The year of the pageant refers to the Bath historical pageant of 1909 when, during one week, over 3,000 performers acted out the history of Bath.

In 1909, Britain stood on the brink of the modern age. Lloyd George’s ‘people’s budget’ saw the beginning of the creation of the Welfare state; Model T Fords started to appear on the roads, and more worryingly, an arms race with Germany had begun.

In Bath, the issues of the day remain topical. Should there be investment to encourage tourists? Or should money be better spent on the needs of the residents? The state of the roads and more often the pavements, noisy street musicians, the lack of things to do and places to go, were all familiar sources of discontent.

The smell of the gas works has now thankfully gone, as has the atmospheric pollution from coal fires. Thankfully, few people these days are inconvenienced by the beating of mats and the sweeping of pavements. In many ways Bath is instantly recognisable, and yet it is so different.

I am full of admiration for the authors of this clearly written and extensively researched magnum opus. Extensively illustrated with many fascinating and evocative photographs; there is so much of interest in this book.

The only criticism I could level is that at 716 pages this is literally a heavy read. It could have been divided up into three smaller more digestible volumes. No worry though, this is a real feast – and at £15 it is a bargain.

Mike Manson

The Year of the Pageant, Andrew Swift and Kirsten Elliot, Akeman Press, £15 (ISBN 978-0-9560989-0)

Beezer was 16 years old and living in Bristol when, with an eye on FE college, he borrowed his mate’s camera to put together a portfolio. It was the moment he says, when ‘I accidentally discovered my love for the camera.’

A year later in 1983, when this collection begins, he was already photographing the scene mat the Dug Out and the Red House and, with innocence or nerve, catching the street life of Easton and St Paul’s. A precocious talent, he was fast-developing a style of his own: photographs that are quietly-spoken, honest without being confrontational, and funny but not trite.

Perhaps Wild Dayz appeals because it is nostalgic – look at the headbands and head-spinning and the ‘victory to the miners’ graffiti of the eighties – but these photographs are also timeless, a part of the collective memory and day-to-day life. Looking now at his pictures of Bristol’s hip-hop clubs it’s not so hard to imagine them appearing in a 1950 Picture Post next to the question ‘Can coloured and white communities learn to live together?’

In Wild Dayz Beezer has answered that question in a way that a previous generation could not have envisaged, through a fusion of music, style and youth cultures. And though some of the pictures offer crude stereotypes rather than real people, many more provide a little-seen view of black youth culture. Though many are shot in crowded rooms and at St Paul’s Carnival there is a peaceful, even reflective coda to them, as if the protagonists, whether making music, dancing or laying prostrate on the stage of the Thekla, are caught in the act of thinking – suspended by the intensity of the moment. Hedonism has never been so thoughtful.

In photographing very tall men on tiny bikes, or bright-eyed teenagers spinning vinyl, Beezer’s pictures are warm and witty but never cruel. Even the poor bloke swamped by foul Glastonbury weather is allowed some dignity.

Because Wild Dayz is a compilation of found and unpublished work the publishers have devoted part the collecton to colour photographs of graffiti and grafitti artists such as Ian Dark. The cover picture of the Wild Bunch posed on a Camden Street in 1985 is reproduced inside along with other frames from the same contact strip. Each frame shows different poses and different combinations leading up to the final, preferred shot. If you want to be a better photographer buy this book.

Stephen Morris

Wild Dayz Photos by Beezer, Tangent Books, £15 (ISBN 978-190647733-2 9000)

Both Bernard and Diana had lived their lives as a sham. Bernard had a mistress and a son in Italy; Diana, meanwhile, lived the drab life of a suburban housewife, all the while subsuming her desire for passion and excitement.

This gripping tale of a middle-aged woman looking for excitement in her later years is fast-paced and keeps the reader guessing. This intriguing story, set in England, Geneva and the Italian coastal town of Rapallo, has an unexpected and a surprisingly amoral twist at the end. The message is upbeat; it’s never too late to start a new life.

Mike Manson

The Rapallo Legacy, Alison Cooper, Silverdart Publishing, £14.99 (ISBN 978-0-9554581-3-2)

Pirates and Privateers out of Bristol is a lively and well-researched story of murder and robbery on the high seas from the Spanish Main to modern Somalia, fictional and real.

