mike in mono

2012-01-18T10:58:00.000-08:00

Birth of the Birmingham Group

2011-08-02T04:15:00.000-07:00

The Cabin, Union Passage, photographed in 1911

This week I received through the post, all the way from the Amazon, a copy of Leslie Halward's 1938 autobiography, Let Me Tell You. Unusually for an autobiography of a writer it was his second book and so it mainly focuses on Halward's growing up in Selly Oak, Birmingham. However, the later chapters are concerned with the beginnings of his writing career and in particular chapter XXI recalls the formation of the Birmingham Group of writers. Although the Group would sometimes be regarded as including WH Auden, Louis MacNeice, Henry Reed and even Henry Green, the core were those who met in a pub around Martineau Street in Birmingham's city centre during the 1930s - Walter Allen, John Hampson, Leslie Halward, Peter Chamberlain and very occasionally, Walter Brierley. I have often tried to ascertain exactly which pub it was and I am convinced it was The Cabin in Union Passage, seen above.

below are selected quotes from Chapter XXI of Let Me Tell You (1938) by Leslie Halward:

Now let me tell you about the "Birmingham Group," which, alas, exists no longer. The almost weekly meetings no longer take place in the upper room of a public-house off Corporation Street. Allen and Chamberlain have both gone to live in London; I am here in Malvern; only Hampson remains near the city.

In February, 1935, there appeared in New Stories a story by Peter Chamberlain called "Fanciful," and in the first sentence was a reference to the old Birmingham-Wolverhampton Road. I did not care much for the story, but the mention of the road, which I knew well, caused me to think that perhaps the author was a Birmingham man. At the same time I recollected that in his novel Saturday Night at the Greyhound John Hampson, also a contributor to New Stories, had written of the "good old Bull Ring." Perhaps he too lived in Birmingham. I decided to find out. I wrote to [Edward J.] O'Brien and he replied promptly, saying that certainly both Chamberlain and Hampson were Birmingham men, as also was Walter Allen, a story by whom had appeared in New Stories a couple of months before. O'Brien [editor of New Stories] was under the impression that we all knew each other.

On receipt of O'Brien's letter I wrote at once to both Chamberlain and Hampson and asked if I might meet them. Chamberlain's reply was very vague, intimating that it would not be a bad idea if we had tea together somewhere, some time. Hampson's was much more to the point. It began: "Do you know a pub off Corporation Street...?" went on to give very precise directions for finding the place, and stated that at seven o'clock on the following Thursday evening he and Walter Allen would be there. In order to avoid any confusion a copy of New Stories would be prominently displayed on their table.

I shall never forget the shock I received when I walked into that room and saw first the copy of New Stories and then the two men seated at the table on which it lay. My recollection of Saturday Night at the Greyhound and the opening sentence of Hampson's letter had caused me to expect to see a burly young fellow of thirty or so blowing the froth off a pint. I took one look at Allen, knew that he could not have written Saturday Night at the Greyhound, and found it almost impossible to believe that the other one could. A frail little gentleman he looked, at least forty-five years old, and he was toying with a glass that had a drop of whisky in the bottom. His hand was so small that my own enveloped it, wrist and thumb included, and as he made only a half-hearted attempt to rise I got the impression that he was an invalid or perhaps even a cripple. He introduced me to Allen and I sat down opposite them.

Well, that is how the Birmingham Group came to be formed. We four met more or less regularly at that public house and talked and talked and talked, as diverse a group of writers, as one newspaper has put it, as any part of the provinces can boast of.

Can it be wondered that we disagreed about a number of things, that arguments were inclined to be rowdy, that nearly always the lights were turned out on us before we realised that we were alone in the room and that it was time for us to go home. We never regarded ourselves as a group; it was left to O'Brien to so christen us; we were simply four young men who, having common interests and vaguely similar ideas, met periodically for the purpose of explaining each to the other where he was wrong.

Kings Heath 1960

2011-07-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

I came across this super8 footage on YouTube of Kings Heath, Birmingham, filmed in 1960 by Terry Pearson.

New Birmingham Central Library, June 2011

2011-06-04T07:12:00.000-07:00

Paul Axel Lund

2011-05-19T12:44:00.000-07:00

"I am attenuating my relations with Lund and company. Too much of a bad thing."

- William Burroughs

In 1959 a book was published by Secker & Warburg by the prodigious author Rupert Croft-Cooke. Entitled Smiling Damned Villian, it let screwsman, jailbird and raconteur, Paul Axel Lund unveil himself. The author met Lund in Tangier where the latter was running a bar out of reach of the British Constabulary. Croft-Cooke was no stranger to prison, having served a sentence for homosexuality, he was also a writer of detective fiction and was keen to hear Lund's criminal experiences, expanding on the newspaper clippings on the walls of his bar.

Paul Lund had been driven by an insatiable desire to cure himself of boredom. He began early. Barely out of shorts, he was turning over houses nearby to the ten-bedroom Lund family home in Moseley (2 Wake Green Road). Entering the properties by the railway embankment near Moseley station, he made off with jewellery which he fenced at the stables opposite the Bull's Head. Lund evaded capture for thieving, but his first encounter with the law was after an assault on park-keeper Isaac Miles. This happened in a place which seems to have hardly changed since the incident in 1928:

There was a private park in Moseley - may be there still for all I know. Just about typical of that place and time. Imagine the snobbery of it - only approved householders in the district and their guests allowed in. The poor bloody kids who had nowhere to play could look through the railings. The householders had keys and there were two park-keepers to see that no one not approved by the committee should get in.

Later, he was an avid reader in prison - biography, history, and his favourite author, Joseph Conrad, unsurprising perhaps for someone who had spent three years at sea before reaching adulthood. At liberty he was a creator of narrative - one robbery after another, twelve years in the army; a year of which spent in glasshouse. Not even wartime could stop Lund from schemes of thievery. Then after demobilisation came his most notorious crime in his hometown - the snatching of the Ladywood Children's Hospital wages.

It required precision planning if he was going to get away with it, and he did. The rehearsal, the familiarisation with the geography of the crime together burnt a snapshot of post-War Birmingham into Lund's mind to be recalled years later to Croft-Cooke in the safety of Tangier. And now Smiling Damned Villian provides us with his image of the City from its archive.

"It happened that the girl Mac was running around with worked in the offices at the Ladywood Hospital. She was a romantic-minded, dizzy little piece who was thrilled to think she had been taken up by a real crook with a real Jaguar. Dreamed herself up as a big gangster's moll, if you can imagine it, and only longed to be allowed to give any information she could.

"She told Mac that every Friday the hospital sent round to the bank about three hundred yards away to draw the wages. Three weeks out of four this amounted to no more than about £1,500, but on the fourth week, when they paid the monthly salaries, there was about seven thousand smackers in the kitty. All this was fetched on Friday morning by an oldish man (well, about fifty-five) who worked in the same office as this girl. He'd been doing it for years and took no precautions at all. Just went on foot with an old Gladstone bag.

William Rudge; victim of a wages snatch involving Lund in January 1946

"It sounded almost too good to be true but we watched for two or three weeks and found it was just as she said. The old boy would come out of Ladywood Hospital on Friday mornings at about twenty past ten as regular as clockwork. He'd go downhill to the bank at the corner of Ladywood Road and Broad Street, then come toddling back about twenty minutes later with the dropsy. We could watch this comfortably and without being noticed because there was a bus-stop across the road from the hospital from which you could see it all.

Five Ways, 1952. The bank is the spired building to the left of the bus.

"I was to do the snatch in the uniform of an American soldier. Birmingham was full of Yanks on leave from Lichfield and they'd done one or two minor snatches already. Mac had a brother-in-law working out at the Air Base who got me a uniform, then all I needed was a bicycle which we were to knock off on the afternoon before we did the job.

"The plan was this. There was a low stone wall along the front of the hospital and I was to sit on this while the old man went down to the bank. Then, after he had passed me coming back, I was to drop downwards on to his bag, almost like a rugger tackle without a fall. We practised this in Mac's flat and found that even when he was expecting that downward jerk he couldn't hold the bag against it, so I shouldn't have much trouble with an older man who wasn't expecting it.

"Then, with the bag in my hand, I would get on the bike which had been waiting on the kerb, run down the hill for two hundred yards, bend left and take a road leading off to the left called Duchess Road. There Mac would be waiting with a car stolen that morning. I would ditch the bike, get in the car (lying on the floor at the back) and drive with Mac to Edgbaston Park Road where Ben would be waiting with Mac's own car. There we'd leave the knocked-off car and go on our way rejoicing.

"I made the snatch and the bag came away as easy as picking an apple. The rest of it was easy. Mac counted the money and the total was £7,400 and no note higher than a quid. By twelve noon I was sitting in the Kardomah Café talking to as many people as I knew. It wouldn't exactly be an alibi but it would be the next best thing to one."

Kardomah Café, New Street

Lund's story did not end with the publication of Smiling Damned Villain. Croft-Cooke's biography of the thief is an enjoyable read in its own right, and the illumination it gives Birmingham is interesting; significant enough to warrant an entry in this blog, but there's more... so come closer.

In 1955 the American author William Burroughs moved into the Hotel Villa Muniria at 1 Calle Magallanes in the old French quarter of Tangier. One of his fellow residents was none other than Paul Lund, on the run from the police back home. The two started spending time together with Lund entertaining Burroughs with his tales of robbery and jail. Impressed, Burroughs incorporated Lund's stories into the routines he was writing for Naked Lunch. Eventually the relationship turned sour when Lund pointed the finger at Burroughs for alleged drug smuggling into France. Burroughs had moved to the Beat hotel in Paris in 1959. With the publication of Naked Lunch imminent, he received a suspended sentence. His bitterness towards Lund is captured in William S. Burroughs: Letters 1945-59.

