Holidaymakers speeding to the south of France cannot fail to notice the thousands of gravestones of those who lost their lives in the two world wars. Yet, without the efforts of one Bristolian, these immaculately-tended military cemeteries might well not have existed.

The cemeteries owe their being to Fabian Arthur Goulstone Ware who was born in 1869 in Glendower House, opposite Christ Church, Clifton. After private education, Ware studied at both London and Paris universities and became a teacher in the north of England. There, he wrote occasional articles for the Morning Post, a respected national newspaper.

In 1901, after the Anglo-Boer War, Ware went to South Africa where he filled senior educational posts. He returned to England in 1905 and became editor of the Morning Post and later joined the Rio Tinto Zinc company.

When war broke out in 1914 Ware was already 45 years old and not required to take an active part. However, he volunteered to lead a mobile Red Cross unit attached to the French Army. A month into the war, he realised that there was no system for recording the graves of the dead or informing their relatives. It took some time to convince the War Office but by the following year he had persuaded them that this was necessary both for the morale of the troops and their families. He was appointed as Director of Graves Registration and Enquiries with the rank of major. In 1917 he was appointed vice-chairman of the Imperial (later the Commonwealth) War Graves Commission which was established by Royal Charter. By the end of the war in 1918 he was Major-General Ware and had twice been mentioned in despatches as well as receiving decorations from several allied nations. He was knighted in 1920.

From the beginning, Ware determined that everyone who had died in the conflict should be remembered by name on a headstone or monument, that all headstones should be the same and, unusually for the time, that there should be no distinction of rank, race or creed. All the gravestones were to be laid out in straight rows with the national emblem, service or regimental badge as well as the name, rank, unit, date of death, age and religious emblem on the headstone. Families were allowed to add a short personal inscription.

At the height of the war, in 1916, he contacted Kew Gardens for planting advice. (Wherever climatic conditions allow, national plants from native stock are grown in cemeteries to symbolise the links to the gardens of home countries.) Ware’s attention to detail extended to ensuring that low-growing plants were placed in front of the headstones so that inscriptions could be read but that they were high enough to prevent soil splashing the headstones when it rained.

With the help of major architects such as Lutyens, Holden and Bloomfield and calligrapherMacDonald Gill, as well as thousands of masons and gardeners, cemetries and monuments to those with no known grave were laid out. By 1930 the name of almost all those who died in France and Belgium had been recorded.

At the outbreak of war in 1939, although past retirement age, Ware was again appointed Director and was also responsible for recording the names of civilian casualities – over 67,000.

Sir Fabian retired to Amberley, Gloucester in 1948 and died the following year. He is commemorated in Westminster Abbey and Gloucester Cathedral and in 2004 the Clifton and Hotwells Improvement  Society erected a plaque on his birthplace.

Today, the Commission looks after graves and monuments in 23,000 locations in 150 countries, as well as war graves in civilian cemeteries. These cemeteries vary in size from 47 graves to over 12,000. The Thiepval Monument in France contains more than 72,000 names of those with no known grave.

All this results from one Bristolian’s determination that the war dead should be decently recorded and honoured.

A Tuesday afternoon in the bar of the Colston Hall. The last of about forty teenagers have straggled in and settled on rows of chairs around a small square stage. Three actors signal the start of the action by playing a short musical round on chime bars before bursting into the arena. Their tuneful harmony belies the lyrics: ‘Rhona Sullivan is a slag!’

This play is called Jump, and it’s part of a workshop with Myrtle Theatre Company for an audience of young people brought together by Bristol Teenage Pregnancy Partnership. Some have come via Connexions. Some from YIPs – Youth Inclusion Projects. Others from PRUs – Pupil Referral Units where you end up if you’ve been excluded from school. All have had difficulties and disruption in their lives.

Through Myrtle’s performance of Lucy Catherine’s engaging and entertaining play, they have a chance to see some of the issues that affect their lives acted out on stage. Awkward relationships. Neglect, rejection, fear, violence. Looking for love. Finding ways of coping. After the drama, the Myrtle team run an equally entertaining and engaging workshop, examining the thoughts and feelings of the young couple at the heart of the action.

There’s nothing preachy or patronising about Myrtle’s method. Through rerunning short scenes from the play, they involve the group in a lively discussion about how actors understand and create a character, exploring the ‘sub-text’ of ideas and emotions that influence what a person says and does.

So the focus is apparently on the workings of theatre, but the process examines and clarifies real human problems, neatly incorporating some practical information and safe sex advice from a Brook Clinic nurse.

‘It’s a human instinct for people to act things out, but some of the audiences we perform for have never had that opportunity, or haven’t seen theatre that bears any relationship to what they know about or believe in,’ explains Heather Williams, Myrtle Theatre’s artistic director, who not only played several roles in the performance but also expertly facilitated the workshop. ‘Our work is about providing theatre that’s directly relevant to our audience, creating an imaginative context that can give them new insights or perspectives on aspects of their lives that may be difficult or challenging.’

Left: Myrtle Theatre’s summer school 2005.(Photo by Graham Burke)

Set up in 2004, Myrtle Theatre Company grew out of the Bristol Old Vic’s Education & Youth Theatre Department, where director Heather and administrator Hilary Davis worked together for four years.The company took its name from its first production, Lucy Catherine’s Myrtle on the Mainline, which was originally part of the BOV’s 1998 drugs awareness project. Lucy is part of the creative network of freelance writers, designers, actors and technicians who first worked with Heather and Hilary in King Street.

‘Without wanting to sound grand, I feel that because we had been working in one of the country’s top ten regional theatres, we bring all that experience, integrity and expertise into making high quality theatre within the field of social change,’ says Heather, who was already an experienced actress when she first trod the BOV’s boards in 1991, staying with the company to build up its enterprising outreach programme and drama courses with young people.

