Telfer Stokes Interviewed by Cathy Courtney: Full Transcript of the Interview

NATIONAL LIFE STORIES

ARTISTS’ LIVES

Telfer Stokes

Interviewed by Cathy Courtney

C466/61 (tapes 1 – 15)

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The British Library National Life Stories

Interview Summary Sheet Title Page

Ref no: C466/61/01-06 Digitised from cassette originals

Collection title: Artists’ Lives

Interviewee’s surname: Stokes Title:

Interviewee’s forename: Telfer Sex: male

Occupation: Dates: b. 1940

Dates of recording: 1997.11.05, 1998.01.29, 1998.01.30, 1998.20.10, 1999.06.10

Location of interview: Interviewee's home, Yarrow, and British Library

Name of interviewer: Cathy Courtney

Type of recorder: Marantz CP430 and two lapel mics

Recording format: TDK C60 Cassettes F numbers of playback cassettes:

Total no. of digitised tracks: Mono or stereo: Stereo

Additional material at the British Library:

Interviewer’s comments:

What would you say today’s date was?

I’m really lost, I don’t even know what the date is. If the fair was at... I can’t even think. Are we into the sort of teens?

It’s actually the anniversary of the day I moved into this house.

Oh that must be about thirty years ago.

Ooh!

[LAUGHING] Twenty years ago?

Sixteen I think.

Sixteen. How come you actually have an anniversary of moving into the house? I don’t think I have that sort of thing.

Oh well the only reason is because it’s November the 5th.

Ah, well then that is easy to remember for other reasons, yes.

And what year would you think it is?

Oh, you’re going to make me do mathematics now. Something like ‘82 or something.

No no no, now.

Oh, what year? ‘97.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

If we can start at a very boring place, which is where and when you were born.

Yes. Well I was born, I believe the house was called Park Owls.

Called what?

Park Owls. There’s been a certain amount of controversy about the name of the house, I’m not quite sure why, but I always understood it is it’s name, I mean it is obviously... So I was born, anyway I’ll go in...I was born...right, I was born, well was I born in the house? I don’t think I was, I think I was...oh no I was, that’s right, that’s right, the whole story of me being born was, the nurse coming to the house and my mother had me in her bed, and it was at Park Owls. And that’s in Carbis Bay just outside St. Ives, which is where my parents went to live having moved from London. And so that was the 3rd of October 1940. I believe it was on a Thursday, so, my mother has always said, ‘And Thursday’s child has far to go’.

Putting you on the doorstep the moment you could walk.

[LAUGHS] So, that was Thursday the 3rd of October 1940. So that was just obviously after the war had started. And very touchingly my father had found my mother a cave somewhere in the vicinity in case the Germans invaded. Because, you know, up to that point she was pregnant obviously. And, it had running water, and this is all with the idea of the birth with the Germans having invaded. And meanwhile he was being drafted in the Home Guard, and in the early days they kept eyes on the horizon and then later on the idea of the parachutists etcetera, they kept their eyes on the skies, was the sort of general kind of comment. But, Carbis Bay, or rather Park Owls, overlooked Carbis Bay, so, and the garden was sort of, was like a sort of terrace, because the house is built into, sloping down into the, down to Carbis Bay itself, so we were sort of on a plateau overlooking the bay. But there were trees around the house, so that, I don’t actually remember being able to see the sea except when you are in the house, and it was on all sorts of kinds of levels, there was a terrace over a lower bit where my father used to keep his, where his sort of, his studio

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Page 3 if you like to call it, I don’t know, it wasn’t his studio, it was really, what was it called? It was called, it’s where he...actually he used to sleep down there; I always remember his bedroom and his working, his sort of study is really what it was called, was down in the lower part of the house which overlooked a sort of back road, and it was built on a kind of, almost like a cliff, and then there was the back road, and then there was another house below. And curiously enough, I really ought to say this, this was owned by my mother’s future second husband’s adopted...well, it was Francis’s, Francis Davison’s, what he called his mother, but I mean she had adopted him so, I don’t know what his relationship to her was, she was called Mrs Arbuthnot as far as I remember. And he evidently was visiting now and then and he would have been there when my parents were living just the other side of this thing. And in the Nicholson drawing which Ben Nicholson made of Park Owls from the lawn, you can actually see the house in the right-hand corner below Park Owls, the sort of...and you can see Godrevy Lighthouse and a bit of the bay, and the sort of pine trees which made it virtually impossible for me being rather small to see the actual sea from the lawn. There was one hoop, there was one croquet hoop in that drawing, and actually what there was was, this was a focal point for various sort of people to go and play croquet, my father was fairly kind of competitive. He started off with Ben and Barbara, evidently they had been...I mean, before my birth they had already stayed with my parents, had come down to[??] London, but there’s lots of stories about how they arrived in a taxi all the way from London. No? Well I certainly have heard it a few times. And I think my father was asked if he could pay for it or something, I can’t quite remember. But they came with a cook and a nanny, and triplets. And the triplets, the Nicholson triplets were born the same day as me but two years before. It didn’t seem a coincidence to anybody, but it was, I mean it really was.

Did you grow up knowing them at all, or not?

No I didn’t. I mean I only met Kate due to the fact that she was married to Alan Bowness, is that right? And so, the first time I ever really met her any other than being a child, and I can’t actually remember if we did actually meet, was when she was, many many years later. So no, absolutely, connection to me. But curiously enough I was at school with Tim Nicholson, who wasn’t Ben Nicholson’s part of, and

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Page 4 certainly not Ben and Barbara’s part of the family, it was Ben Nicholson’s brother’s side of the family, and last night at Margaret’s opening, Jane Kasmin was there who was married to Kasmin but she was the elder daughter of Tim Nicholson who was...and they were both all, the three of them were all children of Ben Nicholson’s brother, who is an architect and I can’t remember his actual surname, I never met him.

It wasn’t Kit, Kit Nicholson?

Yes, it probably was.

Oh right.

Yes, Kit Nicholson, it was. And he was married to someone called EQ.

Yes.

Yes. Well that was their mother.

And do you feel linked to them in any way, or is too tenuous?

The Nicholsons?

Mm.

Well I feel that today because I bumped into Jane, and I didn’t...to be honest I saw her at this opening and I thought, I can’t think who that is but there was something vaguely familiar about her. It’s not as if I really knew her, but I...because somehow Kasmin came into my life in various sort of points when I was living in New York when I was about 20, 22, and then it went on and on, you know, via the years, as a painter in Bond Street and Kasmin Gallery and Knoedler and all that, Jane would appear, you know, every now and then in sort of... So in a funny sort of way I’ve probably seen more of her than I even saw of Tim, who has become quite reclusive I believe.

But when you bump into her like that now, do you sort of think, oh right, well now we’ll start seeing each other, or do you...?

No.

It’s just a sort of passing in the night.

Isn’t it extraordinary, I never think of that. I never think there actually is anything more than kind of connections that exist in the past. In conversation one discovers a thinking person that one hasn’t had that image of, but when I said to her, for instance last night, I said, ‘Well perhaps it was because...’, she said, ‘Oh...’ I said, ‘I believe, I hear Tim is married,’ or something, and she said, ‘Married? Oh no no no, no. Tim’s never been interested in women.’ And I thought, oh gosh, now I have to return to this image of Tim as I always knew him as a schoolboy, which was a sort of, sort of rather extraordinarily, rather over-developed in lots of physical attributes, you know, like, older than everybody else, looking older, and yet almost more childlike in other ways. And kind of fun in a certain kind of limited sort of way, but certainly not my best friend. And I said, ‘Oh well, perhaps he was...’ I just came out with this comment, ‘Oh well, perhaps he was so much in love with his mother that he never...he never would have found anyone who would come up to it.’ And she said, as if it was a revelation, she said, ‘Oh, that must have been it.’ I mean, that to me, this sort of lack of analysis, couldn’t possibily have put that person as an intimate friend, because I would have accepted that as being almost kind of given, and it was a part of what would have been understood and not something that would be a revelation, but I think, it was interesting that she believes that that could be the case.

Did you know EQ?

Not really very well, no. I mean certainly the only times I really came across her was when Tim would, when I was, a sort of post-school period where I saw Tim a little, and we were invited to a meal or something, I can’t remember the occasions, but she was certainly there, and she also referred... Oh, also when we were schoolboys, yes,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Page 6 they lived in Cranborne or somewhere like that, and they all had a collection of Rileys I seem to remember, and we would go on a weekend out and it was very kind of them to sort of have this group of, the art room as we were called, the art crowd, we spent most of our time in the art room, at Bryanston.

And what do you remember about the way they lived? Do you remember their house?

Yes, kind light and open and, oh, a kind of recognisably, something that was quite close to the kind of sense of home that I would have had from my...but with a lot more money. I was always thinking, gosh, where is all this money coming from? It’s definitely there. And you always felt that, because of that, they were fairly cut off in certain kinds of aspects to certain experiences in life if you like. I mean maybe they gained others.

Well at the time you must have known them, Kit’s death must still have been relatively new. I mean he died in the Forties didn’t he, but it was certainly after the war.

Yes. I thought the Fifties, early Fifties.

He was dead by ‘51, the Festival of Britain.

Right, yes.

So, I think it might have been just in the Forties.

Well I...that would be between that period and about ‘58 which was when I left, I went to art college, so...so it was I would say ‘56, ‘57, something like that, it would have been in my last years at Bryanston.

So did you and Tim, given that your father was not a very present figure in your childhood, would you and Tim have ever talked about things like that, or not?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Page 7 No. No. In fact I was always rather trying to figure out how he related in, you know, I had to be, it had to be explained to me by someone else at one point that they weren’t anything to do with the then Ben and Barbara family. I mean I was very vague about... It was like, we all knew at school that we had series of vaguely kind of important antecedents, I mean, who related to certain sort of people, so therefore that was why we found ourselves in the kind of group as a sort of series of people who shared something. But the point was, there was still the moment to find out whether we were really artists, and I very much doubted to a certain extent that I had proved...I was going to have to go much further along the line to find out really whether I felt that what in a sense was a given thing was really me or not. And I was quite happy to play-act at being an artist as a schoolboy, and be interested in all the extremes of, what I saw as the ultimate extreme, was publication of all those things in ‘Life Magazine’ on Jackson Pollock and de Kooning, Rothko and Clifford Still, and that sort of publication was very influential, we all started making, working on the floor and throwing paint around, and that was our basic contribution to that.

But going back briefly to Tim Nicholson, I mean presumably then he would never have talked with her about William Nicholson, and that would not have been...?

Actually funnily enough I think we had. I think there was more connection on that level, yes. I was certainly...but that was because it was covered in art history or something, that we had to study for art A’levels, the Beggarstaff Brothers, is that right? Something Pryde and William Nicholson, that’s right. And we all were quite well aware in a curious sort of way that Tim was related in some way.

And did you feel that that was a bit of a burden to him, or was it something he revelled in, or what?

No actually we really loved it, it was great, we felt...it was all part of our kind of, sort of game really, it was quite interesting. Because there wasn’t just Tim, there was...there was someone called James Scott, who was a great friend, who was much more of a friend of mine who was the son of William Scott, in this group; someone called Michael Buhler who was my best friend but his father was Robert Buhler, R.A.,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Page 8 but we considered that slightly sort of, too traditional, but Michael I like very much. And, I mean, let me think who were the other people. Someone called Bob Cox who I went and lived with in New York, who had no, his parents were simply, they made shoes and they lived in Leicester, and it was a sort of family of shoemakers probably. And lots of other people that had no, none of this. But we all kind of... Oh there was someone called Heyward Hill who was a grandson of Derek Hill I suppose. Do you know Derek Hill? No. Oh Derek, oh well...

Is he a portraitist?

Yes, he is...

And he’s in his eighties now.

He’s still alive, and he...he sort of got himself connected up with the Royal Family I think.

That’s right, and he goes to Sandringham.

Probably.

And Roger de Grey used to write about him in some way.

Yes, and he was a friend of Robertson, the one who ran the...I mean he was, he was gay basically, and he did lots of portraits of nice young men. And Ann, my aunt, was very connected, because he was a friend of my father’s you see, Derek Hill. He was, Derek Hill was present particularly when Adrian died and Ann was at a loose end and she went on all sort of tours of Turkey and went up minarets and things like that, and it was Derek who organised these things.

And did you enjoy his company, was he important to you in any way?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Page 9 Derek? Well, it’s quite complicated. The revelations of my father’s homosexual life as it was before he met my mother has only just in a sense come out, and, although I...and so therefore, there was a sort of procedure. I mean I knew that he had had a homosexual past because when I was a schoolboy, at again Bryanston, he took me out to Cranbourne Chase I think it was, or am I getting this mixed up? where a group of homosexuals lived in a house together, old friends of his, musicians, let me think who they, what they were called. They all had sort of double-barrelled names, and they all came from kind of... And they had all been Oxford friends and it was quite obvious that... What was it, Eddie Sackville-West was one of them, yes, Eddie Sackville- West, yes, he was sort of music critic of ‘The Times’ I think, was he? Anyway, and, so having been introduced to them, I mean that was really an extraordinary kind of leave-out for me to be taken to this house, which, I mean he had said, ‘Oh well it’s quite close, we can go and see these old friends of mine.’ Derek Hill somehow then...if I switched to the way Derek would be asked for a dinner, and so, Ann my aunt would be cooking a meal frantically in the bottom of the house, and we would be having sherry upstairs, and Derek would be sitting in his corduroy, loose corduroy trousers in the same way that I realised the Duncan Grant school would do, the same, almost propping up the mantlepiece. And, I mean I noted that my father was quite excited about this, and I was being shown off as the young man really, and Derek would be observing, and asking me questions of course, and my father would be interceding. And, I think in a way he was playing a little game, because he threw me into psychoanalysis at the age of 18 because he thought I probably was homosexual, and obviously what had happened to him was that his analysis with Melanie Klein had converted him from being a rampaging homosexual to affairs with women and finally meeting my mother. But the extraordinary thing is that if I really look back I don’t think she was completely aware of his homosexual past, and even when he married Ann, my aunt, she only knew a certain amount. And what I’m saying is that, this biography that’s meant to be published but isn’t still, Richard Reid[ph] has gone into the whole homosexual phase in great detail, and he keeps on asking the family if they’re going to be upset by these particular things, and everyone says, well, you know, really what are you worried about? curiously. I mean why curiously, I mean I don’t mean curiously, I mean they mean, well why should you be worried, it’s not going to affect us. But the thing is, the reason...I mean, I suppose the two-prong thing,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Page 10 which is that in a way they would like to know about it via Richard Reid[ph], because they never did know about it. And I mean, my mother would still say, only a few years ago quite innocently, ‘Oh, Adrian would take me to the ballet where Massine was dancing, and then he would take me back to the flat or the hotel or whatever it was, and then he would go back to the party’. So whether he was or did have an affair with Massine is irrelevant, but I don’t think at that point, by the time he had met Margaret, my mother, he would have...he would have been, but certainly Massine quite easily might have been, although Massine probably was completely non-sexual, I don’t know. I mean...

But I am interested in this idea of being analysed and coming out not a homosexual, I mean that’s a very unconvincing possibility really. Do you think he was simply bisexual all his life and made decisions?

Well, I mean a sort of way of feeling that is perhaps his advice to my mother which was, about me was that, of course if you are too close to him, he will be unable to find anyone as a substitute, so this was all, you know, this idea that Telfer could never find a wife or a woman or be interested in women in general if his mother became too dominant. But I actually think my mother used that argument as a way of being able to get along with her work and her life. And so when I said, well there was one or two instances really where I felt totally abandoned, and I’ve never been able to really come to terms with that kind of grief that it really did cause, she has always come up with that riposte. But I think on the whole she couldn’t help doing what she did, which was that she was so hurt by the divorce, by my father leaving her, that she ultimately identified me very much as a substitute for him, and she had to in a sense find someone else who she could confide in to a certain extent and talk it out with, and go on and on and on talking about it. And curiously enough the only person that really would be enough for her - because it was, I mean it has made her the person she is, this divorce - was someone who had equally been hurt by a similar situation, but even hurt worse because they never knew who their parents were, and who had been probably, suffered amazing kind of rejection all their lives, who she could mother, and ultimately that was Francis. And so she...and she she adopted him, and I felt basically left out in the cold. This was a slow process, and I think not being able to really relate

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Page 11 to my mother and always being in conflict was due to quite a lot of reasons but one of the things was that, after Adrian died particularly, and again when Francis was dying, I always assumed that she was playing this game over Adrian in front of Francis to sort of hurt him, but actually it turned out that the only reason that she had brought up these things about Adrian in front of Francis as he was dying was because I was in the room, and because I represented Adrian. And I was never there in, never there in the room obviously with her making comments, when I wasn’t there, and she didn’t make comments about Adrian.[??] So I finally came to this conclusion, oh my God! I’m a substitute for him.

How did you find that out?

Well I confronted her with it. We went on a walk in Southwold and I said, ‘Look, this is what’s been happening, I hadn’t realised this, but when you see me you basically see Adrian, and that’s why when Francis was dying of cancer you came out with all this, and he would go, “Oh oh oh oh,” like this, because he didn’t want to hear about it any more, and, he had lived through it, and so on.’ And I said, ‘It wasn’t to get at him, it was to get at me.’ And she burst into tears, and I said...she said, ‘How can you think like this?’ I said, ‘Well I just do, it is my way of surviving, I have... I mean after all, I have been through analysis quite intensly in lots of ways and forms, I’ve made it my own decision to have been involved in it again as well, and it hasn’t been something that I’ve been thrown into by my father. And I see it, and I’m afraid I have to say this to you, that I feel this is what it is. I could be wrong.’ But actually it dealt me, it finally...it was the right thing, because ever since that point there’s been no, none of the same kind of searching, you know, sort of worrying comments, deep probes, need to identify me as Adrian and the villain of the piece as it were, which is what it was.

What kind of deep probes would they have been?

Actually not deep probes, I’m really trying to find the analogy, and I’m probably saying deep probes for me, to find it. But it was just her having to...she was...because she...I mean it’s absolutely astonishing. If someone is so analytical about every little move they’ve made and how they’ve obviously, Melanie Klein has made the

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Page 12 conversion, yes, to go back to your original question, yes I do believe that Melanie Klein moved Adrian from a homosexual to a heterosexual, but I don’t know how and why, I mean he obviously had to be because he was desperately unhappy about being homosexual. But I mean you know, to keep going on to that, and married Ian Angus who was a homosexual who had also been through analysis, and after all, isn’t any longer so, there’s got to be something in both my mother and aunt which favours, what you might call an effeminate man or a man who has homosexual inclinations, and both who have fairly strong, both female and male attributes within them, they must be attractive to homosexuals or past homosexuals. I, you know, to actually be able to come to some sort of final conclusion about that is really, you know, is like asking to sort of, an answer to something totally improbable, you know, totally un- analysable in a way.

But do you think when you felt your father was flaunting you slightly as a young man, do you think he wanted you to be homosexual?

No I think he was trying to find out if I was, yes. No.

It’s very intrusive.

Yes, but I mean I kind of quite enjoyed it. Actually he was also trying to promote me.

Mm. And when you were taken...

He was trying to help me, he felt, my way of being able to help Telfer is to propose that he is attractive to, say, Derek Hill, whatever, you know.

And when you were taken to the house at Cranbourne Chase, at that point did you begin to understand what was going on, or was it very mysterious to you?

No, the most embarrassing thing is, I didn’t want my father to say, ‘Look, is there anything you want to know? I will tell you anything you want to know.’ And I was thinking, oh my God! he wants me to talk about sex, and at that age I was totally and

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Page 13 utterly embarrassed to be able to talk about anything like that with him. But what he was asking me was, perhaps you know I was a homosexual, and you want to know all about it; I will tell you. And I would say repeatedly, ‘I have no interest, I do not want to know.’ So really it was for his benefit, not mine, that’s how I see it now looking back. And I just felt acutely embarrassed to be able to talk about such a thing in front of him. Maybe I might say, the way we were able to talk through sort of a series of very strong conflicts, I mean we really did get at each other’s goat, there’s no doubt about it, we didn’t get on. I loved him and he obviously returned that love too, he did love his children enormously with a great passion, but it involved all the conflicts that went with that as well. And the normal mode, I mean for instance when I was living at Church Row with him and Ann it was appalling, we would fall out practically every night, and I would throw absolute fits of anger. I mean he would lose his...he would...I suppose at any kind of smallest bit of criticism of my appearance or the way I ate, which was always the way that he brought it up, I would throw everything back at him, and be very very insulting, and try and hurt him as much as I could. But eventually we did come to a truce, and the latter side of that was, I would.....

End of Track 1: Tape 1: Side A

It would be that I would arrive for a meal at Church Row and he would actually insist that I rang up at least once a week, I’d say, ‘No I can’t possibly do that’. He said, ‘Well I used to ring up my mother three times a week,’ and I said, ‘Well what’s what got to do with me ringing you, may I ask?’ And I think he did see himself as sort of a mother figure in a funny sort of way, he was... So I would go to...I would come into the house, I’d go upstairs, he would be sitting at the desk looking out of the window with his back to me, he would sort of half turn. ‘Hello old chap,’ or something. And then there would be the armchair facing the opposite direction which he would read his newspaper in, and, ‘Sit down’. And we would sit back to back more or less. And it was always the confrontation of initially meeting that was most difficult, and this was the way we got over that, by not actually looking at each other. And then gradually we talked in him looking out of the window and me looking the other way, we would actually be able to feel, we would be able to steal a glance. I think it was my appearance that he found so hard to take.

What did you look like at this point?

He thought I was extremely aggressive. I don’t know what I looked like, I don’t think I...I think I looked sort of wild and unkempt, that was about it, I was an art student basically.

What sort of age are we talking about?

From 18...well no, I left Church Row after rather a hard two years, or even a year and a half, so I must have been... Well what age I’m talking about is when I was, the early...well I would say in the last two or three years of his life, so we’re talking about the late Sixties, early Seventies. He died in ‘72 having just barely made his 70th birthday, so really he was 69.

Had you become afraid that he would die, was that part of it, part of this battle?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 2: Tape 1: Side B Page 15 Well he did, we did move to each other, he did actually...he did actually move, he became more tolerant towards me, that was really what it amounted to. I supported my position, he supported his, which was that I was an aggressive young man, not quite the mould that he wanted me to be, and I think I became more and more less the mould. But then he became more accepting near the end.

Did anybody else find you aggressive at this point?

Some people did, yes, yes, I was pretty. There was no doubt in my mind, there was nothing... I think, yes, I think I was highly competitive, it was on...I was trying to make way for myself, and I found that basically, when it came, although I loved him very much, this is talking about my father, I had to make my own way in the world and I was not going to go by the sort of things he was offering and his friends and their reputation. It was an immense challenge, I mean he had more reputation than he does now, I mean...I mean he was a mystery to a lot of people, and he was a great figure to a lot of people. I don’t know why it’s all lost at present, I mean, perhaps it will come through again, but... He had a magnetism to a lot, a lot of people respected him, also were fearful of him, afraid of him. I had none of that; my main thing was to extract myself from his influence basically and make my own way, and it created a kind of aggressive person if you like.

Would you actually have read him?

I find it impossible to read him. I tried. I tried. I see it in my own children, how could they possibly look at our books, you know, or my books, you know. They look at them with pride but only with pride; this is my father’s work sort of thing. That’s how I looked at his work. No, I was only able to look at his, read his books, and again they were...I found the entrée into his books with the last, again, it must be the last[, which is a collection of essays that he wrote at the very end, or over a period of time but they were all, they were published by Cartinet Press after he died, and I really thought it was...well it was a new form, I mean he never had, as I can remember, essays in a sense published like that, but they were more available for that reason, they weren’t novels or... And, I got a lot out of that, that particular book, I really did.

And do you re-read it?

I’m actually in a position to have to sort of look at certain things now because I’m one of his literary executors, and certain things have been published in French and Italian, just, you know, and we did go through something in ‘Le Promeneur[ph] series where they wanted to print ‘Venice’, and I had to read three different versions of ‘Venice’ to find out what they were talking about, because there are actually three different versions, there’s ‘Venice’ that’s published by Faber, there’s ‘Venice’ that’s published by Duttons, there’s one that he did, a version of ‘Venice’ which is basically collections from other books, which he called, which he did with John Piper, who did the illustrations, I suppose the sort of, a kind of what you might call a livre d’artiste in a sense, where he did the text. But the illustrations by John Piper are absolutely appalling, absolutely appalling, and I was really relieved when ‘Le Promeneur’[ph] said that they weren’t going to, they weren’t even interested in putting one on the cover of this book. I think they published a little sort of paperback with just the text, and I had to get someone to go over the translation, that it was being translated in French, and we found all sorts of bits of it that were totally untranslatable, so we then questioned it, and the translator turned out to be really good and they acknowledged the problems and so on, and that’s as far as I went. So I in a sense was reading it for sort of reasons other than pleasure if you like, if you could call it pleasure; it’s hard work reading Adrian Stokes.

And how much do you think about him now? I mean we’re obviously thinking about him for a reason at the moment.

Yes.

But is he a solid presence really?

Not quite so much as my mother at the present, and I would say my life’s been fairly hard in the sense that if I’ve wanted to establish something individually for myself I’ve not only had one parent to cope with but two, and an aunt. But then obviously I,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 2: Tape 1: Side B Page 17 you know, in a funny sort of way gave an entrée in a certain kind of way to a world, to Helen for instance, you know, so I am not only...I can’t deny the involvement is there, and the existence of it was all there as a sort of born-into situation, but that I carried on too through all the people that I know, and I’m always basically trying to introduce them to the...possibly to a more...perhaps...perhaps why I wanted it, why I’ve always questioned my reasons for wanting to collaborate in the first place, perhaps it’s because it might be something to do with competing with my parents in a very subtle way, which is that I wanted people to come in on something that I found for myself in a sense, which was in a sense opposed to their things.

But I suppose too, although you in a sense inherited this circle, it was a very fractured environment in that you had to, you were perpetually having to take a position or finding yourself in a position apropos them, it wasn’t an easy environment to inherit was it?

No. Yes. Yes, well that’s the aggression that came into it. It’s really what my father identified really.

Mm. But also it must have taken a lot of emotional energy being part of it; it wasn’t as if it was a wonderfully creative, jumping-off ground that left you free to just get on with whatever it was you needed to do.

Oh yes.

It needed to be attended to a lot didn’t it.

Yes, it was death, death. I could not follow in the same mould. I mean, I would say to someone like Jake Tilson, ‘Don’t you find it difficult with your father being a well- known painter? How come you can be doing...how come you don’t even, say, this is me and this is him?’ Because at certain points, you know, I think he did a book on Jake - I mean he did a book on Joe, or, I think he did, or am I thinking of someone else? At any rate there are people...or, I’m thinking of Lanyon actually, I’m thinking of Lanyon, that’s right, he did a book on Andrew Lanyon.

Peter.

Peter Lanyon, sorry, so I’m talking about Andrew Lanyon. I asked the same question, and that’s a unique question you ask of any people who have had parents who have got a... And I was astonished from the Jake reaction, I think I said that to you yesterday or the other day or something. But I think actually looking...

Can you just put on the tape what Jake’s reaction was?

Oh well, he said, ‘No, no problem,’ you know, which was a sort of throwaway line. And I said, ‘Well all I can say is, a tremendous problem, I think it’s a big big problem, I mean...’ He said, ‘I’ve never thought about it.’ So you know, I felt, oh gosh, cover cover cover. But then, is it my role to always analyse these things so deeply? Does it do any good, you know? I mean maybe he gets away by not doing so. I don’t know, I just don’t know. I mean maybe he has found a way by not analysing, you know, I mean so that everyone has a different approach. But certainly with Andrew Lanyon I would have said that was, doing a book on Peter Lanyon, absolutely extraordinary. But then he might be re-writing it from his, you know, he might be re-hashing his father in a sense.

Did you know Peter Lanyon?

I met him on my only visit back to Park Owls, which brings us back into the first question you asked me about, where I was born. Because the Lanyons moved into the same house. And he, and then Patrick Heron was the sort of pivotal person, I mean, because, I remember many visits to go to Patrick’s house, Patrick and Delia, as we all sort of knew them, in what was off Holland Park. But because Patrick went to school with Francis, so my mother met Francis via Patrick Heron.

What are your memories...?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 2: Tape 1: Side B Page 19 Well let me just go...I’ve moved my...you asked me about going to Park Owls and meeting Peter Lanyon. Is that, I went down to Cornwall and stayed at Eagle’s Nest, because there was a friend of mine at art college who was getting married, and this is the only visit that I’ve made to St. Ives since I was born there, and Patrick did a kind of round where he said, ‘Look, I’m going to take you and show you...I mean he decided that I ought to go and see Park Owls, and Peter Lanyon was ill in bed with ‘flu and it might have been the very thing that I picked up, because within about three or four days I was down with it too, and... But anyway, that was my visit to, my only contact with Peter Lanyon and the only sort of visit, re-visit to the house, where everything seemed considerably smaller of course.

So really if Peter had flu, it wasn’t a very significant encounter.

He lying in bed? Yes.

And did you know Andrew quite well, or not?

I didn’t really. I mean there was every opportunity to stay in touch or get in touch. We meet at book fairs, that’s about it, isn’t it extraordinary. It’s not as if, you know, common ground on a kind of family basis is necessarily the reason why a person is important to you. I’ve actually always, I think possibly always tried to make my own way without those things, because I’ve been desperate to actually have my own...my own sort of...I don’t think I think of being an artist as a career but in this instance I suppose you could say that’s what it is.

And why is there controversy about whether the house was called Park Owls or not?

Oh, because of the Richard Reid[ph] thing. I think he actually, because he is writing a biography he’s looked into everything and he said, ‘Surely it’s...’ I still can’t quite remember what he said, and whether it was spelt differently from what I understand or...

How do you understand it to be spelt?

I just thought it was, because I left at the age of five so I could probably hardly read it, but it was written on the gate, I thought it was just P-A-R-K Owls, as O-W-L-S. I mean he has come out with something else.

So it would be one word, Parksowls?

No, no no, Park Owls, two words.

Right.

It’s nothing much. I could be still wrong about it but it doesn’t matter, I just retain the...

And did you know your grandparents on either side?

Certainly my mother’s grandparents - my mother’s parents, yes. The thing with my mother is, there’s this really historic photograph with her as a baby sitting on my grandmother’s knee, so, my grandmother is in her twenties, my mother is a baby because she’s the eldest of the family; next to her is my great-grandmother who was still alive when my first son was born, she lived to 105; and next to her is the great- great-grandmother, and they were all called Margaret. My mother had been handed this cup with Margaret written on it, and she said, she said, ‘Well, you...I suppose we can always miss out a generation with you but I had always hoped that you were going to call your daughter Margaret so she would inherit this cup’. She never understood at the time how absolutely appalling this idea appeared to me at the time that Emily as we called her was born, and we called her Emily, and, I mean looking back I can understand now what it was that was going on in her head, but there was such an enormous gap, and, should I say a space between us, not a gap, or perhaps a gap, on reading and understanding reasons which was not happening in a very connected kind of way at all at that point, where I probably was in absolute opposition to practically everything she was saying at the time.

No, not really, because, I think the photograph of the four Margarets is, will remain and is, the four Margarets, and there’s no reason... I broke the chain by being the first boy in that chain if you like, because they were all the eldest child apparently, that was the other thing. And so, to have handed on to my daughter, or to call her Margaret or, would have just been sort of really weird, and...so yes, that was the force. But the photograph itself tells a story, and...

And when you knew your grandmother, where did she live and what was the environment?

Well, Omo and Porpoise they were called, Omo and Porpoise, my grandmother was called Omo. I mean I expect you think that’s soap powder but as far as I’m concerned I didn’t know what...there was as much as...there was never such a thing as Omo soap powder when her name was to my mind.

This was her actual given name, or it was an affectionate name?

I don’t know, I think it was my mother and the general family that called her Omo, and it was passed on. I mean I always called my mother Ayah, as a matter of fact, I was allowed to keep her name. This was my...my first words I suppose. Apparently it means nurse in India, but that of course hadn’t hurt anybody. But my name for my father had to be changed because I called him Shoddy. I saw him very much as a road mender, someone who works on the road, and I was utterly obsessed with the fact that he was a...yes, he was one of these people who hack away at the road with a pick, and I called him Shoddy. And I think they said, well, they got me to call him Daddy. I mean why I don’t know, I mean Shoddy as far as I’m concerned was the appropriate name for him. So anyway my grandparents, let me go back to that. Yes, they were, my grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, they had borne my, my grandparents had met as missionaries in China, as Presbyterian missionaries, in the Presbyterian enclave in a place up in the mountains, sort of east of Hanoi, I don’t know quite where. My mother was born in China. My grandfather was recalled to fight in the First World

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 2: Tape 1: Side B Page 22 War, so, she was born in 1914 and he came back in that year and went straight to the trenches as a sort of padre I think.

And, did you grow up knowing stories about missionary China or not?

Not really, not much. My mother, after all, had heard...she talks about the journey, she did remember coming back, then she could have only been one, so I find it very hard to believe that she does remember that, but in her sort of talk about it she said she remembers the Bass Rock; coming into Edinburgh in a boat there’s this big rock called the Bass Rock. And she also remembered her grandmother’s house which was in Berwick, which is quite, North Berwick, it’s sort of...and that’s where they stayed initially and started off, and my grandfather had a church called St. Peter’s which is now a gallery in, curiously enough, in, quite near North Berwick, and what’s the place called? It’s got a golf course. God! I can’t think.. It’ll come back in a minute. Anyway, when I was... Yes, about ‘47/48/49 I believe the whole family assembled in the existing parish manse of where my grandparents were stationed if you like, and this was somewhere near Montrose, and I remember that very vividly, the sort of, the sort of...we had...there was a pump in the kitchen for water, there was a big pump, and you had to pump it every morning, or, I didn’t, but all the sort of uncles and, there was paraffin lamps that always stood on the kitchen table and then went to the different parts of this enormous house, it seemed. Damp, there was a wonderful smell of damp. My grandfather chopping up wood for the fire in the sitting-room, and there were two pianos in the sitting-room. The family was very musical, and my grandmother played the piano and I think my mother and my aunt all played the piano. He had an enormous study with a big, enormous desk that he wrote his sermons at.

Was he involved with you, did he have a relationship with you?

He was a wonderful man. What I actually...well they were both wonderful, I actually adored my grandmother too. I mean she would have lived for ever if she hadn’t been knocked over by a scooter in Edinburgh, it was a great pity. I mean didn’t die but she simply lost her head, she cracked her head on the road and ended up by just being

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 2: Tape 1: Side B Page 23 unable to look after herself and died in a home. But she, I mean like her mother who lived to 105 she was, had everything to go on with.

How old was she when she died?

She was in her, she must, I mean she should have...I think in her eighties.

Oh right.

But she should have, she had every reason for going on, I mean, she was a very resourceful woman. Yes, I would say the thing I can give them most was the way they would take the grandchildren for a rest into their bed, and he would put on his black band, in the middle of the after...well after lunch, we would all be resting, we had to have rests after lunch, it was a sort of routine. But if I was on my own, if there were no cousins and so on there, they would simply, I would be taken to their bed, and I thought that was...oh it was a lovely thing, that, I remember it vividly. Anyway I have a memory of it. I don’t know why, it had nothing but just kindness involved.

When you say a black band, you’re talking about an eye band, to keep the light out?

Yes, to stop the light, yes.

And presumably you wouldn’t have been in either of your parents’ beds really?

Oh yes, I was in my mother’s bed, yes. Yes, definitely, I remember lying on my mother’s bed looking out the window and seeing the rain pouring down and there was like a, probably a telephone wire or something outside the window, and I would watch the water going down in dribbles, watch it for... I remember lying in bed and doing that. Not in my father’s bed, no, and my father’s bed was at the other end of the house in his study, at least by the time I was aware of it; I mean there was this double bed where my mother slept. But apparently he never slept with her after I was born, that was ultimately the final thing, that, I don’t know whether he was so utterly disgusted by the whole thing of, or whether the whole...well I don’t know what it was, but I

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 2: Tape 1: Side B Page 24 mean certainly they were in conflict, I remember, a lot, and they were always arguing, and he would often take his pudding, as it was, he would have, downstairs to eat at lunch time.

Was he there at your birth, do you know?

He must have been around, I don’t know if he was in the room. I think, I remember, I seem to remember knowing he was waiting, it was the usual old thing, he was waiting, and the doctor arrived, he said, ‘Is it all right?’ I was born by that point and heard me crying. And the doctor said, ‘Oh they normally cry, it’s nothing to worry about,’ you know. In other words he was asking whether it is, has it got two legs, two arms, a head and ears and, is he a normal child? And the doctor said, ‘Oh, they normally cry.’ I just remember that story, him telling. So he was in a sense sitting downstairs somewhere, so he wasn’t in the room certainly, no. No, he didn’t witness the birth itself.

And do you know, I mean when you, I asked you about it, it sounded as though there were lots of stories attached to the build-up of it, you know, the doctor coming in and everything; I mean was it a very traumatic event from your mother’s point of view?

Well it was a little, it must have been, but of course she hadn’t decided on...there was a lot of trouble about, what are we going to call him or her? And I was actually called Telfer more or less at the last minute because, my father was being a market gardener, it was part of his sort of, he was digging a small field to plant either potatoes or cabbages, and that was his sort of role in the Home Guard, and, but there was no tractor so they would go down to the local employment office and he came back with someone called...I believe he was called Telfer MacPherson, he was a Scotsman, or Telfer McNeice or something, I believe, the story was he was called Telfer MacPherson. And, my mother said, ‘Oh...’ and this was only a week or so before. I mean most people say, ‘Oh so your father was the gardener,’ you know, or whatever. He wasn’t a gardener, he was actually helping to dig the field by hand. And I later discovered that Telfer, far from being the idea of the name Telfur or Telfor or Telfer, meaning sort of, it was apparently a name, a sort of arms-bearer coming over from

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 2: Tape 1: Side B Page 25 Normandy, someone who holds strong arms or, such armour, or such into[??] steel or something, I mean fer meaning metal. But it actually is quite a common sort of Scottish name, I mean if you look in the telephone book you will see lots of Telfers. And you know, even to the point where there was Telfer meat pies quite, which is often, actually, I never got called meat pie but I often suggested that if no one understood or remembered or could understand, just remember the meat pie.

Do you like it as a name?

Yes, I think I probably find it...I do now. I think it was a challenge. I remember when I was in...when I went to New York as a sort of postgraduate student after I left the Slade, a lot of the Americans said, ‘Oh, well, you’ll certainly have to be somebody with a name like that,’ and I thought, oh my God! this sort of, this thing has been made for me to have to live with, this name. But that was an amazing release I think, a release from all sorts of restrictions that had been placed upon me.

Going to America?

Yes. Yes.

And when you say your name was chosen at the last minute, do you know what you might otherwise have been called?

Yes, my father wanted to call me Philip after his elder brother who was killed in the trenches, in the First World War, and my mother didn’t want to call me that.

Because she didn’t like the name or she didn’t like the association?

I’m not sure, I never asked her that. But certainly my brother was called Philip and so someone was called Philip. My half-brother that is, Ann’s son. And then, you know, Ariadne, my half-sister, was called Ariadne after ‘The Thrill of Ariadne’ which was my father’s second book.

Yes, it is, considering she was basically retarded from birth, and has lived her life out in this Catholic convent. And, I think probably, I only see her at the most traumatic periods when she’s been pulled out of St. George’s or whatever it’s called, in Haywards Heath, taken to, where my aunt and Ian live.

End of Track 2: Tape 1: Side B

We’ll go back to Ariadne at the sort of time when we get to that part of the story really. Can I just take you back to your grandfather again. I mean, was he the sort of grandfather that you would have gone running up to when you first saw him and had hugs with and that kind of a relationship with, or was it more formal than that?

I think he did, I think on the whole he was much more available in certain sorts of ways, although he was quite a gruff old chap. The vision of him was that he would wear those kind of short...well, yes, the sort of wear, he would...the sort of pantaloon type of trousers which came up to the knee and then you had sort of long socks on. I don’t know what you call those.

Socks rather than white tights?

They aren’t tights, they’re like kind of, they were sort of...

Are they breeches? I’m not quite sure what breeches are.

Breeches, yes, they are, that’s the sort of thing he would wear. And so therefore it accentuated the shoes quite a lot, in some kind of curious way. He wasn’t very tall.

What would his shoes have been?

I’m not sure, but they somehow, they were usually black I think. I mean this is really, and this is something I’ve not thought about for, and never have I don’t think. But I do remember his obsession with the lawn, and he used to have one of those lawnmowers which you push, just has sort of blades that twirl round as you go along, and he got it down to the most unbelievable sort of height really. And then when the mole arrived there was no end of problems, you know, it was a major kind of... But I recognise all those kind of problems now these days because I do that sort of thing; I’ve been trying to catch a mole, one particular mole, it’s a sort of conversation that

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/6 Track 3: Tape 2: Side A Page 28 one gets into about lawns. I don’t have a lawn, I hardly ever take grass off like that, and we never even planted grass seed, it’s just wild grass, but...

But did he have a sense of humour about the mole, or not?

I think he did, and he got into everything he did. I mean he was...what was interesting about Porpoise was that he had lost faith. He had had these amazing doubts. I am not really quite sure about the whole business of being a preacher.

And when would you have become aware of that?

It was, I never was aware of it, until I was told that that’s really the story of my grandfather.

And was he dead by then?

Yes, I think, I suppose you’re right. I mean the thing was that with the kind of Presbyterian thing, the actual pulpit is the focal point in the church, it’s not the altar at all, and he would get up into this pulpit and he would launch himself with his loud voice, and my grandmother would be at the organ, I mean it was absolutely right out of that Dirk Bogarde and, almost - not Dirk Bogarde, sorry, what am I...yes it is, isn’t it? No, Humphrey Bogart and, you know, the ‘African Queen’ type of thing.

And when you witnessed that, did you think, oh there’s my grandfather, or did he appear to become somebody else?

It was...I mean the way he launched his voice and shouted and sort of almost spoke in tongues, although he didn’t, was quite a performance. I don’t think it was related really very strongly with the way one felt about him as a person, no, it was a bit like... It was quite disturbing initially but then we got used to it, I think I got round that.

And did you think of him as someone with any kind of special authority? Because he obviously had a semi-public role in that sense didn’t he.

Yes. I always liked his smell, he used to smell good, sort of...

Of what?

Kind of sweetish kind of herby smell. And, with those sort of, are they knickerbockers or...those kind of golfing sort of types of...somehow they were very tweedy, that was really what he wore now I think about it, it was a sort of, a sort of rather Scottish tweedy type of jacket and a sort of waistcoat and those breeches, I think they are called breeches aren’t they. And possibly brown shoes, I think they were black, I’m wrong about that.

I was going to say, are we talking brown tweed or what are we talking?

Oh we’re talking kind of greeny, yes. A kind of, a kind of, well just something very Scottish to be honest, you know, I mean, it was the whole idea of, the heather mix is really involved here which is something that Helen got involved with, with her textiles and, Donald Brothers[??]and stuff like that, and actually if I think about it, it’s very familiar in lots of ways.

But would he have asked you about what your world was, did he come down to your level, or was it really that he was the figure and you were embraced and carried along by him?

No, I didn’t. I mean I was, you see I was really up to the age of, I mean there was a point where I visited him in...this is really still talking about the manse of Dun near Montrose, and I was, you know, nine, eight, nine, ten, something like that. So, later on in Edinburgh he was a different person really in a certain sort of way, slightly lost to be honest, I mean without...he was retired and he would go to rugby matches and stuff like that. And, I don’t think he...I mean it wasn’t quite the same, I mean, the thing was that we would play all these games, the whole family would play them, when we...

Oh, kick-the-can was the major sort of family game.

Indoors or outdoors?

Oh no, this was in the garden. And there was a can and someone had to guard it, and everyone hid, and then you had to sneak up and kick it, that’s what it was, and then you became the defenders of the can and so on. And I remember literally pissing my pants sitting in this - with laughter - because someone had put, and I think it was my father, who was even drafted into this, I mean he was the most unlikely... Oh this was the great thing, was making fun of all these, everybody had to take part, and even though he wasn’t staying in the house, believe it or not, he was staying in the hotel, the local hotel, and coming to meals and things and going back for the night, ostensibly because there wasn’t room enough in the manse but it wasn’t that at all. He, I remember him poking his head into this bush which I was hiding above, sitting on a branch, and unable to contain myself with laughter, it was great fun.

And do you think he knew you were up there and was pretending not to?

Yes, absolutely, I knew he was putting it on.

So he was capable of that.

Oh totally, I mean oh my goodness, mean I’ve painted a...I’ve sort of given a certain kind of, later-on kind of images of him, but no, he was...oh no, not...I mean, oh gosh. Well how do you describe someone from all their sides? But anyway, yes, he was, he certainly...he certainly went down to, right down to the child level, he was very in touch with that, yes, definitely.

And when you say the fact there wasn’t a room was not the reason why he wasn’t staying in the manse, would that have been a mutual thing with your grandparents, or was it really coming from him?

They admired him immensely, and the greatest conflict my mother had with her parents was the way he took, they took, Adrian’s view on her divorce, they supported Adrian, and they were not in the slightest bit bothered about Ann. It was illegal at the time, she was only, I don’t know how old she was, 20, 19. It was meant to be incest, marrying your sister’s...you know, divorcing the other sister and marrying...I mean, I know, it was against the law at any rate, they couldn’t be married in this country and they had to get married somewhere else. And, they were terribly supportive of Adrian and great admirers of his. He could do practically what he wanted, and, it was an excuse to take me to the hotel and we played billiards in the billiard room and stuff like that. ‘Keep your eye on the ball Telfer,’ you know. ‘Pot the white. Can you?’ I would take in the sort of atmosphere and the smell of it all, and enjoy it, yes I loved it.

So that, we’re talking when he was still married to your mother?

No no no, this was after the divorce. But this is when the family was almost sort of trying to come to terms with all its separate bits. I have no memory of Francis in this whole thing I must say, he must have been somewhere.

Would your mother and Ann have been there at the same time?

No that’s a point, yes, yes. And my father was staying in the hotel, either, I’m not sure whether Ann was or not with him or not, I’m not sure. I think he was solitarily staying in the hotel, that’s the sort of thing, I mean, it was an extension of roughly how he used to come and visit me at a school I went to in, near Dover, later on, and he would go and take up residence in the Queens Hotel in Deal, Deal sort of, seafront basically, and he said he always favoured the Queens Hotel because there was no one in it, and, he liked to have a window out onto the sea. And that kind of thing comes into a lot of his writing anyway, so he sort of, but this would be taking place in Italy of course, not in Deal, Kent, but, I don’t know, it was re-playing that in a certain kind of way.

They don’t come to hand, they don’t come to mind at the present moment. I remember conversations, you see, our family were great meal-gatherers, and, round a table. Food, I remember picnics, we used to take food out, and we used to...we used to go to a place called Edzell which had, this is another family outing, and the grandparents were a focal point for the idea of outing and eating outside. We would actually eat at the slightest excuse with blankets outside, as long as it wasn’t raining. We would do these picnics when it was raining, and we would go to a certain place up a beautiful brown frothing river with rocks which if you got close to enough you couldn’t hear anyone speaking. And it was usually the duty of one uncle, my Uncle Duff or something, to set up a fire on a piece, on a little island in the middle of the river, but there were gamekeepers, or people keeping an eye on the place, and you weren’t supposed to have a fire, so they would continue to do this, and we wouldn’t have a picnic without a fire and cooking up something. And so they had to do, there were the people who gathered the wood and it was all organised. You see my grandparents...my uncle, after all, my mother...Uncle Dan, or Daniel, I don’t know, he was always Uncle Dan, became a captain in the Navy, and, it all came out of the fact that my grandparents’ life was spent with a little boat, and they used to sail, and it had no motor, and they used to sail all over the place, and so this kind of camping complex or context was related to the boat when they were my, when my parents were children they would do the most astonishing trips up the Caledonian Canal and out onto the west and then catching the tide and coming back in. Incredibly dangerous. They probably risked their lives more than a half a dozen times. My grandmother always throwing up and being sick. It was continued by my uncle and his family, they had a boat, he was in the Navy. My mother would absolutely insist that she wanted to sketch and do water-colours, and so they would have to go to some sort of remote place, and they would all have to wait till she was finished. So when she was going through Edinburgh Art College she made a series of demands, she would be there, but her demands were that she had to finish her things. And the whole family held on to her record of these trips and we didn’t have...I mean there were, there are shots of the family sitting and eating, everywhere, but it was the pictures she produced of the

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/6 Track 3: Tape 2: Side A Page 33 rocks, her water-colours and so on, and more importantly her oil painting of the boat, Puck, it was called Puck. There was a sort of family kind of iconography, legend if you like. So when we all gathered, all these different arms of the family, with my father as the sort of wrecker having divorced one and then married the other, and bringing all the children together and so on, but being also adored by the grandparents, we still continued these sort of expeditions up to Edzill, and various people having to go out and wade across the river to get to the island, to light the fire, to bring back the soup. It was all wildly exciting for me and my cousins, they were...I was the eldest actually, and then there were cousins...oh no, am I the eldest or not? Oh well, anyway, I’m either the eldest or, yes, I said I was didn’t I? I think I probably am. And then my uncle’s children came pretty close, and, cousins and so on.

This is the naval uncle?

Yes.

What’s his name?

Dan.

And what kind of a person was he?

Well he took on the mantle of my grandfather to a certain extent, yes.

But at the time you’re talking about, your grandfather was still hale and hearty?

Yes.

And was he a great friend as an uncle, or not?

My grandfather or my uncle?

Your uncle.

He was...he followed in the mould of my grandfather to a certain extent, he would go up and down the lawn playing the bagpipes, this is certainly a thing of my grand... I don’t think my grandmother actually did it, but certainly my uncle did. And actually he recently asked us if we, if any of our children were interested in bagpipes because he wanted to pass them on, and I said to Laurie, was he interested, and he said no. [LAUGHS] He said, ‘Well at least that’s straightforward.’ He’s still alive, you know, well of course he is because he’s not even older than my mother you see, because my mother’s the eldest, but they’re all in their eighties, and he lives on Mull. His wife’s died. But they are long-livers, they really are.

But, were you close to him?

Not really, no. I was called Terrible Telfer, that was my, that was my nickname, which I discovered through a cousin, Charlotte, my, the only cousin that I really was, am close to now, who was the youngest. You see, probably why...you asked me why am I not close to, say, why...am I in touch with Tim Nicholson, am I in touch with Jane Kasmin; all these reasons is that, in the generation I was brought up with, I never found any solace, I never found friends in it, I only found, I found connections with a generation, two generations beyond, below. So, Charlotte, the youngest cousin, the very youngest, was the most likely person that I would know in the family as a cousin, and indeed she is because she is a potter, and so on, and she has got lots of connections with Ann, my aunt, and she’s a great friend of Helen’s now. And, so I found out from her that, yes, the name for me was Terrible Telfer, because I was this complex, I suppose, rather difficult child.

And was it Terrible Telfer with affection or with a groan?

I don’t know. I’m not sure. I think I embodied the conflicts which was created in the family to a certain extent between Ann, my aunt, and my mother, and Adrian. Adrian was not liked by the other side of the family at all, they identified a Jewish element in him, and, this is my Uncle Dan who was probably fairly prejudiced, and they came from very...I mean after all he was in the Navy and he was married to somebody

And so Dan sided with Margaret, or it wasn’t as open as that?

Yes. Yes, definitely.

And are they close to each other still?

Yes, they’re quite close, although they’re not in touch an awful lot. They certainly were as children though, because he was, they were the couple, the two children who were about the same age, yes.

And there were the three children, Ann, Margaret and Dan?

No there were four. Uncle Duff more or less killed himself, a very unhappy person, probably one of the most sensitive in the family. He died on a, well he went, eventually ended up in India as a, he wanted to become a yogi, is that necessarily what...I mean... But he was unable to join the sect because he was European, and he went through kind of fasting and he over-fasted, and died, basically we understand that.

And how old was he then?

He was probably in his late thirties or early forties I should say.

So did you know him at all?

He used to take me from the south of France, which is another episode of my life, where, to school, on a couple of occasions, and he was the one who I, when I was, when there was a disembarkation at Calais or, no sorry, at Dover, that’s right, I had left him and wandered around the ship, running around, and fooling around, and found, I’d gone back to where I thought he was sitting and found that everyone had

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/6 Track 3: Tape 2: Side A Page 36 disembarked and there was no one there, and I sat down and thought he had left. And it was only when the captain took this tearful child on, that we went to search for him and found him sitting in a deck below in exactly the same position, totally oblivious to the fact that everyone had been getting off, looking into space. And, so, he was deaf, he was seriously deaf. And of course my father had his theories about it, that it was psychosomatic. You can imagine the problems that went on in my family.

And do you remember Duff as being part of these picnics and these expeditions?

He probably was the person who waded across the river, he was enormously strong, very very strong. Very fit, very compact, and incredibly sensitive. He was just really... He was closer to Ann, and, they were very very close as children, and when you see a photograph of all those children, he comes over as something really rather different and very sensitive looking.

And was he kind to you as a child, do you remember him in that light?

I teased him, he unfortunately was very sensitive, and unfortunately I identify somebody who was very vulnerable. And unfortunately the age that I knew him, I would have appreciated him in another way later on, but I was far too young to understand his major major problems. And I think he avoided me to a certain extent because he knew... There was a contact, there was a contact, but it was not verbal, I mean it really wasn’t, because he could not hear what one was saying. He was into, he was so inside himself, so continuously. But he wasn’t, you know, he wasn’t mentally deranged if you like at all, he was very very on the ball.

Do you know what your mother’s relationship with him was?

Tremendous, tremendous sadness when he died. Actually it was an absolute overwhelming grief. Yes, I do remember that, yes.

And do you know what happened to him in his life before that, as an adult, was he able to have any kind of work or, he couldn’t do that?

Well you see, there was Dan, drafted into the Navy, going to do things for him and his family, this is how my grandfather saw it I think, and Duff was also pushed in and it wasn’t his thing at all. He was in the Chindits I believe, and he fought in Burma and then in India and I think that’s where his sort of, the deafness started, but it was again, my father would say, well, was this not the beginning of the neurosis as it were, if you like. And, he went back to India due to that. But I mean, to draft him into the, or to force him into it, which in a sense he had been by my grandfather, was a great mistake.

Do you know anything about your grandfather’s growing up, where had he come from?

Yes, well they go back sort of a long, it’s just sort of... I think the Clearances were involved, they were small...there was one side of the family that were, they had a small...they came from northern, you know, sort of Helmsdale area of Scotland, and... There was the Clearances involved, and...

What’s the Clearances?

Well the Scottish Clearances, where they moved everybody off the land and put in sheep, and literally forcibly, forcibly pushed them out, and a lot of people emigrated. This is really, I mean basically you’re looking at the Highlands of Scotland as an empty countryside due to the people being removed forcibly, and one side of his family, I’m not saying, I’m not sure which, was, and his name was...I think they were...it was a bit like going through emigration in New York at Ellis Island, they were actually named Smith, although they might have been called McGregor or something like that, but they were pushed into it, possibly due to being smithies, blacksmiths. And there is this wall on the cliff at Helmsdale which was built literally to keep these people out of the land, and they were allowed to exist on the coastline as fishermen or whatever. So, there was, you know, there was the crofting, let’s say the crofting element there. You know, the whole thing of missionaries and Presbyterian missionaries was that of course, that was the way of gaining class status, if you went

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/6 Track 3: Tape 2: Side A Page 38 abroad, and that is ultimately what... Certainly my grandparents’ parents were missionaries too, and they probably made that move from a fairly poor background to this status of becoming ministers and so therefore being, and also being missionaries, and that is... So you could say the actual trip to China took place a generation before, and my mother then was the baby that was carried back to Scotland in 1914. I’m not really, I don’t know enough about all that, really, to be able to talk about it in a lot of detail.

And were any of your grandfather’s brothers and sisters part of your life at all?

No. No I shouldn’t say no. On my grandmother’s side yes, because they were McKenzies and old Mrs McKenzie is my great-grandmother and I certainly used to go and visit her in Bexhill, and she lived to 105. And certainly there was an aunt, there were two aunts, one lived in Highgate. I think they were all daughters. I don’t know of any brothers. One aunt was a Mrs Wilkinson who was married to a naval, a painter of naval scenes, representational, R.A., called Wilkinson. I still have cousins called Wilkinson who do turn up at openings of my mother’s work, and so, and I do meet them, but... I remember Eva, Eva, my mother’s, my grandmother’s sister, was married to Norman Wilkinson, that’s right, Norman Wilkinson the maritime or, painter of boats. I used to be very impressed by these destroyers and they were fairly sort of...

As a small boy?

Yes.

Where are they?

But I also knew that there was tremendous conflict about these representational things coming from my father, and the R.A. context, you know, ‘He could easily be painting horses, you don’t seem to realise, it doesn’t make any difference, it happens to be boats. It’s not that that I am worried about. It is the way it’s all done,’ you know, was the kind of thing that was going on.

Goodness knows, I have no idea.

And actually, where are Margaret’s, the water-colours you were talking about in the [INAUDIBLE] exhibition?

They were, well she...to be honest I don’t think she has them. They were given, they were taken by the grandparents and passed on to the Dan side of the family, and I think he probably has most of them.

Can you remember them?

Some of them yes, I do, yes. She used, she still...I mean the great thing was that she used colour when she was using water-colour, and so, even though she used, you know, she discovered light and dark, shadow and light, her shadow was blue, it wasn’t only black. They were very colourful, but they were...and she was able to represent, and they all admired the sort of technical ability, I mean... You must realise that her meeting my father was an enormous step out of a very deeply grounded attitude, series of attitudes. I mean these have changed enormously, if I witness my aunt’s present position, but what she was brought up with where she was being the youngest daughter of a family, her moves were considerably easier for her than it would have ever been for my mother who had to make the break. But the fact that my father was then passed to my aunt, as it were, or rather he chose my aunt, whatever way you want to look at it, and my grandparents were complicit in the divorce and the break-up of... A strange history, but my mother basically made a break from a very deep-rooted series of ideas and traditions.

But what about, this whole notion of documenting your outing or whatever as it happens, is on the one hand possibly a lovely thing to inherit, but on the other hand it could be very stifling, this idea that everything is of importance and it has to be remembered and it has to be frozen in time.

I mean are you a documenter of your life?

I have a curious...I was thinking about your photographs, and when you were, you know, when we had the break, and I was thinking, now, it never occured to me to actually have a photograph of myself in any room of my house, or of my parents.

I don’t normally have a photograph of myself, this came in the post yesterday.

Actually I thought that photograph was you sitting on the...

No, that’s my godchild.

Is it?

Yes.

How extraordinary. Right, oh well, then I’ve made a total misinterpreation. But I mean, it could have been you to be honest, there’s certain sort of features that are similar. You mean the one of holding the baby?

Yes, that’s John Christie’s[ph] baby and he sent it to me in the post yesterday, that’s why it was there.

Oh really?

It’s not normally out there on display. What a bizarre idea.

Yes. I actually do have a curious attitude to photographs which are that they are, because of the work with the camera and book-making, you know, artist books I’d better say, it is a means to an end, and so, I have a vague...

I suppose I wasn’t necessarily meaning photogaphy, I was meaning any way one might document it, such as diary writing or sketches or anything like that. I mean do you have a sense of wanting to hold time in that way?

I must say, when it comes to Laurie and our child, we do document his growing up, and we incidentally get involved obviously in the photographs because we’re continuously photographing him or he is photographing us, or...then it’s to do with where we go and what we’ve done. I think it’s probably an excuse, probably an excuse for also documenting our lives too, via him though. I think there always has to be a mover, there has to be actually some kind of reason why you are taking these photographs, and then there’s always subsidiary reasons that go with it, that is a documentation. But I must say when it...obviously it says, if you are saying something like, it has to be done because it’s always been done, that’s the last time you ever do it, you give up. I think there’s an element of our life at the mill for instance which has often been documented, I mean I actually relate it quite strongly to the way...the mill has changed quite a lot, it’s been this enormous - well it’s an L-shape building with two barns going in separate directions, and two or three floors on either. It’s taken a period of twenty years to actually finish it if you like. We started one bit and have gone, and it’s a sort of... And in a funny sort of way it’s like a sense of achievement when you see, ‘Oh, gosh, we didn’t...did we get those skylights then?’ you know, and I mean it’s much more, you know, it’s much more, when you say, ‘Oh, didn’t we have the skylights in?’ it’s actually saying other things than that which is meaning, ‘Oh we’d moved and started to use that bit of the mill for that reason,’ and it’s sort of reminding you of that, but initially in the foreground is a couple of people come to stay or something, you know, I mean, there’s all sorts of things going on, foregound, background, side ground, round the corner ground, season ground, what’s in the garden ground, you know. Why did we actually buy photographs of the mill from an aeroplane that someone came to sell? Oh, because we didn’t remember that we had dug that bed in the garden or...you know, so on and so on, you know. So, yes there is a documentation going on, because also there’s the element of books that’s involved,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 4: Tape 2: Side B Page 43 and we associate how the things looked when we were doing a certain thing too. But Laurie actually is a focal point for that, definitely, our son.

But with something like the aerial photographing showing which bit of the garden was dug, it’s important to remember that bits of garden were dug? Why is it important do you think, why do we do these things?

