On the 17th of May 1649, three leading Levellers - Private John Church, Corporal Perkins, and Cornet James Thompson - were executed by firing squad in the churchyard at Burford. This event, which achieved its objective of diminishing and almost eliminating Leveller influence within the New Model Army, is commemorated each year in the town

This year, for the first time since the pandemic, it reverted to a live demonstration in defence of democracy and the right to protest. Speakers included the Reverend Canon Professor Mark Chapman, Ann Hughes - whose study of the Civil War in my county of Warwickshire is seminal, John Rees author of the definitive The Leveller Revolution, Richard Burgon MP and, loudest of all, Attila the Stockbroker.

The attendance - a few hundred - did not match some previous, pre-pandemic, years but it was representative of almost every strand of socialist thought - from communists and clerics to academics and activists, from Greens to Labour, from trades unionists and the International Brigades Trust to a plethora of maverick radicals like me.

This demographic and political diversity is appropriate. The Levellers were equally diverse. Those who wore the sea-green colours came from many social classes and espoused many political aspirations. The Diggers originally called themselves The True Levellers. And Henry Denne, in 1649, wrote that “We were an heterogeneal body, consisting of parts very diverse from one another, settled upon principles inconsistent with one another.”

But they united in the common cause.

Today, few of us can argue with any of the demands outlined in the Agreement of the People. And nor did those who organised around it in The Saracen’s Head.

They may have had different emphases, disagreements over detail, more ambitious objectives for the long-term. But in their debates, no-one accused another of factionalism. Such accusations were the tactics of those who would be prominent in the counter-revolution, the Grandees, and the most prominent of their actions is surely the Cromwell’s order and the executions at Burford.

Which is why Levellers’ Day is important. At Burford, on the Saturday nearest to the 17th of May, the broad left can put aside differences and show solidarity not merely with the three martyrs but the commitment of hundreds of thousands of people of all persuasions to the greater good.

We can learn from them.

And if I have one key take-away from the day, it is this from Richard Burgon MP:

“The Tories know what they are doing” he said. “We must be as class conscious as they are.”

Today from the everysmith vaults: I used to love Jacques Loussier’s transcriptions of Bach but seldom play them any more. But I have recently discovered that he has given Erik Satie the same treatment. Playing now are the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. Exquisite.

"When we genuinely speak we do not have the words ready to do our bidding, we have to find them. And we do not know exactly what we are going to say until we have said it, and we say and hear something new that has never been said or heard before." 

​This counterpoint to Wittgenstein's famous 7th proposition in TLP is from Auden's Secondary Worlds published in 1968. I wish I had read it then.

In recent years, I have used this blog and these posts to work out positions and identify issues. Not exclusively, but primarily. Seldom do I have a preconceived argument to advance in advance, and my faux-Oulipian approach (500-ish words and no more than an hour at the keyboard) is intended to sharpen my focus.

It also serves to establish priorities. In the last few weeks, there has been and remains much to consider. Ukraine, of course, but also Syria and Afghanistan; the expulsion of a friend and comrade from the Labour Party for anti-semitism (yes, of course he's Jewish); the awesome shows from Dylan on the Spring leg of the Rough & Rowdy Ways tour; the imminence of a new baseball season (we play the Yankees in the Bronx tomorrow); the selling-off of Channel 4; the fact that Covid has preventing me seeing many of my grandchildren for months; the culling of a beautiful tree in a nearby garden.

​You will note that, even half way through this post, I still do not have the words ready to do my bidding. In fact, I have not yet even an inkling of what my bidding should be. So some random thoughts on a recent discovery.

I have stumbled on a series of books by Timothy Venning, entitled An Alternative History of Britain. I started with the English Civil War.

Venning concerns himself with the ‘what-ifs’ of history. In the volume I have read, the chapter headings give the game away. His Edgehill chapter, for example, is entitled Could the war have been won quickly by the King?  The year 1644 is headed Was the war winnable in 1644 - by the King, or by parliament without resorting to the creation of the New Model Army?