‘We established a working relationship with the health services while we were at the Old Vic,’ adds administrative director Hilary, who originally joined the BOV in 1996 as PA to artistic director Andy Hay. ‘And we used our theatre skills to address sensitive issues like bullying, drugs, sexual health and personal relationships.’

‘We’re very lucky to have Myrtle Theatre on our doorstep,’ says Elspeth Loades of Bristol City Council’s Children and Young People’s Services. ‘One of their great strengths is their ability to foresee, understand and deal sensitively with young people when problems arise. They are non-judgmental and inclusive. So the young people gain in confidence and self esteem not only from their involvement in drama, but also from their interaction with all those involved in Myrtle productions.’

16-year-old Naiidine Watts is a striking example of the effectiveness of Myrtle’s work. She had never acted or sung in public before meeting Myrtle through their outreach work at the Meriton school for young mothers in St Philip’s, which she attends with her three-yearold daughter. Naiidine was one of 25 young performers – many of whom had personal experience of being in care – in Myrtle’s City of One, written by Bristol playwright Mike Akers and premiered at the Tobacco Factory last September.

With her confidence boosted by the chance to develop and display her talents on stage, Naiidine was determined that City of One’s graphic portrayal of what it feels like to be in care should be seen by people with the power to improve children’s lives. She successfully applied for a grant from the Youth Opportunity Fund, for the company to take the play to Westminster, where it was performed for an audience of MPs, ministers, senior civil servants and artistic directors. ‘We took it in our stride – though it took very big strides to make it happen!’ smiles Hilary. ‘Our partnerships with children’s services led us down the path of working with young people in care, and part of Myrtle Theatre’s success was due to hitting the government’s Change for Children agenda at the right moment’.

Helen Chambers of the National Children’s Bureau is an admirer: ‘The NCB has worked with Myrtle to involve vulnerable children and young people, especially those in care, to say what should be in national government policy and tell a wide range of people what life is like for many of those in care,’ she says. ‘Their expert use of theatre technique and practice, coupled with a sensitivity for each child or young person involved demonstrates the sort of high quality artistic work with vulnerable children that NCB supports and encourages.’

All of Myrtle Theatre’s commissioned projects are fully funded by various agencies – NCB, councils, health and education services – enabling them to employ the best people in Bristol, often drawing on their BOV connections.

Right: A scene f rom Catherine Johnson’s Through the Wire. (Photo by Graham Burke)

‘But we wouldn’t be surviving without our wonderful angel, Catherine Johnson,’ says Hilary. ‘Her support for our core financial costs enables us to operate independently of the kind of official funding bodies that require you to fulfil complicated conditions that can distort the nature of the work.’

‘Catherine gives us a sense of being connected with mainstream theatre,’ adds Heather, ‘and giving back to the people of Bristol means a great deal to her.’

Like Myrtle, Catherine – now internationally known as the writer of ABBA musical Mamma Mia! – began her professional career at the Bristol Old Vic, when she won a 1988 playwriting competition. In 2006,a Myrtle Theatre cast of thirty 16- to 20-year-olds revived Catherine’s smaller-scale musical, Through The Wire, set in a young offenders’ unit and originally commissioned by the National Theatre.

Myrtle Theatre are not only on the mainline, but also connecting with society’s sidelines, encouraging individual confidence alongside a sense of community. Find out more at www.myrtletheatrecompany.co.uk or call 0117 902 9030.

What’s so special about Bristol? What’s so special about living in a city which has a port? A number of cities in the United Kingdom and abroad are port cities, but is it possible to claim they are each unique while at the same time saying that they have common experiences?

The Port City Writing Project is a website that enables you to contribute your views and read the opinions of others on these and other issues relating to living in a port city.

The project is part of Arnolfini’s literature programme. Three writers – Edson Burton, Philip Hoare and David Batemen – have been selected to write a personal perspective on Bristol, Southampton and Liverpool respectively. The writing covers the past, present and future of their city, and the people who are living there. The essays and the discussions that follow are then posted onto the website.

The site is very similar to Wikipedia and allows members of the public to contribute their views to the discussions, or start a new line of debate. It’s part of project.arnolfini, an online experimental production and management system that’s linked to the physical spaces and the curatorial programme of the Arnolfini.

Edson Burton, poet and playwright, ( pictured left. Photo copyright Paul Bullivant) contributes these thoughts on Bristol…

NOT YET A NATIVE

I came to Bristol in 1994 to start a PhD at the University of the West of England. Ideally I would have deferred a doctoral programme until I had become physically decrepit, but my post-MA life – kitchen hand on mortuary-warm industrial estate – had lost its appeal. The reality of my relocation struck me when on my first day in the city the driver stopped the bus in order to buy a box of fags. This, I realised, was not London: Bristol has its own unique cadence, somewhere between a strut and a stroll but rarely a sprint.

I have grown fond of Bristol, of its pace, its manageable scale, its variety, its quirky beauty, its grit and remnants of grandeur. It has reconciled my warring impulses towards romanticism and realism, flight and laziness. For that I am eternally in its debt. Yet I stop short of adopting the city out of sheer frustration with its divisiveness.

In my first week in the city, a sweet-faced Bristol girl in the baker shop, warmed by my impersonal politeness, ended our conversation with the warning, ‘Stay clear of St Pauls.’ The coded message: ‘I wasn’t like the black folk who lived there and would do well to stay away from that lot.’ In direct parallel, my first real conversation with a black Bristolian centred on what survival strategies I had used to survive living south of the river. How I had managed to escape a beating from the ‘crackers’.

Both encounters articulate the stark division between Bristol’s communities and continue to shape my lived experience. These divisions are in the first instance physical. The Avon creates a north/south divide as it winds it way through the heart of the city; the steep climb westward up from the waterfront creates a splendid isolation between patrician Clifton and the rest; the M32 has cut the once cohesive communities east of Bristol into separate entities.