It works both as an academic study, citing contemporary documents and drawing heavily on Captain Johnson’s marvellous (though contentious) General History of Ye Pyrates published in 1724, and also tells tales and spins yarns with humour and delight. Thus the subject is lifted from the purely scholarly, and a caption, for instance, to the picture of Anne Bonny and Mary Read (notorious female pirates) describes ‘…a right pair of bruisers.’

Pirates and Privateers out of Bristol is well illustrated throughout with portraits, engravings, and photographs as well as nearly a dozen hand-drawn illustrations. It is a charming book, a labour of love, and well worth anyone’s pieces of eight.

Nicholas Law

Pirates and Privateers out of Bristol, Ken Griffiths and Mark Steeds, Fiducia Press, £10 (ISBN 9780946217342)

The section on Sri Lanka suggests travelling up to the tea country or Kandy, the last royal capital of Sri Lanka, or a stay in a mud hut, experiencing local Sri Lankan curries, and a chance to be guided by your host to see giant crocodiles, purple herons and historic temples.

Andrea Leman

Alastair Sawday’s Special Places to Stay: India and Sri Lanka, Alastair Sawday Publishing, £11.99, (ISBN 978-1-906136-25-3)

Somehow Farson reached a respectable seventy-plus, whereas the ‘Two Roberts’ or simply ‘the Roberts’ as they are referred to in this book, were less fortunate. With constitutions blasted by childhood poverty and later malnutrition, they had few reserves to fight the effects of alcohol. Colquhoun died from a heart attack at just 47 and MacBryde was knocked over aged 53 while drunk in a Dublin street.

Things had begun so promisingly. It was a happy chance that they met at Glasgow School of Art where they immediately bonded, and as polar opposites soon recognised that each supplied qualities that the other lacked. The younger Colquhoun was tall, good-looking and fair, but in personality reserved, introspective and pessimistic, while MacBryde, small, dark and lively, was charming, seemingly easy-going and always ready with a song and a dance. Each hailed from Ayrshire, both were the children of poor families, both were precociously talented, with that outspokenness, aggression and dislike of compromise that often accompanies great drive. Both were determined not to be seduced into abandoning their dream of becoming great artists by the easy options of teaching or graphic design. At Glasgow, as big fish in a small pool, they scooped all the prizes, and when in 1938 Colquhoun was awarded a coveted travelling scholarship to study art in Europe their inseparability was recognised by a benefactor who put up an identical sum to enable MacBryde to accompany him.

A six-month Grand Tour of the major art capitals of Europe during the tense months before the outbreak of the Second World War was a significant introduction to European art for a couple who had hardly ventured out of Scotland. It also cemented their joint determination to be ‘Scottish Painters’ like their fellows Peploe and Hunter among the Scottish Colourists, and not to be tainted by the cosy amateur modernism of the Bloomsburyites. Instead, they looked towards Europe and their brand of modernism was focussed on the aesthetics of Cubism. However, Scotland could offer little in the way of inspiration or patronage and the decision to move to London in 1941 marked the beginning of their success. Drawn into the bohemian lifestyle of the hard-drinking poets (and fellow Celts) such as George Barker and Dylan Thomas – in Fitzrovia and then Soho – they tapped into the zeitgeist of neo-romanticism. At the same time they were introduced to the homosexual community, who included not only writers like John Tonge, and fellow artists Keith Vaughan and John Minton, but also wealthy patrons like David Archer and the dairy heir and art collector, Peter Watson.

Bristow is very entertaining on this particular period in the lives of the Roberts and is right to focus on Watson as their single greatest benefactor. An opportunist with an eye for talent, this playboy’s offer of accommodation in his tiny flat undoubtedly enabled the Roberts to gain a toe-hold in the London art scene at a critical time in their development. Thereafter, furious networking, hard drinking and hard working, despite the ever-present dangers of wartime London, brought early success. Indeed, the most striking aspect of the Roberts’ career is the speed with which they achieved recognition. From being almost total unknowns outside Glasgow in 1940 they had within less than three years overtaken many of their contemporaries by achieving shows in some of the swankiest West End galleries, notably Reid & Lefevre, and the Redfern, and were soon to be lionised as two of the most significant figures in contemporary art. The clearly more talented Colquhoun was inevitably picked out for special attention, a fact that seems to have troubled MacBryde little, though both men were incensed by accusations from Michael Ayrton that MacBryde was a mere pasticheur of his partner’s work.