Paul Lund died in 1966 and was buried in the Church of Saint Andrew in Tangier.

That Cemetery Without Walls

2011-04-30T13:10:00.000-07:00

'In any real sense of the world I was born at Oxford: I have no more connection with my early life and with Birmingham than I have with Timbuctoo.' - Kenneth Tynan

The year 1927 was in retrospect an important one in Birmingham's cultural history. Henry Green arrived in Tyseley to begin work at his father's factory, Laurence Olivier began his career at Barry Jackson's Birmingham Rep, and despite his denial, Kenneth Peacock Tynan was indeed born by Caesarean section on 2nd April 'in a small Birmingham nursing home, Glenhurst, 319 Shaftmoor Lane, Hall Green', and raised in the city. The first eight years of his life were spent living at 955 Stratford Road, Hall Green, then in 1935 the family moved to 229 Portland Road, Edgbaston, near 'the Smethwick frontier'. The young Ken switched to George Dixon school, then from 1938 until he reached adulthood and an Oxford scholarship, Tynan attended King Edward's Grammar School where he was regarded as a brilliant scholar. They could teach him little he did not already know.

After school he would often read for up to six hours in the Birmingham Reference Library. In the evening he would write up his journal, turn out a theatre review, and the following day produce immaculate school work, which he had completed in the early hours of the morning.

the 'reflib'

I read the first hundred pages of 'Ulysses' in the reflib the other day; it is prob the finest comic classic of our time. [Letter from Tynan to Julian Holland, 16/12/1943]

In reading his Letters, I was struck by the lack of love Tynan had for his father, and for his hometown. They seemed to be one and the same when they received his revulsion. He described Birmingham as 'the ugliest city in Europe' and could not wait to get away. Tynan may have disliked his father for all sorts of teenage reasons, but there was a very good one which Tynan claimed to be unaware of until his father's death in 1948. Peter Tynan was not who he said he was. In reality, only his mother bore the Tynan surname, his father was Sir Peter Peacock, self-made businessman, six times mayor of Warrington, and, on Tuesdays, a Justice of the Peace in the town. Ken's parents were not married as Sir Peter had been refused a divorce from Maria Peacock whom he had walked out on and their five children.

Although Sir Peter Peacock and Rose Tynan had set up home together in Birmingham since 1921, it was not the end of his life in Warrington. Two days a week he continued to travel north to oversee his expanding business empire and his civic duties. He had many fingers in many pies, but the Peacock name was most associated with Peacock Stores. By the time Ken was sixteen, there were twelve Peacock Stores in the Birmingham and Black Country area. Today, there are 900 stores in the UK, and 200 overseas.

The last trace of the fading Kardomah Cafe sign, New St.

The flamboyantly dressed Kenneth Tynan must have been an anachronistic sight as he glided down New Street in the middle of wartime Birmingham; an austere city at the best of times. On the first floor of the Kardomah Cafe he sat overlooking the street below, writing on his typewriter and generally holding court amongst the young bohemians of the day. Home to the Birmingham Group of surrealists, various actors and thieves (including the notorious Paul Lund), the Kardomah Cafe on New Street was the cool centre of young Birmingham.

Tynan once described the most significant event in his early life as seeing Citizen Kane. He did not just watch it, he completely immersed himself.

On 4 March 1942, the day Kane opened in Birmingham at the Gaumont Cinema, the fourteen-year-old Ken was there. He came away, as he later wrote 'dazzled by its narrative virtuosity, its shocking but always relevant cuts... its brilliantly orchestrated dialogue, and its use of deep focus in sound as well as vision'. By the end of the week he had seen the film five times, once with his mother, once with his eyes shut in order to prove that the sound track was expressive enough to be listened to in its own right.

Letter from Orson Welles to Kenneth Tynan, 29-4-1943

2011-03-14T13:26:00.000-07:00

Best to keep the first page blank, keep it full of silence and light. Let strips of colour land and reflect. Perhaps some passing beauty or accidental truth will unfold without my clumsy interference. A wonder - a small, undiluted wonder - unworthy of words, will grow out of nothing. If that's your bag. I like the idea very much. It's a wonder that I've spent so much time covering perfectly formed pages with black or blue scrawl. A spider's web to a fly quite content with flight and not in the least need of a seat. Such a bitter little spider with some nerve, don't you think? Still, those webs are so geometrically spectacular that you have to curse those for whom the spider himself is nothing but a wee snack. But I should not digress into the food chain when there are so many other chains to unravel. Like the one that drags the pen forward. Another small wonder, another web, another cryptic trap. Another little golden leaf falls down from the sky. Look up but there's no tree. Another small wonder worthy of not investigating further, in case it's all explained away. Leave the enigmas to be enigmas, so precious and liable to disappear at the first hint of touch. The futility of grasping at them should always be remembered, at least after logic wakes up. We will disappear under the weight of equations with their bastard complex numbers. And any moment now... there are many waiting, and I am waiting to disappear, and while I wait I wonder blankly and wait to be overawed.

2002

ZX VM Data Patterns

2011-02-07T04:12:00.000-08:00

Functionary Landscape

2010-12-28T12:35:00.000-08:00

2010-08-28T14:32:00.000-07:00

Nos. 54 & 105

2010-08-13T14:57:00.000-07:00

Lucy McLauchlan at Central Library

2010-07-29T13:15:00.000-07:00

Click here for more of Lucy McLauchlan's work.

Or here for Birmingham Central Library.

Teilhard Bookmark

2010-07-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

Jane Webb Loudon

2010-07-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

"Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?" 1 Sam. xxviii. 15.

Jane Webb Loudon (1807-1858)

Born in Edgbaston, Birmingham, in 1807 to wealthy parents, Jane Webb Loudon is most remembered for her series of instructive books on gardening and natural history. However, by the time she was 20 she had published her first novel, The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (1828).

This early science fiction novel was partly inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and also by all things Pharaonic which was considered fashionable after Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. Although it draws from Frankenstein in that there is a re-animation, it is regarded as science fiction rather than horror for its dystopian view of the future with elements in common with Yevengy Zamyatin's We (1920) and George Orwell's 1984 (1948).

A fear of the future was understandable given Jane Webb's changing circumstances early in her life. Her mother died when Jane was 12. Her father's fortune dwindled which prompted the Webbs to move from Ritwell House in Edgbaston to Kitwell House in Bartley Green where The Mummy! was written. Further catastrophe occurred when Thomas Webb died leaving Jane an orphan at the age of 17. Forced to fend for herself she sought the publication of her fantastic story.

Kitwell House

The technological prophesies contained in the novel, especially the automatic milking machines, attracted the attention of her future husband John Claudius Loudon, a well-known and much-respected landscape gardener, who was then constructing Edgbaston's Botanical Gardens (for expenses only!). Inspired by her new husband's work, Jane Loudon turned to writing popular natural history, realising there only existed texts for those who had already been trained through apprenticeship. A series of books on the subject followed which won her much respect and supported her when John Loudon died in 1843.

Here are only a few of the online resources for Jane Webb Loudon and The Mummy!:

Birmingham City Council

Romantic Textualities

History of Birmingham Places & Placenames

Beyond Death

2010-06-13T09:03:00.000-07:00

Playlist

2010-05-15T15:04:00.000-07:00

I have some work in an exhibition coming up in Brussels.

Birmingham and the Atomic Bomb

2010-05-07T01:10:00.000-07:00

Rudolf Peierls

In 1937 Rudolf Peierls took up a position at the University of Birmingham as Head of Applied Mathematics. Two years later he was joined by Otto Robert Frisch. Out walking the blacked-out streets of the city in early 1940, the pair realised how the theoretical possibility of an atomic bomb could be a practical reality. Previously it had been believed that the amount of uranium needed for its construction far exceeded the means of transporting such a device and the time needed for its construction. After calculation they concluded that only one kilogram of isotope uranium 235 would be enough to create temperature equivalent of the interior of the sun and pressure that of the Earth's core.

The Nuffield building at the University of Birmingham

The possibility of the allies constructing a bomb meant that there was also a possibility of Nazi Germany constructing one too. Although many of Germany's nuclear scientists had fled the country, Heisenberg had remained and was leading the research there. It was uncertain how far his programme had reached, and it was not known that Heisenberg was deliberately working on a go-slow basis to forestall the Nazis getting there first.

In March 1940, they typed the Frisch-Peierls Memorandum in the Nuffield building of the university. The 3-page document outlining their findings, has to be the most important text to have been written in Birmingham. The above opening extract reads:

Strictly Confidential

Memorandum on the properties of a radioactive “super-bomb”

The attached detailed report concerns the possibility of constructing a “super-bomb” which utilizes the energy stored in atomic nuclei as a source of energy. The energy liberated in the explosion of such a super-bomb is about the same as that produced by the explosion of 1000 tons of dynamite. This energy is liberated in a small volume, in which it will, for an instant, produce a temperature comparable to that in the interior of the sun. The blast from such an explosion would destroy life in a wide area. The size of this area is difficult to estimate, but it will probably cover the centre of a big city.

In addition, some part of the energy set free by the bomb goes to produce radioactive substances, and these will emit very powerful and dangerous radiations. The effect of these radiations is greatest immediately after the explosion, but it decays only gradually and even for days after the explosion any person entering the affected area will be killed.

Some of this radioactivity will be carried along with the wind and will spread the contamination; several miles downwind this may kill people.

The memorandum was taken by Mark Oliphant, a pioneer in radar and the Poynting Professor of Physics to Henry Tizard who headed the government committee overseeing the military applications of scientific work. This led to the setting up of the MAUD Committee, and later, the Tube Alloys project - the codename of the British atomic programme.