Geography has compounded socio-economic division. In common parlance, for example, south of the river is Bedminster, a sprawling mass of homogenous white working-class communities, while the inner city St Pauls and Easton wards are overrun by exotic brown people.

(above: The Avon creates a north/south divide as it winds its way through the heart of the city. Photo copyright Peter Hunter.)

These divisions are of course part of an imagined Bristol. In truth, Bedminster is but one of a hotch potch of diverse wards that make up south Bristol. South Bristol is predominantly white but that is the limit of its homogeneity. The various wards vary in character from the überdeprived new estates of Knowle West and Hartcliffe to bohemian Windmill Hill and Southville. Elsewhere, clusters of white suburban poverty can be found throughout the city but these attract far less attention. Similarly, black inner city St Pauls is one parish among the highly diverse Ashley ward. Furthermore, belying its reputation as a dodgy black area, the African Caribbean population of St Pauls is less than 30 per cent. First-, second- and third-generation migrants have either moved or have been dispersed further afield, albeit mostly a mile or so across the motorway to Easton/Eastville. They now stand to bear the mantle of ‘dodgy black areas’.

Division has bred territorialism. Each population claims volkish rights of residential ownership and with that the right to be irked by foreign invaders, be they from abroad or other parts of the city. Yet this too is largely built upon a myth. Few families can recall distant ancestors that have lived in the same area generation after generation. Slum clearance has displaced former white working-class populations from the inner city to either suburban sink estates or high rises. Recent migrant communities have also been stricken by the territorialism bug. Current anxieties over the gentrification of ‘black’ St Pauls forgets the fact that black settlement is only a half-century old. Moreover, that St Pauls is a perfect example of the cyclical nature of housing fashion that has seen the rise and fall of inner city living.

The dockland has the potential to unify the fractured city, though on the surface it highlights its divisions. The dock has long ceased to be a working concern. Waterfront apartments reclaim the land left over from the decline of the shipping industry. The new dockland settlements epitomise Bristol’s reputation for reinvention. Crucially, unlike the shipping industry, these departments are divorced from an industrial ecology. At night, the waterfront becomes a crowded playground. Music auteurs, the musically indifferent and art aficionados find their niches in the clubs and centres that line the harbour. But despite the clamour, there is little in the way of meaningful interaction.

It is in psychic terms that the waterfront has the potential to connect Bristolians. The waterfront recalls a period when the destinies of working and commercial classes were bound together by trade. While that intimate relationship has ceased, it has been replaced by heritage celebration. But over the last eleven years I have witnessed the challenge to the public adulation of Bristol’s maritime past. A plethora of white and black voices have spoiled the maritime party by pushing Bristol’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade centre-stage.

In 2007, an awesome amount of energy was expended in Bristol over whether the city should apologise for the transatlantic slave trade. To my mind, the entire debate pointed to the deeply dysfunctional relationship between white and black, in particular in their relationship to the city. For white Bristolians, to besmirch the city’s maritime history is to lose an anchor in a city where belonging has become so fragile. For black Bristolians, the question is more to the point: how we can claim belonging without first acknowledging the historical and contemporary fractures within the city.

Guilty by association, the waterfront evokes too many painful memories to become a space for reconciliation. With available routes blocked I am tempted to ask, how does one offer an alternative vision of Bristol? How else can we speak of the city in a way that marks its diversity of race, class, geography, tradition? Perhaps as writers, artists, thinkers, open-headed people, we must simply view our myths with suspicion, reach across, up and above to form new alliances, and most importantly remain tuned to reality.

To join the discussion about this essay and to read the other essays, visit
http://project.arnolfini.org.uk, click on the tools tab, and then on the Wiki tab.

The Port City Writers’ project is part of the larger Port City art project. This is a large-scale contemporary art project exploring themes of mobility and exchange. It incorporates a range of different art forms, including an international touring exhibition, a programme of live art performance, context-led interventions, participation projects and platforms for critical debate.

Back in 1989 Redcliffe Press celebrated its first big milestone – the publication of 50 books about Bristol – with the claim that no other publisher had produced so many books about one city. Nearly 20 years on, they can repeat that claim, with little fear of contradiction. May 2008 sees publication of the firm’s 200th Bristol title, St Mary Redcliffe: the church and its people. (There’ll be a review next issue).

It all started back in 1976 when John Sansom ( left: as seen by Emma Dibben) responded to his friends’ suggestions there should be a parents’ guide to what Bristol had to offer young families. The resulting book – Children’s Bristol – fast achieved iconic status, and thousands of parents still recall the little red book with great affection. The 75 pence cover price on that first volume is a far cry from the £165 which Art Dictionaries Ltd, a Redcliffe offshoot, charges for Dictionary of Artists in Britain since 1945, a recently published two-volume, 2¼-million-word dictionary of modern British artists.

But it all nearly ended in disaster, as John explains in his publishing memoir, Written Between the Lines. ‘The first printing of 3,000 copies [of Children’s Bristol] sold out in three weeks, when we immediately ordered a second impression of 3,500. We hadn’t realised that publishing could be so easy… Of
course, it wasn’t, as we found a year later, by when we had rushed out four more family guides – Bath, Bournemouth, Brighton and Manchester, with York following later. They were meant to be the front runners in a nationwide series, but we chose badly. For a start, blinded by the Bristol success, we did no market research. How many children are there in Bournemouth? Certainly not enough to make sense of publishing a full-blown family guide. None of these titles came remotely close to repeating the Bristol success.’

Redcliffe lost money on the putative national series. But fortunately, there was another successful Bristol project round the corner. John Sansom liked the look of artist Frank Shipsides’ drawings (he wasn’t so keen on the paintings), invited Frank to lunch and the outcome was another best-seller: Bristol Impressions,
with pen-and-ink drawings by Frank and text by John. ‘In the five weeks from launch to Christmas, we sold most of the 1,500 hardbacks we had printed. We followed up with a softback edition, which also sold out. We were now firmly hooked, but it would be many years before we could make a go of publishing books full-time.’

