Robin Bryans
Honeyford Press
58 Argyle Road, London W13 8AA, £9.75
Another slice from the memories of Robin Bryans. (The first volume was reviewed in’ Lobster 24.) An extraordinary cavalcade of names, faces and odd events. If you liked volume 1, you’ll like this.
While I was keyboarding this I opened the book at random and this is the paragraph my eye fell on.
‘Sally’s step-brother, however, Joe Ackerley, was not a bastard and made himself famous with his homosexuality and exposés of some of his lovers. Joe’s editor at Cambridge, Anthony Blunt, kept in touch with Sally, who had been married once since 1945 to Blunt’s friend from 1921 who became the 4th Duke of Westminster in 1963, as well as with Joe. Not even when Diana Petrie wrote a book about her father in 1975, The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley, did the secret about Sally come out. Joe Ackerley took credit for having introduced the policeman, Bob Buckingham, to E.M. Forster who became the great love of the novelist’s life, although Forster kept up with life as Forrest Reid lived it at Ormiston Crescent in Belfast. Ian Paisley not only took over Pastor Rea’s mantle as a preacher on the Ravenhill Road, but built one of the largest churches in post-war Europe there called the Martyr’s Memorial Church complete with busts of Luther and Calvin and one of Dennis Parry. A powerful influence on Paisley’s youthful preaching had been Teddy Sherwood on his soapbox swinging his gold boxer’s belt on the sands of Barry Island, but the made-to-measure-martyr Dennis Parry had actually shared Paisley’s bedroom at the Barry School of Evangelism and a Gospel Caravan with me in the hills of Abergavenny.’ (p. 368.)
And there are 438 more pages of stuff like that.