By this time Frisch had moved on to Liverpool, while Peierls continued to work in Birmingham. In 1941, to help him with his Tube Alloys research into isotope separation, Peierls was seeking a suitable assistant, and so in May a politically-motivated German exile came to Birmingham from Edinburgh. His name was Klaus Fuchs and he was a Soviet agent.

Fuchs had been interned at the outbreak of war and, as he was not Jewish, was held with hardened Nazis which, as a Communist, he deeply resented. Embittered by his treatment, and convinced that the Soviet Union was the only real chance of defeating Germany, he contacted Jurgen Kuczynski, a member of the German Communist Party exiled in London, who put him in touch with a fellow GRU agent known as Alexander (a.k.a Simon Davidovitch Kremer) to whom Fuchs passed technical information of his work in Birmingham.

"Fuchs became a lodger in our house, and he was a pleasant person to have around. He was courteous and even-tempered. He was rather silent, unless one asked him a question, when he would give a full and articulate answer; for this Genia called him "Penny-in-the-slot". There were a few brief periods when he felt unwell. He did not go to work, stayed in bed or on a deck chair in the garden, and showed no interest in food. But this passed in a day or so. We realised the significance of these attacks only much later."

Rudolf Peierls,'Bird of Passage'

38 Calthorpe Road (above) was rented by Peierls for five years from 1937. Fuchs lodged there in Otto Frisch's old room from May 1941 until the end of 1942 when Rudolf and Genia moved to a flat at 19 York Road, around the corner from his old friend Fania Pascal [see my earlier blog post Wittgenstein in Birmingham] whom he had known since his Berlin student days. It took a lot of explaining by Genia that Fuchs could not move with them into the smaller residence. Instead he took a room in a nearby boarding house.

In the autumn of 1942 Kremer had passed Fuchs on to a new controller Sonya, a.k.a. Ruth Kucynski (Jurgen's sister), Ruth Werner, Ruth Ursula Hamburger, Ruth Beurton, Ursula Beurton or Mrs Brewer. She lived in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, and the pair would meet in Banbury, half way between London and Birmingham.

On 3rd December 1943, Rudolf and Genia Peierls, Klaus Fuchs and other scientists from Britain landed in New York to take up their positions with the Manhattan Project. Fuchs continued to pass information to the Soviets throughout the war and into the start of the Cold War when he worked at Harwell, Britain's nuclear research facility. He was finally confronted at the end of 1949 and confessed his spying career to William 'Jim' Skardon of MI5 in January 1950. He was sentenced to the maximum 14 years imprisonment. After 9 years as a model prisoner, Klaus Fuchs was released from HMP Wakefield and settled in East Germany where he obtained the position of Deputy Director of the Institute for Nuclear Research at Rossendorf.

Musician's Fear of the Unexpected Performance

2010-04-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

There is a pathway which either begins or ends at Park Hill Road in the Birmingham suburb of Harborne. It was once a railway line which disappeared around 1964. Now tidied-up for the leisure-strollers, it took me to Summerfield Park, Winson Green.

Momentum from the hike carried me through the park towards an intriguing red-brick building whose door is always open and windows shut. I had escaped the curve of the Harborne to Monument Lane Railway - by slingshot I moved tangentially along my very own branch line.

I had little idea of what lay beyond the doorway ahead. From the outside looking in, I could see... more of the outside. It did not make a great deal of sense. Was this building merely a facade? A fake station on the invisible railway?

In retrospect, I should have realised its more earthly purpose, but after such a long walk - I had started in Selly Park and had spent most of the time thinking abstractly about enigmatic traces of history - my expectations had evolved into ethereal demands.

Stepping through the doorway, I was surprised to find myself once more on stage. How many sweaty dreams have involved this scenario? At least there was no audience and I still had my trousers on. But still, it jolted me. A dream spike - a slip into and out of the incommensurable hollow.

A solo performance for grass blades and daisies was improvised. I performed internally, was dramatic with myself; cutting a ridiculous, tragic figure in two. One body embarked for the centre of the Earth, the other returned to his duties on the asylum farm.

So when I part from the last station, and cross the Navigation,

I wish to be the light that dances under the Asylum Bridge.

Even

2010-03-02T14:20:00.000-08:00

Nothing and Something

2010-02-13T14:03:00.000-08:00

Walter Allen

2010-02-08T14:14:00.001-08:00

Walter Allen 1911-1995

It is thanks to Walter Allen that we can spy in on some of the literary and artistic life of Birmingham in the 1930s. His Memoir of a writing life, As I Walked Down New Grub Street (1981) draws a picture of a city far from culturally stagnant, but one where the themes and concerns of the era are acted out, contemplated and reflected.

Born on Anglesey Street in the working-class Lozells district of Birmingham, Allen won a scholarship to King Edward's School, Aston before entering the University of Birmingham to read English. He was fortunate to have been taught by Annie Dodds (wife of E.R. Dodds), A.M.D. Hughes and Louis MacNeice, as well as the head of the Faculty, Ernest de Selincourt, though he bored Allen rigid. The Arts Faculty was then still based in the city centre in Mason College which stood where the Central Library currently stands. I write 'currently' as quite recently the library building, one of Birmingham's great architectural icons, has scandalously failed to be listed and will be demolished in 2013.

Mason College, Chamberlain Square

University was not just a place of learning for Walter Allen. Throughout his time there he also immersed himself in editing the university magazine, The Mermaid, joined the dramatic society and attended meetings of the Birmingham Film Society. Consequently he was befriended by E.R. Dodds.

Allen also had a short and disillusioning experience in student politics; an episode he would later describe as a farce, but it does shed some light on the rise of extreme politics at the beginning of an age of 'ferocious theologies.' This was in 1931 when many were disillusioned with the Labour Party after the General Strike and at the start of the Great Depression. Oswald Mosley, that most hated of British politicians, had a previous life as a Labour MP for nearby Smethwick (and a Conservative before that) but resigned in February 1931 in protest of Labour's inability to tackle the problem of unemployment. He immediately formed the short-lived New Party which set out to attract those who wished to split from Labour. Walter Allen was one of a small group of Birmingham University undergraduates who joined the local branch, chaired by former Labour MP for Aston, John Strachey who later became Minister for Food in the Attlee post-War Government. So when Mosley came to Birmingham Town Hall in September to make a speech at the invitation of the Communist Party, Walter Allen witnessed Mosley's journey into Fascism. The most shocking revelation of the New Party at that meeting for Allen was the presence of Mosley's "Biff Boys", his own militia led by the boxer Kid Lewis. It was not something that Allen could possibly tolerate, and so he and his fellow undergraduates headed to the Trocadero on Temple Street to drown their sorrows of naivety and foolishness as fighting erupted on New Street.

After graduation Walter Allen continued with his ambition to be a full-time writer which was no small feat during the Great Depression. Although he was working on a novel in the background, he was a prolific writer of articles and essays - a real jobbing writer. He contributed regularly to the Birmingham Post, the Birmingham Gazette, the Bookman, the Radio Times and the BBC Midlands service. For the latter Allen wrote and broadcasted a series of children's stories but as it did not pay well, he suggested a programme on Midlands authors which was accepted. The research brought him into contact with his subjects - W.H. Auden, Cecil Day Lewis, John Hampson and Henry Green - and helped cement relations between them. Of these, it was John Hampson who became the closest friend. In 1936 when Hampson was persuaded by Auden to marry Therese Giehse, Walter Allen took the role of Best Man. For those in attendance it was a fondly remembered and often recounted event, mostly for the surrealism.

In 1938 Walter Allen's first novel, Innocence is Drowned, was published by Michael Joseph. It was the culmination of everything he had been working towards. Despite respectful reviews, it did not sell well, but Allen was following his dream of a life of a writer, and so he did what talented and ambitious creative people have done from the beginning of time - he moved to London, to a flat on the edge of Bloomsbury. However, he did not leave Birmingham totally behind him as the successors to his debut - Blind Man's Ditch (1939) and Living Space (1940) continued to draw on his own Birmingham upbringing, and this theme climaxed with what is generally regarded as his best novel, All In A Lifetime (1959).

'Mr. Walter Allen displays a rare appreciation of working-class life. He has a gift for terse, elemental writing not usually found outside the pages of American novelists.'

Birmingham Gazette, 10 February 1938

Letter from Walter Allen to Annie Dodds, 1950

Gordon Herickx

2010-02-04T12:38:00.000-08:00

There is treasure hidden in the walls of Birmingham's Barber Institute of the Arts - four stone carvings by the sculptor and stonemason, Gordon Herickx (1900-1953). These are collectively known as The Symbols of the Arts. They fit well with the Birmingham style of public sculpture during the 1930s, and with good reason. Herickx was a pupil of and assistant to William Bloye, the city's number one unofficial municipal artist. And Bloye was pupil of Eric Gill. I think the lineage shows rather well.

Herickx's work greatly impressed those fortunate to come into contact with it during Herickx's short life. Louis MacNeice strenously bundled the Herickx sculpture Cyclamen into the back of his little car and drove it all the way to Cambridge in an effort to flog it to his mate Anthony Blunt. Unfortunately Blunt's taste had changed from the abstract by that time, and the hard-up Herickx family were no better of for Louis's effort.

In July 1953 Herickx had his first one-man show at the Kensington Gallery, London. It seemedto be a success and his Birmingham friends who had moved to the capital insisted on throwing him a party. But Herickx was adamant to return to his family and headed back to Birmingham. That night he died in his sleep. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery held a memorial exhibition the following October. On display were twenty of Herickx's sculptures which was nearly his entire output. One of his works, Unemployed Man, had been shown in Moscow but had failed to be returned.