An enforced decampment from Kensington to Lewes, ironically as guests of Bloomsburyite print publishers, enables them to perfect their lithographic technique. A more agreeable removal to Elizabeth’s Smart’s Tilty Mill in west Essex, where old Soho friends encourage their drinking exploits, sees their lives unravel to a dangerous point, resulting in a reputation for unreliability and a marked deterioration in the quantity and quality of their work. After alienating both friends and potential employers through their behaviour and after having to leave Tilty, brief sojourns in various flats and bedsits and on the floors of their remaining friends in London they are offered, rather luckily, a final rural retreat in Suffolk which seems to have brought contentment of a sort.

These last few years are chronicled with great verve by Bristow, who supplies many hilarious and a few harrowing anecdotes, but increasingly in all of this we are reminded of the self-destructive relationship of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. Indeed there is a sort of horrible inevitability about the career path of the Roberts, as personal issues are played out against a general lack of enthusiasm for their particular brand of neo-romantic art in the era in which Pollock and Rothko were flavours of the month; and so as sales fail to match the critical plaudits, Colquhoun in particular, driven by his inner creative demons, nevertheless emerges as a
heroic figure.

The Last Bohemians reads like a labour of great love. It is a product of long, patient and rigorous research (it includes an excellent catalogue raisonné and comprehensive illustrations) by a writer with a deep knowledge of the period and a mission both to return the two Roberts to their rightful place in British art and to exorcise what he regards as myths that have damaged their reputation. His analysis of their art is sensitive and sound but in attempting such a ruthlessly honest account of the less admirable sides of their characters, he has risked perpetuating the images of them as deeply-flawed and often rebarbative figures who, even when sober, show few of the warm and generous attributes that friends like George Barker seem to have recognised in them.

R.M.Healey

The Last Bohemians: The Two Roberts Colquhoun and MacBryde, Roger Bristow, Sansom and Company £29.95 (ISBN 978-1-906593-19-3)

The authors run workshops and courses for photographers which often involve travelling to picturesque locations which they have discovered, here and abroad. As one would expect, the book has some lovely photographs which have been taken by them on their travels and include many landscapes. Some of these are discussed in detail as they describe the inspiration, situation and camera-work involved in the process.

The book is split into several sections covering finding locations, thinking about what sort of photographer we are, discovering inspiration and – of course – taking a good image.

In these sections the reader gets an insight into the relationship between the two authors as they critique each others work. This approach to writing about their ideas and advice is a theme throughout and reflects the book’s subtitle A location photography masterclass. It does feel chatty, informative and fun, like a workshop, but I am not sure about the masterclass.

For some reason the authors have included several pages entitled ‘On Location’ – most of which have no pictures relating to the location discussed. This left me feeling disappointed as I would have liked to have seen what they were writing about. Without the picture, I was left guessing. I am not sure who would get most from this book as it seems to sit somewhere between beginner’s guide and a catalogue of the authors’ work. And although the authors demonstrate that they can find the picture, I don’t feel that it has really helped me find it.

Keith Blundell

Finding the Picture, Phil Malpas and Clive Minnitt, Argentum, £20 (ISBN 978 1 902538 58 7)

In music and art, there’s an apprenticeship, a long immersion, a perfecting of skills, and finding a level. But is there a similar apprenticeship for a novelist? If there is it might be served reading and analysing the craft of the masters, reflecting on events in our lives, travelling, and perhaps beginning to write a novel in one’s fifties or sixties …

In dreams. The focus now is on our own writing, and quickly. We need distilled advice from those who have succeeded! Yes, some kind of literary apprenticeship would be nice, but an accelerated one. Hence the higher degrees in creative writing, of workshops and the how-to books. All of which emphasise the hard work involved in writing and offer practice anda compass, but what kind of novels are they fostering?

Actually, fiction is flourishing despite the recession; rich and wise debut novels are appearing. Something’s going right.