I think actually the garden is a sort of obviously, it’s almost more private but at the same time more public, area of one’s life. But also there is just pure either practical elements to it which is like trying to grow enough food to live on, or eat, which we never have been able to do, which is like how we started, all practical reasons, and how we’ve given that up and just simply like growing other things, like things to look at, flowers. No, we still, it’s really great to feel that we can actually get our own lettuces out of the garden, and, there’s always a new challenge. I mean, the most recent new challenge is the pheasants, the pheasants have been bred across the road - not the road, the river, and they come in in their hordes into the garden and just get through everything, so how to keep things from eating everything that we want to eat, instead of killing the pheasants and eating them? And, there’s all sort of solutions and, oh that year we had abandoned the beetroots, or they didn’t come up, or...I don’t know what it is, it’s a sort of consistency really. I mean, yes, I think I have a habit for instance of turning on the news, Helen hates it, at 10 o’clock, p.m. She said, ‘Well really, what is the reason?’ I mean, and I said, well, it probably isn’t to find out what’s going on, it’s simply a sort of consistency, and I think there’s an element of that in relation to recording. I mean, it seems to indicate that every day could be completely and totally different, and that you need something to hold it together, which is, ‘News at Ten’, I mean it might be, and I mean radio, I’m not going to, you know, getting...there’s nothing as intrusive as a television in our house.

But also, I mean this is rather sort of simplistic, but there was very little regularity in your beginning wasn’t there, I mean it was a very...

There was a lot of regularity but it was broken, broken broken broken, very deeply. Yes. I think I could trust that, that was there, right at the early beginning, in Park

Obviously I want to talk about that a lot. Just to get away from this grandparents’ house in Scotland...

Get away or to finish with?

Well both.

Right.

What did that house look like, I mean what are your memories, the manse really?

Rambling, sort of manse building with a sort of stucco, or, I don’t know what you call it, pebbledash exterior, round windows with sort of stone frames, but wooden frames within that. With a lot of green damp creeping up on the outside, because it was permanently damp. There was a wonderful smell of, a sort of rot in a funny, a sort of special smell, of water, I would have said. I think I identified it as the smell of water, even when...as my Scottish experience actually, because the air in a sense is highly humid, and even in the huts, and then burning fires in certain rooms to warm it up. And so tremendous contrasts and burning one side of your face with the heat of the fire, freezing on the other, that was always a very strong experience. Tea around an oval table with elephants, elephant heads as legs with tusks, as a sort of reminder of this sort of weird background of, goodness knows where this table came from, and I suddenly thought of it just then, and I don’t think I’ve thought about it since my childhood, which I now remember really admiring, these white tusks with the elephant heads as legs, tea on it, with a carved top. Probably more African than, certainly nothing Chinese about it, so, goodness knows where it’s gone, and, probably in, you know, in Mull with my uncle, because in a sense he inherited practically all the furniture, and everything that came out of my grandparents. Tea, yes, tea was a very important meal. And, you know, the early dark coming in at half-past 3, 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

When you say tea was important, what kind of tea is it? Is it a high tea?

Enormous teapot with a big cozy on it. It would always be silver. Lots of teacups, and they were always Chinese pattern teacups with saucers.

As in blue and white?

Blue and white, but sometimes sort of orangey and, blackish even. A lot of plates with, certainly very Chinese influence, kind of dragons and things on them. And what we ate off was certainly a Chinese element. Inherited cutlery, which was definitely fairly good quality. There was all the trappings of money but on a very showy kind of way from people who don’t have a lot of it, but put it into a show. So if he was a Presbyterian minister he would have had to, my grandmother would have had to assemble the best china, the best cutlery, the silver teapot, because they had parishioners coming in and out, and apparently the life in - no, it isn’t North Berwick, lost it again - was quite a lot of parishioners coming in and out, and tea was the, was the time of day, and was the meal that they would be asked to. So it continued on as the grandparents in the manse had done in Montrose.

So what would you have eaten at this tea?

I think my grandmother would have baked something.

She would have done it, or somebody else would have done it?

Oh no, she would have done it, yes. I think we would have scones, and we would have, there might have been cream as well, I think. And, I’m a bit...I might not have had them at that age, it might have been considered too rich, I’m not sure. I seem to remember, I’ll tell you what I remember, is oatcakes, is flapjacks, I remember flapjacks, I remember a sort of oat...oh there was certainly an element of oatmeal about things. She certainly was very good on cooking, there was always cakes with

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 4: Tape 2: Side B Page 46 lots of icing on them, especially if there was a birthday. But no, tea was a memorable meal, and that was often taken in the sitting-room in front of a fire.

And would it have been formal at all, or not?

No, it would come in on a tray, as I say the tray would be put down on that table, by the fire, and it was like sitting around, in chairs and on the floor, in front of the fire.

What would you have been wearing?

I have no idea. Certainly not a kilt though, I can tell you that. [LAUGHS]

But we’re pre-jeans aren’t we.

Yes. I don’t know, I don’t even have photographs of myself at that time.

And would you have gone up to stay for the summer or something, or would you...?

Yes, it was always the summer, although, in a curious kind of way to me it seemed like a kind of...and it’s probably only two summers I’m recalling with great detail here. But it seemed to be a, you know, a kind of autumnal type of summer, I mean honestly Scotland has to be experienced for what it is, which is, as soon as the clocks go back it gets dark at 3-ish, the further north you go, half-past 3. That was why tea was at that time of the day, it was like, to revive the hopes of death which the dark would bring, in other words there will be another day, this is... But you know, it can be very depressing when the light, you know, when you’re used to the idea of it not getting dark till 6 or something.

Do you think there was a layer of depression in this family anyway?

Not via my grandmother, she was very very high-spirited.

What was she like? We haven’t really talked about her personality.

She was, oh she was a very lovable person, really, very high-spirited. But...oh, high- spirited, I don’t know. She was again obviously the eldest, and she had looked after all her brothers and sisters, because her mother basically had abandoned them. She was very good and caring.

Why had her mother abandoned them, what’s the story there?

I’m not sure, I really am not sure. They hadn’t been completely abandoned but, it was just considered that the eldest girl would take on the responsibility early on of looking after the younger ones.

Do you know what your grandmother’s father had done, as a profession?

My grandmother’s father. He must have been Mr McKenzie. No, I don’t.

And she is Scottish I presume?

But, no no, of course he was, because he had to be the missionary. I mean he had to be...of course they were, because I mean that was, it was already one generation of missionaries, Presbyterian missionaries.

And do you know where your grandparents had met?

No. Well, my grandparents met...no I do know. They met at the enclave, which I have already...at the Presbyterian enclave in China.

Right. And did it seem a good marriage? It sounds as though it was.

Yes, it was definitely a good marriage, yes it was definitely a good marriage, yes. Definitely.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 4: Tape 2: Side B Page 48 And so do you think in a way if your grandmother had a very good marriage, it didn’t make her very sympathetic at understanding your mother’s problems? Or, I mean it seems a very odd response.

I think my mother had more trouble with her father than she had with her mother. She had...I mean I think, I think she had the problems of being the eldest child when she could sort of...being fairly headstrong I would say, and initially getting the disapproval of my grandfather.

From an early age?

Probably, I think she was pushed around a bit, and she was toughened up by him. You of course don’t know your grandparents when they were younger, you only know them as older, and so, they’ve all in a sense undergone quite a lot of changes when you as a grandchild reach them, and they, of course I know how it feels, to feel like, your own children having children, and how, I would be so happy to be able to kiss their bald little baby’s heads, because I am so completely unattached, you know, and...

What do you mean?

Well because, you know, one generation, they’re not your children, they’re your grandchildren, there’s one generation in between. There is a fascination in wondering where you lie in this, how much of you there is and how much there is of all these other people who come in there.

You mean in terms of genetics?

Yes. Yes. And there is a connection between going, getting old and losing your hair, and kissing a baby’s bald head before they’ve grown. Which seems to be appropriate in relation to grandparents. I remember my grandfather was a bald-headed man, is probably what I’m thinking about.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 4: Tape 2: Side B Page 49 And, it sounds as though your grandmother would have been the kind of grandmother who did give you lots of hugs and things.

Oh wonderful, I was, you know, cold showers, there was a lot of tough stuff, but we were made into sort of Scottish heroes. You will be Bruce today, and, Patrick, you will be Wallace. And who’s going to be, who’s going to have the cold bath first? Who’s going to pump the water? It was all great fun. And she had a tremendous spirit.

And did she ever talk directly to you about your parents?

No. No. The focus was on her and what she had to contribute, which is something quite different. I think she was...she was enjoying it, in the same way that I was saying I probably enjoy my own grandchildren. And she realised there is a different story to tell, and she was doing it her way I think, yes.

And, do you remember what was on the walls of this house, do you remember images at all?

Yes, well on the walls was, one initial thing, right above the mantelpiece, in the sitting-room where we take tea, would be the painting by my mother of Puck in the harbour. I remember that vividly. And there would be some of the water-colours on the wall. Otherwise, you know, I mean they did become the icons of the family, you know, they really were, and, the thing was that it was a bit like saying, we knew Peggy as this thriving artist, this pushing, thriving, talented artist who went to Edinburgh Art College. We see that side of her when we think of her.

And do you know about her growing up and developing into an artist, do you know what the path was?

Yes, I know that, she often said that she thought she was to be a musician, and, although she wasn’t...I can’t see how she could have been, but anyway, that’s what she talks about. And then for some odd reason, it was possible for her also, if she

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 4: Tape 2: Side B Page 50 went to the art college to do this...it was something that fitted in to some kind of... There were relations, certainly my grandmother’s McKenzie relations who had houses in, who lived in Edinburgh, and they were definitely a very Edinburgh-based family. And she did stay with her grandmother, or her great-aunt, and that was a good and easy arrangement for the art college, and she often talked about the difficulty of her being a student and living with a considerably older relative, and it didn’t last very long. [LAUGHS]

And, still going back to this manse, I mean were there books in it that mattered to you, did you go through things like that?

Oh there were books, yes, the study where my grandfather wrote was a book-lined room.

And anything stay in the memory?

No. Afraid not.

And any objects, either inside or outside?

Oh yes, well, there were...I mean, I would say, it’s quite interesting, the...OK, we were talking about that table, which is either African or Indian, I can’t see it as being Indian I must say, but perhaps possibly slightly kind of like, somewhere between Chinese and...but it isn’t Chinese either, or perhaps it’s Ceylon or...I’m not sure. But there were, because of my Uncle Duff’s interest in Indian culture, Hinduism etcetera and Buddhism, and he was a Buddhist at one point, there were a lot of Buddhas about, and there, there you might say was in total conflict with the Presbyterian background and upbringing. I don’t know what went on there. I think there probably was major conflicts initially which had been fought out before I came along.

And what was your response to the Buddhas?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 4: Tape 2: Side B Page 51 Oh I was fascinated. I wanted to know what on earth this fat man was doing sitting with his legs crossed, and I was told he was a Buddhist. A Buddha. And that in a way Uncle Duff would contemplate him and stuff like that, and I took it... So there was this kind of element of orientalism if you were that had been coming in within there and with her. It wasn’t...there wasn’t the whole element of the Scottishness there at all.

What do you feel about orientalism now, I mean do you feel it’s part of you, or not?

Well, I think I’ve successfully blocked all that. You’ve raised all that and you’ve asked me various sort of questions and I’ve said things, I don’t think recalling has come, come to my mind. But of course now I realise, I have been to India, I have been to China, I was aware of my mother being brought up in China, being born there and so on, but, and when she said, ‘Oh, if you’re going to China will you go and see...’ this and that, I said, ‘There’s no possibility of me doing this’. I never saw going to China to make a book anything to do with anything to do with my family, and yet, you know, these things do have reasons and I am not stupid enough to say I didn’t, you know, unconsciously feel there was possibly some linking. I certainly knew about going to India but I, you know, I knew about Uncle Duff dying there and I knew of his interest in Buddhism and so on, but again, I was going to look at architecture initially for an excuse to make an artist book, to go to certain places in India, but, I certainly didn’t connect going to Buddhist caves at Ajanta and Ellora as anything to do with Uncle Duff, although probably Uncle Duff did it. But I did actually notice with a certain amount of irritation that one of my early, my father’s first books where he went, he did actually mention the fact that he landed in Bombay and went to these caves, and I was absolutely, well, just basically irritated that yet again, you know, I hadn’t...although I had gone before I actually picked up ‘Sunrise in the West’ or whatever it was called, or ‘Thread of Ariadne’ or whichever it was, I managed to open it at the very page where he mentions it, I at least did that after I had gone, so, you know, there wasn’t that implication quite. But you know, I do find it, it’s still there, there’s all sorts of places that I find myself in that I think have been found and have been arrived at by one member of my family or another.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 4: Tape 2: Side B Page 52 And what about the Christian Church, I mean, was that part of your upbringing outside visits to your grandparents, or did it really hit you there?

I think school destroyed that almost completely, I found it...

But what was there in the beginning, I mean as a small child did church come into your life?

Yes, I was kind of quite interested to a certain point. I was much more interested in my grandfather getting up and sermonising with his sermonising voice, I found that interesting. But to be honest the Bible meant very little. I think I was just looking at the messenger rather than the message.

And do you have any Christian faith now?

Not Christian faith. I think I have a growing awareness of a spiritual context, and I think that’s an area I am discovering in a way. But I really don’t see any particular kind of connection to the things I’ve been talking to you about in relation to that, although of course again I can’t be completely...I probably will be visiting places that have been visited by one member of my family or another at one point or another I’m sure, and I’ve had to accept that all my life.

And was Duff’s death the first one you encountered?

It was...as it took place in India, and as in a sense they never even brought his body back, and as there was no funeral, I think he really was, yes, but it was a very remote thing, it happened when I was at school as well.

And do you know what you were told about death, what did you think death was?

I’m afraid my experience of death is seeing my father dying and then Francis dying, two men. I’ve never seen a woman dying, my mother is still alive obviously, and these are intimate occasions which have made me think very much about my own

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 4: Tape 2: Side B Page 53 death, and, or, yes, and when I moved to Scotland I became aware of death too in the sense that I was basically cutting myself off completely from life in lots of ways, from people, and that, in a way that was like a death. If you want, if I want to try and see of it, talk about death in another way, I don’t think I really understood very much about it, or was concerned about it, until, particularly until my father started to die, and I realise that death doesn’t come easy, that there is an immense amount of suffering going on when it’s happening. I mean I haven’t seen anybody in a sense die naturally, they’ve always died of a tumour, a cancer. I began to understand that as the way death is, and, but I certainly didn’t know the suffering that’s involved of it. I do make a series of comparisons and refer to them a lot nowadays, and did, ever since my father died and Francis died, in the sense that they were after all two people both married to my mother, both died of exactly the same disease, both with totally diametric views on it. My father said well, he felt he could have done more but he was resigned to it, but he was basically fairly fearful because he was a complete atheist and didn’t believe in any spirituality at all, whatsoever, I mean his religion was Freudian, the Freudian religion basically, or the Kleinian religion to be more exact. Francis was a religious person, he basically could have been a priest, he certainly preached and he certainly, oh, attended church, and he was simply angered, angered, enormously angered, that he was dying and there was nothing he could do about it, because he still had so much work to do, and his life was being severed, and it was like the wry, cynical laugh that he had at his own fate and at a fate that had always in a sense been there ready for him, that he had lived through all his life; that he should be deprived of the only thing he ever really wanted, which was to go on living, to produce probably his really, the flowering of his work. I mean Margaret’s probably gone on to do it with hers, but she probably would have been held by him if he had not died, and probably would have never done it.

So, what do you actually think happens when we die?

I think we go through a hell of a lot of pain, and it’s not easy, and it’s very degrading in lots of ways, especially if it’s going to be that you lose all control of everything that you...and you become another baby really, nappies, the lot. I mean everyone’s... I’m fairly aware of it at the present because I actually have a problem with my bladder

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 4: Tape 2: Side B Page 54 unfortunately, and I thought at one point it was a prostate, and I realise that in a way there is...that all these things come into dying, and there is a degrading part of it, that you know, born as babies we have no control over our bowels and so on, there is an element of dying which is also the same. So, and there’s a kind of symmetry to life and death in a funny sort of way that...and then of course as, if the dying is going to be of this nature, I suppose, I’ve only experienced it as this nature but perhaps it can happen in a happier way, in between life takes place, and I think of, it is only through knowing that you’re going to die that you have to, you have to...the compulsion to do the things that you...that need to be done in your life is that much greater, and the statements that have to be made about life in general, it is all due to the fact that we all know we’re going to die. And the things that you need in a sense to communicate and leave is all part of making art, I feel, and possibly the awareness of the frigidity of life is the reason why artists become artists, and the inevitablility of death is also the reason that artists become artists.

End of Track 4: Tape 2: Side B

Are you saying that you think when you die everything finishes?

Oh, well, fate decides doesn’t it whether someone lives on in people’s consciousness or not. [PAUSE FOR THOUGHT] Yes. Yes, everything that’s material dies, the body dies, the brain dies, everything that we understand as living dies. But in fact whatever that, I mean I think it’s a wonderful thing that we do have history, we do have people who mean an awful lot although they’re not around, I think that’s an incredible thing.

But there’s no after-life, for the person?

Oh heavens. Well, you know, I’m terribly sceptical. I mean I don’t have to believe or not believe in it. I go to India and I see these ashrams and I see these people, Meher Baba, etcetera etcetera, who by their followers left their bodies, but exist, you know. I think in a way they do exist in a concept in the people that are living; I mean in a way we might transfer ourselves into the minds of other people, butI think spirits, I mean you can’t define spirit, but I mean I do believe there is spirit, there is spirit, there is certainly very very strong wills in people, and that the wills can remain as a force, yes, as far as that goes yes, the spirit does remain. I couldn’t deny that because I can go and see, I don’t have to have the proof, I feel that it’s something that I do feel. But, somehow it doesn’t rule me or concern me, you know, a stupendous amount. I feel fairly neutral about it. I feel that, I mean, let’s take Diana, I do think that was the most astonishing event to...

You’re talking about the Princess of Wales.

Yes. That has occurred in a very long time in this country. That everyone was able to abandon the stiff upper lip, or at any rate to show feelings publicly if you like. But it might be that our whole society is changing from a more, you know, this strong military stiff upper lip empire-building, male-oriented and dominated society, to a much more female, emotional, a spiritual society, and if that’s the case I can’t think

I mean when we were talking about it a couple of days ago you were saying you thought that the public expression and feeling over Diana was the most significant thing since the 1960s in this country; can you say a little more about that?

Well I do think there is a spiritual element involved. And I mean, what was being experienced was, how there was a common feeling could be felt by so many people, and there was no logic in it, it was just a feeling, and I think there hasn’t been any kind of move which encompass so many millions of people in their consciousness that has occurred. I mean it might have happened in kind of generations and in certain age groups, but it’s never occurred on that scale. I know, there might be lots of reasons that it actually occurred at that particular moment, but the actual promotion to someone who...I mean, you see there were the various sort of sceptics where people found it in the sort of idea that, oh well, what do we need the Royal Family for, and in fact it had zero to do with that kind of concept at all, but those people were stuck with that idea, they didn’t experience this other, this other - well, it was icon-building experience, but it was also something about showing and feeling feelings, and, when it is something that in a way you are experiencing due to everyone else’s actions and you are picking up on it, on that scale, no, nothing has occurred, nothing I can think of has occurred in my experience in this country in all my life. And I just think it was an absolutely, an era-turning pitch-point, and I don’t think anything is ever going to be quite the same again.

As someone without a television, what was your experience of it? Because you weren’t in London presumably.

Yes. My experience of it was that I turned on the radio as usual on Sunday morning and couldn’t understand why these religious programmes were going on about her. And then they would, then there was a short thing and they mentioned the word ‘Diana’, and I became glued, because I thought, this, what is this? Because something really has happened and I am not aware of it, and then the news came on, and I heard

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 5: Tape 3: Side A Page 57 what had happened, and I knew from that point onwards basically that she had been transformed from Princess Diana to this basic icon really. And I then became utterly, utterly uncompromising about that, so that if anyone disagreed, I just walked away, I just could not argue about it; I just knew that if they hadn’t sensed it, there was nothing I could do about it because I wasn’t even going to try and convince them.

But, so that preceded any knowledge of crowds gathering and...?

Yes, oh absolutely, yes.

Because you presumably didn’t see that in any way, you just heard about it?

Yes. I did actually see the funeral on television, I went to someone else’s to see that.

Right. But you weren’t seeing images on the news of crowds gathering and things?

No. No, not at all.

And presumably through the newspapers, did you have newspapers, or not?

I did see photographs, yes, I did pick up an ‘Independent’, on, let me see how long after the funeral. Well, I was very, we do get a Sunday paper. I was, I actually was listening to the news and they were doing quite a good... I mean, you know, I do have the radio on quite a bit, certainly in the studio too, and I mean we...there was a very definite... I mean, you just, you know, Virgin Radio, what... I mean, that was enough, you could tell exactly what was happening and why they were playing certain things. There was a complete change of atmosphere, there really was a major major change.

And when you were talking the other day and mentioning the Sixties, were you referring to things like uprisings in Paris, or were you referring to pop concerts and hippyisms, or what?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 5: Tape 3: Side A Page 58 I I think I was referring, I was lumping everything together, yes, there was the political uprising in Paris but... There were the students’ demonstrations in ‘68. I was involved in an art college demonstration in ‘68, or was it...yes...no, sorry, not ‘68, it came later, ‘69 perhaps. And then I do mean, yes, I mean, the sort of beat period and the Beatles if you want, and, flower power, you know, it is all very much a part of my upbringing in a way, and my...although by that time I wasn’t the age, I was more the age of, well I am actually identical age to the Beatles really, I mean I am a kind of, John Lennon, I mean we were, our birthdays are the same week I think, you know. But then that seems reasonable, you know.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

Now, we’ve talked a lot about Margaret’s parents. I got the impression you never met Adrian’s, but do you know about them?

Oh yes, no I did...I never met his mother, who was the most important person for him, and she was the Jewish element in a sense, she came into our, his family. But, Guardi as he was called, my grandfather...

Guardi?

Guardi, God knows why.

How do you spell that?

G...I don’t know, I’ve never spelt it, G-U-A-R-D-I? Was, well, he was...I understand that his family were all in stockbroking, and that they had all...yes, I suppose Stokes is the bearer of the name of Stokes, is an Irish name, presumably, I think there was an Irish element in that. And, they all were stockbrokers, and the story was that his grandfather and his father had all gone bankrupt. He had made it, I believe he made it by going out to Burma, seeing them making, cutting the trees and making, getting rubber, and went back and threw his money into Dunlop, and made an absolute

What was his name, do you know?

Durham Stokes.

Durham?

Yes.

Gosh what wonderful names you’ve got in your family.

Well actually I’m Telfer Durham Stokes, I was called after him.

Is there any other part of your name?

No other names in my name, no. Yes, I don’t really know his brothers, I never came across any of his brothers, sisters, whatever.

Do you know where he lived?

Right, they lived in Pangbourne, and, or at least that’s where, yes, I think they...basically he was a commuter, he commuted from Pangbourne, Reading, every day, the Great Western Railway etcetera, to the City and back, and as I say he had a stockbroking firm on the Stock Exchange, and I think they were called Stokes & Christopher, or Christopher & Stokes, or, yes, I’m pretty certain that was it, because the name Christopher was fairly important in relation to a solicitor that I in a sense was introduced to and inherited from my father who initially was called Christopher North and has now become just George Kirk[ph], but he was in the firm called Christopher North which has been disbanded, and I still have a solicitor who related in a funny odd sort of way, who deals with various sort of financial things for me, who relates back to Durham Stokes in a sort of really rather strange kind of way. So, I

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 5: Tape 3: Side A Page 60 leave school, and one of the first visits when I went to stay with my mother and Ann - sorry, not my mother and Ann, my father and Ann, at Hurtwood House is where they were living when I was still at Bryanston, was a trip to Tunbridge Wells where my grandfather was living in a hotel. And we would sit and have lunch in the dining- room, and he would say, ‘She’s the Beemax heiress, and he’s...’ the so-and-so, these are all...and they were solitary old people eating their meal in a hotel.

Did they play bridge?

I’m not sure. Not sure about that. We would take coffee in the corridor later, he would have, ‘Do you want a cigar old boy?’ he would say to my father, and they would both smoke cigars. And ultimately my father was doing this job of convincing my grandfather, Durham, that instead of giving back the Government the money he felt he had robbed them of all his life, he was to invest it in the likes of me, and that was why I was transported over to Tunbridge Wells. In fact I never actually saw that money, but it was a very good way of saying, well look you can avoid tax if we put it in Telfer’s name and so on. It probably, probably went towards the marriage settlement or the need to top up that sort of, the sort of divorce settlement - not marriage, divorce settlement with my mother, which...

It suggests that Adrian had some financial nous himself.

No, he never made any money whatesoever, he inherited everything he had, literally. I mean he did a bit. Well, I mean he always used to, one of the major kind of argumentative areas was him trying to teach me things that he didn’t really know much about himself, which was stockbroking, and he went about it as if he knew absolutely everything about it, and of course it was, as I learnt later, the major conflict between him and his father anyway. So he was just taking on the role of father to son.

Had his father wanted him to be a stockbroker?

He certainly didn’t want him to be anything like an artist, I mean his father was utterly and totally opposed to this idea of a writer, which is what Adrian wanted to be, and

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 5: Tape 3: Side A Page 61 couldn’t understand it, and, ‘So when are you going to make your own money old boy?’ was the general kind of attitude. And he succeeded in living off his own father all his life basically.

So, did you ever go to the house in Pangbourne that Durham had, or not?

Yes, I did. I only went there when it was all closed down though, and things were being cleared up.

And what are your memories of it?

Kind of, yes, well the sort of thing you would expect, kind of stockbroker type of belt place with a tennis court and, quite pleasant.

Did you have any desire for it?

You know actually Cathy, when you say that, I don’t think I could have possibly gone, but I, in a sense I visited it through certain sort of descriptions of it I think. I can’t think there’s any...I don’t think it existed, it wasn’t in its old form when I... I can’t think of a single instant where I could have possibly gone back. I might have actually gone back with my father on one occasion, but it couldn’t have been an empty house, it would have been bought by somebody by then. I don’t really know this. But I do feel I think I know, and I have a vague idea where the tennis court was and, it was quite a nice garden. Though I don’t have much impression of the house at all really, no. I think I must have gone, and what it was was that my father was clearing out and he was in the house and I was told just to play around and have a look around the garden, and I think that’s really why, but I... Because I have a very specific kind of view of what the garden was like, and a lot of the photographs were taken of people, all were taken just outside the building but have absolutely none about the building itself, so possibly...but I can’t, I can’t pinpoint when it was. But at any rate my visits to Durham Stokes in Tunbridge Wells were the things that definitely occurred when I was at school, and so obviously the house had been sold and he had moved, at that point.

Presumably it was very difficult to get to know someone in the context of their life in a hotel. I mean it can only have been a relationship around furniture almost.

Yes, and he was quite unapproach...I mean he was nothing like the other grandparents, I mean he was a very detached man. A very confident, a very contained person, a very...someone who felt they had achieved something in their life and were satisfied, you know, and had certain expectations of themselves and everybody else, and if they didn’t fit into what they wanted they just didn’t pay any attention whatsover. We hardly talked, I just simply stood and witnessed in a sense.

And what did you think the relationship between him and your father was at that point? Were they reasonably...?

Well he was so old, well he wasn’t so old, I think he was in his eighties, he wasn’t so old, he was a little bit ancient if you like, and my father certainly had the upper hand, and I think he had to. I mean I think major problems had always existed over the, between him and his father because he probably wasn’t given the upper hand.

And do you know where your grandfather had grown up?

No I don’t know, no.

And, did your father talk much about his growing up, do you know what it was like for him?

Yes, mostly about the problems he had with his father, and how they were...they really always argued, and that his mother was the only kind of solace, and the only reason he would ever go back. But it was a very, it was a very strange family, because, my father had two brothers, both were obliterated in the First World War. Philip the eldest who was meant to be, I mean was really riddled with, I mean, he was like one of these sort of hyper-typical kind of cartoon ideas of a kind of, the guy leading the people over the trenches with a pistol in his hand, and he was just shot through, you

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 5: Tape 3: Side A Page 63 know, absolutely massacred by bullets finally. And then the second brother, who, Geoffrey, who did actually marry, I mean he didn’t die so young, he survived the war but was I think in a sort of permanent state of shock after it, I mean his experiences in the Navy had been bad enough, I don’t know what and how, but, he died possibly in, I should say in the Twenties or the Thirties, before I was born.

Do you know what he died of?

Prolonged illness, it was really the result of being drafted into the Navy.

And had your father been close to them, did he talk about them?

Philip he was, Philip he worshipped, he was his eldest brother, but Geoffrey was the odd one out, and Geoffrey never...I mean there’s a photograph of my father and his brother Philip standing in front of the tennis court in tennis gear, but there’s no, nowhere in it is there any image of this Geoffrey, and the only other surviving sort of photograph of the three boys together is when they are much younger and Geoffrey looks out of it really, he’s different.

Do you think Adrian’s homosexuality could be to do with losing brothers, to do with losing young men he was close to, or familiar with, or used to having around?

You know, homosexuality doesn’t actually come from other men in a sense, it’s got to come from a relationship with a mother. And of course it could have been that she, because she had lost two sons, ploughed a great deal into Adrian and did a lot of things for him and was in certain ways very very attached to him and wouldn’t let him go. Not only because he was the youngest of three boys, but also because eventually later on he was the only one that was left. But, I don’t know if I’m putting that in the context of time and age exactly right.

And what did you learn about Adrian’s mother from him?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 5: Tape 3: Side A Page 64 I think in the end, I think it’s in his books, I think that it relates...I mean any kind of, I mean for instance in the book ‘Inside Out’, which is about his re-birth in a sense because it’s where he goes, he comes out of the Cesana tunnel is it, the tunnel that the railway used to take to go under the Alps and come into Italy, and he contrasts that with his upbringing in Bayswater which was where they lived, and his, the constant series of nannies they had when they were taken for walks in Hyde Park. And, I mean the whole, the whole story about Hyde Park and how that totally transfixed his whole childhood, how he wanted to get to grips with Hyde Park, he wanted to get to grips with all the people who lived in the park, and the park-keepers, the people that chased them, it was...the terrifying things like the place which pumped the water up for the Serpentine, and all sorts of... I mean extraordinary, it’s all in ‘Inside Out’. And he contrasts those two things, the thing he left behind in London and the thing he found in Italy. And the only biographical book, which he wrote during the war in fact in St. Ives in Cornwall, in Carbis Bay. Yes, because he actually, it is actually dedicated to Margaret.

His mother?

No my mother.

Oh right, right.

Yes. And it does deal with his mother, yes.

When did his mother die?

She evidently visited when I was born. She was...she was a very mysterious person, she believed that she would be re-born, when Ariadne was born she believed she was going to be re-born, and she died about the time that Ariadne, in fact she died a week before Ariadne was born, and she had predicted that she would be re-born in Ariadne. So Ariadne was...right, if Philip was born in ‘47 or something like that, then Ariadne must have been born in about ‘52. I think Ariadne actually is the same age as her and so, she is about 45.

But you still didn’t meet this grandmother?

No I never ever met her.

Apart from when you were born.

Well I probably, I did as a baby or child.

But she...it’s interesting, I mean do you think she didn’t have a relationship with you because of your mother?

I don’t know. Yes, I think that as soon as that happened, that did proceed. I never saw her, no it’s absolutely true, I never, I never thought of this, but I never actually saw her; as a baby of course but no, I never saw her subsequently, when I would have been older, no.

And would Philip have done so?

You know I’ve never asked him, I’ll have to ask him that. I don’t know. I don’t know about that.

And do we know what Adrian’s father thought of him leaving your mother and going off with Ann?

No. No.

And did Margaret have a relationship with them at all before the break-up, did she get on with them?

She apparently did with Adrian’s mother, yes. She had more to say about Adrian’s mother than my father - his father.

Well I’ve asked her what she was like, because she is after all the only person I know who actually knew her. And, I didn’t get any impression from what she said at all I’m afraid. I do know that, it was the most remarkable marriage, a sort of, a self-made man basically, although of course there was the context of the stockbroking going on, marrying a Jewess, probably a very conservative self-made man, marrying someone who ultimately couldn’t have been more different, and I would have thought it was a pretty fraught kind of marriage, I don’t know. And I expect she was utterly and totally, I get the sense that she might have been a very frustrated person, and a sense of a rather wasted life in a certain kind of way, but that is only an impression I have.

So Adrian grew up in London; Pangbourne happened after he was an adult?

Yes, I think they lived in Lancaster Gate, you know, right on the park.

And, presumably he had governesses and then boarding school did he?

Yes, he went to, he followed Philip to Rugby, who had been head boy at Rugby. Then he followed Philip to, through Oxford, to Magdalen College, and so on.

And so you don’t really know more about his childhood than there is in that book?

Well, no, but there’s quite a lot in that book actually to be honest, at any rate what he has written, as a sort of primary kind of seeds for total neurosis. I would say, one of the things, the comments that I always remember very vividly is that he does talk about having tantrums, and one of the things he says when he’s having a tantrum is, ‘I want to get it straight, I want to get it all straight, I want...’ And I think it’s in relation ultimately to the kind of history that he’s building up of this terrifying place, Hyde Park. I would have...I followed that kind of comment without even being aware of it by saying, I want to fit things together, which is probably a similar kind of emotional thing. And I’m also very, I am conscious of the idea of trying to put things together as

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 5: Tape 3: Side A Page 67 in making books. So I am resigned to the fact that I keep on all through my life rediscovering things that have already been written down.

Does Hyde Park have any associations for you other than Adrian’s?

No, no. No, well, although there is actually curiously, and I must say this, that I did have a show at the Serpentine Gallery when I was still a painter, in fact it was my final, penultimate show as a painter; I wasn’t using canvas at that point, I was working in fibreglass but never mind. And Adrian came in with shining eyes and he said, ‘You know this is where the tea house was.’ This is where the, this is it, this is...and, he was absolutely thrilled that somehow there had been a connection between what I had done and in a sense this iconography of his which was related to the park, and the Serpentine.

And he was able to look at what you had done as well?

Yes, I don’t...I don’t think it...I don’t think that was the important part of it for him, but it was the fact that that connection had been made. If I remember rightly, someone had gone round and switched all the lights off. All these pieces had...depended upon a light, a strip light to shine behind it, and someone had gone round and turned them all off, and, so that there was absolutely no way of seeing what these things were except these sort of dark things on the wall which were waiting for the light to come on.

And you couldn’t get the light back on?

Yes, I think they were turned on but I mean gosh, you know, turn on a work of art, that’s a horrendous thing for someone of, to be able to understand what you’re doing.

And when he came to the exhibition and made that link, what was your reaction?

Well I was really pleased because, I mean there could have been all sorts of reactions, and, I was aware of the fact that ‘Inside Out’ had been, you know, and what had been

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 5: Tape 3: Side A Page 68 written in ‘Inside Out’. I actually have a tendency to forget what I have actually read sometimes; I have obviously read Adrian’s books, but I actually have to go back to them and read them again to really remember what I read. So it doesn’t...I mean there are certain things that stick in my mind. But I must have been acquainted at that point with, and I knew what he was talking about, and, so I was really pleased about that, although I felt, it’s a pity people can’t come out of their own history and come into, and make the transition to what you are trying to do sort of thing, but I mean that was... Actually he had always been very openly involved in what I did, and he used to come to my studio, and I rather, although I slightly dreaded these visits, at the same time I did feel that there was something terribly important to him about what I was doing as a painter, and, although he always wanted to be something else than it was, it was still important to him. And he would walk all the way from Hampstead across the Heath to Kentish Town and arrive in his walking shoes, slightly out of breath, and then walk all the way back again. I’ll tell you where Adrian is present for me, is in Hampstead Heath; I can actually do various walks and know that that is where he walked, and I also can feel that there are certain trees that he would pause at and look at, and I know exactly where they are. And although I get a sort of, sort of weird feeling about it, of, ‘What are you doing Telfer?’ I mean for God’s sake, he’s been dead something like twenty years, ‘What are you trying to do?’ I say to myself, I still...I still have a kind of routine where I sometimes meet someone in a pub in Hampstead and that involves walking across the Heath from Kentish Town, and that involves going past various little alleys and walks that Adrian used to do. I think I unconsciously do put those things together.

End of Track 5: Tape 3: Side A

Is that ultimately a comforting thing now?

Not comforting. I can’t say it’s comforting. The word ‘comforting’ isn’t there. But there is a context in it, and I think perhaps it’s something I can’t admit really very very fully, but as I said, I often find that he has been in a place that I find myself in before, and so therefore there is some sort of...I have to always find it out for myself, and I am always very very worried about reading about it before I come to it myself, but as long as I’ve come to it and then I read it in something he’s written, I’m all right, I’m OK, I feel all right about it.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

OK, so let’s move on...

I don’t know how you’re so sort of sacrificial [INAUDIBLE].

I’m lazy Telfer.

[LAUGHS] People talking about themselves, must be the most biggest bore there is.

What were you told about how your parents met?

Ah, right, well, I could quote from my mother right direct if you want me to. I do think that one of the most significant things is that she, what is it, she said she...she saw this, what seemed to be a really much older man in this room, and she was aware of his presence, this was in Paris, and she then went to see the Monet ‘Waterlilies’ which were in the Tuileries at the time, and who should walk in the door but this chap.

Sorry, where was the original room, in a gallery or in a hotel?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 6: Tape 3: Side B Page 70 I’m not absolutely sure, I think it was in a gallery or something like that. I think she saw him in a sort of gathering of people, you know, in Paris. So, and so she said she went and sat down and waited for him to pick her up, which is an extraordinary statement really. Actually, what was it? Oh yes, it’s in the description in the ‘Guardian’ I think, or in, sorry, in the ‘Independent’. But I can say that what I understood was that it was in front of the Monet ‘Waterlilies’, and those were in the Tuileries Gardens I think in those days. And they were the only people in the room apart from the attendants.

Well that was lucky in itself.

Well, if it was anything to go by, like, this idea of sex in public, which I was reading about in the newspaper today, how people do it in Madame Tussaud’s and things like that, and sometimes pretend to be, if a leg was draped over the death of Nelson no one would know with all the gunfire that it wasn’t a waxwork. [LAUGHS] Anyway, obviously they didn’t go behind one of them and... But, so she met him and they spoke, and they, I don’t know what, and then... OK, but the part of the meeting she didn’t really mention was that she said...so she remembered this Adrian person, and she was still staying in a hotel in Paris somewhere, and she came out of the hotel a day or so later, she knew where Adrian was staying, that was right, and she thought, this is very critical, I can either go up the street this way and never see him again, or if I go the other way I might possibly bump into him. And in fact she decided to go to his hotel, and walked in, and he just came into the lobby, he was just leaving, with all his luggage, at that very moment. So obviously she thought, well fate’s ruled here, and that’s how it started up, that’s how they met.

So they exchanged addresses or something?

I think they...I’m not sure, I don’t know what, after that, but at any rate that was the confirming, the meeting.

And do you know much about their courtship?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 6: Tape 3: Side B Page 71 Not an awful lot, except that I did, I think I did mention the fact that he was still very involved in ballet, and going to the opera and ballet, and they did have a great deal of sessions of looking at dance, well, going to the ballet was a great pleasure, a shared pleasure, and listening to music and going to concerts. But particularly the ballet, and I think in those days, those, did I already talk about that, the fact that he would then go, take her back and then go back, you know, with a reception with Massine etcetera. But it possibly would have been quite reasonable to expect that because he...if that was the case then that was obviously when they had come back to London together and it was very early on in the courtship if you like, and she would have seen that as very much the connection that he was re-establishing with his old friend sort of thing, but I don’t think she was aware that there was any homosexual element to it.

Would she have known about homosexuality?

I think a certain amount, but... I think that in fact the revelations of the fact that he was not just an occasional homosexual but really quite heavily involved, and that he used to pick gondoliers up and went to Venice precisely for that very reason in the Twenties, would have been shocking to her. I mean it would have been different if it had have been...I mean, certainly people like Richard Vollheim[ph] seemed to know a lot of the actual individuals. Again, it’s funny, I feel as if I’d been introduced to them individually all along. There was somebody he knew called Billie Winkworth who was a collector, and he even dedicated one book, one of the books he wrote, to A.A., or B.B. or whatever it was, or, W.W., that’s right, W.W.W., Winkworth. And, he gave me a tiger’s tooth, and a netsuke, a netsuke, one of those sort of Japanese things which is like a snail that you threaded onto a belt. I’ve still got them.

W.W.W. did, your father did?

No, yes, W.W.W.

And what do you remember of him?

Do you feel, thinking about those people, that they knew your father in a way you didn’t? I mean other than the obvious, I mean do you feel that something was hidden from you, or something was unavailable to you that they had?

Do you mean, are you implying that he was sort of like playing with it?

No, that they knew more about, say, his emotional life, or...

I sometimes felt that he was trying to prove something to them, that he was...I mean, but this might have been rejection of my feelings about homosexuality which I was a bit worried about in certain kinds of ways. Probably I was at an age where I was being somewhat protective about it. But I think now, I think of various sort of stories that have come out about him having a pair of binoculars and watching a woman undressing from the back of the house in Church Row. But actually there might have been an element of, two things involved, a kind of, he might have even been getting a certain amount of pleasure from it. I mean not in a nasty kind of way, but...

No I wasn’t talking about him taking you there at the time.

Ah.

What I’m saying is, you know, all these people with whom he had some sort of intimate relationship which appears to have been more than a casual sexual encounter, that they knew sides of him that were private to you.

[PAUSE FOR THOUGHT] I remember visiting W.W. Winkworth and not having any idea that he was a homosexual or had had a relationship with Adrian. The trouble is with time when you gather all this information, you put it together, and you forget that those, that that was the only information you had at the time. I just thought he was a nice guy who gave me these things, and I was rather pleased, and he seemed

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 6: Tape 3: Side B Page 73 very friendly. Looking back on it, there must have been a reason behind Adrian doing this, because it wasn’t, he was following quite a strong pattern of in a sense both, I think possibly to prove that he has had another life other than the relationship that he had with that man, and also...but at the same time that there he was in a sense showing off his son almost as if it was like the younger version of himself in the same situation to a man.

Were you physically like Adrian?

Not very, I think I looked more like my mother. Oh there are certain attributes. No, he was basically fair-haired, and... Oh he was a very very attractive-looking man in his twenties, thirties, but I mean of course by the time he was my father, he was in his forties when I was born, and I mean one of the reasons why it was always considered, you know, that the reason Ariadne was retarded when she was born was because basically he was really very old by then to have children, I mean, or there’s a chance that the baby might not be quite right for the reasons that one of the parents is quite old. Of course it doesn’t always happen like that way, but...

How old would he have been when she was born?

Well let’s see, I mean if Ariadne was born in the Fifties, I mean he would be...and he was born in 1902 so, although I suppose it wasn’t that old actually to be honest, he would be in his fifties, it isn’t that old is it? No. Let’s say he was 56. I would say possibly he was a little bit younger than I am. I am now 57, he might have been 54. I certainly, the last...I mean Laurie is now 14, so I had Laurie when I was 40-something, and I certainly wasn’t 50. I think, I mean there might be a certain sort of difference there.

And, what do you know from your parents about how they came to get married? I mean do you know much about their early life together?

Well, I mean, a major kind of thing which has cropped up ever since, which is the wedding that took place at the Euston Road School where every single artist at the

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 6: Tape 3: Side B Page 74 Euston Road School gave presents of their work as wedding gifts, so the Victor Pasmore, the William Coldstream, the Claude Rogers and all that, was retained as sort of trophies if you like of their marriage right through to, my father died having already married Ann, and there was this...everything came to a kind of crux when, or crisis, whatever you want to say, when, with my mother and my aunt where my mother, who had always retained this idea that those things did belong to her, those paintings, because they were wedding gifts, the family more or less went to court about who actually owned those paintings, because my mother had convinced Ann, my aunt, that she could borrow the Victor Pasmore because she now had somewhere to put it, which was her excuse for not having had these paintings, but in actual fact she wouldn’t have dreamt of taking them away from Adrian as he was alive, I mean it was...it was like one element of her marriage to Adrian that was retained on the walls right through Adrian’s second marriage to Ann.

But it was never discussed formally that they were...?

I believe Ann and Adrian had a conversation when he was dying about, well, she had asked him, well what happens if Margaret comes and says these are hers? And he said, ‘She wouldn’t, would she?’ Or, ‘She wouldn’t! She wouldn’t do a thing like that,’ or something like that. So they were so firmly his in his mind that they should be inherited from him by my aunt.

And were you surprised by what Margaret did?

Yes, and unfortunately, well not really unfortunately, but I, because I had already been married and divorced, I took the point of view that if my former wife had walked in and said, ‘that’s mine by rights, and I can take it,’ I felt that was an appalling threat in fact. So, my position was that I said, well I really don’t understand, to my mother, I said to her, I really don’t understand why there is such a fuss being made. But actually...and I said to her, I really do feel, and as I’ve said, that if someone, if Ruth, my former wife, walked in and said, ‘That chair was given to me, I gave that to you, or we were given that as a wedding present, but it’s mine by rights,’ or, ‘I’m waiting for you to die to take it,’ it seems a little bit, a little bit of a threat. And she said, her reply

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 6: Tape 3: Side B Page 75 was, ‘But the lawyer now tells us that we have everything to fight for on this.’ And I said, ‘But surely this is not a...I mean is this going to law?’ And Ann and Ian decided they would take it to law, and then the costs of what it would cost to actually go through a court case stopped the whole family thinking about that, and, thank goodness, and, there’s something called Three Wise Judges where retired judges sit in chambers and make a judgement, and they were very keen for this case to go to court so it could be put on the statute book, if you call it that. So that there was a case that people could refer to because it was a unique situation. What I failed to realise all along was that in law wedding presents are of an exception. So in actual fact if a couple are given certain wedding presents at a wedding, then even though one of them, one of the partners has died, and the other partner hasn’t claimed them, they, as long as they are alive they can still claim them as theirs, and that is actually what the judgement was made, and it was a very very big shock to Ann and Ian, they didn’t believe this any more than I did. And it was an enormous shock to me, because in actual fact the conclusion was that because I was the only issue as it were of that marriage, and as those paintings were given to both Adrian and my mother, then, they asked me whether I would take them as a compromise for both parties, and so I did, minus the Pasmore that the whole thing had blown up over because my mother had borrowed it, taken it away in the taxi, and then, about six or seven or eight months later was rung up by Ann and said, ‘I’ve been asked for the Pasmore for this big retrospective of his work in America; do you think you could send it?’ And my mother said, ‘No sorry, I can’t, I’ve sold it.’ And that’s how the whole thing blew up.

And did your mother sell it because she desperately needed the money or did she need to get rid of it?

She wanted, she said she wanted the money so that she could put it behind, either a museum or creating, it was at that time, something for Francis to put up his, to make a museum for his work. But when I found out what she had sold it for, I said, ‘Well please, please don’t sell any more work.’

What was the painting?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 6: Tape 3: Side B Page 76 It was, well like sort of like café painting. It was like, there was a kind of, there were two figures, it was a bit like two figures in a sort of French café done in a kind of rather impressionistic kind of Victor Pasmore early period without an awful lot of detail. It was kind of, quite pretty, but I would have said a fairly meaningless piece of work. It was rather extraordinary because in fact some of the paintings that were given were really very good pieces. I mean for instance the Coldstream which is known as a sketch is actually an oil painting of a tree, and I think it’s one of the nicest Coldstreams I’ve...I mean I’m not a great Coldstream fan but I mean that painting I would always want to hang on to, just because I think it is quite an exceptional piece. Also, the piece that I’ve recently sold, which I feel I have a right to do so, and I’ve gradually let the rest of the family know what I did, but the piece, if I can remember his name, Bell.

Duncan Grant?

Not Duncan Grant. Clive Bell, who was the other member of...am I right? Clive Bell.

Who was married to Vanessa.

No no, I’ve got it wrong again. No it isn’t, it’s Graham Bell, Graham Bell. It’s Graham Bell who was a member of the Euston Road, who was killed during the war, and this was one of his actual seminal paintings if you like, and it was bought by, finally, through a dealer I managed to sell it to a place where it should have been really, because, there’s no point in having a painting like that without it being seen by the public, and it’s gone to...it went to Yale, the collection, the British Collection at Yale, for a good price, and I was very happy, I was very, you know, I mean, it’s been very important because it’s moved my life on enormously, I was able to do up the studio and put the money where it was needed to be put, and finished a lot of things off.

And have the family been sympathetic about it?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 6: Tape 3: Side B Page 77 Well, I mean I told my mother immediately. I broke the news slowly to Ann and Ian, and of course it’s totally out of their...I mean they wouldn’t dream...but they were vaguely interested, and it was only my brother, Philip, who said, well was interested to know how much I got for it as a matter of fact.

Ann and Ian aren’t bitter that you’ve got them all, I mean they accepted it once a decision was made?

No no, they weren’t bitter at all, in fact they were incredibly generous in other areas in relation to passing on work, and they’ve tried to be very fair about that. But I think they were genuinely upset and distraught by the fact that they had misjudged the actual ownerships of these paintings, although at the time Ann was just about to give the very painting I’ve sold recently to my brother Philip, it was actually being passed over to him, in a kind of Trust thing.

And what, after that’s all been resolved what’s the relationship between Ann and Margaret now?

Well I always had a vaguely unrealistic relationship perhaps with both of them, because I used to sort of, in a sense used to play them off against each other. I knew that my aunt and my mother would always...I was in a sense an intermediary between them so I was often asked, ‘How is Adrian? How is Ann?’ For instance, when I was still at school I would go from one to the other during the holidays, and I was the kind of...so...and, ‘What’s been going on?’ And it was always like news, and there was always a certain kind of news they were interested in and not another, and it was, oh, it was, you know, there was a certain kind of tension there. And so I sort of...I think my mother had a phrase for it, that Ann was going to ‘suck up’ to me, she would say, which was usually a certain amount of annoyance and anger with her younger sister on one hand and also the fact that her son... She should have really said I was going to suck up to Ann, because there was an equal amount of that going on, if that was the case, I’m not absolutely sure it’s quite as bad as that sounds. But... I certainly, I will, as I said, I certainly did know how to play the sisters off against each other to a certain extent. So what has happened, as in that a more realistic relationship has evolved, I

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 6: Tape 3: Side B Page 78 still remain the sort of person who sees both of them. My mother and Ann do see each other but not an awful lot. And certainly my mother doesn’t - as she used to, when Adrian was alive - go and stay at Church Row, when she’s in London, and that used to be one of her main stopping-off points. And it seems like, very curious now if you think about it, that Adrian always wanted to know what she was doing, where she was going, how things were in South...well it wasn’t Southwold in those days, it was where she lived with Francis. Francis was never there, Francis would stay behind in Suffolk on my mother’s very frequent visits to London, and then I...

Frequent or infrequent?

Well quite frequent. And quite a lot of them I would witness at a sort of dinner with both Ann and my mother Ayah and my father, and there was the usual, well, it was strange really. And, there was a certain amount of obliviousness to the fact that there had been this conflicting history going on, and I always felt slightly kind of torn by these things, and then when, if there was, at such an occasion when Francis would be there as well, I used to think it was absolutely hysterical, in fact I would go hysterical, slightly, I’d kind of get a bit drunk, and I would laugh a lot. But I was probably a little bit disturbed to be honest.

Mm. Do you think Adrian had any regrets about leaving Margaret?

Well, you know I think he was very happy with Ann, I think that Ann was everything he wanted, in providing for him, and he was rather like a very overgrown child in lots of ways. He was also like a woman, but he was also like a very very demanding and a domineering man, so he had all sorts of sides to him. He was a very complicated person really, and, I can’t say I have ever experienced anyone quite like him, but then a lot of people say that about their parents I expect. But I mean there has never been any older person I’ve been approached to who had such a complex make-up as Adrian, and I’m doing that from a feeling point of view rather than a sort of, ticking things off type of thing. And, I mean I think it was a pleasure to a lot of people to meet him, and I did arrange meetings quite a lot sometimes with my contemporaries

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 6: Tape 3: Side B Page 79 and so on, and I was very proud of him as a person, I mean he really was quite a performer. Whether...now what was your question, sorry?

Well I was initially asking you about Margaret and Ann post the painting really, and whether he had any regrets about Margaret.

No, he was very happy with Ann. I don’t think he did. I think he felt that it was good therapy for Margaret particularly and himself to almost as it were sweep everything under the carpet and meet on a kind of level basis. I think he felt vaguely threatened by my mother. I think the fact that the paintings were retained in the house, he wanted it to be left that way, but it was a little bit like, there was an element to my mother which he couldn’t quite be absolutely certain of, and he was always attempting to make sure that she wasn’t going to start doing something that he could.....

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

.....more focused to you, about time. What are your very early memories then of this house in Cornwall?

Right, well, one end of it, you came in basically into the dining-room, which was on the first level, so there was like a kind of... So OK, you come down this kind of gravel path, come off that down a sort of chute to the front door, which leads straight into the dining-room. On your left was a sort of extended sitting-room. On your right there’s a passage, which would go on to the bedrooms via one or two steps, so in a funny sort of way the bedrooms... And then, and also at that point you go down and you get into the area of the house that my father used which was the study and so on. So it was built on a kind of hill, and there were bits under other bits, and you came in a bit like you would expect any house that is built on a hill, on an unexpected level, because of the ground around the house.

Was it light or dark?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 6: Tape 3: Side B Page 80 Well of course I was absolutely astonished when I did go and visit, and this is the only other occasion, and it seemed to be terribly, yes, it was...it seemed dark, it also seemed pokey and it seemed small. I didn’t remember it like that though. The sitting-room was really worth a little word. It had, as I said it had, it was to the left of the room, of the door, the front door, and it had either velvet or velveteen curtains of a kind of orange colour, and all the furniture was in kind of oatmeal covers, I mean all the chairs and the sofas and the, whatever you sat on were in this kind of, loose-covered chairs. One of the dominating, one of the most dominating pieces of furniture was the gramophone, which had an enormous, like an old EMI gramophone with an enormous speaker, HMV sorry, an HMV speaker, with, which was obviously 78, where you actually clipped the needles, they were like red pine triangular, and there was a pair of scissors, special scissors where you put in the triangular needle down a little chute and it came out and then you clipped and you made a new needle for yourself. At a very early age, must have been four or five, I was allowed to do this, this was my major toy play, play toy: not my major, it was my interest in music as well, I played certain pieces of music on 78s. And I would, I have great memories of being in the sitting- room, which was, became like, a very important part of the house to me, when no one else was in there, putting on Gigli and Tchaikovsky, basically they were sort of ballet music by Tchaikovsky, and Gigli, and I forget, ‘Mama...’ Oh! And, usually from, sort of excerpts from opera and so on. I, initially I think my interest in it was that I thought, this is a kind of ridiculous thing, but because the actual image of EMI, HMV, no HMV, that’s right, HMV was the dog with the speaker, I used to think the dog was down the speaker, so I would often put my head right down in to see where the dog was. But it was all explained, there’s no dog there, but this is how you do it, and they showed me how to clip the needles and how to do it, and I did it. I am amazed that at that age I was allowed, now, thinking back, how complicated it was to change the needle, how delicate the records were, how it was all, they were all in different packagings and how I must have done this and done that, and I was allowed to do it. But it was a very very essential sort of piece of equipment, and the pleasure of the music went straight to me. Music actually has always played an enormously important part in my life.

End of Track 6: Tape 3: Side B

.....why the HMV dog is in your book?

Yes, probably. I mean yes consciously, yes, I knew, I knew perfectly well, yes. And so is the wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow was the other toy I had, a very small wheelbarrow. The main thing was that I actually wanted people to wheel me around in it rather than... So, it was like one of those kind of tools or toys where I involved other people, but I never really realised that I was in a sense created as this little god- creature or Buddha sitting in the barrow to be wheeled. I was supremely spoilt, I would say.

By both of them?

I think almost compensated for by the obvious break-up of the marriage that was going on all around, and so therefore a lot of concentration, yes. My mother would have been, is, would have been a very good mother I would say right up to the point where separation occurred and then everything collapsed. He was very affectionate too, but then he wasn’t there after the collapse. This is where my life changed very radically, we left the house. I always used to ask my mother why, why do we have to leave St. Ives, and her answer was, ‘Well, you can’t...I couldn’t have possibly gone on living there on my own.’ I mean, you’ve got to realise that St. Ives, which was in 1945, oh, was a very cut-off place, and the war had finished, and I even remember the day we went to London and there was flags everywhere, it must have been in, you know, the final...taking the train up to London. And that was a terribly...a real wrench, because, and my life completely changed from in a sense paradise to, not even pergatory, hell, up to a point, by the time I went to this boarding school. And, but also because I felt I had been abandoned, I felt, there was a very strong feeling of being abandoned, by both my parents.

Before we talk a bit more about the paradise part, just going back to the wheelbarrow, did you succeed in getting people to wheel you around?

And who would have done that?

Well, there was Moll[??] Farrell, who was the gardener, not that he had a lot of time for it. Then there was Janey, who took me for walks, Janey I adored, she was a 19- year-old girl who lived not very far away, and came in every day.

And was paid?

Yes.

So she would come in to clean and things, or she came in to look after you?

I think she came in to look after me, and, I’m not sure how much cleaning she did. The trouble was that I was also extremely spoilt, and I think it’s probably worth recounting one incident where I was being forced to eat my lunch, so, as I explained to you, the actual dining-room or the place that we sat at this oak table that still exists in 20 Church Row, was in the room that you come in the front door, and as Janey came in on one occasion I looked up and knew that this was walk time, and felt extraordinarily resentful, didn’t want to go, picked up the nearest implement and threw it at her, which happened to be a fork, and it stuck in her throat. She was then escorted up to the bathroom and I remember her lying sort of, you know, there was actually blood pouring out of her neck down the bath, and I just came into the bathroom and laughed. I was then sent to my room and my father was sent up to discipline me. But it was a more, it wasn’t actually laughing at, it was almost out of, how can such a...you know, I mean what kind of problems have I caused, sort of, what is going on, sort of feeling. My father arrived, and came in the door, and said, ‘You’ve been very naughty.’ And I laughed at him, and he left, didn’t do anything. I knew he was being sent to do something and he didn’t do anything. And I felt like a complete monster. I don’t...it was a superficial, it wasn’t...I mean it wasn’t...you know, in fact I have exaggerated it to a certain extent, I mean yes, she was leaning over the bath, but if you had a fork, if a sort of fork had been thrown at you, it would

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 7: Tape 4: Side A Page 83 be more of a shock than actual blood running down her neck that really upset, and... But, that is always remembered, I remember that very vividly. But I did adore her too, I really did.

And when you left, did you have any contact with her?

No. I always...apparently she went on to look after lots of children, many many children, and I was her first.

And what did you adore about her, why did that happen?

Well, one of the things I really looked forward to was going up to her house, which was, you can imagine Cornwall is on rocks and so on, we were sort of down in the bay, and it was up, and it was a thatched cottage, and, they made a great fuss of me of course, but I remember all sorts of qualities to that place.

Who was in it, who were they?

Oh, her mother and her father and her brothers. She had quite a few brothers, about the same age, in fact there was one slightly older brother, and a couple of other brothers, and they, we played around and they all, I was made a lot of fuss of.

About the same age as her, or as you?

No no, no one was the same age as me, they were all her age.

Did you want brothers and sisters yourself, were you conscious of not having them?

Yes, very much so, yes. Not at that point but by the time we moved to France and I was very much on my own with Ayah, my mother, and Francis. And in this Chateau Des Enfants, sort of deserted sort of chateau as it were with a wall all the way round running round it, I really...yes, I missed companions. It was, although I could speak

Mm. And you said that there was quite a lot of pattern in your life in St. Ives; was there a real routine to the day, can you remember what it was?

No I can’t. I mean, certainly there I was, sitting at the table when Janey came in on that occasion, that must have been a routine, you always sit in this chair and you have your boiled egg and so on, and...yes. And of course there was the walk, I mean you know, there’s nothing like having someone sent over to do...how else could it be if it wasn’t a routine, you know, I mean, how do you organise for someone to take somebody for a walk at 2 o’clock every afternoon or whatever it is? I was never aware of scattered, un-routine-like life. I have no memory of any routine when, by the time we moved to Chateau Des Enfants or a lot of the things that happened after that, but I suppose I clearly do think there was a kind of structure to life at Carbis Bay.

And, did your mother deal with the domestic life, I mean was she the cook in this household?

No, at one point she had a cook. She did certain things. But the thing, the point was, when she had the cook, or rather there was the cook, it was because she was given time to work and paint, that was the general reasons.

But who for instance would have made your bed?

I was expected to make my bed but I probably didn’t. I can’t remember that.

Who would have dressed you when you were that age?

Right, my mother would have dressed me, if I had to be dressed. Yes. Only the room that I occupied was hers, it was known as Margaret’s or, I mean, I didn’t know this of course, but on one occasion my aunt said, ‘Oh, and those windows are Margaret’s room,’ and I said, ‘Oh, I always understood that as my room’. So you know, that

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 7: Tape 4: Side A Page 85 gives you proof that she had always, I mean in a sense... And it’s not an unusual thing, I mean exactly the same thing happened when our son Laurie was born, what was our bedroom became his room, we moved out and went to another room.

Why?

Well, you think that...I think the first child is given, it’s a very new experience for two people, and, I think subsequent children are treated in a more, you know, it’s not so novel any more, and...it’s a rather amazing thing the first child being born, and you probably give up considerably more of your life to accommodate that, and that’s one of the... Just the actual, where someone lives in a house, probably the established sort of sense of security of a room for a baby is seen as, oh it’s got to be the bedroom, and at the mill there was only actually at that point only one bedroom.

Ah, right.