Herickx did not make a great deal of sculpture, though what he made was well regarded by his contemporaries. His studio was no more than the shed at the bottom of his suburban garden where he worked mainly in the summer because 'in winter he was too tired from hacking the frozen stone in the stone-cutter's yard.' He was also passionate about cinema, so perhaps it is not surprising that his name appears in the list of committee members of the Birmingham Film Society.

Chestnut Bud, 1935

'He read widely and discussed what interested him with wit and zest. He had an engaging gay seriousness and he seemed always to be seeing himself from a slight, half-comic angle.'

Walter Allen, 'As I Was Walked Down New Grub Street'

Highfield

2010-02-03T14:09:00.000-08:00

"The front door of my own home in England has no knob or handle on the outside at all; it can only be opened from the inside after an enormous bolt has been shifted. It is a mid-Victorian house built for security and privacy. At the entrance to the drive there is a great wooden gate which is so formidable that I doubt whether I should have the temerity to go in myself if I ever found it closed."

Lella Secor Florence, 'Our Private Lives' (1944)

Between 1930 and 1936, the Irish poet Louis MacNeice lived in a former coachman's dwelling (below) in the grounds of a home in Selly Park called Highfield, one of the large Victorian houses built in the 1860s on Selly Hill but demolished in 1984. MacNeice's home was known as Highfield Cottage which he shared with his wife Mary, and later with their son Dan.

From 1929 until its demise, Highfield was the home of Prof. Philip Sargant-Florence, Director of Social Studies at the University and Professor of Economics, with his wife Lella who 'had a charming smile, violent red hair and vitality,' according to MacNeice. She worked in Birmingham promoting family planning, and seems to have spent the 1930s using Highfield (below) as the centre of Birmingham's 'alternative Bloomsbury'.

Philip Sargant Florence had indeed lived in Bloomsbury before moving to Birmingham. His sister Alix was even more connected to the Bloomsbury Set, having married James Strachey in 1920. Together they made the standard translation of Freud into English.

Philip, Mary, Noel, Anthony and Lella Sargant Florence with Alix Strachey (nee Sargant Florence)

MacNeice writes in his unfinished autobiography, 'Two or three times a summer they would lend their garden for Labour Party garden parties and our doorstep would be littered with orange peel... Our landlady's friends had a gospel-tent enthusiasm and quivers of prickly statistics.'

'Most English Left-Wing intellectuals and American intellectuals visiting Britain must have passed through Highfield between 1930 and 1950.'

Walter Allen, 'As I Walked Down New Grub Street.'

Philip Sargant Florence's mother, Mary, who had taught at the Slade School of Art, decorated the walls of Highfield with murals, making it sadder to hear of its destruction. The address was 128 Selly Park Road, but the land is now Southbourne Close, an exclusive, private cul-de-sac. Residents there have access to what little remains of Highfield - the Southbourne Close Pool, one of a number of lakes which once existed across Selly Hill, and the pagoda which can be glimpsed behind trees from Kensington Road.

There was a scheme for Highfield in 1939 with the intention of building Isokon flats on Highfield's land. But the war intervened and Isokon could no longer operate. Here's a picture of what might have been, Isokon's Lawn Road flats in Hampstead, London:

In November 1935, Mary left Louis and Dan to be with Charles Katzman, a former American Football star who the MacNeices had befriended. The month previously MacNeice was driving Katzman back from Oxford and was about a mile away from Selly Park, when he crashed his Austin 7, throwing Louis and Katzman out of the vehicle.

Although MacNeice was able to walk home, Katzman was hospitalised but released after a few days. He continued his recovery at Highfield Cottage where Mary nursed him back to health, and fell in love with him. This Ballardian collision was a blow to MacNeice who was in danger of having a breakdown according to his worried friends, but it was a gain to Birmingham. After Mary's departure, Louis became more involved with the city, spending more time with its writers and artists.

Things Being Various

2010-01-14T10:51:00.000-08:00

'We had a miraculous stroke of luck. There came on the market - cheaply, since the Great Slump was on the way - a pair of small late Georgian houses in Sir Harry's Road in the inner part of Edgbaston, in those days only a penny ride from the City Centre; and at the same time Bet unexpectedly inherited from a childless uncle enough money to enable us to buy them. One of the pair was inhabited by an aged maiden lady; the other was vacant and became our home.'

E.R. Dodds, 'Missing Persons

Today I had the honour of being allowed into the former home of Professor E.R. Dodds and his wife Annie, fondly known as Bet to E.R. For this I am deeply indebted to Mrs B. Pugh who currently lives there. Professor Dodds lived in Birmingham from 1924 to 1936, and around him buzzed much of the cultural life of the city. Perhaps he is best known for his close association with the poets Louis MacNeice and W.H. Auden, both of whom regularly hung-out at home with the Doddses.

Like the rest of the country, Birmingham is covered in snow at the moment which made it all the more fortunate for me to see 6 Sir Harry's Road in weather pertinent to the address. Here, Louis MacNeice, while sitting in Dodds's study (above) and gazing out to the garden, was inspired to write 'Snow' (January 1935).

Birmingham Film Society

2010-01-08T11:41:00.000-08:00

'It was in the Film Society more than anywhere else that young artists came together. It was through Dodds that I first met them. Very soon after I graduated, he invited me to a dinner he gave in a private room in the Burlington Restaurant to a group of young men whose mentor in some sense he was. Most of them were clerks in local government or industry. There were perhaps ten guests, among them the sculptor Gordon Herickx, who worked as a stonemason, Stanley Hawes, who became a documentary film director and worked first in Canada and then in Australia, the painter John Melville and his brother Robert, who became a distinguished art critic and whom I last saw a glimpse of in a television film about the British Surrealist movement; he was meditatively and seemingly absent-mindedly kicking a violin along a gutter in a street near Waterloo Station.'

Walter Allen, 'As I Walked Down New Grub Street'

The Birmingham Film Society was set up by two clerks from the city in 1931 to show films not scheduled in commercial cinemas. These mainly consisted of European features, experimental short films and social-realist documentaries. One of the founders was Stanley Hawes who after a few more years working for Birmingham Corporation, moved to London to work under the wing of John Grierson as a director and producer for Strand Pictures Ltd. He returned to the city for the Society's 50th meeting in November 1936 when he introduced 'Chapter and Verse,'a film about the history of writing and books which he had recently completed.

Stanley Hawes

Although the Society began in a small derelict cinema at the back of Snow Hill station (possibly the Great Hampton Picture Palace), it moved first to the West End cinema at the top of Suffolk Street and then the Scala on Smallbrook as membership increased. The original and luxurious Scala closed in 1960 to make way for the development of Smallbrook Queensway. However a replacement cinema (below) was included, but that too closed in the late 1980s. The offices surrounding it are known as Scala House.

Meetings were generally held on Sunday afternoons, although there were a few extra-ordinary gatherings on a weekday in an attempt to introduce discussion on film. For instance, W.H. Auden was enlisted to talk to the Midland Adult School Union at their hall on Severn Street alongside a showing of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, one of the Society's most popular features.

In the Society Auden was amongst friends. E.R. Dodds was the chairman who was later replaced by that other ringmaster of bohemian Birmingham, Philip Sargant Florence, and among the committee members were Gordon Herickx and Robert Melville whose brother John designed the logo.

John Hampson

2009-12-28T04:08:00.001-08:00

John Hampson, 1901-1955

"His appearance was striking: he was plainly an unusual man. He had a large undershot jaw, deep lustrous brown eyes and brown hair that came down over his right temple like a lick of paint."

Walter Allen, 'As I Walked Down New Grub Street'.

Letter from Walter Allen to John Cornish, 1977

Grandson of Mercer Hampson Simpson, manager of the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, John was born into a family that once had money, but by 1907 the family brewery business, co-owned by his father, also called Mercer Hampson Simpson, collapsed and the Simpsons slid into poverty.

After a home education, John began work in a munitions factory when he was thirteen. After a wide variety of low-paid employment and a short stretch in Wormwood Scrubs for book theft, John Hampson found himself the job around which he could apply himself to his vocation as novelist.

"A winding drive half a mile long brought us to Four Ashes. The facade was that of an Elizabethan cottage, which had been added to and enlarged. In front of it was a very small pond on which moorhens were nesting, and it was surrounded by a garden of several acres, with orchard and paddock."

Walter Allen, 'As I Walked Down New Grub Street.'

In 1925 Hampson was employed by Mr & Mrs Wilson to tutor and nurse their son Ronald who had Down's Syndrome. As part of the job Hampson lived with the family at Four Ashes, Dorridge. He had enough time to himself in this rural retreat to devote himself to his craft. The result was the publication of Saturday Night at the Greyhound, which sold well for Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press.

Although Hampson's early success had brought him some interesting acquaintances such as E.M. Forster and Graham Greene, he didn't really know anyone in Birmingham, and the joys of his success were left unshared until Walter Allen approached him for a BBC radio programme on Midlands writers. Allen found that Hampson's room at Four Ashes had become a shrine to himself, with photographs and newspaper cartoons of Bloomsbury parties. Hampson would later add to the collection a portrait by John Melville and a bust by Gordon Herickx. Not put off, Walter Allen and John Hampson became friends and would meet every Thursday in Birmingham; Central Lending Library, Boots Library, cafe, pub, then tea at the Burlington Restaurant.

Through Walter Allen, John Hampson's Birmingham became a more interesting place, "I introduced him to my friends, to Auden and MacNeice and Professor Dodds and to Herickx and the Melvilles, and later to Birmingham journalists and to people in the BBC." In return Hampson introduced Allen to E.M. Forster and William Plomer when they were staying at Four Ashes, and he also wrote him a letter of introduction to Graham Greene.