Not snappily worded, I agree. But good questions. And inside these larger questions are small details of what might have happened has something happened or not happened.

A new one for me is the fact that Parliamentary cavalry commander Stapleton had a clear shot, at close quarters, at the charismatic Prince Rupert during the first battle of Newbury. His pistol misfired.

Would Rupert's death have destroyed morale in the Royalist cause? Would the King have given in? Or would he continued his stubborn approach? Would he, perhaps, have refused to engage at Marston Moor?

​Venning describes it as “the most vital what if of the battle”. Of such mishaps is history made.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Not actually in the vaults but it will be. It is PJ Proby reading from Eliot’s The Waste Land and its bloody brilliant. The recommendation comes from the poet Roy Kelly (@stanfan49) who writes: “Summer and PJ surprised us.” Thanks, Roy.

I don’t think I told you, but we moved house last year. We exchanged an elegant garden apartment in a Regency square in Leamington for a Victorian terrace in Warwick. But it’s not just any Victorian terrace. This one has history.

Our new home was once part of the Warwick County Mental Asylum - that’s what psychiatric hospitals were called in those days - and was built in the Gothic style on a grand scale.

It was opened in 1852 and rapidly expanded, gradually acquiring neighbouring farms, and developed into what amounted to a self-contained village with a blacksmith, a chapel, cricket and football grounds, an orchestra, hairdresser and beautician, water from its own spring. It extended over nearly 500 acres and was pretty much self-sufficient, with patients growing and cooking their own food, putting on plays and hosting an annual fête.

If all this seems very different from our ideas of Victorian asylums, that is because it was very different.

The activities and the grounds in which they took place were part of the treatment regime. Occupational therapy we would call it now. But although the treatments were ahead of their time in some respects, they were also of their time. For example, Electro-Convulsive Therapy was used; so was LSD.

Nevertheless, under the direction of John Connolly and William Parsey, pioneers in the humane treatment of mental illness, Central Hospital (as it was renamed) became, relatively speaking, a centre of innovation and excellence, visited by specialists from all over the world.

In 1995, Central Hospital closed with patients transferred to a modern, purpose built facility in Warwick itself. And then the developers moved in.

But as you can see, they did a pretty good job. Yes, there are many new houses built, but much of the landscaped grounds was retained and the original building sympathetically converted into homes.

One of which is now ours. Location, location, location - and the rest is history.


Today from the everysmith vaults: I’m listening to Close by James Knight. It’s a song cycle and it’s about as personal and heart-rending as any piece of music as I know. Including Four Last Songs and the Last Quartets.

“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.” Like everyone, I am waiting. Waiting for Putin to invade the Ukraine. Waiting for the MLB lockdown to end. Waiting for the Forde Report. Waiting for the reinstatement of Corbyn. Waiting for the publication of Sue Gray’s enquiry. And waiting for the resignation of the Prime Minister.

These are merely a few of the various sources of angst which I am currently experiencing. And they are all issues over which I have no influence.

But the waiting does give us an opportunity to muse on the essence of those issues, to consider precisely why we feel so helpless: why we are denied the opportunity to act. We can think. We can feel. But what we think and feel is impotence, an inability to influence events, a lack of engagement with the processes that affect our lives.

We are not even in control of our ourselves. As Sartre says, we are ‘trapped in existence’.

Trapped in existence, Jill and I lead a moderately comfortable life: children, grandchildren, good friends, a nice house. All that good stuff.

But that does not eliminate anxiety. It merely mitigates. And I am waiting still for the freedom that Sartre promised would be the outcome of that anxiety.

True, it is about choice and the inability or unwillingness to make choices (which is, of course, in itself, a kind of choice). 

Unfortunately, choices - meaningful choices - are usually false or fraudulent. They are hostages to fortune. And those who make those choices are making the wrong ones.

Which makes me even more anxious. And even more angry.

Sorry about all this. You’ve caught me on a bad day.

