001. I'd already put it down twice as I thought it was just too odd, but in the end I had to buy it - and it was signed (very oddly, of course) by the man himself. Now there are just four copies for sale according to Bookfinder, and none of them signed, but I just love the description of the cheapest, which is a snip at nearly £77:

'The front and back sides of the case are of silver paper, which is badly scarred. The spine is very loose, with the front of the case almost separated from the book block. Interior and outer pages are tanned from age. It looks like a little beetle or something started to drill through the 1st 50...'

This paragraph definitely has something of the dusty bookshop about it.

[Eric]

Those who are family or friends of the late Lionel Britton (the author; not to be confused with the chap who posts here) should start a campaign to have his books reprinted.