Their Thursdays together continued into 1934 when they were joined regularly by other members of the Edward J. O'Brien-named Birmingham Group in a pub off Martineau St. [The street as well as the pub have long since vanished by redevelopment.] It had been presumed by the American O'Brien that the Birmingham writers must have known each other and form a cohesive scene, but they came together afterwards. And so Hampson and Allen were joined by Leslie Halward and Peter Chamberlain.

The public school educated Chamberlain was perhaps the antithesis of the proletarian writer which it was expected of Birmingham to produce. Allen thought him smug and arrogant, nevertheless their association continued over the years. Halward, on the other hand, was the closest to being a voice of the working man.

In 1936, John Hampson married Therese Giehse, a Jewish-German actress working in a cabaret written with contributions from Auden who had married Thomas Mann's daughter and Therese's friend, Erika Mann. Hampson, homosexual, was persuaded by Auden to help Therese get a British passport (above) to escape from the Nazis. Auden argued, "What are buggers for?" And Hampson agreed. Three years previously Hampson had travelled to Berlin to cover the Reichstag Fire Trial for New English Weekly, and the experience had made him a passionate anti-Nazi.

"[Hampson] was a generous man and as honest as he was generous; and everything he knew he had learned himself. He owed nothing to schools or universities. Some of his weaknesses as a novelist may be due to that, but it also gave him strength."

Walter Allen, 'As I Walked Down New Grub Street'

Bibliography

Saturday Night at the Greyhound (1931)

O Providence (1932)

Strip Jack Naked (1934)

The Family Curse (1936)

The Larches (with L. A. Pavey) (1938)

Care of "The Grand" (1939)

The English at Table (1944)

A Bag of Stones (1952)

Living in Birmingham

2009-12-19T07:36:00.000-08:00

Henry Green

The novelist Henry Green was born Henry Yorke in Tewkesbury, 1905, and died in London, 1973. In 1926 Eton-educated Henry dropped out of Oxford University where he seems to have spent most of his time drinking and not getting on with his tutor C.S. Lewis. It was time to learn the family trade. When Vincent Yorke married Henry's mother Maud, his father was given the Birmingham foundry H. Pontifex & Sons based at Farringdon Works, Tyseley, in Birmingham.

The site of Farringdon Works, 2009.

In January 1927 Henry moved to the city to work there initially as a stores labourer and then later as a pattern maker. During his two years at Farringdon Works, he lived in Stockfield Hall, a large Victorian boarding house located near Acocks Green on the Stockfield Road, seen below in 1941.

Henry Yorke, labourer, was already Henry Green, novelist, having written his first novel, 'Blindness' (1926), while still at Eton. His fellow workers in Birmingham assumed Henry was being punished by his father but Henry Green was observing and absorbing himself in the life of the factory. The result was his second novel, 'Living' (1929).

The site of Stockfield Hall, 2009.

Some footage of Birmingham in the 1920s:

Sprawling

2009-12-18T10:16:00.000-08:00

Architect's impression of St Martin's Flats, Highgate, 1938

Following the Great War, Birmingham Corporation began to address the issue of its massive population growth and overcrowded and decrepit housing. Returning soldiers had been promised 'Homes fit for heroes,' but, despite the Corporation's efforts, these homes had not been fully realised by the beginning of the next war.

During the inter-war years the city expanded outwards into the large areas which had been purchased by the Corporation. Private sector housing was proving too slow in meeting the needs of the people and these houses were beyond the means of most, and so, municipal housing, deemed too socialistic before WWI, became a reality.

The planned suburban sprawl was designed for skilled workers who could afford the rents, but the majority of back-to-back dwellers couldn't. Slum clearance had been in the minds of the Council for many years but real advance was not made until after the Second World War. However this did not stop a limited series of housing experiments conducted just outside of the inner ring road.

The pictures above and below show the Holme estate which consisted of the first municipal flats built - "in a Dutch style" - by Birmingham Corporation in 1927 on Garrison Lane, Bordesley. Although the first residents complained they were too small, the Mansions, as they were known by the residents, still exist today and are listed.

The second central area experiment didn't happen until about six years later when a row of maisonettes were constructed in Great Brook Street and became Moorcroft Place (below). Then the whole area along neighbouring Barrack Street was cleared to build the Ashcroft Estate which was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1934.

St Martin's flats (below) in Highgate were the first concrete-only flats built in the city. During 1935 there had been much debate in the Council House about a return to flats as a solution to the housing problem of the inner city. It was decided that any further experimentation would have to be done using concrete instead of brick. This was simply due to the shortage of bricklayers. The design of the St Martin's flats reflected the research done by Council committees in the German cities of 1930. They were opened by the Queen in 1939 and demolished in 1980.

1942

1980

[Three other photographs of St Martin's flats at Emily Street by the great Phyllis Nicklin can be found here, here and here. Much credit is due to Keith Berry for hosting them, along with his own collection of old Birmingham photos.]

After the financial crisis of 1931, the private sector began to catch up with local authorities, and by the outbreak of the Second World War over 50,000 municipal homes had been built and over 200,000 people had been re-housed in the expanded area of Birmingham.

Although living conditions were better, there were new problems. Long-established communities had been broken up and dispersed, new pressures on transport, distance to employment, and then there were those who were left behind. The scale of suburban construction had been enormous but it had left the issue of the worst housing near the city centre (within walking distance of the factories) unresolved, and that was still the case in Autumn 1939.

Leslie Halward

2009-11-04T15:20:00.001-08:00

Leslie Halward (1905-1976)

786 Bristol Road

Leslie Halward was raised "over a pork butcher's shop in what was then known as the High Street, Selly Oak, Birmingham." The shop is now what you see above, and never a more non-descript shop could be seen. The picture below shows how it used to be.

Halward was one of the Birmingham Group of writers whose short stories were published by Edward J. O'Brien. In 1936 twenty-three of Halward's stories were collected in To Sea On Sunday.

Written with great economy, Halward's stories are often funny, sometimes sentimental, rounded into parable or enigmatically left hanging. All but one are of their time, concerning themselves with the lives of the working class or the new lower-middle class of the 1930s. This was the time when the suburbs were under consruction throughout the nation, and several of the stories are set in the half-built estates on the edge of Birmingham.

from Frost:

'On the outskirts of the town a new estate was being built. Several hundred houses were completed and already inhabited. These were built alternately in twos and fours, rough-cast, washed over in cream or white, with doors and window-frames painted green. The smooth tarmac roads were wide and straight, flanked by grass verges, newly mown. Electric lamp standards with graceful curved necks stood at regular intervals along the edges of the flagged pavements. Everything looked clean and fresh.'

The Dedication

2009-10-07T14:54:00.000-07:00

According to a property website, the flats along Duchess Road offer the cheapest way of buying a little bit of Edgbaston. All of the properties on this road are the result of re-development; the Victorian houses have long gone. Without an old photograph of the area, it is hard to imagine the road as it was when Francesca M. Wilson lived there, at number 35.

Francesca M. Wilson

She was teaching at the Edgbaston Church of England School for Girls, but to call her a teacher would reflect only one part of who she was. Through the Society of Friends she spent much of her time helping refugees and the starving at times of war and their aftermath. Luckily for us she was also a writer who documented her experiences.

In 1944 she published 'In the Margins of Chaos', and dedicated it to Bachtin.

'In the Margins of Chaos'

It would be understandable to assume the Bachtin in question was the now famous philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin, but it was actually his elder brother, Nikolai or Nicholas Bachtin, who was rescued from starvation in Paris by Francesca in 1928. Nicholas shared his brother's passion for language, and taught at the University of Birmingham via a bewildering route.

Nicholas Bachtin

For more information about Francesca M. Wilson and Bachtin, I recommend reading Sian Lliwen Roberts' thesis.

A film by...

2009-08-24T14:48:00.003-07:00

Wittgenstein in Birmingham

2009-08-03T13:38:00.001-07:00

This morning I set off early to detour through Selly Park, the University, and Harborne. My intention was to find 44 Lordswood Road, an address of note for those interested in the life of the twentieth-century's most influential philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In 1913 Lordswood House was the family home of David Pinsent, close friend of Wittgenstein. On the eve of his self-imposed exile to Norway and just after a holiday there with Pinsent, Wittgenstein stayed with the Pinsent family (descendants of the philosopher David Hume) to say his goodbyes.

He had visited Lordswood House a year previously, in October 1912, on his and David's return from their first holiday together in Iceland. They arrived in Birmingham 7.00am, and breakfasted at Lordswood where they showed photographs from their trip to the family and acquaintances who were staying. Afterwards the Pinsents and their Austrian guest travelled by bus into the city, alighting at Five Ways to speed up in the rest of the journey by taxi to the Town Hall for a concert.

During the lunchtime interval, they enjoyed a gathering at Hume Pinsent's law office at 6 Bennett's Hill (above), before returning to the Town Hall. There Wittgenstein stood outside the front, because he found one particular piece by Strauss so distasteful. He eventually left the concert and made his own way back to Harborne.

Paradise Street, Birmingham, with the neo-classical Town Hall at the end on the left, 1905.

In the evening he discussed his ideas in Logical Symbolism to Hume Pinsent and during the following morning he mastered their player-piano, and had a 'quite interesting' talk with David and his mother, Ellen Frances Parker Pinsent, about education. This is also 'quite interesting' because Ellen Pinsent at that time was a leading figure in Birmingham and within a year her influence would be felt across the country.

