nm5000: er well good evening everyone er er well frankly i'm amazed that er 
there's such discussion of my child as i call it my firstborn here er i hope 
that you know it's opened a lot of areas of enquiry for many people and i hope 
it's entertained as well as after all it is fiction to a large degree er i 
don't know how i'm exactly how i'm going to do this whether some of you like to 
shoot me questions first or whether i should actually just read some of my 
favourite chapters and that's what i think i will do i'll just read some of my 
er f-, well er keynote passages i'd call them rather than favourite chapters 
'cause i don't think i have any favourites er and i'll just invite questions on 
them afterwards 'cause i think you know there are a couple of sections one 
fairly lengthy one not so that er i'll read sort of sum up all the ideas and 
key points in the novel which i hope were tr-, er trans-, would be transferred 
to any potential reader er and i'll stand up for this as well 
it's different you know i might as well read in my bed at that level er okay er 
oh sorry di-, er so k-, i can just be f-, clear er what sort of percentage of 
people here have er read the novel or are familiar with it oh okay well er for 
the sake of those who haven't i mean i'll if you'll bear those who will the 
majority will bear with me i'll start from the beginning er and as you know it 
starts in London twenty-ninth of May seventeen-eighty-six Buckram stood in a 
puddle outside The Charioteer and listened to the shouts and laughter of 
several black people in the big smoky room the alehouse was full this evening 
and through a grimy rain streaked window he watched his old begging mentor 
Georgie George as rigorous as ever standing in front of the fire opening and 
closing his shabby frock coat every few seconds there was Henry Prince the 
boxer looking fatter and dressing much better looking prosperous in 
fact two men one black one white dressed as women were leaning against the bar 
screaming for drinks the publican Offaly Michael was still there bullying his 
staff and trying to keep order Buckram caught a glimpse of Angola Molly a 
lifelong whore and at twenty-eight a grandmother giggling eagerly into the 
hairy ear of some rich white sot business as usual Buckram thought he scanned 
the crowd more closely William wasn't in tonight and Neville of course wouldn't 
be seen dead in such a place it had been two years since Buckram had taken a 
drink in a boozing ken he studied familiar faces jabbering wildly under 
powdered wigs and all the bejewelled ill-painted women in laundered clothes and 
polished buckled shoes then he caught his own reflection in the green-tinged 
pane and flinched away before the image of a shivering grey-bearded black ogre 
with matted hair and greasy clothes could settle too solidly he glanced over 
his shoulder at the 
cramped tenements of Bridges Street they looked seedy and sad like poorly baked 
loaves left in a cold grimy oven even from the street he could smell the sour 
stench that told of generations of uncleanliness starving drunken whores 
staggered from one tavern to another and gangs of cadgers huddled bickering at 
the mouths of alleys and courtyards groups of strangers gathered under awnings 
and talked about the weather the sky rumbled fitfully pack dogs sniffed his 
heels and Buckram felt abandoned at the mercy of an English god he thought back 
to the night before when too ashamed and confused to return to his old haunts 
he'd taken himself to Warren Street to the black sick house for a meal of 
maggoty biscuits smeared with maggoty marrow his bubbling bowels kept him awake 
throughout the night while all around him howling madmen expired on verminous 
mattresses it was almost as bad as jail so he escaped before morning and the 
arrival of the press 
gangs three black grenadier guardsmen approached the tavern stepping gingerly 
on islands of slippery smooth mud hey brother a tall guardsman was loosening 
his pouch take this a handful of pennies landed at Buckram's feet gurgling the 
gratitude he scooped up the coins having no pockets he held them in his fist he 
looked in again at the irrepressible high spirits behind the window it was too 
soon he couldn't face them in there yet first of all he needed cheap food and 
some real friends er okay that's just er introduces well can't really call it 
well for the sake of er this i'll call him the protagonist the main victim i'll 
say Buckram who is a er penniless black beggar who suddenly finds himself in u-,
er on the streets of er London after having served a er two year jail sentence 
in a in a traditional style for a tr-, crime he did not really commit et cetera 
et cetera er Buckram and some of his cronies were one of er a number of a group 
of people who 
particularly interested me in eighteenth century England in the black 
population of London and this was the er large numbers of ex er s-, ex er black 
servicemen who could have been originally recruited while still slaves er in 
the American colonies and had joined with the loyalist side and of course after 
the British lost that particular campaign they er thousands of them left the er 
eastern seaboard ports and er settled either in Liverpool or in London others 
er settled of course in Nova Scotia er there's been a continuing er continuous 
population in Nova Scotia to this day some of them er i understand also settled 
in Bermuda er and the Bahamas but i know nothing of them and i wouldn't imagine 
i couldn't for the life of me imagine why any ex-slave would want to go to 
those places er so that that's the beginning i mean i had a lot of fun writing 
this book probably too much because er i am someone who loves research i can 
lose myself in it to a ridiculous degree and 
er the thing is with a with so-, with a novel like this there is so much fresh 
material and so much obscure and downright perverse material that you come 
across that you just can't refuse the reader the privilege of you know you just 
have to share it i mean er what i'll what i'll read with you i mean for the the 
there are examples from example the fact that er there was a fashion for er 
young ladies to wear er eyebrows which had false eyebrows which had been made 
from er mouse skin now there was also a thriving acti-, there's also a thriving 
market amongst the lower class-, some members of the lower classes lowest 
classes to er er capture rats some would be used for sport and capture ri-, 
mice and some would be used for this activity there were other mouse skin 
products and thimbles how you're going to use a mouse to to get a thimble but 
er all these little er pieces of information i just felt i needed to really in 
some places glut the er book with it the text with it because it really helped 
to flesh out the where the er how can i put this it it helped to flesh out the 