Today from the everysmith vaults:​ In keeping with my mood, Shostakovich Symphony #15. Kirill Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic.

In October 1818, John Keats responded to a letter from Richard Woodhouse complimenting him on a review of Endymion which had appeared in the Quarterly Review. He wrote: “As to the poetical Character itself (I mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself - it has no self - it is every thing and nothing - It has no character - it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated - It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet." He goes on to point out that “A poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity.” He has “no self”.

The parallel is clear. John Bauldie’s posthumously published book, titled The Chameleon Poet and sub-titled Bob Dylan’s Search for Self is a tardy but nonetheless interesting contribution to the faux Dylan-Keats debate of decades ago, a debate in which I engaged at the time but always with an understanding that, although I was a lover of Keats and remain so to this day, the quarrel was of no relevance to an appreciation of either. Then, it was about defending the genius of Dylan against the snobbery of people like AS Byatt and, crucially, defending the song against the poem. It was about defining poetry.

Bob of course, Bob being Bob, he was ambivalent. “Yippee, I’m a poet and I know it” he sang, before adding (just in case he was being taken seriously) “Hope I don’t blow it!” And when asked directly if he regarded himself as a poet, he replied “I think of myself as just a song & dance man”. Michael Gray, the pioneer of Dylan studies, seized on this conceit in his seminal triptych, Song & Dance Man, the first volume of which was published as far back as 1972 and in which I am not aware of any mention of John Keats. 

According to Bill Allison’s excellent (and for me, informative) introduction to The Chameleon Poet, Michael’s first volume inspired Bauldie. Reading it, he realised he wanted to be more of a Dylanologist than a Bobcat (although he is credited with the coinage of the latter term, which refers to those who follow the shows as compared with the desk-bound scholars). Certainly, Bauldie makes no reference to shows, to music, to performances. His emphasis is almost exclusively on textual analysis, including the movies and - importantly - Bob’s writings on the back cover of the sleeves. It's practical criticism. Throw in his degree in English and his experience as a teacher of English, and you have the nub of Bauldie’s approach.

It is, in many ways, a schoolmasterly book. You see how I started this piece talking about Keats and only by association moved onto Bob himself? That’s a trick Bauldie uses in this book as he must have done many times in classrooms as both student and teacher. One chapter, ostensibly concerned with Bob’s early work, begins with a lengthy exegesis of King Lear. Others reference Hesse, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Jung. Even if one didn’t know about Bauldie’s untimely death, one could make an informed guess at the date of the manuscript of this book.

Bauldie was older than me. By five days. We were both born in the last days of the summer holidays in 1949. We both combined our love of Bob with support for under-performing football teams. His interests were my interests at that time and the compare-and-contrast methodology with which we had been imbued is a way of thinking and explaining adopted by all of us in and out of the classroom.

He is not as meticulous in his readings as Michael Gray, who, in turn, is not as meticulous as Christopher Ricks. But who is? Nevertheless, there are some keen insights here. He is particularly good on Planet Waves and John Wesley Harding. And, passim, he is excellent in his distinguishing of the noumenal Bob from the phenomenal, the inner from the outer, the masked and anonymous from the simple and direct.

I wish I had known John Bauldie. But I know him well enough now through this book. And I am reminded of one of my favourite Bob stories.

“You don’t know me, but I know you” said a fan, outside a show.

“Let’s keep it that way” said Bob.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Bob’s first show back on the road, in Milwaukee, on Tuesday night. A wonderful show, with eight songs from Rough & Rowdy Ways and the sound of Shadow Kingdom. It’s only been in the vault for 48 hours but it is currently playing for the fourth time around.

I am writing this on ‘short rest’. A wild card game against the Yankees followed by a fantastic and ultimately successful series against the Rays have conspired to deprive me of sleep and contribute major stress to my extended waking hours. But the Sox are now champions of the ALE and there are two sleeps available before the first of the ALCS against either the White Sox or the Astros. There is a sense in this solitary part of the Red Sox Nation that the Sox are on a roll.