In November 1911, Ellen Pinsent became the first woman to be elected to Birmingham City Council, standing in the Edgbaston ward. She stood down from the post two years later when Hume retired, prompting the Pinsents to move to Oxfordshire. During her time on Birmingham Council Ellen Pinsent led the Committee on Special Schools. Amongst her reforms was to appoint an officer to oversee Public Health in these schools. The officer appointed was George Auden, father of poet W.H. Auden.

Previous to her election she had sat on the Royal Commission on Care and Control of the Feebleminded, and had formed the National Association for the Care of the Feebleminded which had worked with the Eugenics Education Society to pressurize candidates for the 1910 Parliament into supporting curbs on the mentally deficient, including compulsory institutionalization, and the prevention of having children. In a private letter to Asquith, the then Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, supported the views of the Eugenics lobby. As did Neville Chamberlain who, before becoming Prime Minister was once Lord Mayor of Birmingham (1915-16).

'These ideas were rooted in the fear that an unimpeded increase in the 'feeble-minded' population would lead to Britain losing its place among the world's leading nations. Eugenic theories must be placed within the context of the British defeat in the Boer War, with its shocking revelations of the general unfitness of the recruits, and in agricultural and industrial depression.'

Paula Bartley, 'Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 1860-1914'

Through her brother, Robert, Ellen met Karl Pearson, British statistician and eugenicist. When he visited her family home she absorbed his 'unorthodox views'. She became a member of Pearson's Men's and Women's Club and met her husband Hume Chancellor Pinsent who was also studying law with Robert at Cambridge. They married in 1888 and moved to Birmingham where Hume joined his brother's law firm, Pinsent & Co.

In July 1913, the Mental Deficiency Bill was passed with only three votes against it. One of those belonged to Josiah Wedgwood IV MP who made an astonishing 150 speeches in 3 days in opposition, only sustained, apparently, on barley water and chocolate. The effect of this opposition was to bring in the condition of being able to look after oneself to determine fitness. The Mental Deficiency Act 1913 drove the categories of fit and unfit permanently into the structure of society. Birmingham was not unique to have the lunatic asylum, the workhouse and the prison back-to-back in the very real, architectural sense. There are a variety of levels of existence within these complexes, but essentially everyone within, to those outside, is controlled, irrational and silent.

There is a campaign to save the Archway of Tears, the entrance to the Birmingham Union Workhouse.

Ellen Pinsent was appointed Honorary Commissioner to the newly constituted Board of Control (replacing the 1845 Lunacy Commission), becoming a Permanent Commissioner in 1920 and then a Senior Commissioner in 1931. She was made a Dame of the British Empire for her mental health reform work in 1938, and died in 1949.

It was during his next stay in Birmingham, October 1913, that Wittgenstein dictated the typescript which would become part of his Notes on Logic. The dictation occured at the Berlitz School of Languages, which then occupied 32 Paradise Street (below), across the road from Birmingham Town Hall. The typsescript was made in German between 5.30 and 8.30pm, 7th October, 1913, and sent to Bertrand Russell.

32 Paradise Street; above, 1951, & below, 2009.

The next day Wittgenstein saw Pinsent, his 'first and only friend,' for the last time as he said goodbye to him at New Street Station. In 1918 tragedy struck Wittgenstein and the Pinsents as it did for so many friends and families during the First World War. David who had been deemed unfit for service, was not at the front when he was killed. He had volunteered his services for aviation research at Farnborough, no doubt aided by his first degree in mathematics from Cambridge.

Birmingham Daily Mail, Wednesday May 15, 1918

Death of Mr D.H. Pinsent

Recovery of the Body

The body of Mr. David Hugh (sic) Pinsent, a civilian observer, son of Mr and Mrs Hume Pinsent, of Foxcombe Hill, near Oxford and Birmingham, the second victim of last Wednesday's aeroplane accident in West Surrey, was last night found in the Basingstoke Canal, at Frimley.

Currently Lordswood House is the name of the building listed as 54 Lordswood Road which is a bit confusing. However, being a medical practice, it fits with the history of the original house. In May 1915, two years after the Pinsents moved to Oxford (the same year the Melville brothers moved to Harborne) , it became Worcestershire V.A.D. 62, a Voluntary Aid Detachment hospital during the Great War, and afterwards, the Lordswood Maternity Hospital.

Boundary wall of Lordswood House

Although I didn't find the Pinsents' home, the search had led me to ask for bearings at Harborne Swimming Pool, situated to the left. An attendant told me that, in all his years, the pool had never had a street number. Stranger was the Blue Plaque on the building's facade. I hadn't been expecting one for Wittgenstein, merely an occasional visitor to the area. No, it wasn't for him nor any of the Pinsents. It was for someone who lived in the house next door, number 42 Lordswood Road:

BIRMINGHAM CIVIC SOCIETY

W.H. AUDEN

POET

LIVED IN AN ADJACENT HOUSE

1919-1939

Apparently Auden's mother whould disapprove of his walking to buy cigarettes in his dressing gown. His father was School Medical Officer for the city, with an interest in classics. Auden's conflict with his mother at Lordswood, found him relaxing with his friends at 6 Sir Harry's Road, Edgbaston, the home of E.R. Dodds, Professor of Greek, the man who appointed Louis MacNeice (1930) and George Thomson (1937) to the classics department of the University. George Thomson became head and appointed Nicholas Bachtin (1938) [Nikolai Baktin , elder brother of Mikhail].

Thomson lived firstly at 32 Goodby Road, Moseley, and then from 1940, at 84 Oakfield Road, Selly Oak. Robert Melville remembers Thomson's Oakfield Road home as a place where artists and musicians from Birmingham University would meet. I recommend Tessa Sidey's book Surrealism in Birmingham 1935-1954. George Thomson (1903-1987) and Nicholas Bachtin (1896-1950) were friends of Wittgenstein's from Cambridge.

Bachtin and Wittgenstein would spend evenings reading Dostoyesky and Pushkin in Russian, but it was an evening reading through the Tractatus with Bachtin, in 1942, which prompted Wittgenstein to seek publication of the Philosophical Investigations for a second time. Bachtin had several addresses in Birmingham; 27 Wheeley's Road, then moving to the next road along, 37 George Road (above) , then the next, 36 Frederick Road, and finally , 12 Cambridge Cresent where he died suddenly of a heart attack, aged 54. He left behind 5 boxes of notes for an extensive work on rethinking the nature of language. There is no grave for Nikolai Bakhtin in Birmingham. He was privately cremated and no flowers were requested. His widow, Constance Mary Alix Bachtin, stayed in Cambridge Cresent until she too died, in 1959, after enduring severe multiple sclerosis for many years.

'One of the strangest men I have known and one of those best worth knowing'

E.R. Dodds, 'Missing Persons'

It was the end of a short but interesting life. Born in Orel, Russia, 1896 elder brother to Mikhail Bakhtin; 1912, attends university in Odessa; 1916, joins the Tsar's army on impulse for adventure and to look good in the uniform of a lancer; sought refuge in the Crimea after the Revolution; by chance, he meets his old C.O. who persuades him to join the White Guards during the Civil War; flees and becomes a sailor, gets drunk and joins the French Foreign Legion until he is badly injured three and a half years later. He then lives in poverty in Paris while writing for The Link and Numbers, is rescued by friends and admirers of his work, attends the Sorbonne, then Phd. at Cambridge, teaches in Southampton, and joins George Thomson's classics faculty at Birmingham University in 1938. He goes on to be the Linguistics department.

Roy and Fania Pascal also moved from Cambridge to Edgbaston (17 Rotten Park Road, above) when Birmingham University appointed Roy who, like Thomson, had been a member of Maurice Dobb's communist circle at Cambridge, to the Chair of German in 1939. In Cambridge Fania had taught Wittgenstein Russian, and she would see him often when Wittgenstein visited the Bachtins in Birmingham.

'What I do know and what in itself would call for attention to the friendship is that Wittgenstein indeed loved Bachtin, was unusually happy and gay in his presence, and never dropped him as he easily did others. His was the rare case of Wittgenstein taking a person as he found him. All this in spite of the fact that they were poles apart in outlook and character. Bachtin was given to extremes of passion and an uncontrolled exuberance of feeling and expression. He always seemed on the verge of erupting, like a volcano. He suffered from many irrational fears and obsessions, loved expansiveness, was a great gourmet. Unlike Wittgenstein, Bachtin, though childless, could take delight in children, even in cats. They did however share a kind of childlike innocence, and lacked everything commonplace.'

Fania Pascal, 'Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections,' edited by Rush Rhees

According to David J. Davis's contribution to "Great Men of Harborne," Auden's family home at 42 Lordswood Road was demolished in 1979, although his remaining family had moved nearby to 13 Court Oak Road after Wystan's departure to America in 1939. Next door, Lordswood House was demolished several years beforehand. The Lordswood Maternity Hospital had closed in 1968, leaving the building to fall victim to vandals.

Lordswood House, 1970

_________________________________________________________________

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Infinity etc.

2009-07-17T08:48:00.001-07:00

Usually I have two books on the go at the same time, one factual and one fictional. One to learn, one to relax with. In the last few weeks they've been David Foster Wallace's 'Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity' and Charles Perry's "Portrait Of A Young Man Drowning'. On this occasion there was an overlapping when I came across this passage from the latter:

I look at the big bottle of tonic on the bathroom shelf. On it is a picture of a little girl with yellow hair and a blue bonnet. She is smiling. She is holding up a bottle of tonic. The bottle she is holding up also has her picture on it in which she is holding up another bottle of tonic. And on that bottle of tonic there is another picture of the girl holding up the bottle...

I wonder. It is funny. How many pictures of the same thing are there in this one picture? I look close. I can only see two pictures good because they get smaller and smaller. But there must be many, many more.