alien environment that i was coming into contact with the more i found out 
about er the physical aspects of everyday life for people of all classes in the 
eighteenth century er the more that alien nature became apparent to me and 
moreover the alien nature of the people i was trying to describe the way that 
basically life and death decisions had to be made on a daily almost casual 
basis er but er back to the trivia and er this is a section where Buckram has 
just made friends with Georgie George who's the king of the beggars styles 
himself the king of the beggars and this character Georgie George as with all 
the other characters er he's amal-, an amalgamation of er several er real-life 
characters one of the people who went into the Georgie pot so to speak was 
someone called er Blind Billy Waters or Billy 
Waters who wa-, became the king of the beggars in the eighteen-twenties er he 
was another black ex-serviceman er blind one-legged black violinist became king 
of the beggars i mean we laugh but you know this was er quite a fantastic feat 
with actually a nice little er sketch of his funeral er entitled There Goes er 
Old Billy and it's a beggar's funeral that was incredibly unluxurious you know 
to our sensibilities and you know he's just there being wheeled by on a horse 
no his coffin's on a horse-drawn cart and you have all the beggars in doffed 
caps following in its wake a little cortege and he had a little write-up in the 
Times er so people like that i tried to bring to life in fiction but of course 
mixing it up with a lot of much more nasty cases er wen-, er w-, went towards 
making this character of Georgie George er here it goes yeah Georgie was 
friends with everyone Buckram saw how he seduced and obscured then 
cajoled and spoke true his was an incomparable world as William described it 
easy and busy borderline and safe but safe the road to organized crime was a s-,
sharp sweet drop at first Buckram and William fenced for fencers they were 
pimps and lookouts and couriers sometimes they helped with coining they learned 
how to drill and load dice and all the names for the different weightings 
before long they could tell bale of bard cinque-deuces from a bale of direct 
contraries and bale of flat cater-treys from a bale of langrets contrary to the 
vantage they acquired the more arcane skills of pickpocketry from elder cadgers 
the wipe-snitch the cly-fake the kinchin lay and how to nim a ticker 
specialists abounded upright men janglers jarkmen clank-nappers bufe-nabbers 
bilkers freighters and swaddlers and the dimber damber himself Georgie George 
it was a fairly undemanding life compared to the hand to mouth existence they'd 
led hitherto there was no shortage of food binges of roast meat 
and fish replaced the communal stews of scavenged vegetables they'd grown 
accustomed to all kinds of beers and spirits flowed freely and soon became part 
of their daily lives except for Neville they ditched their fraying uniforms and 
started to buy new clothes William especially he quickly adopted the flamboyant 
dress code of their new circle of friends the blackbirds favoured bright 
primary colours worn in combinations that would have clashed against white 
skins in the room in Ivy Street soon acquired mattresses a cupboard and a table 
William gained membership of several gaming houses for gentlemen and he began 
with little success to apply himself to the theatrical arts the only hindrance 
to their new life was Pastor Neville Georgie had taken an instant dislike to 
him and the feeling was mutual Neville refused to partake in any illegalities 
and on the one occasion that he visited The Charioteer he was forcibly evicted 
after insisting on reading aloud 
to the clientele from the book of Leviticus he was a good bud nevertheless 
Buckram and William couldn't bring themselves to abandon him the three of them 
had endured so much together and besides he was the only good cook among them 
gang life suited Buckram the noisy carefree atmosphere of The Charioteer was 
the ideal place for him to practise his gift of tomfoolery it became his second 
home in a matter of weeks he had gained enough status to merit the honour of a 
personal chair from which to conduct his business he genuinel-, oh he genuinely 
enjoyed George's company indeed everyone did and took to accompanying the king 
of the beggars as often as possible on his trips out er that's interesting on 
his trips to out of the way villages like Tottenham and Camberwell right er 
this sort of introduces in a back to front manner the two other main well t-, 
some of the other main characters 
in this novel er one of the hardest things for me to do was to give an idea of 
the spectrum of er er black life in the black settlement of London in er the 
late eighteenth century and i was having very very i don't think i actually 
achieved it er but i was trying to show the actual breadth of activity that er 
black Londoners were engaged in at the moment i'm er working as a researcher 
for er Lambeth er archives looking up er s-, traces of the black population 
there and it's absolutely phenomenal er you know you find a-, apart from having 
an African school there there were also er African greengrocers and doctors and 
people involved in all sorts of careers and activities but the overwhelming 
majority of the people we do come across and this is in a sense partially 
echoed in this er work were er people who were just trying to survive on a 
daily basis basically living from hand to mouth and trying to make it er 
through the day any way they could er there's one final 
thing i'm going to try and find here which er before questions come in yes yes 
yes th-, this is when er Buckram actua-, finally meets up with Pastor Neville 
er and this section is f-, particularly er dear to me and it's a fairly short 
one er and Pastor Neville who is er for those of you who haven't read it a mad 
preacher er i mean there's this thing er practically er there are two things in 
almost every black British novel and i fell victim to both of them of course 
one is the use of the kissed lips you know somewhere throughout the the novel 
one of the characters will kiss their lips as in that will just be there the 
other is the mad religious character and true to the stereotype this is my mad 
religious character er Pastor n-, Neville who er er has got a job working at er 
Saint Giles' church and he has some sort of accommodation there to which he is 
now leading Buckram 
it wasn't so much a house as a shed this asked Buckram this is where you live 
the dwelling place of the most high almost a lean-to Pastor Neville's home was 
a windowless wood slatted structure held together in places by shipwrights 
nails and tar the hut lacquered w-, the hut lacquered with chevrons of green 
slime abutted a stable in Saint Giles' churchyard an ever present smell of hops 
and malts from the nearby m-, brewery blanketed the entire neighbourhood 