And I had to make a room for us to sleep in which is still really basically what we call the mill room but it’s really the room we sit in, but it was a big room. And there is a tradition in my family that I’ve always actually had what you call beds in rooms that you live in. I don’t...I’ve never really gone for this idea of bedrooms, although in this situation we had actually, I had constructed this room above the bathroom at the mill where there had been no room before, which we did call the bedroom, but then I used to even work in it originally, so it’s a bit complicated.

What do you remember of this room you had as a bedroom in St. Ives?

Oh well I was thinking of it just before so I can say this. I remember sitting on the windowsill, because it was, what, the kind of cliff end of the house, it was well, well up, and there was a very small window with grilles, sort of, railings do you call them? No, sort of, almost prison grilles over it, so that the window would open wide but you know, there was fear of the idea of someone falling out, because there was a very big drop; it wasn’t just the drop down the side of the building, it was also down the side of the cliff. Not the cliff onto the sea but the cliff onto the road that divided us from the

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 7: Tape 4: Side A Page 86 house that it turned out that Francis visited and so on. I remember sitting on this windowledge and the sun rose over the sea, and I remember bathing myself in the light of the sunrise, and I remember to this day that actual, that actual experience, and of feeling in a sense a tremendous, tremendous happiness, and tremendous sense of specialness. The other thing I would do was...

Sorry, that you were special, or the experience was special?

I was actually special in the light of the sun, yes. The other thing I would do would bother the visitor because the visitors’ room was next to mine, and it would have been possibly my Uncle Duff might have stayed there, but I would go in very early and wake them up, and we would have conversations and so on, and so on.

And you would get into bed with your cold feet, or not?

I wouldn’t really, possibly sometimes I wouldn’t even know the person but we would acquaint each other. But I was a great talker, and I would ask lots of questions.

Can you remember what?

No.

But they would be about the other person perhaps, or...

Yes, often. But sometimes fairly personal questions, you know. ‘Your nose looks funny; did you do something to it?’ You know, you know, pulling them to bits, poor people.

And do you remember how they reacted, were they mostly kind?

Yes, always, always.

But what actually was in your bedroom, what was it like physically?

I remember there was a paraffin stove for heating, the kind of egg kind, which was absolutely terrifying because it sometimes lit the floor, I mean on one occasion I think paraffin spilled out and went up, but someone very sensibly got, put something on it and killed it - well, you know, dampened the fire. No, I can’t really remember. I wonder if I had the bricks? The bricks were an amazing kind of inheritance. The bricks were just 2 x 2s cut up in length about a foot long; there were two kinds of bricks, there was the square brick which was two inches by two inches, 2 x 2s - no, sorry, what am I talking about? They were one foot long, or maybe ten inches long, they were 2 x 2 bits of wood. There was, the more flatter kind of brick was again the same length, about ten inches long and it was like one-and-a-half inches thick and about two-and-a-half inches wide. These bricks had been played with by my mother, my uncles and my aunt as children, and they had been handed down, and there were all sorts of games that could be played with those bricks. For instance, one of the major ones was stacking them on the floor, all along the room, a little distance away from each other, and then going, knocking the first brick and they would all go down in a row and then you can make patterns. Or else another one was building as high as you could go, or having someone in it and building them up, so often the person I woke up in the morning, it was probably an aunt, there was like, ‘Will you do, will you build bricks around me?’ 0r, ‘Will you do this?’ Or, ‘Will you do that?’ And extracting promises for the rest of the day for doing certain things. ‘Will you wheel me round in my barrow?’ I’m not sure, but it could have quite easily been that. Another toy that absolutely and totally fascinated me was a methylated spirits steam engine; it was really to work Meccanos, so if you made a windmill out of Meccano, this thing was a motor working on steam which had a little piston, which you lit with a methylated spirits lamp, heated up the water, the water boiled and went down these pipes, and it started these pistons working, and it was the way, nowadays you would have an electric thing to make the windmiill you had made out of Meccano go, or the thing work, but you had a little sort of, ways of attaching the engine to make, you know, sort of bands or, rubber bands, I don’t know what, from this little engine. But that wasn’t what I wanted to do, it was actually the whole experience of lighting the methylated spirits, boiling the water, the smell of the methylated spirits on this little copper boiler, the hot water going down to the piston and the steam, and the

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 7: Tape 4: Side A Page 88 possibility of the piston...and we would keep on turning the wheels just to see if there was enough steam for it to go round. And then the magic of it actually going was just amazing. That again was, oh, extracting all sorts of promises from people to do it for me, or to help me do it.

I was going to say, you sound as though you were quite an agile child in that sense, that and the gramophone needles. I mean were you quite competent, or did you really need supervision?

No, I didn’t need supervision but I really wanted to involve other people. I think I enjoyed it more to do it with others than to just do it on my own. The gramophone was an exception, I was quite happy to do that, I didn’t have to share that, but all these mechanical toys I think on the whole I either did, was a little bit frightened of, and I probably was told I wasn’t allowed to light the matches or the...in fact that’s probably it, wasn’t it. The actual methylated spirits was probably quite dangerous, or I could have...I don’t know what. I wasn’t allowed to strike matches, I mean there were certain restricrtions, I can’t remember what they were.

And would your father ever have done these things with you?

Never did, no, never. No.

And would he have been around during the day from your point of view, or was he locked in his study and that was out of bounds?

More or less. I mean, I mean I think I was allowed down. Well, of course there was a great tradition of reading at bedtime, and it still continues although it’s not going on any more, but there was to a very late age, and one of my greatest pleasures was him reading to me.

Do you remember what he read?

Oh everything, absolutely everything.

Like what?

Well, they were...I mean, my first, I mean one of the things that I remember absolutely was some sort of silly children’s book about, it wasn’t about a spider but, there was a phrase like, and it went like this: ‘“That’s nuffin’,” said Sheila.’ And I think, that would sort of send me off into absolute hysterical laughter. It was probably because he actually put on voices and became different people. That one he remembers feeling really, and he said, ‘I actually began to get really worried about you because you just could not control yourself.’ It was just beyond belief, how funny I found that phrase, ‘“That’s nuffin’,” said Sheila’. God knows, I mean it doesn’t make me laugh now.

Do you think you really did, or do you think you had got yourself into a cycle where that was what you did when you heard that noise?

Oh well, I think it was...it was taken in... I think the word ‘Sheila’, I adored that idea of the word ‘Sheila’, I don’t know why. It must have connected in some way I’ve lost, you know. But he, instead of saying, ‘That’s nothing,’ he would say, ‘That’s nuffin’,’ you know, and I knew he was putting on an act. When my mother tried to do the same thing I would just say, ‘Please don’t’, I didn’t actually say please, I never did say please to anybody to be honest. I said, ‘This is not, this is not right, you’re not reading right, go away,’ is what I said. And I must say I did require a certain kind of thing.

When you say you never said please, when did you learn to say it?

I don’t know but certainly not then.

So was anybody disciplining you ever?

Hardly.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 7: Tape 4: Side A Page 90 And do you think they, when you said, ‘Go away, that’s not right,’ did they just accept it or did they think, what a horrible child we’ve produced?

Oh, yes they probably hated it, but they didn’t say. I didn’t say that to my father but I certainly did say it to my mother I must say. Mm. I was enormously spoilt, there’s no point in pretending I wasn’t. But you know, goodness knows, there’s all sorts of reasons why these things occur. In certain ways I could say I wouldn’t have bathed in that sunlight and felt that I was important if I hadn’t been considered that, you know, by my parents, and I do remember that as thinking that this is very wonderful and singular, and why doesn’t this happen every day sort of thing? But I also thought I was discovering something. I mean to me the sun rising over the sea never meant anything particularly, but on that occasion it did, and it has ever since.

How old do you think you were?

I was, well it was before the age of five so you could say I was between four or five.

And do you think when your father realised he was going to go, do you think it occurred to him that he was losing you in that sense?

Yes, I think it might have done. I think he would have, he would have felt bad about it. I know he would have, I know he did, because he went on trying to compensate for the rest of his life in lots of ways. [PAUSE FOR THOUGHT] He was much more analytical you see, and what is so extraordinary is that my mother, you would have thought he would have chosen somebody who would share those views, but she has never been like that; in fact she is refreshingly un-like that.

What do you think attracted him to her?

Possibly a certain will that there has always been about her. She was very attractive looking. She possibly is a little bit...what attracted her - him rather? And maybe that he moved in certain circles and this was someone from a very different area who he felt he could...who was un...in a funny sort of way ready to learn and didn’t, wasn’t

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 7: Tape 4: Side A Page 91 knowing as it were, didn’t have a preconception of any kind about him, just took him for what he was. Was interested in the same things, but it was also this great need to sort of be in touch with a painter, because at that point he was actually and had started to paint himself, and he needed quite a lot of advice about it, and she was providing it almost immediately.

And do you remember in the St. Ives days, I mean do you remember good times with the two of them together, or was there always this sort of feeling that they were battling with each other?

As a matter of fact I don’t make much distinction. I don’t...I mean...do I remember a particular good time? I don’t remember them being together that much, you know, the curious thing is. I do remember bad times, I do remember when the car broke down and all sorts of things going wrong. I remember...but I always took these things very personally and was not very well at that point, and had earache or something. I basically was a very happy child, that’s the extraordinary thing. And quite, I don’t think I experienced loneliness at that point at all. I was terribly confident, enormously confident; it was almost as if I had everything that I needed, but at the wrong time. But maybe it is [INAUDIBLE].

What would have been the right time? Why was it the wrong time?

Well perhaps it was the right time then. I mean perhaps it counteracted some of the appalling kind of conflict that was going on between my parents, and so therefore it couldn’t have been a better time. From that point of view I’m wrong in saying that, yes.

And do you associate the house with having lots of people in it, or of being you quietly playing by yourself?

Yes, no there was often, there was a great deal of people coming and going.

And who do you remember?

Well the visitors were nameless as far as I was concerned. I mean I remember, I mean just the spare room was occupied quite a lot, and they were different, and it was always fascinating to me who was staying the night, you know. But I didn’t know who they were, I don’t remember who they were. You know, I don’t really, don’t think I made enormous distinctions. At that age, you know, you were saying up to the age of five, to actually... I do remember frightening things certainly, I remember on one occasion someone playing pillows in the sitting-room with me, and stuffing this pillow over my head, or over my face actually, and it was probably a game, but I began to suffocate, and got a terrible shock, and just, I’ve never forgotten that sense of suffocation, and fear, and these were very new emotions, I don’t think I ever felt such things until I experienced them there. And this person whoever she was, rather agile I remember her, a rather agile, elderly woman, got a terrible shock as well, and I didn’t forgive her for it, I really didn’t, I wouldn’t say anything to her, I wouldn’t have anything to do with her. I think I actually did have my way of controlling things, and I did have my own way, and I must have been pretty appalling.

Maybe you needed to be.

I don’t know.

Did you learn to read?

I can’t remember, but I must have done.

Did you have any schooling before you left there?

Yes.

What was it?

It wasn’t very far, just up the road.

I’m not sure.

And you must have been not very used to being with other children. How was it?

I’m again not particularly sure about that. I didn’t mind school, but I don’t have very much memories of it at that point. I remember certain parties much more where other children are involved, and I think I felt they were fairly awkward, but in the course of one particular party I’m thinking of, a sort of Christmas party it was, I also remember sort of getting the better of the whole situation and having a good time. So I wasn’t...there was an initial problem of being thrown in and introduced to a new situation where the focus wasn’t on myself, but I think I managed to find a certain amount of pleasure through it in some way or another.

And did you have a sense of other households being different from yours, or not?

Not really, not at that age.

And were you drawing?

Yes. My first, unfortunately, and this is the terrible thing, my mother organised an exhibition when I was four or five. Oh, well, you know, I had three girl friends, they were girls, my friends were girls, one was Naum Gabo’s daughter, called Nina, Nina Gabo, she was actually my best friend, but the only reason I feel is because she was really quite a bully, so it says something about me then. There were two other girl friends who were less bullying and I was less interested in, in certain sort of ways. Anyway, the first exhibition organised by my mother in St. Ives, the two children painters, was of her, mine and her drawings, and I certainly...

Sorry, yours and Nina’s?

Yes. Yes. And I certainly was quite a prolific drawer.

What were your drawings like for that, do you remember?

Oh I did trains, I did boats. I mean there must have been, the Wallis things were all hanging on the wall. I mean I felt I kind of knew it all, to be honest.

Have you still got them?

No. I don’t know where they are.

And do you think there was something special about your drawings, compared to other children’s drawings?

I don’t know. I mean, possibly there’s a certain knowingness in the background that I came out of, and what was hanging around, so it makes you a knowing... But I think all children have the ability to produce drawings of quite a high standard actually.

Yes, I mean a lot of children are very oblivious to what’s around them in terms of anything on the walls or things; did you watch your mother painting, how involved were you at the time?

Yes, I do remember her doing a book cover that I think I thought was very tremendous, it was a rather representational thing of some geraniums. She took on all sorts of odd things to do.

Where did she paint?

She had a little room off, a minute little room, absolutely cram-full of things, off the dining-room, between...oh yes, well the kitchen I didn’t mention was a walk-through from the front door, you walked through the dining-room and then you went straight into the kitchen, but to the left was a sitting-room and then a little room next to it was where she... But I don’t think that’s necessarily where she painted. Apparently there was a studio down the other side of the house and I have no memory of it whatsoever.

End of Track 7: Tape 4: Side A

And, I mean did you feel that what Margaret was doing at that stage, did you realise that it wasn’t what everybody’s mother did, or did you just think this is ordinary, or were you made to be aware that it was special? Or was it something that was simply the time when you had no access to her because she was working?

Well it might have been more that, yes. I remember hanging around. I had no consciousness that this was a different kind of household. I would normally, if I went somewhere else I would think, not that we were different from them but they were different from us, but it didn’t make us seem...do you know what I mean? I mean, in other words it’s not the same as home, but then home is different, it was more in that context.

And did you get...I mean presumably you went to the Gabos’ house.

Yes, quite a lot.

What was that like?

It was a kind of bungalow, it was a bungalow. It smelt of, a very intense memory of the smell, it smelt of linoleum, a kind of slightly sweet smell of linoleum. And it to me was rather precious and I liked going there.

Why?

I think Miriam, I liked Miriam and of course I liked Nina. I think that my...I think that’s where my whole taste, if that’s what it is, for Americans started very early on, as something that I find I recognise or I am drawn to, because Miriam, Nina’s mother, was American.

And what was she like?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 8: Tape 4: Side B Page 97 I felt she was a very warm person. The curious thing is that she was involved in the video or the film that was made about Margaret and she was living in Tuffnel Park, and I had no idea she was living in Tuffnel Park, which is just up from Lady Somerset Road in Kentish Town, and... There was no compulsion on my part to make an arrangement to meet up, and yet I have very fond memories of her at that time. You see I think I’ve acknowledged the fact that people aren’t necessarily the same, and that people in certain circumstances are the way they are, and that is the way you want to remember them, and that they don’t remain the same and you’ve always looked and you only saw them from one point of view at that time. And that in a funny sort of way it’s almost disappointing meeting these people later on.

Is it partly because this period of your life is a very precious one that seems very separate from everything else? Is it partly people from that time?

Yes I think it is, it’s very precious, yes. And I think I hung on to it through thick and thin for many years after that where everything changed around. I think there was only one way of judging it, from the other end if you like. I think [INAUDIBLE] probably passed me... A lot of people who had comparatively happy childhoods have no memories at all because, you know, because it was...there was nothing that they could actually focus on because there was no contrast. Really what, the curious thing is that my life’s been a series of ups and downs and reverses and fortune and misfortune, and it’s only through all that that I’ve judged, and valued, various things that have passed. I don’t think I judged it at the time, I mean as I said I was a stupendously spoilt brat, and I wouldn’t have wanted to meet myself now as I must have been.

But, apropos the fact you didn’t feel any reason to arrange to meet Miriam, I mean aside from Helen and Laurie, who are - and your mother, who we’ve talked about her - who are the adults who you are very attached to now and who you regularly communicate with?

[PAUSE FOR THOUGHT] Well, as you know there’s...I own this house in Kentish Town, and over the years a number of people have lived in it, but quite a lot of

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 8: Tape 4: Side B Page 98 friendships have been based on the people who have lived in it in one way or another, and one very long one was with someone called Michael, Michael Shag[??], who lived in the basement, has only recently moved, but a very curious one, a very curious friendship. I mean he is a sort of, well first of all he is interested in art and is very involved with art but he is basically a kind of, or was, a concert pianist, and, I seem to remember one of the first conversations I had with him was that I said, I assumed that he, if there was any kind of connection it was because he was a composer rather than a player, and I actually remember actually thinking, oh gosh, this is the difference; here is somebody who is actually playing but not composing, so the actual parallel between me being an artist is not the same as in a sense him, and yet he was fully involved in art in lots of different ways, in much the same way as an artist might be. So I found this a very curious combination. The other one was that he is American or was or is, and the third one was that he is homosexual, which was an irrelevance as far as I was concerned at the point, and, but it did in a funny sort of way mean that he had another life that had nothing to do with me at all, and... But I suppose really the connection between him and me was an analytical mind, and an involvement in analysis if you like, in analysing visual material, analysing people; discussions on that level were very important to me, and have been all my life, and I would say that the actual dialogue that goes on between me and Helen is always very analytical. I was searching for a passage to talk about to those students yesterday in my notebook which I never came to, when you were there and you said, oh you...when we want to discuss Helen, and you’ve actually gone to your notebook to check out something. What it was about was related to, yes the collaboration, the collaboration between myself and Helen about where analysis finished, where we could...where we talked on one level and where we analysed what we talked about on another, and where analysis ultimately became rather destructive of the making, of the collaboration which was the doing if you like. And that was a crucial point in the actual collaboration, because sometimes we would continue to try and collaborate without the analysis, because the analysis became too analytical or too probing or too...too destructive actually. With Michael there was never any problem with that, there was a way of communicating with him where it was fascinating to continuously indulge in analysing and taking things apart and putting them together again, in a just, a kind of wandering kind of conversation.

Was that partly because it wasn’t to do with bringing a piece of work to fruition, it didn’t have some ulterior thing?

Possibly, quite possibly, yes. And, but he also understood my interest, because he was connected in some way with art. If it had simply been about music I don’t think I would have, it would have worked as well.

So what were you analysing, what sort of things would you be discussing?

Well probably dealing with people on one level. I mean he would be very concerned, but then, but really as a projection of talking about himself. I mean he was the only person I know that I can actually listen for hours talking about himself and not be completely put off by that.

And, did he become a friend because he became a tenant, or did he become a tenant because you had a vague friend and it...?

I didn’t know him before he became a tenant, and he moved in upstairs, and there was, it was one of those critical periods of breaking up and re-forming friendships where I focused on him and said, did he want to take over the other end of the house, the bottom of the house, when we left, and it worked out that he did. And it was a bit like a sort of liferaft for him at that point, and I think the friendship started from that point onwards.

And so would you just pick it up when you happened to be in London, or did you actually take more trouble over it than that?

It’s funny because then there are house concerns, so quite often he would ring up from London and I would communicate with him from Scotland. I would also always...sometimes there was irritations. And it’s interesting because now he’s moved, we still...I do ring him up. I mean it could be that I associate him with Lady Somerset Road, but when I arrive from Scotland into this rather cold dark empty room

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 8: Tape 4: Side B Page 100 with no one to talk to, I think of Michael. And it’s probably an association that I went through all these years of just ringing the phone number downstairs and saying, ‘Hi, I’m here’.

How long did he live there?

Something like, approaching fifteen, sixteen years.

And you think you probably will go on seeing him?

Yes. Because he didn’t move very far away. In fact he’s only a stone’s throw away.

Why did he move?

Complicated, but, I never thought he would move, and up to that point it was really a basic problem of how on earth am I going to make this viable? Because the rent that he was paying me was just a pittance, and I was all of the time trying to up it and up it, and, he couldn’t believe that I wouldn’t be terribly upset when he left. It was all a series of weird things, and in actual fact I was delighted, but I was also really pleased that he was only going to go round the corner, and so... There are a variety of reasons why he left. First of all he has a regular boyfriend, and who was living with a woman who, they ended up all living together, and then she died very quickly, as soon as they moved in fact. But she had the money, and she bought the house.

And so you saw him when you were in London. Is there anyone you see in Scotland?

Oh yes, there’s the people that we knew initially from the days in the Seventies, a couple who run a glass, they blow their own glass and they run a glass studio called Lindingmill[ph]. We moved there in the mid-Seventies, these people came in the late Seventies, as sort of on the end of the kind of craft...oh there was also someone called Tim Stead[ph] who makes furniture. And they remain very very important friends to us. Both, nearly all of them are foreigners, and in a way...I mean in the sense that they’re not Scottish, but they were looking for space to live in, and found Scotland as

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 8: Tape 4: Side B Page 101 the appropriate place to set up a workshop, and that seems perfectly realistic. But it’s interesting that, although there are artists and painters and so on, subsequently more recent friends, there are certainly no book-makers except if you could count Eck Finlay but, you know, he again is a subsequent, and much younger sort of person. In the early days there was no one but craftsmen and people making furniture and making, blowing glass, potters etcetera, I mean, and that was the accepted, we just totally accepted that.

But these friends you’re talking about, are they people you see together? Are any of them intimately your friends?

No, they are people we see together quite a lot, yes. Yes, they are.

So is there anybody else who, in the sort of world landscape, you think of as one of your kind of touchstone people?

You mean, world landscape? What do you mean by that?

Well I mean, I can think of the key people who are my friends who, I might not see them very often, I mean for instance there’s somebody in Gloucestershire who I might see three times a year but she would still remain one of my closest friends.

Yes.

Is that not part of your world?

Cathy, the reason I live with Helen is because she is my very very best friend. I only have ever needed one good, very good friend. Otherwise, I’ve never had highly sort of, the kind of, sort of friend relationships which you could call acquaintances; they either are good friends, really good friends, someone I can completely confide in, although the people I’ve just been talking about funnily enough are verging on that, they aren’t that... I mean you know, the way couples...well, couples have children, have a family life, have independence from other people. I can’t say I really go for

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 8: Tape 4: Side B Page 102 couples as friendships, you know, couples, friendships between couples is a very strange kind of friendship. I think friendships between individuals, and in your case I always think of you as an individual, and I understand you having friendships with people, and important and touchstone friendships as you call them. I am now acquiring certain types of friendships through my voluntary surrender of myself in kind of highly analytical situations. For instance I will go to somebody who I talk to every week very intimately about myself, but it is as, it is as therapist and patient, if you like, or client.

And when did you begin to do that again?

Well I started, oh, about, let’s see, a good eight or nine years ago, but I’ve gone through various phases and moved on from one person to another. And what’s happened is that the person that I’ve chosen finally, which is only been going on for about six months, eight months, has been nearer to being somebody who could have been a very good friend or could become that. So I don’t, I am beginning to really, not really see the distinction, but I feel that there is an enormous amount of history that I actually want to, or, an enormous side of myself that I actually want to confess to, or unload with, or witness as, with somebody who would accept things beyond what a friend would take. I don’t know if that makes any sense or not.

But, going back to what you said about only having needed one good friend at a time so to speak, have you therefore got a history of having intense, quite long friendships with someone and then not needing them any more and moving on to the next one? Do those relationships get sustained? They don’t by the sound of it.

Well, the Michael one after all is and was quite a strong one.

Well, I’m trying to find others than Michael.

You see the problem with friendships is that there’s also an element of it which is that it doesn’t leave the person free. I mean you acquire a friendship for all sorts of reasons because you give to it but you also to a certain extent receive back as well.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 8: Tape 4: Side B Page 103 The thing is that what I...possibly there was something almost stifling about the friendship with Michael because in a funny sort of way he was, because, also one can’t totally separate the idea of him being a tenant, so he was also a dependent, and he was also sexually oriented in another way. I mean I’ve never in any way been interested in homosexuals in a sense of sex, but only as...but I have been interested in them in a kind of curious kind of way as people, and as sensitive people which they always seem to be. And there must be something in me that is rather like that, but I’m not sort of, in a sense...I don’t know, but I don’t...you know, there’s not really a side of me that’s sexually orientated in that way. But, and there has never been any need for that either. In the early days when I was a teacher I think I did have lots of different sexual relationships with different women, and I felt that there was a whole element of it that was very exploitative on my part, and in a way that it wasn’t...and I could say that about my second marriage as well, but at the same time there was a great deal of feeling as well, so it was very hard, and sometimes we can never have necessarily the ideal relationship. It’s very hard to make a distinction between the giving and the taking, if that’s what it involves. And... I don’t...you see I suppose...I suppose I’m a person who in a way is prepared to sit and wait. I don’t think that when I’ve made choices of my own they’ve been very good; I think the circumstances have often ruled how I come to know a person, and, I’m probably absolutely petrified of being, making a terrible mistake and being rejected, probably right from childhood. So therefore I do put a great deal of trust in the friendships that are, they’re all- embracing, which is this best friend sort of idea.

It’s quite a dangerous position though isn’t it, because you’ve put all your investment into one thing.

What, all your eggs in one basket? I know, but then there’s a whole philosophy about that, you know, I mean why spread them over, you know, a wide area? If that, that could be even more protective if you like, and being protective ultimately is always basically holding a great deal back. At any rate when you put your eggs in one place, you know something truthfully one way or another, because you risk so much, and I think taking risks has always been quite a sort of forte of mine.

I actually quite enjoy being on my own. I actually enjoy quite a lot of time on my own.

But that, is that within a context of being on the whole not on your own though?

I think it is, yes. But you know, if I come down to London and find an empty room, I do feel somewhat lonely. I always expect when I arrive in London from Scotland to feel sort of disorientated, and, but I somehow, as soon as I’ve gone to see a certain amount of shows, bumped into a certain amount of people, I feel quite happy. I think I do rely quite a lot on dialogue with people, and in circumstances where my best friend isn’t there, or I don’t talk to her or, whoever he is, her, him, on the phone or something, I find ways of communicating with people all around, especially in a city, I mean it really is considerably easier than in Scotland.

But could you imagine living at the mill by yourself?

Well that would be a really fairly hard one. The mill is, well it’s not stupendously isolated but in certain ways it is, although it’s very close to a small road. You are very aware of the weather, the exposure to the weather, and the very sort of...the nights, the darkness in the winter, the lightness in the summer, the bad and really gloomy- looking, dark days, the wonderful sunny, hot days where you don’t want to be anywhere else. There’s all sorts of incredible contrasts. But within that you could see that someone could go completely off the rocks if they had no direction in their lives in a place such as this. But I always have an awful lot to do, I mean I do...I mean it isn’t just the practical sort of arrangements in life, it is actually getting on with the work, and that occupies a very very intense period of time where everything falls into a continuous pattern, and I don’t have time for London, I don’t have time for children, I don’t have time for anything, trying to get this thing done, finished, before I lose it, which is roughly the process of making a book.

Mm. And, I’m going to take you back again. Tell me a bit more about Nina.

Nina Gabo. Yes, what about her?

What was she like, apart from being bossy or whatever you said?

A bully, she was a bossy bully. I loved her.

What did she look like?

I’ve met her since and she didn’t allow... It’s amazing, I was open to anything, and she was saying, ‘Your intimacy with me is, or your supposed intimacy with me, cannot be on the basis that you assume you know more about me than someone else does just because you knew me from the age of five.’ That’s what she was saying. And I think she felt quite threatened by my attitude. I think I felt extremely, I felt hilariously...I felt almost as if I was in a fish shop buying fish with an analyst; in other words you’ve done a session with an analyst in this room and then you go and buy your fish to eat and you find they’re doing it the same. I find that absolutely hysterically funny, and I remember the sort of stern expression of this analyst as she was trying to buy her haddock, while I the patient, who had only been talking to her sort of, or the client, whatever you want to call me in those circumstances, had already bought their haddock, and was going off in the opposite direction, and there was none of the things that could have operated within the session going on there, and she was looking extremely stern and upset. And this was rather similar to, I mean not that Nina was any of those things, but, it was just that she felt I was assuming too much intimacy too quickly, but possibly because she didn’t feel she had the amount of control she needed over this meeting.

Where did you meet, and after how long?

I think it was at something at the Tate, and... Oh, I was introduced to her, and, I didn’t even know it was her.

So we’re talking thirty years or something?

Yes. Yes.

So she wasn’t in any danger from you, I mean you weren’t exactly going to sort of...

You know, I think I understand it. I think that if you’ve known someone, and I felt I did know her as a child, then that knowing has gone by the time you’ve grown up.

What do you know of her as a child?

[PAUSE FOR THOUGHT] Something I can’t put into words Cathy really quite honestly. I think that because children don’t, who just play around, do things, there aren’t the restrictions that we have between people as we grow older in one sense. We’re both vulnerable, we’re equal in lots of ways. We’ve had life’s experience, things have been thrown at us, we’ve taken things, we’ve dropped things, and all that experience is not any longer in any kind of intimate relationship between the two of us. She is fixed with whatever life she’s got, I am fixed with whatever life I’ve got. None of all that, that came in between, can be communicated within ten minutes; there is no implication that we were going to see each other for any other reason, so therefore there really isn’t very much.

But what are your memories of her in childhood?

As a sort of busy, rather domineering little girl.

But what would you do together when you saw each other? Did you see each other often?

Yes, more than I saw anybody else. But it was pure, I mean, it just happened. I was very regretful when they left, they went off to America.

But would you, do you think you were more often outside or inside?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 8: Tape 4: Side B Page 107 Yes, usually outside. She was...she was a pampered little girl, who wasn’t, you know...and I might have been a little, slightly dangerous little boy, and Miriam was always looking for protection for Nina and rather worried about her from me.

So would you have been climbing trees, would you have been playing in the homes?

I remember we played cars in a kind of bamboo grove type of place with, and, I remember on one occasion I pushed her over because she had sat in the seat for too long and it was my turn, and she refused to leave. And so she went bawling into the house. That was quite a lot of it, I mean there was a lot of bawling and crying.

Would you actually physically fight each other?

I think we did, yes.

And do you remember him being there, Naum?

Sort of, yes.

And he’s not an important presence?

Yes, no he had a very strong atmosphere in the house. But he...he basically I felt was a rather sad character. I mean it’s concentrated by the way I’ve come across him since, and, although he’s dead, he seemed to survive extraordinarily well, and to have gone on to achieve amazing things. But he seemed a very doleful, unhappy man in that period in St. Ives, Carbis Bay, continuously complaining and continuously carping on, you know. And I mean, the major...sort of, arguments about who got there first, Barbara Hepworth or him, and who copied who, were all going on, all going on, and although I know that in retrospect I must have picked up on it.

And do you remember seeing his work?

Yes. Yes.

And what do you think you made of it as a child?

Well I was prepared to accept anything. I mean after all it was a pretty crazy kind of world to have been brought up in wasn’t it, to anybody who wasn’t... I think I remember the idea of him carving a stone in a box that had sand in it, and that the only way, with a chisel and a hammer, and, a small one, just a...I felt, I saw him doing that, and... As you can imagine it’s rather hard to carve a sort of, say a pebble off the beach, not that they were, but sometimes, if you don’t have a way of holding it, you know, it would always slip away. So one of the kind of devices was that you had a sort of box with sand in it, and you sort of semi-buried it, or you kept it in the sand, and then when you had pushed it right across the box, you pushed it back again with, when you were trying to carve it with a chisel.

And as a child, when you came across the work of any of these people, was anyone expecting you to have a reaction, or could you just quietly get on with your life and notice it as much as you wanted to? I mean was it, were you made to pay attention to it?

No, I was never made to, no.

And just before we finish, before we have a break, I mean, when you had this exhibition with Nina, what were her paintings like, or her drawngs?

I don’t know, I have no memory of it at all, I was simply told it.

So you don’t remember going to it?

No, I don’t.

Right, and you don’t know...

End of Track 8: Tape 4: Side B

We may find the tape runs out before we do - not the tape, the battery. You were just describing one of your drawings in this exhibition that you remember.

Oh yes, a very sharp looking kind of rowing boat with about twenty cross-hatching sort of seats across it - not cross-hatching... So it was an idiotically kind of centipede- ey like long boat with a sharp...

Prow?

Prow, yes that’s the word. And lots and lots and lots of seats going across it. In the same way that they do trains, the only thing that really interested me about trains were the little bobbles that went along the roof which apparently were breathing, for air, that in the old carriages they used to have these round things along the top.

Did you travel by train quite a lot as a small child?

Well I seem...I do...I remember more travelling by car funnily enough, yes. Well you see I’ll tell you why, it was because we lived above the railway line, so I must have...and I was fascinated by the railway line and putting pennies on it and things like that. So to go down to the beach you had to actually cross the railway line, which was a small sort of junction line from Carbis Bay to St. Ives; I don’t know how it worked quite honestly but, it wasn’t the main railway line, it was just like a single track that went round Carbis Bay, that must have connected up at some part, it was like kind of, I really don’t quite understand. But that was a fascination. The smell of, that tarry smell of sleepers in a hot day with a salty breeze that you get on the coasts in Cornwall, and the wind blowing everything, there was always a lot of wind. That was a sort of memory.

And was the beach itself important, did you spend a lot of time on the beach?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 9: Tape 5: Side A Page 111 Yes it was, yes. Yes I did. I played a lot with Nina on the beach. One of my favourite little tricks was digging...it was a sandy beach so you can dig, and I would estimate or ask someone what the tide was doing and if it was coming in I would go right up to the edge as it were where the tide was coming in and I would dig a big hole and get someone to sit in there, have a big wall, so that every sort of, every sort of bay, every sort of wave that came up was, we would sort of, we would watch the way it would, the wall would take it. And then when someone wasn’t looking I would make a little breach in the wall and run out and let them get horrendously soaked by the wave going through the breach that I had breached. I remember doing that at least once anyway. But I think probably someone did it to me at one point and then I went I went on doing it to everybody else. I was always doing kind of naughty things if you like, at that age.

Were you quite athletic?

Probably quite lazy you know. I don’t know. Not sure about that. So, what does athletic mean really?

Well did you spend a lot of time running around and turning cartwheels and...?

No, I don’t think I did. And I think I was pretty bad about coming, you know, I would certainly go down to the beach but it was a really steep climb going up and I would make a great fuss about getting a lift and a carry. But, we are talking about the age, up to the age of five of course. I used to fly a kite down the beach, that was quite fun, but it would always go, be blown away, I mean, the wind was really quite hard sometimes. Again that would involve someone, a visitor or somebody to help with that.

And did you swim?

Yes, yes.

Did you fish?

And was there a sort of life in the town that you were part of at all as a child, do you remember going to the town to shop or anything like that?

Well at St. Ives it was. Because basically Carbis Bay is on the outskirts of St. Ives. I do remember going into St. Ives and going to the harbour, and I was told, ‘And this is where you will hear the fishermen talking in French,’ and I was really quite fascinated, we did actually, there were... I don’t know if this was during the war that the French fishermen had come over in their fishing boats and were camped out in St. Ives or what it was, but that was rather exciting.

And was the war something that really impinged on you?

Not really. I mean I believe before I was born a Messerschmitt came very low over the, up the drive basically, which was the flattest bit of the...and then looped up over the house and then went on to St. Ives and bombed the gasworks. I believe that’s the only, apart from some bombs being dropped on Hayle or something that we heard, there was no other... And, apart from the fact that my father was drafted into watching the coastline. Actually he, because he had a car he was actually drafted into passing on the message, if the Germans did land, and there was a lot about that kind of concept, and apparently on one occasion someone collapsed at the doorstep and said that the Germans had landed and he was sent off, he had to do his trek across country with one light in the middle of night. It turned out to be just a rehearsal, but it was being done for real. So he sort of wandered back the next day. But it never happened.

But, I mean in your early years, the country was at war, did you grow up with a sense that that was a normal thing, or do you think that you were so unaware really that a war was going on that it might as well not have been?

You know, the thing was that I was made aware of it now I think about it, because there were a of a lot of... But in my mind it was because of the war, but what happened was, there was a great deal of boats got beached, they were either wrecked

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 9: Tape 5: Side A Page 113 or beached, I’m not sure, and then we were always continuously seeing these boats and getting up on them, just sitting on their sides sometimes in the sand, stuck. And, that to me was war, I understood that as being war.

So was that a desolate sight, or was it quite fun, from your point of view?

Oh tremendously exciting. Oh tremendously exciting. I think I experienced all the things of what wreckers must have experienced, of coming across some booty, you know, sort of, like getting a boat to flounder, and, I mean not that I got on the boat or was even allowed anywhere near it in fact; these would have been visits with Janey for, shall we go down and look at the latest boat that’s been wrecked, you know, sort of thing.

And were there any other adults in your life at this phase?

I don’t...other than the ones we’ve gone through and gone over.

Were the Herons part of life?

They were...I think they came in later, but they weren’t specific friends of my father’s, they were more my mother’s friends. No, the Herons weren’t in St. Ives of course at that point, they lived in London.

And what about the gardener, I mean did he talk to you much, was he a significant person?

Yes, I loved him, yes.

What was he like?

He was called Farrell, and I used to spend a lot of time up in his shed doing drawings with him. I actually liked people of a kind of working nature, you know what I mean, someone who did a job. That’s why basically my kind of idea of my father was

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 9: Tape 5: Side A Page 114 someone who worked on the road, and I actually idealised that kind of person. That’s why I enjoyed going up to visit Janey, my nanny, and her family, and her brothers and all that. It just was a total romance to me, an absolute total romance. In fact they were really more important these figures than my girlfriends as it were who came from the same kind of ...background.

And did you like having tasks yourself, I mean did you like having a job to do?

I think I was out for pleasure only. I can’t remember any, having to do very much.

And was there anyone who told you stories, apart from your father reading you stories?

Well I thought that when Farrell started speaking he was talking as a story-teller talks, so I would sit and listen and listen and listen and I could go on listening. And I mean I was fascinated by the way he talked different from my parents obviously, and he had this Cornish, this Cornish twang to his voice, and I hardly knew what he was saying, it was absolutely fascinating to me.

And did you have nightmares?

I think I was afraid of the dark, I think I insisted on having a light on in the passage. I don’t have an awful lot of memory of that; I do remember a certain sense of... I remember evenings which were evenings of listening to records which I could hear in, where I was in bed, and my parents were listening, and there would be people. I also remember going to the sitting-room the next day and the smell of tobacco smoke, and that, well, I still think of it as a rather wonderful smell of wine and tobacco from the evening before. And I suppose I would play with the gramophone with that kind of wafting around, I mean to me it was a sort of..... the setting, for putting on and listening to Gigli or, you know, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ or whatever the Tchaikovsky ballet was on, on the 78 there.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 9: Tape 5: Side A Page 115 And did you get the impression, if your parents had other people in, did they put on a brave front that their relationship was better than it was, or...?

No, I didn’t have any, I must say, any kind of...I didn’t have any feelings about that. I know that my mother was, did try quite hard, or didn’t have to try hard, but was valued as a cook, as someone who brought out various sort of things at certain times, and everyone was delighted with the general kind of evenings.

And do you remember any Christmases there?

Funnily enough I don’t, no. I think we did have a Christmas tree but, there has always been a certain amount of resistance from my mother about having a Christmas tree, she always wanted to make it alternative and not common, as it were. She didn’t actually use the word common, but I think that’s really her thinking.

What about Easters?

Easters I remember in France, because there was nothing else except for a few boiled eggs which had been dyed in different colours, and there was an idea of trying to go out into the garden and find them, that was a kind of... And I think that was probably something to do with Francis and the way he had been brought up. I was, I mean you know, looking back on it I think there are certain things you do when you’re a child are just repeats of what your parents experienced when they were children.

Mm. And so, what do you, how do you...oh, before we leave off this, I mean, you’ve talked, you obviously had Meccano. Did you have...

I...you know what, the machine was for Meccano, and I don’t think I actually did do much with the Meccano, I might have put a few things together that...

Did you make models otherwise? Because models have become part of your work process quite often.

Were they there in your childhood?

Not really, no. I might say I don’t do models now, I mean they’re not really part of the book-making any more. No, I think...I think they probably owe quite a lot to photography itself, or the idea of illusion and trying to create, play a trick, is more likely.

OK, so they’ll come in later. But, within this house, I mean were there patterns either in floors or walls or bed covering or anything like that that you used to pay attention to? Because it is a time when you’re quite often close to things and you can lose yourself in wallpaper patterns, or something of that kind. Was there anything like that?

I do remember that the way to get to Adrian’s part of the house, which was, come in the front door, turn right, go through the drawing-room and then down some stairs, and just down the stairs there was a telephone, and it was in the passageway, and my mother or somebody had scribbled, and I thought this was absolutely appalling, as they were in conversation, it was a bit like a public telephone because we had that, simply, it was like a phone on the wall and it was part of the house sort of thing, she had made all this...well as she had been talking she had been doodling all over the wall, and I think that’s my first interest and fascination with what doodling amounted to, was the sort of unconscious drawing if you like, yes. That I remember, although I don’t actually remember the detail of it, but I remember being fairly shocked by it in some sort of way, it seemed to be something completely out of place. I remember even asking her why she had done it, as if this was something, possibly it was something that people did, and I couldn’t quite figure out why she had done it, and I wanted to sort of gauge how it fitted into everybody else’s life. I didn’t see my father doing a thing like that, for instance.

And do you remember what she said?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 9: Tape 5: Side A Page 117 She gave me no explanation, as far as I...I don’t know, I don’t remember really, I don’t remember. I think she just...I mean if I would be surmising now, I think she just said, ‘Oh, it is something I’ve done while I’ve been talking to people on the phone,’ I think she just said that, that kind of thing, you know.

Had you suddenly drawn on the walls, would anyone have minded?

I think they would have put up with it, yes.

And when you got to Adrian’s bit of the house, what was in it?

Books lining the wall, right up to the ceiling, a desk, a bed, and chairs, it was quite a big room with carpets and various sort of bits of furniture. It had a special smell.

What?

Kind of vaguely sceptic Sorry, not sceptic, antiseptic. I think his smell basically. Slightly sooty smell because I think there was a fireplace in there, and that was...he could have a lit fire but he kept, he was very keen on electric bars, that was his sort of way of heating a room. Certainly there was no such thing as central heating at all. I was utterly and totally fascinated by some books on the top shelf which were schoolboy books as he described them, and that if I was, if I was really good he would let me hold them and handle them. They were at the top of a shelf, and they were something like ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ and things like that, but in an old edition and with a kind of illustrative sort of spine area sort of, you know, with an image sort of embossed in the...and I found them very very fascinating, and they were like, my attention was always drawn to those books, and I wasn’t really satisfied till I knew them all And I would often make a visit, you know, in the hopes that he would have time for me enough that I could sit and look up at these particular books, and with the expectancy that one day I would be able to handle them. I only wanted to touch them, I wasn’t that concerned what was in them, although I somehow must have associated the idea of being read to. I used to go, ‘Reader reader reader,’ that was my call for him to read, and he would go... He would also play games with me, he would take me

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 9: Tape 5: Side A Page 118 on his shoulders and he would take all over the house and then dump me, and, he said I had to keep my eyes shut. And he always wore slippers in the house. And that’s in a sense where this Shoddy idea came in, this idea of this horse. He was very much a horse, I would sit on his shoulders, and he would transport me into different rooms, and I would have to shut my eyes and perhaps say where he had put me before I opened them, and then he would pick me up again, put me on his shoulders and then go off, trundling off somewhere else. And he was really very like a grown-up kid himself, in these sort of shuffling sort of slippers and his sort of very loose, old trousers. And, I held onto his hair. Oh I loved that. But you know, and, ‘Reader reader reader’. So I was being, I could demand more or less anything, I felt, I was the king.

So you could go into his room when you felt like it?

I could try; I was sometimes thrown out. ‘Not yet, not now, I’m busy,’ that type of thing. ‘Come back...’ Whereas, you know, he would know how to get rid of me actually. Somehow he would make a diversion and find someone else, he would get me posted somewhere. Whereas my mother wouldn’t know quite what to do. I might, yes, I might hang around outside his door sometimes.

And, what was the first news you had that life was going to change?

You know, I can’t remember, I really can’t. I think I remember feeling the sense that something had really changed, but I was thinking, well at least we don’t have to all completely, it doesn’t have to be everything. And then when Adrian really wasn’t there any more I then discovered that we were leaving Carbis Bay, leaving Park Owls, and I think that was an absolute final blow, because I was...in a sense I think I could have probably survived the, survived it all, even if Adrian wasn’t there, but I couldn’t have necessarily done so in a completely new place and a completely different place.

There was a period when Margaret was there by herself with you wasn’t there? It wasn’t all very abrupt was it?

No, but didn’t...wasn’t there a time when Adrian had left and Margaret was still down in St. Ives?

Oh yes, I believe so, but that is only something I’ve heard about.

But you would have been with her, wouldn’t you?

I think they had some kind of way of getting rid of me, you know, I might have been with someone else or I might have stayed with someone or... For some odd reason I didn’t really know about what was going on at all. It was certainly kept from me as much as they could.

And do you remember her being unhappy?

I remember near the end it must have been...I approached my mother who was standing at her desk which she used to always keep in the sitting-room, in the drawing-room as we called it, with those curtains and those sort of oatmeal kind of furniture, with covers, and the gramophone, and she was standing at her desk and I was saying, ‘Ayah, Ayah, Ayah,’ and she could, she was totally in another world, and I found it really quite disturbing that she should be so away. It must have been just precisely when all that sort of thing was happening. But you know, children tug and tug at grown-ups to get their attention, and, but I do remember that quite vividly. But, subsequently one learnt that she was utterly distraught, I mean she was totally distraught. I mean the first bit of the news that Adrian was gone off with somebody else was bad enough, but, and then it was, the curious thing was that it wasn’t quite as bad when she heard about the fact that it was Ann. But the fact that it had been going on in the house when I was still, I mean it only started because Ann had come to look after me as I was born, so that it had gone on all that period of time.

So it began at your birth?

Yes. The fact that she didn’t even know really, or wasn’t aware that it was still Ann, although she must have known something. I mean she certainly said that, I think at about the time Ann came to stay to look after me, or to help my mother, that she noticed that she thought that if Ann had met Adrian and not her, it might have been quite...she might have...it would have been...they would have got on. She had noticed that they would have got on quite well, but they were...there was a situation, they were walking through fields and getting up over stiles and going over walls, and the way Adrian was getting Ann over and so on, she had noticed quite succinctly that he was doing it in a certain kind of way which indicated a lot more than just helping somebody.

Had she just dismissed that from her mind then?

She simply said, well, she still thought that...it never had entered her mind that Adrian would have an affair with Ann.

Because she didn’t think he would have an affair with anyone, or because it was her sister?

Because it was her sister.

And she thought he wouldn’t because he would think of her, or that she didn’t think her sister would do it? I mean why did she think it wouldn’t happen?

Well she was a silly goose was the phrase she put in, so that was, that dealt with Ann, but...

What, Ann was a silly goose, or Margaret was a silly goose not to recognise it?

Ann was a silly goose, because she was seduced by Adrian, that was her argument. She must have been a, I mean if they hadn’t in a sense, you know, if he hadn’t... I mean, if in a way he was already sleeping in another room if you like, she must have

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 9: Tape 5: Side A Page 121 been worried or suspicious. I don’t know, I mean this is all the sort of things that one hears people saying or what has been said and been recorded. But you know, the actual events sometimes are distorted, and... I always understood that my mother never really, well had to confront Adrian and ask who it was, and was pretty surprised to hear it was Ann, after all that time. But you must remember this was during the war, and that those were pretty special circumstances where people couldn’t go anywhere or do anything in the sense that we understand you can do now.

And had you built up a relationship with Ann, was she part of your childhood, did she come quite often?

Yes, I think I adopted her as a substitute mother must have gone right back to the very early days.

So what do you associate with her in St. Ives?

I really don’t remember her. I do and I don’t. I think that in a way, in the same way that Laurie referred to Ann as the other one, and as my mother and my aunt looked very similar in lots of ways, and you could substitute one for the other, although they are very different, I must have thought I was in a very special situation in that I had not just one but two of the same kind of thing, whatever that was.

But nevertheless you knew that there was something odd if your father went off with one and not with the other?

Well I wasn’t, I wasn’t informed that it was Ann, and so on. So, God knows when I got to know that it was, and if it made any difference to me even if it was you see. I think that actually, the break-up of things and the fact that we were living in this appalling room in West Kensington, I think the worst things were, I remember rides in taxis with men that my mother knew or had got to know, and who I disliked intensely, and I instinctively knew were replacing my father in one way or another and I...I was warning her continuously about it, and saying I didn’t like them, trying to get my way, finding that things had changed rather radically.

Do you think your mother could have made it through life as a single parent?

No, I’m afraid I don’t think she could. No.

And what do you think she was looking for?

She was so devastated by what Adrian, what had happened, that she needed somebody to talk about it to in a funny sort of way, someone to live it out with. And I mean the way she took on Francis was someone who had been very radically hurt from upbringing onwards, she had identified with that person, found them as either more hurt than her or equally hurt, and drawn them in, and continued a very long and lasting, deep, happy I think, although he was an extraordinary man, rather frightening man, rather... Well, it’s a terrible responsibility, I must be the only living person apart from someone like Patrick Heron who couldn’t have possibly known him as well as I did, apart from my mother, who ever really witnessed him. I thought of him as a very, I mean just a typical stepfather to be honest. I was, a great deal was knocked out of me pretty quickly, by his disciplining.

What form did that take?

Well I was beaten, usually for... But I think the worst things were later on when I was 12, 13, 14, where he...there was obviously the gaining attention was mounting up with the rumours. I probably was being pretty intolerable and rude and bad and so on, and being extremely unresponsive, and finally this rage would break, and it would normally break by his hand coming really down hard on the table and making everybody jump, that’s including my mother and me, about three feet in the air, and then, the ranting and the raving would go on without stop. It was absolutely petrifying. I would normally burst into tears and rush away. But it was a very very traumatic event, and it would happen more or less every holiday I came back from school, at one point or another. But followed by this hysterical kind of laughing, not laughing at but trying to make up. ‘Come on, it wasn’t as bad as all that,’ sort of thing.

And what would he have been ranting about?

Well, you know, he would be threatening basically. He would say, ‘Look, you’ve got to leave, if you’re going to be like this we’re not going to live with it,’ you know, ‘we can’t go on living with this, you’re ruining our lives.’ It’s a very high, big security threat. You know, it was like, this will not go on, you know. He really did everything, he pulled every punch to upset and there was no, there was no holds barred.

And would that then make you careful how you behaved, or did it just make you retreat, or did it make you carry on, or did it make you rebel, what did it do?

Really basically it only confirmed a sort of series of conflicts that existed in me, and it just made them more extreme I think. I don’t think it stopped me working towards the breaking point again, you know, another time. It often focused itself on my rudeness to my mother. Oh there was probably lots of reasons, and very good reasons why he broke out like this. But I often did treat her terribly badly.

End of Track 9: Tape 5: Side A

Anger probably, more than anything else.

And did she try to defend you?

When these things broke she went quiet, and she was often as shocked as I was, but she certainly, all her concentration was to try and calm Francis down.

And do you think anything comparable every happened when you weren’t there, was it part of his character, or was it really a response to you?

I think he probably would blow like that when I wasn’t there too, yes. Yes. I think it was part of his make-up.

And did he bring you good things as well?

Yes. His contribution to, the reading tradition went on, and he would read all Dickens. He was obsessed...I mean he was...he was a very very good reader of, I mean I’ve been treated to practically every book in the classic series having been read to from the age of, probably through Francis. We would be living in this strange isolated place in Suffolk with oil lamps, in the sitting-room, in the evenings, and him reading from ‘Bleak House’, you know, or, ‘Bleak House’ ended up by being a book he read and read over and over again long to himself of course, but I think we read ‘David Copperfield’ and we read, well particularly ‘David Copperfield’ with the kind of orphan context created there, but also the sort of ‘Oliver Twist’ and, the whole Dickens series. Oh, it was a very austere kind of home-coming, if that’s what it was.

Did you ever get to the point where you did feel very fond of him, or not?

I think I did, but the funny thing is that, I think finally, it never, my attitude to my mother never really changed, and it wasn’t just what he thought it was, there was a whole thing about wanting to separate myself from associations with her, and with the

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 10: Tape 5: Side B Page 125 association with, in relation to art as well. I mean I had to make way for myself. I couldn’t join, I couldn’t...I wasn’t...there was no area for me to operate in, I couldn’t be a painter, I couldn’t be, unless I had...because there was too many conjunctions and connections made between her activity, and meanwhile he had started to do it as well, as it were. So, I mean, and a lot of my relationships have been in conflict, there’s no doubt about it, and it’s as equally valid to have a conflicting relationship as it is to have one that isn’t, in certain ways, it might not be as happy, but let’s face it, that is another way of having relationships. And, I think he might have misunderstood that. But we’re talking about the more positive sides of him. Oh, I think to the end, I mean what amounted...I think I actually started by saying quite early on in this interview that my mother, I never realised that my mother had actually associated me with Adrian, and I think ultimately these bursting forths, these sort of blows, him blowing and rattling the table with his fist, were all to do with a conflict over Adrian, and whereas my... There was an area where my mother would start defending him in the early days, that is Adrian, in front of Francis, but later on I became associated with Adrian, and that’s where he, when he was very ill and he would groan, you know, when she started bringing it up, about Adrian and how he would do this and how he would do that, it only took me such a long time to realise that she was talking about me, so, and that she wasn’t doing this when I wasn’t there, because how would I know that? So it took quite a lot of trying to figure out to realise this.

Do you think at any time in her relationship with him, if Adrian had said, ‘I want you back again’, she would have gone?

Not when she was with Francis, because then she would have had to drop the orphan which she had adopted.

And do you think she wanted Adrian and Ann to split up, would that have given her pleasure?

I don’t think so. She’s never vengeful or, she didn’t have that in her. Charity to Ann, she totally separated the whole thing about Adrian and her. I mean, she’s a funny woman, I mean, and in fact, it’s wonderful to be able to come to her via Helen; Helen

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 10: Tape 5: Side B Page 126 is really, really admiring of Margaret, and in a way has become, I was perhaps for her the very thing that her mother never was for her. I mean she admires her guts, her tenacity, all the better qualities that she has, and the fact that she can actally blossom and produce her best work in her eighties is an absolutely supreme achievement. But I don’t think I could have ever appreciated those things if I hadn’t been able to experience it through Helen’s view.

And can we just end by putting on tape what we were saying at the beginning before we started to record, that, how important it’s been to be able to know your mother in later life, and how your relationship shifted, and that, had she died when, say, she was, say, 57, your feelings about yourself would have been quite affected by what you hadn’t been able to talk to her about.

Well I do, I do appreciate the fact that when Francis died and I was able to confront her with this very thing about, well when I was in the room and Francis was going, ‘Er er er!’ you were aware, you had associated me in your mind with Adrian, and this was a fatal problem, and you’ve got to realise that I am, you know, I am myself and I am also your son. And I think it was the appropriate moment to say it because in a sense what she had done was to adopt Francis, who was an orphan, and substitute him for me, and put me into Adrian’s position. So yes, it is, it is indeed extremely important that people out-live certain circumstances, but she would have never been able to make, or I would have never been able to make that conclusion if Francis still was alive to this moment, and they had been...and I don’t think either she would have produced the work that she has produced since he died. And so, and the great benefit for me is that a very close relationship has evolved with her. I mean, it is true that she has now become much more dependent on me, and that’s probably one of the problems of our relationship, because she was totally un-dependent on me, and so there was no area for me to connect with her and Francis, especially with Francis who was virtually impossible to relate to anyway by then, and was quite, you know, quite soon later very difficult. I know I do appreciate that, but I also am looking at a very different person, although again she has a selective memory, and I think amazingly enough she doesn’t bear all those, that trauma any more that she had with the break-up of the marriage with my father, it has been resolved, and she has lived it out, and she

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 10: Tape 5: Side B Page 127 doesn’t any more, although she does vaguely, the trauma of Francis dying has replaced the trauma of her divorce from Adrian, it isn’t...she also probably even accepts the fact that...I mean I have asked her a few times, ‘Do you think you would have been able to do this if Francis was still alive?’ And she says probably not, you know. So, you know, how circumstances land out, or how things come, is pretty extraordinary, and I think it’s one of the major sort of fascinations with people’s lives and life itself that makes a very strong incentive for me as an artist.

End of Track 10: Tape 5: Side B

Track 11: Tape 6: Side A

Telfer Stokes.

Where did we get to last time?

Hang on. What do you think today’s date is?

It’s about the 28th isn’t it?

The 28th of what?

January ‘98.

And it’s actually the 29th. And where are we?

The British Museum - well the British Library, which is now in St. Pancras, which is quite nice but we’ve got sort of trembling kind of, sort of air vents and lights.

Well the building was built with a tremble as you can imagine.

[LAUGHS] You must take on from the original pile that they drove into the ground over the [INAUDIBLE].

I think it’s Mrs Thatcher’s tremble that’s been embodied in it. When we were talking last time we obviously didn’t do it in a totally linear way but it was pretty chronological, and we had got to the point where your parents had parted and you were talking about a memory of being in taxis with men with your mother, and we didn’t really... You don’t remember leaving St. Ives, is that right?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 11: Tape 6: Side A Page 129 Oh yes I do, yes yes, I do. Well, I do, I do remember the actual train journey, which was very peculiar, yes. There was flags flying everywhere, I think it was...it couldn’t have been the very day that war ended, but it must have been during that week, ‘45.

So there must have been a sort of curious sense of celebration and doom going on at the same time.

It was...black, I mean there seemed to be no electricity, everything was black, I seem to remember, and a very dull day, and wet, which it often is in Cornwall anyway, and there were these sort of rather limp flags lining, sort of lining streets, and everywhere the train went it seemed, on stations and so on. And it seemed to take the whole day, well it always, it used to in the old days, take the whole day to get from Penzance to Paddington Station.

And was it just you and Margaret?

As far as I remember it was, yes.

And do you remember her sort of state of mind?

No, I have no idea, not really.

And do you know if you knew where you were going to?

I don’t know, I’m afraid. Well, what actually amounted...well it was very peculiar because the only place she had to go to was a room that my aunt Ann had rented, somewhere in South Kensington, of which she, it had been arranged between my father and Ann and my mother that she could stay in. And so there was this sort of, a rather chaotic room full of things, and a bed had to be made up for me. And, I remember in that period going to a ballet, and it probably was ‘Sleeping Beauty’ or, it was one of those anyway, it probably was ‘Sleeping Beauty’, because...and I remember getting terribly upset because, we were sitting very near the front, and I noticed there was sweat pouring off everybody, and I thought they were crying. And I

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 11: Tape 6: Side A Page 130 absolutely burst into tears. And I remember sitting in a bath in this room - well it was like one of these rooms which had baths at the top of a house, you had to go up the stairs and everyone shared it, and sort of crying my eyes out. As a matter of fact I probably cried only in the bath and probably not in the ballet, but...and my mother said, ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong?’ And I said that everyone was crying. And she couldn’t understand what I was talking about, and then finally we realised that it was because they were sweating. But I’d never been that close to, and I often was taken to ballets but I’d never been sitting that close to actually see people sweating. But it was particularly the, it was particularly the, not the Sleeping Beauty but the Prince I think it was.

It’s a rather wonderful intense beginning to watching things on a stage isn’t it.

Yes. Yes very, very. And I don’t remember really, apart from many years later going to a New York City ballet in New York, which I went to in the Sixties, I really don’t remember any visiting of any ballets really if I can think of it since that point.

Did Adrian carry on going to the ballet, or was that really to do with Massine?

Yes, I think so, yes very much so, I think that was really part of it. I think the reason I was taken was because, and my mother was quite used to the idea of going with Adrian, and so it sort of continued that, and I mean it was rather odd in a sense that she also was in this room which was the ex-room of my aunt who my father had already gone to live with, or, I don’t know where they were, I think they were already in Switzerland by then.

Actually can I just get clear. Ann was married first to someone called Ian?

No, not first. She was never married to anybody.

Ah right.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 11: Tape 6: Side A Page 131 When I was born and she was... Let’s just back-track a bit. She was 19, and she came, as a dancer, she was actually dancing in a ballet, and came to help my mother, and my mother obviously arranged it, you know, to have me, and it was then that Adrian met her.

So she’s now married to somebody called Ian?

She is married to Ian since Adrian died, and Adrian died in 1972.

Yes. And do you think at this point when you were in London you realised you were never going back to the house in St. Ives, or not?

Yes, and I’ve always...I’ve always...looking back I’ve always said I could, I could understand everything except for leaving the house in St. Ives, and I said, ‘Well why? Why did you have to do that?’ to my mother, and she said, ‘Well what could I do?’ you know. ‘There I was, stuck out there on my own in St. Ives,’ which to her was literally being away from what was going on, and it was necessary obviously to just sort of become...I mean the St. Ives group of people was very inverted, and it was obviously necessary for her to get out and meet someone else, and form another life.

And, how long do you think the time in this room in London went on?

I don’t know, but what I do remember was waking up one morning and my mother was violently sick, was being sick, and she had been sick all night into this bucket by the side of her bed, and it was the first time I was actually aware of how unpleasant things could be, and she went on being sick for the rest of the day. And evidently, this time she had met Francis. But you see these things blur, they really do blur into a kind of, not really knowing really how to separate these things. I was obviously extraordinarily confused by what was happening. I was also being sent off to this prep school, which was in Rugby, in the area of Rugby. I would say by about ‘46 I was there, or ‘47, and this was probably the major kind of disaster in my life, I would say probably left a real mark on me.

No, it was preceding that.

So you had been in your little school in St. Ives and then the next thing was this school?

Yes, it was a boarding school.

A boarding school? Gosh.

And I was probably the youngest in it, and it went...although it was a preparatory school there were a lot of people who were older than 15 or 16 and I was 6.

