Hello Again
Sometime in the near future, I will no longer write these bite sized articles as the current Coronavirus emergency will have faded and everyday life will have returned.
I have just watched a recording of a Chelsea game in December and it appears to have been played on another planet. How things have changed in a few short weeks. but I wonder if we will have changed when we are allowed to move freely and socialise as we used to do.
In Hungerford, as with most small towns, things have changed with most of the shops closed and our streets are certainly much quieter. However, the buses are still running along with the trains and there is a good deal of passing traffic.
But there is something in the air which I have not sensed since The Beast from the East a couple of years ago when the country came to a total standstill. Everything seems quite normal, but Hungerford has lost its rural buzz and appears to be sleeping with its eyes open.
Wilton village which is only a few miles from Hungerford, has been featured in The Economist and this in turn has been picked up by The Independent which is very much a first.
These are mysterious times as I believe the song goes, but hopefully it will end soon as each of us is outside of our comfort zone.
But what of the subject of this weeks article? Well I have chosen The Left Book Club which was the subject of an article some years ago which some of you might remember reading. Rest assured I am not going to repeat what I have already written but over the last two or so months I have found some LBC publications that I have not found before.
I was aware that the LBC had published fiction, but had not really seen any of these books until I found a copy of Choose a Bright Morning by Hillel Bernstein which was published by Victor Gollancz in 1936.
To be truthful, I have yet to read the novel although the current lock down has given me plenty of time to read.
The one obvious difference to me was that instead of the famous orange cover this book had a yellow and pink cover.
I purchased the book on the spot and considered myself quite lucky as after twenty years of collecting, I had found another slightly different edition (you always find the really interesting things when you are not looking for them).
But then, the logic of London Buses took hold.
One waits what seems ages for a bus to arrive then two come along at the same time and guess what I found, another LBC publication on my next visit to the Arcade.
This time it was a non-fiction book called World Politics 1918-1936 and was written by a R Palme Dutt who I had not come across before.
It dated from 1936, as did the third LBC book that I found about a week later which had the heavy title of France Today and the Peoples Front which had been penned by Maurice Thorez.
When I thought about my finds, it is likely that they came from the same collection as one of the books carried a bookplate. And as with Hillel’s, book they each had a yellow and deep pink cover.
The actual colour of the books bothered me a little as I was aware that the LBC tended to use orange and red covers, generally.
My books were obviously very early editions, but I am still trying to find out more about the yellow and pink covers (if you have any information on this subject then the Arcade with be happy to hear from you).
I have always found the inter-war era very interesting as after the excesses of the 1920s, (will the 2020s be similar after the pandemic ends?) the 1929 Wall Street Crash changed everything.
People were looking for new ideas to replace the stale ideas and were leaning towards the Soviet Union and many people admired Stalin (which is surprising after what history has taught us).
That is what makes these books so interesting as they are a window into the past.
In 1936, Europe was on the slippery slope to war which is not the case now. The world just needs to find an answer to the virus as soon as possible.
My LBC finds were quite random in the weeks before the close down was ordered and I hope to find more books to add to my collection.
If you are a fan of these books then, they do show up at the Arcade quite frequently and you can expect to pay between two and five pounds for a copy (obviously more if the edition is rare).
I have seen quite common LBC editions sold for considerably more elsewhere so as normal, it pays to shop around.
But that is a no, no at present due to the sensible restrictions on travel, but these will fade and slowly but surely we will get back to normal.
Coronavirus will be beaten and it will not be down to one country but many countries working together and in the years to come, there will be books written on the subject. Just as there have been many books written on the inter-war years and the Left Book Club.
It is time to finish now otherwise this mini-article will be as long as The Mirror & The Light.
Look after yourselves and remember that this virus will exhaust itself, as all storms do.
Be Safe and Be Well
Stuart Miller-Osborne