Buckram sighed slowly as Neville wrestled a bent key in a rusty lock they had 
both slept in worse places Neville lit a dim smoky lamp and weak light bled 
over a bed of rotting sacks used cooking utensils and countless open books lay 
in the mess like prone and hungry lovers the walls were cold and sappy and 
moisture dripped in gluey crawls to a broken flagstone floor but Buckram's only 
thought was of the hours of uninterrupted sleep awaiting him Neville left the 
shack returning 
moments later with a half bale of fresh straw my bed i suppose aye sir fashion 
it as you please Buckram hefted the bale under his arm and started to shred it 
spreading handfuls of hay across his sleeping area he added another layer 
shaking out the clumps this time in order to keep the whole soft he padded the 
remaining straw high around the walls to ward off draughts and to lessen the 
chance of injury should he thrash about in his sleep only when he'd finished 
did he realize that he'd instinctively made a night bed for a horse stay away 
from George said Neville and keep out of The Charioteer those men are my 
friends Neville it was good to be with them tonight they're friends to no one 
least of all to you they have done this to you they have made you like this he 
framed his hands at the sides of Buckram's stiff dirty clothes Buckram nodded 
glumly friends or not the regulars at The Charioteer were the only people he 
knew who could make things happen for 
him it was all right for Neville he could read and write he had his verger's 
post to keep him in food and lodging but Buckram had lived as a beggar he knew 
full well the horror of those days when you have to compete and sometimes fight 
with the legions of native poor crossing themselves whenever you crossed their 
path and your gaze never leaving the ground for fear of meeting another's 
bewilderment or missing the scraps that will feed you for another day looking 
more bedraggled lost and ethereal as one by one you give up your dreams and 
stumble on through shame filled lives not knowing who you are where you come 
from forgetting you ever knew otherwise slouching past one another in the 
street without acknowledgement because it could have been anyone or nobody and 
how it feels never to know security not even anonymity in a city of eight-
hundred-thousand souls he would not live like that again he promised he'd kill 
himself first bom and 
that's the short rea-, set of readings and er i suppose i'm open to questions 
nm5001: are are you going to going to read later for us 
nm5000: oh yes yeah go on go on 
nm5001: are you going to read later on 
nm5000: yeah that would be fine yeah 
nm5001: so what he er what namex has said is that he will read later but take a 
break ask a question namex you wanted to ask about five questions yeah 
sm5002: yes yes i did 
nm5001: yeah one 
sm5002: er 
nm5001: to start with 
sm5002: okay you chose the title Incomparable World er we've heard the citation 
from the actual reading itself as it was given 
nm5000: mm 
sm5002: referring to a particular character Georgie George but in terms of its 
casting over the entire 
novel i mean where did you come up with the you know the the idea of something 
being inc-, incomparable is it incomparable in terms of us reading 
nm5000: yes 
sm5002: er or 
nm5000: incomparable in terms of me writing it really was it was i mean er i'd 
set myself this task er which involved amongst many other things er getting 
into contact with the whole world with a a totally second-hand world and er er 
sorry a world that i can only er er approach through er er er er o-, o-, o-, 
other's writings and experiences er and and honestly the more i found about 
about eighteenth century er London Georgian London i found i couldn't come up 
with absolutely nothing in my experience which i could compare it also i'd 
given myself the problem of er s-, conjuring up er Buckram this er illiterate 
character er in a work of fiction and you know th-, that was quite entertaining 
as well and that involved all sorts of ironic nonsense er so fundamentally yes 
the answer to your question is that i think that the whole 
experience of being alive at that time was simply incomparable because no-, we 
have nothing with which to compare it that's the easy answer 
sm5002: 'cause i think i think when when we er someone's writing an audience 
will er necessarily having to compare it with other works 
nm5000: so it's the 
sm5002: or compare the when we're actually writing on it or when we're 
considering it there has to be a sense of comparison that we we we use with 
other novels we've used Sam Selvon for example in 
nm5000: mm 
sm5002: in the mapping over the sense of community and such and 
nm5000: mm 
sm5002: that comes on into it but do you find that the there's a sort of 
fluidity about it though in sp-, in spite of what originally started off as 
being incomparable becomes later i mean if you consider some you know er areas 
outside of London er places which are g-, undergoing huge you know er 
nm5000: mm 
sm5002: changes in which people live in sense of class disintegrates and you 
have 
underclasses having to you know pursue these sort of these you know similar 
sort of lifestyles 
nm5000: yes it's yeah 
sm5002: er former you know er U-S-S-R et cetera 
nm5000: mm 
sm5002: and in other places like that 
nm5000: yes er yeah i mean i i un-, i think i understand what you're saying and 
of course these are my only references in an any sort of emotional er sense to 
it er er i-, because i mean of course there are ways you can approach the novel 
and get a grip on it it falls into a lot of er er standard forms er i don't 
think it's a very successful action adventure format novel but it can be 
approached like that er er it's also a very poor boy meets girl novel but er 
that's happened for various reasons that i'm not going to go into and it's er 
yeah i mean yes it it is easy to er compare 
it to various things we are familiar with but i just feel that that whole 
period of history is something that has to be looked at again revised and er 
from this particular viewpoint it's still really interesting perspective on er 
that period in time 
sf5003: i guess that which brings me to ask you why why the the eighteenth 
century i mean did you feel that there was a a gap to be filled that it was a a 
purloined letter of history or fiction 
nm5000: er 
sf5003: i mean did you do research to to assess yes 
nm5000: yeah well history fiction that's that's a yes i i i'd say not so mu-, 
or just culture in general 
sf5003: mm-hmm 
nm5000: er the entire er reality impact of the black presence on British 
society is something which is very very slowly er seeping into er er the 
awareness of a small percentage of people er last er er you know we've recently 
had er the Windrush er celebrations and er if you 
ask the overwhelming majority of people black and white in er Britain er when 