And why was it chosen, do you know?

I have no idea. I think probably my father, because he had been to Rugby, he thought that something convenient, you know. I’m not absolutely sure, I’m not certain about it, it was recommended in some way.

So you probably left your mother living in this room in London.

Yes.

And was sent to school at that point.

Yes.

Do you remember, I mean you mentioned some memories of other people she was seeing. I mean have you got any specific...?

Yes. I think there were...and the name Tony has always been a rather suspicious one, and I think there was a man called Anthony or something like that. And I do

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 11: Tape 6: Side A Page 133 remember on, possibly on this occasion that you were talking about when we came back up from St. Ives to London that we were in...I remember being in a taxi from the station with this boy - this boy! - this man called Anthony, who she had formed some kind of relationship with, and when we dropped him off and went on to this room, I don’t know if that was what we were doing or not, but, I said that I didn’t like him at all, I really disliked him, and I thought he was terrible and told my mother all these things. And she said I...well, I mean because she did consult me a bit like, a kind of, a Buddha figure, I mean there was that, I mean, she would listen to what I would say. And many years later she said yes, he was awful. But I’ve never liked the name Anthony since.

And do you remember any other times in London at this point, I mean like the ballet or whatever?

I do, oh well I remember going...I tell you why, I should really add about the school I went to eventually was in the country in Rugby, but there was... Probably what had happened was that there was this other part of it that was in London, and I remember going to visit that and being absolutely petrified by the lavatories. I mean I saw these lavatories with these kind of doors in a row, and I remember, it was my first inability to actually...I became...what happened at the school eventually was that I became incredibly constipated, I didn’t go to the lavatory at all, I was so frightened by it. And on top of a lot of other things I eventually caught pneumonia and I had something like measles as well, I ended up extremely ill. But the incidence of...and so, anyway, talking about the school was that, there was some reason why, I think I probably said I didn’t like the school or I didn’t like the place in London.

And that would have been a day school would it?

And it was a day school. And so they obviously decided that they would send me to this other school, and it probably was...I would have, if I had had the chance I would have said that I wouldn’t like that school, because I thought I could probably get my own way by saying... But it was fairly unfortunate, it would have probably in the end been very much better if I had gone to this other school; at least it would have been a

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 11: Tape 6: Side A Page 134 sort of slow break in, but this was a very dramatic break in. There was all sorts of reasons why it was dramatic in that there was a power failure so there was no heating, no lighting, and, it was either during the winter of ‘47 or ‘46, I think it was the winter of ‘46/47, and I do remember being taken out of the school in a kind of passageway that was in a furrow and there was snow lying so that you couldn’t see, because I was only fairly short obviously, you just could not see. And, that combined with the kind of, the whole school going down with flu. It was fairly dramatic.

And how did you behave? I mean did you have tantrums and scream, or did you withdraw, or what?

At the school, when I was there? Well I’ll tell you, the procedure was, I was so terrified of going to the lavatory that the first thing I did was eventually shit in my bed, and, they wanted to discover who it was, because they could...I mean I managed to change my pyjamas. I mean, it obviously happened in the middle of the night and I had no control over it. But this was a new thing for me, and I was absolutely appalled by this, and I remember changing my pyjamas somehow in such a way that no one noticed that they were all... But then they had to discover whose bed it was that had... So that began, began like that. And then, what was the next stage? Oh then...

But when they did, were they kind about it, or what?

They were quite, they were all right, but then I was...there was some amount of bullying started, and I was certainly being pushed around by older boys, and this was another experience I had never had in my life. And I think someone tried to sit on me at one point. And, then there came the, I remember, just... OK, I remember feeling totally frozen, I mean I obviously wasn’t wearing the right clothes and I was...there was no, there was no kind of...there wasn’t really any kind of organisation at all, there was...no one was aware. I remember talking to a boy and saying how cold I felt, but at this point...and crying, and miserable, and the sort of stone steps leading up from... Then...then I eventually... Oh yes, then, I was put in a room, obviously I was ill, and it was like one of these kind of country houses that had tapestries all around it, but it was like a kind of, this was a room which had tapestries to the ceiling, a small room,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 11: Tape 6: Side A Page 135 high ceiling and tapestries, and I woke up in an absolute nightmare and thought that these things were coming off the wall at me. I mean I don’t know what they were, they were hunting scenes or whatever they were, but I remember then at that point, they really reckoned I was in a bad way and they moved me out of that room. But I remember screaming. Then, I remember being very ill. Well I don’t really remember very much about it; certainly no one knew about it, there was no communication with my mother, and there was no communication with my father because he wasn’t anywhere near. It seemed that the phone lines, that they just didn’t contact parents in those days about things, and as the school was going down like flies, everyone was in bed, there was complete chaos. And I remember gradually sort of floating off, and not really knowing what was happening. And there was...there was a kind of nurse, or a woman, who would come round and see each person in bed, and I remember finally confessing that my parents were no longer together, in some way I did know this, and breaking down and crying. And she came back, and I remember her very vividly, because, I really had no sense of time at this point, and I evidently did have pneumonia. And I remember feeling that in a way she did exist as the one sort of link with a kind of reality, and I remember her very kind, and very considerate, and I have never, would have never known who she was or who her name was or anything, but just a sense of this person. I don’t remember what she looked like even. And I think she probably was...she would have been the person that helped me through. I really didn’t want, I had...I remember having a complete sense of not particularly wanting to live, and that I was quite happy to float away, and I was, I was doing this. And I have had pneumonia on another occasion, and it was quite serious, and the same thing had occurred, the same thing occurred.

That was when you were in Scotland wasn’t it, in the mill, and there was no heating?

No, this curiously enough was my only final visit to Cornwall, to attend someone’s funeral - funeral, sorry, their marriage, and I was staying with Patrick Heron and he was absolutely petrified of catching whatever I had so I was sent to the house next door where a single woman lived who had been, called Ricky, and she had been brought in more or less to occupy this house by Patrick so that someone else didn’t come and live there, because they were the neighbours. But she couldn’t cope with it

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 11: Tape 6: Side A Page 136 with its large rattling windows, you know, right on the cliff, freezing cold. And I was eventually put into St. Ives Hospital.

And when was that?

It was...it would have been ‘60...it was post, it was when I was still at the Slade, so it must have been about ‘61, ‘62.

Did anyone come to see you?

I mean it wasn’t post-Slade, it was before.

Oh right.

There were a few people but they wanted...and Patrick kept away. I mean there were... I remember feeling, gosh, you know, being taken in this ambulance to St. Ives Hospital, what a strange thing this is. Not many people, no, because no one knew I was there. I remember being visited by Bridget. It was, actually Bridget McWilliam’s[ph] wedding who was a contemporary at the Slade and she was marrying someone called Ben John. And they had been together ever since, before I knew Bridget at the Slade. She was a friend of Jenny Lousada’s. It was basically Bridget McWilliam[ph] and Jenny Lousada, and I was a friend with someone called Julian Usborne[ph], and we had on one occasion, at the Slade, borrowed Jenny Lousada’s aunt’s boat, which was moored in Chiswick.

Lavender or Crystal?

I don’t know what it was called.

No no no, that was the name of her aunt.

Oh, oh the aunt, right. Well she had lots of children, and we would go and sort of paint up this boat and we were eventually going to do this kind of trip up the Regent’s

Julian the son.

Julian Usborne[ph]. And, it was, I mean talking about disasters, it was one of those major disasters.

Because?

I felt I caused it. Well, we managed to get off the Thames up to, through the kind of lochs up the Regent’s Canal. When I say lochs because I don’t really know how to say them, because a loch means a lake in Scotland and it’s probably ‘lock’. And done that. And we had slept the night, I think we had slept in the boat and the girls had slept in a tent on the bank, and no one had slept very well, and the reason they didn’t want to sleep in the boat was because it did have a leak and it would fill up with water, and there were these hammocks, and you were expected in the morning to be just, you know, wide of the water coming in and you had to quickly start the boat. And then on the first morning we had eaten, and I was left on the boat to start it up, and go up to this...and all I did was, I started it up. Well, I mean, preceding that I seem to remember the times I was on the tiller, I had to keep on saying to myself, you hold the tiller and if there’s a boat coming round the corner, which, they were these very narrow canals, you do the opposite to what it feels like, which is, you point the tiller in the direction of the boat to go in the other way. I remember one very crucial point where we could have collided with a boat which we met on a corner, but I did manage to do it the right way, and I happened to be on the tiller. And no one knew how near I was to not getting this right, but I mean in those days one took enormous risks. But I mean anyway I just started the next, this coming morning I had to actually start the boat, and one of the things, Julian was a technician, a kind of engineer, and he knew how to do things and all this sort of stuff, and he said, ‘Don’t ever start the motor in the reeds because what will happen is, if you’re near the bank, you know, get away from the bank and then start, because what might happen is, it will twist round the propeller.’ And I mean, anyway we could have fixed it all right, but I had no idea

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 11: Tape 6: Side A Page 138 that the boat was weak round the back of the propeller, I mean you know, the water had been coming in from... We saw on the Thames water leaking in from the back of the boat, and Julian just put some putty on it, you know, I mean... So what actually happened was, I did start the boat in the reeds; the reeds did twist round the propeller, and it created a certain kind of final thing that this block of wood that was always going to come away came away and water just poured down, and the boat sank. And I felt terribly responsible because it had been me, but quite frankly it could have been anybody, but the reeds did it. And that was the end of the boat trip.

And how did everyone behave to you?

Oh well everyone was very, I mean they felt...oh I was...no one was talking to me, they felt it had to be my fault, but I had to, I did explain, well, you remember that leak in the Thames, and, it’s better that it leaked...better that it sank here than if we were in the middle of the Thames, which is what, I always felt extraordinarily sort of unsafe, with this leaking boat.

And what was Bridget McWilliam[ph] like?

Bridget was very blonde, blue-eyes, kind of classically an artist wife look with quite a strong nose, but very beautiful, physically, you know, very picturesque really. And many men were after her, there was no doubt about that, but she was, there was something quite cool about her. But she was...but at the same time extraordinary, because she was absolutely obsessed with Ben, and Ben was quite obviously never going to be what she wanted him to be, so there was this... And I mean we all knew it was going to be a disaster when she was married to Ben, it was just quite obvious, I mean they were continuously sort of fighting, and I mean most of what she talked about was her latest argument with Ben and this was before they got married.

Did you go to the McWilliam[ph] parents’ household?

Yes, I think so.

I remember there was another sister who looked very different from Bridget, she wasn’t anything like as attractive to look at, but very, but also... And I also remember her father was very fond of Bridget, and he was deaf, and in fact it was an inherited sort of, kind of inherited disease because Bridget became deaf pretty soon after, when she was quite young, well at least in one ear. I mean even when she was at the Slade she was beginning to get... And... I can’t really remember a lot. It was a very pleasant, it was a, you know, it was a kind of familiar kind of scene in a way, you know, of something that I suppose I was quite acquainted with, this kind of, a household of artists.

Having had that in St. Ives and then lost it, did you ever try and make yourself belong to other families? I mean were there other households that became very attractive in that way?

You know the funny thing is that, I was always...I was quite interested in different kinds of households. I think in a funny sort of way I felt I was, I knew it, but I felt that it was something that was not quite like other households, and I wanted to experience what other households were like. It’s the same with...it’s the same with a number of households, it’s also for some odd reason, I always felt fairly at ease in a kind of established household, a kind of, a rich household. Now I, the only reason I can think of was because my early, my first girlfriend at the Slade really was the daughter of Peggy Ashcroft and her father was a lawyer.

Jeremy Hutchinson.

Jeremy Hutchinson, yes. And we...I suppose we had a whole round of theatre-going, trial-going, I mean I actually attended the ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ trial where he was acting in it.

Jeremy?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 11: Tape 6: Side A Page 140 Jeremy, yes. But he wasn’t the sort of main, he was kind of, he was deputising or something. Which was a fairly historic situation. And kept up with the kind of Blake things in the paper, you know, the spy, Blake, he defended Blake. So there was a kind of...yes, and so that was a kind of privileged household in lots of ways. I mean for instance Jeremy was interesting, because actually his mother, Mary Hutchinson, I used to go very regularly to see her with Eliza in Hyde Park - well it was kind of Hyde Park Crescent or something like that, it was off Bayswater Road, in a sort of top-floor flat, and she had various drawings by Matisse, drawn of her, hanging up. I mean on one very challenging occasion where she was trying to work out whether I was really good enough for her granddaughter, she said, ‘Well what do you think of this Matisse?’ you see. And, I said something that convinced her, I can’t remember what I said. But...and we...yes, we were entertained on lots of levels. We were seen as this kind of young couple, we...and so on, yes, on lots of levels, first sort of Mary Hutchinson’s level of the introduction to various sort of people, Georges Dutuis[ph]. She had a whole collection of people that she was connected to, mostly in Paris. And then there were the people that were connected to Peggy Ashcroft and there were people who were connected in some ways to Jeremy Hutchinson, and they were all in different areas of society in a sense, but all kind of quite well-known people in some senses. I mean for instance, as a kind of couple we were seen as this odd, these young... I mean for instance actors and actresses, I remember there was an actress called Judy, Judith Stott[ph] I think her name was, but she was at the time having an affair with Albert Finney, and so, we would go and see Judith Stott[ph] quite a lot, she had a flat in Hampstead Heath, one of those sort of, that big sort of mansion house block which actually sits on the Heath, I don’t know if you know... And, so, it was possible for us to, because we were this young couple, somehow to sort of, to call on people without even announcing, and say, ‘Oh do come and meet Albert’. That kind of thing.

End of Track 11: Tape 6: Side A

Jeremy’s mother had the most fantastic pictures didn’t she, and also the...

Well the Omega Workshop...

The table.

The table that we ate off always, Duncan Grant and...

What do you remember that looking like?

Oh, oh it was exceptional. I mean you didn’t really feel...I mean you know, ‘Oh do put your plate...no, don’t worry,’ you know. You know, it’s like, you had to use the Bloomsbury thing, because it was her background. Although, I mean I understand that, I mean she...although she found herself as part of the Bloomsbury set-up, but it was very much, she introduced herself through her husband who was, what was it, Hutchinson, St. John Hutchinson? St. John Hutchinson. Her husband, who is Jeremy’s father, was a QC, and in some sort of way he had, he obviously had worked for some of the people in the Bloomsbury set-up, and, or the Bloomsbury Group, or else they became patrons of it. I think that basically they became patrons, they actually... So they bought their way into, certainly Mary wanted to, was very keen to become part of that social scene, and she was very connected in social ways. But she was...but you could say that they probably bought their way in by buying work. Now there wasn’t an awful lot of that kind of work up, I mean as I say the Omega Workshop, but she then wanted...but I mean the thing that I noticed was very much more the Matisse pieces.

Did she talk to you about Matisse at all?

Somehow being in front of the drawing was a bit like being... You see you couldn’t really reminisce about things like that, it was like you were presented by the thing and you actually ate off the Omega Workshop table, you sat in front of the fire, in front of

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 12: Tape 6: Side B Page 142 the Matisse drawing of her, and you felt ultimately that she had approached Henri Matisse as well to get...in some sort of way, and wanted a drawing of herself. And so, I mean, there were also certain Surrealist sort of works there which, I didn’t know what they were but I did see one in a very large exhibition at the Hayward, and I still don’t, can’t quite remember who it’s by, but I recognised the work, the painting, immediately. And I must have taken it in without really thinking.

Did they introduce you to Roland Penrose, was he around?

No, I did actually know...I think my father introduced me to him once, on one occasion when we went to the ICA in Dover Street.

What was he like, can you remember?

Well, how can I describe him? I remember him, greying hair with glasses and talking in a way where he would prop himself up against the bar at the ICA and look at the room but not actually come into eye-to-eye contact. And, was he smoking a pipe, or something like that. But he was very much of a certain period, you felt confident that he represented something, he held it, it was in his whole being and persona. And I felt the ICA was going on on other levels, but he was a kind of, he was definitely a figurehead. But he represented certain things to other people, older generation people. I did go to the ICA, and he was, my father was asked to say something, and I can’t even remember what it was about, and I was amazed the way he got up at the back of the room and did it, and I’m sure he did it to sort of...I felt...I felt terribly nervous myself for him, and I think Roland Penrose spoke from, you know, from the kind of, from the podium, oak panel table, at the top, and to be honest I can’t really remember what the, I can’t remember what the reason was.

But Adrian did it well?

He did it very well, yes, very well, it seemed unlikely, not the sort of thing he would do.

Mary Penrose?

No, Hutchinson.

Oh Mary Hutchinson. No, I wouldn’t have said she was. In a funny sort of way she was quite...I mean she was an extremely strong person, and you couldn’t miss her, and she certainly had lots of different people sort of clustered round her, and she held a group of people. And she even ran a magazine called ‘X’, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that, and she would often ask us to dinner and she would have the editor or, one or the other editor was there, and whose name I have now forgotten. And, she obviously financed it completely and it was like a sort of, it was...they were always Irish, well, I mean, this particular guy was Irish, I can’t remember, but he had the contact with that other, that group of people, now let me think, I’ll think of who they are in a minute. But...

Not Brendan Behan and people like that?

No, not...he might have...he might have been covered in one of the issues. I think they ran to about five issues and then they...and I actually got a very, a collected volume of all the issues at one point.

This was a literary magazine?

Yes, a literary thing called ‘X’. Patrick...anyway...

And were her dinner parties informal, or what...?

Yes, very. They were all held in this room which had a kind of bay window, but it was not Victorian, it was early, late, sort of early Victorian if you like, but probably late Georgian house, a sort of stuccoed white, or, house in Hyde Park Gardens I think it was, at the top. As I say I was very aware of the three windows on a bay, on a sort

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 12: Tape 6: Side B Page 144 of, overlooking the street. You walked up, or there might have been a lift, and she was always up there. And she prepared the meal, and it was always held in this room, and I think off that room was a bedroom and very little else, you know, bedroom, bathroom, and that was about it. But the main part of it was this very large room.

Did she have another property somewhere else, or not?

I’m not sure whether she did or not. As far as I know she didn’t, but she might have had.

And what was her relationship like with Jeremy?

Oh, adoring, totally.

On both sides?

She had Barbara, Barbara who was married to the artist Ghika, who had been originally married to Rothschild and had a son called Jacob Rothschild who was...and Miranda Rothschild, these were both cousins of Eliza’s. I hardly ever met Jacob, I never met Miranda, I did meet Jacob a few times.

What was he like?

I found him totally insufferable.

Why?

Well, the assumed rich, I mean, probably I felt that, and he was probably quite generous, because I remember staying in his place, he had a flat on the river probably next to Dan Farson’s place which he used to have on Limehouse, and he had this flat done out, it was actually on, it was facing onto a river, like, a series of flats there, and they did barge repairs underneath. And I stayed there to do paintings from the window at one point, and it was, I remember Eliza and I going to stay there. But you

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 12: Tape 6: Side B Page 145 felt the kind of opulence and wealth which I slightly despised, but used to my advantage. But it never felt like that from Jeremy’s side of the family, but it did from the Rothschild side of the family if you like.

What were you painting, what were the paintings like?

I was doing, I was still at the Slade and I wanted to paint subject matter up the Thames. I mean something fairly kind of bleak and, I was probably in my de Staël period, where I used thick impasto paint, I was a great admirer of de Staël at one point. And I felt, you know, thinking back it was a very retrogressive period for me.

And would this have been one or two paintings, or a series or what?

No I think everything I did was a bit like that.

Which? No no no, sorry, from the Thames, window.

Oh I see. I can’t remember, you know, I can’t even remember...I certainly never kept the painting if I did it even.

Oh right, so it might even just have been one?

It might have been one. I might have been completely...I remember the whole thing of staying in this place on my own, which was something that we all did, you know, the sort of angst to do with being an artist, we would find somewhere to stay and then get, you know, then hardly be in touch with the partner as it were, because you had to devote your time to the work, and I had done that in desolate places before and it seemed to be...it wasn’t desolate but it was, because I remember feeling, there was no shop I could buy any tea in or, you know, there was no place for provisions, you had to walk miles, because you were sort of cut off by the Mile End Road and the East...you were in the East End, and at that time there was nothing, nothing, there was no one living around. This was before it was all taken over by what is now, I mean this was in the late Fifties, early Sixties. Yes, and you couldn’t find anything, you

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 12: Tape 6: Side B Page 146 know, a loaf of bread or anything. And so there was this sort of thing, I think there was a phone but there might not have been, you know, it might have been one of those things where there wasn’t a phone because it had to be cut off, it was a bit like being in some kind of cut-off place. And you were totally absorbed by the noise, I mean there were these things going up and down, I mean sometimes you would look up and you would see an enormous boat going past which filled the whole window going up the Thames. And otherwise, and other times there were riveting going on downstairs, which was enormously loud, and I mean the noise level was high high high. And, there was some...a really sort of scatty person who lived upstairs, who you felt was totally, who had about four of these appalling little dogs, and her whole life was around these dogs, and you would go and talk to her perhaps.

How long do you think you spent there?

Probably nothing more than a weekend, you know. It was enough, you know. It was both a luxury, it had all the fittings, you know, at the same time rather sort of isolated, divorced, and most people went there to sort of, as a couple, to sort of, to make love really. I mean it was like one of those scenes really.

Is that what Jacob used it for?

I’ve no idea, but certainly we disturbed two people when we, on one occasion we had arranged with Jacob, yes it was free, and we found someone with a camera and lights and people hastily getting dressed.

And what do you remember of Jeremy then?

Well, I saw really the break-up of the marriage between Jeremy and Peggy. Apparently, I’ve only just discovered, he didn’t like me at all, he thought I was completely nondescript, and...

How have you discovered that?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 12: Tape 6: Side B Page 147 Well, it’s only about four years ago I actually met up with Eliza again, and it was of my initiation curiously, and we did go over a bit of this, and, but she said that ‘Peggy adored you, but Jeremy didn’t’. And I did feel that, I felt that, he felt that I had...I mean I don’t know if it was a jealousy or just simply that he felt that I wasn’t up to it, but I mean I remember on one occasion he was talking to his son, Nick, and he was saying, and we were in his car, in his Lotus as it was, saying, ‘Well, thought of going into the City old chap?’ And, Nick laughed and I laughed with him. And, he was going through a very, very sort of, they were going through a very bad phase together.

Peggy and...?

No, Jeremy and Nick, the son.

Oh right.

Where Jeremy was attempting to get his son Nick into some kind of area that he could relate to. In actual fact he became an actor and has quite obviously chosen his life in another way which was quite opposed to his father. I would say Jeremy... I would...I’ve got lots of things to say about Jeremy actually. I would have thought it was extraordinary that his mother, Mary, who came from the Bloomsbury Group, who was connected to all these people, that he would only relate to her as his mother, but never the social scene that she stood for, and all those things, and although he inherited all these things from his father, his library, the...he totally denied all the connections, her love affair with Bell, I believe, he totally rejected those. And in fact I went over that with Eliza again when I saw her. And he presumably had to carve out some kind of life of his own which was opposed to the kind of, the background that he came from, or chose one of the backgrounds he came from, and as he was after all a QC then he chose his father’s as opposed to his mother’s. And, I just feel, I felt that she acknowledged that there was this total rejection. So maybe his marriage to Peggy was doomed from the beginning, because he was having to, he had this need to separate.

But his mother adored him; did he not adore her?

Yes, I think he did. Yes. I’m not absolutely sure, I never saw him, very rarely did I see them together, I would see her separately, yes.

And the mother had a relationship with Clive Bell?

I believe so, yes. Yes.

But where do you think Jeremy’s sort of centre lay? I mean, the things that he did, the famous cases are socially very acceptable aren’t they?

Yes.

And he was, he seemed to have quite a social conscience and to stand up for certain principles.

Politically he was left-wing, but I mean you know, I consider this idea that someone who is a QC who is pointing to becoming a peer, I mean there are such things as Labour peers but it’s rather a contradiction I think in terms. However, anyway, he politically allied himself to the Left, so therefore during the Wilson era, or whatever it was, he obviously gained the favours that he was going to require to lead his career on. I would say, and I should say that probably the rejection of the kind of background, the Mary Hutchinson background, was in opposition, because he wanted to see it in a very conventional kind of way. And from my point of view it just was totally meaningless, that someone should be left-wing and become a left-wing, become a Labour peer, you know, I mean...I mean I know there are such things as Labour peers but it is a contradiction in terms.

Did he become a peer at that point? I can’t remember when that happened.

Well I just don’t know, I mean I only became aware that he had become Lord Hutchinson perhaps in the Callaghan era. I don’t know. Later on.

No, not at all. He wasn’t even, he hadn’t even been, you know, I mean he was taking cases on [INAUDIBLE], but like with the ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ case, which is a fairly classic one, he certainly wasn’t the main QC in the defence, you know.

How often did you attend?

Well that was the one I did attend, I’m not...

The whole thing?

No, I was allowed in on one day and given seats, you know.

What was it like?

It was, you know, because it was through him it was seeing these people exercising their craft if you like. To me it was based on a sort of public school confidants’ scene. And I would say it would follow on that if you go to certain kind of schools you are tutored for sets of professions and one of them would be to become a QC. Bluff and counter-bluff, it seems to be.

But, so in other words the content of this case was irrelevant as far as you were concerned, you were just watching the procedure.

Well it wasn’t irrelevant, because, immediately, I mean I remember - well he circulated, he was very keen on the kind of, on what the man in the street was saying, and he said, I remember at the time he was saying that book shops were saying to people, did they want ‘The Lady’ at the time. In other words they almost had this under-the-counter, before the case had been resolved, it was already, it had already been set up to be published, the possibility of being able to get this book sold, so therefore they had the book under the counter but it hadn’t actually been... So Jeremy felt he was very in touch with the man in the street, which was extremely irritating. I

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 12: Tape 6: Side B Page 150 remember a story he gave me which was, he used to take, hitch lifts in lorries, in trucks and things like that, he used to hitch lifts even though he had a Lotus in the garage somewhere, and it was all part of his scene that he wanted to know what the common man thought, which used to make me really angry. This lorry driver picked him up on one occasion, and he had asked him what he did. No, they were in a conversation, that’s right, they were in a conversation, and he started saying that he knew, he always knew what the person was doing, you know, what profession the person was in, that he had given the lift to, and Jeremy was quite confident that this man wouldn’t know what he did, so he said, ‘Well, if that’s the case, you tell me, would you like to tell me what I am and what I do?’ And the guy said, ‘You’re a QC.’ And he said he was so pissed off. And he actually said, quite truthfully he said he was so annoyed, he wouldn’t talk to the guy for the rest of the time. And I found all that horrendous; I mean I felt, you know, taking into account the things that he had rejected, and this idea of the man in the street, which to me wasn’t the man in the street, the ultimate contradiction, you know.

And did you confront him?

No, I didn’t. I really didn’t think it was worth while, there was no reason. I think that probably he disliked me because I did show a certain opposition and certain resistance, and a certain ignoring of values that he thought were, certain kinds.

Would you have talked to Eliza about your feelings?

[PAUSE FOR THOUGHT] Would I or wouldn’t I have? I think she talked to me about her feelings you see initially, I mean it was all taken for granted that there was a conflict with father anyway, and we both...I mean he had this sort of rather complete library that he had inherited, and we used to...

What was in it?

You know, all Virginia Woolf’s thing. I mean things that we were interested in, so we would borrow the books out of it and he would forever try to get them back; it was

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 12: Tape 6: Side B Page 151 rather like...and we would...we would break it up, I mean there was no doubt, there was the whole, the collected works of Oscar Wilde for instance, I’ve still got a copy of that. We were bad on books to be honest, I mean I remember I used to borrow books and make them part of my collection, but she would also borrow books from me and make that part of her collection. We were - well when I say bad, you know, it’s a great thing about books is they are... But I would say in those days I expected if I had acquired a book from somebody I would expect to keep it.

And when you say Virginia Woolf’s books, you mean her copies?

I never actually looked... No, not, no not at all. I didn’t even look at the, whether these were the Leonard Woolf’s publications, you know, whether they were the original first editions or not.

But this is Jeremy’s father’s library?

I think that probably what had happened was, it probably was but, yes it probably was, but, that either they were taken, you know, they had been given to Jeremy before and that Mary hadn’t taken them on. This was certainly before she died. The other thing was, visiting Rodmell, we used to go and visit Rodmell and see Leonard Woolf.

You and Eliza?

Yes. But more often with Jeremy. Well, on one occasion I seem to remember we went with... No, we went on our own, it was always done on our own.

And what was it like?

Well, Leonard Woolf was living on his own with two Siamese cats there were making love in the kitchen, male and female, and there was a dreadful smell of cats. I remember there were bookshelves everywhere, there was sagging under books. Rather a sort of austere man who would put on a hat to go to London. Rather sad man. But... I mean for instance, compared to the meetings with André Masson, that

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 12: Tape 6: Side B Page 152 we did through Mary Hutchinson in Paris, where we were sat down to table and really, I mean had to be able to talk in French, and talk quite intellectually, that kind of conversation didn’t go on with Leonard Woolf. I think it was set up by probably Mary for it to do so. She was great for trying to introduce us to these figures.

So Eliza wouldn’t have known him terribly well?

Eliza would have known him through probably having visited with Jeremy and Peggy, or probably much more likely through Mary.

So Leonard might have been rather bemused to be entertaining you do you think?

Yes, he probably didn’t know what to do quite, yes.

Was there a sense of Virginia?

Well I looked for it, I was very aware of all that, and... I’m not sure I found it. I think probably more in the garden funnily enough, not in the house.

And presumably at that stage, were you at all interested in books and publishing, would you have talked to him at all about that?

Oh yes. Yes, and I probably read ‘To the Lighthouse’ and ‘The Sea’ and so on, but not completely, you know.

But would you have been interested in the Hogarth Press?

No, not particularly. I mean that’s why I had even forgotten the name Hogarth Press when I said Leonard’s publication. I think to a certain extent, whereas with, say, if I compare André Masson in his slippers, in the informal way the French people are, Leonard was terribly formal and with his, almost, I can see him wearing his black Homburg hat; he wasn’t wearing it but it felt very much like that.

There was a woman there, but whether she was looking after him or not I don’t know, but she was certainly someone local. I have no idea what age he was, he was in his seventies.

And would you have been at ease, or would you have been...?

Yes, this is what I was saying, was that, I was at ease with all this. I mean I do remember, I mean I should flip on a bit, but I mean if you want me to talk more about kind of these kind of Hutchinson connections, I do remember being brought up very...brought up by a social situation that I had initially been at ease with.

End of Track 12: Tape 6: Side B

.....talked about his mother quite a lot, but I didn’t really know who she was, which [INAUDIBLE].

Mary Hutchinson?

Yes. Which is rather difficult. And I didn’t think that I could ask in the [INAUDIBLE].

I think she...I really do, I felt very upset that I didn’t know she had died, and I hadn’t any information about the funeral at all. I would have gone.

When did she die? A long time ago now I suppose.

Eighties?

Oh right.

Or even, yes, early Eighties maybe. I’m not sure now. Is it going now?

Mm.

What I would like to say, just in the prelude to talking about Victor Rothschild which I will talk about...

This was the social situation that you were going to talk about?

Yes, I will talk about that. But in the prelude I would like to say various things about Barbara, who is Jeremy’s elder sister, or, I don’t know if she’s elder sister anyway her sister. Barbara was, Barbara Hutchinson married to Victor Rothschild and then married to an artist called Ghika.

He was a sort of, he was a Greek artist, and, I thought it was G-H-I-K-A, I think so. I had met her as she lived in Maida Vale Road, sort of off the Regent’s Park Canal, before it goes under the tunnel to Islington sort of thing, which I am very attached to, well it was known as Little Venice, and had a whole history in relation to, before it was developed again living in a kind of derelict house overlooking the Regent’s Canal and what was known as Little Venice. Anyway, Barbara by that time was married to Ghika. We called him Ghika, and I don’t think, you see I think that’s his surname, in fact it is; I don’t know what his Christian name was but he was just known as Ghika. And he was a very generous, wholesome man, and she felt as if she held a history of one kind or another, a very long rather turgid kind of history, and I felt very sympathetic towards her, I would say in contradiction to feeling sympathetic to Jeremy, and I would say I remember her, her sort of rather sad looking eyes, I do remember her. I can’t say I actually remember any particular kind of contact with her, except that she, we know, we both knew who we were. I think I spoke to her on the phone once, and it assumed a certain kind of intimacy in a certain kind of way of knowing each other, but it’s such a long time ago, and anyway she’s died, I think she’s dead. I think, I know Ghika has died anyway. Anyway her children was Jacob Rothschild and Miranda Rothschild by the Rothschild marriage; she then had another daughter by Rex Warner, when she was married to Rex Warner.

Oh, I’ve met her then, I didn’t realise she was married to him.

Yes, I had completely forgotten until I was thinking, there was another marriage, now who was it? And she, they had, again I can mention this, they had a sort of bungalow overlooking, in Pembrokeshire, overlooking the cliff, another one of these desolate places that Eliza and I went to, to sort of be artists as it were, although I think on this occasion she was there, and I hitched to meet her at this place. Anyway, and this was the Rex Warner house, this was the Rex, the Barbara and Rex Warner house that was empty as post sort of the marriage. And I do remember reading Rex Warner and ‘The Airport’, I remember very vividly reading that. So Barbara had had those three, Barbara Hutchinson or Barbara Ghika or whatever her name, Barbara Warner, Barbara

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 13: Tape 7: Side A Page 156 Rothschild, had certainly known quite interesting people and lived with them and married them. So there was this younger daughter as I say by the Rex Warner marriage. So, to talk about this Rothschild thing, a few years later...

Later than when?

Later than the Sixties really, I would say this was...let me think now, this was actually the late Sixties, or maybe it was about... If I’m talking about Barbara I would be talking about the early Sixties, so this was...this was...well I suppose you see, so much happened in those years that it seems really a long time later, but this would have been ‘60...it must be in the ’63/4 period, because I ended up by being married to Ruth in about ‘65, so it had to be before then. I met somebody who I had evidently met... Yes, I met somebody who basically was a friend of Emma Rothschild, which was, Emma Rothschild was the daughter of Victor Rothschild and his wife post-Barbara, and, in fact this girl had been at a school called Critchwell[ph] which was the girls’ equivalent to Bryanston which was the school I went to.

Isn’t it Cranbourne Chase?

Yes, Cranbourne, but we called it Critchwell[ph] for some odd reason. Cranbourne Chase, yes. And I had in a sense been having, strangely, affairs with different girls from that school, having never met them before as school girls, but...

That’s supposed to be one of the things about those two schools isn’t it, that they all marry each other but they don’t meet through the schools.

Is it? Oh. They marry. Well I never married any of them. But anyway...

You just had your wicked way and moved on.

Well, it wasn’t so wicked, I tell you. But, it’s nice to think of things like that as wicked as a matter of fact; it would be terrible to take away the wickedness. I’ve sort of reversed it all again. But, so, this girl, whose name was Ricky I believe, had been

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 13: Tape 7: Side A Page 157 head girl, and she said, oh she wanted to meet me, to go and meet...was a friend of mine. So we met at Liverpool Street, and I seem to remember I had a pair of jeans on that had plaster all over them, and shirt, and was really looking a complete tip, I had been making some sort of plaster things, and I remember her looking at me up and down, and I said, ‘Oh we’re not going somewhere really...?’ She said, ‘Oh no, no, we’re just going to Cambridge.’ And so I said, ‘OK, fine.’ But I did feel slightly uncomfortable, but I knew that I had to...and then when we walked through Cambridge to this place, I thought, oh my God! And it was the Rothschild, we had been asked to lunch at the Rothschild household, a modern, specially-built building with car ports and butlers and... But the thing that really got me was the Cézannes on the wall, oh my God! I mean there were Cézannes I’ve never seen in my life, I mean they could have been sort of, I mean they’ve never been in any reproduction, and so... So, but I knew it...

Sorry, when you say got you, you mean you were thrilled to see them, or you felt angry that they owned them?

Oh no, I was absolutely...I mean you know, the awkwardness of this situation was allied by being able to look at the work and perhaps in a sense legally as it were. I felt I was being watched rather like I was someone who was casing the joint as a matter of fact. But the whole idea of going to visit was, I think I believe a game of tennis had been ordered, so that was all right, but then we still had to have this lunch, or was dinner? I can’t remember. So there was this formal thing and me in these dreadful clothes.

Were the others actually in evening dress or something?

Not quite, but they were fairly smart. And there was...

But had you sort of said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I was coming’, or did you just not mention it?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 13: Tape 7: Side A Page 158 I think I said nothing. But I was introduced as this artist, probably. And, let me get this right, there was...there was someone who became very important in the U.N., a woman, who was married to a British MP, and, I haven’t thought about her, I remember her quite well, but I haven’t thought about her, I can’t remember her name, but I seem to remember, they were continuously having, Victor Rothschild and her were having this continuous battle, and at one...it was so funny because right...and so he had to clear the way, and he mentioned the word ‘intercourse’ and she took complete...acception[ph]...how does the word go?

Exception.

Exception, why did I have to...exception. Exception to this. And he was going on about, well social intercourse is different from sexual intercourse. But she really held on to this. So there was this whole frightful atmosphere going on, and then he decided that he would, you know, he was having this problem, so he sort of basically turned to me and he said, ‘What party do you support?’ You see, this dreadful politics coming up. And, I was actually, I had...this story I’m telling because you said, ‘Do you always feel at ease?’ you asked me, in any social situation. Up to this point I had been perfectly at ease. I had had this disadvantage. It was a bit like being in, you know, I mean I’ll tell you that one of my kind of recurring dreams, which I think is very funny, where I feel awkward but I go along with it, is where I dream I am simply standing in a room full of people in a party and I am wearing a T-shirt, that’s all I’m wearing, and I am pretty certain that the T-shirt covers my genitals, and in fact it’s one of those sort of T-shirts that when it’s been to the wash and you really pull it, it will. And as long as that T-shirt is, I feel OK, I can do it, and there are lots of people in the room so they can’t even see below a certain level, you know, you’re standing quite close. But, there is this up-and-down situation where I feel vulnerable. But I am still prepared to go on with it, and I keep it up. This is a dream. Well, this was the point with Victor Rothschild. So he turned to me, having... I mean I want to say Albright, but it’s not. I know you’re very keen on knowing who I’m talking about, but she was a predecessor in the U.N. Anyway, so, I think she took over from U Thant later on. Anyway, she was extraordinarily well known, she became extraordinarily well known. Anyway...

She’s American?

Yes, she was an American, she was... She was deputy to the U.N. at that point, or something like that. And she was married to this weird sort of old, old-fashioned English Conservative LP - LP! MP. [LAUGHS] He was an LP. He probably was. He didn’t say a word in the whole situation. So he said, ‘And what do you vote?’ This is Victor Rothschild, ‘What’s your political interest?’ you see. And I was thinking, Christ! what are his? This is not yet another one of these bloody people who basically is going to be left-wing, but there he is, he’s had all this... I knew perfectly well that he had been involved in MI5 or the secret service or whatever it is, I knew that, I knew there was all this Burgess-MacLean connection, or, perhaps I didn’t, perhaps I didn’t, but I knew there was definitely the Cambridge set-up connection there. And it all came to me at that point, and I had my hand... You know the stem of a glass, I just was about to pick up the glass and drink, and I started twiddling the glass like that, and there was complete silence around the room, everyone stopped talking, and I started to blush. I mean I’ve never done this before. And I didn’t say anything, and everyone watched this awkwardness. And I said nothing. And I twiddled the glass. And I looked at him, and I just, well I just stood, I just sat there watching him, meeting his eye, and he was kind of getting all more and more like, ‘Oh, this is aggression’. And he said, ‘Quand le lumière illume’, or something, ‘When the light shines, we see what’s there’. Really nice. And that was that. But previous to that there had been this tennis game, and...

With you still wearing jeans, or were you lent whites?

Yes, yes. I would say, I failed to come up to, you know, I mean I did, I felt acutely embarrassed by the situation.

And over something like that, how would Eliza have reacted?

Well this was post-Eliza. This was actually after I had split up.

Yes, it’s all right. And this was about ‘70... Right, I came back from America in ‘73. I think I met all of these Critchwell[??] girls one way or another up to ‘74, yes, it would have been about ‘74. The one I was very fond of, and that I really did like, and, I always regretted the way the relationship went, was with Mary Moore, who was also a Critchwell[??] girl.

Did you ever meet John Bulmer?

John Bulmer.

Who was terribly in love with her.

No. And I mean I did know Henry Moore, but, I did have a meeting at Much Hadham with him and John Russell and Vera Russell, they were all there. We all played ping- pong, and, I was able to beat John Russell, but Henry beat me, with his ghastly spin.

Before you move off this, I mean what were your political feelings at this time, that Victor asked you the question, were you political, were you engaged in any way?

No. I was totally uninterested in politics, I really was. I mean I was becoming aware of art politics as being a very frustrating situation as it were, that in a way one doesn’t join the art politics without being associated with a group, and I didn’t, wasn’t associated with any group, I in a sense rejected completely my background as art college or the Slade, gone to America, worked, made work, which I was actually quite proud of, and had brought it back and had shown it, and had to sort of start from nothing; it felt very much like whatever advantages I had obtained or whatever advantages for being this painter in America were lost completely by not being able to connect up to a sort of base in this country again.

But would you actually have voted do you think, or you just didn’t bother?

And, things like the U.N. at that time were very potent; would you have been interested in the U.N., the bit of...?

I was but the only, not from being in Britain at all, but when I was in New York there was the Cuban crisis, the Cuban crisis ‘62, ‘63, and I was extraordinarily aware of the impending possibility of nuclear war, I felt that anyway. And I remember being glued to the radio in New York, and I was in a funny sort of way on the top floor of an eight- floor building downtown Manhattan in a loft, and I felt that the first, you know, the most likely possibility was that if there was such a thing that New York would be targeted, and I just felt, I suddenly recalled something that someone had said to me at school, who had read something out of predictions, Nostradamus’s predictions or something, that there was going to be an incredible confrontation in 1962, anyway, something like that, but it all came to my mind that this was the last place I should be at that time. And I really did believe there was going to be something. Now, superstition is one thing, but actual kind of, where a number of things meet and where I really... I had actually taken part in Ban The Bomb marches from Aldermaston to Trafalgar Square in ‘60, ‘61, so I was, if you call me politically connected, I, on certain issues I really was, I really did feel that about the nuclear holocaust, that there was a likelihood of it. And those were my concerns as a student. So it was, you know, it was an extension of that., the Cuban crisis.

What do you remember of the marches?

My memory of the marches was permanent rain, sleeping in haystacks, rather like the extension of taking the boat up the canal. Freezing. Not eating anything. Being absolutely petrified of being asked by an interviewer why you were on the march, because I wouldn’t have had any reason other than instinct. I had no political views of that kind, I wasn’t that interested in talking about it. Meeting people. But, on the whole I was, I felt quite young at that point, I felt basically, I was catching up quite a lot on various other people’s involvement, which were political, and I [INAUDIBLE].

Do you remember any speeches or rallying or anything like that?

We rallied, yes, well there was a rally in Trafalgar Square. I wasn’t on the first one, which, where Bertrand Russell spoke, but I did actually see it on film at the Academy Cinema was it, in Oxford Street? And it probably was the prelude to doing it, and also because other people from the Slade were doing it as well. But that wasn’t the only reason; I was very aware of, if my political views were anywhere, it was about that.

And did you, were you more convinced by Peggy Ashcroft’s left-wing views, did you feel that was a deep-rooted conviction?

Yes, but we never discussed politics as far as I can remember.

What did you discuss with her? Did you spend much time with her?

Yes. A lot of time. I must say I can’t really remember what the discussions were. It assumed this kind of Bloomsbury way of talking where we...everyone talked in a kind of rather, what I imagine is Bloomsbury anyway, where someone launches into a dialogue, and what was nice was that both with... I mean in this sort of sense Jeremy was accepting, people would sit and listen, and they gave people time to talk. I don’t feel that now there’s any appreciation of the idea that someone can...that so many people want to say things that no one is prepared to listen. In a kind of curious kind of way there was the acceptance that someone can launch into a dialogue and that the moment to come to contribute or to offer to join in or, arrives, and that’s there’s every moment in the world. I think there was a sort of aspect of that. I think we talked quite a lot about theatre, there’s no doubt we talked about theatre; we talked about, for instance Pinter. We talked about UNESCO. We talked about the Royal Court. We talked about the Royal Shakespeare, that had just moved to the Aldwych I seem to remember. We talked about, we used to go up to Stratford, we used to talk about, we would see various, the sort of group actors up there, during the Stratford season, Peggy would take a kind of lodge in a sort of, a lodge house in a kind of, a kind of

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 13: Tape 7: Side A Page 163 estate not very far from Stratford, where I would meet Eliza again, and we would do our painting things in the fields.

Was Eliza at the Slade with you?

Yes. Yes.

But do you remember anything that was said about the Court, or U.N.E.S.C.O. or Pinter, or is it just general really?

I don’t remember.

Were you going to the Court, were you going to the theatre?

Yes, yes.

Any memories?

It was a kind of whirlwind of things. I think when you start going to the theatre regularly and then you stop completely, you either, are left with a kind of overall impression. As a matter of fact, I think there was, there was much more going to various sort of openings that Peggy was involved in, and then there was the plays that we would all go to or we would get seats in, I mean it was like, it was always somehow, it was so organised in such a way that we would go. There was a point where I started going to the Hammersmith Lyric, which was quite different and had nothing to do with the Royal Court or...and I remember seeing ‘Danton’s Death’, which I found terribly impressive. But, it was almost as if I had to establish some kind of area which wasn’t kind of related to the context of Peggy Ashcroft or anybody who we were connected to.

Do you think Eliza felt the same, that, a bit like you?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 13: Tape 7: Side A Page 164 I think there was a whole element of that. I mean for instance when we went to Stratford, it was like, ‘Oh, oh we have to go, we have to go and see “Measure For Measure” tonight,’ or, ‘Oh it’s...’ You know, it was like, you know, there was no way...it was a weeny bit like that. I mean we enjoyed it, I loved it, it was...I loved it, but, it was all part of a kind of thing where you knew that you were carving out something for yourself as well, and that this was... If I was being an actor it would have been very different, but I wasn’t. If I was going to be involved in one way in the theatre, and I was never going to do that. You know, I remember doing very different things, like going to films, wandering around. I mean, most of the relationship with Eliza was a sort of confrontational argumentative thing where she would be, not so much...I never knew what was wrong with her, what was the matter with her; I mean I would comfort her, but I never knew quite why or what it was. And I felt that there was a very strong need to develop some kind of independence from her parents, and she was completely unable to do it, and in lots of ways I was some sort of ally to help her. But when she was... But she was emotionally extraordinarily vulnerable, and I remember going, I remember going to... ‘Huis Clos’was it?... a sort of Sartre, a film on Sartre, where, Sartre’s thing of these people, you know, the idea of Hell is that these people have been put in a room together and the way they start to relate, and there were two women who quite obviously start forming a kind of relationship. And this upset Eliza enormously. So we were walking in...we almost came out in the middle of the film or we came out at the end of the film and she was in tears, and we then had to find Peggy, and Peggy would be in...she said she wanted her mother, it was really like that. And we would then find her dressing-room, and it happened to be that she was doing, which play was it? Well it was just like, off the Haymarket, or it was, I seem to remember it was just off, it’s one of those theatres off Leicester Square, and we were coinciding...we would have to walk around until the play had finished, and then we would go in and meet her and she would burst into tears in the dressing- room and so on. And she was doing an Ibsen play, at that time.

Oh it was probably ‘Hedda Gabler’ wasn’t it?

Yes. Yes. And, as a matter of fact I found those sort of things very...I loved Chekhov, but I found Ibsen very...

Did you see ‘The Cherry Orchard’ then?

Yes I did, ‘The Cherry Orchard’, at the Aldwych, with Redgrave, Peggy was in it I think.

Everyone was in it.

Yes, but I always was embarrassed when Peggy was... I mean because of this intimate relationship with her, and I did feel an intimate relationship with her, I mean I felt in a way I fed through Eliza who was in lots of ways very similar, and in many ways not, but, I felt I knew Peggy quite well. And whenever she was in ‘The Cherry’...I remember particularly in ‘The Cherry Orchard’, I remember feeling stupendously embarrassed by her performance, it felt like, terribly old-fashioned, you know, the way...because she was coming from... I mean although the Redgrave performance was as well, I felt, there were young... And I was always aware at, for instance that, at Stratford there were younger, there was a certain amount of, the Gaskell group.

Bill Gaskell.

Bill Gaskell group. I remember on one occasion there was Bill Gaskell and his...their stained trousers, I remember thinking, good God! you know.

You mean stained with sex?

Yes. Sitting on the floor which, or the ground, and having a kind of, a sort of barbecue was it, at Stratford. But they were giggling at Peggy, you know, and I felt very protective towards Peggy, and in a funny sort of way that part of the Royal Court, I felt, I mean, why I should be protective towards Peggy I don’t know, but, well I suppose it’s quite obvious, but I felt slightly prejudiced actually.

End of Track 13: Tape 7: Side A

.....George Devine at all?

Yes, certainly in Flood Street with Jocelyn. I always felt, well first of all I knew the connection with, the Chiswick one where he definitely lived on the Mall in Chiswick in the old house where the Lousadas lived in, and Jocelyn lived in. I think he lived down... So I think I saw him in the house there. But really what I’m talking about is the studio in Flood Street which I believe Jocelyn still lives in, does she? No she doesn’t. Right. Well I just remember it as... And the bed. But there she was, working up on that gallery which was, it was like, perhaps I should describe it, perhaps you know it.

But the tape doesn’t.

I mean it’s like one of the, Rossetti studios was it called, where there’s this enormous slit in the side of a wall to let out the large large paintings, and then there’s the gallery so that you can view the painting, but this was what George and her were living in. And the bed lay where it was in the corner of the room so, and in a funny sort of way I felt that was a statement about life coming from various artists. I ever since have always expected beds to be in a living-room; I never thought of bedrooms as separate. Not ever since, I think, should I say not ever since but it’s been an acknowledged sort of part of the way an artist should be, in a way. And I always felt for George with his white hair, his pipe and his glasses. As a matter of fact do you know, I think earlier you asked me a description of Roland Penrose; I’ve actually sometimes mixed them up a bit. I don’t think Roland Penrose had white hair, I think he had, I don’t think it went white, or, I remember it was dark, but George had completely white hair. And I knew he had a few heart attacks, I knew he had had a heart attack, and I felt, how can, how can he with what had seemed to be all the troubles that were going on at the Court which I was very aware of, vaguely, via Jocelyn, and my feeling about Bill Gaskell for instance, in relation to even Peggy, I put these things together, but I felt that there was an enormous strain going on, how could he cope with it? How could he? There is, you know, oh, he probably wants to, he looks so tired, all he needs to do

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 14: Tape 7: Side B Page 167 is to lie down. And there is this very very kind of up-front social scene situation where people, you know, even, all Jocelyn’s children are crowded into that Flood Street place, Jenny, Muffet or Moffet, I can’t remember her name now, the younger one.

Olivia.

Olivia, right. The four of them anyway.

Sandra and Julian.

Sandra and, what was the...?

Julian.

Julian, Julian, I haven’t seen for years. How could they all be fitted in, you know, especially with their respective boyfriends and girlfriends, you know, how they coped with it. It was quite extraordinary, I thought a feat of absolute incredulity really.

And do you remember George’s ‘Dorn’ in that...no that was ‘The Seagull’ wasn’t it. Did you see ‘The Seagull’ as well, which had Peggy in it?

Yes.

I think I’m confusing ‘The Seagull’ and ‘The Cherry Orchard’. ‘The Cherry Orchard’ was much earlier, wasn’t it.

‘The Cherry Orchard’ was at the Aldwych, there’s no doubt about it, and it was done by George (sic) Saint Denis was it?

Yes, that’s right. You saw the ‘38 one then. You can’t have, you weren’t born.

Not ‘38. It was probably a resurrection of the ‘38 one by...

And did you, sorry, I am getting confused.

Saint Denis, I remember meeting Saint Denis because he...

Oh what was that like?

Oh, French. [LAUGHS] Oh gosh. In a suit, quite rotund, glasses, dark glasses - I mean not dark glasses but big, heavy, horn-rimmed glasses. Quite short, a short man, sort of out of another era, I’m sorry to say that’s how I felt.

Did you know him when Vera Russell was married to him, did you pick up her at different points [INAUDIBLE]?

I had no idea she was married to him; I only knew her with, I knew her with John Russell, which was post that was it?

Must have been. I can’t remember if she was married to him, but, well she was probably [INAUDIBLE].

She had only probably married to [INAUDIBLE].

She drove him insane I think, they used to fight like crazy.

Yes, yes definitely. Vera I actually saw finally in Coachtown[ph] when she moved there. I mean I went to see her.

Yes, we’ll pick her up later on.

Yes.

But, so, sorry, you probably didn’t see ‘The Seagull’ that Peggy did that had George playing Dorn.

I saw ‘The Seagull’ but maybe it wasn’t Peggy, but I think I’m thinking of ‘The Cherry Orchard’ with...

Everybody.

Yes, at the Aldwych, and I’m not certain what I saw. You know, when you asked me what I saw at the Court, I couldn’t distinguish, I could probably think about it, but, I can’t think what I saw there.

You didn’t see her doing ‘The Good Woman of Szechuan’, did you? You were probably before...

I didn’t see that.

Before your time with her.

I’m pretty sure I saw the Osborne, ‘Look Back in Anger’ there, with...

Alan Bates?

No, I was thinking, maybe I’m thinking of the film then. I know, I’m pretty certain, I... I saw, certainly I... No the other thing I saw, and I’m moving a bit, but, I can’t remember about ‘Look Back in Anger’, but I think I probably did see it. I don’t remember Alan. No, Alan Bates is in the film.

No, it’s Finney in the film.

Is it?

Isn’t it?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 14: Tape 7: Side B Page 170 No it wasn’t Finney, that’s definitely it, it wasn’t Finney. I remember Finney in the film but... I seem to remember Alan Bates in ‘The Caretaker’.

He was in ‘The Caretaker’ too.

Well that’s what I saw, I saw ‘The Caretaker’ at the Aldwych, and with Alan Bates in ‘The Caretaker’, and that was before the RSC moved there.

Wasn’t it in The Arts? Actually this doesn’t matter, anyway.

Oh maybe next door, you’re right, you’re absolutely right actually Cathy, yes. Right, it was next to the Aldwych, that’s it, yes.

But, were you aware that Peggy was very unfaithful to Jeremy, was that part of...?

Never aware of that.

And were you aware how shocked she was when he left?

Yes. But that happened after I had left Eliza.

So, I mean there was just a sort of sense of tension that you didn’t really know what it was?

No I knew what it was. I walked once into their house in Frognal, and Eliza...all right, you went up the stairs, I remember that house, really beautiful, I loved it, really loved it.

Can you describe it for the tape? Because obviously it’s not their house any more.

No, it isn’t. Well, yes I can. I mean we went over this a lot with Peggy. She said, apparently it was chosen by Peggy. She went down, there’s a kind of, off Frognal, at the top of Frognal really, there’s a narrow passageway with lime trees going down it -

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 14: Tape 7: Side B Page 171 well passageway, a sort of lane, right, on your right are lime trees, and at the end there’s a house and on the right there’s a house. She actually initially went to see the house at the end, and while she was looking at that house she looked over the wall and there was this empty house which was actually what she moved into, and she asked the...it was originally the old farm house for the whole of that area, the whole of, going down the Finchley Road. It was an early, I mean basically a late Regency- stroke-Georgian, early Victorian house, with a kind of, overlooking a garden going down, a big mimosa tree in the middle of the lawn - a mimosa, what’s the one with the, not mimosa, sorry, the one with the sort of pink flowers. Not mimosa.

Magnolia?

Magnolia, that’s right. An enormous magnolia tree. Grass. A little sort of, because the first floor was raised off the ground there was a kind of, a railing and passageway going slightly above the garden leading off from the house, so that there were doors that opened up onto this kind of terrace, but it was just a sort of terrace that you could...it wasn’t like a large terrace, but it was built on. It originally had its kitchen in the basement, because this is where Nick the son used to have a room down in the basement. On the first floor was, on the right the kitchen, and you came in, a big hall, you walk through to a sitting-room on the left that was furnished in absolute horrendous sort of flowery, flowery kind of furnishings, curtains, settees and so on, which was very much Peggy’s room, strangely. And this was the sitting-room, and it had a piano in it. Then on the, then you come out of that room and then you walked slightly to the right, you had the dining-room, which was connected to a hatch to the kitchen, and then further behind that was Jeremy’s study, which was lined with, I should say probably, now I think about it there must have been the Hogarth Press books all there. He was certainly very kind of possessive about his books. But that was basically built on Victorian extensions, that bit. So what you really saw, the house as you came down this lane, were the lime trees that Jeremy made a very big thing about clipping I seem to remember, a sort of walkway, and the sort of Victorian extension of the house, so that it didn’t look really particularly interesting as a house, and you wouldn’t, you didn’t really know the earlier bit of it by, until you went round, because the entrance was a sort of back entrance to, onto that, onto that lane but it

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 14: Tape 7: Side B Page 172 wasn’t the main entrance. Well it was the main entrance by the time it was being used like that, but originally it would have been the back entrance because it was the way into the kitchen and so on. I was going to say, so, Eliza had the first room on the left as you went up the stairs, and then there was this room which was a shared room between Peggy and Jeremy, and which it had two beds in it; it had a big double bed which Peggy slept in, and on the right with a series of cupboards was Jeremy’s bed. And one occasion I walked into the room, and they were both in bed, which is what was so peculiar about it, or at any rate Jeremy was sitting in bed reading briefs, looking very like a kind of stuffed mummy, but evidently he had a cold, flu or something, and he had an important case the next day, and it was like one of these...it was like the lawyer in bed with his glasses on, you know, and looking very white, and pale and plastic, and having to do all this work. And at the other side was Peggy in this sort of, I think she had a...it was, to me it felt very much like a kind of, the bed had a feeling of Bloomsbury about it, and I’m not sure whether it was the cover or the actual bed itself, but anyway it was... And, she was very sad. It felt a tremendous separation between these two people and I said to myself, my God! living...sleep... And there was this sliding door as a matter of fact, which had obviously been installed, which could be slid backwards and forwards between the two parts of the room, and there was no...I just felt, oh well, you know, two people with two careers, no connection, but, that was what I thought at the time.

So they were in their separate beds?

Yes.

But it’s interesting that they didn’t want to be in totally different bits of the house, I mean, it wasn’t a total separation was it?

No. I think Peggy was complaining at that time that he only left her notes. They hardly saw each other, I mean he would be in, she would be working, you know, she would be in late, he would be getting up early, you know, I seem to remember that was all done by notes, that was what was going on at the time.

He was cutting himself completely off, I felt, mm. I had the feeling, I seem to remember feeling that, I had understood that he had already formed another relationship with somebody you see, if I remember rightly, I had had no, I had no... I felt that Peggy would be terribly sad if this broke up, and my feeling, I didn’t have any idea of her series of different relationships with different men at all, but I had a sense that he had, but you see these things, I can’t remember if it was information that I was fed or whether it was just instinct, but that’s what I’m trying to...

What about the paintings in that house?

There was the most appalling Sickert over the piano in the sitting-room which I thought, of Peggy Ashcroft, and to me that was a photograph that had been coloured in, you know. I never thought it was any good, I thought it was awful. I can’t remember anything else.

There were other Sickerts eventually, I don’ knowt if they were there then.

There probably was, but Sickert has never been that fantastically, my favourite.

And what was Nick like?

I liked Nick. Nick to me was just, well he was very sweet to me, kind of, we... I don’t know if I connected completely with him because... I remember once meeting at the Oval cricket ground on one occasion, we were both watching cricket, I took him back, I said, ‘You must come and meet Ruth’. What a disaster.

Because they didn’t get on?

He never met her, and, I mean as far as he knew I was still...I don’t know if he knew, no, he probably knew exactly that I had got married to somebody. I think that he

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 14: Tape 7: Side B Page 174 delighted in my relationship with Eliza, and in a sense took me on as part of the family, so I might have done that to sort of try and open it up.

And how did he get on with Peggy and Jeremy?

I think he got on with Peggy a lot, he loved his mother, and she adored him. I’m not so certain he got on with Jeremy at all.

And what was Eliza actually like?

Well I can say this in retrospect having met her a few years ago, re-met her as it were, that, I realise now that what I consider to be slightly kind of, well I shouldn’t say this because there’s all sorts of nice things I could say about Eliza, but the thing that has struck me since is that she is very unbalanced and always has been, maybe. At the age of 19 I wasn’t aware of that. And she seems to progressively be more like that. I mean I can say now looking at her mouth that it’s highly, it goes down, and I remember thinking, God! is that mouth real? I mean there’s something, you know, something about this mouth that is rather frightening. And, it slopes down in the corners to such an extent that it has...I don’t recognise physiognomical traits as being anything, but to me that is deep depression. And certainly, there was two meetings, and I maybe forced myself on her a bit, I’m not sure why, I felt that I was obliged to, I felt, I arranged these meetings and I think on the second one she was very...she had no time for it. And, we argued within ten minutes.

About what?

I said I wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in hearing about her husband; I said I had come to see, to talk about...I said I didn’t want to hear about her life. We hadn’t talked about her life on the first meeting, but she was completely full of it and she just got up and went, disappeared, and I paid for the drink, went out and had a meal, and as I was sitting there eating the meal, who should go past the window but this Eliza in tears? This is a person in tears, walking along. And the whole restaurant looked.

Had she known you were in there, or it was just chance that she went by?