Being a Sox fan in Europe means long nights. Games mostly start after midnight, and even the game 3 afternoon start at Fenway (9pm BST) went to extra innings and continued into the early hours. But during the day and early evening, normal life continues and has its own highlights.

One such took place last Friday, the anniversary of my father’s death. After 18 months or so, the International String Quartet series returned to Leamington, featuring the Sacconi Quartet. I had missed their previous performance at the Pump Rooms, a decade ago, so was keen to be right upfront for their return. In a heavily and professionally Covid-proofed auditorium, I managed to reserve Seat B1.

In fact, the attraction was not solely the Sacconi, nor even the return of live chamber music to my neck of the woods; it was the programme.

The Sacconi were to play (after the obligatory Haydn warm-up) the eighth of Shostakovich’s quartets and to devote the second half of the concert to the String Quartet In C# minor, Opus 131 by Beethoven.

The latter has been one of my favourite pieces of music. I have a dozen or more versions of it at home and one of them will doubtless figure in my list of Desert Island Discs. The Sacconi did it more than justice: they are are a powerful, muscular band and they brought out the grandeur of the fugue, the joy (in the Allegro) and passion throughout, whilst addressing the delicacy and profundity of the Adagio. It is a heavy responsibility to play this masterwork. The Sacconi took it on and triumphed.

But by then, we knew they would. We had already heard the Shostakovich 8th, his 1960 response to a visit to a bombed-out Dresden.

I mentioned that it was the anniversary of my father’s death because he was a bomber pilot in the RAF during the war. And a distinguished one, with a DFC and AFC to prove the point.

I do not know whether he was involved in those controversial raids in mid-February 1945, during which the city was systematically destroyed and more than 30,000 civilians are believed to have died. (Some estimates place it over 200,000.) At this stage of the war, the only ‘civilians’ would have been the elderly and sick, women and children.

It has been described as a war crime, principally by those of my political persuasion. But it is significant that Churchill, in his massive 6 volume history of the war, makes no mention of the Dresden destruction.

As I say, I have no idea if my father was one of those involved. He never spoke of it, but then he never spoke of any of his wartime experiences.

But I know enough of him to know that he would have listened to the Shostakovich quartet and, as did Shostakovich himself when it was played to him by the Borodin, “buried his head in his hands and wept”.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Away from performances and mlb.tv, I am listening to English music. Warlock, Delius, Elgar and - currently - Vaughan Williams. It's A Sea Symphony​ playing right now. 

I haven’t done a word count, but the press reckons that it is 12500 or perhaps 14000 words long. Seems longer. When I embarked on reading it, I was looking to take issue with his policies. Unfortunately, I can’t do that, because there are none. Or, at least, none proposed or even mentioned here.


I didn’t vote for Starmer, but I thought about it. I have his Ten Pledges on my notice board and, when they were published, each one made me more open to his candidacy and potential leadership. It seemed I was not alone. Many of those who had voted twice for Jeremy Corbyn were attracted by Starmer’s claim that he would not change track, and that the 2017 Labour manifesto was the basis of the party in the future.


In my case, I allowed my heart to overcome my head. I voted for Rebecca Long-Bailey. But when the results came in, I nevertheless believed that Starmer would be a good leader of the party, perhaps in the manner of John Smith, but certainly not like Tony Blair, under whose aegis the party lost my support (though not my membership subs).


Since Starmer’s election, a great deal has happened to cause concern amongst those of my Labour persuasion. I won’t list them because most of you will be aware of the purge of the left, the expulsion and suspension of Jewish socialists, the lack of opposition to Johnson, and of course the current proposals to change the one-member-one-vote system within the party.


But this much-vaunted Fabian leaflet - an ‘essay’ apparently, but not even a good try - was Starmer’s opportunity to show himself as a positive, forward-looking leader: someone who had a vision which was not confined to purging opponents, but concerned itself with ideas, practicality, policy.