Now I study it hard: on the first picture there is a girl holding a bottle of tonic with the same picture on it, and in that picture there is a picture, and in that picture there is a picture, and in that picture there is a picture, and in the next and next it is the same, and I guess it will go on for the end of the world.

It makes me dizzy and dreamy. I am scared. I stop quick and run out of the bathroom.

Despite 'Portrait...' being quite a disturbing but good read, the above did remind me of my first contact with the concept of infinity. We had a bathroom in our house with mirrors on one wall and a mirrored cabinet on another which I could open to face the mirrored wall and stand in between. Needless to say I felt a lightbulb go on inside my head when I was amazed at the result. Unlike Harry Odum in 'Portrait...', I didn't run out of the bathroom freaked out, but waved down the line at my infinite selves and concluded that this world might be curiouser still.

The Red Square

2009-06-30T10:17:00.000-07:00

Stills from The Red Square, animation on Sinclair ZX Spectrum (2006) (2 minutes)

A pastiche of Soviet modernism and the endurance of an ingrained Protestant work ethic, The Red Square was made in the first nine months of 2006. The first three were my last at the civil service where I had been working myself to death modernising the archiving system. Designing databases, cleansing data, maintaining large filestores and then programming machine code at night all blended into one after a while. Work is the theme of The Red Square. Indeed in its world the square is the unit of work. It is the product, the currency and the simplest form of being. The animation ends when the means of production create language.

Alpha Omega

2009-06-21T10:25:00.001-07:00

Stills from Alpha Omega, animation on Sinclair ZX Spectrum (2009) (1 minute, 50 seconds).

Alpha Omega began with another animation and drawing entitled 'Barmouth, Portstewart, 2002' which itself was a response to a recurring dream. I come from Ireland but live in England, and for years my home in dreams was situated somewhere between the two - on board the ferry forever and ever, stopping only in the middle of the night to pick up passengers, others adrift, in need of rescue, and no one ever disembarked.

The dream occurred so often I wanted to capture the images within it. This began an interest in pixellating the sea and sky. In seeking how to best represent these within the confines of 256 x 192 pixels, I became interested in a plethora of mathematical concepts. My knowledge is still embarrassingly shallow but my interest is keen and passion resolute.

These plethora of concepts fall under the heading of algorithmic information theory, a term associated with Gregory Chaitin of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. While still a teenager Chaitin discovered the Omega number which, in short, is the halting probability of a randomly generated computer program. His work is a continuation of Godel's and Turing's.

Algorithmic information theory sees the universe as a quantum computer processing itself as information. Temperature, for instance, is a measure of information. The number of bits needed to describe the regular structure of ice is relatively small compared with the number of bits needed to describe the chaotic movements of the molecules in steam. If the second law of thermodynamics holds true then the universe will approach a state described by 2^∞ bits.

Frank Tipler's Omega Point theory states that the universe's computation power will become infinite as it collapses into singularity. By this stage our descendants will have harnessed the quantum computer nature of the universe, and will be able to run artificial intelligence versions of everyone forever. This is where algorithmic information theory becomes quasi-religious. Tipler's Omega Point theory has its origins in the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), Jesuit priest and scientist, who envisioned a future of self-conscious and reflective unity beyond animalistic being in what he called a noosphere.

I should point out that at no time have I heard or read any mention of Omega Point theory by Chaitin who describes himself primarily as a computer programmer and then as a meta-mathematician. There is, however, a connection beyond the use of the word Omega. The Omega number is theoretical, its absolute value unknown. The problem being that the closer the calculations are to its answer, the longer it takes to calculate. In fact it will take infinitely long to find its value. However, as with Turing's uncomputable real numbers, Tipler's infinitely large expansion of the universe's computing power allows these calculations to be made.

Omega Point theory is of course wildly speculative. Despite Tipler's claims of its proof in physics, it still reads like a religious prophesy of technological determinism. Surprisingly for me, I find it easier to consume Teilhard's version as something which is to be striven for and spiritually dedicated to. In this animation, Alpha Omega, it is the audacity within Tipler's theory which is being satirised. It is, admittedly, audacious to create animation on such an apparently redundant machine as the ZX Spectrum, but, to raise the spectre of my pretension, learning machine code programming over the last seven years has involved spiritual dedication.

Compression plays a central role in algorithmic information theory. To compress information is to enact an understanding of it. The compression algorithm is that understanding.

Gregory Chaitin :

I think of a scientific theory as a binary computer program for calculating the observations, which are also written in binary. And you have a law of nature if there is compression, if the experimental data is compressed into a computer program that has a smaller number of bits than are in the data that it explains. The greater the degree of compression, the better the law, the more you understand the data.

But if the experimental data cannot be compressed, if the smallest program for calculating it is just as large as it is... then the data is lawless, unstructured, patternless, not amenable to scientific study, incomprehensible. In a word, random, irreducible!

Gregory Chaitin :

Compression techniques are useless if they are applied to noise, to the mad jumble that you get if an antenna is disconnected, because there is absolutely no pattern to compress away.

Another way to put it is that the most informative picture is one in which each pixel is a complete surprise.

Above is some further evidence of the Spectrum running the animation. The BASIC program which you can see runs two files of machine code. Each one has a sequencer routine which runs smaller sequences of even smaller routines embedded with calls to other even smaller routines, and scattered amongst this hodge-podge of code are the bitmaps. Each time an animation is made new routines are designed which are then re-used in a library for the next project resulting in the bottom of the code looking relatively elegant, but then the rest becomes spaghetti of increasing complexity towards the top. If ever an animation is made of complete code elegance it would probably be the last one I would want to make. It would signify that there wasn't anything new to learn.

You can tell from the clarity of the stills that the animation isn't just being run on a Spectrum but, instead, it is an emulation. Actually very accurate to the real thing but it allows me to work on a laptop with all the benefits, i.e. fitting the work around a busy life, grabbing bits of time in a cafe before the day job and in a library at lunchtime. No nervous tension during cassette loading! Having spent the last 7 years using the old method on the real machine, an emulation has been a liberation. Besides, the idea of running one system inside another is appealing. It is very Omega Point.

Incommensurables

2009-06-03T12:23:00.001-07:00

Incommensurables series (2008)

Based on dysfunctional conversations between leading figures in the 20th century, this part of the series explores the probability of success in communication.

Here, the graphical form of a dysfunctional exchange is derived from the idea of an immeasurable mid-point on the diagonal between corners of the unit-length square, i.e. pixel.

These four figures of modernism are, in attempting to communicate and understand each other, trying to unscramble Dedekind's "secret of continuity", the irrational diagonal of the unit square. In using rationality, they spend their time chasing their tails. However, all dialogue between them, no matter how extensive, could be encoded into the infinite decimals of the unit square's diagonal length.

Formal axiomatic system

The set of all unmentioned words

B radiation

T makes a point to W

Lines of argument

Radiating communication (ideal)

Unknowable Centre

The diagonal of a unit length square is the incommensurable √2.

The diagonal of a square drawn is pixels is equal to the length of its side:

1000

0200

0030

1234

Each pixel is a unit length square.

Each pixel contains incommensurability.

I was inspired to work on this part of the Incommensurables series by reading of the meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg during October 1941 in Copenhagen. This is an example of how dysfunction in conversation can help to steer the coarse of history. Bohr was sent to meet his former pupil in order to assess Germany's ability to produce an atomic bomb. Heisenberg who, although leading the German atomic research, was engaged in 'active resistance' with the aim of slowly not producing a weapon. It was Heisenberg's intention to communicate this to Bohr but it was not straight forward as any explicit message would inevitably be interpreted by the Gestapo as treacherous.

The following quotations are from 'Brighter Than A Thousand Suns' by Robert Jungk (1956):

But unluckily the important interview in Copenhagen between Heisenberg and Bohr was ill-starred from the beginning. It had been reported to Bohr that Heisenberg had defended, at a reception given in his honour shortly before, the German invasion of Poland. The fact that Heisenberg in order to disguise his true sentiments, was in the habit of expressing himself quite differently in society, especially abroad, from the way he talked in private. Bur Bohr, that fanatical devotee of truth, neither could nor wished to recognize such a double game, learned in the hard school of totalitarian compulsion. Accordingly, when Heisenberg came to see him, he at once assumed an extremely reserved and even chilly attitude towards the pupil who had once been his favourite.

...unfortunately [Heisenberg] never reached the stage of declaring frankly that he and his group would do everything in their power to impede the construction of such a weapon... The excessive prudence with which both men approached the subject caused them in the end to miss it altogether.

When Heisenberg took leave of his master he had the impression... that the conversation had made matters worse rather than better. Bohr's mistrust of the physicists who had remained in Hitler's Germany had not been lessened by his pupil's visit. On the contrary, he was now convinced that the men in question were concentrating intensively and successfully on the manufacture of a uranium bomb.

Machine Coding 102 (Sequential User-Defined Sound)

2009-05-29T14:29:00.000-07:00

QUDS

Quds is a development of Uds. Like its predecessor it uses 8-bit values as wavelengths to create sound. The Q in Quds is for seQuential. Unlike its predecessor, the sound it plays will, within a margin of drift, be the same length in time no matter the data being read, so it can be used as the basis of a sound sequencer.

Where Uds finds a zero, it will halt. If Quds finds a zero it will return to the beginning of the data and keep going. So when does it stop? Two variables, initially one a copy of the other, are used to determine duration; Total and Current Total. A typical value for these would be 24*256. This is the sum total of the wavelengths put through the Quds sound engine before it terminates.

There are two benefits from using Quds instead of Uds. Firstly is the independently-determined duration and secondly, it does not have to rely on large samples of data to sculpt sound. In fact it does not need any devoted Udata information. Quds can be pointed at any part of memory and interesting sound will emerge. However, WARNING! Remember that where Quds finds a zero it will loop. So if the FIRST piece of data is zero, then it will loop indefinitely as it subtracts nothing from the duration limit.