Since then, Redcliffe have covered almost every conceivable local angle. ‘One thing we’ve never gone in for is ‘Bristol in Old Photographs’ although we did once publish a rather good book about Victorian photographers in Bristol by James Belsey and David Harrison, two great Evening Post writers, now sadly
both dead.’ Two money-spinning genres, nostalgia and the ‘Bristle’ phenomenon, have passed the Sansom family by. ‘I always felt that Reece Winstone had rather done to death the archive photograph stuff, but look at how they still come pouring off the presses!’ Life would probably have been easier if Redcliffe had gone wholeheartedly for the nostalgia market. Instead, the company’s list has always been eclectic, mixing such popular fare as its books on Bristol in the war with special-interest titles like the history of the Royal West of England Academy and, most recently, a biography of the eighteenth-century publisher, Joseph Cottle.

Unlikely early topics, such as a very successful book about Bristol murders, were later shunned in favour of subjects closer to John Sansom’s heart: art and architecture, Bristol’s streetscapes, the way the city looks today. Hence, a number of good-selling photographic books, several by Stephen Morris, acknowledged as one of the city’s top photographers. And thanks to John a series of elegant books about modern-day Bristol, its buildings, handsome interiors and its public sculpture was published to support Bristol’s bid for
2008 ‘Cultural Capital’ status.

Rather out of character, Redcliffe have recently published a little book on Bristol graffiti, which has sold predictably well. ‘But I feel hypocritical about this. To be honest I’m a bit stuffy about ‘street art’, and we only took this one on to get a bit of street cred and because we think we ought to cover all sorts of Bristol topics.’ He adds that Richard Jones’ Tangent Books can do graffiti better than Redcliffe can, as shown by their brilliant Home Sweet Home book about Banksy.

‘Publishing books about Bristol is much tougher than it was 30 years ago,’ John Sansom muses. When he first set out, there were only two local-interest publishers of note – Reece Winstone, with his eccentrically titled photography books such as Bristol As It Was:187-1866 and Abson Books, who launched a new craze with Derek Robinson’s Krek Waiter’s Peak Bristle. ‘Apart from them, we had the field to ourselves and even quite specialised books got a good showing in the bookshops. Now, the shelves are packed with those “Bristol in Old Photographs” I get so snooty about! But there are also many more good local publishers on the scene, producing some good stuff. And we get on well together in the informal Bristol Publishers Group.’

Some titles can only be published with sponsorship, and the list of local organisations that Redcliffe has worked with is impressive: Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Bristol Zoo, Arnolfini, Bristol & West Building Society, the two local daily newspapers, Bristol City and Bristol Rovers, the RWA, BBC Radio Bristol, HTV, Bristol Old Vic, Harveys of Bristol, Bristol Cathedral, Testimony Films, Bristol Cultural Development Partnership… and John Sansom is currently seeking backing for two books Redcliffe are publishing next year to mark the 200th anniversary of the Floating Harbour.

Good relations with the local book trade is essential, of course and John regrets that the W H Smith chain refuses to stock his books – ‘their definition of a local book isn’t one published in Bristol, but by a chain which turns out fairly ordinary stuff in a ‘look-a-like’ series covering the whole country.’ And he regrets the recent loss of Waterstone’s on College Green, the closure of long-established Clifton Bookshop – ‘a really smashing, friendly family outfit’ – and the end of The Book Cupboard, which had served the local Bishopston community for some years.

And what of the future? ‘Well, I suppose it would be good to top 250 Bristol titles – we’re got our next 10 Bristol titles pencilled in already’, says John. Alongside the Bristol books, the firm has long since diversified into books on modern British art (where, as Sansom & Company, it now has a national reputation), and a whole range of topics ranging through sport, poetry, fiction, medicine –including a DIY orthopaedic surgery manual – to religion, cookery, even volumes on the soils, vegetation and traditional agriculture of Zambia. Literally, an A-Z compendium of titles. They relish the challenge of producing and marketing art books nationally and are now concentrating on this area of publishing, but when pressed John, Angela and daughter Clara Sansom admit to being just as proud of their local books. ‘It’s very pleasing to be told, once in a while, that we’re doing a good job for the city.’ .

For more about the trials and triumphs of local publishing, read John Sansom’s biography, Written
Between the Lines, Redcliffe Press, £10 hardback.

Things have changed for ever at King Street, Bristol. Shirley Brown offers an insight into the complicated history of the Bristol Old Vic and the steps now being taken to ensure a sound future for theatre in the city

And now the good news – the Bristol Old Vic has already re-opened!

It will take several months to effect the essential repairs and refurbishment of the King Street buildings, to establish a new producing company and to put on shows, even in other venues. At best, the studio will re-open in the spring of 2009, and the Theatre Royal the following year. But the BOV has already emerged from its darkest hour and reconnected with the people of Bristol, who turned out in their hundreds at January’s open public meeting to demonstrate their support and concern for the theatre. Within a week of the meeting, the BOV website (www.bristol-old-vic.co.uk) was re-launched, re-opening a much-missed direct channel of communication between the company and its audience, and offering a range of information from historical anecdotes to topical updates.

The morale-boosting arrival of Dick Penny (pictured left) as Executive Chairman has happily dispersed the depressing atmosphere of secrecy and obfuscation after last summer’s sudden closure, radical retrenchment and redundancies.