I have now read it. Not The Guardian’s summary. I have read it all, word by word, cliché by cliché, banality after banality.


It is heart-breaking. Not merely because of the style - where is that forensic approach? Where is that legal mind at work? Where are the strong socialist principles? Where, indeed, are any principles at all?


Where, in short, is the leadership?


Perhaps the claim to leadership is to be found here ….

Or perhaps not.

Today from the everysmith vaults: I have of course been listening to Volume 16 of The Bootleg Series, and tbh, one needs to get to the last two tracks of the fifth and final CD to listen to anything new and/or worthy of the man. I have also been listening to a soundtrack of Shadow Kingdom, which is masterful. But I have mostly been listening to James Knight's poignantl and cathartic suite, Close. Quite beautiful.

Bob's birthday took about three weeks. It included much preliminary listening to albums and shows as well as tuning in to Radio 4 which ran a number of Bob-related broadcasts which exceeded my expectations; notably the Front Row conversation and the play Dinner with Dylan.
 
I commend both to you. But the celebrations really began with the arrival – by courier! – of Michael Gray’s Outtakes on Bob Dylan (#13 since you ask).
 
Anyone with even a passing interest in the extraordinary genius of Bob Dylan will be aware of the commentary, critiques and criticism provided by Michael Gray. We have all taken from our shelves our copy of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia to confirm a fact or check a reference and found ourselves, hours later, moving seamlessly from one entry to another.
 
Outtakes on Bob Dylan is different from the encyclopedia and from Song & Dance Man. It is more personal, more subjective. And because the selected pieces were written in real time, more alive and immediate, less retrospective.
 
The book begins in 1966 and subsequently covers if not every year, certainly every period of Bob. Part of my enjoyment is the realisation that Michael and I attended many of the same shows, though not always coming to similar judgements. One show on which we agreed was Bob’s dreadful performance on the first night in Birmingham (UK) with Tom Petty in 1987. It is the only Bob show I have ever left early, out of embarrassment, and the story goes that, as Bob started a new song, one Heartbreaker asked Petty what it was. “Dunno, but it’s in D” said Petty. Michael is right that the next two nights were a transformation. But that’s Bob being Bob and there are countless examples in Outtakes, because Michael is always honest. He is, primarily, a fan but his academic rigour is never relaxed. He will never, as I do, look to justify or praise when there is no reason.
 
Many of the selected pieces are familiar, but even I cannot keep up with every item of Dylanology in every periodical. So many are new to me, including of course the recently written essay on Rough & Rowdy Ways.
 
This is a fine piece of work, worthy of the exhortation given to Michael by an editor many years ago that he “should do an FR Leavis on Dylan”. Spoiler alert: Rough & Rowdy Ways “isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s a work of depth, warm resonance, invention and generosity.”
 
One final recommendation: the penultimate essay is a moving tribute to Bob Dylan 8-for-43 Willis. I met Bob Willis, a long-standing friend of Michael, twice only. The first time was at a Bob concert (one of the Birmingham shows in ’87)when we stood at adjacent urinals before the show and talked cricket; the second was at Lord’s when we talked about the number of bootlegs we each possessed.
 
That Michael who watches tennis in the summer was a friend of an English cricket legend is a measure of the man. And this obituary a measure of his writing.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: The three shows in Birmingham from 1987. Jeez, that first night was awful.

​Crow Court by Andy Charman is greater than the sum of its parts, of which there are fourteen. Each might stand alone – and indeed a couple have been published as such. But it is in this form, in this novel, that the short stories, with their precise observations of people and landscape, are integrated and interwoven to create the diverse community of Wimborne Minster between 1840 and 1863.
 
It is a fascinating read, which I can’t tell you too much about without triggering a spoiler alert. But it begins with marriage plans and the apparent suicide of the chorister scheduled to perform a solo at the ceremony. And this is closely followed by the murder of the choirmaster, which prompts suspicion and relief in equal measure throughout the town. What follows is the long search for justice, examining the suspects and their relationships.
 