No. No, but it was as if, ‘Oh, so you’ve got it all arranged,’ you know, type of thing, that, I mean...well, she walked out, I thought she had just disappeared, I had no idea where she had gone, I mean how did I know? I just thought, right, she’s walked out, that’s the end of that, so I thought, well I’m going to go on...

Oh what, you mean you think she was meaning to come back?

I have no idea what she was thinking. I don’t think she was, no, I think...she was wandering up the street rather like someone completely in some kind of... I mean there wasn’t any, you know, what I could distinguish was that there was nothing, no mind had been applied to precisely what she was doing, it was just like, she was like in a dream. And I thought, oh my God! I didn’t know it was as bad as this, which is what I felt, you know, I mean I thought, right, this is perfectly understandable, that someone should get up and go if they feel offended and angry, perhaps they should explain why, but it doesn’t matter; after all I’ve obviously made a mistake trying to make this arrangement, it’s my fault. I assumed that she had just disappeared, gone, I mean it’s where she lived, it wasn’t... I was definitely not going to... Anyway, so I went out...

Where did she live? Did she live in France?

Yes, she lives in, she lived, a few miles away.

And you had gone to France?

I had gone, first of all I had met her in Rouen? Rouen, I think, Rouen, on the way to Italy, and then I was coming back and I had gone to Versailles or something like that, I can’t really remember where it was, I know it was south of Paris. I think it was rather

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 14: Tape 7: Side B Page 176 un... Well anyway, so there she was walking past crying. So I walked, I said to the guy, ‘Hang on a minute, I’m just going out; I’ll pay, I’ll come and pay in a minute, I’m just going out.’ And so we stood there talking, and she was going, looking at all these people watching, and saying, ‘Well I’m not going back.’ I said, ‘Well look, why don’t you come and have a meal then? Why don’t you come and join me for this meal? I had no idea you were going to be here.’ And she said, ‘Oh, I’m not going back in there.’ And so I went back and paid for it, and we wandered around. I mean it felt very much like the way it always had been, this sort of wandering around. And I then said, ‘Look, let’s go there.’ It was really cold, and she was shivering, and she said, ‘Oh no, I can’t go there.’ And I said, ‘Come on, it’s the only place that’s open, there’s lots of people in it, we’ll sit down, it’s warm.’ Finally she agreed, we walked past it three times, and this is what Eliza was like, and when we got in there she said, ‘Oh I love it, it’s hot, it’s warm,’ you know. And she calmed, she sort of de-iced and calmed down a bit, and was something else, it was completely different, just like that, and sort of almost became human again.

And did you sort of find out things that you had wanted to find out then?

No, this really put a block in it. I mean I just suddenly realised that I’m dealing with somebody I can’t...I didn’t realise that she is so disturbed, because that’s really what it became, quite obvious.

And did you at all understand why by the end of that evening, did she...?

No. Not at all.

And in your previous meeting, on the way to Italy, what had it been like?

Well, the curious thing is, as we were touring this, I mean we met by the cathedral so we started walking round it, and, I said at one point, ‘Well, let’s talk about something, let’s...’ I said, I changed the subject actually, and later on she said, ‘That was really good you did that, that was the best part of the meeting.’ And actually I think that’s probably exactly what I was trying to do the second time around if I think about it, and

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 14: Tape 7: Side B Page 177 it worked in an opposite way, because the point was that she was going to go into a long description of what was happening in her life at that point, and I could see that there was going to be no meeting point whatsoever. I wasn’t, I hadn’t come to talk about our respective lives; I had come to talk about what was in common between us.

What what?

What was in common, what we shared.

In the past, or now?

Well what we shared now, yes, what there was, was there anything to carry from that point to this? I think she definitely had been the first person I’d been in love with, and, it had ended very very, in a very strange and odd kind of way. And it had never been resolved, and it had never been understood. And, I think really what astonished me was the dislocation that had been created, rather than the connection. I think I presented her with some books, I did.

That had been hers, or...?

No no, our, my and, I mean our, the books, you know, like Weproductions.

Right.

And she found them incomprehensible, I think. I mean I think again, I only did that on the pretext that she was talking about it, and she was saying how initially the person she was married to had become involved in something to do with that, and I said, ‘Well, we can’t ignore the fact that I am involved in doing this, and, maybe you’ve come across more...... or something.’ And so she said, ‘Well let me...show me, you know, I never knew...’ She hadn’t, and so, you know, it stayed there. I said, ‘Oh well, you can have them.’ Awful really, but, I’m not sure what I...I don’t yet know, it may have been completely wrong. I know - no, I’m sorry, I’m not thinking quite. I had received a number of letters from her saying, ‘Meet here’ ‘Meet there’. I

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 14: Tape 7: Side B Page 178 would reply and nothing would happen. I would actually go to the places, to meet. She said, ‘Is there a place we can meet in?’ When I came back to her about this, she didn’t remember, she said, ‘I don’t remember writing to you’. I should have realised that ultimately she wasn’t totally responsible for what she did or thought, that that was the situation with her.

But when you changed the conversation in the first meeting, what did you get her to talk about?

You know, I can’t really remember.

So you didn’t learn anything really about the past through those meetings?

No, there was a complete blank, there was a complete blank on that.

And have you had contact with her since?

No, none.

And how did it end between you?

Oh, it was quite friendly. Bye, goodbye, you know.

But mutually, or...? No no no, I mean at the time of your love affair with her, you said it was unresolved.

Oh I see. Oh, oh how did it end? Oh well, I mean goodness me. Right. Well, we’ll have to go back to when I went to America. I probably did in part want to change the way things were going to go between me and Eliza by leaving this country, going to America.

With her or without?

How long had you been together by that point?

About three or four years. I mean it seemed like a century, but...

So you were really together most of the time at the Slade?

Yes, all the time practically. I think I remember saying we were together for four years, which, maybe I left the Slade in ‘62, so I went to America. But I mean, there was something like four years of us being together. And, so... So there were the scenes of me leaving, there definitely were, I remember going down to various places and having a talk about it, going to stay here and having a talk about it. I must also say that I wanted obviously to go to form some other context to relate to other than the Slade. I mean I rejected really roughly the whole schooling I achieved, or didn’t achieve in a sense, at the Slade, didn’t seem to be part of my background as an artist at all. And I wanted, and I felt, well I wanted to be connected to the present, and I wanted to go to America, I felt that America... So I chose it, and I worked out how to get some kind of scholarship and so on to go to, eventually I wrote off to various different places, and I was given, I was accepted at something called Brooklyn Museum Art College, or Art School I think it was called, and I also had an old school friend who was living in a loft in Manhattan which I went to live in, and shared with him.

What did you go to do at Brooklyn? Was it an actual course?

Yes, it was a year’s postgraduate course.

In painting?

Yes, painting, yes, painting. I then, I then actually arranged with the art college that I didn’t have to go in as well, so I could work on my own.

Yes.

End of Track 14: Tape 7: Side B

There’s a lot to go mate!

Oh my God! [LAUGHS] I don’t know, it’s so retrospective, it’s terrible.

It has to be.

God! That’s a thing I fight against all my life.

Never mind, you’ve taken a big plunge. Carry on.

So, that was the other reason, but it did serve as a reason of separating from Eliza, I think I...

She wasn’t wanting to separate? I mean when you said you wanted to get away, to make a change from what was going to happen, what did you think would have happened if you hadn’t gone, what was on the cards?

I felt that on the cards we were going to end up together.

Married?

Yes.

Had you actually been living together?

Yes. Well, no I had always had a place and she stayed with me. I know...well I don’t know how you define living together, but yes.

And she had a flat somewhere or something?

She still lived at home.

And would you stay with her there, that was accepted, or what?

I think I crawled in up the drainpipe on lots of occasions, when we had had an argument or whatever it was, but I mean...

Was that to do with not waking the household up by ringing the doorbell, or was it because you weren’t officially supposed to sleep with her?

I wasn’t officially supposed to be sleeping with her. There were certain jokes about the drainpipe having to be fixed later, so that it was like in a, it was accepted in certain sorts of Bloomsbury sort of kinds of ways that this was something that was going on.

And did it, again did you think Jeremy and Peggy had different attitudes, or did they seem...?

I’m not sure, I...yes, I will say that it was, quite obviously Peggy’s attitude was prevalent at the time; Jeremy’s attitude was very peculiar. When I...I’ll talk about the thing in America now. He rang up my father and said that I was responsible for what had happened to Eliza.

Because, by leaving, you mean?

Yes, because she had...because what had happened was, she had had a nervous breakdown.

And do you think she would have had that anyway?

If people are prone to having nervous breakdowns, she always said at the time that it wasn’t to do with me leaving, it was to do with the fact that she sharing a flat with two other people who she didn’t get on with.

Presumably Jeremy and Peggy had broken up by this time, had they?

Yes.

You didn’t think that was anything to do with it?

Yes, it was also to do with that. And in fact I was told, there was lots of letters going on between me in America and writing to Peggy, and she had I think explained at this point that they were breaking up, so actually the break-up occurred when I was in America. So it coincided with me leaving, the break-up, and the flat. I think I did go over this with Eliza when I saw her in France recently, and she did say something about her parents, so, you know...

Had Adrian been drawn into this circle, did you take him in at all, or was Jeremy’s phone call to him the sort of first contact?

I’ll tell you the most extraordinary story. When my father was dying in 1972, literally dying, the last pottery party that Ann my aunt put on, he was dying, we were standing in the front room which was a room I used to, it’s now part of the pottery party, on the ground floor, and it looks onto the street on the ground floor level. We were standing there, and Ann looked up and she saw Peggy walking past the window, Peggy Ashcroft, and she went, ‘Oh, come in, come in’. And Peggy Ashcroft came in and she was actually present at the moment that my father died. He was...what it was, he was upstairs on a bed, and my brother had rigged up a kind of sound system so everyone could...not for everyone to hear, but it was still going, it was obviously for Ann to, you know, know whether he needed attention or whatever it was. And all accompanying this pottery party was this breathing. Peggy came to it, but she left early on. I don’t know if they had an awful lot of contact. My father didn’t, he was aware of the fact, Eliza used to visit the house, he was actually just about, he was actually opposed to Eliza quite a lot, he didn’t think she was...he made it quite plain that he didn’t think that she was...I think he...he realised that she was somewhat unbalanced. I think this occurred to him up to the point...he didn’t voice it until she had her nervous breakdown, but when that happened, and especially with Jeremy’s phone call, he

But would Jeremy ever have gone to Peggy’s house or anything, was he a part of your life in that sense, or it was simply that you would sometimes take Eliza there?

Now what do you mean by Peggy’s house?

Well Peggy and Jeremy, I mean would you ever...was it sort of family...?

Would my father have gone to it?

Mm, was it family to family?

No, not at all, not at all, no.

And did you see their worlds as being very foreign, did you see any joining points?

I didn’t try and join them.

No, but I mean in your head, were they totally different landscapes?

Yes, I think it made... I had trouble with my father, I mean after all I was living at that time in Church Row possibly quite a lot of the time, in my early, you know, when I knew Eliza initially, and I was having a lot of trouble with Adrian anyway at the time, so there might have been the connection, you know, with Eliza having trouble with her father and me having mine.

So when Peggy went past at this pottery party, I mean how did Ann know that she could invite her in? I mean had Peggy and Ann known each other?

I’m not sure but they were pretty close neighbours. I mean if they did know each other then it was something that I had nothing to do with. There is this assumption in,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 15: Tape 8: Side A Page 185 everyone minding each other’s business, so, of course everyone knew. I’m not too certain how, but I was standing next to her, how it happened.

And Adrian presumably wasn’t a theatre-goer?

Not really, he was more ballet, yes.

Yes. And just before we go to America, I mean, in a way what was happening at the Court to Peggy Ashcroft’s generation of actors was the sort of redbrick university writers and actors coming in to change things.

Yes.

And in a sense, with what you’re talking about Jeremy and Bloomsbury, I mean in those days there was a sort of upper class group of artists having a social life with the English upper classes wasn’t there.

Yes.

And I suppose in a way although you actually had a sort of pedigree behind you in a sense, you were representing the generation of artists who went on protest marches and came from very different backgrounds. I mean, in a sense Jeremy must have been at a sort of pivotal point where in the past there hadn’t necessarily been that kind of division, and that art in a way could have been perceived by him to be being hijacked by a totally different social group.

Well I think you’re probably right. I never looked at it like that. But you see the thing is that there was a conflicting attitude between him and Peggy. Even though I said about Bill Gaskell sort of sniggering at Peggy when they were all sitting on the lawn, I still thought it was internal politics, but it also had this thing of making Peggy look terribly old-fashioned and dated, and the way she...and he was sniggering at the way she was talking, and that had related, that related very strongly to what you are talking

Well, and also she was one of the actresses that in the end could bridge it, or nearly bridge it; I mean she couldn’t in the end but she...

Yes, she nearly, she couldn’t but she was nearest to coming to it. Because she was basically adopted as far as I remember.

I can’t remember [INAUDIBLE].

I actually have the tray that her adoptive father gave her that came to me for some...

From her?

I think she gave it to me, she said, ‘This might be useful, Telfer.’

Do you still have her letters?

Maybe, I haven’t looked them out. I think if they went to America, I would have had letters from her in America, if they were in America, I think they probably are, they are among my father’s letters. I certainly kept all the letters I received in America, and, at that period, and my father used to write pretty regularly. I have the letters I might say for the record, I have the letters of that period from my father, and possibly one or two from Peggy. I know I’ve got one from Peggy, it might be in that lot, I haven’t looked it out. But what I do have is the letters that were sent to me in Los Angeles in ‘72, which were the last letters he wrote really, where his writing goes off the page basically.

Written to you, or...?

Yes, and talking about having to get repatriated.

Yes, repatriated. And how his clock, how his clock goes for hours. Oh no, his, sorry, not his clock, his spectacles go for hours, that’s right. Because he was now in his last fling, highly sedated with a sort of tumour on his brain. But he...

Did you write back, were you a letter-writer?

Yes, but you know, there was this man who observed absolute blank paper, yes, no address at the top, written, Biro yes, but absolutely rigidly, you know, the writing would cross the page, and, neat held, and there was this writing where he had gone off the page. To me that was an absolute, you know, something dreadful had happened, there was no doubt. I looked at the letter and I couldn’t believe it. In all my life I never received a letter with the writing going off the page in that way, and I knew something had really happened and I would have to go back.

It’s quite interesting in the light of what you’ve done in your work to do with pages and scripts and texts and things, I mean that must have been...it’s a bit like the sweating in the theatre, an incredibly painful and intense sort of experience.

You mean the...yes, right. Yes, and I never really acknowledged the fact that doing books had anything to do with my father. I think if I had ever thought about it like that I probably wouldn’t have done it. I felt that I was moving from painting, or making constructions if you like, which is what it ended up with, and incorporating words, to making books, and it seemed quite a straightforward connection. But then if I think about it, they were basically visual books, there was no text initially. Whereas with the late paintings I was using writing in it, I abandoned the writing probably to do books but then only introduced them later, introduced it later.

So do you think the fact that you have done books is to do with Adrian?

Well, I mean I must say, you know, before he died I was able to give him the first book, ‘Passage’, and, I mean I don’t know if I was aping, but I made it a Penguin size

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 15: Tape 8: Side A Page 188 book, because at that time there was a book called ‘Image and Form’ coming out which is a collected writing by Adrian Stokes, in Penguin blue - Cambridge blue? I had used the same colour. I had no idea this book was coming out, but there were two books. And the funny thing is that someone called Freeman, something Freeman, who had been a gardener for my father, when I say gardener, he used to do a market garden, down in Cornwall. He had turned up just after my father had died, and he said he had had this dream, he had seen Adrian, and Adrian was walking down the road and he said, ‘Here’s the book, it’s all here,’ and it was this blue Penguin book.

And had the man seen the blue Penguin book in life?

No, no. ‘It’s all here,’ is what he said. What’s his name? John Freeman? No. I can’t remember his first name. Yes, very strange. This was the post-period of death, you know, very kind of atmospheric period of time, where people turned up out of the blue and coincidences occurred. I mean to be honest the Peggy coincidence, I hadn’t even remembered till I spoke of it.

Did the gardener come up specifically to find you to tell you about this, or you just came across him in some way?

Let me explain, he wasn’t a gardener; my father had to dig a field for the Home Guard and grow cabbages, and he would go to the local Employment Agency in St. Ives and get someone to help, and he, this guy Freeman came on one occasion.

He wasn’t Telfer? Because one of them was Telfer wasn’t he?

One was called Telfer MacPherson or Mac whatever, and he, yes he was called Telfer, and so my father was continuously, you know...yes.

But I mean had he come to find you to tell you about the dream, or did you just bump into him somewhere?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 15: Tape 8: Side A Page 189 No, he had actually come, he was actually staying in the house with Ann, at Ann’s, because he had rung her up and said, ‘I’m coming up to London, could I see you?’ you know, and then he told her about the dream and I just happened to be there. Now, am I to get back to something?

Yes, actually, can we be strategic?

Yes.

Hang on, I’m going to ask you a couple of things first, but, you said in an earlier recording that you, at the age you are talking about, the sort of teenage going into twenties period, you couldn’t bear to read Adrian’s books. Was he aware of that, did he want you to read them, was it actually an issue?

No, no. I think he understood that.

And how did he react when you showed him ‘Passage’?

He said it was very interesting. He obviously didn’t understand why I had stopped painting. He was a great supporter of me being a painter, he used to come and look at my paintings, he used to walk across the Heath from Hampstead to Kentish Town and we would do a session, and he would walk back, in his walking shoes. I would try and offer him a cup of tea or this and that. ‘No no, no no no’. It was all business. I never quite understood what he was trying to do. He didn’t actually contribute very much, it felt as if what I was doing was so far from...or else it was too difficult for him to distinguish; in the same way as I find it difficult to read what he writes, it was difficult for him to look at what I did. When I showed him this book, I mean what I remember was, of course I was very wrapped up with Marcel Duchamp and all his whole history, and I had previously lent him the complete works of Marcel Duchamp, and he said, it was a very heavy book, he said, and he said it takes up a lot of room, so he had put it on this other table and he said that, ‘I nearly had to get Ann to come and pick this book up for me because I could hardly, you know, pick it up’. And he said that in the process of doing so he had cut his finger on one of the pages, and he said,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 15: Tape 8: Side A Page 190 ‘A very Duchampian joke’. That was his comment. He said he had never been particularly interested, he was perfectly aware of Marcel Duchamp’s existence and this was of interest to him but, in a sense what he was saying was of passing interest. So when I presented this book, I think he did draw some kind of connection, and he knew that it wasn’t going to be something that was going to appeal to him. Although he did actually talk about one bit of the book as being very topical, and that’s a thing that I’ve...I never remember and never think of, which is a bit which I did with envelopes, which was half a manila, a white...I had halved a manila and a white envelope together and done some kind of word play on manila and uniqueness or something, and I can’t quite remember, was it...you see I can’t even remember the work. But he thought that was very topical, and I can’t think why. I mean that was a comment I... What? Topical? I think it was something like élite, I used the word élite. Manila élite? Anyway... So, I was very happy that, or pleased that I was able to...I was very keen for him to see this book. OK, that, yes.

So you weren’t disappointed by his reaction?

I wasn’t really, I wasn’t going to be...no.

If you had to sum Adrian up as thumbnail description of the kind of place he had in the art world, what would you say about him?

In, a place in the art world?

If you were trying to describe him to someone who didn’t know who he was, I mean...

Yes. Ah. Well, I mean, there are, I mean there is no doubt there are people who are extraordinarily, search him out, search him out, but in retrospect not as much as when he was alive.

But how would you describe him? What would you say his profession was for instance?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 15: Tape 8: Side A Page 191 Aesthete, someone who writes about things that are not mainstream basically, but because... I mean his way, his approach to the flowering of the most important part of the Renaissance if you like is, you can use Adrian’s books as guides, go and look at Adrian Stokes’s, you know, what he has selected to look at in say a church in Siena, and it will be the thing that is still ignored. But he said that this is the incorporation of this particular period of Renaissance, before it became sculpture. He would reject Ghiberti’s gates, you know, in Florence, because of the...but he would talk about... I mean, the relief work at the Tempio...er... M...... , the Rimini temple, there at a certain period of time, certain kinds of things were achieved in a certain kind of way which was never to be met again. I mean he might be saying, well, you know, you could say again and you could still say, what is that relevance? But I think people do respect that, I think that that’s ultimately...but it’s an aesthetic view, it’s a very highly aestheticised, if you can say that word, view.

Did he do journalism as well, or not?

He did write for the ‘Spectator’, he wrote ballet reviews, but he wrote also about various artists, like Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth.

And, did he do broadcasting, did he have...?

No.

No? So his public life in a sense was through the books really, and through some articles?

Yes. Yes.

And he was never attached to any kind of institution?

No, and this was the major argument between him and Gombrich really. I mean you know, there’s a sort of... I mean, I don’t know, because I’m really rehashing various things that have been brought out. I feel that ultimately someone like Richard

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 15: Tape 8: Side A Page 192 Reid[ph] who is writing his biography has written various kinds of connective things with Adrian and he’s done one piece on, which has been published, one piece on the Gombrich-Stokes axis or what the argument was. I mean, I think there is a heavy- handed sign coming from my father talking to Gombrich as if he is a kind of, he changes his view on Gombrich just simply by addressing him as Gombrich initially in his letters ‘Dear Gombrich’. I mean, he then starts talking about, whatever Gombrich’s...Hans or...Ernst, that’s right, ‘Dear Ernst’ later on, but, I think it deeply offended Gombrich in a kind of class, in a class way.

Which bit offended him?

I think the argument came down to the fact that he was employed by the Warburg Institute and Adrian wasn’t.

I.E. that one had a private income and one didn’t?

One had a private income and one didn’t. And Adrian didn’t have an argument for that, he just stopped like that. I think he is misrepresented by the way that it’s been covered, I think it is...I think ultimately, the argument isn’t about private income and the Warburg Institute, it isn’t that at all; it’s about, you could go into what in a way, what in a way Adrian was, had the opportunity to write about and chose to write about, and in a way what Gombrich chose to write about.

And I’m now going to get us towards the point where we can talk about the books this afternoon, so, there’s lots of gaps that we’ve got at the moment that we’re going to at some point need to go back to cover, because we’ve only actually got you having pneumonia in prep school apart from anything else.

Do you want me to go back to that?

No, not at the moment. What I would like to do, I mean you’ve talked about one of the reasons for going to America being that you wanted to separate yourself really from what you felt the Slade stood for, and I just wondered, can we quite briefly talk about

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 15: Tape 8: Side A Page 193 how you came to go to the Slade in the first place, and what it gave you? And again we’ll have to go back at some later point and look at it in much more detail.

Yes. Well, I presented a folio of work I had done at Bryanston school. And I felt that the interview, it was a set-up basically, it was done via my father. And that was that, I mean that was quite straightforward with that.

Who were you interviewed by, do you remember?

A panel, I believe Claude Rogers, Bill Coldstream was there, maybe William Townsend.

Had you met them anyway?

Never, no, that was the first time I had ever seen them.

And, presumably the first year was a general foundation year was it?

A general foundation with Patrick George, and that was...if I had ever received any kind of honours at the Slade, that was when I received them, curiously.

Because?

Well, complying to the general kind of, what was asked of. I did a drawing or something that got a prize, or was elected for a prize, I don’t know. But otherwise I would say that the time of the Slade was, I became slowly more and more disillusioned by what was in a sense going on at the time, which was the Bomberg...

Can you describe it a bit, because I’m thinking of it from the point of view of Americans reading it who won’t possibly even have heard of the Slade?

Right. Well, there was an artist called Bomberg who actually, looking at his work, I don’t feel quite so prejudiced at all, but there was a whole school had been established

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 15: Tape 8: Side A Page 194 at that time where there was a lot of pupils, a lot of - not pupils, but, yes, there were, there were people who were actually in contact with him, both on the staff and as students, and the general incentive was that that was the way everyone should work.

Who was actually teaching the painting?

Andrew Forge was very important in relation to this. There was William Townsend was...I don’t know if William Townsend was, probably not, I would have said that he was much more a sort of artist of the old, artist of the old school, quite refreshingly interesting, because he used to show his work quite a lot. I remember seeing his work lots of times. I think one of the few people that actually was on, you know, was at the Slade who showed their work quite a lot. Bill Coldstream we all knew had his models, which he was painting away in a, one of the studios somewhere in the Slade. I was very familiar with this, the work, I didn’t have to see it really because it was in the house, my father owned three or four Coldstreams, and especially the one of Monica, the woman who he actually married who I remember drawing down in the Sculpture School in the... I mean after she had posed for William, Bill I mean, she went on posing down in the sculpture bit, and I used to go down into the Sculpture School and draw her.

So might Adrian have acquired that while you were at the Slade? Did it...?

Actually I think he’d acquired the first painting...he ended up with Monica’s painting while I was at the Slade but I think he’d acquired the first one, which was definitely done at the Slade, it had all the Slade appearance of the sort of grey, slightly greeny background, and that was done, we had that in the sitting-room, a sort of sitting nude cut off just below the knees. Head, torso, body, cut off above the knees.

Did you like it?

No, I hated it.

Why?

Static. I think that I felt that there was a very, there was...I felt that Adrian related to a series of Melanie Klein theories to the idea of having a nude in the sitting-room, and there was nothing I could actually feel was anything sexual about it. I mean if there was something sexual, then it had been totally removed, you know, and I mean, you know, that’s not the reason I disliked it, but it was just that I disliked it as an object. It was very much like an object person, you know, it could have been a still life. And of course that’s a procedure with the sort of very slow, working away, sort of marking and drawing and all that which you get with the sort of Euan Uglow school now.

Did you feel any sexuality in Coldstream, other than in his work?

I suppose one did as a matter of fact, yes, yes. You felt that he must have made love to all his models in one way or another. I don’t know though. I suppose, my cousin actually posed for him and I don’t think she did in fact have a...but she said he was very sweet to her. I mean, I don’t know, I’ve no idea. I mean I think mythologically- wise, I suppose you do think, especially if the work doesn’t seem to show the very thing that you feel that the person could indulge in, or the model could.

And did Coldstream actually teach you?

No. As far as I know he didn’t teach anybody, but, I don’t know about that. Well the procedure was that the first year was done drawing with classes and then you went to the life room and did drawing the rest of the time. Then after that I seem to remember we were able to, we did painting of heads, the same procedure but without classes.

End of Track 15: Tape 8: Side A

.....your Bomberg explanation. I mean, were most of your contemporaries happy to go along with that, or was it quite an element of debate?

Oh there was quite a lot of people that weren’t, and they were allocated space in the passage to work. And there was more people set up in passages than anywhere else, just generally passages.

Tell me who some of them were.

Who the artists were? I don’t know what Mark Vaux[ph] did, whether he worked in the passage or not, and I don’t remember Tessa Jaray working in the passage, but they were contemporaries. I think a lot of people worked at home. There was someone called Anthony Donaldson who did quite well for himself at that time, who did...who was more influenced by the kind of various things that were going on at the Royal College and sort of, Pop orientated. I would say that actually the people that were left in the passages were just dog-ends to be honest.

And where were you working?

I didn’t work in the passage, and, I didn’t work in the passage, but I also... I think when I described to you what I did down in Limehouse was part of my studio environment if you like. I worked in different places at that point.

And I mean do you remember sort of feeling overwhelmed by the Bomberg element and feeling perhaps that for a bit you were interested in it and then backing away, or, I mean how did it happen and were there other things feeding you?

I mean, yes there was Mario Dubsky and Dennis Creffield were kind of little pets. Someone called Dorothy Meade[ph] who was definitely very very in love with Andrew Forge, and I think held a real ding-dong battle with his wife or with him, or, remained an enormously good friend, but I believe she died quite recently. And Mario

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 16: Tape 8: Side B Page 197 died of AIDS, was one of those sort of very early, big AIDS people. I don’t know abut Dennis Creffield, I think he’s still alive, still going, I think I saw a show of his work coming up. They were the sort of front-runners earlier on. Then Tessa Jaray and Mark Vaux[ph] came a year later or something like that, but they definitely were different, they were in another area, area more than era.

But how were you reacting to the Bomberg...?

Oh completely against.

Right from the start?

Yes.

Why?

Well, I suppose there was this sort of abstract kind of, Abstract Expressionist kind of view of it which, I wasn’t very in favour of Abstract Expressionism. I didn’t like the gestural kind of idea. People in my year, believe it or not, went on, were very involved in it. I mean someone like John Wonnicott[ph], someone like Patrick Procktor was in my year, and so was Anthony Darlson[ph]. I mean they adapted or adopted their way of dealing with it, but they were all in some way or another sort of part of it.

Did you have Cecil Beaton coming in and draw?

I remember Cecil Beaton in the Antique Room which is what we called...yes.

What do you remember of him?

Yes, I do remember him in the Antique room about the time I was meant to be drawing. I did know that it was Cecil Beaton, I was told, I went to see him.

Just exactly what you would expect, you know. I mean I’m sorry, it’s just like what you see him in, as photographs. But it seems strange, I think probably by that time I had left that, the Antique Room and then...

But it sounds really then as though the Slade was simply the wrong place to send you; was it was that you didn’t know anything about one art school from another, and that Adrian had the best relationship with William Coldstream and that’s why you went really?

Yes.

I mean you should really have gone somewhere else, shouldn’t you?

I don’t know, I mean you know, in a sense...I mean I was there in ‘58 to ‘62, did four years, and I went straight from school, I was 17 when I went. I don’t know, I mean the college might have been a little bit more wired up, yes.

Well except that was postgraduate wasn’t it.

Yes.

But do you think you were put...

There wasn’t any postgraduate at the Slade at the time, none.

No, but I mean you needed to go as an undergraduate so you couldn’t have gone to the college.

Oh was it only postgraduate?

Yes. But I mean...

There were a number of people at the Royal Academy Schools I remember.

But do you think you were going to need to rebel against whatever was the overall...?

Probably, yes. I think so. I mean, I was also in analysis at the time, which was...and my father had put me in there and I felt I was at the Slade also through my father, so these two things I treated with a certain amount of disrespect. I mean I do remain reminiscent of...I mean I do, I mean, I do remember, and then, take that memory forward and say, and look at it and say, yes, but, it was an appalling period of time with all this Bomberg work going on. I mean I’ve got nothing...I mean I actually rather liked Bomberg’s work, but I couldn’t stand, and I still can’t really, well... I was, later on I was taught by Auerbach. Now Auerbach in lots of ways was also, I did classes with him, he was also very much a part of that school. And...

Classes with him at the Slade?

Yes. Later on I did classes with Auerbach at the Slade and I did them with Harold Cohen. And I would say the most challenging in the end, although the most, absolutely irrelevant ones, were with Harold Cohen, but they were good classes, they really made... I mean, but you know, after four years of in a sense being outside of it, all I did was to bring in a very new attitude a bit late.

What was it though?

Well it was a total reaction to Bomberg’s school, there was no doubt about it.

From Cohen?

From Harold Cohen, yes.

So he was anti it?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 16: Tape 8: Side B Page 200 Completely. There couldn’t have been any different, there couldn’t have been any different beginnings than what Harold actually initiated, and he had just come back from America too. It might have had a lot to do with me knowing that what I was going to do, although I had already arranged that it was the right thing to do. He introduced me to, he said go and see this guy, and I went and saw him and, that was a friend of his in New York at the time.

So you had a good relationship with him?

No. He thought I was, he didn’t think I was any good at all.

Harold?

Yes.

And yet he was prepared to give you an introduction.

Yes. Well he was absolutely astonished that a person who didn’t really show any interest, really any, anything in the class, was actually the one that was going to go to America, which was the place that he really in a sense sort of talking about the whole time.

So in other words even though he was anti-Bomberg, that didn’t make you open up to him?

Well I felt there was...I didn’t think he was a very sympathetic person.

Because?

Very cool. I didn’t think he related to people very well. He had his favourites. He didn’t seem to be particularly fair. I mean I do remember, and I admired him for this, I mean there are certain things I did like about him, and certain things I didn’t. I do remember this, that, you know, in a sense there all comes a point where people get

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 16: Tape 8: Side B Page 201 congratulated for what they’ve done, and in this class that we were doing there was...at that time there weren’t that many older people working at the Slade, I mean there were older, you know, meaning older students, what do you call them now?

Mature students.

Mature students, right. There was this woman I had never spoken to, I wouldn’t have for any reason whatsoever, I had nothing in common with her I don’t think, who had done a painting in that class of an easel. I mean we had these appalling easels that ended up by being the only subject matter anyone used, and she had done it very freshly, it really was... And Harold picked it up and said, ‘That’s the piece I’m really proud of,’ and he was right about that. And he said, he even said, ‘And I wouldn’t have expected it from you,’ he said. Of all the people in this class, ‘I wouldn’t have expected it from you.’ And I respected that enormously. I thought that that transcended a number of things that I had been sort of bothered about, and it possibly made up for it. The other thing was that he took us to his studio, and I was quite impressed by his work.

Did you let him know that?

No.

And what about Auerbach as a teacher then?

He was very different, he was not an intellectual in the same kind of way. I mean definitely Harold was, there was no doubt about that. I think he was... I felt someone very entrenched in what they were doing, and that they wouldn’t really relate to anybody who was doing nothing, something that wasn’t coming up to the same thing, but he wouldn’t offer any opposition either. I didn’t feel as if that was particularly, I do remember Harold’s class, but I don’t remember Frank Auerbach’s.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

Yes.

Anyway, we’ve now had a break and we’re going back to the recording. We’re about to go to America but before we go to America, what were your paintings like by the time you were at the end of the Slade time?

Well they were roughly where they were before I went to the Slade, which was sort of semi-abstract. I think really what, what happened at the Slade was that there was this idea of drawing and so on I took on to a certain extent but not completely, and the idea of representation I didn’t take on, and I remained sort of caught into a kind of bubble of whether I could refer back to the previous period of time, which was uninformed, which I had to do in fact, rather than take on what I had acquired in a sense by being at art college.

And before you went to the Slade, what abstract paintings had you seen? Who were you aware of?

Oh well, I remember the ‘Life Magazine’ spread of Jackson Pollock and all the Abstract Expressionists absolutely vividly, in fact everyone in the art room had just gone crazy, you know, with that, particularly with Jackson Pollock, I mean...

The art room at school?

The art room at school, yes, which was a whole group of us, about seven or eight people. And, I became acquainted with the de Koonings, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, which I didn’t know anything about at that point, and Jackson Pollock. And we all, as I say, put paper down on the floor and started throwing paint around. And it became a very serious and important part of our activity, being observed, I found out later, from high up through a window by one of these house masters who thought we were completely...happened to be my tutor I think he was, and he, on one occasion I was talking to him, he said, ‘And, what are you doing down there?’ And we went over to

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 16: Tape 8: Side B Page 203 the window and there was the whole art room, except, I wasn’t there, but there were all these friends of mine and they were doing... And I could see from this distance that it seemed that, it wasn’t as if we were throwing paint at the floor or, at the canvases or anything like that, but we were just, we were just sort of co-existing, and there were all sorts of sniping and talking. These sort of things were all completely cut off from this sort of bird’s eye view from his eyrie. I then went back and informed everyone that we were being watched, and everyone was very careful after that.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

And, given the age you were, was that sort of approach to painting really just something very liberating, because you were at the point to be physical and to be released rather, or were you well enough informed and engaged in that way to think that it really was a turning point in painting?

Oh I think I was already interested in knocking down old values. For myself the reaction to home was the most paramount part of it, and especially when a group of other people joined in, then there was no stopping.

What was Margaret’s work like by this period?

She was...it probably would have been that Francis was more or less starting on his early abstract paintings, which they were, and she was still somewhere between abstract and representation, she was probably doing quite a lot of bottles.

Paintings?

Bottle paintings, yes, but they were semi abstract. I mean these led on from the period in the south of France, at Cap d’Antibes where we lived, where she did in fact become quite representational. She basically abandoned the earlier relief work which was completely abstract when Ben Nicholson and people like that were around. Well, perhaps not abandoned but, that’s not...at any rate that’s the way her painting went.

And, I mean you talk about having conflicts with your father, but not particularly about abstraction versus figurative painting. And you don’t particularly seem to have had those kind of battles with Margaret. Did you feel in tune with Margaret, or...?

No, I...I in fact found very claustrophobic the whole atmosphere at the church-run college which was what it was in Suffolk, when I used to spend my holidays from school there, and I longed to be anywhere else.

But I’m trying to talk at the moment specifically to do with you reacting against inherited values about painting from either Adrian or Margaret. Because when we’ve talked about Adrian it’s always been in terms of Renaissance. I mean was Margaret, was what...

Well his writing, one part of his writing was, but he only used the Renaissance as a sort of focal point to continuing a kind of life’s work about psychoanalysis really.

But would you and he have engaged in arguments about figuration and abstraction?

Yes, he was much more guarded about abstraction in certain kinds of ways, although when he was a Trustee of the Tate I think he was responsible for getting the Tate to buy Bridget Rileys. So, but he, I mean, but then he felt that that was very specifically something that happened, her work ultimately affected the, a physical kind of thing with the eye, you know, and he saw that as particularly relevant. It’s rather a literal kind of interpretation of abstraction. I think, I know what...his objection, and I actually shared it, was a dislike of Abstract Expressionist work. I don’t mean Abstract Expressionist, I mean the kind of German Abstract Expressionist, or shall we just say Expressionist, sorry, not Abstract Expressionist. And it might have led on to Abstract Expressionist too, yes, but basically the kind of gestural aggression. He was always going on about how he thought, his way for painting was something that he saw as something to do with the way the brush touched the canvas in an unaggressive way, in

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 16: Tape 8: Side B Page 205 an un, in a non-conflicting way, a way that...and I think his attitude to Renaissance was similar in relation to carving, that it wasn’t three-dimensional and aggressive, but relief, somewhere between something flat on the wall and something three- dimensional. And, yes, so you’ve got the...who was the...well one of his bêtes noires was curiously enough an incorporated person into the British tradition, someone like Davie...

Alan Davie?

Alan Davie, yes. He considered him his bête noire of the...and I’m not probably talking about Alan Davie of the present who has become representational in a funny sort of way, but I’m talking of his kind of, what you could call quite strong aggression. I think when he was a Trustee, again he came up against John Hoyland, but he decided that John Hoyland was all right; he would have identified the Expressionist sort of element to Hoyland, but he would have decided that he, because he was a mumbling, fumbling sort of person who they would interview, that in a way he was...because he didn’t show aggression, and probably knew how to win these old men over at the Tate, that he came a little bit more, I didn’t think he was such an out, you know, outright aggressive person. Now one of the arguments we did have was that I was forced into the situation of being quite aggressive with him, because, and that of course, I mean of course perhaps I adapted it to be awkward and difficult, but I must have instinctively known that this would get his goat.

And so what was your own attitude to abstraction compared to Adrian’s then?

I accepted it. You must remember that in both households there was one artist who I’ve always felt is my kind of maker almost and that’s Alfred Wallis. We had a vast collection of Alfred Wallis, mostly because my father cleared his house out when he died and took his work. Before the house was demolished, took his work in St. Ives, put it in the garage, and rang up everyone he knew and said, ‘If you want a Wallis, come and collect it’. And we were left with what wasn’t taken away, which was most of it. That was then split up between my mother and him to a certain extent, although my mother had independently bought work, so when they went to his room or studio

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 16: Tape 8: Side B Page 206 in St. Ives, she would actually give him money, buy this, or buy that. So, Alfred Wallis ultimately you could say had a quality that wasn’t anything to do with representation at all.

What?

Narrative, story-telling. He was certainly trying to re-create something that wasn’t there any more, and he never drew, he never painted from something in front of him. Now that’s very important, I mean you think of, my father painted landscapes, still lifes, everything was always in front of him. My mother still at that time, we’re talking about the Fifties, was doing...she would set up something to paint, and Francis not, but then Francis wasn’t in the painting tradition in a sense at all, he came from being a poet, but then influenced by my mother and encouraged by her, in the same way that she encouraged Adrian as well. I think Wallis formed a very important part, if I can bring Francis into this, I’m going to say Francis relates strongly to Wallis, and I would say in a way Wallis was a, to anybody else, including me, Wallis remains a complete example of a sort of independence from tradition of, possibly narrative, the narrative concept of, but not trying to be representational really in any sense, and independence, not part of anything but creating something perhaps, by example.

So, how had you made the transition between the kind of work that Wallis did and the practice of abstraction?

Oh I don’t think that’s very difficult because I mean Wallis isn’t representational, but he isn’t abstract either. I’ll tell you, there’s various things he did which are very important, which is part of abstract painting. For instance, one canvas that I’ve got at home, which Adrian gave him, obviously because it has Rowneys on the back of it so he had obviously bought it in Percy Street in Rowneys, Wallis left one bit of, it was a painting that Adrian had painted, a sort of pink sky, he left that... Sorry, as the sky; it was a pink bit of the painting, he left this pink bit as the sky; he left another bit of green. In other words, the point was that he accepted that the object that he was working with had already got in it so much towards the finished article. When he cut out a piece of cardboard he didn’t make any, or he didn’t cut out, but someone gave

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 16: Tape 8: Side B Page 207 him... Or, yes, he would cut it up. He would in the end, end up by using this odd- shaped bit of cardboard. When he showed these things he apparently hung, I never saw this but he would hammer them up on the wall outside his house so people could see, with enormous nails sticking out of these things. There were all sorts of elements to it, you could say this is the untutored mind if you like, but I think he was extraordinarily sophisticated in one kind of way that is absolutely abstract if you like. I associate it with abstract art in every sort of way.

And how do you associate it with what you might have been doing at the Slade?

Oh not at all. I felt totally divorced from that. I feel that the one kind of island thing that I’m always related to and feel totally secure about is what Wallis represents to me.

And so how do you think you’ve used that in your work in some way, or not?

I don’t know. I think he’s an appalling influence.

Why?

Oh because he is so specifically what he is, and I mean if I ever thought there was anything that Wallis taught me, it’s got to be something about the sort of things I can talk about in relation to it but it’s never actually the work, the painting, anything in the painting, subject matter or anything else. It’s something around what he did, and around the way he was, and around... And it might be that he represented, because he was basically discovered by other artists, something that equates itself with me being the son of other artists, you see, it could be that.

But I’m still really trying to find out what it was you thought you were reacting against in terms of your painting practice at the Slade that relates to home, because that’s what you said.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 16: Tape 8: Side B Page 208 [PAUSE FOR THOUGHT] Did I? Oh. Because that seems terribly complicated. I was basically reacting to the Slade, but that didn’t relate to home, although if I say Coldstream related to home, yes, he did, but I was... But the funny thing is, if I say I didn’t like the Bomberg thing, that would have been shared with my father too, because it had his abstract quality involved, I mean the sort of aggression and so on. So there is a mixture, there is a mixture. I would say I was reacting to being in that place because I was put there and hadn’t made it from my own choice, in the same way that I rejected going to Hannah Segal[ph] as a Kleinian analyst because I was put in there against my will, and I probably saw the only thing that I had formulated, formed in a way independently of my father or any of his influences was my relationship with Eliza, but then that brought in all sorts of other kind of weird things that I found objectionable too. I mean where do you start at the age of 17, you know, when you’ve, although you’ve been absent from home and been through all these kind of boarding schools, what do you relate to?

So, when you said that one of the things that drove you in terms of your own painting, was a desire to knock down the old sort of idols...

Yes.

You are really thinking in terms of a Coldstream portrait?

Not completely. Not completely, but yes, that would be one.

Being knocked down by the American abstractions?

Well I haven’t got on to the American things, because what happened was, I mean, let me just... No, I can go on to that, but what I can say is that, I’ve had it played back to me by other people that whereas I did react to my background and my upbringing a lot, I also played along with it, but only half-heartedly perhaps, not all of me. But I would...I was finding, or seeing, an advantage, and if there was an advantage in something, I would attempt to carry on. Whether I did it well or badly I do not know. So there was a coming, there was a toing and froing, but it was mostly for my own

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 16: Tape 8: Side B Page 209 advantage. What I was trying to do was to find a way for myself, and I wasn’t going to completely reject my background, and I mean as I have already explained there were integral parts of it that were bound in that were things independently, that I felt I understood in a certain kind of way, such as Wallis, that were important to me, so I couldn’t take that out of my background. But when I went to America was the first time, and that’s what I organised completely, not only to leave this girlfriend but also to go to America, because I felt as a reaction to the Slade that it was important. And what actually happened there and what work I did was for me terribly important.

End of Track 16: Tape 8: Side B

Had you actually seen the American painting at the Tate, that big exhibition, or was that after you went to America? I can’t remember the dates.

I think there was... No, I went to America in ‘62, so it pre-dated it.

So, the exhibition was in the Fifties, wasn’t it?

Yes. Well let me see, were there or weren’t there? I seem to remember seeing a big Rothko show... Yes, there was a big Rothko show before I went to America, and I was actually, it was filmed by the BBC or someone within the BBC and I was actually in that film. They came to the Slade, and they wanted people in this film they were making, and one bit of it was going to be shot in the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and I was actually in that, and in fact that was shown, it was the time of Eliza’s nervous breakdown. She was actually shown at just about the worst point. She saw it on television when I was in America, and it brought everything to a kind of absolute total climax with her nervous breakdown.

Were you interviewed on it, or you were just in the gallery?

I was...no, I was brought in... What happened was, I was asked... I wasn’t interviewed, there was no speaking part, I was just like, used as a kind of, as the public coming into the gallery and looking at the paintings, and then, but there was something like seven or eight of us, but I was singled out as the only one to end up, to sort of look at a painting, and the camera came right up and shot me kind of, I was asked to do... In the end I was looking at the corner of the room as far as I remember just because of the way the lights were arranged, but it was meant to be looking at this Rothko.

And what was your response to the Rothkos?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 17: Tape 9: Side A Page 211 Oh I was absolutely.. I mean everything was happening kind of the right way. I mean there I was, whether I had actually set it up to go to America or not, but it was definitely what I was always going to do, and it was my way of getting out of the place, of the Slade, etcetera.

What was your reaction to the Rothkos?

I was absolutely entranced, I mean it was wonderful. I hadn’t actually experienced Rothko as, the paintings, I’d seen reproductions. I had seen them in ‘Life Magazine’ which was all part of the Jackson Pollocks, the Jackson Pollock thing. I mean, I was going to say about that, it’s interesting how in retrospect you hear about, the reasons why that spread in ‘Life Magazine’ was put out, as a sort of propaganda thing.

You mean the CIA?

Yes. Yes. But you know, at the age of 16, 17, whatever it was, coming across it, or perhaps I was 18, anyway, no I couldn’t have been because I wasn’t at school then, whether it was for propaganda purposes or not it was a very important part of, in my life that.

And do you still like them?

Well, again I feel a very important lesson, and a very important part of my development is involved in that work, and I think I put, my whole experience should have been about being at the Slade into my period in time of America where I met Barnett Newman, and actually met him, used to go and look at his work, he used to come round practically every other week, a series of kind of pure chance circumstances. It also happened that Arshile Gorky’s retrospective happened at the Museum of Modern Art at the same time as in America, and I had met Magoosh[ph] Gorky, who was his previous wife, married to, who lived in Belgravia, sort of socialite, who used to hold, whose daughter was at the Slade with me called Mara[??] Gorky, whose boyfriend was Stephen Spender’s son, the Spenders being old friends of my father’s, and probably one of the people that I used to wake up in bed in Cornwall,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 17: Tape 9: Side A Page 212 in St. Ives, before he married Natasha I think her name was, who was the pianist. So, and... So, what was I saying? Yes, that Mara[??] Gorky, whose mother was Magoosh[ph], was Arshile Gorky’s last, was his wife when he killed himself, I had met Magoosh[ph] before and at Magoosh’s[ph] I had met Paolozzi and Michael Andrews, the two people hanging around her. Over and over again, every evening we went there, every evening there was Michael Andrews and Paolozzi.

This is while you’re at the Slade is it?

Yes. Anyway, so then, so she knew I was in America so she sent me a card to his opening, and at that opening I remember seeing Rothko and all the other Abstract Expressionists.

And what were they like?

Rothko again, he was a short man, he didn’t seem to engage in a lot of conversation, especially in his group as it were, because, I think probably it was considered a group more than it really was a group. He was much more on his own than you would ever expect for quite, someone I admired so immensely. In fact I was rather irritated that I didn’t know Rothko rather than Barnett Newman, although Barnett Newman ultimately was such a wonderful, I loved him, he was a wonderful person, such an amazing man that he should just walk into your, should walk into where you were and you open the door and you walk past and you say, ‘Where’s Malcolm?’ I said, ‘Malcolm’s left, and I am Telfer and I am living here now.’ And he said, ‘How do you do Telfer. Artist are you? Good, let’s have a look at your work.’ It was that kind of thing.

Did you know who he was at that point?

‘I am Barnett Newman,’ I think he said. No.

And what did he say about the work and what was the work like?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 17: Tape 9: Side A Page 213 Well, he was quite... I mean I was amazed that he should find any interest in what I was doing at all, and, he asked me why I was doing it the way I was, and I explained that all I was trying to do was to paint the canvas as a sequence of kind of, I was trying to paint the whole thing, I said, one colour, but I found that I stopped and found an end and then painted the next colour on it. And it sort of fitted in to what he understood completely. He then became a complete, he became totally obsessed with the way I prepared everything, and he would tell me where to go to get the brushes, where to go to get the paint, how to prepare the canvas, and so on and so on and so on, and then he would come and inspect it with his monocle to see if I had stretched it right. So he became a complete perfectionist about the way I was working. He would then ask us over to his place, that was me and Barbara who was this friend I shared this loft with. And, I remember...I remember, it was a big sort of studio on what was called Front Street, which was right in Wall...I mean we were in, we were sort of slightly left of Wall Street and the Lower East Side but he was literally, his studio, he didn’t live in his studio but his studio was on Front Street which was really kind of the sort of, part of the city of New York that you would actually see as you came in by boat, and that’s actually what I did. I approached Manhattan Island as the sun was rising behind it, and it was actually catching as I came into Manhattan the first time. I was brought up on deck, or everyone was, and the horizon, it was a beautiful sunset, and what was so absolutely astonishing was the Empire State was there long before the Trade Fair Center. The top of the Empire State, and the spire and possibly the very top of it, was just caught in this kind of pink glow of the sunset (sic) coming over the horizon, and then there was mist below that, and you couldn’t...and it seemed to me as if we were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and coming out of this was just a fantasy, a kind of fairy, almost like a clichéd fairy castle. It was too [INAUDIBLE] to believe. And then the rest of that, I mean totally riveting, because as one came in the sun came up over the horizon and more and more the building became lit, and whereas the bottom bit was blue, the top bit would, the middle bit would be sort of red, and then where the sun had really hit it, it was a yellow, and as it slid down, you saw not just the Empire State but you saw what looked like an absolutely symmetrical castle with these tiles[??] Still, because you can see them now, you can see the shore, you can...even though it was in Long Island Sound, you wouldn’t have known that there was any land anywhere near. They hadn’t even put in that big suspension

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 17: Tape 9: Side A Page 214 bridge, that wasn’t there as I came in, the Navarro[ph] Narrows or something I believe it’s called, it wasn’t there. It was there when we left, so, that was extraordinary. Anyway... I left by boat too, I left by SS La France a year later. Anyway, there wasn’t very much difference between travelling by boat and travelling by plane at that time, but also I’d packed basically all that was of any value to me in a trunk and I was more or less, you know, I was emigrating. I would do that another time later but it didn’t work either.

But, so what was it that was to do with this trip to America that changed the way you were painting?

I think I started again, I had the opportunity to do so. Also to find belief and/or...and I remember thinking this very, I wrote it down and whether I wrote it in my letters or not, I certainly wrote it in my notebook, I wrote, this was the opportunity to really prove to myself that irrespective of my background or influences from either parent, the way, them being artists, that I was going to be able to find out whether I was, and prove to myself whether I was an artist or not.

Did you seriously doubt it?

I think at that point I was so disillusioned with art college, and so disillusioned with all the things I’d been pushed into, that all I had was a thing that I had decided to do which was this. And it was an incredibly success, for me, everything as it were happened.

Like what?

Well, I made the work, that was really important to me. I actually in a sense was in New York at a most extraordinary time. I met Barnett Newman, that was important. A number of people visited me, I remember Lawrence Gowing coming, if I remember rightly, sent by my father I might say. There was also other weird things. By that time I was quite prepared to do anything Adrian had suggested. He said, ‘Go and meet this person, Lincoln Kirstein[ph],’ he gave me a letter.

He ran the ballet didn’t he?

Yes, the New York City Ballet. And I saw all the Balanchine...well I saw a whole night of Balanchine ballets, which I remember being totally riveted by. I think most of the things that happened to me, that I did, remained immensely important. I met someone called, I mean this is sort of going back to pre-war London, but I met someone called Tamu...I called him Tamu Motown[ph], but maybe...but at any rate he was a sort of figure of the Fitzrovia period of pre-war where he ran...he had now become completely alcoholic, he was living in a basement off The Bowry[ph].

Did he do ‘New Writing in Daylight’[??] or one of those magazines?

He did ‘New Writers’ or something, yes, he was very...yes, he was quite... He was half Indian.

So was he having a miserable end to his life?

Well actually he had acquired a new wife, but he was certainly drinking solidly. I mean this is the kind of experience that I had never come across, serious alcoholics before, and, why should I have? I mean, just think of my background.

How did the work change, why was it different painting there than painting in the Slade?

I, well, because I was immediately in a very different environment, enormously different, and I was able to actually accept the fact that this city had something that I had never experienced before, and I experienced it absolutely to the full. It was the most invigorating, powerful place, that, I mean, I still feel it a bit. I find I have resisted now, I hate it, but then I was prepared to accept it. There was such an atmosphere, there was such an atmosphere. I mean those sort of things are enough to change anybody. I mean of course it doesn’t change you, because what you have and what you do is what’s in you in the first place, but, it brought out... I mean I

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 17: Tape 9: Side A Page 216 immediately knew at the Brooklyn Museum Art College I didn’t want to go to, I mean, because I felt there was this mouldy old art college, and I had had enough of art colleges in general, I said, what in the hell did I want to go to another art college for? I don’t need to learn anything, I want to actually do something. And I never learnt anything anyway, and I had been stopped doing things, that’s how I felt the Slade had been.

That they had stopped you doing things?

Well, I had been stopped. I had no...there was no place I could work. I mean of course I could have found myself, and I did find myself a studio, but the work I did was not, I was lost to it, I...

The Slade.

I mean, I had in a sense been influenced by the Slade in some way or another, but I found myself in between two different areas, both the Slade and what I previously could bring to it myself.

And where did you work in New York?

Well this is it, as I said, there was luckily a friend of mine living there in a very large sort of, what we called loft spaces, they were kind of ex-commercial sewing machine set-up factory spaces, and he was sharing it with someone called Malcolm Morley who I believe had been rescued from prison of all things by someone, would it have been Carel Weight, or somebody like that, at the Royal College, because he showed a certain amount of talent as a painter, and had somehow emigrated and got out into America. And it was him who Barnett Newman came to visit, I had taken over his loft, so that’s why when he said, ‘Where’s Malcolm?’ I said, ‘Malcolm?’ Malcolm was away, gone.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 17: Tape 9: Side A Page 217 But I remember when we talked about ten years ago on tape, I think you said then that one of the things that was important was the scale of the canvases the Americans were using.

Yes.

It hasn’t cropped up at all this time.

Well I was going to say that. But you know, it’s very hard. I mean the scale of the thing was absolutely vast, I mean, I remember coming back to London, and it must have been after the...it’s always after a hard winter or something, but everything was very black, everything looked very damp, and everything was very small, I just couldn’t get over it.

But I was actually meaning the scale of the American painters’ canvases. I remember you talking years ago about it.

I know, but it’s related Cathy, it really is. I mean, because, oh Bob and I would have endless conversations about America, that’s all we did, I mean we shared, we made our, I mean we made our rooms as it were, we made, I had half this space and then we broke it up, and there was a sort of kitchen half-way between, and initially before I got set up, my bit, which I had built, this is how my building expertise if you could call it that, came about, because I had to design a space where no one knew I was living in it, because it was illegal basically to live in a loft, and so I had to hide the bedroom or where I was going to sleep and I had to hide the fact that I spent much time there. So it was... And so, anyway, in this sort of labyrinth we built, which basically, it was in this idea of, you open the door and when that person opened the door they shut off a way of getting in another way, and that was how we, he had designed his place a bit like that, and I did the same. And, we used to talk endlessly about America, and the experience of being in America. He had been there already, I don’t know, three or four years. And, what we distinguished, what became quite obvious was to do with this vast vast country, but, I mean, we were small little ants in this very big city, and we understood this in relation to the actual work and the art, that it was all based on a

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 17: Tape 9: Side A Page 218 kind of, both a pioneering spirit, they still had that feeling, you know, there was this, sort of something that was still being discovered, it felt like that, certainly in art, but it was being discovered in the way that Americans worked, which was on a gigantic scale related to this enormous country, and these enormous scale-shifting things, and this city with these enormous towering skyscrapers seemed to be the absolute ultimate. And you can imagine me standing on the top of this eight-floor building, it was nothing really, but we used to have to walk up all the time and walk down, and thinking, my God! if there is a nuclear war this will be the first one to go. I mean you know, you didn’t want to lean too hard against the parapet, you know, it was brick, it was all built out of brick. It was built in 1914, this building, which is old for American buildings, and, it was all falling apart, the roof was being repaired countless times with, you know, flat roof, but it had been kind of, layers of kind of tarmac had been put down over each other, and then there would evolve these enormous blisters, so if you walked over it, it would sort of squelch and squelch. Everything about it was rotting. And the reason why the loft was available was because no one wanted to run a business on the top floor of one of these places, you know, it was just, not only the lift was unreliable but the heating didn’t get up.

So what was your work actually like?

Big.

Well, what scale was it?

I mean quite definitely, well I tell you what I used to say in our discussions, I said, well, and this is quite obvious, I mean, I said, in Europe people make paintings, I mean, you know, I’m not...I mean, but it was a generalised thing, I mean, of course the Rubenses made vast paintings, but in Europe ultimately the whole concept is of a painting which, in the end we’re talking about canvases that will hang on a wall in a small room, but also something that is in a sense human size, or perhaps just top half human size. The whole thing of the American thing was that you should be able to walk into it. It was basically human scale, and it wasn’t like top half, it was the whole

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 17: Tape 9: Side A Page 219 body, and a lot more room too, and that was a distinction, and so obviously there was no other way of working except for the biggest size you could work.

So in England, before you left, what sort of size were your canvases?

Oh, probably, you know, 2 x 3.

Feet?

Yes.

And in America?

Something like, I think I started off by being 6 x 4, 6 foot by 4.

Straight away?

Yes. And it got bigger.

So were you in a way going to America in order to assume the identity that you thought some of those American painters you had seen in ‘Life Magazine’ had? I mean, in theory you could have made a big canvas in England couldn’t you?

I wasn’t going to assume the identify, I wanted to pick up on what in a sense was in the air, what was going on, and feed into it, yes. Because I saw it infinitely more expansive. I did try and do that when I came back, I tried to recreate what I called America in the East End. I had a studio in Ashfield Street off Whitechapel, and although it wasn’t quite the sort of studio I wanted, it was a disaster, a total disaster.

Why?

Well because, because I tried to, because precisely that, I tried to recreate an atmosphere that didn’t exist. I had, because it was such a small, I used to do the

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 17: Tape 9: Side A Page 220 paintings in sections and get them up and down the stairs, or else got them out the window, or even took them off the canvas, but there was a whole logistical kind of problem. I was in touch with Richard Smith when I got back from America, and he had been there, Dick Smith, and he pointed me in the direction towards various sort of people who lived around, curiously enough Fournier Street and around...Spitalfields. One guy was called David Milne[ph] I think, and he was attempting to get to America. He was interested in me having been in America, I was interested in him because he had a loft space, and we...and I even joined up with him in America on a couple of occasions to see how he is, curiously, a sort of left-over thing.

But, when you were working in America were you working on the floor? How were you working?

No, I constructed, of course one must remember that it was a big space and then I made up a studio within it, and I, because plasterboard comes in 8 x 4s almost internationally, or does more or less, the ceiling height that I took it up to was 8 foot, but there was still another 4 foot or even 5 foot before the actual ceiling, so I constructed these kind of board divisions where a painting could be at least 8 foot high. In fact I probably didn’t go further than 7 foot in fact.

And so would the canvas actually be attached to these partitions, or would you lean it, or what?

No, oh no I would make a stretcher. No, you would make up a wooden stretcher.

Yes, but would that be lent onto it, or would it be...?

I would hook it up on sort of screws sticking out, or nails or whatever.

So, from the point of view of approaching it to paint, it was flat, it wasn’t leaning one way or the other?

Absolutely flat, yes.

And then what would happen?

Well, the normal procedure was that I worked on it, I had some kind of colour kind of concept of how I wanted the colour, which colour I wanted to use, but it was probably a history of having done this, having done that, and finally, and doing these paintings in America, and I’m using a particular colour at that point. So I started painting that colour, and I started, even in the left-hand corner I started...and I would just limit the brush strokes up and down. And I would then feel, oh damn, you know, why, why, what is wrong here? There’s something about the brush perhaps is not right. So I would change that, you know, adjust that. I really felt I was getting down to it. Then I would accept or not accept the canvas, probably done more than one, I mean I would often do them in sort of...what kind of surface I was painting. But when I got, the surface of what I was painting, the size and the kind of colour I was going to use, is all I needed to know. Then in my mind I was really going to paint the same colour over the whole canvas, just going to cover it in that colour, but of course due to the brush, I didn’t, and I ended up by painting one bit, I then assumed I had painted it - I didn’t assume, I knew I hadn’t painted the whole canvas, but, I made the assumption that I had done enough, done enough, and I would start on the next colour. And...