Despite having more generous support from the Arts Council than ever before – more than £2 million of extra funding towards a ‘Stabilisation and Recovery’ process since 2001, in addition to annual revenue grants that rose from £610,000 in 2000 to more than £1 million a year since 2004 – the BOV’s recent management not only lost its way financially but also lost touch with its Bristol roots. By November 2007, only three of the paid personnel had been part of the Vic in the twentieth century, and none of those were in positions of power; most of the dozen-or so ‘skeleton staff ’, and all but one of the six remaining Trustees, had joined the organisation after 2004 and only a few BOV supporters knew either their names or their faces. By contrast, man of the moment Dick Penny is so well-known and respected in the city that he attracted unanimous support from both practitioners and audience, politicians and funding bodies, even before he accepted an official BOV role or offered any detailed proposals. Approachable and adaptable, with a passion for Bristol and theatre, Penny has a proven track record as an arts manager, including a two-year stint as the Bristol Old Vic development director in the late 1980s. The new incarnation of theatre management in King Street will operate in a very different way, adjusting to changed circumstances and overcoming crises as managements have somehow managed to do for over two centuries.

Kathleen Barker’s definitive history of The Theatre Royal, Bristol, 1766-1966 – long out of print, but accessible through the Bristol Central Library or the University’s Theatre Collection – provides much entertaining detail about the vicissitudes of ‘Britain’s oldest theatre building with a history of continuous use as a playhouse’. That description applies only to the Georgian auditorium, not to the Bristol Old Vic which, though often inaccurately described as Britain’s oldest working theatre, is neither a theatre, nor very old. It is a theatre company, set up in February 1946 as a regional offshoot of the London Old Vic Company, and operating independently since the original Old Vic became the National`Theatre in 1963.
The confusion between King Street’s creative company and the building it occupies dates back to 1972, when the Theatre Royal was incorporated into a much larger complex, proclaimed as ‘The Bristol Old Vic Centre’ in silver letters above the display cases on the new brick frontage. Alongside modernised backstage facilities, offices, workshops, and a stateof-the-art studio space, the 1970s redevelopment also gave the theatre its appropriately grand eighteenth-century entrance through the neighbouring Coopers’ Hall, built in the 1740s. Though closely associated with the name of the Bristol Old Vic, none of the King Street buildings belong to the BOV Trust. The title deeds to the Theatre Royal and the early 1970s extensions are held ‘on behalf of the nation’ by the Charity Commission’s Official Custodian, and the Coopers’ Hall is owned by Bristol City Council. The entire complex has been Grade 1 listed since December 2000.

The Theatre Royal Trust (which was set up in 1942, and pays the City Council a nominal peppercorn rent for Coopers’ Hall) acts as landlord to the BOV Trust, which, under the terms of its long lease on the complex, accepts responsibility for repairs and maintenance. Most of the Theatre Royal’s Trustees are nominated by organisations with a vested interest in its preservation, though they act as individuals not representatives. The Council for the Preservation of Ancient Bristol, Bristol City Council, Bristol University, Bristol (Municipal) Charities, The Georgian Group, and the Merchant Venturers retain the right to nominate, but the Arts Council, Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society and the National Trust have withdrawn. At January’s open meeting, Denis Burn, current Chairman of the Theatre Royal Trust, announced that the two Trusts are investigating the possibility of merging. He believes: ‘There is a willingness to make changes if this will help develop a strong and sustainable result,’ he says. ‘The Theatre Royal Trust has been an
over-forgiving landlord and the Bristol Old Vic Company has been a cash-strapped tenant, and that’s not a good arrangement for either,’ adds Dick Penny. ‘On a conventional balance sheet the Theatre Royal is probably a liability. But in its unique nature, its timbre, its history, it’s a massive asset for making and sharing theatre. Joining the governance of the building and the company would underline the need to take responsibility for raising money to animate the place as well as to keep it functioning.’

The new role of BOV Executive Chairman already marks a pragmatic change in the way the King Street operation is run. Most charitable trustees are unpaid volunteers with responsibility for appointing and strategically advising the management, but not running the business. In special circumstances, the
Charity Commission sanctions the appointment of an individual not only to chair the Board but also to be a paid executive of the company. ‘We’ve got to go through a period of reinvention during which the Board – and critically the Chair – needs to be more engaged in day-to-day decision making than it would be in a calmer environment,’ explains Dick Penny. ‘Taking a leadership role, as well as a governance role, creates an environment where we can be more open to new ideas and innovation. There won’t be the same pressure to be safe. In any reinvention being safe would be death. It’s got to be about new ideas.’

Behind the euphoria of finding an eleventh-hour saviour, and persuading the Arts Council to continue backing theatre in King Street, what we once knew as the Bristol Old Vic Company has gone forever. Dick Penny is committed to producing theatre, but the new working model will not return to the previous pattern of in-house and co-productions. Instead it will deploy its resources in a much broader way to promote theatre culture in Bristol. ‘The process we’re going to go through – with all of it, the artistic vision, everything – is a series of discussions, provocation papers, workshops and consultations that will gradually evolve into the next step forward,’ says Dick. ‘But that won’t be carved in stone because the step after that might modify it. It will be transparent, but I don’t know what jobs there are going to be at the moment. We absolutely need to look at the range of aspirations and see what we can ultimately deliver and whose needs we can meet.’ Some of this reinvention process will be specific to King Street: reshaping the refurbishment project to make the most of the available funds and re-open the building as early as possible; recruiting new Trustees with an appropriate set of skills; planning and implementing the new business model; instigating new productions with local, national and international artists; and supporting the BOV Youth Theatre, which continues its work with over 400 young people in 17 weekly sessions. The Bristol Old Vic is also playing an integral part in the consultation process run by networking forum Theatre Bristol (set up by the Arts Council in 2004), which was already developing proposals for a theatrical infrastructure within which creativity can flourish, and an environment that encourages the widest community to participate.

Meanwhile, the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School goes from strength to strength under its own new management following the retirement last year of Christopher Denys, who had been Principal since 1980. He oversaw the transformation of the School into a financially separate business governed by its own charitable trust since 1989, and its development into an Associate School of the University of the West of England and affiliate of the prestigious Conservatoire for Dance and Drama. The Bristol Old Vic Theatre Club is also an independent organisation, regularly hosting events to maintain loyal interest in the Company during the closure, as well as fund-raising for the refurbishment. If you want to support the BOV’s next stage, find out more about the club via bovtc@tiscali.co.uk.

