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Cycling on the ‘Continong’ in 1906
Two things that jump out from a cursory glance at The Continong by the pseudonymous Anar de la Grenouillere, F.O.N.S., of which a file copy of the fourth edition of 1906 was found at Jot HQ the other...
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More gems from Scorn with Extra Bile edited by Matthew Parris (1998)
Pop music This man has child-bearing lips Joan Rivers on Mick Jagger You have Van Gogh’s ear for music Billy Wilder on Cliff Osmond Wood Green shopping centre has been committed to vinyl New Musical...
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Bindings
A few years ago your Jotter invited that celebrated expert on the Western tradition in book binding , Mirjam Foot, to give a talk on bindings to the local literary society. She was then married to the...
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The Strawberry Hill Press
Strawberry Hill, the ‘Gothick‘ pile near Twickenham, which dilettante Horace Walpole began to build in 1749, continues to fascinate lovers of architecture and design. No only is it the first building...
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Book Collecting for Fun and Profit by Bill McBride. An American perspective (1).
Mr McBride, an American dealer based in Hartford, Connecticut, published his pocket-sized guide to book collecting and dealing for $9.95 in 1997, but twenty six years later, things in the second hand...
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Book collecting for Fun and Profit by Bill McBride (2)
Rule three: Know what you buy. Do your homework. Yes, you will make mistakes early on. But the more knowledge you bring to the marketplace, the better equipped you are to buy wisely and well. Learn...
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First Lines
In her anthology entitled First Lines (1985) Gemma O’Connor declared that few celebrated writers in English opened their novels and memoirs with arresting first lines. Dickens, Joyce, and Jane Austen...
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Book Collecting for Fun and Profit by Bill McBride (1997)
Part three What do you like? 5) History: Periods, politics, wars, monarchs, presidents, suffragists, leftwing, rightwing or in-the middle politics, abolitionists etc. History is a huuuuuge field, and...
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Autograph collecting (some notes)
There is a story behind every autograph. Idly fossicking about online I have retrieved a few such stories and added some of my own. It needs courage to be an autograph hound so much respect to those...
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Book collecting for fun & profit by Bill McBride (1997) Part 4
Entertainment: Music, vaudeville, movies, dance, theatre, television, radio, circus, the carnival, etc. If it amused, it was documented in books. We have already looked at television and radio under...
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The Bus stops at Binham Lane
A lost classic of ‘thirties dormitory suburbia ? When a comparatively recent book becomes hard to find one is tempted to wonder exactly why. If it isn’t a private press production in a limited...
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Now and Then
This was a literary magazine published sporadically by Jonathan Cape to promote their own new books. The idea of such a magazine is unusual, to say the least. Your Jotter is not familiar with any...
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When Iain Sinclair was a book dealer…
Found in a pile of books at Jot HQ, list 53 compiled by Iain Sinclair, the cult author of Downriver and Orbital to name but a few, when he was a bookseller. The catalogue is dated Autumn 1992, by...
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Roedean Slang
We are always interested in slang at Jot especially specialised slang, like school slang. Lists can often be found in the appendixes of school histories. Winchester College has probably produced the...
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Dining on the north Norfolk coast before it was as trendy as it is today
Judging from their entries in their 1956 guide to good eating, Bon Viveur ( Fanny and Johnny Cradock ) had nice things to say about eateries in coastal Norfolk. Here are two of the restaurants they...
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Floating Voters
Found – this manuscript poem by E.V.Knox (1881 -1971) one-time editor of Punch , serious humorist, poet, parodist and satirist (known as ‘Evoe’). It was probably published in Punch and possibly just...
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Bon Viveur visits The Marquee, Egon Ronay’s restaurant near Harrods
Egon Ronay, along with Raymond Postgate, has become a byword for good food guides in the UK. But did you know that the ‘ Bon Viveur ‘ double act of Phyllis ‘Fanny ‘ Cradock and wine expert husband...
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Yet another book of literary lists
Jon Wynne-Tyson Henry Eliot—a sort of PR man for Penguin Books—does literary tours based on the work of Chaucer and the Lake Poets. He is also the compiler of The Alternative A – Z of London and...
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Fanny and Johnny visit the Rex Whistler Room restaurant
In 1956, over sixty years before the Tate Gallery ethics committee decided to close it over criticisms of its ‘racist’ mural, Fanny and Johnny Cradock paid a visit to the famous Rex Whistler Room...
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Fanny and Johnnie visit Quo Vadis, one of Ian Fleming’s favourite restaurants
(..thanks Flashbak) We don’t know whether Fanny and Johnnie Cradock, aka ‘Bon Viveur’, were fans of James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming , but the three writers had one thing in common. They all liked...
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