Sorry. The next...?

The next colour.

A different colour or you’re thinking it’s monochrome?

No, no the next colour.

Right. So in other words a section of the canvas is coloured in one colour...

Yes.

And the next section becomes some other colour?

No, I start again at the top, top left, I might even go over that colour, not completely though. I then finish what I finished.

At the same point?

No, not necessarily. And I remember thinking, what’s wrong about this is that I don’t want this overlay, so I would then paint what I painted in white again, and then I would paint it in that colour.

A monochrome?

You see, you start off with a white canvas, and I paint number one colour.

On part of it.

Yes. And don’t paint the whole thing. I then start on the number two colour. And in a way what I’m doing is, something to do with saying, I’m covering the whole of this but I stop when I need to. I don’t have to, I mean I’m not saying I don’t have to colour the whole thing; I might colour the whole thing but I quite easily might not have to. When I come, when I feel I’ve fulfilled the task that I’ve set myself, what was so weird was, I said, now, there’s something wrong about this overlay, I’ll go back over that second colour and paint it out in white, but I’ll know where it is because you can’t fail to see where it is because it will still be there, and then I’ll paint it again. In other words what I didn’t like was, say the first colour blue being covered by the second colour red, in that area, so I painted the whole area that I had painted in the red, which was the second colour, I would paint the whole area white again, so it was a bit like starting the canvas again, it was like the same ground, white, that I had painted the canvas to paint on, but just in that area, still leaving the first colour underneath it you see. I would then paint what I had painted white again, that colour.

Which colour?

The red.

Yes, the red. Because I was going to start with the blue. Then I get onto a third colour.

Because you would get to a certain point with the red and think you didn’t like it, and over-paint again?

No, there was no chance of having any mistakes on this. Every intention was always going to be seen. The only thing that I did change was the second colour which was red, which was the area I had painted the red, I painted, over-painted that white and then painted the red again.

On top of it?

On top of the white. So that it had, it was, all it was was trying to achieve a white ground. I didn’t feel... You see it was all about colour, the colour did not sing until it was painted on a white ground, so when I painted it over another colour it didn’t sing. So therefore you could say ultimately I was looking at the colour all the time.

But then did you continue and paint red down to the bottom?

I don’t know if I did or didn’t. What actually I did do is, I never painted the whole canvas one colour, but I started painting what looked rather like smoke rings, it was like a ring with a middle, and I did a series, and really what I was doing was just sort of rings.

Against white?

Yes, because I always painted out. I would start the colour then paint it out white again, and then put the colour back in again, and then I would do another colour on

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 17: Tape 9: Side A Page 224 top. There was a certain sort of elaborate thing which was extraordinary if I think about it. I then put number three, four and five, whatever colours I’d got to.

And did you get to a point where you thought these canvases were finished, or not?

Yes, it was often, there was always this opposition going on, there was one colour against another. They weren’t just straightforwardly colours, there was always, if I started with green or something like that, or if I started with blue, there’s only an alternative sort of colour that I could have used with that, at that point anyway. And so therefore I thought of colours in pairs, really. So I would have said the most I ever went to was four, if I think about it.

And these were pairs to do with the laws relating to the physics of colour, or they were much more associations in your mind?

I think associations in my mind, but I think there was something to do with the physics of colour, but I wasn’t that interested in the physics of colour any more. I was quite prepared to...it’s extraordinary to think what decisions one made by instinct, and I’m quite used to trusting my own instincts, but of course that’s what I say when I’m talking on this tape. I think it’s all a very large part of what people don’t understand of why people do things, they don’t necessarily have planned reasons, otherwise they know they’d be restricted and wouldn’t do it.

Where are these paintings?

I have them still rolled up, yes.

End of Track 17: Tape 9: Side A

Where did you say these paintings are?

Oh they’re in Scotland now, rolled up, yes.

And did you show them anywhere in New York?

Well, what was so, what was ridiculous was that I had evolved, I thought I had an arrangement with the art college that they would accept the fact that I could work away, and, I first received this ridiculous kind of emigration note to say that I hadn’t been attending my courses and so on and that I was being chucked out. I mean I was being told I had to leave the country. And, I think I got in touch with the art college and said, ‘What is this about, because I thought we came to some kind of arrangement?’ And it was the toing and froing business. But I didn’t go and see them at all. And they then finally wrote me a letter saying, ‘Well bring your work in,’ and I said, well how could I? I simply could not get this on the subway, the work I was doing; would they come to the studio? And they wouldn’t do that. And so we had this whole ding-dong thing, and they assumed that because I so needed to stay, would want to stay in America, that I would eventually come to some kind of compromise, but I never would, I didn’t. And anyway I knew the opportunity to get back to America - to get back to England, was very important, because of, I felt enormously guilty about this nervous breakdown that Eliza had had, and it, I mean all the time I’d been away I had been aware of the fact that there were various sort of pressures for me to come back. And I must say my life might have been extraordinarily...I mean I had no intention really of coming back, and my life, on two occasions I went to America, which was where I wanted to always live, to be honest, is where I wanted to live, would have been very different if on both occasions something hadn’t happened in a family kind of way that brought me back. On the second occasion my father was dying and that’s what I was describing about the letters going off the page, and I went back, but those were very different circumstances ten years later, in 1972 I think it was.

I was in Los Angeles on that time, that occasion.

Why?

Well I had...I had met Kate Brewer, who was an American, and she came from Los Angeles, L.A., and I had had this sort of idea that I still wanted to experience America, that I felt denied in some way, and, she was quite happy to go back, and so we planned to do that.

So you went back to live with her?

So we, no, well we both went to, I seem to remember she was there already, and I met her, she met me off the plane, yes. She was...I mean I knew her in London and she went backwards and forwards between L.A. and London, and then finally I went over to L.A.

But in other words it was to live, not just to exist there?

It was to live, I packed a trunk yet again, and it was sent, I picked it up from the docks like I did the time before from New York docks, with all my worldly possessions yet again, you know. I didn’t include the Wallises, I don’t know what happened to them, but... And, yes, half my library. I never looked at those books.

Anyway, sorry, I’ve led you off again. But, in terms of coming back then, you were kind of forced to. Had you assumed...I don’t want to go into this too deeply at the moment, but I mean had you assumed you wouldn’t see Eliza again if she hadn’t had her breakdown and therefore lost contact?

No, we were permanently sort of in contact, and I realised that... And also the letter from Peggy I might say was imploring me to come back, you know. So there was pressure from all sorts of areas. I mean I still didn’t have to do it. But anyway, the

After a year, or what?

Yes. In the end the art college didn’t respond, I never...they never saw the work, I rolled it up with Barnett Newman, under his auspices, him inspecting every little corner. He gave me the tubes. He even thought that if I was going by boat, this shows how old-fashioned he was, he thought that it would be in the hold, that there would be water slopping around. I said I was sure that it wasn’t like that, but I wasn’t going to argue. And he brought someone with a, he brought some, a friend or someone he knew or, you know, with an electric saw and bits of wood and so on to make the ends, and he had it all sorted out for Telfer to leave.

Did you stay in touch with him?

I lost contact, it was awful. He died very soon afterwards as a matter of fact. I did send postcards but I never got anything back. Yes.

And, during this time, had you seen anything that we would in retrospect think of as a piece of book art?

No, not at all.

Had the idea of making a book occurred to you?

Well, about two years later I was, I started to live in St. Stephen’s Gardens, which is in Paddington, off Westbourne Grove - Westbourne Park Road, Westbourne Park Station is it, or Westbourne Grove Station, or something like that. And, this is a house that I had got - no, not a house, what am I talking about? It was a house which had a flat that I managed to rent for £4, pretty good, it had one, two, three rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, £4 a week, and I was able to actually support, I also paid for a studio in the East End as well for £4, so I was paying £8 rent, but I was able to rent

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 18: Tape 9: Side B Page 228 out the rooms in St. Stephen’s Gardens for £2. You know, I mean, it’s extraordinary how I manipulated these things. But I used to take the tube from Westbourne Park - no, Westbourne Grove, that’s right, via Paddington, all the way under London to Aldgate East, to Whitechapel, get out, work all day, get on the tube, and so I would go right through the City, underneath the City, all the way through. Oh, what a business! Extraordinary I put up with that. And that seemed for years, that really did seem for years, but I was very...this is when I was trying to re-create America in, this is post, you know, this is when I was trying to re-create America in Whitechapel. You know, you shouldn’t have given me this bottle because all I do is open and shut it.

OK, give it to me, I’ll confiscate it

[LAUGHS]

Books.

You need something to fiddle with.

I’m allowed to fiddle, I’m not being interviewed.

What? Oh yes, what is it you wanted to know?

When the idea of making a book ever occurred to you.

Oh right. Oh yes, so, this period, so I rented a room out. And in fact this is where Mary Hutchinson comes in, because initially, I was meant to be meeting this guy called Nick Rawlson[ph] who was meant to be going to visit Samuel Beckett, because this of course was another connection with Mary Hutchinson, or not...I don’t think she knew him enormously well but she certainly knew of him, and, I was expected to meet this guy, or, I think Eliza and I met him at Mary Hutchinson’s, someone called Nick Rawlson[ph], I can’t remember. Anyway he was going to Paris to meet Samuel Beckett, and he told me to meet him at Victoria Station at the, some sort of bar, and, were we going to Paris together? I can’t remember, I think we were. I was going to

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 18: Tape 9: Side B Page 229 Paris and he was going to Paris, that’s right. And, but I couldn’t understand [INAUDIBLE], but I walked in early and there was this...I remember noticing this guy standing by the bar, I thought, oh, oh oh, heavy, I do remember thinking, oh, someone full of kind of angst. And then Nick arrived and he said, ‘Meet Arthur,’ and this was this guy. Oh boy, that led to a series of unbelievable kind of connections and miseries and, but my first marriage in one way, yes, because he was, his girlfriend was someone called Ruth who was the person I ended up by being married to eventually.

Who was Arthur then?

Well Arthur was Arthur Lacey. I do believe he’s still around. He again was a Beckett fanatic, and they all knew each other from a place called, up in Wakefield, Bretton Hall, have you ever heard of Bretton Hall? Which apparently is very different now, it still exists, and they all had been to this place called Bretton Hall.

Was it an art school?

No, it was basically a teacher’s training college, then.

Mm, that’s right, yes.

But a lot of people who were in some way literary-connected seemed to have gone to that place, some weren’t but I mean... I in the end ended up by playing host to most of the ex-Bretton Hall people who were from very different backgrounds, and ultimately taught me a great deal about working-class backgrounds. On the occasions that I used to make this trip to Whitechapel, I used to be coming back exhausted or whatever I was, fed up or happy or elated or not elated, and on the way out of this flat that I rented to these people, including Nick Rawson[ph], Arthur Lacey, etcetera etcetera, would be two people I just recognised but they were both wearing my clothes. This was, you know, they were out for a night drinking; I wasn’t asked along; there was that...I mean on those occasions I wasn’t asked along, or else they were just doing it between themselves. But you know, two people ultimately who have now landed themselves some place in London, irrespective of whoever that was, I felt totally

You mean financially?

No, no not financially. I think intellectually in a certain kind of way. They were definitely older than me, I was much younger. And, one of the things was, and this was what I was trying to get you when you asked me about books, was, in ‘64, it must have been ‘64, I won a point, asked Arthur Lacey, you know, what would he...when was he going to write this book? Because everyone was going to be writing their famous book, you know, this was... And I said, I can’t remember how I asked him to describe it. He said, ‘Oh, yes, I’m not going to write anything, I’m not going to write anything. It will just be...I’ll just use a camera,’ he said. I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘I mean, I can make, I mean a book, it doesn’t have to be a...I mean, there’s a whole element...’ you know, he said, ‘I see this visual book, this book which is,’ I don’t think he used the word visual as a matter of fact, but, ‘I see this book of photographs,’ he said. ‘I see this book of photographs. I think I could do something like that.’ And I remember thinking, yes, that appeals to me, though why, what is it that appeals to me about that? Is it because in a funny sort of way, even though I didn’t even have a camera at the time, but what is it that makes me feel I’m jealous, I’m jealous? What is it that makes me feel I’m missing something? Why is it that it appeals to me? And I also remember that Nick, the other guy, again very strange, he used to go to Reykjavik, he used to do fishing on trawlers, trawler fishing, this was his way of making money. Did I tell you about this before? Well, he’d come back with this story that he had seen this crazy man at this exhibition of these books, and it would have been no one other than Dieter Rot.

Gosh.

And he said he was a poet, and...

Dieter was?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 18: Tape 9: Side B Page 231 Well, he didn’t know his name. He said he had seen it, because he had spent a lot of time in Reykjavik getting on and off trawlers, and that was actually how this flat served him, he would be earning money fishing and coming back - well not fishing, I mean God knows what he was, cooking meals I think. And amazing descriptions of being on a trawler I might say, but that’s something else. And, I think somehow this had got, I think he had told Arthur about this, they’d sat in a pub and talked about it a lot, and I think that actually Arthur had seen this, or, you know, had felt it, and realised that there was an element there somewhere.

What sort of year would the Reykjavik exhibition have been, have you any idea?

You see I’m not absolutely certain whether it was an exhibition or he had been introduced to him and had been shown these things, I still don’t know, but my, and I don’t know if I’m exaggerating something, but there couldn’t have been anybody else at that time who could have been...I mean, I’m afraid I made the assumption, I don’t know that it was Dieter Rot.

Right, but did you know what sort of year you’re talking about?

What year now? I’m talking about ‘64.

Right. And what did he tell you about them? I mean, he must have described them in some way that made it very vivid to you.

Well I think he saw them as a writer, he really did, and that they were drawings, but that there were also the use of...he certainly acknowledged this sort of idea of the use of newspaper etcetera.

Right.

And it all sounded very interesting.

And going back to the art books...

So that was the first time I ever really considered the idea, but it was hearsay, and I felt it was very important.

Yes, it’s quite interesting you hadn’t seen it.

That I hadn’t seen any of it, no.

Mm. But just picking up on the detail about Arthur, when you were asking him about his book, was this to be a book on Beckett, and he was talking about Beckett photographs, or was it the book everyone was going to do in the sense of a novel or something?

No no, it was his novel, it was his novel, his launch of his career as it were as a writer, yes.

Right. So what you are looking at at the moment is two ideas of different books.

Yes. I think that probably I’ve singled them out because I remembered them in retrospect, and I don’t think they were among a lot of things that I’ve probably forgotten. But that was the first time the idea of an image-orientated book came to my mind. I can move on and say when, if we’re talking about artist books or not, I don’t know, but I can say when the second occasion occurred. The second occasion occurred when Martin Attwood and I were going to New York, and in a sense I was taking Martin to New York to visit where I had been in the early Sixties, this was ten years later.

Who was Martin and how had he come into your life?

Martin, Martin came into my life because I used to teach at Corsham Court drawing and in the graphics course, although I wasn’t aware of, I didn’t even take photographs, I would probably in the end ask Martin how you, what you do in a darkroom. But anyway I taught them drawing, and he was one of our, my, in a way sort of prime

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 18: Tape 9: Side B Page 233 students. And, I used to take a class on Saturday afternoon which was very relaxed, and I think everyone smoked pot except for me, I didn’t even know they were, but they brought in Bob Dylan’s latest. This is ‘72. No, I’m sorry, I’m wrong there, this is not ‘72, let’s get this right. This is late Sixties to early Seventies, say ‘68, ‘69 would be the year, ‘69. Yes, that’s right. Because I actually resigned from that job in 1970. So yes, then, I had bought this house in Kentish Town, or I was buying it, I had bought it, I remember Martin coming over and photographing the children and me, and Ruth, and I’ve still got those photographs somewhere. And, he was living round the corner by this time, just around the corner in Dartmouth Park Road, so we were in touch. Then he moved to Camberwell I think. And about that time Ruth and I got divorced and I suggested to him if he was interested that there was a top of the house to go, I was only going to live in half of it, and he could bring in who he wanted, you know, he could live in it. He did. And that’s how our friendship started. I in a sense, it started off as a teacher, student, then friendship, then as a sort of landlord I suppose. But his way of dealing with things was very much to be all part of the construction, I mean he was very interested in the house, because when he came over he took these photographs but he, he then started helping me floor, you know, he started to join in, he started to help me explore the basement. I can remember him coming to help, in fact he did, we put these tiles down together. Then, these things added up, added up. The name Weproductions was coined by him.

So how and why and for what?

Well, because his suggestion was, ‘Telfer, we should do a book about our trip to New York.’

This was before you went on the trip?

No, it was on our way back.

And what had you just, tell me what happened in New York, it was just always meant to be a brief trip?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 18: Tape 9: Side B Page 234 New York. I visited the place where, I mean we stayed in the very place that I had left ten years before. Bob was still there, in fact he owned both bits, or else he had rented the other bit and he was living somewhere else, I’m not sure. But anyway he...he took great exception to me coming with this other guy, disliked it enormously, and was very, very peculiar, very odd. Well I suppose we were, we didn’t take in account of his hurt, I suppose he might have been terribly hurt. I noticed that he hadn’t done any painting, because he was a fellow artist if you like, since the time I had left, which I was absolutely appalled by.

You hadn’t been a couple in any way?

No, I never had a homosexual relationship with anybody except when I was a schoolboy, and that wasn’t really what I would call a homosexual relationship either.

But you didn’t break his heart by going back like you did Eliza’s by going?

I’m not certain I...I don’t think...it never occurred to me that his heart was broken at all. I think he liked having me around, because he was a lonely person in lots of ways. But I think that he got more and more involved in teaching, and he just ultimately just became a teacher. So, yes, so we did this trip, Martin and I, and he did a piece, I mean I was, I was encouraging him enormously at that point. He did a piece which was called ‘Proof’, and it was a bit of roofing, you remember I was talking about that roof with these squelchy...well it was a piece of that roof which he had cut out ‘Proof’ in. And I remember thinking, I remember him saying... Because it was still wet when we left, and the tar was...he had put paper around it, and it was on a piece of, nailed on a piece of wood and then the piece of roofing felt was on top of that and then he cut out ‘Proof’ on top of it, and it had come out in the kind of gungy bit of the roofing sort of stuff. And, he had put newspaper round it so that it didn’t leak onto other things, and then we got back he took the newspaper, and a lot of it had stuck on, and he was absolutely, ‘Oh God! it’s ruined, it’s wrecked, I can’t do this’. I said, ‘Leave it, leave it. It’s great, terrific.’ He gave it to me for that reason. He hated it from then onwards. But anyway the point was, why he wrote, he did this piece called ‘Proof’, I mean possibly, you know, it was all sorts of things about proving that we had gone,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 18: Tape 9: Side B Page 235 and proving this, proving that. We were going to do this book together about the trip, and he had already started to go to UEA, or, he had abandoned his job at the British Council which he was at at that point, he went back later but that’s something else, and - well not abandoned it, he had simply left to go to university, I think it was part of a thing. And he did an M.A. at university, at UEA, where he met Helen, Helen was a student in her first year.

Helen who, for the tape?

Helen Douglas. It was through Martin that I met Helen. I would say that probably Helen had, well Helen had, was, in love with Martin, her first contact, I think her first really falling in love with anybody was with Martin. And he of course, he wanted to introduce me to her. I remember him saying, ‘There’s a girl...’ I think probably at this point he forcibly had to extract himself from a relationship with Helen because there was other people he was interested in I believe at the time. But, he said, ‘There’s someone at UEA who you would..’ and he said it like that. He didn’t want to give me the whole story. But he did realise that there was something in common between us, or that there was something about both of us which was similar, or something that was connectable or connecting. So he said, I’ll say that again, ‘There’s somebody in UEA called Helen who you would...’ And that was the first introduction to someone called Helen I had ever heard. The point was, and why I was talking about this instant, was, that Martin said, initially, ‘This, we must do a book about this,’ and that was the second occasion where this idea of doing a book came up. And I remember saying to myself, I missed one opportunity, because I really feel I did, I am not going to miss this one.

And have you any idea why he was thinking you should do a book about it? Why was he thinking in terms of books?

I think, yes, quite definitely because he saw himself as a writer, there’s an element... Well, a writer, a storyteller, yes a storyteller. He was already writing Peter’s...he wrote a sort of catalogue to Robyn Denny’s exhibition, which was quite influenced by James Joyce. I mean, it was sound words. I always understood that it was going to be

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 18: Tape 9: Side B Page 236 very radical and I was very interested in his contribution, but what happened with him being in UEA and me being in the basement of 11 Lady Somerset Road, was that he would snatch time to come down to continue our dialogue, which we were having a very intense dialogue. I would want to catch up with him, but he would want to catch up with what I...I was very very full of it, and, I felt there was something, you know, really there. Martin was terribly necessary to me, because I knew he was the link to being able to practically work these things out. I had no idea how I could work out camera work, darkroom work, printer, this that, all these things I owe to Martin in a sense, he actually, I would say, ‘Look, how do I go, how do I print this?’ I mean, how can I possibly do this?’ He said, ‘Well we’ll go and find a printer.’ I mean he was extraordinarily practical, and the very person... I was going to Joe Weldon and it was really Martin’s initiation that that happened, so he in a sense made it, let it happen.

Who was Joe Weldon? The printer?

Joe Weldon printed the first five books.

And who was he?

Joe Weldon, J. & P. Weldon, I think he, it was two brothers originally and then Peter died. He was a jobbing printer in Kilburn High Street, and he quoted something like £300 for the first book, including binding, and, you know, the lot.

And apart form the starting point that the book was in some way linked with the trip you had made to America, I mean you were obviously not going to do a diary saying, on Wednesday we went to catch the plane or whatever, I mean what was your starting point?

The book? Oh, the mention of the book or the mention of the idea of the book, it was...

Well, what you’ve said so far is that Martin thought you should do a book about going to America together.

He had taken a lot of slides when we were in America, but he had...he had a camera, he was sort of obsessed about cameras, which kept on going wrong. What happened was that he would be fiddling around under a blanket to try and get the film back, and what happened was, there was about 40 sort of things superimposed over each other. And he started making this into it. He started making this part of the thing. He first of all...

Part of the book?

No no no, no mention of book yet. This was just part of his trip. To him it was the experience. And to him really it existed more as slides. I think he might have thought when he made the suggestion on the trip back that we should do a book together, that he was thinking of that, but there was no knowing of that because there was no correlation or connection. I think that he was really holding those as his. I probably might have even thought that that was the case, that’s what he was talking about, but I was thinking, well, yes, great, but I had nothing...you know, I mean I’ll have to start working at this won’t I. And, I mean the thing was that I had in a sense been working towards something like that that whole summer, because I had spent this time in a place called Saunton with Kate, in a beach hut, and I had been sending slides back all the time to Martin showing him what I was photo...shooting.

So when had you got a camera?

I had acquired this camera, or borrowed it at that point, from Kate.

And so this was when you were in Los Angeles?

No, this was before. This was when I first met Kate. The whole thing about Kate was that she in a sense offered herself plus camera. She was walking around with this camera here, and the thing she wanted to talk about was this Pentax.

And so you’re on a beach in England taking pictures?

I was on a beach in England, nude, or semi-nude, living a kind of retrogressive primitive kind of life in a kind of rather hippy style if you like, and smoking a lot of pot, and, just generally being totally in a world, in another world.

And what were your photographs of?

Well, I was actually not just photographing, I was making imprints in sand. I was actually making, I had this foam with me, which expanded to 33 times the size of the liquids; you joined two liquids together and it created, it foamed up, and I evolved a way of making, if I did something in some sand I made a kind of pit and I started doing letters and pictures and hand marks and so on, I then made this imprint and it would make this object out of foam, and the layer of sand would stick to it. I think that was what I was doing principally. But the rest of the time I was writing in about three different books, frantically.

End of Track 18: Tape 9: Side B

Had you written before?

I hadn’t written for a very long time, it was really the beginning of a lot of writing that’s pared itself down over the years. I now have, I still have notebooks that I work in, but I’ve had, the same notebook that, going back to ‘94, and we’re we now ‘98, so I’ve had the same one for eight years - four years. So, it shows that whereas I could get through one notebook in just one summer then, I now have one that lasts, only, you know, two trips, one to China and one to India, and in between...

And this summer with Kate, what were you writing?

Oh, I had different sections, I was discovering different sides, different people in me.

So they were factual observations rather than fiction?

Oh it was a lot of fiction as well.

What kind of fiction?

Weaving things around facts. A great deal of kind of imagination really. Attempting to pull in everything that was going on, really trying to put it down. And it was a very very, I mean, although nothing I did there was of any relevance as it stands, and there was a lot of, I’ll look at it and think, oh my God! it was terribly important, it was a release, it was a tremendous release. I would say it was the result of what was basically an enormous failure, this big exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery of, in ‘71 of these kind of constructive reliefs which had writing in them. I felt that we never had any publicity for the show, no one came and saw it; there were four or five people showing in different parts of the Serpentine, or maybe two or three others, and it went unnoticed. And I felt that Sue Grayson was her name? didn’t like the work and said so quite openly. Martin had been very important in helping put the show up, he had

When did you start putting words into your paintings, or in your constructions?

OK, probably as letters to a girlfriend I was in love with, who I was very hurt by in the sort of period ‘69/‘70, before I met Kate.

So how did that relate to your paintings, or your reliefs?

Well, I mean, how did it relate to my...?

Were you putting extracts from the letters into them?

They weren’t letters, they were just, I was questioning all sorts of things and they came in forms of words. She was actually a poet.

Sorry, I’m getting lost. When I said to you, how did it come in to your painting...

The words, letters.

Yes.

The final show at the Serpentine had writing in it.

Yes, but you make it sound as...the girlfriend was writing letters to you and you used them in some way?

Oh no, oh no no no. No she wasn’t writing, we never wrote.

So what was her role in it?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 19: Tape 10: Side A Page 241 Probably, well you know, a sort of lost love. It was like a, I was suffering from a total...suffering, yes, I was suffering from lost love, there was no doubt about it.

And therefore you put writing in your painting?

I think writing came to me at that point, yes, as a sort of suffering.

So what, there would be...

You see, I think the actual painting wasn’t adequate to hold it, and I was trying to find some activity in my work to be able to put down the very intense feelings I felt of unhappiness if you like.

So would these be whole words, or what would it be?

Yes, yes.

Such as?

I’m so glad the work’s been destroyed. [LAUGHS] It’s been destroyed because there’s nowhere to put it. I mean, well OK, there was, and she saw the show, I remember saying, I had written ‘pain ting’ on one of the pieces, in other words, you know, pain. And it was done on a grid so that each letter had its own square, and so you can work out that it was, one two three four across and two down, so ‘pain ting’.

And what sort of scale would the letters have been?

Oh, about six inches. But there was more, there was much more complicated things which is...

But hold on, before you go to [INAUDIBLE], this one that says ‘pain ting’, what ratio of the canvas or whatever it was did these words represent? Were they a tiny part or was it a...?

No. OK, the square that they were...say it was, you know, eight squares, because there’s eight letters in that, the grid was eight squares, plus the wires going off to sort of hold it up. Because it was, really what it was, I had better explain this, is that they were fibreglass, but they were held away from the wall so that a light could be put in behind it, so they were all basically only possible to see with the light, so you in a sense could turn the work off by simply turning the lights out.

And apart from the word ‘painting’, was there anything else on it?

No, not on that one. But on another one which is much bigger there were whole reams of writing.

What kind of things?

You know I can’t really remember. I would say I would be embarrassed to actually, because it was terribly personal, and about...and you see I did it in such a way that I cut it out... I cut the letters out of fibreglass, I had a method of pouring in the colour and it went through the letter holes, and it amalgamated. This is the great thing with chemicals if you like, working in fibreglass, is that you have two things, a sort of solid thing and then they coalesce and go hard, and you could add pigment to it so you bring in colour. And I just poured in the colour. It was a stupendous job to do, and I don’t know what I did to my health, because I used to do it all in the studio. I was glad that you couldn’t read the letters. Sometimes you could read it. It’s the only time I’ve been glad, but it’s also been quite a strong part of not wanting the actual sense of the pain to come through, but also the sense of information being there; I didn’t actually want it to be literally read but I wanted the book - the painting in a sense to be seen as a whole and not certain things singled out of it. So if it was possible to read certain words, that would be enough. I didn’t want the whole thing. You could say I didn’t want everyone to understand the whole thing, I perhaps didn’t...

How do you feel, because it’s very to the point at the moment, there’s a lot of people producing book art because they’ve seen other people doing it, and a tremendous

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 19: Tape 10: Side A Page 243 number of them are basically tipping their diaries into their books and writing extremely personal stuff without really filtering it at all.

Mm.

I mean what do you feel about all that?

Well I mean, well this is it, I mean I think I’ve been talking about it, except it was on a much bigger scale. That is diary stuff, and although probably not on a level that you’re talking about, almost made into poetry.

But what do you feel about students doing it now and the sort of wave of book art coming in that’s like that?

I don’t really mind, but, of course if there’s any, if there is anything to it, in retrospect it will still be there, but there is some time-based idea which resisted me doing it in the first place, which is that, if you can’t concern yourself about not only the time you’re doing something in, but the time that it would be witnessed in as well, then you are not dealing with something that is actually going to have a life of its own in the future. And I felt that always about everything.

But how should a person concern themselves with that issue?

Well I mean, it is maybe a primary stage which is very personal, but then there comes a stage, and there are stages, where it is something that meets another, you know, another side or another, another sort of side of life if you like, or, I don’t know how I can describe it but I certainly know it when I see it. Very hard to be able to retain the personal thing. You see I would say it’s always a development; I would say everything is a development, and that you have a point where you start and I would say, what you are talking about is where you start, it’s not where you end.

So what one’s talking about is inexperienced students or artists not knowing the various stages?

I think it’s terribly important, it’s like saying, what is art? Is it therapy? And there’s a whole element to art which is therapy, but it’s not the only element, and if anyone thinks it was or is then they are mistaken. I’m sure there is an element that is a therapeutic process, and I would have said, I wouldn’t want to even say there wasn’t, to every, every kind of making, but it isn’t as I say, just that, and it’s got to contain more.

And what do you think that more might be?

It isn’t just more, it’s lots of other mores.

Like?

Well, you know, after all I can only talk about... You know, the love or the hurt feelings are simply part of a whole human being, that are not that whole human being. I mean maybe at one point, but they’re not going to be that forever.

But some of it also surely is at the primary stage, the writing has been to do with communicating to the person themselves.

Yes.

Not to another person. So something is about the gap between how it’s received by an outside eye isn’t it. Some of that’s secondary stage.

You say that what bothers you is that it’s not, is that what you’re saying?

I’m basically agreeing with you in the sense that it seems to me that it is at a primary stage, that it needs to be filtered and gone through lots of other digesting or manipulating or whatever needs to be really, they need to be tougher on themselves about what they put out to anybody else.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 19: Tape 10: Side A Page 245 I mean, I mean there is a way of dealing with it where you can have it there, but you then show how it..it’s almost a bit like rescuing it from keeping it in one place only, but showing how that particular thing can evolve. I mean I think that’s one way of possibly holding to some original... I mean I’m sure that’s what happens. You don’t necessarily have to do that, you might just want to end up... But there is, I mean, my way of looking at it is that there is a necessary evolution, and that something... You see, I mean, I think one of the things I have always learnt, well, what my father taught me, if he ever taught me anything about going to the National Gallery was, that if he had some sort of concept about Old Masters, which I never understood but I thought [INAUDIBLE] Old Masters, God! But what he would say is, ‘You see Telfer, they managed to be able to put not just one thing in there, but they managed to actually put in a great deal more than one.’ And his, without saying it what he was saying was that what is wrong with modern art is that it’s got to the point where it has simply gone back to that oneness and not that wholeness. And we could talk about whole and incompleteness, but I think he was thinking in psychosomatic terms, you know, and using that as a model. But I still actually, whether I, I certainly don’t use that as a model, and I am not interested in using models, but I still do feel that my interest in art lies in being able to give something more complete than simply that oneness, and that’s why possibly most people find my books, our books sometimes over-complex or difficult, as the word is used, difficult, and I think it’s only because we’re not trying to, or I’m not trying to single out one thing, I’m trying to combine things, trying to put things together and give a sense of the whole, and I feel that has always been of value to me, whether my father said it to me or not, I might have been...I mean it might have always been there, it might be just some part of me. And you know, you’re talking about students, and after all quite honestly in retrospect it’s quite interesting looking at students’ work, but you know, if someone went on to do something really interesting or had a really good career or life or their work, it would be very interesting to see these very personal things initially and how the work evolved from there, but you would never be able to see those personal things on their own like in the way that you are witnessing them; you are not able to witness their further career, their further kind of involvement in art. But they would mean... So, to a certain extent there’s nothing wrong in the way they’re doing it, but it is after all only a beginning. But if you were

No, I mean in fact I’m saying students but it’s not necessarily only students I’m thinking about, but, the principle is the same anyway, yes. That’s a good response. OK, so, you had had this show at the Serpentine which included writing.

Yes.

And it hadn’t had a due response really.

Well I felt possibly what Sue Grayson’s comment was, that she didn’t like the work, probably made me very angry, and I decided I...I did very dramatic things in those days, I would go and do something, I would just, like that, go. And I found that I was in the position to make this enormous change, I felt it was an enormous change anyway.

Which was to go and live on the beach?

Live on the beach, but, I was...that was the primary kind of beginnings, stirrings if you like, for making books, and when Martin finally said this thing on the ‘plane, it was as if I was all prepared for it.

And you went to America after you had had the summer on the beach?

Yes.

Yes. And, I still didn’t find out, I don’t think, what you were taking photographs of on the beach.

Well, I mean I was taking photographs, sometimes they were things that I was thinking about; sometimes they were things I was making. I mean even, you know, in

What are they?

One of them is, they’re both slides, one of them is of the tent that I had, where I made these kind of... It was like in a hollow in the sand dunes and there were these flowers growing around and there’s this khaki sort of ex-Army tent that I used to keep my, the work I was doing in it. And you know, it was extraordinary because it was completely public, and yet that tent, all that time I was there, I mean it was...it wasn’t miles away from where I was staying but it was around the corner, but I could have, everything could have gone, but in those days you didn’t expect such things to happen. Everything stayed in the tent and, anyway, I don’t know why I’m saying all that. Anyway there’s this photograph of this tent sitting in the sand dunes and below is this little sand-pit that I was very worried about, because in fact what had happened was that these flowers had come in and in a way sort of planted themselves or got established on these sand dunes, and I started to make at the bottom of the sand dunes a kind of little kind of, well it was a sand pit quite frankly, it was like a child. And I felt really worried about cutting up these plants because I was very aware that they were, it was a very sort of up and down kind of situation whether these things would survive or not, or, they were just getting established and whether I was doing something absolutely horrendous. And I remember writing lots and lots about this, really worried about this, what I’m doing here, but I just had to do it. And, I just looked around, there was just, there was very little to work with and yet that was absolute paradise, there was the beach, the sea, the sand dunes, the little house that we stayed in, the tap that we went and got water from, around the corner the dunes with the tent and all my kind of, sort of, foam equipment in bottles, bits of board. You know, life was pared down to virtually nothing. And as long as the weather was all right, everything was fine.

But carry on about this photograph then.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 19: Tape 10: Side A Page 248 So I...so those are the things I photographed, sometimes I photographed things I saw, you know, what had happened here, you know, the sort of, the result of something happening, like, shall I give you an example? Let me think. I can’t think of an example, you know.

Were there any people in them?

Very few, I took a lot of Kate, but otherwise no.

And why have you chosen the one of the tent for the current book?

Oh, well that serves as a sort of, it’s an image for a title, basically, or the title for an image. I’ve given it a title. I had the title. I’ve moved it around a bit, and I have turned up with this, because there are a number of...I mean all these, this preliminary part of this book called, which I call ‘Covers’ which are a series of covers bound into the book before the book proper starts, which is called ‘The Song of the Thrush’, are basically an introduction to ‘The Song of the Thrush’, and yet they bear no relation whatsoever, because, well they do in part but basically they’re all about the sea, and where my mother lives in Southwold. I’ve even got a photograph of my mother in it, which I took last summer. And it so happens that this fits in, because it is the sea, and there is the same, there is the same context. I mean I feel it’s quite strange looking at these things and thinking, good God! these were 19...these are, you know, more than 25 years before, and yet there’s not really, no one would know the difference.

And for another reader, there isn’t that kind of strong autobiographical element in the tent because they won’t know that that was ever your tent for instance.

Ah, it doesn’t matter.

For you it’s... No no no, but for you, is there quite a strong autobiographical element coming into it?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 19: Tape 10: Side A Page 249 I’m not seeing it like that, I really am not. No, I’m seeing it, I mean I’m talking about it for autobiographical reason, and I’m going back to that time, but to be honest... I’ll tell you, the title is ‘Welcome’, all I’m doing is manipulating an image to a word, and the word ‘Welcome’ really basically referred to the idea of doormats where you get that idea of welcome. It’s now evolved into, it has to be a certain kind of way. The last thing I’d expect, you know, you expect to have a doormat for, or even the idea of welcome is to go into a tent. So there is a disparity between the image, there’s a disparity between the image and the title. Now there is in all the things. There’s another one which I use from that time which is, of the sea, and the sand, and there’s these tyre marks going in. Everything has to be seen in the context of sequence, and so if I don’t give sequence then the actual, what I’m saying doesn’t really make any sense, but that is really very much part of what book’s about. Sequence plays an enormous part in what has been, the understanding of what’s going on. It also changes what initially could be interpreted as one thing to another. So anyway, so there...

Sorry, before we leave this, can you say any more about using words and images and disparity?

Yes. Well it’s the old test, caption and image, you know, from like newspapers. If you cover the caption up, and I know this is probably the result of the way newspapers are made, which is that you have someone who has something to say and someone who is taking the photographs, so there are two different things, and they don’t necessarily connect up, but if you put your hand over the caption, I mean I’m saying this generally, I mean it might be that in certain cases that isn’t the case. I mean if you, you’ve got evidently a particular footballer kicking a goal, and it says something that backs that up, then...but actually if you examine it, there is more in the image, if you really wanted to associate the event, but the point is, the point is with a newspaper is that there is so much going for the article, what you read, that actually if you look at the image you literally interpret what’s read, what the caption says, and interpret it in the image. But they are, and they do exist as two separate things. And in a funny sort of way the only way that you really look at the image, the only way the image operates separately, is if there’s no attempt to make the caption relate, and of course what I am

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 19: Tape 10: Side A Page 250 trying to do is to make the image equal if not more important than the caption; in other words trying to reverse the trend. And so therefore the attempt is made in doing this, in the way that I’m talking about.

It’s quite interesting going back to what Adrian was saying to you about Old Masters, because it’s slightly as though someone had decided to put a caption under one of those very full Old Masters that just said, you know, ‘So-and-so eating a grape’ or whatever, it’s the sort of absurdity, and that we’ve absolutely come to accept that paring down of what we look at in a newspaper image.

Yes. Yes.

But it’s also to do with pace in the sense that if we didn’t we would still be reading the newspaper of forty years ago because we wouldn’t have been able to get through it if we’d been really going into what was in every image and all those implications; it’s a way of managing the world.

I do admit though that when we, we now have images and sound, and TV and so on, and a great deal is said about the image by the sound, not the commentary so much but the sound. But there is a certain, I mean if there is a commentary you don’t see the guy talking. But there’s still a lot in the picture that the guy’s not...his view on what he is looking at is still orientated towards a certain sort of... And, I think what is interesting about images over words and speaking is that they are uninterpretable in the same... I mean they don’t, they basically, words do not sum up images, and there’s no pretence or no reason why one should ever think the case for the... Even though I think, going to China, going to, you know, going to Russia, being interested in Cyrillic text, going to China, because it’s the pictographic, it must be, you know, it all comes out of pictures, so there must be a related image to the formation of the Chinese characters, there must be. All these things have been going on for years with our books. There was a whole kind of emphasis in this idea that maybe we can find a way through this, where is the image in the word formation? And it’s come to a complete conclusion, there isn’t, that they are completely different.

Yes.

But the other side of it is the potency of the caption in relation to the image. I mean...

Well, it was when the image backs up the caption, in other words when there’s an element in the image which confirms the caption, then there’s potency in the caption.

Yes, the degree to which a key of the caption leads you off on a path that’s either valuable or not, depending as you say on what else is in the picture, what it blinds you to.

Yes.

And it’s...

And so what you’re saying, in the picture or in the caption?

Well I’m thinking of...

Or the implication in a word.

I’m thinking of what the impact is if you have a photograph that is very very hard to interpret, and then you might lift your hand up and see a caption that then lets you go into that, and see what the image is sometimes, you might not actually have been able to work out what you were looking at and then it might become clear. I mean that’s an extreme example, but in a way it’s a key, but it’s also, you’re no longer looking at it as a whole and as you were when you couldn’t interpret it, but it’s an indication of how potent that caption can be.

As a guide to the...what someone wants you to see in the image.

And how they want to manipulate you.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And the actual image does exist as some sort of separate entity really. I mean I do know that, I mean obviously, yes, so the cameraman goes out and the editor comes in; the cameraman goes out to take the photograph, comes in, OK, the editor comes in at that point in the production of this caption image situation, and so there are two separate different people. But also you’re dealing with a camera as well, a sort of mechanism that’s not quite like...

But it’s also marrying up with what the brain does anyway, because effectively you’re looking at some light and dark in the photo frame in your newspaper aren’t you?

Mm.

And you’ve already started to think, oh that looks like a cloud and that looks like a street or whatever. I mean you are already doing it yourself without a caption, there’s a sort of continuation isn’t there...

Yes.

Of some instinct that’s there already.

Well it’s confirmation isn’t it. We don’t actually trust actual images any more than we trust words, in fact we don’t trust, we trust images still a bit more than we trust words. I think perhaps putting the two together is a little bit more like believing in something.

A nice little statement. And, before we leave this one, I mean, the fact of including an image of your mother seems to me something you wouldn’t have done a long time ago. What’s that about?

Giving an image?

Putting an image of your mother in a book.

Oh in a book. Well you’ve got to accept the fact that, I’ll tell you what it is, ‘Covers’ is a series of short stories that came about just purely, I don’t know, because I could have actually written these short stories, but in the end they ended up as images. Now it so happened there was one called ‘Pioneer 10’ which is about the rocket that...well I don’t think it’s actually Pioneer 10 but I’ve elected for her to be Pioneer 10. Now she is the perfect, she is...I mean how, how to call your mother a rocket, I mean it’s great, because it’s got no relation, but actually one of those rockets did go out to, I think it was Voyager, Voyager 1 or Voyager 2, went out with, is now in space, with an image of a man and a woman, and, did you know this? It’s in my, actually it’s in my, it’s in the front of my Philip’s map of the world now, it explains about stars and the sun and, to simple people like me, and they explain about rockets going into the cosmos. And I actually happened to note as I followed on Voyager 1 and 2, I think, I’m not quite sure I called it Pioneer 10, but anyway, somehow... You see for instance, the book should have been called ‘the Song of the Blackbird’, but that does not work, it has to be ‘The Song of the Thrush’. It’s probably a blackbird I heard originally, but I mistook it for a thrush, but it doesn’t actually matter. Now, whether she is called Voyager 1 or Voyager 2 or Pioneer 10, it’s Pioneer 10 as far as I’m concerned, and she is standing with her bicycle outside her front door. And the subtitle of it is ‘Hinge and Bracket’. And Hinge and Bracket are female impersonators who used to do radio programmes. It’s all right, absolutely right, there couldn’t be any other image as far as I’m concerned for that, for both the title and the subtitle. Now you may, you may query this, I don’t care.

End of Track 19: Tape 10: Side A

So, we’ve got the work that you did on the beach, you and Martin then went to America on this, this-is-where-I-lived kind of trip. And did you fly back?

Yes we flew there and back.

And on the flight back Martin says to you, ‘Why don’t we make a book of this?’

Mm.

And then, what happens, apropos the book?

Well, yes, he’s at UEA and he comes up and down, I think I mentioned, and we see each other at weekends or whenever he can get away. And I show him the kind of front of this book.

Well hang on, I mean what was your starting point with him? I mean, you have the idea on the plane.

Yes.

And then, how do your discussions begin? How do you know for instance that you’re not thinking of, he’s not thinking it will be a book on vellum that’s 6 foot by 4 foot, and with a marvellous binding?

Well he basically ironed out... Oh God knows, how did it work out that we were going to do a really small, we were going to do a paperback size book? I’m not sure how that happened. I think it happened when we went to the printer and found out how much it cost, and how it would be more convenient. I think, you know, I mean I think those decisions were ironed out. I don’t know, we went to Joe Weldon and we never went any further.

Oh yes. Oh yes.

How very practical.

Yes yes, terribly practical, yes, he said, you know, you’ve got to do that. And I then realised, you know...and, you know, yes.

Had you for instance seen any of Ed Ruscha’s books by this time?

I...can I remember...? Wait a minute, wait a minute. No I hadn’t been to L.A., no. I went to L.A. basically to meet Ed Ruscha believe it or not, I mean I’ve got to say that. I actually rang him up when I got there, and didn’t get in touch with him properly, and various other people I got to know who were rather, a bit upset about it. Someone called Helene Winer[ph] who I used to know a bit in London, she used to work at the Whitechapel, was an American who lived in L.A. and she was back there and she was living with someone called Jack Goldstein who is a film maker, or was. And I became very friendly with him, and they introduced me to Man...no, who’s the one with the dog, Man Ray. I met him, instead of Ed Ruscha. The one which does the videos of the dog, I can’t even remember his name now, it’s awful, and he had a dog, a big dog called Man Ray. Do you not know him? Anyway it doesn’t matter. I could fill that in some other time.

But why did you want to meet Ruscha by this stage?

Oh, I suppose I thought, well who would I like to meet at this point, who would it be? I think I would have said Ed Ruscha.

But why? Would you have seen his work?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 20: Tape 10: Side B Page 256 I admired... Yes yes yes, I had, I had bought quite early on...well I would say by, let me see, let’s get this right. I would have gone to Compendium and I was certainly buying the books there and looking...either looking at them or buying them.

Ruscha’s books?

Dieter Rot and Ed Ruscha, yes, but I only ended up with one of his books, I think I looked at them all but I only ended up with, ‘Real Estate Opportunities’ was the only one I ever ended up with.

But do you think you bought these and saw them before you made your first book, or afterwards?

You know what, I probably saw them but never had them. I think I went back to look and possibly buy later on the Ed Ruscha’s, ‘Real Estate Opportunities’. I know that for instance I had contact with Bernie Jacobson before I went to L.A., and he showed me the more recent Ed Ruscha things, because he was dealing in Ed Ruscha at the time.

But hang on, you went to L.A. after you had made the first book, didn’t you?

Yes, but only the first book. That was all, the first book was started in ‘71. I probably...I’m afraid I don’t know. The likelihood was that I had looked at Dieter Rot and Ed Ruscha at Compendium by, before I started, because I think on the whole I said to myself, yes, there is room for me, and that was about this idea of book form.

And, I mean Ruscha is often held up to have been the beginner of a certain type of book art. Do you go along with that, or do you think it was almost a...?

I think I am responsible for getting that idea put forward. It certainly was taken on by Clive, I know that.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 20: Tape 10: Side B Page 257 Well that’s why I wondered, because there’s so few people who have been writing, that it seemed to me that that statement Clive made has been taken as, with great authority.

I know.

But it could easily have been somebody else had said something to somebody else.

He asked me, he asked me who I thought was, and I told him I thought Ed Ruscha.

And do you still think that, I mean do you think it’s...?

No I don’t, not necessarily. I mean I do... No, I must be fair about this. I do think that Ed Ruscha made a contribution that was absolutely unique, and, but also I admire the fact that a lot of people who are not interested in art, you know, understood what he was doing. I mean, going to L.A. was an eye-opener, it was another eye-opener for me. Going to New York ten years before, yes, ten years before, had been an eye- opener but going to L.A. was another, and that was much more about the social context and the way art was understood by a wide audience of people, much wider than you would ever find in this country, and Ed Ruscha had that, and I admired that enormously, because in a funny sort of way, you have to understand how L.A. was in the Seventies was a place full of puns. There was word play on everything, people would go round with cars for sale but instead of S-A-L-E it would be S-A-I-L, and that was an open pun. I mean in other words, everything was punned, everyone was looking at things all the time. I mean maybe everyone was stoned out of their minds and they probably are, and were, but, the point is that that was a kind of cultural underground that was really on the over ground if you like. And in a certain sort of way Ed Ruscha’s work appealed very much on that level, and so therefore there was an enormous social context for his work.

And word play has always been very important to you?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 20: Tape 10: Side B Page 258 I think it got me lots of places, but I wouldn’t have said that it’s the end or, I mean be all or...it’s just the beginning.

What do you mean it got you to lots of places?

It got me fascinated in meaning, and the way things...I came to it quite naturally, or, naturally or whatever, how do you come to those things naturally? I found it appealing, and I didn’t feel it, I felt it was like every man’s ability to find word play wherever they wanted.

Do you remember when you started to find it appealing? I mean can you...?

Yes, well this period at Saunton Sands in Devon on the beach was very important, and the sort of things I was reading, I was reading something by Jack Burnham about structuralism I think; I was reading articles from ‘Art Forum’; I was reading... It led to various things like Michel Foucault and ‘Les Mots et les Choses’ and things like that, I don’t know what the translation of that is, ‘How Things Are’ I think it was. It’s a book which starts with les minas (sic), les meninas (sic), and he analyses that. And, I found that very inspiring, and it led right through to Barthes and people like that. I mean it’s funny, with Barthes, I didn’t come across camera lucida till very much later; I had noticed that... And, the reading I used to, later on I took up was quite a lot of John Berger, Susan Sontag. Well, Berger actually has always been terribly important, I think I followed his writing from very early on, because I remember almost being in touch with him when I was an art student. I can’t quite think of any... There was a whole group of people in there. And so I was doing, well now I was not only writing but I was reading the whole of the rest of the time, taking photographs, and it was a kind of, a moment.

Mm. And just to try and pinpoint this, have you any idea, when you had the conversation with Clive first about the key person and Ruscha’s importance, have you any idea when that conversation would have taken place?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 20: Tape 10: Side B Page 259 Well, Clive was the first person to review the first book, and he wrote a review completely out of the blue in ‘Studio International’ in about ‘72, if not 3, I’m not certain, it might not have been. If that book came out in April ‘72, then it might have come out at the end of ‘72 or it might have come out at the beginning of ‘73, I’m not sure. Probably before ‘73. And then he reviewed ‘Foolscrap and ‘Spaces’ in the following years And by that time I was in touch with him. So by the time Helen and I collaborated on ‘Loophole’ we both went to see him as far as I can remember, and he even reviewed ‘Loophole’ and ‘Threads’, which he hadn’t come across, it was the book that she had actually written. I would say at that, about that time, he might have asked me that, but I’m afraid I don’t know.

So we’re talking in the first five years of the 1970s?

Yes, mm.

OK, it’s interesting.

I mean, there’s a funny thing, I did actually, that’s right, Helen and I went to meet him, it must have been terribly early on then, because I remember going to Crystal Palace where he lived with his wife and two children in, basically it was quite a, kind of, well, it is a surburban house, and... And so that was very early on.

So it was before he was in America working...?

Oh definitely, and again I felt very strongly that, I don’t know why but you see, I’ll tell you the other things that relate to Clive. Martin, before we fell out, which we did fall out I’m afraid, and, not over what you would expect it to be, but possibly over what you would expect... Sorry, I mean, I’m really being confusing here. If you can imagine... But anyway, let me get to Clive first. Martin was back at the British Council after doing his M.A. at the UEA, and he started to organise his book show. This must have been post Nigel Greenwood’s book show because that was the book show that I got my first, the first book was actually half in and half out of it, it was sort of there but it wasn’t, and that was in ‘72. I can’t quite remember when the, but I

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 20: Tape 10: Side B Page 260 can look it up. Anyway, he organised this Art as Book Works’ or something show for the British Council which was a touring exhibition, it was going to Germany. He was already living back in the house, after, having lived upstairs originally, been at UEA, and then living down in the basement finally with Denise, who he had met at, who was his big love at UEA. And he was doing the exhibition for the British Council and he had taken on all sorts of areas of concern, like making the exhibition stand and this and that, and it was all fairly crazy, and he asked me at one point, he said, ‘Well who should write the catalogue for this? Who would you think?’ And I said, ‘Clive.’ And he said...and so it turned out, that was the way. And then that followed with the Arts Council book exhibition, again Clive, it just followed on I think. I think by that time Martin and I weren’t on speaking terms because he felt I let him down very badly in lots of ways by about ‘75. One of them was, he had a baby girl by then with Denise, and so he was very rattled. He had to get this book show done, and he felt that in a funny sort of way I owed him more than just the normal amount, to contribute to help him get it done, and I did, I did, I said, ‘You have the studio for so long’. There came a point where I wanted to do this book with Helen, and this was all very complicated. Helen had moved in to the top of the house, so I was in the top of the house with Helen, Martin was still in the basement with Denise, and there was this book we wanted to do called ‘Loophole’ in ‘74, and Martin still hadn’t moved out his exhibition stands out of the show, so there was this sort of... But then we were also playing with the sort of thing, you know, here I was collaborating with Helen, or going to, or we were, and whether he was pleased or not pleased, at certain points he said, ‘I’ve got a really good idea Telfer for a book,’ and I knew things were slipping when this was happening because this was ridiculous, you know. I haven’t really explained why we didn’t do this first book together; I’m not sure how, but he did ultimately, I’d better go back to this, in ‘72 after he kept on coming back from UEA he said, ‘I haven’t got the time. I can’t do it’. And, one of the things was, I felt, well, the way he saw I was going about it was not the way he wanted to do it, and he didn’t want to fight about it, and that was true. Secondly he literally didn’t have the time because he had, he was a violent ball-bouncer and he likes to keep lots of balls in the air at the same time. So he wouldn’t say, ‘I don’t want, I can’t do it, I won’t do it, I don’t...’ but he would always want to keep it so that there was something possible. He in lots of ways had fed ideas to me for this book, which I would take up, I mean there was no

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 20: Tape 10: Side B Page 261 doubt about it. One of the bones of contention, curiously enough, is one of the things he actually did feed to me, which was, he said at one point, ‘Why don’t you use bread as a substitute for the page of a book?’ I mean, I said, ‘Oh yes,’ and then I thought, how extraordinary, because this isn’t the first time this idea has come up, but, that, when I used to teach at Bath Academy a student girlfriend had made this loaf, ceramic loaf, of, and she had cast each of the cut loaf pieces separately and then put it together, and sort of glazed it pink, in the kind of, in the sort of spirit of...I felt she, it was in the spirit of, who made the inflatables? It wasn’t Oldenburg. It was Jim Dine, it was in the actual kind of Jim Dine kind of field, there was a sense of... But had always found this very appealing and I had always wanted to have it, and in the end she gave me two of her pots, and someone else got the loaf. She was one of these sort of people that used to disown everything she did, and didn’t really like it, but I loved it. That point I thought, God! Martin’s thinking of Elise’s loaf of bread. What a fantastic idea. Because it had always appealed to me. Well I didn’t know that Helen had done this piece at UEA and had shown it to Martin, where she had made this bread, she had actually, it wasn’t...it was...she had made an imprint of a piece of bread and then she had done various things, like putting surfaces on it and so on. I had no idea of this. And of course this kind of thing started to kind of emerge when I got to know Helen. So there was a certain sort of thing that, despite the fact that when I was presented with this idea of using bread as a substitute for the page, and started to do that for ‘Passage’, the book that I was going to do with Martin, I did something completely different, I mean there wasn’t, there was just, it was just... I mean if you look at it, it isn’t, it’s neither a book about a cut loaf, nor was it about, whatever other things it is. It’s certainly about the idea of layers, and the idea that when the actual sliced loaf is a substitute for the page, the idea of buttering it and putting jam and then making, forming sandwiches and the way of opening and shutting the pages, those were all things that I fed into this idea of using the bread. No idea of that had come over in any way, either from the ceramic loaf or from the description of using bread that Martin had transferred to me. So, as I say in ‘75 when we started working on ‘Loophole’ and these things, so, a division started to be created.

Well... OK, sorry, go on. With Martin.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 20: Tape 10: Side B Page 262 Yes. And because he was still occupying the studio. So he resented this in a sense. I mean I feel that there was also a lot of, there was an awful lot that was never talked about.

Can, for the sake of the tape, can you describe ‘Passage’, the book we are now talking about? Because there will be people listening who have never seen it.

Right. Well, the point was that I was making little entrées or little journeys into the book itself by attempting to show the physicality if you like or the actual book as a sort of printer’s dummy. So if I for instance on purpose lit a match on a piece of paper, and it burnt a hole, I wasn’t going to just light a match on one page, I was going to assemble how many pages I thought that book would have or that section would have, put them together, light a match, and then put the fire out, photograph, disentangle the paper so that I could thread it, so I could separate it, photograph the front of it, turn it over and photograph the back; take the second page, photograph the front of it; until finally we get to the bottom page which has got a receding burn mark. And then having completed this photographic cycle, putting it into the book in exactly the way I have described it, so that when someone opened the book they would see this sequence of how the pages had been affected by this action. The same way with the bread.

Sorry, again, for someone who can’t see it, you start off with an image of a plain slice of bread on the left-hand side, and an image of a plain slice of bread on the right, yes?

Well, with the bread it became more complicated, because I became involved in layering, if you think, the example that I actually gave about the burn, the little fire I created out of the wood if you like - out of the wood! - out of the paper, out of the paper pages, I had actually cut out the paper pages, I was very concerned about this, it had to be the size that I was going to put it into the book so that I could transfer the photograph into the book, so that it was just the same, the same scale, no sort of upping and downing and so on. With the bread I was realising, oh yes, well I’d got bread, I’d got paper; certainly when I turn the page something happens here, it’s quite

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 20: Tape 10: Side B Page 263 different from burning; it’s not going from the back to the front of the page, back to the front, it’s a piece of bread that can’t go through the paper, it doesn’t work like that. It’s something that’s really in a sense, when you turn the page over, and you put two pieces of bread together, they formed a sandwich, and that is the end of the actual sequence. I actually said in an interview with you, I seem to remember years ago, which was printed in ‘Art Monthly’, about this, you said, why not? I seem to remember you said it, ‘But why didn’t you go on doing that kind of thing?’ And I said, ‘Because it had been far too limiting.’ I couldn’t just concern myself... I think, the actual, I’ve actually got it here because I remember, I came across it the other day, and I was rather upset to realise that it didn’t get over what I really meant at all. It says, ‘Why didn’t you do that?’ And your question was... I had just said before that, ‘I might have photographed both sides of each slice of bread for every single page that would have been transferring the notion of the object itself, relating to the object I was really making, the book.’ And you said, ‘Why didn’t you do that?’ And I said, ‘I started to do that, and I thought, why don’t I pause here? I could add a layer here by spreading the butter on the bread, and then I could spread something else on that, I could... And then finally I realised that I could make a sandwich, and when I made the sandwich, I turned the page and so that was the end of the sequence.’ And then I go on to say something like this: ‘Something had occurred which was an analogy for something else. It had been left in the book, and it related to the production of the book. You could limit yourself immensely by simply making books about things like that.’ Now what I shouldn’t have said was, ‘about things like that’; in other words it seems to refer back to the bread. What I’m really referring to is the way I made the bread relate to the book, do you see what I mean? I mean, what I saw it was was an ever-expanding possibility with objects. If the objects were actually going to control this expansion, and limit it, then I didn’t want to let that happen, and I wanted to sort of basically move on.

But surely with these two examples, in both cases what you are effectively doing is commenting on the surface of the page, that it can be burnt, or it can be effectively the centre of a sandwich, because the bread can’t pass through it; its surfaceness and the illusion on it is really what you are commenting on, is it?

That’s what I’m saying.

Yes. But I’m talking about the illusion...yes, you’re right, the illusionistic...the illusionistic element to the image that’s been created.

But therefore both the bread and the burning are tools in order to make qualities about...

Comments about the actual thing itself.

The page itself, and also our lack of questioning of it, and the things we’ve gone blind to about the page, aren’t they?

They are in part, but it’s also saying, it’s saying, this is the only way to present bread, this is the only way to present... And you present it in a certain kind of way, doing it like this, than if you make an image out of it, and what I am trying to bypass was the idea that we would have to interpret this as a photograph, that really, that it has to be taken for something that is actually happening in this book, because I have taken the book with it. Now, it might be questioning something, I’m going a little bit here, well not questioning, it might be sort of assuming, that people will still say, but it’s still a photograph. But the point is, it isn’t really, because it’s actually saying, this is a reality too, because the reality is that the page is there.

And that the page is not a photograph, it’s a page.

Well I’m saying it is a photograph, as well, and I’m saying this is what happens to the object and the page in one. I mean there’s a lot of questioning about illusionism, you know, the illusionisticness of an image or a photograph, and whether you can, whether it is real or whether it is just an illusion. I mean, why is it that an object made by an artist is more real than an image on a photograph, or a photograph is? I mean we accept that images of events in the Vietnam War are images that are real, don’t we, so

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 20: Tape 10: Side B Page 265 why on earth don’t you accept, or why is it more difficult to accept, that if an actual image of a piece of bread which when it works in with a page, is considered to be less so?

Well we don’t think that the image of something in the Vietnam War is the thing; we think it’s a record of something that happened.

Well that is contained in the bread as well, but I think it goes a step further.

But there’s also the aspect that, it’s not very common to take a slice of bread as your main image, is it? There’s also that element coming through, which is slightly what Ruscha is doing. He’s foregrounding something that isn’t normally foregrounded.