Shirley Brown is author of The Bristol Theatre Royal -The Continuing Story 1966-93 (1994) and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School –The First 50 Years (1996).

Bear essentials: The story behind The Mild Mild West, by Jim Paine - the man who got Banksy to do it

Jim Paine started out with a shop, Subway Records, in Walcot Street, Bath, selling techno and hip hop records. He got that one decorated by Bristol graffer Feek. He opened a second Subway Records on Stokes Croft, Bristol in 1998. The shop also sold spray paint, and Jim later had the shop front decorated by TCF (Twentieth Century Frescoes, aka Paris, Eco, Xenz and Feek). He was also involved in the Bristol free party scene from 1993 to 2004.

‘I knew Banksy from a while back, from the mid to late Nineties when he was sharing a house in Easton, a couple of streets from me. I was at a free party at a warehouse on Winterstoke Road, Ashton – the old HMSO building. This must have been New Year’s Eve 1997/98. Free parties were basically unlicensed
events where we broke in to a disused building. There were a lot of them at the time, in warehouses in Feeder Road, St Philips Marsh and Whitby Road in St Annes. But we also did legal club nights at Easton Community Centre, the Trinity, the Lakota, Club Loco and the old Leadworks [demolished to make way for the At-Bristol complex].

‘Many of the crowd that night at Winterstoke Road were assaulted by the police, along with members of the sound system who were playing. That party, in fact, marked the beginning of a more hardline approach from the police, using violence as a method of breaking up the parties. We were also getting chased and
harassed a lot by the police at the time.
‘Anyway, soon after I opened up the Bristol Subway shop, I told Banksy about this massive space on the wall of the building next door. The building was unoccupied at the time – it had been squatted, set fire to, abandoned and boarded up. I had access to the wall, and it seemed like a great place for a big graffiti piece. He was really up for it. I got a ladder, we bought the paints between us. ‘We discussed what the piece should be for about a fortnight. His first sketches had an anti-consumerist message. Banksy’s first design had a building in flames, with a looter fleeing the inferno with a loaded shopping trolley. But then I started talking to him about the episode on Winterstoke Road. That was what gave him the idea for the piece.
‘I said that, as far as social expression went, we felt pretty oppressed. We were ordinary, fluffy, party people, and we were being bullied by police with riot shields and truncheons. The teddy bear was his idea. A teddy bear with a Molotov cocktail in his hand – it was showing a mix of hard and fluffy that was the free party scene. We were a laid-back scene, but we were involved in things like the Poll Tax demos, Reclaim The Streets… it was a mixture of laid-back and quite fervent. We were also involved in the demos against the Criminal Justice Act. The free party scene in Bristol had a strong New-Age Traveller element, and they also had a history with the police. With the teddy and the Molotov motif, Banksy was saying, ‘we could be one or the other. We’d prefer to be mellow, but…’

‘I was surprised that there wasn’t more reaction to the piece – police attention, angry letters to the Evening Post. After all, it’s someone (OK, a teddy bear) chucking a petrol bomb at the police! I expected there to be all sorts of complaints of incitement to violence. Instead, it’s been accepted into mainstream culture. And yet they complain about him writing his name on a bridge…

‘Is it a reference to the St Paul’s riots? I don’t think so, particularly. We certainly never mentioned it while we were talking about the piece. And the riots were a long, long time before that. So no, I don’t think they were an inspiration – but then again, I’m sure he was thinking in a much wider context than I was.

‘We did it in daylight, over three days. I held the ladder for him and kept lookout. The first day, he painted the wall black. Banksy used car paints – he had a deal with a guy who ran an auto shop. The next day he put the teddy bear in, and then the police. We did the cops last thing that day because that was the most provocative part. The third day, I think, he did the lettering. He wasn’t happy with the coppers after doing his first draft, and if you look closely you’ll see he’s adjusted the outlines of the policemen. Banksy’s a
perfectionist. I love the way the teddy looks slightly wobbly, slightly ungainly… he looks kinda docile. It’s a simple piece, but there’s so much to read into it.’ ●

Joan Barton’s Miss Prideaux of Clifton (the beginning of which isreproduced in the panel to theright) is a poem which peoples theterraces and squares familiar to anypresent-day Bristolian with their shabbygenteel inhabitants of the early part ofthe last century. In a hundred or so lines, we are given the measure of one elderlylady’s meagre daily life and its contrastwith her previous existence as thedaughter of a respected military officer. Of the three carefree young women inthe family, Charlotte is now immured inan Anglican convent (for some breach ofconvention we can only guess at), Arabella prematurely dead and buried inSt Andrew’s churchyard and Eleanor, thespeaker, surviving on her memories witha few remaining family possessions; oddbits of Spode china, Waterford glass, aquilt made from silk from hergrandmother’s trousseau. Without a traceof self-pity she faces the stairs to hersmall top-floor room, taking comfortfrom the morning’s Cathedral sermonand looking forward to hearing throughher window the nightingales singing inthe woods above the Gorge. It is asperfectly realised as a Chekhov shortstory and has a not dissimilar poignancy.