the er black presence er can be from when the black presence can be dated in 
this country er the overwhelming majority of people will point to towards 
nineteen-forty-eight and the arrival at Tilbury Docks oh yes that's Windrush er 
now i mean the plain historical fact is er that the black community 
particularly in London has been er continuous there has been a continuous black 
presence for at least five-hundred years some people put it much further than 
that but just for the sake of this particular discussion you can say at least 
over five-hundred years and er this whole novel was a way of just bringing this 
particular that you know that whole issue of the black presence in to you know 
to highlight it and er make it something which people spoke er more freely and 
openly er i-, i-, the reason i chose the eighteenth century was simply because 
it was the most interesting and there was 
the largest body of records of er people both black and white you know they 
have newspaper records you have er the letters of er Sancho er you have the 
works of er letters of er Mary Prince you have 
sf5003: mm 
nm5000: i mean you have a vast er amount of detail er detailed information to 
work on and of course i was seduced completely by the language er which i found 
in-, very very er beguiling er and heartening like er you know you'd hear from 
some of these court records the er defences given up by er ordinary workaday 
black villains and the their use their use of vocabulary and the ability to to 
actually make language work for them is absolutely er well i mean er to or by 
our standards is stratospheric so i was really s-, er seduced by many aspects 
of the eighteenth century also the rough open er quality to life er which 
eighteenth century London presented it was a hugely cosmopolitan er environment 
i mean you had literally people from all over the globe here at the er er er 
imperial centre er 
exchanging ideas meeting had people all over the er African diaspora er i've 
just been looking at this African school in er Clapham where and this is a very 
weird set-up to begin with but amongst other pupils they had side by side in 
the same classroom er the sons of er African er er heads African chiefs er 
African leaders who happened to be involved in the slave trade but they were 
but they sent their sons there they were sitting next you know side by side in 
the same er classroom sharing desks with the sons of er Maroons who were or 
semi-independent er blacks black settlers in Jamaica who had fought their way 
out of slavery they found er you know they had found some of their sons found 
themselves side by side with er probably the sons of families who had sold them 
into slavery directly and er as well as that you had people the sons of er this 
is a very male society as well you can tell also you had the sons of er er free 
blacks from 
Nova Scotia er who were also at the school so i'm rea-, really trying to revise 
er our whole er idea or provoke i should say to provoke discussion of our whole 
idea of eighteenth century London of er Covent Garden of how people behaved 
what people did er because it's er one of the self-delusions of er our period 
of you know the l-, er last quarter of the twentieth century those of us who 
live in industrialized societies is to believe or to labour under the delusion 
that we er have some sort of er licence or on various lifestyles such as 
promiscuity and er a certain amount of er movement in socie-, ease of movement 
in society er we also have a totally er insane notion of er what people 
actually did in their spare time in the eighteenth century how people behaved 
what their expectations were it was not strait-laced and er er starched and er 
tight collared at all er there were acts of er promiscuity and perverseness 
which i just couldn't include in this 
book though i was tempted but er i mean i mean co-, eighteenth century Covent 
Garden er was er well a place which actually would have been downright shocking 
to many of us in a lot of its activities er for example there were er what we 
would now call er gay bars or er they were called sodomitical taverns and it 
became dangerous for young men er i think i made a mention of it at one point 
in er in the early part of the book 
sf5003: yes 
nm5000: so i just thought you know 
sf5004: men dressed as women 
nm5000: yes and also er er Pastor Neville refers to er these people trying to 
entice unwary youth unto the like er practice or something like that but it was 
worse you know people would actually you know you could be walking across 
Covent Garden Piazza and be actually mugged by men in skirts who would be er 
trying to you know do all sorts of things to you there were places where you 
could pay to see women fighting other women not so unusual there were also 
places where you could er where women could go to be spanked by other women and 
there were magazines er catering to this taste so i mean there was a whole er 
range of activity which i just thought needed to be brought into the idea of 
what actually went on in these coffee houses and how people behaved how people 
made a living and er as w-, i mean yes i've just drawn out the whole alien 
nature of the time and the place was something i had a lot of fun with so i 
don't know if that answered your question 
sf5003: 
nm5001: er yes 
sm5005: thought the end was in a way it was very sad because he's he ends up 
being very very mean to his stablehand 
nm5000: mm 
sm5005: and he's nasty to the bloke who's got the letter from William 
nm5000: yeah 
sm5005: so he loses contact with his comrade 
nm5000: yeah 
sm5005: er is Buckram to be condemned for his actions at 
the end of the novel and his m-, his metamorphosis or is that him just making 
his way 
nm5000: er i just have to say it's him making his way i mean this is one of the 
things i mean with this book i was very aware of er agendas popping up and i 
was trying very hard to avoid them in all sorts of ways i mean i would have 
loved it to have a er Warner Brothers' ending and everyone sailing off together 
in wonderful stereoscopic vision and er stereoscopic sound rather and er but 
Buckram he he proved a problem because he just went off during the writing er 
and did his own thing i couldn't control this character he just er i was trying 
to beat him into this sort of nice politically correct character who would 
validate you know my er conceit as a writer but er no no er he went off and 
became this individual you know who having settled into er some sort of mior-, 
minor er min-, minorly prosperous role does adopt many of the 
traits of the people he's been doing business with he becomes part of the world 
around him yes and he er he was a very difficult character all the way through 
like i said for er apart from all the ri-, ridiculous ironies of using the 
illiterate as er the protagonist er he was the one in a who in a sense er had 