So firstly, here is the Z80 assembly code and its opcodes in decimal. Preceding the routine are the two variables Total and Current total. They are referred to in the routine by their low and high-order byte addresses as totL, totH, curtL and curtH. The address for qudata (the address of the sound data) is inserted at quds+1 (low-order byte) and quds+2 (high-order byte). At quds+10 is something called stretch with a default of 1, its shortest value. Increasing this number (POKE quds+10, 4 for instance) will stretch the sound, but will also increase the inaccuracies in the timing. Another variable hidden in the routine is at quds+72. It has a default of 5 for tuning balance but it could be adjusted for serious detuning of the sound. If you are not interested in assembly, don't worry about this listing, further below is the BASIC code for compiling the routine, creating a sound and a way of triggering it.

Total : 0 24

Current total: 0 24

Quds: LD HL, udata 33 qudataL qudataH

XOR A 175

LD A, (HL) 126

OR 0 246 0

JRZ -9 40 247

LD BC, stretch 1 1 0

PUSH BC 197

LD B, 0 6 0

LD C, (HL) 78

PUSH HL 229

LD HL, (current total) 237 107 curtL curtH

SBC HL, BC 237 66

JPP quds+57 242 targL targH

LD A, L 125

NEG 237 68

LD B, 0 6 0

LD C, A 79

PUSH BC 197

LD BC, 9 1 9 0

DEC BC 11

LD A, C 121

OR B 176

JRNZ -5 32 251

POP BC 193

DEC BC 11

LD A, C 121

OR B 176

JRNZ -15 32 241

LD HL, (total) 237 107 totL totH

LD (current total), HL 34 curtL curtH

POP HL 225

POP BC 193

RET 201

LD (current total), HL 34 curtL curtH

POP HL 225

PUSH BC 197

LD A, 16 62 16

OUT (254), A 211 254

DEC BC 11

LD A, C 121

OR B 176

JRNZ -5 32 251

LD BC, 5 1 5 0

DEC BC 11

LD A, C 121

OR B 176

JRNZ -5 32 251

LD A, 7 62 7

OUT (254), A 211 254

POP BC 193

DEC BC 11

LD A, C 121

OR B 176

JRNZ -5 32 251

POP BC 193

DEC BC 11

LD A, C 121

OR B 176

JRNZ -83 32 173

INC HL 35

JR -95 24 161

BASIC Compiler of Quds

10 LET quds = 32772

20 LET qudata = quds + 256

30 LET qudataH = INT (qudata / 256)

40 LET qudataL = qudata - (qudataH * 256)

50 LET target = quds + 57

60 LET targH = INT (target / 256)

70 LET targL = target - (targH * 256)

80 LET tot = quds - 4

90 LET totH = INT (totH / 256)

100 LET totL = tot - (totH * 256)

110 LET curt = quds - 2

120 LET curtH = INT (curt / 256)

130 LET curtL = curt - (curt * 256)

140 LET a = quds - 4

150 RESTORE 220

160 READ x

170 IF x = -1 THEN GOTO 500

180 POKE a, x

190 LET a = a + 1

200 GOTO 150

210 REM ____Variables

220 DATA 0, 24, 0, 24

230 REM ____Quds

240 DATA 33, qudataL, qudataH

250 DATA 175, 126, 246, 0, 40, 247

260 DATA 1, 1, 0, 197

270 DATA 6, 0, 78

280 DATA 229

290 DATA 237, 107, curtL, curtH

300 DATA 237, 66

310 DATA 242, targL, targH

320 DATA 125, 237, 68, 6, 0, 79, 197

330 DATA 1, 9, 0, 11, 121, 176, 32, 251

340 DATA 193, 11, 121, 176, 32, 241

350 DATA 237, 107, totL, totH

360 DATA 34, curtL, curtH

370 DATA 225, 193, 201

380 DATA 34, curtL, curtH

390 DATA 225

400 DATA 197

410 DATA 62, 16, 211, 254

420 DATA 11, 121, 176, 32, 251

430 DATA 1, 5, 0, 11, 121, 176, 32, 251

440 DATA 62, 7, 211, 254

450 DATA 193, 11, 121, 176, 32, 251

460 DATA 193, 11, 121, 176, 32, 173

470 DATA 35

480 DATA 24, 161

490 DATA -1

500 REM _______Sound Generator

510 RESTORE 580

520 LET a = qudata

530 READ x

540 IF x = -1 THEN POKE a, 0: GOTO 640

550 POKE a, x

560 LET a = a + 1

570 GOTO 530

580 DATA 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

590 DATA 32, 34, 32, 30, 64

600 DATA 32, 34, 32, 30, 60

610 DATA 32, 34, 32, 30, 64

620 DATA 32, 34, 32, 30, 68

630 DATA -1

640 REM _______Sound Trigger

650 FOR m = 5 TO 45 STEP 10

660 POKE quds + 72, m

670 FOR n = 1 TO 4

680 POKE quds + 10, n

690 RANDOMIZE USR quds

700 NEXT n

710 NEXT m

720 GOTO 650

Sound Generation (lines 500 to 630)

This is where a demonstration sound is created by reading the data values held in lines 580 to 620 and poking them into memory at the address previously defined as qudata at line 20. This method of shaping the sound, wavelength by wavelength, is the most detailed and it is usual to instead use an equation for drum sounds, but the method shown hear is the most transparent. Experimenting by changing the values held after DATA will give a better understanding of how the whole routine works. It doesn't matter how many or how few values you choose to put here as long as there is at least one and the data has -1 at the end. Notice also that when the sound is triggered, you can actually see the wavelengths in the border region of the screen. This is because port 254 on the ZX Spectrum is connected to both to the sound output and the border.

Sound Triggering (lines 640 to 720)

Here the code is demonstrating the use of the two variables of detune (quds+72) and stretch (quds+10), but the sound needs only to be triggered by RANDOMIZE USR quds.

Machine Coding 101 (User-Defined Sound)

2009-05-14T10:59:00.000-07:00

Featured in the August 2008 issue of Computer Music magazine is an article on lo-fi production in which I give a tip for creating sound on a ZX Spectrum. As it is written in Z80 assembly, I thought this blog might give further enlightenment, and some workable examples in BASIC and machine code.

Below is a BASIC program written for a ZX Spectrum. It compiles a machine code routine called "uds" which is short for User-Defined Soundreader. Its main purpose is to play sound effects.

The lines beginning with the BASIC command DATA hold the machine code opcodes and data for this routine.

Lines 530 to 600 are where the sound effect is created. Here this is given as an example, but really any data in any part of the memory will do. The sound stops being read when uds finds a zero.

At line 10 uds is positioned into memory at address 32768 which might seem like a strange number, but it is exactly half way through the total machine memory, and begins to make more sense if viewed as hexadecimal or as higher and lower order bytes in decimal - 128, 0, i.e. 128 * 256 + 0 = 32768. Perhaps this is running before walking. The point being that you can change this number, but I would recommend that if you do, make it higher so that it doesn't clash with any BASIC program.

Line 20 defines where this particular sound effect is placed in memory, again it could be anywhere, but here its "a bit further on from uds", and the address is called udata.

Line 50 defines the variable "duration" with a default of 1. The sound can be stretched by increasing this number up to a maximum of 255. But it will lose its identity pretty quickly, and I usually don't go beyond 16.

Line 320 contains the number 8. This value I refer to as the inner wheel tuning and it is meant to balance the sound. Again this value can be increased up to 255 to lower the overall tuning.

310 and 440 contain the value 251. It can be changed to a value between and including 244 to 251. I think of this as being an octave ladder. 244 being the lowest.

After the routine is compiled and the sound effect created, it will be triggered and then pause until you press the keyboard, then triggered again.

Well that's all for now, folks. I'll update this blog with further explanations, examples and links.

10 LET uds = 32768

20 LET udata = uds + 256

30 LET udataH = INT (udata / 256)

40 LET udataL = udata - (256 * udataH)

50 LET duration = 1

60 LET a = uds

70 RESTORE 140

80 READ x

90 IF x = -1 THEN CLS: PRINT a, a - 32768: GOTO 530

100 POKE a, x

110 LET a = a + 1

120 GOTO 80

130 REM _______uds

140 DATA 33, udataL, udataH

150 DATA 175

160 DATA 126

170 DATA 246, 0

180 DATA 32, 1

190 DATA 201

200 DATA 1, duration, 0

210 DATA 197

220 DATA 6, 0

230 DATA 78

240 DATA 197

250 DATA 62, 16

260 DATA 211, 254

270 DATA 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

280 DATA 11

290 DATA 121

300 DATA 176

310 DATA 32, 251

320 DATA 1, 8, 0

330 DATA 11

340 DATA 121

350 DATA 176

360 DATA 32, 251

370 DATA 62, 7

380 DATA 211, 254

390 DATA 193

400 DATA 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

410 DATA 11

420 DATA 121

430 DATA 176

440 DATA 32, 251

450 DATA 193

460 DATA 11

470 DATA 121

480 DATA 176

490 DATA 32, 204

500 DATA 35

510 DATA 24, 191

520 DATA -1

530 REM ___________udata

540 LET length = 254

550 FOR n=0 TO length STEP 2

560 LET ang = (n / length)*360

570 POKE udata + n, n + 1

580 POKE udata + n + 1, 128 + 32 * SIN (ang * PI / 45)

590 NEXT n

600 POKE udata + 255, 0

610 REM __________trigger

620 RANDOMIZE USR uds

630 PAUSE 0

640 GOTO 620