The writer, Joan Barton, is however, little known in Bristol and little noticedin the surveys of the poetry of her era (she was contemporary with W.H.Auden, Stephen Spender and Louis MacNeice); an omission which is now beginning tobe made good. She was born in Redlandon 6 February 1908 to parents who ranan art dealers’ and frame-makingbusiness at 84 Whiteladies Road (thepremises which in 1966 were to becomeBristolreviewOFbookshome to the Clifton Bookshop). Theeldest of three children, she won ascholarship to Colston Girls School. Always good at organising, as well aspassionately involved in reading andwriting (in her early teens she filled anexercise book with capably finishedpoems, a number of which were printedin the school magazine), she becamehead girl. Accepted to read English at StHugh’s College, Oxford, she was forced toforgo her place when she failed to getfinancial support; the family could notmanage to meet the cost. Instead, shebegan a degree at Bristol University butafter falling ill with a thyroid disorderwhich put her in hospital for much of hersecond year, abandoned the course towork as an assistant in the big localbookshop, ‘George’s’ on Park Street. Bookselling was in fact to become herprofession when, in 1947, after workingfor the BBC in Bristol, the Land Army inHampshire and then the British Council, she opened the White Horse Bookshopin Marlborough with her businesspartner Barbara Watson. After moving toSalisbury twenty years later theycontinued to trade in second-handbooks; specialising in modern Britishfirst editions, detective fiction andchildren’s fiction until Barton’s deathin 1986.

Thursday’s Child
Remembering for me
the day that I was born
the February day
you said it was the gentlest spring
that you had ever known
the sky clear as a bell;
drowsily you lay
and watched it
and the thin blue shell
of morning growing light;
it smelt of joy;
and I the first-born in your arms asleep,
together, gathered close,
and all was peace for pain.
Alas, but I was Thursday’s child
and we had far to go
to find such peace again

Few people who knew Joan Barton as abookseller were aware of her other life asa writer. Probably none knew that thefirst poems she had published (at the ageof twenty-two) had attracted theenthusiastic attention of Walter de laMare; that Philip Larkin included her inhis definitive Oxford Book of TwentiethCentury Verse; that she was the subject ofa Radio 3 programme in the series TheLiving Poet in 1975; or that the presentPoet Laureate, Andrew Motion, selectedsome of her work for a programme of hisown, describing himself as ‘a great fan’. Equal admiration was expressed by JohnBetjeman (who urged her to publishwork she showed him when they workedtogether in the 1940s), by Cecil DayLewis and later, Anne Stevenson. Suchwas her modesty and sense of privacythat even some members of her ownfamily were unaware of her writing untilher first book The Mistress (Sonus Press, Hull) came out in 1972. Her very highstandards kept her output small; when anexpanded collection, A House Under OldSarum, appeared – to favourable reviews– in 1981 from Peterloo Press, Barton was already in her early seventies. At her death, she had published abouteighty poems.

It is fortunate that the centenary of herbirth comes at a time when literarystudies are moving beyond slottingBritish poetry into catch-all categories; ‘the Auden influence’ (1930s), ‘Neo-Romanticism’ (1940s), ‘The Movement’ (1950s) and so on. There is an increasingacknowledgment of the range and varietyof work that was being producedthroughout the twentieth century.

Barton’s work particularly resistssimplistic classification. An outsider interms of the literary world – on accountof her gender, class, Redbrick University, provincial location – she wasnevertheless very aware of changingliterary modes and fashions. In the mid-1930s, for instance, she moved from theuse of strict metre and rhyme to a moreflexible, colloquial mode of expression, feeling that the former had become ‘oldfashioned’. But her poetry was groundedin her own world; a prosperousprovincial city that lived by trade, a placeof sounds, smells and physical objects, every one of which, like the silk-linedsunshade carried by Miss Prideaux, had atale to tell. So precise and concrete is a Barton poem that the series to which ‘Miss Prideaux of Clifton’ belongs (Aphrodite, Snow in the Streets, TheTimber Wharf, The Wet Summer, WhoseComrade?, all written between 1935 and1939) stand as a document of the Bristolof their era; its cargo ships, dock basins, timber wharves, malodorous passages, cooped-up clerks, grim prison-likehospital as well the crumblingeighteenth-century architecture andnatural beauty of Clifton and the Downs.

This Bristol was effectively destroyedby the Second World War, which alsoushered in a fallow period for her poetry; busy with her job, she wrote none at allfor almost sixteen years. In the mid-1950s in Marlborough, the impulsereturned. Her work from this middlephase draws on her experiences in thebook trade, on friendships (usuallyrecalled in absence) and on holidayjourneys. Frequently, the focus of thepoem is a single character whose wholelife story she manages to imagine fromthe slightest of traces; a photo tucked intoa book bought at auction (Lot 304: Various Books), a few scribbled words inan old desk diary (The Major: AnEpitaph) or a retired working man’slibrary that she has been called in to clear (A Passion for Knowledge in NorthWiltshire). The life she summons up isoften marked by failure – aspirationsunfulfilled, opportunities unrealised, human connections glimpsed but missed– and the loneliness which is a morecommon fate than any of us generallylike to admit. Or it may have beenblighted by social disadvantage; an issueof which Barton was always aware.

Only in the last decade of her life didthis most private of poets write aboutherself. My Grandfather in the Parkrevolves around a childhood memory ofplaying, rather anxiously, in CothamGardens, watching her retiredrailwayman grandfather timing the trainsas they pulled into Redland Stationbelow. Thursday’s Child, a poem ofextraordinary tenderness, evokes herown birth in the house (still standing) inMelville Road.

It is good that a hundred year’s onfrom that day, Joan Barton’s work isstarting to receive the attention itdeserves. With thanks to Harry Chambers ofPeterloo Poets for permission to republishpart of ‘Miss Prideaux of Clifton’and ‘Thursday’s Child’ from Joan Barton, A House Under Old Sarum, Peterloo Poets, 1981, ISBN 0905 291328. Available from Peterloo Poets, The OldChapel, Sand Lane, Calstock, Cornwall, PL18 9QX at £7.95

The Royal West of England Academy’s galleries are among the finest outside London and, although slightly forbidding to some, the magnificent building is an architectural masterpiece, a jewel in Bristol’s crown, an immense cultural asset for the city. The autumn show, showcasing work by hundreds of artists, is a highlight of the annual exhibition scene.