the least baggage er he was just like er some sort of rhythmic innocent 
character er which his illiteracy helped me how that helped me with as well his 
illiteracy but er the other characters like William for example and er Pastor 
Neville they're both readers er Neville isn't so much a thinker but he's an 
educated person it's easy to get round his mind it's easy to er come into 
contact with him but Buckram he's a very h-, he he reacts to things he's not a 
reflective individual so he is definitely someone who's totally shaped by 
events and that's the story of Buckram at the end he's just been shaped by 
events yet again 
nm5001: er somebody is writing well many of you are writing essays on this er 
on this er on this novel er somebody wanted to ask if you you wanted to ask 
about Selvon was it 
sm5006: er no er but i've got a different question with regard to Hogarth 
nm5001: right 
sm5006: to what extent did er William Hogarth influence er you writing this 
novel 
nm5000: well that was er at the root of it at the very genesis of er the actual 
project i mean i found myself er i don't know where i was but i mean i could 
have been i just found myself in front of some er works by Hogarth i think it 
was the series Morning er er Noon and Afternoon Morning Noon and Evening and er 
i noticed black characters there and i er i was taken aback because i had to 
ask myself er A who are they what are they doing there and how do they manage 
to survive in this environment if this is supposed to be taken from life 
looking more at Hogarth i realized that you 
know black figures were frequently used for various reasons i checked er Mr 
Dabydeen's work and er i then did my own researches from that first meeting of 
black characters in Hogarth interestingly enough the thing that other thing for 
me personally with Hogarth and this is very personal er hitherto in eng-, in 
English painting the black figure had always been represented in very very 
formulaic terms you would have er the black servant or the individual of 
whatever class er or whatever whatever degree of servitude would always be er 
er kneeling down there à genoux with er clasped hands looking up imploringly 
beseechingly spaniel-like at er the white social superior who would be er of 
course standing and looking not down at er towards the gaze of the black 
servant but out of the picture towards the stars you know where they er load 
there to those con-, astral celestial concerns and er that was pretty much er 
formulaic in my knowledge and experience of 
er the representation of black people in er English painting er with Hogarth er 
on that first meeting what i saw were black people in the sense that i 
recognize a person as someone who's walking across a road or just happens to be 
there or even if they're acting if or they're even if they're there as a 
symbolic device they are still there er to a minor degree in their own right 
they just happen to be there and er my further er examinations just really er f-
, flushed out er fleshed out that whole world of the black settlement in er 
Seven Dials and on the site of what is now the horrific Centreprise building in 
London for those of you who know it er so to yeah to answer your question 
briefly er Hogarth was central absolutely central to firing off my er curiosity 
er into what has now become well yeah an obsession 
nm5001: what about Selvon 
nm5000: oh well Selvon he's someone er who er h-, er who who amazes me er so 
few people really 
celebrate him i mean which Selvon did you read The Lonely Londoners fantastic 
book 
nm5001: yes 
nm5000: now absolutely fantastic book now it's not simply that he is a 
fantastic writer i mean with such ease and economy he manages to paint this 
extraordinary panorama er i mean i've got to confess i only read The Lonely 
Londoners er two years ago but er 
nm5001: read it after this 
nm5000: yes 
nm5001: right mm 
nm5000: but it was er i mean i could immediately feel u-huh yes he's trying to 
he's attracted to the same er load that i that draws me er here he is looking 
again at er life in London also with s-, with Selvon as with myself he's 
someone er who in his writing expresses a an incredible love of London and the 
city which i share er and into this environment which fascinates and repels him 
at the same time which literally er sort of is at the centre of or of his 
attention he draws these apparently disparate characters er from all areas of 
the er black diaspora er again most of them are in irregular situations trying 
to hack their way through daily life but er it for me it's just 
amazing that this book isn't spoken about more er i think it's the genuine er 
kick-off point for black British brack black British writing in er this century 
er to my knowledge and experience er oh what what did er do you think of Selvon 
did it get a thumbs up or a 
nm5001: yeah it's a great it's a it's a great novel er er i th-, i think you're 
quite right we we teach it every year so er i can say we try to push the boat 
out Selvon himself was an honorary doctor at this university 
nm5000: oh 
nm5001: and my curry partner 
nm5000: u-huh 
nm5001: er 
nm5000: no it is it's it's a it's a wonderful book i mean wh-, wh-, what hits 
me with er Selvon is that i mean i i was er lumbered by writing about the 
eighteenth century so the matters of sort of linguistic form which really er 
stayed my hand er so i couldn't really a-, achieve that economy and grace of 
style which er Selvon did i mean i was er lumbered down with er i don't i i 
don't actually know if it 
succeeded or not but er i did have problems with how to er er write this novel 
in the sense that there are two competing schools seem to me to be two 
competing schools in historical writing at the moment one of which goes towards 
the er goes to the degree that er we can dispense totally with any 
anachronistic er usage of language er we don't have any yea verily forsooths et 
cetera but er we all just use a s-, we all just use straight direct English 
this is something i'm not very er comfortable with er the other er school goes 
directly er into cod English as i call it cod period English and it reached 
some ridiculous heights even using Y-E and you know as it's people actually 
said ye all that sort of nonsense er and i wasn't comfortable with that so i 
tried to hit er some sort of midpoint in which the two styles could almost flow 
together but er oh sorry are there any more questions 
sm5002: just just one quick one 
nm5000: mm 
sm5002: er the The Lonely Londoners and er i think to an extent your 
book as well is about coming to literacy er there's er a you've got er Moses 
Aloetta 
nm5000: yeah 
sm5002: coming to a sense of an ability to er interact aesthetically with er 
with what he experiences as well and as as a first novel did you try to express 
the sense of writing something er i mean in terms of not only of William having 