So it’s a murder mystery. But it is also a description and an examination of a changing way of life in a provincial town, with its class consciousness and power structures, its received pronunciation and its ‘Dorzet’ dialect. Dorset in general and Wimborne in particular are central to the narratives. This is not a story that could be transported to any other part of the country: its truths, its authenticity, stem from its sense of place, which we see from the inside and the outside.
 
Nor could it be transported into another era. In 1840, Victoria is on the throne and the Victorian Age is off to a flying start. The railways are opening up the provinces, welcome to some, frightening to others. And by the end of the book, Darwin’s Origin of Species has been published. This new world-view reaches Wimborne as the story evolves to its conclusion.
 
So it’s a history book also. A social history. It is possible to read it as a form of allegory, with characters ‘representing’ their class, their status, their position. Don’t. They are far from stereotypes. Characters are developed with a gentle, nuanced, understated accumulation of detail over many episodes and more years.
 
I read Crow Court in a single sitting. I shall read it again because Andy Charman’s beautiful prose belies the issues of his subject matter. I shall read it again because it works on so many levels and I know it will repay my attentions. I shall read it again in order to master the Dorzet dialect, for which a glossary is helpfully included, as fascinating to read as an Amis footnote. Jill and I have already adopted ‘dewbit’ to describe our first morning meal.
 
Most of all, I shall read it again because it’s without doubt my book of the month and will probably be my book of the year. Unless I am very fortunate.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Yesterday was the birthday of Franz Schubert. I am celebrating with the String Quartet #15, played by the New Orford String Quartet.
 

​Yesterday was Thanksgiving and, on my morning walk, I mused on those topics for which I wished to give thanks. I came up with the defeat of Trump, the return of Alex Cora to Fenway, and my rediscovery of Dando Shaft*. At which point I returned home to find that, in their infinite lack of wisdom, the government had placed Leamington Spa in Tier 3 on the basis that it falls in the same county as Coventry, Rugby, Nuneaton and Bedworth. All of which are some distance from Leamington geographically, socially, and culturally. Not to mention in terms of Covid infection rates.
 
You may think that this is a sub-genre of NIMBYism, and it probably is, but the decision is unfair, unjust and unwarranted.
 
Four weeks ago, we went into Lockdown 2 in Tier 1. Four weeks of quarantine later, we are in Tier 3.
 
WTF?
 
I have been a good boy throughout both periods of lockdown. I have done what I was told and tried to maintain respect for authority. I have listened with great attention to the proclamations of government and government advisors. Yes, even those of Johnson and Hancock. I have accepted their decisions, even when it prevented me from visiting my 94 year old mother. I have “followed the science”.
 
Much good it has done me. I and thousands of others who have obeyed the rules are now to lose freedoms because of arbitrary decisions made by those with no idea of how people live their lives.
 
The prime minister spoke of the “whack-a-mole” approach which would ensure a targeted response. But now he has reneged on this and picked up his scattergun.
 
My argument is not libertarian. I do not believe that there is no such thing as society; rather the reverse. I am not with those MPs in the Tory party who come from this tradition and will, perhaps, vote against their government on Wednesday.
 
But I’ll take their votes if it means that some common sense will be brought to bear on this complex issue. I’ll take their votes if it makes a difference to those businesses which will not re-open because of this decision. I’ll take their votes if it means that thousands of young people will have jobs next year. I’ll take their votes if it means grandchildren can see grandparents.
 
This is a major crisis. Simplistic solutions based on simplistic analysis will not suffice.
 
And don’t forget, like Sunak, I haven’t even mentioned Brexit yet.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: *Prompted by  twitter thread, I have been listening to Dando Shaft, a Coventry band with a Leamington singer, which rivalled the Fairports and the ISB in the early ‘70s but never achieved the success they deserved (though they did receive a great deal of critical acclaim). I commend them to you, although yesterday and today, what’s playing is The Complete Last Waltz, the greatest ever Thanksgiving show. And yes, I do omit the Neil Diamond bit.