Bristol-based Carolyn Lewis has written a guide in the form of an accelerated apprenticeship – specifically guidance for those writing their first novel. What is she offering the writer? And when the novel is finished and past the gatekeepers (agents, publishers) what will it offer the reader?

At the outset, Lewis states her conviction that if you don’t read, you can’t write. Moreover, her book is spiced with short examples from literature to illustrate the points she is making, to encourage analytical reading, and to whet the reader’s appetite for the writers she quotes.

The chapters are what we would expect in a book that sets out to guide the novice from beginnings to publication, and the advice is practical and wise. There is a particularly accessible chapter on voice and point of view and an entertaining chapter on theme. And tucked into the middle of the book is a gem of a chapter on detailed writing in which she analyses William Trevor’s description of a man in his workshop.

What of the reader-to-be? Lewis constantly holds this future reader in mind, warning the new novelist not to bore them to tears and to keep their needs centre stage.

Readers attracted to the pragmatism suggested by the title A perfect recipe will, I believe, be surprised by the warmth and wisdom of Lewis’s guidance. The presentation is lively, and everything about this book is refreshing and vibrant. The overall task is clear, as are the individual exercises. The text sparkles with erudition, good sense and experience.

The author says that there is no magic formula to writing a novel (possibly no perfect recipe either) but she shows us ways of seeing and noticing, ways of practising, ways toedit and take pride in our craft, ways of bringing it all together.

And so here is the bonus, the extra that makes this book stand out: Lewis is herself so actively engaged with living and writing that her ideas and observations of life as a plot enliven and enrich our thinking – and this alone will improve our writing.

Geraldine Taylor

The Novel: A Perfect Recipe: A Guide to Writing Your First Novel, Carolyn Lewis, SilverWood Books, £8.99 (ISBN 9781906236182)

Stanley the narrator is a political activist but a reserved Victorian sort – preferring to change the existing political infrastructure rather than burn it. He is dismayed when a friend and cohort falls in with a group of violent anarchists led by the eponymous Hartmann – a man already infamous for a bomb attack on Westminster Bridge ten years earlier. Alarmingly, Hartmann now has a terrible new weapon: Attila, a battle-ready airship laden with bombs and crewed by fanantics.

With a super-weapon in their hands and a charismatic leader at the helm, will anarchists destroy the civilization they despise? And will Stanley, the benign reformist thrilled by the ride on the monstrous machine, succumb to their vision of anarchist utopia?

In 1892, Edward Fawcett’s imagination carried Victorian readers into a world in which war is fought from above and no civilian is safe. Did any of them think that one day his fantasy might come true? Fawcett was only seventeen when he wrote Hartmann, but he did not live long enough to see the reality of bombing raids on London and Dresden – and Hiroshima.

As for a later generation of bomber crews, for Stanley flying in the Attila is both a beautiful and terrible experience: ‘I gazed rapturously into the abyss below… The clouds hung around and below us, but here and there through their rents flashed the blue of a waste of rolling waters. Ever and anon these gaps would be speckled with rushing sea-birds.’ And then the killing begins: ‘For full fifty to sixty yards the blaze filled the roadway, and the mob, lapped in flame, were writhing and wrestling within it.’

In his introduction to this elegant new edition from a new imprint of Tangent Books, Ian Bone encourages us to ‘relax and enjoy parliament and the bankers in the city of London being annihilated’, but Hartmann is not nearly so particular in his targets. Overwhelmed by horror, Stanley the Narrator/Hero becomes simply Stanley the Narrator, a mere observer to the forces of evil. Did the young and inexperienced Fawcett succumb to his creation? Did Hartmann the charismatic wrestle the plot away from him? In the confusion Stanley’s loyalties oscillate and his reasons for staying aboard the Attila are contrived and unconvincing. But, as Ian Bone says: ‘This is to quibble in the face of genius.’

Finn Dempster

Hartmann the Anarchist, Edward Douglas Fawcett, Bone, £5 (ISBN 9781906477288)

Andrea Leman

Alastair Sawday’s Special Places to Stay: Green Europe, Alastair Sawday Publishing, £11.99 (ISBN 978-1-906136-15-4)