Oh he’s looking at something that presumably people would see as simply the gap between one thing and another. If you’re talking about something like the book that I bought, which was ‘Real Estate Opportunities’, yes. In other words then, yes, you’re right, that it is the gap between two properties as against, in other words the space between two things, and the things that you look at are the things that are built on and not the actual vacant lots.

End of Track 20: Tape 10: Side B

Track 21: Tape 11: Side A

OK.

But if you looked at the vacant lots as this idea of property, the potential for property, then you would be wrong as well.

Yes, but what I’m saying is, it’s also, on some level it’s playing with a convention about what is suitable material for a book.

It’s playing with a convention, yes, playing with a convention, you’re absolutely right, that is exactly it; it’s trying to...it’s trying to change the con...it’s trying to change the emphasis and context that people think and judge things by, and it’s the only way in art that you can probably say something different.

But I mean, it’s also, I mean, Ruscha wasn’t hoping that by showing that series of photographs of parking lots of whatever, that people were going to discuss parking lots.

No.

It’s a conversation about books and images and those contexts wasn’t it. It was never going to be about, the subject was not parking lots in a sense.

No, I think the subject matter is pared down to mean more or less nothing.

Any more than you were expecting people who saw your pages of slices of bread, people weren’t going to discuss the quality of the bread, were they?

They did, I mean some people said that’s Guatemala when a bit of treacle dripped through the bread and the bread had been removed and it left a stain. I mean people wanted to see Guatemala in the treacle stain. But I mean, and it probably showed the

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 21: Tape 11: Side A Page 267 need to see something, which they are used to seeing, but... Isn’t it something that’s left in the mind as opposed to something that is actually... I would say that, I mean, I should say what’s interesting about Ed Ruscha is that it leaves something in the mind, that it isn’t actually something that you...you can only re-fuel as it were by re-looking at the book, but you can’t...you can’t actually get anything out of the book, because it isn’t about anything particularly interesting. But it leaves a concept, it leaves a very strong concept, and I think that’s probably the only way you can sum it. But then if you want me to sum up ‘Passage’ like you asked me to, so there are, there are literally short passes if you like of different objects being used in relation to the pages of the book, and how I put it together was simply decided in a sense fairly instinctively on, this is the right place for this bit, and this is the right place for that bit. I wasn’t able at that point, and I was trying very hard, to make a book that was continuous, I had no ability to do that at that time, although I had lots of little sort of vignettes if you like to call them.

And, what determined the length of the book, why was it more than the burnt pages and the bread?

You mean why weren’t they longer or shorter?

No, why were there more sections, signatures, why wasn’t it, eight pages in total, why is it the length it is?

Sorry, are you talking about the burnt pages or the bread, or...?

The book as a whole.

Oh the book as a whole. Well because I had, I mean, say, take the bread or the burnt pages, I think with the burnt pages I chose, I said to myself, two is not enough, three is still not enough, four is perhaps right, or maybe five, because you would end up with a blank page so...

You mean a book of burnt pages?

No, why wasn’t the burnt pages enough, why did you not say, that’s my book?

I see. There’s something very different between the bread and the burnt pages. I mean I see them as totally different, I mean one is going through the paper, the other one is sitting on top of it.

OK, but then why, there’s more in the book than just those.

Well, because it’s reiterating the same thing through all these different, as many different things as I could find. I mean, you see the thing is that everybody does look at subject matter. I was not looking at subject matter at all, I was looking at actual form, or the way it worked, and I just wanted to make sure, to really pin it down, as to the fact that it really, in the end what I’m trying to say is that really everything is like this, it’s just a question of choosing something that’s going to show this better than another thing.

Mm.

And so, therefore I’ve got to give a really good, I’ve got to give a sort of swathe through here and try and think up as many different possibilities as possible.

And was there ever going to be any language in the book?

There is a list of...no there isn’t a list of contents in that book. Well that’s how I started though. There is the manila élite, I did mention that before, or, I can’t remember, there is printed words in that where, the little game played with brown and white envelopes which I meet either as a complete envelope or as half and half. I think I used mulatto, the word mulatto, and manila, and élite, as a sort of distinctive

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 21: Tape 11: Side A Page 269 thing between a brown envelope and a white envelope, and a brown... And there are implications which go beyond what it’s actually about. So there was an element to...and whether you see implications beyond the bread or not is another matter.

Do you?

I do, yes. Whether the people do is another matter though, and I think that it’s... I mean some artists have been able to make people see implications.

What implications do you see beyond the bread?

I see exactly the idea of layering, and I also see the way layering, I am surprised by the way it came to an abrupt end. I would have done...I mean I’ve seen books called ‘The Bread Book’, which must have come, I don’t know, I don’t care, but I’ve been to Printed Matter and someone has shown me ‘The Bread book’, and I’ve said, ‘But why did they choose such interesting-looking bread?’ And then I thought, oh why did I have to say? And I said, ‘Has this person produced any other books?’ They said no. I said, ‘How well has it sold?’ They said, ‘Oh very well.’ I said, ‘Why...’ ‘And don’t you think the photographs are well taken?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ Totally meaningless. As far as I’m concerned meaningless, you know. But those are all the reasons I should say which show that it isn’t just, there is still, you know, there was obviously and has been much much more to say and to develop, and if you look at the bread as a series of levels or layers, I feel that that has implications to life and to people. I also find that, I think it’s fairly disturbing to think that people come and go rather fast, like the bread does.

You mean they die?

Yes. And that there is a conclusion. Sometimes there isn’t you see, I mean I might have brought in lots and lots of pages, but I wouldn’t have done, I didn’t, of the burnt pages. I didn’t... In the same vein the beer can that looks as if it’s something to do with Jasper Johns, but I forget about that, I mean it had nothing to do with Jasper Johns but never mind, it came through only for a little while in ‘Spaces’; it only had to

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 21: Tape 11: Side A Page 270 come through so far so much, but it’s interesting that there is a beginning and an ending to everything, and it finds its...and so it is a bit like life, yes. And it is a little bit like, I mean, objects could be an analogy for lives and people. I mean, why am I talking about Pioneer 10 or Voyager 1 and 2? Because Voyager 1 and 2 sent out an image of what life looks like on earth, and they had two very very primitive drawings of a man and a woman, and what I find totally objectionable, or at any rate I put myself in a position with the story that I never wrote about someone, an African chief, and he’s saying, ‘Well, you know, if this represents me, I just reject it completely; there’s nothing about this that looks anything like me. After all I am black.’ And these images were line drawings on white backgrounds. ‘And also, tell me why a man should...’ The actual way the man is drawn is this way, which is a sort of, hands behind his side standing straight, feet together, and why this woman has one leg slightly open? What is the signal here, what is the symbol of this, what does this mean? Why does this give...you know, does it represent the whole human race, or does it just represent one part of it? And this thing will be the only thing that survives us, and us sitting in this room, and possibly the whole of this world, because it’s travelling into outer space. If we ever blew up or didn’t exist or, that will be the only representation of our existence, and that’s important.

But assuming there was only ever going to be one image, one way or another, that was going to be the case.

You think it’s good enough that they had the images of two human beings on it, and Einstein’s relativities (sic) theory.

Presumably they’re the images of the people who are paying for the rocket, aren’t they. That’s what it comes down to, they’re the images of the people with the money to put the rocket in space.

Yes. Well that could be a story about earth too.

Absolutely.

I’m not arguing for it or against it, but I’m saying, if you say, reverse it, and you have a black couple and the man’s got his foot forward and the woman’s standing as the man is, then the argument’s going to come from the other side just as much; you cannot, there is no drawing that will represent humankind, is there?

Yes, but this was the opportunity to do that.

But it’s impossible, isn’t it?

OK, it may be, but I object, I object.

So what would you put in?

I think they should have had artists do it.

Which artist?

I don’t know.

And what should the artists have come up with?

[LAUGHS] Well I think they would have put their minds to it, and they would have ended up with some sort of ridiculous pseudo-scientific kind of image, you know. I think that, what are artists for, if they’re not to sort of consider these things? After all art is involved in that, there’s no doubt. I mean, art is about...it involves...it involves not only the past and the present, but it also, there’s a whole element of art which involves the future as well, and I mean, it involves a very deep thinking about life and what is meaningful about life, and questioning. I would say it relates very strongly, it is a - well it isn’t, I mean we use the word ‘religion’, but I would say that it is a challenge to life, and the only way that ultimately it can make a final comment is about life itself, and I would have thought if you’re going to launch a rocket into

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 21: Tape 11: Side A Page 272 space... And I do feel, I mean of all the things that really appeal to me or frighten me or terrify me, is when I look at the stars at night. I mean I do feel it is awesome, I think that word is well found in relation to looking at the stars at night, because I, and I don’t know if many feel like this, and a lot of people don’t even know what those stars are, I mean they just think, suns? what are suns? you know, and what’s a solar system? A lot of people...it’s actually, not many people seem to know what these things are. I am actually quite aware of what they are, I think, perhaps not more than you, but a lot more than a lot of people, and I find it awesome, horrendously awesome. I don’t feel that anything that we’re doing here seems to relate to anything out there. And I think that everything we do relates to everything we do here. And I just think, well God! there really is...we even...we haven’t got anywhere near comparing, we’re comparing, making comparisons, because we don’t make comparisons, we just don’t, because it doesn’t exist yet. Is it really rather like the Elizabethan concept of the world before America was discovered? Is it really, or is it infinitely, infinitely more than that? I think it probably is you see.

But, this drawing reminds me of something you said that I meant to ask you about at the time. When we were looking through Susan King’s ‘Treading the Maze’, and you were saying that you felt rather disappointed by the drawings, and you said, this is really like a diagram.

Yes.

And, my point I think was, on that page, that it was meant to be a diagram, rather than a drawing, and I didn’t know why you were bringing in the concept of drawing at that point. But, I mean, it does interest me, because, I mean what do you feed into the word ‘diagram’? It sounds to me like these images that have gone up in the rocket, which I haven’t seen, are diagrams.

Mm, I think they’re diagrammatical, yes, diagrammatical.

I mean what does the word ‘diagram’ conjure for you? It sounds as though it’s a pejorative word.

Well it is connected to factual knowledge I think, diagram; it’s dealing with fact, and I don’t think art is dealing with fact at all. And, I think there’s a whole area where you don’t acknowledge really what art is really trying to be and what it’s trying to deal with. I mean people do understand diagrams as practical solutions to something, but there’s so many people involved in the idea of practical solutions that they don’t see anything else. So, you know, art talks about making marks; in a very basic kind of way, I would have said what I described about painting was very much that, you know, making marks. But, I mean surely it came from a side of me, if I’m talking about myself, which didn’t, wasn’t diagrammatical or anything of that kind, or had any actual logical reason for existing except for a kind of compulsion. I think that is as relevant as what we’ve been taught to understand about relevant information, how to educate people, all these sort of things, there’s a whole side to life that we do miss out, all the possibilities of human beings that we miss out on.

So presumably really the end point of what you’re saying about the image that went up in the rocket, is that it will communicate something very limited, but that something perhaps that an artist had done might be objectively less similar in visual terms to anything human that might actually communicate something more important?

It might, yes. It certainly would be coming from another side of the way of thinking. I mean, I would say it’s something we’ve got to contribute, you know, I would have said making diagrams isn’t, I think that perhaps that’s rather a sort of ..... sort of illustrative element to it which has a practical use, but I think that we undervalue very much things you can’t define, and I think that’s the area that art exists in, and I think they’re very valuable.

And actually, just picking up as Devil’s advocate for a moment, what would be the difference of putting in your book ‘Passage’ a series of drawings of a slice of bread, rather than photographs of a slice of bread, or a series of diagrams of a slice of bread?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 21: Tape 11: Side A Page 274 Well, Ed Ruscha does come in here, because I was interested in Ed Ruscha as someone who took photographs, and I think I probably chose to use, I chose to use the camera... Well, there were all sorts of things that happened. I was presented with a camera, but I did want to get round drawing, and I did see a way of communicating which I thought wouldn’t have the things that get in the way. I thought that, and perhaps wrongly, now, looking back, that people understood, or understood a certain truth in photography that they didn’t really accept in art, because although what I’m practising is art, I would like to also say that using a camera is making art as well, because I am directing what I want people to look at at the thing directly that has been photographed; I didn’t want all sorts of things that I might as an art college student, ex-student, bring in, because, you know, because I’m drawing something that I relate to a certain period of time, that I might unfortunately or unconsciously bring in because it’s a drawing.

Funnily enough I would have thought, I mean I haven’t ever thought of this before but, as an untutored eye coming in, if you didn’t know anything about book art, and you came across a book that had drawings of a slice of bread having different things done to it...

Yes.

...and becoming a sandwich, you actually might pick up on the idea of it quicker than if it is the photograph, because the very idea of a photograph of a slice of bread being an image that somebody would put in a book is in a way more distancing, because it’s more of a shock to people...

Yes.

...than a drawing of a slice of bread, it’s quite a...I mean I hadn’t thought about it before.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 21: Tape 11: Side A Page 275 Yes but you’ve got the whole history of drawing involved in that. But it’s a very...I mean, photography is not that old, and I appreciate being able to be involved in it. I suppose roughly the sort of beginning of it.

So are you saying any drawing has got the whole history of drawing involved in it?

Yes.

Only if you come at it with somebody with the knowledge of the history of drawing.

Not necessarily.

Well I don’t think most people say in a drawing of a slice of bread are going to start thinking about the history of drawing.

They’re not going to say...but I mean, the person who draws it is always going to do it in a certain kind of way, directed to their history, in relation to their history of drawing or whatever it is.

But that’s a slightly different pointer.

But you see it’s also what I call making art, drawing’s got that association. Photography doesn’t, photography does not have that association of making art, and I wanted it to be as bland and as objective, and that’s what I mean about Ed Ruscha, I like that detachment, I wanted it to be detached; although it’s highly emotional, his things aren’t, but mine are, that I wanted it also be totally sort of detached.

The placing of the bread on the page is very important?

I think it just related to the proportion of the book, and the size of the page. The book had been decided before the bread.

The placing? Well, Helen and I have a very big disagreement about what I call composition. I mean, I was very strict on the whole what I call the paperback series books, that we could never take more than one photograph of everything, and that if we failed to take the right photograph, we had to touch it up. And it went with also the way we composed the photograph, it had to be the minimal kind of... I mean there is, I agree, I mean, I’ve got to get the piece of bread on the page, so I have to withdraw the camera a bit more or go in a bit further, but that is all it comes down to, it’s always going to be central. I noticed with the bread book that I was talking about that I came across in Printed Matter, is that, the guy chose slightly squarer more image, and he used a squarer loaf, but he certainly got the idea of the size. But then he did it, he was a photographer. This is the other thing I must add to what I’m saying is that I’m not a photographer, I don’t see myself as a photographer. I literally, I am still incapable of taking photographs, I still struggle with film that I’ve mis...that I have over or under exposed, and batteries I haven’t put in cameras, so they’re not...and so I have a whole stream of films that don’t actually take. This guy had photographed it, it was so well photographed that it was, that you could admire the photograph.

But you almost don’t want to achieve that, do you?

No, I’m not interested in that at all.

But do you positively ensure that you don’t achieve it?

No, but at that time it was really convenient, that I first of all was going to a lousy printer, and secondly I didn’t really know how to take a photograph.

So you weren’t developing your own photographs at that stage?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 21: Tape 11: Side A Page 277 Actually no, I think, no. I was developing the photographs but I wasn’t printing them, they were printed up quite grandly now I think about it, at London Weekend Television studios.

And, for, again for someone who has never seen it, can we talk a bit about the colour of this book, ‘Passages’?

‘Passage’.

Passage’, sorry.

The colour? Oh well, yes, a Cambridge blue, and what’s happening is - or the cover did you say?

The cover.

It does actually say ‘cover’; there’s a hand painting the front of it, and there’s the brush, one of the paintbrushes that I used initially with painting, and it’s got on the paintbrush, which had to be printed like this, the little bit of the blue, and it’s about to paint the cover blue. You then look at the back of the book and you see that that side has been painted. Quite convenient, in a sense that... Oh yes, but, oh yes, because the back of the book has been read as it were when you got to the end of it and then it’s about to be read when you start it. Underneath the hand is the word, someone said, ‘Is that lover?’ In fact it says, ‘cover’, rather primitively scratched in on a plate. I remember the printer bringing me in and saying, ‘Look, this, the photograph you’ve taken of this bit of writing here under your hand is not going to come up; can you do something about it?’ And, I would never do that again in my life. I shouldn’t talk about mistakes.

You mean you would have let it go and let it come up however it came up?

I would probably, probably now re-photograph it.

Well I accept the fact that I am useless at doing it, and in a way it has its good points as well. Yes, I mean, but you know, like I say the argument with Helen about composition, it also goes on to subject matter too, because of course that is the other reason that I wanted to make the subject matter very very subsidiary to the actual formal way that it’s presented. And she would say, ‘But I am interested in subject matter,’ you know. So, we proceeded with the paperback series with her interest in subject matter and my in a sense lack of it.

But in a way what you were trying to achieve would be annihilated by subject matter, wouldn’t it?

I know, but somehow it was presented OK, with Helen’s collaboration. I mean, because we had both had interests in just about the same things, it was amazing, because, for instance in ‘Passage’, the first book, I actually constructed a wall within a wall, of the corner of the room, and photographed it being both constructed and then knocked down. I never felt happy with that, because I should have done it in the spine of the page of the book. So when we came to do ‘Chinese Whispers’ I said, oh great, this is the opportunity to finally re-create that, which I felt I had missed.

But, sorry, I want to go back to what this ‘Passage’ looks like. What I was trying to get at was that it’s not black and white glossy.

The cover is.

But inside.

The inside, it’s printed in a fairly flat, pan, Seventies style way, I mean in a way that a jobbing printer would print anything in those days. In the Eighties things did change a bit.

So that wasn’t something you were aiming at, that was just something that happened?

No, something I accepted.

Was it what you wanted?

I accepted it. I’m not sure, you see, you see you can’t say it’s something I wanted before a book is ever printed the first time.

But you nevertheless, it became something linked to your style in several of the books really?

Well, I obviously accepted it because I did five books using the same printer and the same method after that. I mean, it was necessary for me to know what was going to be produced. I was in a terrible state for the first book, because I was going to be seeing something I had no idea what it was going to look like. I didn’t know whether I could accept it or not.

And in a way, although Martin wasn’t part of it, the printer was your collaborator wasn’t he, in a funny way? Compared to doing a painting, this is very much working with someone.

If you look at it like that, but I never did, yes. You mean getting, it’s farming it out for someone to paint as it were?

Yes, and also...

It was an element of that, but never, from the first book onwards, not, because then I knew what it was like and I could work with it.

Yes, it’s the difference between farming it out for someone to paint when you know what it’s like to paint yourself, and farming it out for someone to paint when you don’t.

And, how was the book received, and what did you do with it and how many copies?

A thousand copies. I went to America with it, obviously, because I went to America in ‘72 and that’s when it came out. I probably went to see Ed Ruscha especially to give him the book. I had to post it through his front door in the end.

So you didn’t actually meet him?

No.

Did you get a response?

No.

Have you ever had any subsequent contact with him?

No. And this sounds terrible, because I mean, it wasn’t as if I was...I mean I was in this, yes, very foreign country, I found L.A. quite, a very different place to a lot of places I’d expected, and, or been to, and, I probably was looking for someone to talk to to be honest. I just thought, well, you know, books present something really challenging and different, and that there’s a whole group of people doing them and I want to be in touch with them.

Did you, were you aware of the women’s building in L.A., and the Women’s Graphics Center?

I don’t think it existed then.

Didn’t it?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 21: Tape 11: Side A Page 281 I’m not sure, but, I wasn’t aware of it. I’d like to say...oh you mean where Susan King worked? Susan King is a younger generation of artists, there’s no doubt. She was...when I saw her in the Eighties, although she was... I mean, I could say she was at least ten years younger than me.

I think she was born in ‘46, I can’t quite remember.

OK, so she’s six years younger.

I ought to remember, I’m working on her interview at the moment.

I didn’t know Susan King until I probably, know of her until I probably went to publish... No, I went to the Boston Book Fair in ‘84 or something like that, and I think I probably got to know about her then.

And you’ve since met her?

And...?

You’ve since met her, have you?

I met her more, I got her mixed up actually, it was terrible, I got her mixed up with Helen Fredericks[ph], they both look rather similar, or I thought they did, at this other conference in ‘89 put on by artist book shop in Bleak[??] Street, whatever their name is. I mean this enormous conference in ‘89, or was it ‘90, I’m not certain, but it was held in New York, and I had met, I talked to Susan King a bit there, quite a lot actually, with Kevin Osborne[ph], both those.

Can you remember what you talked about?

Well basically her and Kevin Osborne[ph] were sort of, sort of discussing something, and... I had seen the book she had printed at Nexus too, because when I printed a book at Nexus I saw her, I was aware of the fact that if she did a book of something

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 21: Tape 11: Side A Page 282 called ‘Conversation from the South’ or whatever it was called, then in a funny sort of way I think that maybe she was connected in some way to the south, and I hadn’t realised that. I never spoke to her on a very intimate level at all, I still don’t know an awful lot about her. But I see her very much as a writer. I know she makes visual books but I do see her as someone who writes, and I think that is a very strong element of her work. And that’s possibly what my comment was about what I call diagrammatic drawings. I know they were, I understand that they were done by, they were actually done by doctors of, and it relates to the book in itself, but, and it is material, the book, but on the other hand the book isn’t primarily visual, it’s about the story that is written in it, and I would say that these things are like, accumulated and accounted for images due to the subject matter that’s been written about, rather than the images that the text relates to.

End of Track 21: Tape 11: Side A

And, how did Martin react to ‘Passage’?

I seem to remember him saying, ‘Why didn’t you say thanks to Helen at the end?’ And I said, ‘I didn’t know that Helen was involved.’ And he never explained. He...he was very sweet about it, he was sweet about it, and of course he included it in the exhibition the British Council put on and he organised, which, I think the British Council exhibition had both ‘Passage’ and ‘Foolscrap’ in it, and possibly ‘Spaces’. I’m not sure what year it was in, probably ‘74, maybe, I would have had three books in that exhibition.

Can you just for the record tell me what you include in the paperback series.

The paperback series is ‘Passage’, which was the first book we’ve been talking about; ‘Foolscrap’, which is the book I did in L.A., but then came back and did it here in ‘73; and then ‘Spaces’ where I went back again to New York with both early books, and more or less started ‘Spaces’ while I was in New York, in a sense selling that book. I considered ‘Spaces’ an important book for me. Then I went back to London and the end of ‘74 Kate left and Helen came into the house, and we started working on ‘Loophole’ together.

And is that one of the paperback series?

That is the fourth one, and the final one is ‘Chinese Whispers’. So, it’s ‘Passage’, ‘Foolscrap’, ‘Spaces’, ‘Loophole’, which was our, what we call our honeymoon book, and ‘Chinese Whispers’, and they were both printed in ‘75, we did two books in that year.

And what do you feel about ‘Passage’ now?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 22: Tape 11: Side B Page 284 I am so glad it’s still there, and it shows that all the things I was really... I can’t feel, you know, sometimes people feel ashamed of their early work if you like; I don’t feel ashamed of ‘Passage’. I am so glad I did it.

Because?

I’m so glad it came out the way it did, in the way I am proud of it. I mean it’s still the first book. I think lots of things have gone on since that are important, but just being able to establish ‘Passage’ and to see how it came out, and being able to go on to make the other four books, that was all thanks to ‘Passage’.

And, so...

Although, I might say, I only thought I was going to produce one book initially.

Oh really?

Yes.

Why?

I didn’t see anything beyond the first book, and the only book.

And, at this point, after the beach, did you paint again, as in painting?

No, never.

And was that a subconscious thing that happened, or not?

Actually the beach wasn’t...I mean I wasn’t painting before the beach either, I was just making these fibreglass things. I would say it was the whole year, something like 1969-stroke-70 that I last painted.

Straight after that exhibition at the Serpentine in June ‘71.

So, is it true to say that ceasing to do that kind of art activity was in one sense a retreat, and in another sense it happened because you found the books, I mean it was both a negative and a positive?

Well it was a rejection initially of the failure of the show which I felt...a lot of the people had said, no, it’s not a failure at all, but I felt it. And, but it probably helped me get on to making books. I only see the books as an extension of it, I never really see it as very different.

And did Margaret react to the book?

Margaret was interested. I can’t remember her reaction, it leaves no impression on me whatsoever. She is much more interested these days. I think in those days she wasn’t that interested to be honest.

Was she interested in your painting?

Yes, I think that she felt it was...I think she stopped asking me, when am I going to make more paintings.

And at the time you made ‘Passage’, were you aware of other people in England making books at all?

Not really, no, I didn’t feel...I thought it was an open field and I was very very pleased to be in there.

And so how did ‘Foolscrap’ come about?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 22: Tape 11: Side B Page 286 Well, that was, as I said I sent to L.A., dropped ‘Passage’ through Ed Ruscha’s front door, and was working right away on the next book. I mean I could see no possibility, in fact I was rather worried that being in L.A. I would stop making books altogether, but there came a point where there was a possibility I would stop making books because I was going to have to earn a living, and I was basically living off what I had with me, and Kate didn’t have any money, it wasn’t as if there was any other money coming in. We moved out of one place that we were staying right down by the Pacific Ocean which she had rented, because we simply couldn’t afford it, and I took a kind of, a sort of, I think it was a store front, it was a shop front which originally had been a hamburger joint, in really the sort of ghetto part of Venice in L.A., the black area. And, then I was looking for a job basically and someone had offered me something called ‘Sundance’ magazine in San Francisco, or, I don’t know if it would ever come to anything or not but there was this magazine, but it evidently went out, it went out of circulation a year or so later. I think this guy was trying to be rid of the job and he was trying to find someone else for it, but that was good enough. But it would have meant that we would have, having put all this energy into making this place to live in L.A. which was again rather like one of these empty spaces that I put up, and I was particularly paranoid by now, because we certainly weren’t allowed to live in it, but I was also smoking an awful lot of dope and I was becoming more and more paranoid, which kind of happened. And, I think I remember three months of bliss and one month of absolute hell in L.A. And then this letter arrived from my father, which, as I say, fell off the page, and there was no...there was no...I hadn’t...I mean, I was just at that point about to take on this job. I was very worried about whether I was going to be able to make another book, and it was a question of, perhaps this would rescue the situation. Not only would I get, you know, perhaps I would... There were, you know, my father needed me. I mean I needed to see him too, I didn’t...this was something new. I know he had had a cancer operation the year before, but everything had been all clear, and, but I knew when we said goodbye that there was something very funny about him, and I knew he was crying, and I felt very very strange and upset. I knew he was standing in the middle of Church Row and he was crying, so he must have known.

Did he cry often, was he a man who cried?

He didn’t show it. I think he could cry, more than I can do. But...yes, he could cry over family matters.

And when you said goodbye to him then, did you acknowledge that he was crying?

I was going up and down the road in the car, you know, sort of reversing, turning round, and looking at him, and I was far away, he was standing in his slippers, and he was straight, waving. But you know, my mother no longer cries. We used to leave her in Southwold, the time that Francis died she used to cry, but now, she’s coping, it’s amazing.

Is crying equivalent of not coping?

It’s acknowledging great sadness and the possibility you’re not going to see each other again, but I think what’s happened is that she’s gone on living, and... I only spoke to her today actually. Her memory’s going, but, she always says that, she’s still not, Alzheimer’s, major major; she could be, God knows what will happen. Well I know what will happen, I’ll have to go and look after her, but I mean, that would be a major sacrifice for me to give up making books, which, you know, who knows? There’s all ways of doing things, but if I’m just about to print a book and suddenly she started not remembering where she was and who she was, I would have to drop it, and obviously... We’ll see.

But, when I said to you how did ‘Loophole’ come about, you said, ‘I went to L.A. and was working on it’; and what I meant was really, what the ideas for it, I mean, what is ‘Loophole’?

Right, ‘Loophole’.

I’m sorry, ‘Foolscrap’, sorry.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 22: Tape 11: Side B Page 288 Oh, ‘Foolscrap’. I could have told you ‘Loophole’ easily. ‘Foolscrap’. ‘Foolscrap’ was so difficult. ‘Foolscrap’ I wanted to hold in a sense what I thought I, the ground I had made, if you like, the whole sort of odd bit that played off the previous book to begin with. However, it evolved into the thousand and one, you know, Islands’ dressing, which really was a real... I didn’t do that till I got back to London.

What was your starting point on it?

How did it come about?

Well if you didn’t do that bit till you got to London, and we have established that you were working in Los Angeles, what were you doing in..?

I did ‘A Thousand And One Islands Dressings’ in my...I had, I was working away in my notebook, and I had that written in, ‘A Thousand And One Islands Dressing’, but I didn’t think I saw it as seed or cress growing, it came to that idea that that’s what it is. So it was the joining of an image and an idea and a sequence to something I had already written down. Well, the reason was that there is a thousand and one uses that we, it’s commercially... I mean, the involvement in kind of commercial punning, I’ve already explained in L.A., there was a whole sort of thing going on, and there was also that kind of, do I have to say, but there is the Islands dressing which used to be used for hamburgers, well there is, the Thousand Island dressings I think. This was my attempt to lasso and bring that in. I acknowledged it as a very important word play, punning, thing. The way the idea evolved was peculiar, it might not have happened if I hadn’t come home, and I set up a special seed-growing place and a place to put the camera so that it went underneath and above, so that every morning I could photograph it this way and that. And meanwhile I was trying to get people out of the house. I mean, I had gone to L.A. I might say without any idea of coming back, and I had occupied the house with various people, and I can’t remember how I arranged the rent. But anyway there were people occupying different parts and different [INAUDIBLE].

Why didn’t you return to L.A. after your father had died?

Well yes, I wonder why. Settled down in London and printed ‘Foolscrap’ and realised that if I went back to America I would never be able to print books.

Because you wouldn’t...

There wouldn’t be any financial backing, I wouldn’t have money from the house. As it was, by the time Helen arrived I was very highly in debt, and of course her practical kind of hands-on approach to things was again very, it saved me from quite a deep rut I had really made for myself.

But are you saying that ‘Foolscrap’ really expands a little passage, but isn’t terribly important to you? You don’t seem to have a lot...

I think the important book is ‘Spaces’.

Was ‘Foolscrap’ a necessary bridge to get you to ‘Spaces’?

Possibly, because the end bit was what I photographed in LA.

Can you for the tape talk about what that is?

Yes, it’s a long sequence of film, so it’s basically film which is fitted into the actual pages of the book. I don’t think I can go on for much longer.

It’s all right, we’re nearly through. Do you want a little rest?

No it’s all right, I’ll do this. But I was suddenly feeling a bit strange then. Where the actual film that you take out of the camera is used when blown up to the size of the actual page of the book, the actual sort of cutting of the continuous film works with the page, and, basically it was about the picture within the picture within the picture. So, in the second sequence... The first sequence is in negative, which was a bad idea I think now looking back, I mean I had to be so radical, this idea, oh God! But it would

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 22: Tape 11: Side B Page 290 have probably been much more easier to understand if it had been the right way around, but of course, you know, I had to accept, I had to say, well there is an element to this working out of photographs that is the negative of the positive, and so what, that should have its equal amount of run as the positive side. So, but the second one is of a screen, a projector, projecting onto a screen an image of a bit of text next to an image that is on a screen. Sorry, an image that has been back-projected with a screen. So there’s a kind of, the picture within the picture within the picture, and the actual picture, what I was saying was that I considered the contexts created, sort of brackets around an event, were more important than the actual event itself. It was actually called ‘The Longest Light in the World’, which was just a traffic, a series of traffic lights that were at the end of the place I lived in, and the cars coming. I was thinking, I took photographs at regular intervals of this traffic light before it turned from red to green, and the, just the cars that came up to this point, or the cars that went through or the cars that accumulated, and that is the actual moving image if you like, or the changing image within itself. I had established that there were like these three things, and one was interference, which came along later, but there was... Really that in a way you can interpret it any way. You could say it was image and text, I would say that now, but at that point I had different words for it. But I consider that what was important about the other thing was this idea of interference; in other words that I had set up something which was, I was quite used to doing this photographically, this idea of set-up, and it’s actually part of photographic terms, I never knew this before but set-up is part of, terms of, a way a photographer works in the studio. I had set up a certain series of things to happen or to manipulate, but I thought that, I felt that there was something that would...rather than going along with that, I wanted to set up also an opposing thing, which I called ‘Interference’, and in a certain sort of way, for instance when it came, evolved out into ‘Young Masters and Misses’, ‘Interference’ became something more specifically something that, possibly illusionistic image of a pencil or a protractor or something that you might find in the pages of a book irrespective of what’s going on in the book, or a roll of Sellotape or, etcetera.

A sort of artifice and interruption.

Yes. Yes.

I mean, I suppose...

But in fact in, just to go back to ‘The Longest Light in the World’, which does refer to the traffic light, the interference, well there wasn’t any interference in that, I hadn’t...except for the fact that I was taking a bit of text and the bit of text was there with every image within the projected image, which was being projected if you see... And in the end the actual physicality of the whole contraption worked in the book quite well, I liked the way that the actual pages of the book broke up, the little set piece, and made it different every time because it always overlapped and overlapped a different part of the... And the actual procedure of the way, the problems of overlapping images into book publishing and book perfect binding and all that came through, so sometimes a bit of image got repeated, sometimes it, you know, the printing wasn’t... But Neville added to it, I was happy with that. In the end that became the interference. I did, in a sense I came, I left that open for that to happen. I knew by the time I had printed the book what the problems were about really trying to get an accurate overlap between something that you continue over the spine, and actually that, the interest and use of image over the spine and the, you know, the place where the pages fold out, has been a continuing theme all the way through the books, and it probably started with my utter frustration with it not working absolutely to perfection the first time I did it, and then attempting to use it in all sorts of ways later. And in a way my knowledge of printing, a lot of ideas came from the way things went with printing, the way things didn’t go sometimes, and trying to use those to the best advantage. And I thought, if we can deal with every single problem that goes wrong with printing, this will be a major content for me.

[INAUDIBLE] all your life.

It’s all my life, yes.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

Have you any idea what today’s date is, Telfer Stokes?

Well it’s, yesterday it was the 29th, it must be the 30th, is it?

You’re very logical.

Oh, so logical! [LAUGHS]

Where are we?

What? We’re Friday I think.

But where, physically?

Oh, in the British Museum Library.,

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

You said you had had some thoughts in the early hours of the morning.

Ah, well there’s a number of different, various thoughts. Yes. I mean in certain sort of ways... Well, OK, so, I’m thinking back to the kind of conversation we had about books last night, and we were talking basically about what we call, what I call a paperback series of books, and you were saying initially, so why did that sequence go on for so long?

In ‘Passage’.

In ‘Passage’. For instance the bread or, perhaps the burnt pages or something like that. And I think that in this argument or this discussion you might call it, between form and content, it was because I found a content in a formal, in a formal action if you like. I mean in other words I worked out if I burnt, if I made a burn mark on a series of pieces of paper, I probably, it would go through to so many layers, so then I could thread it and then re-photograph it back and front in the book. But the thing

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 22: Tape 11: Side B Page 293 was that ultimately the actual image that it created was the actual content; it looked rather like a sort of sitting dog.

Yes, I wasn’t actually asking you why each sequence was a certain length; I was asking why you went on and did another sequence and another sequence and another sequence with different...

Oh, well then that relates to the idea that, here is this wonderful tool that isn’t, I’m not going to use a pencil, I’m not going to use a pen, but this tool the camera, and this tool, the camera, actually gets very close to the very thing that I felt that I was missing out on when I was an artist, which was that I wanted my art to be about life, and what was going on in the world. And I felt that the most removed method would be to use the camera, but also as I said before, this idea that it had only been around for so long and it had only been used in certain sort of ways, inspired me to the idea of using it in the way that I felt I could use it. So there was sort of openings in the idea of making books as openings, and the idea of using a camera, but not the openings that seemed to be there for, say, drawing or doing things which is the sort of question you asked me before.

Do you think somewhere in you there was a sort of, in terms of painting, there was a sort of self-censorship that wouldn’t have let you do something that was figurative after a certain point, for instance that wouldn’t have let you do a painting of an iron?

Well I think that probably I would have admired other people’s work of doing paintings of irons enough to not want to have to do it myself, and I do feel that there is a kind of way of progressing along the road where you can, it can make your contribution in an area which isn’t so over-invested. And, there’s another thing which I haven’t mentioned at all, and I think we are talking about sort of my life or whatever it is, today, but, I haven’t said very much about my father, but my father ultimately is somebody that I had to in a sense make... By not reading his books, I left an area open for me to explore. I was too frightened of finding out too much about myself by reading, or too much about what I wanted to do in reading sets of aspects of what he had written about. For instance, I was walking here from Kentish Town to St. Pancras

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 22: Tape 11: Side B Page 294 and along, just coming into King’s Cross there are a number of kind of, sort of workshops with cars, second-hand, I don’t know, garages, and there was also sort of office furniture out in the street for sale and stuff like that, and I was thinking, now what is this uplifting feeling, why is it so wonderful when you see this sort of furniture which is out of its context and put on the street? And I suddenly remembered, my God! there’s a whole passage in Adrian’s books about that very thing, when he’s talking about the... And we, in a sense we are basically talking about mental furniture, why we, why we feel uplifted when we see these things in the street, is because ultimately these old pieces of, these sort of things, these sort of mental blockages, furnitures, whatever we want to call these things that are memories etcetera, that are very much in one place, have actually been shifted and moved and are being aired. And he saw that as very much like the process of psychoanalysis, that’s how he saw it, and he saw the actual reaction and the kind of, the light that was shed on all these various sort of things as being very related to that. I experienced those same things without even realising, and I do realise that I do come across the same things, and I, more recently, I mean, for instance someone said, ‘Oh you really ought to have [INAUDIBLE], or you really ought to have his earliest book, which is “Sunrise in the West”’ or something, and in flipping through one of these books I realised he had been to India, and that he had also been to see the very same, he landed in Bombay and had looked at all these Buddhist caves, and that in a way they could have formulated all sorts of ideas about the early Renaissance that he became involved in later. And the very reasons why I was so attracted to this idea that a cave should be carved out of solid stone and that the pillars then were basically still the solid stone but carved around, and the idea that there was a sculpture as well on the outside of this column, all in one, was precisely what he was talking about in relation to the Renaissance. So, I had to be so careful, because I would have nothing, ultimately I would have felt it had been... So, in relation to what I said about not using the drawing but using the camera, and in relation to what you said about, you couldn’t, [INAUDIBLE] I feel that in representing whatever you were talking about in a drawing, again, it relates to the idea of history and in a funny sort of way my family, and my family...and it does, it backs up that very statement that you’ve made, actually.

And it relates to making a space for yourself that hasn’t yet been filled?

It relates to making a space, yes.

Which leads us to ‘Spaces’.

Does it? Are we talking about books today?

Yes.

Oh right. Well...

Hang on. Oh right, we’ll go on for a little bit. We’re going to have to change the tape in a minute. One thing I wanted to pick up from ‘Foolscrap’, you’ve already begun in that book to produce the watermark, the piece of paper in it, and we didn’t talk about that yesterday.

Well, it follows very much using the cress. I mean the cress, and also the layering, the cress after all, I set up the camera in such a way that I could photograph the back and the front of this bit of blotting paper, and I noticed that the watermark came through as well, I mean, I didn’t really actually notice that there was such things as watermarks on blotting paper, but I noticed that, especially when it was, water was added to it, that, there it was. And that was another sort of reason for sort of telling the printer you’ve got to line these things up, I mean there’s the watermark.

Why were you photographing the blotting paper? Because that’s what the cress grows on?

Well I was seeing how, I mean how the cress could grow in a book, the only way would be to have a set-up where light both shone from the top of the page, or from one side of the paper with the cress on it, and also from underneath, and so I had to make some kind of little contraption where I could slip the camera in underneath and a light, and slip the camera above. Because after all the cress was only growing one

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 22: Tape 11: Side B Page 296 way, I mean I couldn’t turn it upside-down and photograph it or do anything like that, because it would just fall off the paper.

So really finding the watermark was an inadvertent discovery to do with the practicalities of making cress grow out of a book?

It was, but I mean, I can’t actually remember which way round it went, to be absolutely honest. I mean I do remember going to get paper samples after that, going to Reed Paper, because there was the pun on Reed, so I was thinking very strongly about this idea, good heavens, you know, what is the basis to a company called Read, and realising that it was spelt R-E-E-D and not E-A-D. But you know, I found that things like that more than coincidence. So when I went to Reed Paper I was looking for paper with watermarks, but they ended up by giving me little type note things with the sample written in the right-hand corner, which I then started to use as well.

But, it’s fascinating, because that, for the reader, becomes such an exciting part of your books, and the fact that it came in by accident is...

Yes.

Through the process, it’s wonderful.

Yes.

End of Track 22: Tape 11: Side B

I mean, the thing I haven’t mentioned beforef is of course that it seemed that I was prepared to use paper without thinking about it, and then realised that, oh there was even more to it than that, depending on what paper you select, and certainly this idea of using different paper occurred at that point because of the different samples and so on. And, oh it certainly, we lead on to ‘Spaces’ where...

Can I just ask you before we do that, was there any part of you when you were considering these different papers, that related it in any way to the livres d’artistes and their special papers? I mean it’s sort of almost an anti-livre d’artiste, but that was an unconscious aspect.

I must say I was never aware of...I mean, if I did, was aware of it, I have rejected it completely. I thought that was an old tradition which I didn’t want to be involved in. I mean, perhaps I should say about Ed Ruscha is that what I found refreshing about Ed Ruscha was that he didn’t relate to any tradition, again, and that in a way, it might be that we can retrospectively say, oh yes it relates to what’s going on in various sort of ways in L.A. at that time which I noticed in Joanna Drucker’s[ph] book, she I think was probably quite a good, she lays down quite an interesting kind of context of how Ed Ruscha should...I had no idea about that, but to me that was refreshing to the point...and probably, what I’ve just been talking about, this whole idea of having to find an area, was a very important one for me because of my sense of background. But the livres d’artistes, if we’re going back to that, I just totally rejected that.

Had you seen any?

No.

So you weren’t sort of positively rejecting it, you were just not being aware of it?

I’m sorry, I had seen, I mean yes, I had seen, I have always known this idea of a folder, which, you know, this idea that someone presented their work in an etching, in

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61/ Track 23: Tape 12: Side A Page 298 a drawing, in a kind of open folder type of idea, which I always understood was a livre d’artiste type of idea, or it evolved from that, and that, perhaps that’s another word. It’s basically a French kind of idea of accumulating various sort of things around a theme.

But not particularly a text?

But there’s certainly no binding, and not necessarily text; no binding, it was always loose-leaf, and that was again why I rejected the loose-leaf; any kind of book that was like playing cards, or something that didn’t have a binding, I felt immediately was wrong because it wasn’t bound, and the whole sense of binding was very important to changing it.

And, sort of twenty or nearly thirty years later, has your feeling about livre d’artiste changed at all?

Well I’ve played around with it, I’ve come very close to possibly making one, but...

Have you?

Well, yes, you could say, I mean if you analyse sort of something like a livre d’artiste, it comes down to a poet’s contribution, and the artist’s contribution. And so when I went to Russia and did this book with Vsevolod Nakrasov, I mean I didn’t do a book with him, I mean he simply gave me the typescript in Russian and English, and I said, what a pity, because I was doing this other...I would have used it if it wasn’t...I was doing something with Gennadi Aygi, or, Aygee[ph] or whatever his name was. But Gennadi Aygi had absolutely no intention of doing anything with me, it seemed, by the time I had left Russia; I mean he made out that he was while I was there but he... And so I was left with Nakrasov’s thing, and so I did it, and then went back and showed it to him, and he... So, but anyway, that’s... So, but, I was...but you could say I was interested in Russian books, I was enormously interested in Russian books, the sort of early, you know, what we call the Futurist books.

Oh, I was aware of them, I was aware of them, yes. I was aware of them, but I certainly didn’t see them as an example of when I was doing ‘Passage’, but I certainly was feeding into that by the time I was doing ‘Ajar’, yes, but that, I suppose we’re talking about the Nineties then, yes.

Mm. So in other words in some way the livre d’artiste has become less something you need to totally reject at this point?

Yes, and I don’t think, I’m moving completely away from that anyway. I mean I think when Helen and I did ‘Water on the Border’, again we used an existing text, and, I am happy with, I mean it does look very old-fashioned that book now. I don’t know why we both, we agree about that. I’m not quite sure why that is, but... Oh, it...how did it...it doesn’t, because we were combining more than that, we were combining children’s drawings, we were combining an introduction with, and an introduction in Chinese, we were combining the idea of Chinese working from one side of the book to the other, and the English or the Scots going the other way, we were combining in a sense colour, colour as I say, and the text, and the images, and the photographs. So in a way it was like a balancing act, it was not what I would have called a livre d’artiste, which never seemed to be a balancing act to me. And if you look at it now, I feel there’s almost, it only just holds together, I mean, I’m so glad it’s bound, because there are so many disparate things gone in there.

So in other words, you don’t mind acknowledging or suggesting yourself really that some of the books come close to some of the notions thing to the livre d’artiste, but you are happier if they come out not being?

Well I mean I noticed that the actual direction that we have both taken now separately is completely back in another direction, you know, I mean, the book I’m producing, in a way, I mean I’ve...yes, I found a text, I found a text in a voice that I’ve written down, and I’m not being supplied by someone else’s text. I mean, I made big efforts with the Russian book, ‘Ajar’, to incorporate the text within the images so that the images

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61/ Track 23: Tape 12: Side A Page 300 ultimately were hopefully, I hope that it still works, more important, or were more focused than the actual text. I feel in a way, I mean it’s only that way round that a livre d’artiste works; I do feel that in the end the actual image remains subsidiary to the text in a livre d’artiste.

What do you feel about something like Ian Tyson’s work, do you feel those are livres d’artistes?

No, I really feel that he’s quite straightforwardly a printer making books of the kind of flat-bed litho. I imagine the kind of press that he would have had when he was working at Wimbledon for instance, and that he has employed that for making books. But he is an abstract artist in my mind, to my mind, the use of plane and line, and colour. And, he’s managed to achieve a sort of, a very fine kind of quality, you know, which is very unexpected really from those processes. I think they’re, I rather admire his books. I haven’t seen that many. I must say at the actual, at the show he had in Archway at that gallery there, I found it actually very difficult to look at the books, but it might have just been because that was the opening, and he was around, and, but I loved the sense and feel of them, you know, the quality that came over, and the kind of... But he certainly doesn’t, you know, he’s a very different, he comes from a very different place than I do, and I think that’s what’s refreshing for both of us I hope, that we do, we don’t meet on many, anywhere really, we’re completely different, yes.

Mm. And, OK, so let’s move on to ‘Spaces’, which is obviously a very significant title even if you don’t mean it to be.

Well, I mean, I mean ‘Spaces’ relates to, it starts off by interior of different places, people’s places, or spaces. But then they’re, you know, it’s the kind of illusionist window, page type of idea.

You actually went to New York to make it, or...?

No, I was selling the first two books, and, that was ‘Passage’ and ‘Foolscrap’, and I was taking them around, and this book started to happen in my head, really, and I

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61/ Track 23: Tape 12: Side A Page 301 more or less wrote the whole first part of it, and I literally wrote down every single move I was going to do and make, I visualised it in New York before I...and I was only there about two weeks.

Who were you selling to?

You know I can’t remember anyone’s names now. I must say I was in touch with various sort of people and saying, ‘Where do you think, who should I show this to?’ And there were a variety of different people, Lynn Weiner[ph] was one of them, who I had, who was now in New York I seem to remember, and still is, yes, she was running something called Artist Space, and she had originally been a sort of assistant at the Whitechapel Gallery in the sort of Seventies. And she was from L.A., and I had met up with her in L.A. as well, and introduced to Jack Goldstein, who...and so on. So, there was her. There was Clive at the Museum of Modern Art Library, he sort of... But I can’t really remember the names of the people, some of them were galleries, some of them were book shops, and some of them, things like that.

Was Printed Matter one?

Well Printed Matter were already, Printed matter...oh no, Printed Matter, we had already, we were sort of... It’s quite interesting, one of the, you know, when you look at the numbers of the books that dealt with Printer Matter, our numbers are before they become more than two or something, you know. I mean, the early books. We were doing books before Printed Matter opened, and Printed Matter took them automatically, because we were around and we were there, and I had a lot of contact with America by that point of course. And of course Clive was kind of, well he wasn’t in on it originally I don’t think but certainly they were sort of referring to him.

So in a way Clive’s knowledge of your books was probably pretty important in determining his policy really at MOMA.

Yes, there was no doubt about it, it was a tremendous benefit in lots of ways. He certainly said at one point, I mean I remember, he let me know that we had to come to

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61/ Track 23: Tape 12: Side A Page 302 his conference at Boston, and I think that was about ‘84, and we had just had Laurie I think, Helen and I had had Laurie, and it was the last, it was probably only about six months before, and it was going to be, he said, you know, and the reason was that he was going to give this talk about artist books which was...and I was absolutely amazed. I knew beforehand that it was going to be a condemning kind of speech. And he kept on telling me, ‘Don’t be, you know, I don’t know what...I’m really interested to know what you think about this’. But, and so we did go, we did go, yes, and we did get someone, Helen’s mother, to look after Laurie, though I must say I was very worried about leaving him. And, I think Helen, oh yes, and Helen was too, but, it really affected me. And, so Clive gave this talk, and he was in a terrible state. He’s said since that he’s never been so nervous before he gave a talk in his life, ever. And one of the things he did was to basically condemn practically every aspect of making artist books, and I remember a couple of things I felt were absolutely directed towards me. There were one or two things like, I mean he didn’t say these fucking artists, but he more or less was, ‘They can’t even spell’. And of course, we had gone through this kind of thing, I mean, I don’t care that I can’t, I don’t spell, in fact I make it quite a, I feel that, it’s nothing I feel embarrassed about. I mean, I’m just terribly lazy, but also, I’ve always been, I mean, you know, I’ve written a sort of classic letter to a bank manager about, the first sentence I would write four words wrong, you know, ‘next’ would be, you know, ‘next month’, N-E-X-S-T, next, month, M-O-U-N-T-H. Complete, well, I think in the face of convention sometimes unfortunate reactions come up, and I think that I employed it to my total disadvantage in lots of aspects of my own life earlier on. But, and it probably was just literally a kind of revolt against the literary background and all that. Yes, and, I mean, so, there was that. And then, I suppose because I’ve had to make these, had to do this thing to be able to then.. He wanted to extract himself as a matter of fact from it, I felt that he, what had happened was that he had got himself into this situation of being a spokesman, and he wanted to extract himself from it, and it didn’t actually do it.

Did you say there were other things in what he said that you felt were directed at you, or that applied to you?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61/ Track 23: Tape 12: Side A Page 303 Well I feel that, all sorts of things that happened in lots of different ways, for instance, just a mere suggestion to Martin that Clive thought it might be a good idea to write a thing in an exhibition he was going to organise for the British Council, led to obviously Clive writing quite a lot of things. Although he was already writing his column, of course, but he hadn’t written in catalogues up to that time. And he then got his, he then...I don’t know if, how it worked out but I think he was approached for the job at MOMA, I don’t know if it was Kingston McShine[ph] or not, I mean I don’t know, I don’t know how it worked. But I felt, well all these things had quite a lot of, I’m not saying I directly had anything to do with it, but I felt that in a way, he had enough to, he had enough of a reputation to be able to get that job there. And so in a funny sort of way, what happened with him I felt somehow connected to, so when he did this, when he gave this talk and when he desperately wanted us to come and witness it, and...but also he said there’s all these other presses in America you really ought to be getting involved in you know, because, this and that. And I did take that, I met Joan Lyons at that conference and that led to us actually going to America and printing books, but also no doubt with his situation, his thing at the Museum of Modern Art he did put forward our names when Riva Castleman[ph] said was there anybody he wanted, and that’s why we were actually in Riva Castleman[ph]...although it was Riva Castleman[ph] that actually published our book at the Museum of Modern Art and nothing to do with Clive at all, it was his suggestion. So there was a lot of backwards and forwards sort of things going on, and suggestions. And so, you know, going back to ‘Spaces’ again, of course there would be a meeting in New York, and I said, ‘Well who do you think I should go and see, Clive?’ I mean after all I haven’t, you know, it was... And so that was it. But you know, it didn’t, it was nice, it was like usually the way one would present a book in America was that people would be interested, they would be very friendly, but they would, you know, as soon as you left and walked out of the door they would be onto the next thing. So, it’s not as if it was going to change, but it was enough to really be very inspiring.

Before we go back to ‘Spaces’, can you just tell me, when Clive made this speech did you respond from the floor?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61/ Track 23: Tape 12: Side A Page 304 No, not at all. And I felt that he was shooting himself in his foot basically. He asked me, you know, ‘What do you think? How do you feel?’ you know, and all that, and I said, ‘Well, I feel that you probably had to say all these things’. I don’t feel anything bad about it. I mean I did mention the thing about, talking about not spelling, and I feel that probably that was a reference to me, and he didn’t deny it. I mean that’s actually what appealed to me about Helen, she couldn’t spell either. No, not the only thing. No, I must say I felt that he was doing himself more damage and it was totally self-destructive.

And how did other people there react?

I don’t think, you see the funny thing is that when someone thinks they’re doing something, they’re not necessarily doing what they think, and he thought that everyone followed every single word he made, but the thing is, with most people who stand up and talk from a piece of paper, no one’s listening. I mean you know, I wish I could actually talk, and sometimes I’m really happy when I can do it without that bit of paper in front of me. I can actually forget the sort of, the total kind of self- consciousness that I feel when getting up in front of all these people and the fear and so on. And, I do feel that there are things that you could surprise yourself with, you know, which then they would take in. But I think when someone reads prepared frightful kind of condemnation of artist books and giving it at a sort of book conference, they’re not going to take it like that at all, you know, one quarter of it, one eighth would have gone in.

And he certainly hasn’t managed to distance himself from the whole thing.

No.

Do you feel at all that Clive’s attitude is rather rigid now? I feel he has taken a position and can’t let himself escape it.

Well he’s had that before, I mean that was really why he did the talk. I mean I think that that’s exactly what it was. He felt that he was completely, he was probably

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61/ Track 23: Tape 12: Side A Page 305 having trouble with the Museum by then anyway, I mean just the way he’d been pigeonholed and held down, he couldn’t do this and he couldn’t do that, and he was trying desperately to do all these different things. And in a way, it was a sort of expression of his frustration with the limitations of possibly the way he was looking at things, but also the way he...he probably wanted to expand in all sorts of distant directions and he just wasn’t allowed to do it.

But I also feel with him, he’s got an incredible bond with the Sixties and the Seventies, and that he’s holding on to that whole era as well.

Mm, mm.

Both in terms of music and lifestyle and philosophy, and that that actually is affecting it too.

Yes, but the Seventies is all back again.

Yes, which maybe will make him modify a bit, that the periods of the Nineties and the Seventies can actually co-exist.

But I mean what I would be afraid of would be that the Eighties, I mean I would hate the Eighties to come back.

Because?

Because the Eighties were an appalling period.

Are we talking in book terms or in world terms?

Well, I’m thinking of, I mean the only kind of really appalling kind of government that I can think of that’s ever existed in this country, was not the most appalling but I mean the most... I remember at the time of the Falklands War I couldn’t find anybody who agreed with my absolute horror of the whole thing, and of the Thatcher years. I

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61/ Track 23: Tape 12: Side A Page 306 couldn’t find anyone in Scotland, they all thought it was great, you know. I thought, good God! this is really what does happen, is that, you know, when it appeals to everyone’s sense of kind of, you know, we’re not going to be... You know, this whole idea of the British Empire, it really brings that down back again, that it’s still in the English, there, somewhere in this sort of, what, however many generations we are from the colonial thing, that we’re still trying to run it like that.

You weren’t talking in book terms particularly?

Well, no, because that reflects. I mean I believe books reflect the period that we live in too, and I mean it was the big, it was...well, let’s not just say it was a livre d’artiste period; it was also a period where books, you know, the unique book was being produced.

By, who are you thinking of?

Well, I’m thinking, oh God! I can’t even think of the names but they were going on in America, I noticed when I was there in the Eighties, well the early Eighties, there was this whole thing of a single book. It wasn’t a book, it was an object, book object. I mean you could say that that is now prevalent and still going, I mean if I look at the artist book fair last year, they were mostly book objects. I mean not these impossible book objects which you can’t open and shut, and are in a case, and have got all this stuff thrown at them so they’re sort of plaster casts, they’re not books, but then, there are certain book objects that I really, I mean for instance I looked at Sophie Artemis’ book called ‘The Walk’.

Called what?

I think it was ‘The Walk’, I think it was just ‘The Walk’.

I can’t remember what that one is like.

But what is inside these seven or eight pages, what kind of pages are they? I mean are they printed or...?

No no, they’re found bits and pieces.

But is it paper?

No I don’t think so. Well some bits are. I can’t even remember, I can’t even remember. I just remember, the impression is that it was like a Wallis painting, as far as I was concerned.

Because a lot of her work is on fabric isn’t it.

Mm. I think there was bits of wood. I mean, there was only about seven or eight, or even less, pages. It was odd-shaped, and each page was slightly different. I mean there was no, there was no sense of book except for the fact that it folded and it was...the idea of sequence was there.

And it was bound?

It was bound, yes. I mean the sequence, and that’s really what sequence is about, it has binding.

And why did you like it?

Well it appeals on the level that a Wallis painting appeals to me, as something incredibly basic, and straightforward, I mean, and it was exactly what it was, it’s what she found on this walk, you know, and made the walk into the... I mean, if you sort of pin all the things that you are actually passing your eye on on a walk it might not

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61/ Track 23: Tape 12: Side A Page 308 work, but it just so happened that it did, and I felt that was quite close to what my mother does with driftwood actually.

And, do you think it’s significant that Ruscha doesn’t produce books any more? I mean, I wonder if...

Well there’s the other part of the Eighties that I would like to talk about. A lot of the people that made Conceptual works of art became painters or made saleable objects which was a complete and utter sell-out as far as I was concerned, so you think of Gilbert and George, and you think of Ed Ruscha doing paintings. Now, you could say that he had nowhere to go perhaps after the books, but I think where he went was just a real sell-out, really.

But it’s quite interesting thinking in terms of Clive, and I associate Clive’s values with the Sixties values; if Rushay[ph] had somehow been able to develop those books within his own terms, then they would have been Seventies and Eighties and Nineties books because of when they were produced.

Yes, mm.

The fact that his work is frozen in that period, whatever its impact goes on being, is actually partly why this history of book art is being gradually taken, absorbed and taken for granted. It would make a big difference if Ruscha had gone on.

Are you saying, I mean I don’t quite understand this, are you saying that Ed Ruscha wouldn’t be so interesting?

Not at all.

You’re saying he would be more interesting?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61/ Track 23: Tape 12: Side A Page 309 I’m not saying either of those things. I’m saying that in terms of this history which largely seems, more and more seems to be accepted that a certain type of book art started with Ed Ruscha in the Sixties...

Well whether it is or not. I mean you know...

But it’s very easy to pin that down, because Ruscha’s books were done then and not subsequently.

I see, yes.

And it is just a version of a history.

Yes.

And all history is somebody’s version.

Yes.

But it would be much different if those, if Ruscha had gone on and done other things with books.

Well he did go on doing book things, I mean there’s no doubt about it, he did sort of writing little pieces of text, paintings, and it could have been books, but, I realise why they were paintings, because he could sell them you see.

Yes. No I saw one when I was over in December which someone had bought which was effectively an abstract but with a reference to a corn, and I think it might have had the word corn on it, but it was very soft, you know, it was very easy for people to buy and have on their walls.

Yes.

Mm.

It was lyrical.

But didn’t you see the show at the Serpentine? I remember it very vividly, of his work, a whole lot of, I was absolutely astonished. But this was some time in the Eighties, I can’t remember when it was, but I was absolutely kind of, God! I didn’t know he had done that. And, I ignored, I seem to remember even being presented by Bernie Jacobson, who was someone we used to see quite a lot of originally, and he was...the more recent Ed Ruscha book before I even went to L.A., and I just totally sort of went like that, because I said, oh God!

The tape can’t see that. You are dismissing it.

Oh I see. OK. I just, I just didn’t want to acknowledge it. I felt there’s something odd here, what is this, I am not interested. So...yes, they were, they definitely were sort of story things, but sold on this sort of, this funny sort of whiny voice that I always think he has. I don’t know if he does or not, but he’s a sort of whiner I think. I might, I must say, I don’t make these, I don’t think about Ed Ruscha’s books. I am often asked, actually I do feel that I end up by talking about them because they do come up in lots of conversations about books. When I said to Clive originally, yes, it was Ed Ruscha, it probably was then that I did, but ever since then, and certainly by the time I had started making books myself, I mean I certainly went as far as going to go and see Ed Ruscha and posted ‘Passage’ into his studio, through his front door, but I mean after that I left it alone completely, he’s no longer interested in...

Well you see I think that’s slightly what I feel has happened, that because there’s so few people writing about book art that one person saying, making this statement, because there weren’t other people making other starting points, that it’s become the official history so much, and now you question it.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61/ Track 23: Tape 12: Side A Page 311 That is what you are saying, that is what you are saying, yes. I think that perhaps really what people should do if they are going to talk about Ed Ruscha is write about his books in respect to everything he’s done since as well, you know. I think that’s the point. And it will probably come down to the fact that the reason why people want to write about the books is because he did something with those books which is not really been equalled by what he has done since. And he’s certainly not...I mean whether what he does now is the development from those books or not, that’s a whole possibility or not, you know, I mean I don’t know.

