Stratford Mosaic: The Shakespeare Club and a Medley of Memories

Gerald Jaggard, the author of Stratford Mosaic: The Shakespeare Club and a Medley of Memories, died in 2001, aged 97. But his book, published in 1960, lives on, and is still one of the best ever written about the town and its people; it also fetches extremely high prices in good second-hand bookshops, which is appropriate as Jaggard ran one of the best Stratford ever had: the Shakespeare Press.

I remember the book shop well (situated toward the top of Sheep Street, in what is today Vintner’s restaurant) as a dark place which felt like something out of a Dickens’ novel, and there were plenty of those around, including small leather bound first editions that reeked of the past. Jaggard was a very quiet man who acknowledged your presence with a nod, allowing you to meander around the two floors of his shop, all the while keeping a discreet eye on you. Back in the late 1950s and early ’60s most of his stuff was out of my price range, although I recall buying a copy of R.L.Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes there for less than £2. Most of my book buying money was spent at The Chaucer Head Bookshop just around the corner in Chapel Street, where, unlike Jaggard’s place, books were piled high in every dusty corner, a totally different experience.

Gerald Jaggard was born in Liverpool in 1904, with - as the Stratford Herald reminds us - a family “steeped in Shakespearean folklore…” not least that of being related to William and Isaac Jaggard, the father and son printers of Shakespeare’s First Folio of 1623, which isn’t a bad link for a Stratford bookseller.

Gerald’s father, Captain William Jaggard, was born in Berkshire, but, as Gerald tells us, his father’s love of books took him, as a teenager…

“…to Leamington Spa, where he was apprenticed to Simmons the bookseller. From there he moved to Liverpool, where, from a partnership, he developed his own business, and it was here that he married and settled in Canning Street. In the shadow of the great unfinished cathedral he combined with the daily hustle of his city bookshop the writing of pamphlets and other literary work. When in Warwickshire, he had spent many hours in the Memorial Theatre Library. Proud of his lineal descent from the printer-editor of the First Folio… he resolved to make his own contribution to Shakespearean literature. His choice was soon made. When a young man, hardly twenty, he had been employed by the Earl of Warwick to catalogue and classify the great collection [over 2,000 volumes] of Shakespeariana at Warwick Castle.

“I sometimes wonder if my father would have tackled his self-imposed labour of Hercules if he had realized that it would occupy his spare moments for over twenty years!

“The necessity for research brought my father on frequent visits to Stratford, and much of his time was spent in the Memorial Theatre Library. He returned from these sojourns full of the charm and loveliness of the town, and undoubtedly the smoke and grime of Liverpool, the bustle of city life, seemed more oppressive after the glimpses of country quiet. As a youth he had dreamed of settling down one day in Shakespeare’s home town, and now, some twenty years later, those dreams were hardening into definite plans. Liverpool, suitable though it was for the book trade, and for the printing press from which my father issued his index to Book Prices Current and a small study of Printing - its Birth and Growth, held little or no encouragement for the Shakespeare lover. Stratford, the very home of such study, was ready to welcome him, as he was already a governor of its theatre, a member of its Shakespeare Club, and a prolific and diligent correspondent of its weekly newspaper The Stratford-upon-Avon Herald, whose editor, Mr. George Boyden was a personal friend.”

Read the rest of this entry »

All of last week I was in Lancashire with Hilary, which was superb for many reasons, not least that I was able to concentrate on getting a fair bit of work done away from the distractions of those 3.5 million visitors to this lovely town of Stratford, discover the delights of Preston, which included finding a market stuffed full of second-hand book stalls - which was quite a distraction - a superb Waterstones where I bought George Melly’s Slowing Down, plus The Winter Soldiers, by Garry Douglas Kilworth, which is one of his series of ‘Fancy Jack’ Crossman Crimean War adventures (more of Mr Kilworth later), and Alan Whicker’s Whicker’s War.

I started reading all three in the Caffé Nero afterwards and again became quite distracted because all three books are superb, plus the coffee in the Nero is some of the best you’ll find anywhere, which means that Stratford should have one. Please.

It was also quite a distraction ear-wigging other peoples conversations too…

” Used to be a butchers when I were a lad.”

” What did, dad?”

” This place.”

” Are you sure?”

” Aye. Mind, that were afore all these mobile phones.”

” Oh, do you want a bit o’ cake or something?”

” Lovely. Don’t believe in ‘em.”

” What?”

” Mobile phones.”

” Why?”

” Well, who is there to talk to?”

” What sort of cake?”

” Chorley.”

” Don’t reckon they have Chorley cake, dad.”

” Do they not?”

” No. But they’ve got some nice cheese cake mind.”

Which they had.

So quite a few distractions, but I still managed to get some work done…some.

Read the rest of this entry »

… Sorry.