this this would 
nm5000: mm 
sm5002: fantasies of inclusion with terms of writing and 
nm5000: mm-hmm 
sm5002: possessing novels but also Buckram you know of drawing Cs well what you 
know 
nm5000: yeah 
sm5002: by observing as well i mean how far was that conscious in you when you 
were writing the actual novel itself 
nm5000: semi-conscious er yeah ca-, becau-, oh yeah it was er something which i 
i mean i didn't actually deliberately set out to er do this but it's something 
which er just seemed to achieve critical mass in the writing you know the 
various ideas connected with er self-expression 
and er freedom i think in one er space i'm actually Buckram was actually er 
sorry William was actually er his house has burned down and er i describe how 
he fears his life will turn out and er i mention that he fears the lack of 
access to paper and he fears being paperless i wish i was more familiar with my 
own book so that i could find this exact er page for you but you know so i mean 
though that that's one with many er in er references there's also er the 
dreaded letter which really chopped up the flow of the action scene er in which 
er William beseeches his wife to er continue with yes er to acquaint yeah i 
mean he he says to his wife Good Mary as he says of her er he says er many was 
the night i passed in deepest gloom beset by thoughts of your travails and my 
heart is well pleased to learn of your untiring efforts to maintain our little 
ones in the ways of rectitude acquainted as you are with the ways of our 
former masters i don't know why i said former with our former masters i trust 
you do bend their young minds ever towards the written word it will stand them 
in good stead in that land where ignorance is the best and only security for 
obedience blah blah blah et cetera et cetera yours husband er so yes it does 
come up this er er need for some sort of intimacy for self-expression through 
the written word er 
nm5001: in fact that's a kind of echo of Sancho isn't it 
nm5000: yes 
nm5001: that particular 
nm5000: yes it is er yeah 
nm5001: who himself is very concerned about language 
nm5000: yes i mean Sancho again he is someone who i just think should be on the 
syllabus i don't know why he isn't an astonishing person you know born on a 
slaveship in Cartagena er came over here he was adopted as a mascot or a pet by 
er the Montagues and er it is true Sancho is an unusual person 
in that er he did you could say he had influential friends and a semi-
privileged background regardless of his er er servile er docile status in the 
Montague household but er there he was running this er grocery selling amongst 
other things sugar cane mm and er er you know this grocery was er two streets 
down from Downing Street in er Charles Street as it was then now it's King 
Charles the Second Street i think and er when not tending to his shop er he was 
penning these wonderful letters and er he was writing the odd er minuet or 
country dance er you know he's a very sort of rounded character in a way that 
we can't actually imagine i mean the m-, overwhelming majority of people 
nowadays are too stressed even to cross the room to switch off the television 
and it's very very hard for us to get ourselves into this mindset 
nm5001: yeah 
nm5000: of people like Sancho or Equiano who did travel the known world and who 
did who had you know most people by 
the the er their early twenties had survived some life-threatening illness er 
those who were in any degree literate er read and they read deeply and they you 
know they were very familiar with the language to a degree like i said before 
er would be stratospheric we need oxygen to comprehend er the er the grace and 
eloquence of some of the conversations i mean er er i always like to quote the 
letters of er that flew between er Sancho and Julius Soubise i don't know f-, 
how many of you are s-, familiar with Julius Soubise but he was a er black man 
about town for want of a better word he was a d-, a rake and er he was known 
for being well dressed and for being a womanizer and er he also taught sword 
fencing and er he it was his misfortune to become involved with a titled lady 
and the flow of letters between Sancho and Soubise are just astonishing 
astonishing you know high level and you know these people were not er 
standardized intellectuals of 
their day this was just letters between you know two black men talking about 
sexual relationships and er the dangers inherent in them and er you know it's 
things like that you know all went to er inform this er i'm still looking for 
this particular page where William has lost his house but i don't think i'm 
going to find it but yeah in again to briefly answer your question er that is 
exactly what i mean yes the the er the n-, the use of language and the need of 
control of language er was was a theme which did crop up but er it wasn't 
planned it just came out of the nature of the book 
sf5007: mm 
nm5001: do you want to read now 
nm5000: yes i'm trying to find this one particular place ba-de-bum but yes the 
the the the the the this is what i'll read for you er this is just a scene i 
like because er i'm trying to capture a lot 
of things and er bring in something which is fairly central it's a fairly long 
piece here but er part of the background to this er period the summer of 
seventeen-eighty-six is that er this was a very dangerous time for er black men 
in London because er this scheme or scam would be a better word er known as the 
Sierra Leone scheme er ha-, er w-, was doing business er to do this whole thing 
injustice to try and put it in a nutshell the Sierra Leone scheme was a method 
by which er black the black population of London would be transferred from the 
street those who were on the street to this er putative settlement in Sierra 
Leone er therefore fulfilling two s-, very spurious er objectives one ridding 
er London of its black street population and B er set-, and two er actually 
settling these er many of them ex-slaves in a country they could call their own 
er it was a conceit which of course failed in much misery and agony until there 
was a Canadian settlement later which was a bit better 
but er yeah the Sierra Leone settlement is part of the background of this whole 
novel and this draws in you know this whole theme of er er this sort o-, 
repatriation which seems to come in two-hundred year cycles in British history 
i mean you had it in er fifteen-ninety-six and sixteen-o-one with er Queen 
Elizabeth her edicts er basically er stating how er these negars as she called 
them N-E-G-A-R-S she spelled it these negars er are here the great annoyance of 
our own liege people who do want the bread which these people consume you know 
that's the oldest argument in the world doing good business in fifteen-ninety-
six and she tried it again in sixteen-o-one both attempts at er repatriation 
