Just William among the new architecture

diary, 8th April 2017

IT WAS a hard fight, but William won.
          The Society that meets annually to relish the comical stories of the well-meaning or revengeful schoolboy had their heads full of the imaginary landscapes of  English villages, footpaths through farmers' fields, community halls with pretentious guest speakers, and disused barns to work out colossal  plans. Yet these days meetings are held more frequently in glass and steel modern buildings. This meeting, outside London at a redesigned university, challenged participants in a sleek hall with sheer walls and sweeping floor to envisage the  old-fashioned scenes from the William books.  The challenge was met with pleasurable defiance.
           No matter where they are, the Just William Society members maintain the visions of William landscape and adventure of  a comical century from 1919 to 1969. Analysis and celebration of the past abound, a past that strangely is familIar to the present.

The Storey of Camden

diary 6 April 2017

David Storey reminds us of Camden in flight.
His novel Flight into Camden keeps for us  the borough we once knew as it flitted into the future which is now the present.
   He died aged 83.



   I would pass him on the Heath and in the street, knowing who he was and slightly in awe of even the later man's physicality. I was thinking of the rugby player who wrote This Sporting Life.