I’m sorry but I’m going to mention again someone you either love or hate - John Wayne.

I love him without reservation (and on the reservation if you want), and with a passion, lots of passion, and as fellow Humdrumming director, and novelist, Guy Adams, will confirm - under mild torture - I’ve often used the work of the beloved John as an example of a style of film acting that can, when transferred to the stage, work extremely well, and concentrate the attention of the audience in the way a close-up would on the screen. Look at the stuff he did with Ford, especially Fort Apache, and you will see just how ‘theatrical’ Ford’s style is, in the sense that he keeps the camera still, with the actors moving in and out of the frame, or forward to take up a more prominent position before moving to the back of the shot to give someone else the edge of the ‘stage’. And Wayne is invariably the one you notice because he, like the camera, also remains still. Also, when he talks, he weighs every word for effect, creating a combination that is quite magical, with the camera simply an observer. This is a technique Wayne absorbed, and used brilliantly in The Alamo, for instance.

You’ve got me going now. I remember going to see The Alamo in the summer of 1960 at the old art deco cinema in Stratford (sadly long gone), and sitting through the epic twice (try doing that now) knowing I was experiencing something a bit special, but something I couldn’t explain. The same thing happened with Lawrence of Arabia a couple of years later. Both of those films changed my life. Films can do that.

And I’ve only recently seen The Alamo again, but this time on video ( I’m not a DVD man yet) and in the privacy of my own home, and alone, except for a bottle of red wine.

Videos? Hmm? That’s another story completely.

I used to buy lots of videos and now own a pretty good collection, and it’s not my fault, honest.

“ Me Lud, my client pleads not guilty to the heinous charge of buying and watching videos - especially those of John Wayne - to the detriment of himself, and the community at large. And I shall endeavour to prove, Me Lud, that my client, who does not have an ounce of criminal intent in his body, is, quite simply, barking mad, and therefore incapable of perpetrating such a shabby crime deliberately, especially with - as my learned friend with the ridiculous wig has suggested - malicious aforethought, and intent. I would like to call a man I shall refer to as ‘John’, yes Me Lud another John, to the witness stand.”

‘John’ owns a video shop in Stratford, and it’s all his fault, and I’ll say, in my own defence, that if he didn’t have such a wonderful selection of classic films - films you’ll never find in the HMVs of this world I would never have unravelled into the rewind madness that is The Searchers, The Horse Soldiers, Rio Grande, Red River, True Grit, The Shootist, Angel and the Badman, The Sea Chase. Hello? Anyone still there?

As film buffs go ‘John’ is in a class of his own, as the following, overheard exchange, will testify.

“ John, I remember seeing this film, oh years ago now, it had this bloke in it who was a Nazi fanatic. It might have been called The Thirty-nine Steps, or something?”

“ Nazi fanatic you say?”

“Yes.”

“ Thirty- nine? Hmm? Ah! Got it. 49th Parallel, 1941, starring Eric Portman, Leslie Howard, Laurence Olivier, Raymond Massey, and the lovely Anton Walbrook. I think you’ll find it was directed by Michael Powell, with a screenplay by Emeric Pressburger, and of course edited by David Lean, with photography by Freddie Young, with, I think, yes, music by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The action is set in Canada, and I believe the whole thing was filmed there too.”

“ Really?”

“ Really.”

“ Have you got it in stock?”

“ No, sorry.”

“ Oh.”

“ I’ve got a nice new copy of Sink The Bismarck though, with Kenneth More and Dana Wynter, who is gorgeous don’t you think, and the direction, by Lewis Gilbert, who went on to do a couple of bloody awful James Bonds in the 70s, is hugely effective.”

“ I’ll take it.”

“ Thanks, that’ll be six quid.”

‘John’ started his lovely shop about three years ago, effectively turning a hobby into a business, with the place now something of a centre for film nutcases from around the world who are desperate to find a copy of a film that means something special. His most recent request was for the complete BBC Shakespeare, a series that started in the 1970s, and went through to the early 1990s. And after a bit of a search he found the whole set of eighteen lurking on the shelves of a local collector who didn’t think he’d live long enough to watch them all again.

One of ‘John’s’ regular customers is local actor Richard Pasco - remember him in Room at the Top with Laurence Harvey - who, with his actress wife, Barbara Leigh Hunt, is, apparently, an avid collector of films from the 1940s and 1950s.

‘John’s’ little shop is therefore a haven, with images on the walls of men and women actually smoking in public, and sporting hairstyles (especially Dirk Bogarde’s vicious quiff in The Blue Lamp), which are a danger eye and limb.

I was in his shop the other month telling him about Michael Munn’s biography of John Wayne that I’d just finished reading and that somehow I had to get my hands on a copy of The Big Trail, Wayne’s first film in which he had a starring role.

“ Pity you haven’t got a copy.” I commented.

“ It just so happens…”