failed here in seventeen-eighty-six you see the same thing the same tendency er 
a-, attempt at repatriation and it opens with er William Supple at er his so-
called work of gambling excuse me the makeshift gambling board tilted 
precariously under a weight of drinks and coins William Supple rolled a tiny 
whisky glass between his palms while waiting for the last of his five 
companions to show their hand ten or so other men their games long finished 
stood in sepulchral silence around them breathing down their necks and 
signalling wordless bets on the outcome they were playing in a small brightly 
lit cellar under the Strand the temperature in the gambling den was several 
degrees warmer than on the surface and th-, than that on the surface and the 
men played in shirt sleeves their coats turned inside out hung on the backs of 
their chairs for luck the air was filled with tobacco smoke and the smell of 
soil and old bricks William watched as Gerhard the Hessian studied his cards 
and stroked his great red beard the German was also a veteran of the colonial 
wars his regiment had served with William's at a number of battles in the 
Carolina campaign and like some of the black servicemen he had chosen to 
make London his home they exchanged a brief er and William thought 
conspiratorial smile Gerhard drew a few coins from his purse and stacked them 
on the board the company exhaled loudly ten shillings fu-, sorry i don't do 
accents when i read so you'll have to bear with me ten shillings further 
William he whispered will you meet me i dare you William stared him full in the 
face and nodded do your worst Hessian the German spread his cards on the table 
almost failing to mask his anxiety a king a pair of nines and the jack of 
hearts William willed himself expressionless as pockets of malevolent cheer 
erupted around him that delight in annihilation paranoia redeemed the gambler's 
laugh and once more here he was on the threshold of games how to win without 
losing how to show face he fanned out his cards with quiet dignity his ace his 
queen of hearts his jack of diamonds his ten of spades his victory he took 
some comfort in the overhearty applause from the fickle fortune-hunting crowd 
they'd come to cheer a winner and here he was ever the actor outplayed again 
admitted the hau-, the Hessian outplayed again a club-footed pot boy came over 
to clear the glasses and take a cut for the house you've a visitor Mr Supple at 
the door wants to talk to you tell him i'm busy Giles said William and fetch us 
another round of whisky William gathered up the pack to shuffle a game of faro 
it's a black man sir Giles raised his eyebrows and nodded significantly goes by 
the name of Buckram says it's an urgency William sucked his teeth there you go 
tell him i'll be up in a minute he passed the pack to Gerhard and strutted to 
the door three bolts were removed and two locks were turned before William 
could mount the steps to the street Buckram stood filling the doorframe with 
his hat with 
hat sorry his hat that being William's hat in hand warm fresh air steamed in 
from the Strand and Buckram kicked his heels in the dark dusty street hello 
Bucky how is it oh i'm not too bad saw two all over tonight William i need to 
talk to you about something what do you say we go sink a few jars down The 
Charioteer with as much exasperation as he reckoned their friendship could hold 
William started explaining how busy he was making an illeval li-, er an illegal 
living down in the cellar and that he was available to friends during daylight 
hours only it hurt him to say that he had taken such care to avoid Buckram 
these past weeks best to keep things superficial just thinking about The 
Charioteer was depressing the door opened down behind him and the pot boy 
shouted tables are ready and waiting for you Mr Supple bid them wait are you 
winning Buckram asked he was looking better William noticed the jailhouse edges 
blurred back towards normality the 
haunted eyes were still haunted but at home he was a man at leisure wanting to 
celebrate his liberty the old Buckram maybe winning yes William slowly replied 
i will join you in a while he returned to the cellar to close his affairs with 
the house then bounded back up the stairs pulling on his coat let's walk around 
for a bit i i need some air they strolled down to Charing Cross past crow-, 
small crowds of night people enjoying the antics of sword swallowers and a man 
lifting a four-hundred pound weight with the hair of his head William paused by 
a gypsy girl who was goading a small dancing dog to gavotte he noted Buckram 
frowning at the spectacle and reconsidered throwing her the coin he had palmed 
in his pocket with the exception of coal carts coming up from the river front 
alleys and the odd horseman or sedan chair the street was relatively free of 
traffic and like everyone else William and Buckram walked along in the middle 
of it how's your 
side enquired Buckram no complaints hardly a war wound getting better i'm all 
right as long as Georgie keeps me supplied with this he pulled a fat brown 
glass bottle from his pocket opium cordial he tells me said William that you're 
working for him and Henry sort of i sell prints and guides around the piazza oh 
i can imagine no you can't i was stopped by the charlies in Southampton Row 
today that's the er well the l-, l-, the officers of the law er for want of a 
much better description er i was stopped by the charlies in Southampton Row 
today they asked me my business threatened to deliver me to the navy office if 
i didn't give them some money i caught one of them on the job and had to run i 
lost them in Clare Market but i think they'll come looking for me you know 
they'll remember my face William laughed openly no Bucky you're safe from the 
watch don't you know they can't tell one black man from another you 
just have to lay low for a day or so then resume your work stick to Saint Giles 
and the Seven and Seven Dials they can't touch you there i'm sick of the place 
sick of this town William but where else is there Sierra Leone what Sierra 
Leone Africa you must have heard the news seen the handbills or posters 
everyone's talking about it well i don't talk to everyone don't read too much 
nowadays either so you really don't know do you they're planning to clear us 
off the streets they want us out of this country and any black or lascar found 
not working will be held at Newgate for transportation they're making the white 
raven beggars agree to sign for a place in this scheme before they receive 
their sixpence transportation to Africa what the devil do you mean every year 
they invent something new to scare us with it never works we're still here 
there's too many of us slaves ex-slaves freeborn and all just too many i read 
in gentleman's magazi-, gentleman's 
magazine there are fifteen-thousand of us in London alone that was an 