Less well known is the Academy’s permanent collection of paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings. The foundation for the collection was laid in 1844 when Mrs Ellen Sharples bequeathed a considerable fortune and donated a valuable collection of nineteenth-century works. Since then, and particularly in the decades following the Second World War, the collection has been expanded to the point that it is now a significant assembly of British art from the second half of the twentieth century.
The glittering array of more than 1,300 works includes many big names: Vanessa Bell, Paul Feiler, Dod Procter and William Townsend from the 1950s; Charles Cundall, Duncan Grant, John
Piper, Anne Redpath and Gilbert Spencer from the 1960s; and more recent work from Gillian Ayres, Maurice Cockrill, David Inshaw and Peter Prendergast.

The collection is augmented year on year by judicious purchases by the academy president and, since introduced by Derek Balmer in 2001, the diploma rule whereby new academicians present a work to the collection. Inevitably, purchases have reflected the tastes of the president of the time and for some decades there were weaknesses not only in the absence of modernist work from Cornwall, but also in abstract and expressionist painting. Derek Balmer and Alfred Stockham, the honorary curator, have attempted to redress this in recent years. The range of 1960s work has been strengthened by the transfer of part of the Arnolfini collection to Queen’s Road.
A selection of paintings from the storerooms is now shown in rotation in one of the academy’s side galleries, so that gradually the treasure trove is seeing the light of day. ●

The comparison with Lowry is in Tabb’s dedication to everyday subjects: working-class terraces in south Bristol, the docks, railway bridges, canals and smoking factory chimneys. There wasn’t much hyperbole when one critic described him as ‘Bristol’s artist’. Jon Benington’s book, Passion for Paint (Sansom & Company, Bristol) describes Tabb’s 50-year career, from his earliest landscapes through to the Expressionist industrial scenes and townscapes for which he is best known. His childhood in the country, his work as an inspector of buses and his long battle against ill health are also described. In all there are more than 150 colour reproductions of his paintings. An associated exhibition at Cube Gallery, Perry Road, Bristol, runs from December 1-22, 2006.

The book is available at the gallery and in Bristol bookshops.

If the straitlaced matrons of Clifton between the two world wars had known the secret private life of their favourite author, E H Young, it is quite possible that they would not have read her novels – at least not in front of their servants.

Emily Hilda Young was a best-selling novelist of the 1920s and 30s but few people today would recognise her name. Virago re-published her books in the 1980s which has helped keep her name alive but she was not widely ‘re-discovered’ by the critics. Emily Young was born in Northumberland 1n 1880, the daughter of a shipbroker and educated at Gateshead and Penrhos College, Colwyn Bay. She first came to Bristol in 1902 when she married a Bristol solicitor, Arthur Daniell. After first living near the Downs, in 1907 they moved to a top floor flat at 2 Saville Place, Clifton (a plaque records her stay there). This was at a period when the suffragette movement was at its height (in 1913 extremists burnt down the University’s sports pavilion at Coombe Dingle. Retaliation was swift. Male students wrecked the offices of the movement which were opposite the University).

Emily became a keen supporter of the struggle but still found time to publish three unremarkable novels. It was at this period that she began an affair with the married man who was to remain her lover for the rest of her life. With the outbreak of the First World War, Emily worked first in a munitions factory and then in a stables. Arthur Daniell was killed in the bloody battle of Ypres in 1917 and the following year Emily moved to London to join her lover, Ralph Henderson, who had been at Bristol Grammar School with her husband. To preserve appearances Emily lived in a separate flat in Ralph Henderson’s house in a classic ménage à trois.

This change seemed to be the catalyst that Emily needed to develop her art. Seven major novels followed, all based on Clifton, thinly disguised as ‘Upper Radstowe’. The first was The Misses Mallet, published originally under the title The Bridge Dividing in 1922. There then followed William in 1925, Miss Mole (1930), winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for that year, Jenny Wren (1932) and a sequel The Curate’s Wife (1934), Celia (1937) and finally Chatterton Square in 1947. All the novels share a discerning examination of Clifton and its inhabitants and Emily has been called ‘the apostle of quiet people’.

The class structure and shibboleths of what was then a much more rigid and structured society and the ways in which these beliefs could distort their holders and their relationships are depicted in a style which has been compared to Jane Austen’s or, more recently, to Barbara Pym’s writing. Emily describes with equal ease all the social classes which made up the fabric of Clifton society, whether rich merchants, tradesmen, clerics of competing religions, charladies from Hotwells, and the increasing
number of gentlefolk attempting to keep up appearances in the straitened circumstances of inter-war Britain.

Like many of her generation Emily was a great walker and it is possible to trace most of the paths and streets which she describes in detail and even identify individual houses. Some of the names are fairly obvious to the Bristolian; Albert Square is Victoria Square, Nunnery Road an alias for Whiteladies Road and Chatterton Square is Canynge Square.

Whether describing ‘moving tramcars like magic lantern slides, quick and coloured’, the hawthorn on the Downs in Spring or the Suspension Bridge and the Gorge, she paints Clifton as no one else has done. It must be remembered that Emily was writing from memory which makes her achievement even more remarkable. Despite gently satirising the class, sexual and religious creeds of the time, no one was more aware of the danger of breaking these taboos. Her lover was no less than a Headmaster, and of a major public school at that – Alleyns School, Dulwich – and therefore bound by a stricter moral code than most professions. One hint of scandal could have destroyed Henderson’s career and seriously damaged her own. Emily was more fortunate than some of her characters. Mrs Henderson appeared to like her and she was generally popular. She and her sister, Gladys Young, the radio actress, were keen and skilful mountain climbers and they had many friends. The affair was never discovered. On Henderson’s retirement he and Emily moved to Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire and it was there that she wrote her last novel and two children’s books before dying of lung cancer in 1949. The couple never married.