exaggeration by the way but that was taken from fact there are fifteen-thousand 
i mean eighteenth century statistics uh-uh there are fifteen-thousand of us in 
London alone they'll have to call out the soldiers to take us on it's 
impossible it'll never happen wouldn't you like to go to Sierra Leone no i've 
heard some old settlers from Nova Scotia talk about it but that's a free man's 
country they can choose how and when they go over here it's different imagine 
the Englishmen inviting us to return to Africa we'd end up in chains for sure 
he'd heard about the west coast of Africa and all he knew was that it attracted 
slavers like bees to a sugar plantation you're happy here aren't you asked 
Buckram William didn't answer they bought two portions of cold chicken pie with 
ketchup from a street 
vendor in Villiers Street and sat down beside a Charing Cross pillory block to 
eat in front of them behind some railings loomed a statue of King Charles the 
First on horseback the starless sky was as clear as a London night could be and 
it goes on like that any more questions 
sm5006: yeah the role of the River Thames i mean er reading Selvon there's this 
homage paid to this river which somehow symbolizes kind of the mouth to the 
empire right 
nm5000: mm 
sm5006: and er reading you know i believe there's also a kind of homage to it 
with one of the most beautiful and most comic er passages with the charcoal 
fires on the riverboat 
nm5000: yes yeah 
sm5006: er first of all what's the role of the Thames for you in this novel and 
what made you write i mean this this er charcoal fires on on the Thames 
nm5000: okay er the role of the Thames er er i mean it's ver-, i mean it's very 
partial i don't i only 
think i mention it once or twice although there's a whole scene set on it er 
although i mean i was driven by the same passion that Selvon had to sort of er 
boost his er you know the city he'd claimed as his own er and while i'm er 
advertising Selvon's writing adverting to it er er there's one beautiful er 
eulogy he's done to the city called er My Girl and the City 
sf5008: mm 
nm5000: and if you get a chance to read it read it er 
nm5001: they read it 
nm5000: er oh you did
nm5001: it was excellent 
nm5000: it was and er 
nm5001: some of us nearly cried 
nm5000: oh yeah i mean er my own way of doing it was by er trying to draw 
aspects of the city which a contemporary reader would be familiar with and 
putting it in a different context er such as m-, you know just idly mentioning 
that er Hampstead and Highgate were just minor villages er and things like er 
the walk down Oxford Street and the contrast between 
Oxford Street and er Saint Giles and the grot the real grot and horror of Saint 
Giles er but yes i mean everywhere that the city can poke its head up er i gave 
it a chance to do so the river scene er the reason i included that was because 
er well f-, it's a couple of reasons it was er practice along the river to 
shout abuse at others as they did the crossing er it was also er i wanted to 
capture some of that er coarse yet er very coarse energetic yet er totally 
engaged nature of eighteenth century communication there's a roughness to it 
and a real lewdness to it er which is very very hard to capture i mean fights 
were commonplace and er the normal pattern of a fight especially with a 
stranger er er i mean the traditional view of the Jewish stranger or a French 
stranger i'm sure it happened to black people as well and er the tradition 
would be you'd be walking past er a group of er indigenous folk and your hat 
would be knocked off you'd be challenged er you'd have to accept the 
challenge because a circle would be formed round you now er if you lost the 
challenge er you know you'd be kicked by the others er the by the er by the 
cronies of the person who gave you offered the invitation and if you won the 
challenge you'd be raised up on everyone's shoulder and they'd get you drunk 
and you'd become their mate and you know the the you know the this level of er 
nm5001: yeah 
nm5000: sort of savagery and er i don't know the word but it's a mixture of er 
that's it i think i actually used it here er excuse me it's a mixture of 
vindictive you'll have to give me a a moment here er yes i mean there's a a 
section here actually was trying to er get to the nature of this whole thing as 
vindictive and gleeful as an as Anglo-Saxon as a er food fight this whole 
nature of that sort of food fight sensibility but again i can't find the actual 
quote i need er but yeah basically the 
the that was yeah here we are dum-de-dum-de-dum yeah this is it er this is 
where Buckram is er actually looking for William and Neville and he's just 
looking around er the slum on a whim he decided to look in at The Beggar in the 
Bush it was somewhere he'd not normally visit the place was always too lively 
in the wrong way bursting with gregarious vindictiveness as Anglo-Saxon as a 
feu-, food fight and that was what i was trying to er get to in that river 
scene that gregarious vindictiveness of er life at the time 
nm5001: so we can shall we have one last question 
sf5003: maybe about the future about 
nm5000: mm 
sf5003: is there a second novel in the making do you want to experiment with 
other genres beside the novel 
nm5000: yes yeah oh beside the novel or beside the historical novel 
sf5003: well or just the novel g-, period 
nm5000: er no i don't so much like the idea of er experimentation or going off 
on tangents from er many 
standardized forms er i prefer to er use the existing forms to expose the flaws 
in them which i know one again one of the conceits of this book er with a 
historical novel using it to er expose the flaws in many historical novels er 
i'm looking towards other genres such as er science fiction and horror 
sf5003: mm 
nm5000: er again the absence of a black presence in these whole in these areas 
is er i mean especially in the U-K is quite astounding it's not as if we are 
not familiar with either horror or science fiction i mean the ideas of 
abduction by aliens taken to somewhere you don't know and you know your life 
energy being used for various purposes we know all these genres so i mean 
this is something which i'd like to introduce to a wider audience genre busting 
er rather than for-, you know f-, forming whole other areas of experimentation 
nm5001: good well thank you er well thank you again namex for coming 
nm5000: oh thanks for the invitation namex 
nm5001: er it is one of the most remarkable novels eighteenth century novels 
that i have read it is an eighteenth century novel and the wonderful irony is 
that one of the best eighteenth century novels in the English language is 
written by somebody who's not English and er don't think you're eighteenth 
century either 
nm5000: well 
nm5001: thanks very much yeah we'll do a we'll do a book signing session now so 
do do queue up and er