I suppose the other issue is, do you think what he did with books has been equalled by anybody else, not in an imitative sense but in a breaking...

I don’t think that what he did with books was anything more than what happened at a certain point. I don’t think it’s absolutely horrendously fantastic, I really don’t. I might have gone through that very briefly in about ‘72, you know, thinking that, but I mean don’t let that remain the only kind of, as if that’s the only forever lifetime that one should ever...because things have...because things have moved on and I like things that are related. I like to feel I am relating to the present or the time, I feel that that is what the vehicle of book is, it is a possibility to travel, to meet, to go around. I mean this is a contradiction in terms if you think of the, I mean look at us, living in total isolation in Scotland, but, I might say that this total isolation in Scotland creates the need to go out and experience things, and you do, and you pick up whatever you can from what’s happening out there, and the objectiveness is created by that environment to a certain extent. And it’s quite interesting, because Helen is using that environment very strongly for the work she is doing, and what her project is at the present time will relate very much to a kind of, what’s going on, and also what is available in terms of finance too I might say, but I shouldn’t talk about that until it’s come out. But, I would like to think that I certainly do concern myself about finance but much more on the level of sales; in other words I would want to go somewhere with a book as an example of what I could offer someone else if they gave me this or that, you know, it’s like in a bargaining thing; Helen’s actually using it as a grant system for concerning herself about a subject matter that is becoming part of funding that people are getting from the...

I mean she made the point that there aren’t in her view many artist books that are to do with rural landscapes, and that there are a lot to do with urban landscapes, and I must say although I witness you up in Scotland making those joint books, I think of you as an urban creature.

I am. But I think Helen’s exaggerating a bit. I don’t think she does books about rural landscapes, at least...

I don’t think she was quite saying that.

No.

I think she was saying that there aren’t many that actually use that.

Use that material. I’ve never been able to...I mean, I must say it was going very, for me to be able to start using plants around by the river was quite difficult.

Do you know why?

Well they aren’t my material.

Why?

Oh I don’t know. I mean I can go down to the sea and look at various sort of...oh well maybe.....

End of Track 23: Tape 12: Side A

All right, do you want me to repeat that?

Yes please.

OK. I said maybe because, I’ll go down to the seaside, the sea, you know, and I’d look at various objects, and I would see these rusting bits of machinery, and it’s possible that that is material because I’m a man, yes.

But isn’t it also that things like grasses or whatever, I mean they have a tremendous history in a kind of painting that doesn’t necessarily appeal to you?

What sort of history do you mean?

Well, they’re quite often used very lyrically. They’re not distancing objects are they? And that’s what...

They don’t...you mean they are affected...in a sense they’re growth, and they’re something that is affected by the environment and the weather and so on, are you saying that, are you saying those of things?

I’m talking about grasses rather than rusting machines.

I know, but then...

I’m talking about conventional notions of beauty, I suppose.

Ah, beauty. Well I don’t know what conventions of beauty are. I think that ultimately it’s in, you can see beauty in anything. I mean that’s a bit of a cliché but it’s true. I think that is a convention of beauty, this idea that nature is beautiful and everything else isn’t, or anything else that isn’t, isn’t.

Mm.

But there is still, you are much more obviously seen to be making a point if you are looking at something household or urban than you are if you...

Are looking at something in the landscape.

Yes.

Well I think Helen is being very true to her upbringing and her environment, and the consciousness, and then there’s the whole relation to, I would say that if you say that it’s all within the make-up of the person, she can go and talk to her father now, say, ‘I went to so-and-so wood,’ because he can’t get around and he’s...and she knows that in a way she isn’t just talking to him, although he likes to talk all the time and doesn’t like other people to talk, but now he’s having to listen a little to other people. But she knows that he will listen and take it in. And she is probably exercising some part of her that she has been unable to do so for a very long time with her father, which relates to something she has inherited really, some sort of experience, inherited experience. I accept that, certainly, from my family, and I know that mine is much more urban, and I mean when I do see those office chairs sitting in a street, it immediately hits me.

So I’m very interested by that, because I think when I see office chairs sitting in the street I feel sad because I have a sense of the people who used to use them having, not being there.

Right.

And they’re...I always find it very fascinating when somebody’s died, a lot of ordinary objects such as the thing they used to wash up with, which the day before had a

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 24: Tape 12: Side B Page 315 tremendous life; it’s not the kind of object that anybody thinks, oh I’ll take that and give it a new life in my household, they instantly, their whole being changes, they become throwawayable, nobody wants them. And I suppose there’s a degree of that in the office furniture.

Ah, but, let me just add to that. Those are the things, the washing-up things are often the things that are left on the nail when everything else is demolished, and then it assumes quite something. In other words I have often been into a kind of, somewhere where everything has been removed, but there has been one or two things just left, and they become immensely significant. But, you talk about the sadness of that furniture. I immediately rejected those feelings. I could have felt that, I’m not saying I couldn’t have. In other words their usage that has gone through, it’s... But I feel that, on a sunny day, when it’s not raining, and this furniture is outside, and the sun is reflecting off it, and you don’t see it’s worn and used, you can actually see it as mental furniture or, I think that’s the way I feel about it, and it feels uplifting. I do know about usage, I’ve always felt usage is a very important part of accepting investigations into our life and mine, so I mean, we’re all the time looking at usage.

But I suppose also the chairs in the street, there’s a surrealist element to it as well, isn’t there, whether one wants there to be or not.

On a very basic level, it being taken out of an environment and put into another, yes, a sort of ready-made idea, yes, I’m sure that’s exactly what appealed to Duchamp.

Actually yes, I was going to say, when we were talking yesterday and you had talked about Duchamp we didn’t really follow that through. What was your interest in Duchamp, what were you reading and what was exciting about it?

Oh, I suppose in the end it was a new beginning, for me.

Why?

Oh, because it didn’t relate to kind of, the linear kind of progressive tradition.

Why didn’t it? Can you say a bit more?

Well because, I mean in a certain sort of way he was a...he...I mean, he had two brothers who were, or one brother anyway, who was a...they all wanted to become kind of, they were painters, artists, he actually wanted to break with tradition, and I found...I mean just in very simple terms, and he found a way of trying to do it, and so that’s what was fascinating about it.

And you happened to be reading a book on him?

No, I was probably trying to break with tradition as well.

But I mean, you might not have heard of him. I mean why did you...?

Ah, well, I mean I found it quite convincing that if my father actually cuts his finger on the collected works of Duchamp and thought it was a Duchampian joke, then he had acknowledged Duchamp’s existence but had never been that interested in the work.

Yes, but the only reason he had those books to cut his finger on was because you had been reading them and had given them, and I’m trying to go back go back a stage and find why you came across him in the first place.

Oh I searched them out.

But why did you know you wanted to search them out?

Oh I don’t remember, I’m sorry. I can’t go that far. I must have been searching, and I had to find.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 24: Tape 12: Side B Page 317 But I’m quite interested that on the one hand you want to carve a space for yourself, because you feel all these other spaces are filled by your father and your mother or whatever...

Yes.

Or something other artist. And yet, you need to go and find a Duchamp to show you where that space might be. Because Duchamp is in that space isn’t he, but he’s not in that space...

Which space?

His space, that you find exciting and yet you find there’s space for you in his space.

Oh well not really because he doesn’t provide a space for me, but, he certainly isn’t the space where my father was, or my mother, or any of the artists that I had been acquainted to, Roger Hilton, Patrick Heron or the people I used to be introduced to by my mother. I mean I had a whole background of life with other artists, in very small amounts but it was quite enough to make, to change one’s life. And I wanted it to be changed by something completely, well, something that was independent of that. I didn’t feel any of those people relate in any way to Duchamp.

But you still needed a trigger of Duchamp.

Yes.

You needed some platform of some kind.

Yes, I needed a trigger, I needed...well confirmation perhaps, that on this, launching yourself on whatever it is that there was someone you can relate to. I think that’s necessary all through life though.

And what do you feel about Duchamp now?

Oh, I don’t think about Duchamp at all. What do I think about Duchamp? I just feel he was very important at one point, in the same way that Beckett was at another time. But, it was like a, something to step on - not step on but step off from, move away from. I don’t know who I know or feel is important at the moment, I’m not aware of that.

Which bit of life was Beckett important at?

Oh, in the sort of early Sixties, and I mean running through from the theatre, but also the Beckett friends, the ones that shared the flat with me who I went to, went to Paris with, who was going to see Samuel Beckett at the time, and with a friend of Mary Hutchinson in fact. Yes.

So...

Sorry, I’ve come to an end there.

That’s all right.

With all these tapes running out and then suddenly I just don’t know what to say.

So, tell me how you proceeded in New York. You had written down the sequences for ‘Spaces’. What actually happened?

Yes, I had written down the first half of that book right up to, I believe, what was the last sequence? I don’t know.

Was it written down in words or in drawings?

Yes, little drawings. I remember I made a big thing about the... And then, yes, yes I seem to remember doing kind of things with the beer can, drawing how it should come through the paper and so on. But mostly, yes, written down as a kind of

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 24: Tape 12: Side B Page 319 procedure. It’s interesting because in that very loft that I was staying in there was, I found the chair-ladder, stroke-ladder, which was, you know, a normal kind of piece of furniture which, it’s a sort of small sort of step-ladder that folds into a chair which, I don’t know why but it really appealed to me, and I photographed it there. So that that, that actual piece of furniture I never had anything more than photographed when I was actually working on the book in those two weeks.

But it’s like a little gymnast.

I had no tripod, no tripod at all, so the photographs are rather blurred.

But it’s like a gymnast that piece, you photograph it in different positions.

Yes.

What were you doing with it?

Well I was rather aware of making, animating a sort of dead object, and I did feel there was a kind of Duchampian element to it. But that wasn’t really what the appeal was. Well, it was actually the confirmation of the three kind of levels or stages. I mean here was, I mean, I had sort of established this idea of paper, and then the thing that was sitting on the paper, and then the way the camera worked, if it drew away from the actual paper it would reveal what’s around it. So they were like three levels like on, in the paper, on the paper, and over the paper. And that’s actually how ‘Loophole’ started, it goes on about over and over and above, it’s actually related to the layout of the actual, what you are going to see is the layout of the pages that are going to become pages. You see, either you come in on [INAUDIBLE] about. All that stuff basically was a lead-on from that discovering of the chair, the ladder-chair. I then, the part of that thing was I did have the beer can sitting on top of the ladder and then, as it folded into a chair the beer can would fall off and it would get caught, and that’s where it, I suddenly remembered this article I cut out, it’s quite extraordinary, out of a ‘Guardian’ newspaper, about this woman called, I mean it was entitled ‘Miss Mousetrap’ and it was something I had cut out about Mrs Goodvine[ph] I think her

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 24: Tape 12: Side B Page 320 name was, or Miss Goodvine[ph], who had been the manager of the Ambassadors Theatre to Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mousetrap’, and was retiring after forty years or something of being in the box office, and had made the comment, something about, that it was nice to get out on a fine day or something stupid like that, that she had been forty years in this box office, or it seemed that...you know. Anyway, so, there was this sort of, kind of nonsensical sort of story without really very much content, but it related to an action, and it could be brought in, that I found in another country, extraordinarily enough

What do you mean?

Well I had actually cut out that article before I went to New York. When I was in New York I actually came across the ladder. I started photographing it and then realised it was the mousetrap, and so therefore I could join the two things together.

You mean its formal qualities related to a literal mousetrap?

Yes, I saw that, the ladder, as, in the stages of moving from ladder to chair, an intermediary stage. It’s not only three stages, but also that it was like a trap.

But it’s also, I mean I don’t think it interests you from this point of view, it probably irritates you, but, her story of being shut in a box office is another space in another sort of trap isn’t it, but that doesn’t interest you, does it?

Oh yes well I saw that as relevant, yes.

Right.

Oh yes, because she said, ‘It will be nice to get out on a nice sunny day like this, after forty years in the box office,’ yes, of course. Oh but, yes, well I mean that was what the article was about too. I mean it did say ‘Miss Mousetrap’. I mean there was an awful lot of play in this. And also, then I started saying, avoid, avoid, the mousetrap, and then there comes the point where there is the void, or the blank page, and then I

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 24: Tape 12: Side B Page 321 decide that the mouse, which was a beer can, which I said was on the top of the ladder, that’s where the mouse comes through. So... And then I call it the tin teardrop, because actually if you look at a beer can and you take the lid off, there is a sort of form, there is a form of a teardrop if you like, but you see you’ve got to reverse or, I mean you’ve got to, you go through positive to reverse, reverse to positive, I mean, we’ve been...when I say we, sorry, I, have been using that concept or that idea or that use of getting, having got that from film for, ever since the book started.

Sorry, being boringly literal, you mean the tear drop is the void where the top has been taken out?

No no, the actual void is the blank, which in fact was a confusing thing I did for the printer, because, when you do layout and you say blank, it means that he knows that that’s a blank page.

Yes, but which is the teardrop?

The teardrop is the top of the beer can.

The whole top or the empty bit?

No, you’ve got the round top, looking at it from above, and when you’ve pulled off the tab to drink it, you’ve got basically a form of a tear.

In the void?

In the void, yes. So there were all these puns, plays, going on, including ‘Miss Mousetrap’. I’ve never really been able to explain it up until this moment I’m afraid, I mean, or rather I’ve never even looked into it, but I knew it was all there, or, I must have at the time but I hadn’t remembered.

And haven’t you also got the HMV dog at this point?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 24: Tape 12: Side B Page 322 The HMV dog is there, yes, and there again...where does it...? Well that comes in because the book, you see I was using a kind of, there’s another three play, there’s the mouse, the dog and cat. The cat’s on the cover, it’s Herriman, you know Herriman the...the man who did ‘Krazy Kat’?

Oh, no.

No? It’s gone off to the pub, Ignatz the mouse, off to the pub with the dog, and Krazy Kat, and Krazy Kat’s the female.

And is ‘Krazy Kat’, is the, is this a cartoon in a comic or is it an animated thing?

Herriman, yes, no he’s a, I mean it’s a cartoon in the Twenties and Thirties in America.

Right.

So, so there are a series of levels, the kind of thing I absolutely adore I must say, or did, you know, or the thing I indulged in deeply, was all these kinds of iconographic kind of levels, and reasons, working out my own reasons for providing you a content, the...the person who will look at the book one day.

But how much does it worry you, I mean for instance, that I couldn’t have got this comic strip?

Nothing at all, not at all. It doesn’t have to be there.

Right. Because sometimes, not on those books actually but sometimes when I’ve been talking to you about the content of some of the other books, I’ve felt you were very disappointed if I hadn’t understood your train of thought.

Ah.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 24: Tape 12: Side B Page 323 And it’s often because if you don’t have the starting point, you’re starting from somewhere else and following a totally different train, or I am, a different train of thought, then I’ve often felt as though I had let you down because I hadn’t been able to follow your sort of...

I see. I wouldn’t know which books you’re talking about, but I must say, I tell you why it’s a continuous...there is a sort of... The friendship with Clive is based on an understanding that is actually accepting on that level, in that he, whether he wants to or not, seems to be able to want to read into things like that, I mean he has that kind of mind. And, oh a lot of it is done sometimes just in a, just, by just walking down a street and seeing all sorts of associations with things that we read. It’s a kind of game really, and I used to do this with Martin, I mean Martin and I, and I think it’s a game I play with other men.

But are they...

But I must say Helen came into it too, so I don’t know if it is just other men.

But is it that Helen, Martin and Clive might have similar terms of reference to you?

Yes, but I don’t know what terms of reference we’re talking about.

Well, I mean on a literal level at the moment, just for the sake of argument, Clive probably does know ‘Kool Kat’ or whatever it’s called.

‘Krazy Kat’. I probably told him about ‘Krazy Kat’, Herriman, yes.

Right.

But, Martin introduced me to ‘Krazy Kat’ I might say.

Right.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 24: Tape 12: Side B Page 324 [LAUGHS] But I was always interested in, he would say things like, ‘Oh gosh, you would like that,’ you know, I was always interested in sort of various kind of hip, no, sort of... I mean there was a group of people that were involved in comic-making, you know. The one area that I would never be able to work in myself, but I admire enormously, is the use of language and image as in cartoon. So the kind of drawing I would do if I ever did any, if I was any good at it, would be like that; it wouldn’t be like the fine art that you are talking about, which I reject completely. But that I accept, comic strip.

Did you have comics as a child?

I loved comics but I wasn’t allowed, I wasn’t...it wasn’t considered good enough. It was considered a minor culture. I think someone like Clive Edwards...

By your parents?

Yes. Yes. I think that my, I think Clive was brought up on them, and I mean definitely Martin was. I wasn’t, but I found, like a lot of things I came to, I came to very late in life because I was allowed...not allowed to eat sausages because they weren’t good for you, you know, that kind of thing. So in a way I was slightly, a slightly slow developer, but I would indulge, I would really find the things that I really would through other people’s interests and suddenly realising that it appeals to me enormously too.

Were you, did you encounter ‘Oz’ and ‘Ink’ and all those things?

That’s what I was trying to think of, yes, ‘Oz’ and ‘Ink’, exactly.

When were you trying to think of them?

When I was trying to sort of formulate the word comic strip, I was thinking of, what did I say? I said, I didn’t say hippy but I meant to say the hippy era, what I associate with very much all that.

Can you just for the tape say what ‘Oz’ and ‘Ink’ were?

Well ‘Oz’ and ‘Ink’ were underground papers, put out in a fairly unconventional kind of way with a lot of over-printing, they often printed an image, and, I mean they were text, there was no doubt that it was the word that played the important part, but they had very unconventional ways of printing which appealed to me a lot, where they would, a lot of the printing was image-based, certainly a lot of text went over the image. They were concerns about the kind of current culture, of again which is what I am interested in and always have been, in relation to pop, in relation to music particularly, pop music, but, things like what we call lifestyles from the Eighties never occurred to anybody, but, they never used those terms then. But this is what, this is the Eighties, what I call the Eighties, the sort of analysis of something that in a way was there for nothing before, but then suddenly had this appalling kind of monetary value, you know, that people wanted to acquire. And they represented basically underground. I remember someone, was it Joe Tilson, asked me what did I...where was my interests, where did they lie, and I said in the underground. I think he thought I meant the London Transport, but I don’t know. [LAUGHING] So, I would say that, you know, that the whole cartoon context came from that sub-culture.

Right. Were you also very involved with pop music and concerts and things, or not?

Yes, yes, in the Seventies I was yes, definitely. And, I still can go back to it, I still do.

Like whom?

OK, well, I’ll tell you. I’ve just been, I’ve actually been re-hashing, I’ve just simply, I bought a CD by Philip Glass called ‘Music for Four Parts’ or ‘Different Parts’, I think it’s called, which was done in ‘71, and I just suddenly realised that... And I’ve also re- visited Wim Wenders, and I saw recently ‘Alice in the Cities’, which I thought was an absolutely astonishing film, it really really took me back to exactly that period in the Seventies where...and I feel that, the concerns now really are, I think, circulating for

What are the concerns that you isolate?

Well, I mean take Philip Glass, it’s much easier to talk about, because I came to Wim Wenders very, I mean I knew about Wim Wenders and I didn’t think that he appealed to me at all until I saw what he did in the Seventies. So what’s happened is that he has changed with the time but he has become some kind of, you see him in books about Hollywood now, and that totally appals me. But, with Philip Glass, I probably had heard his music, but had never bought anything by him, and I started off with ‘Glassworks’ or something like that, which I think was pretty common, on an LP. I then went through the whole thing of collecting practically, a lot of his, a lot of his music. I mean this is not actually truthful in relation to what I used to collect, I mean I ought to say this, that it was pop music before that.

I was going to say, when I asked you about pop, Philip Glass isn’t a very obvious response.

No it isn’t, because...but Philip Glass has been basically a kind of interest, as an example, and there’s lots of other people, John Adams etcetera, although I think John Adams has gone off as well.

John Adams?

Yes.

I’ve never even heard of John Adams.

Oh, John Adams. But there is a whole train of composers now that are now, Fitkin[ph], you know, have you ever heard of Fitkin[ph]?

This is certainly not Radio 1 pop.

Oh no, this is not Radio 1 pop at all.

So what do you take the term pop to mean? I mean I think, when you said you were very interested in pop I start thinking of you listening to the Beatles and the Shadows or something. What is pop to you?

The Shadows is pre-Beatles and Cliff Richard; I wouldn’t have anything to do with Cliff Richard.

But what does pop mean to you?

Well pop, pop meant the hippy era, and all the, probably the expansion from the Beatles era, initially. So that, you’ve got the whole kind of America blues influence coming in. And so, all the super groups that were created out of Eric Clapton, kind of era. I mean you can’t ignore Bob Dylan of course, and I was going to say, initially, before I started talking about Philip Glass I was saying, well I had bought recently the most recent Bob Dylan.

It’s interesting. So has Clive and so has Mel Gooding.

Ah, but it was me who said to Clive, ‘You ought to buy it.’

Well so did Mel Gooding buy it. It’s very interesting. OK.

Well, well Mel Gooding, I don’t know the reasons why Mel bought it, but...

The reason I know Mel did, is because I said to, I was complaining in a way, in a nice sort of kind way, not in a beastly way about Clive, and I said, ‘And do you know, he’s even bought the latest Dylan...’ I was going to say Dylan Thomas.

Bob Dylan.

Listening, but he didn’t buy it.

So I’m in despair with all of you.

Oh really? Because you hate Bob Dylan?

I don’t hate Bob Dylan at all, but he doesn’t, he’s not a significant part of my life. I wouldn’t sort of buy anything of his.

Well I didn’t, I mean I acknowledge that when I taught, when I taught those students at Corsham, they were all playing ‘Blonde on Blonde’, and so on, which were kind of classic Bob Dylan LPs if you like.

But I remember one of my tutors at York making us have a seminar on Bob Dylan’s lyrics, and that’s probably what put me off really.

Well yes, I mean, I mean you know, and, there’s all sorts of areas which is rather peculiar. I mean, he started, you know, it was possibly one way of selling his poetry, was to sort of do it, strum along to a guitar, but the thing is that it’s interesting how people evolve.

Yes. Anyway, this...

Never mind.

I’m only teasing you really.

And...well, anyway, I’ll tell you one thing is that although I do have a collection of Bob Dylan records, LPs, they weren’t ones I acquired, I didn’t acquire, but Kate, who I used to be married to, I might just put this down as, it’s quite interesting, one day she announced after we’d been married, well, we weren’t married but we were living

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 24: Tape 12: Side B Page 329 together, that, she announced that it wasn’t my profile that she was in love with, it was Bob Dylan’s, and she showed me this LP with, called ‘Blood on the...’ well it wasn’t ‘Blood on the Tracks’ as a matter of fact, I don’t know, it was one before that anyway, and she said, ‘This is the profile.’ I said, ‘Oh really?’ And she went off and met up with him in L.A. She, I mean when I say she went off, she left, she left and went back and I’ve never seen her since. So, she left all the Bob Dylan LPs, this is what I want to get to, that she didn’t want to take with her, so that I still have those. I never actually independently bought them. But, I don’t have to justify my interest in Bob Dylan by saying these things, but I just thought...

You don’t?

I don’t, no. I was... But it is interesting because, he does follow a kind of trend, and the most recent, the one that he has done which is called ‘Out of Time’ or something like that, the present, is, or ‘Out of Mind’, sorry, it’s ‘Out of Mind’, and that is actually quite relevant to the present time, because I feel, my concerns are to try and get my body in a sense back into action and feeling life, everything was coming just from my head. And I think this is quite significant, and it might be... You see, I feel that in a way people quite often, people everywhere are thinking sometimes similar thoughts of ideas or feelings, and we’re all affected ultimately by what’s going on in the world, whether one believes it or not, and we are all sometimes, there’s quite a lot of correlation between what people are thinking and feeling about the way we ought to proceed or should do or should think about, and these are all extremely convincing to me, and that’s the reason why I am a book artist. I do actually want to be able to make statements about that sort of thing. I do feel that that is important, and I do think that if I continue to make books, it would be a kind of catalogue of the way, what was going on. That’s why I do like various sort of sub-cultures, cultural things that have gone on in a sort of underground kind of way, like underground, what we call, used to call underground press, and that sort of thing. I think it forms a very important basis to something that is very real, and to me more real than a lot of other things.

End of Track 24: Tape 12: Side B

I took you off your Philip Glass train of thought; I wondered if you would pick it up again.

Well the idea of buying something he did in ‘71, which I was quite, I was very interested in, because I do feel that, like I was...well, what I was talking about initially was, what these people were concerning themselves with was something much purer than what has happened since, and although Philip Glass has gone on to do these gigantic kinds of ballet opera pieces, like ‘Akhnaton’ or ‘Akentaton[ph]’ or whatever it is, and then since that other things, and John Adams has gone on to write symphonies for the San Francisco sort of symphony orchestra and so on, I did feel that actually the roots of what these people were concerned with in the Seventies is actually, well I do feel that this is something more pure, infinitely more pure, and it’s still there but it’s more grandiose, and, I think perhaps what we could say, what I could say about Bob Dylan is that he’s never become grandiose. A lot of people are interested in him in a sense that he reinterprets his work continuously. I mean for instance, if it is true that he never listens to what he’s done, then it gives him the opportunity to rehash and replay what he has played and put the emphasis on different words and different contexts and in different bands. I think that procedure has been very interesting about him. But it is an involvement in his own history, and sort of, an isolated figure in that sense.

Right. And going back in to ‘Spaces’, what is it about the HMV dog being there?

Well there was a reference to the three, like I said, the, ‘off to the pub’, ‘Ignatz the mouse’ and ‘Krazy Kat’, but I mean only as a threesome, and it’s possibly that I introduced the dog at that point, but there was another significance which was that HMV was a sort of childhood toy and that when I was four or five I was allowed to play the record player, which was one of those horn...

Yes, we talked about that.

Right.

So there was this article about the dog, cliché-written thing, and it even mentioned doggerel and all sorts of weird... I mean I was just wondering how far this journalist could go to satisfy his absolute impatience and fury at having to write about it. But it had its non-content, as it were, enough of its non-content, and external references were so enormous that that was safe enough to use as a piece of developing text. I had to be very careful in those days, that, because I was being such a formalist that there wasn’t, that, very conscious of what I was saying there wasn’t too much content. But there was always a way of finding... I mean, you only look for it, but it was there anyway. And I might say at this point, why I was such a formalist was because I felt there was so much content in everything anyway that it was a question of finding something to distinguish it from everything else in the world.

Mm. But in a way whatever you did, the content was inescapable.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And so you in the end had to work with it, not fight it?

Yes. I didn’t really, I mean it was a kind of play with it. When Helen joined she never noticed that that...well perhaps she did, but I mean we had the, on the next book, ‘Loophole’, I was about to do this whole thing with the wheelbarrow, but she couldn’t believe it because she had evidently done something at Edinburgh Arts where she had done something in a performance with a wheelbarrow. And, it was based, I mean the way we collaborated was really based on, right from the beginning, on a series of very shared material, it was just extraordinary. And then when we discovered later on that there had been one or two little things that had been fed to me via Martin, I don’t know why I say fed but that had just been dropped, and they were related to what Helen had done, and I hadn’t realised that there was any connection, I just thought... So when I said yesterday something about Martin’s comment about ‘Passage’, he said

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 25: Tape 13: Side A Page 332 perhaps Helen’s name should have been there, I couldn’t, didn’t understand the significance of that. I thought, well, if I’d put...I mean I should put everybody I met in it if I was going to do that, that was roughly my comment, you know, because I had no idea of the significance of Helen at that point. I had met Helen at the opening of this exhibition by the way in 1971 at the Serpentine, that was when I first met her and Martin brought her, with Jenny I might say, Jenny and Helen, two friends.

Jenmy Thompson?

Yes, Jenny Thompson.

Just before we leave ‘Spaces’, can you talk about any of the other passages? I mean we’ve settled on the ladder passage and...

Yes.

What else is in that book?

Well, the second part of the book, and it really is in two parts, although the ball bit was thought about in New York too, at the end, but it didn’t find its place till the end.

Helen always says she is not quite sure she understands that bit. Tell me what the ball bit is about.

Oh, oh the...what, the drop in the ocean? It’s actually, there’s a list of contents at the end and it explains that the ball is dropping. Well what happens is the tap drop, I think the, I’m talking about a drop in the ocean, and I’ve taken the drop of the water from the tap into something again reverse...well I suppose it’s not a reversal but I’ve made it considerably more solid. I think it was a comment on myself as well as only a drop in the ocean, or a sand in the, a grain of sand, but in a sense I was happy at that point to say OK well, if all I can do is a grain of sand on a beach, I am happy to have done that. And it’s the same thing, a drop in the ocean, a grain of sand.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 25: Tape 13: Side A Page 333 What about the sort of transformation element of, one moment it’s a drop of water, the next moment it’s something else?

Oh well, the ball does actually move across the page, and it slowly, I still feel slightly embarrassed about the actual art work on that, but you can see rather well how it’s stuck down and stuff. But I didn’t actually worry about things like that, it looks fairly amateur. I didn’t worry, over-worry about that. Well, I feel what happens is, I think there I am referring to various things that I saw happening in what I call the underground press or comics where the idea of transferring an image from one, what do you call them, a frame, one frame, to another, it was a sort of real sort of game that they do, that they have, I seemed to have come across a few times, where there’s kind of very self-conscious kind of use of the frame, and so if they have the same, if the same image is in both, in consecutive frames, the cartoonist might transfer the different... Well no, sorry, not the same image in each, in separate frames, different images in consecutive frames, but they might actually transfer one of the images into the next frame and...you see what I mean, do you?

I think I know what you’re trying to say but you’re not actually saying it.

Well anyway, well, all right, well anyway, what I was doing was roughly following that by moving the ball across the page.

Yes, but that’s not the same thing as transforming a drop of water into a ball.

Ah well you’re talking about something else. I was actually talking about the double, the double bucket I think, that was about transferring the image, but also the idea of left and right. So that from the drop to the ball. I was trying to make the actual drop solid.

But that is a transformation.

Yes, it is transformation.

Yes.

What is the interest in that?

Why am I doing that?

Mm.

Well I’d done that already with the teardrop, I had already transformed a vacuous piece of air if you like but in the form of a tear into, by calling it a tin teardrop, then I made the vacant part solid. I’m saying what that is is, within the process of making, taking photographs, you’re dealing with the reverse all the time, negative to positive, positive to negative.

That’s not the same thing as transforming a drop of water into a ball.

No, but I took that into the content. I took that process.

Yes but what is the interest in this transformation?

Oh I think, well I’m trying to make something from nothing. I think that all art ultimately is giving value to something that’s valueless. I think it’s easier to move from value, no value, to a, some form of value, than it is to move from something that already is valuable to something even more valuable, it’s very difficult that, possible. It’s probably the reason why I pare down content so much.

Right. And you’ve said that ‘Spaces’ was very important to you.

Yes, it was, because in a sense I had been able to do a complete book, up to that point I hadn’t really been able to connect all the sequences, short sort of sequences or long sequences together, into a book, except by binding it together, giving reasons why

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 25: Tape 13: Side A Page 335 they were related in certain sort of ways, taking it as a journey. And quite obviously if the book is complete, I was happy with the way it had its introduction, which I still am very very involved with, this idea of gradually leading someone to something, and trying to change perception, which is again something that I still try and do, try and change the way people look at what I’m trying to show, I mean, they say, ‘Oh God! yes this is just this,’ fine, and then they arrive at something else, ‘Oh, oh it isn’t’. That is what I am trying to do. I don’t know if I succeed always but it seemed necessary for me to do this.

This is a very irritating question, but, I mean the way you put it like this, like that, sounds as though you are in a way trying to score points. I mean is it still a debate with your father or something that’s going on?

No. No. I think it’s trying to make, it’s trying to manipulate, being able to look at something in, not in the sort of, like it’s every, it’s like just anything or everything; in other words to say, you’ve got to give this attention, you’ve really got to, otherwise you don’t get it. There is something there, but you’ve got to find the way to find it. So I do go through this procedure of introducing things, yes, and playing around with convention. I mean like, I’m even now saying, preface, introduction, appendices, whatever, those sort of things that you find in a dictionary, you know.

There’s also, the way you bring an object onto a stage and make it perform is quite theatrical.

Yes. Yes well I think that’s what the chair was doing, it’s giving it life, saying this is what you can do, here you are, you’ve got your stage, yes.

And also things like the drop of water to the ball is a sort of, it’s almost like magic actually, but it’s also quite filmic as well isn’t it.

Yes. And of course that is exactly what is so convincing. I mean, I wouldn’t want to do that in drawing, it would be too obvious. I don’t know, I’m probably terribly old- fashioned now, everyone accepts the sort of way of, you know, the camera does lie,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 25: Tape 13: Side A Page 336 but I always felt that there was a certain sort of belief that, or is still there, that it’s not, you’re not...your ideas are not being manipulated by this artist but it’s, because the camera doesn’t lie. It does of course.

Well I mean in the lifetime that you’ve been making books...

Things have changed.

...from the role of a camera and digitalisation and images on computers being manipulated...

Yes, absolutely.

...has been absolutely revolutionised hasn’t it.

Absolutely, absolutely, yes, and I’ve actually got a computer now too, and I find that I’m doing sort of weird things, like stacking up images on top of each other and just rubbing one out and finding the one underneath, and to join them up, you know, like that. But I’m not trying to do these sort of dramatic kind of things of cars, which is the thing that I always hated with people in... You know, the conventional kind of darkroom boy, the sort of person who works in a darkroom and develops, and you ask him what sort of, you know, he said, ‘Oh I’m going out, I’m going to do a photo session now at the weekend, you know’. I said, ‘What are you going to do?’ And he says, ‘Oh I’m going to photograph racing cars,’ you know. ‘Get this action,’ you know. This convention that, this idea that photography is about capturing a moment, you know, to me it doesn’t exist like that, I mean I’m not interested in photography like that at all. So, and this is all happening - sorry - with the computers and the whole revolution, and being able to superimpose images on each other, and you can have films now where, you know, you really do, you experience a sense of horrendous... I mean you’ve got all special effects of... It’s again in its primitive form, all special effects are there, everything has got special effects now, but you wait, when they’re all fed up with all that technique and stuff, get down to something a little bit more interesting.

You think it will?

Yes, yes. Well it did with photography.

Right. And, how was ‘Spaces’ received?

Well it was very...I mean obviously... I think it went down OK, yes. It went down all right. I think...I think people that, I mean I remember Helen was quite interested in it.

She had come into your life by this stage in some way?

She certainly came to the, she was coming to visit at Lady Somerset Road, and I gave her the book, and she... That’s right, it was about the time she had produced ‘Threads’. I think I’d gone through the sort of meeting, about that, an opening where she said that there was thread...I asked her if there was a thread of thought in her book, and it turned out to be that she had done ‘Threads’, called ‘Threads’. I knew I’d said something rather kind of...because...so she looked at me aghast, you know, because everything was quiet and secret, and you didn’t talk about what the..... you know, what you’re doing with Telfer, you’ve got to be careful with him. [LAUGHS] I think she was very suspicious of me. Yes, and after that book she rang up and, I was just off to Germany, and that was exactly where Martin’s, it was a prelude to Martin’s first book show, was going to go on a British Council tour to Germany, the catalogue was done half in German and half in English, and it was all for this German, it was going to tour Germany. And I had, it convinced me that I should go and put all these books in Germany, so I was off to...and it was a disaster. I remember, at Cologne station this whole package of books that I had with me collapsing as I got out of the train onto the station. The British Council wouldn’t take them. There was no...I found it very difficult to find anywhere I could sell them.

So it was a book fair rather than an exhibition, or what?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 25: Tape 13: Side A Page 338 No, I was literally trying to stack up sort of books. I found various different places, in Amsterdam and so on, but not in Cologne as a matter of fact.

But when you say the British Council wouldn’t take them, were they not part of the exhibition?

Yes, but they said, ‘Oh yes, well we are showing this exhibition, but we’re not selling the book’.

Right. So they wouldn’t take them as selling books?

No, no.

Right. And so, how did you begin working with Helen?

Well, so, there we were. She was in the house, I think Martin was in the basement, yes?

So how was she in the house?

Well she had arrived before I went off to Cologne to sell this book, and had rung up as a matter of fact and said, ‘Hello, have you got a room?’ sort of thing, was really what she said. And I said, ‘Well, you know, you’ve rung up exactly the right moment; I’m just about to go to Cologne and I need someone to feed the cat.’ I can’t actually remember if Martin was in the house at that point or not, because if he had been he probably could have fed the cat, I can’t really remember about that. But anyway he came in sooner or later. And, but that would have been his second go, he had been there before, and this time it was with Denise, and so on. But, yes, and so, as soon as I got back we started... I mean, we started the thing that we had done for the next 25 years, which is talk, and we talked and we talked and we talked and we talked, and I said we should do a book.

Had you...I mean when you had first thought of doing a book it was with Martin.

Yes.

And it just happened that it didn’t become a collaboration.

Yes.

I mean had you always really wanted to collaborate? Because many people would find it very difficult.

Yes, the thing is that I felt, and I was always rather worried that, in a sense where I was thinking about this grain of sand on a beach or a drop in the ocean, I felt that I was...I was very conscious of being very very isolated, and I wasn’t too sure whether what I was doing anyway appealed to anyone at all, and it was very important that I found someone who did share those ideas. And I had actually put in some money anyway to do a collaboration and had sent it off the Arts Council and had suggested three different people I might be collaborating with, one of them was Helen, and that was how she had actually ended up by doing ‘Threads’.

Who were the other two?

The other two, one was called Nick Battie[ph] who was someone I knew who lived in King’s Cross, near here, who was introduced to me by Niko Stangos of all people - I mean I know Niko Stangos from many years back as an old friend - who wanted to know, get to know my father funnily enough, and realised I was his son, which was the sort of thing that used to happen to me a lot and I used to hate, but I did like him. I then got to know David Clark[ph], they’re a couple, and he used to live in Prince of Wales Crescent, I think it’s Prince of Wales Road or something. Now they don’t but they did, and I think that’s where John Golding lived as well, and John Golding certainly knew my father, and Ann, my aunt. Anyway, yes, Nick Battie[ph]. And then there was a woman that I had had a love affair with, called Liz, who lived, who was an ex-student.

I didn’t know what...I think she was called Liz Stobart, she was married to someone called Stobart at the time.

And might she have been a book-maker potentially?

She might have. She really wasn’t a book-maker but she was basically an artist. And, she did produce some drawings, and I was very, I felt terrible because I knew, in lots of ways I liked the drawings independently but I couldn’t see how they would work as a book, and she was very keen to be a part of this, and there was also this complication of this relationship, which I broke. I mean, it didn’t really happen at all, but...certainly, so I had to sort of, I just had to sort of say, well... And it was the case that the Arts Council didn’t produce any money anyway so I simply used that as a very good excuse to say, that’s that.

Right. And so, had you already got the ideas for ‘Loophole’? Because it follows on from ‘Spaces’ doesn’t it?

Yes, the wheelbarrow, this is what I was saying before, the wheelbarrow had already, was already going to be part of the book, as sort of mental furniture really.

What do you think the idea in your mind for this book was, what distinguishes it for instance from the ones that have gone before?

Oh well, I do remember what the reason... I had the title first, the title came first. I mean my interaction with people was very important towards finding and locating ideas for myself. I mean I wouldn’t say...I had to be with people, I had to talk with people, and I had to be, my interest in people was a very important part of it. There was somebody that I was very much in love with called Ann Clutterbuck, who moved to New York, is American, and she had numerous affairs with different people, I was simply, probably just one of them, but she did describe to me at that point how her life had gone like, in this loop, and I...and how she was now back where she was, and she

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 25: Tape 13: Side A Page 341 described it. And I said, ‘Oh, you mean like an aeroplane when it’s looping the loop, it goes right up and then it goes down?’ And she said, ‘Absolutely.’ And that was actually the idea for the book. I mean I had already straight away when she said a loop, I had seen the loop exactly how it was, that it was an aeroplane, you know, reaching its apex and then coming down, and I could see a book working. I was always wanting to do a book in reverse, I had actually thought of this idea that I would find an excuse somewhere along the line to go backwards, but I wasn’t sure how to do it, but I wanted to find... So this fitted in terribly well. Well, the actual idea of ‘Loophole’ changed, it did actually change to ‘Loop Hole’, but then I might have been...I realised that ‘Loophole’ was also this hole, you know, that was made for...aerosplits[??] is a loophole. So that led to another idea for the book, and I think established the wall. So as we go over it again I could say I had the wheelbarrow; I then had acquired this idea of the looping the loop.

Hold on Telfer, you say you had the wheelbarrow; you’ve never explain why the wheelbarrow came in.

Yes, the wheelbarrow was...well, it did follow on from HMV. HMV was one of my toys, so was a wheelbarrow. When I was...well, you know, I used to have a wheelbarrow.

Yes, we talked about that.

Yes, OK.

So, so what was it, I mean why do you think you wanted to pick up on childhood things?

The only things I was convinced by, I’m afraid. I mean I was very...when I say I’m afraid, I don’t know if afraid’s a very good word here. I was very suspicious of any kind of content, as being content for content’s sake. If I had a series of strong associations with something, I felt I could do something with it, and that I was obviously there in it because it was mine and it was something I used. It seems

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 25: Tape 13: Side A Page 342 possibly slightly strange that, but I think I was probably very afraid of using anything else other than something that had already been in a sense invested in some kind of history in some way, my own history though, not someone else’s, not Duchamp, not my family, not other artists, so on. So I was still going like that. And I perhaps, I have explained lots of ways, the way this book arrived.

But, so what do you do, say, with the wheelbarrow in the book, for someone who hasn’t seen it?

OK, well the wheelbarrow sort of is the...the wheel in a way is, comes, sort of ventures into the side of the page onto a very narrow sort of, a sort of set piece that’s set up, which I actually, Helen and I constructed in the studio to the scale of the wheelbarrow, because we were aware that, as we weren’t going to use a model but a real wheelbarrow we had to build something the same size as a wheelbarrow, which we never did again.

Where had the idea of building sets come from?

I had already been doing sets all the way along. I built the set to knock the wall down in ‘Passage’; I had built a set for the sequence which is called Fig. 1, which is of the foam, it’s actually, a lot of people think it’s beer in a bottle but actually that’s the foam I was talking to you yesterday about, which I used in the, in Saunton Sands when I was doing kind of imprints in the sand. There was a set there. There was even someone standing in the background in fact. And that was where I established these kind of ideas of... I was very, by the way that was a terribly important piece for me, that, because the illusion, the idea that this was a fig., what is called in most books, you know, this idea of illustration as fig., I used to call in... What is it, figuration does it mean?

I think it’s...it’s usually figure isn’t it? I don’t know.

Well is it, or not?

Well anyway, I found it...I always say it’s figuration, and is that an attitude to image, you know, is that an attitude to photograph? I don’t know. It’s not illustration, it’s figuration, it used to be fig. anyway. Anyway, so, I also, I accept the idea that a lot of people said things I said were like figment of imagination, in fact I use figment at the end of ‘Spaces’, you asked me why I use the ball, that I use the word, it was an extension of the idea of fig. to figment. Anyway...

Models we were talking about.

Yes, so that’s...yes, that was important there, yes. Yes, and if you go through, and the whole thing with ‘Passage’ again, you know, the sort of, the image within the image within the image was all set up, so... There were plans for ‘Loophole’ which were much more elaborate which I never really went on with, where funnily enough I wanted, I think my initial ideas was of a kind of salesman set-up, with someone actually actively, a figure in it, a person, someone there. I was quite aware that there were no people in my books, animated objects if you like but I hadn’t really, you know... And that was again another thing that I reserved to when I could approach, but I was very aware that I wanted people in it. And I was able to in a sense think about it in relation to set pieces, it was possible. But I remember with the wheelbarrow, as we wheeled it into the set that, I said, ‘We just don’t want a hand here holding the wheelbarrow,’ and Helen said, ‘Well, let’s put a piece of wood in’. So we did actually use it. So even though there was a point where it had to be held, the wheelbarrow had to be held, we managed to not get... But I think also, again there had been an over...I think it was probably more hand than...there had been too much hands going on in ‘Spaces’, too much hand, there was a lot of hands going, I felt that I was just over-doing it and getting into sort of formula type of work, hand usage if you like.

What were the hands doing in those books before?

In what, in ‘Spaces’?

Mm.

Oh, well, the hands were holding the photographs but they were also a bit like signing. There was, in...I did use deaf and dumb catalogues. I’ve always considered actually fingers, and the way like, you use your fingers. [LAUGHS] That signing was a form of language. It is after all, for people who can’t speak or can’t hear.

But you’re also obviously, you’re including in the image something that is conventionally cut out. I mean you’re making that statement, aren’t you.

What, in ‘Spaces’?

Mm, or in any of the cases where you are using, where you are showing the fingers holding the thing that’s being photographed. I mean that’s usually cropped in a conventional book isn’t it.

Yes.

End of Track 25: Tape 13: Side A

I tried to do it as well as I could, I would have done it happier with a, I would have brushed it out with an air gun.

What, so the fingers are there because you couldn’t get them out?

No no. Oh the fingers are there on purpose, in ‘Spaces’. Is that all you’re saying? But I thought you were talking...

No, what I’m saying is that you are including something that would normally be cropped out and there is a statement in that isn’t there?

Oh, yes.

You can’t avoid that.

Oh yes, sorry. I thought you were talking about the way they were presented wasn’t very well...you see I was technically thinking about, you were talking in technical terms. No no, obvious intention. I mean I said to you that there were these ideas of, in the paper, on the paper, and beyond the picture frame, or over the paper, and that was really going much farther, it was like, is accepting that the finger was the thing that was holding, so that was outside of what you were meant to conventionally see, yes. I mean later on I really wanted to get away from these kind of ideas.

But the wheelbarrow one is different isn’t it, because the wheelbarrow has a hand on it to make it function as a wheelbarrow, as well as, it doesn’t need to be held in place in order to be photographed. I mean it’s actually two different things aren’t they.

Yes. I think that that was the first time, funnily enough, we started at the beginning of the book and worked our way through but that was the first time Helen and I negotiated something physically in a sense of photographing it. And, I seem to remember being worried about having a hand coming in and our real solution was,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 26: Tape 13: Side B Page 346 well just put a piece of wood into the shank of the wheelbarrow, and you can actually see that bit of wood. It’s all right, it’s all right. I’m not sure, but I feel ultimately, if someone had to walk in it would have been one or the other of us, and I don’t think we wanted that, I don’t think we were ready, I don’t think either of us, or at least I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t ready for bringing a person in like that. I had made references to, but I couldn’t bring, I just hadn’t, I just didn’t have, I didn’t feel confident with being able to present that. It was the area where there was a kind of, an edge. And I felt that...I was probably in a pretty bad state by ‘75, I mean, Kate had left, I remember actually feeling very very paranoid. By the time we drove up to Scotland, which happened all in the same year, we managed to do both ‘Loophole’ and, through Helen’s wonderful capacity to sort of push me on, and push us on as it were, we did two books in one year, and that completely knocked me out. But, I remember driving in Scotland and saying, I really couldn’t, I simply could not drive this car, because the car on the other side of the road was so close that every time I met one I felt that we were going to collide. I’ve driven up and down that road now for twenty years and I never, never feel like that. Now I can’t understand why I, apart from, it will just say something about my mental state, which was that it was really on edge, and, I probably really needed somebody very badly at that point as a kind of, as a confidante, as someone who would share what I was doing too. And so it was a very, it was a moment of incredible coincidence really.

So can you go on through the book?

So, then, we re-created the top of the house, which is a kind of, was what you call eaves, and we put up a fake kind of wall, we bought this sort of wallpaper, sort of...sort of plastic, they were like bricks, sometimes people put those things up in kind of rooms that they want to make it look like it’s a brick wall, you know. I mean I loved the idea of playing around with that idea that it was possibly a real brick wall underneath that someone had put another...but anyway, we missed all that out. But we did actually put brown paper on top of it, which was actually what had happened in the loft upstairs, which originally had brown paper on it because no one had pointed the brickwork, so I had quite recently pulled that paper off and pointed the brickwork. So we re-created all that, but that was actually before we did the book. So at that

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 26: Tape 13: Side B Page 347 point the house, in all sorts of aspects, had come into, little actions that were going on became stage sets for books. So we followed that action of ripping, or, was it...I can’t even remember what we did. Yes, we were actually putting up the paper first of all, as the wheelbarrow was wheeled in. It then goes into this story, or was it revealing? No, it must be revealing the wall initially, because then, I start to make this window in the brick wall which is something I always said to Helen I wanted to do in the house, if there was a possibility of making a loophole. And then there were these kind of questions of really, you know, OK, yes, breaking out, what are you actually going to find outside? This all became terribly intellectual. And when we got back to the barrow again having done all that and having gone to the advertising hoarding, there were various set pieces that were established, again related to the house, the pipes, the stove, and then this, and then this something called Palmtree toffee, which was something in the Archway Road, it was, Palmtree toffee used to be a toffee you could buy, I remember it from the war - well, post-war, where it was very sort of basic toffee that you could buy in sort of, kind of blocks, extremely hard, it would break your teeth, it was called Palmtree. There was this big sign on the Archway Road, Palmtree.

So it was an advertisement for it?

It was an advertisement, but I saw that, I see the stove very much... I mean there was, I mean there’s no doubt there was sexual innuendoes in the highly... Because I mean, I had always, I mean when I had actually made the, put the stove into the fireplace and made that particular fireplace, which we used photographs of, a lot of people said that just looks like a penis. The reason I wanted to use the palm tree was, and, should I be explaining these things? OK. The Palmtree was very much like, it was meant to be positioned at the top of the penis, so that the palm tree was like the orgasm, and that was meant to be the critical point where the book actually reached the top of its loop, and then started to return backwards. And so that was the critical point where you saw the two, the two images of Palmtree toffee, you also...so that was there, but you also saw below Holy Holy Holy Chinese takeaway. And it’s at that point that we start ripping down the advertisements to reveal the other advertisements that had been...

So, what’s the significance of the Chinese?

Holy Chinese Takeaway? Holy. Oh, because we are talking about a loophole.

And how does that relate to the sexual peak, you mean because it peaks and therefore...?

No. It’s related to the hole in the sense that we have made the loop in a sense solid, relating to the idea of it as a line that is now hole or vacant, or, again the reversal of the solid to the negative, the negative to the positive, but also the title ‘Loop Hole’, the hole that we made through the wall. But it also is takeaway, takeaway meaning obviously remove, change, go and fetch, take out. And we start tearing down at the same time the actual, the actual kind of images of advertisements as they were, as they were to be seen as on an advertising board. So that it’s the beginning of the reverse, the reverse, and this is all, all the sort of...this was the completion of a sort of dream I had about the idea of being able to reverse a book, being able to go to a certain point and then point to the fact that we could go backwards, and that, you know, you can do all sorts of things with books, this is great, come on, you know, we can, why doesn’t anyone do this, this is great, we’re going to be the first people to do this. It wasn’t the only thing but I was thrilled, I was really thrilled. Then the barrow comes in, does its performance, as a kind of connecting point. Then, of course we have, the looping the loop, I forgot to tell you, there is what we call the tail, the end, I mean... Well, there are so many word plays and puns in this book that I don’t need to go into every single one do I? But there is a rat’s tail, there is a, we thread something through a hole in the middle of a record at one point.

But you say the record, why, where has a record suddenly come from?

Where did the record come in? Well it’s Swinging Little Thingy. Well I just, I just remembered the sort of... Where does the record come in? This is the tale, this is the...I mean we’re talking about T-A-L-E at the point, at this point.

Why?

And where did tail, T-A-I-L, come in?

Well the tail of the loophole.

But the whole thing about a loophole is that there is no tail, isn’t it?

Yes, no, looping the loop there is, because you go up, you meet the apex of the loop, you come down in this plane, you cross over at the point that you had gone up, and then there’s a long extended ending. And ultimately, another thing that I could have pointed to, or talked about, was that a great deal of establishing, through establishing of a kind of a musical context in pop music was that a theme had established and then basically you had this period of extended ending going on. So this book didn’t just have the introduction bit of seeing, it also had its extended ending and it had its, it’s also its layout ending going around. So in a way I would look for any kind of formal thing that I could recognise that I felt I could use, that I could actually find I could feed into making a book at that point.

And things like the sexual analogy that’s gone on through it, do people pick up on that?

You know, I wasn’t going to let that be what I really saw it as, as the only way I saw it. I thought that would have destroyed the whole point of doing it. I knew that that was in it, but I didn’t want to make a big deal about that.

And have people picked up on it?

No. No. I haven’t had that much relay on that.

But if you say that that’s not the central way of reading it, then what does that...?

It doesn’t have to be the only reading.

OK, but if you take, if you would take that out, what is the sequence, what is that sequence without it?

What? Well, the sequence without...

The stove and the tree and the...

Well, you could say why or what, what are the advertisements that are going to be put out there? We did, we asked ourselves this, all the time, we said, what is in the barrow, you know, we ended up by saying we found another book in it. But I mean...

But what is that sequence without that reading?

Well, it is basically layering on one level, you know, one thing on top of another. But then you could say, well why are those things chosen? And I could say, well, these were, because it was so much about what was going on in the house, those were actually things that had actually happened, there had been, the plumbing had been done, as a kind of root, a very complicated piece of plumbing, by somebody who I seem to remember came in the evening and said, ‘I can do that,’ and did it. I had done the stove, and the reason it had come out like that was because I wanted to, I felt that if I did make an arch, and I did want to make an arch, I couldn’t support the arch in this wall unless I left the bricks that went across like that. Someone did say, ‘Oh well it does look like a penis,’ and I said, ‘Good heavens, I suppose you’re right’. But I said I really don’t think so. With Palmtree toffee, I was...I had associations with the idea of Palmtree toffee; I also knew that it might not be there next week, and there was a whole thing of this idea that there was this chance possibility that it had to be...there was, sometimes there’s this thing, I want to get that before it goes, and that is another thing that the camera is very useful for. I had no idea how to use it like that, but, when there was the reading of the fireplace like that, then, it was positioned in such a position that it was going to be in that place, but it was amalgamated with the Holy Chinese takeaway thing too, I mean in other words that shop front was not

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 26: Tape 13: Side B Page 351 initially, that Holy Chinese takeaway, that was from somewhere else. And so there was a collage created out of that image.

And presumably parallel to all this there was the development of your relationship with Helen while you were making the book.

Yes. Yes.

And how much did that play into it?

Oh, well I mean, it was complete. I mean we were very much in love, in lots of, lots of ways, in more ways I never experienced, I mean in the sense that I was very... I mean, how one analyses what our love was is very hard. I would have said that there was so much in it that it was quite, fairly unconventional, and that, I mean it might not have been sexual attraction, A1; it might have been...it might have been a kind of, oh, you know, we can empty both our minds here without any trouble, without any fear, and we can experience this in the most incredible way. It might have been more like that sometimes and less like that sometimes, but we did end up by forming a very important, long-existing kind of a relationship.

And how do you think that fed into the making of the book?

Which aspect?

The relationship.

Well I don’t think it played any part in selecting those images, for instance, if you are thinking like that, if that has sexual imagery, I don’t think it did. We both asked ourselves openly, what do we put on these advertisements? And I said, well I just can’t see anything beyond what’s been going on in the past up to this point, and I see that as very much being fed in here. And so I said, well, I did this with the pipes here, and we did that with...and definitely the fire here, and, we came to, I think we came to a joint decision about Palmtree toffee in some way. We did have various photographs

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 26: Tape 13: Side B Page 352 I seem to remember to consider, that we would use. But I think we looked at it very much as a kind of, it wasn’t like a sensual decision if you like, but it was very much a mind decision.

And the thing that’s been constant in your adult life really has been this aspect of building and home-making and things hasn’t it. How much is that linked to making it for you and how much is it linked to being in a couple?

Well you say home-making, but I don’t think I really made particularly what a woman would consider to be home-making homes. They were kind of, they were sites for making work in. The house had remained very much in an incomplete state as you probably, well, I mean a lot of artists end up by living in sort of building sites. And there’s lots of reasons why, I mean sometimes the idea of finishing something for a particular purpose means that their lives are going to be pinned down to being a particular way. There is a sort of element to it which, where you are involved in actually this idea of a transient or changing environment where you actually adapt an environment to the way your life is changing, or other people’s lives are changing, or requirements within your life. I mean, it means that relationships become more pointed, more secure, because the actual environment is somewhat unresolved. It means that, possibly the actual involvement in the actual physical, the physical kind of building work is put aside and other things have continued. There’s all sorts of aspects to it. But it did become fairly creative, and I think in that book a lot of those things that were going on and had gone on were in a sense being fed in, and I was trying to break out with it, you know, by making this, by this symbolic thing of making a hole through the wall was actually an attempt to get out, and I was feeling extremely trapped. And I think it’s quite significant to say that this was the point where I really had to leave, and we did go to Scotland, and it was explaining to Helen that, you know, I felt completely caught in this situation and that it was very important for me to find somewhere else to live.

When you say you felt caught in the situation, what do you see the situation as having been?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 26: Tape 13: Side B Page 353 Well, I mean you know, there had been something like three books around this environment, of this changing house, people. There had been one marriage gone, finished, another marriage gone, finished; there had been various different people had come and gone. They had left their mark. In a way certain things had been fed in, certain things hadn’t. I think that it is as though it had, in a sense, its investment had reached a point where there was nothing I could do to change it and that it was all becoming history.

Right. So what happened next?

So, so we found this cottage in Kirkcudbright, which...

How do you spell that?

Kirkcudbright really. Kirkcudbright. Kirkcudbrightshire, it’s K-U-B-R-I-G-H-T-S- H-I-R-E [sic], Kirkcudbrightshire.

OK, thanks. Why did you go there?

Well, we went, I think I went up on the night bus, I met Helen who had gone home. She met me off this, this awful bus, some time early in, 4 in the morning or something, and drove me to her parents’ house, and I was up before they were, even though they were farmers. And then they came down for breakfast. And, after a few days we had a...I mean actually everything happened terribly fast. I think on the very day I started - no, sorry, the very day I landed there, we started to go out, borrowed their car, and we went, we walked, we actually drove past the very mill we’re living in now.

But had you gone there to look for somewhere to live?

We...well no, we... Ah, right, sorry. One of the incentives was to go and get money for another book we had put in for for the Arts Council and we were applying to the Scottish Arts Council. And what we did have to have was somewhere that we lived in

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 26: Tape 13: Side B Page 354 in Scotland. So, we were looking for some kind of friend or somebody who had something up there, you know. And it ended up within a week that we had this place in Kirkcudbright.

So you were applying to the Scottish Arts Council because Helen had a root there and because you thought they were likely to give money when the Arts Council......

It wasn’t...her root didn’t have anything to do with it except for her home. It’s just that we had this plan that we had to have money to do a book, one book after another. We were going to go on to Wales and do the same thing, I mean this was the general plan, and we had already applied for a publishing grant from the British Arts Council, so we were going to try every single Arts Council funding situation. I mean I had done that with every book before, I’d been rejected on ‘Spaces’as I already explained. I mean I think I was given £100, which I just put into my pocket, I mean I didn’t... But, so... So that was the plan. Then we borrowed the car again and we went and saw, we went to the Scottish Arts Council etcetera, we did a tour of all the people on the panel, including the person who was running the Glasgow Art College.

Again I’m going to want to go into that in some other recording because we’re going to run out of time again today.

Right, OK.

So can we go on to this next book?

What, ‘Chinese Whispers’?

Yes.

So, ‘Chinese Whispers’ was the book, well we put in grants to do this book in Scotland, about, it was going to be called, I think it was the original ‘Water on the Border’, I think it had that title. Let me think. Was this right or not? I do remember sitting in her parents’ garden and we were talking about writing to the Arts...and what

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 26: Tape 13: Side B Page 355 we were going to ask. I think perhaps that was when we were applying for a grant for ‘Chinese Whispers’, that’s right, and trying to... But we were, we did in our grant application talk about this idea of the Border, but I can’t quite remember to what extent. I mean you had...I always say to Helen, this is awful, because in the end, you know, this is the reason why, you have an idea for a book and then you reject it because as soon as you have to put it down on paper before you’ve actually started it, this is the major disaster, and she, I mean we had terrible trouble doing this, terrible trouble. I mean, but it was a wonderful thing that when one person really failed and flagged the other person sort of picked it up and we would re-write what we had written, and the same paragraph over and over again, you know. Anyway we...so yes, but I mean what I was saying was that we did do the tour, we saw all the people for this, and we got the grant, we got £500, and we knew we could then do the book. We then got the cottage, and we went off, and we started immediately to do, to work on the book.

And what was that?

That was ‘Chinese Whispers’.

Yes but what was the book, what is ‘Chinese Whispers’?

Oh, what is ‘Chinese Whispers’? Well ‘Chinese Whispers’ we saw very much as the group of people in, outside with the wind blowing, maybe, sitting in a circle, and one person says, ‘Interactive’. And the other person...so on. And they pass on the message. And when it gets back to, you know, and, it does the circle. This is a game called Chinese Whispers. And when it gets back to the original person it’s...‘et al’ or something, or, ‘inter el’ or, I don’t know, but anyway it’s done its distortion. In other words what it’s done is done the circle and we were all quite, I mean I think after the idea of the loop, I think the idea of the spiral or the circle was our concern and the form of the book that we were going to do.

So what is your book, ‘Chinese Whispers’?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 26: Tape 13: Side B Page 356 Well, the book is, there’s a prelude, as often there is; then there’s the building of the, of what’s about to become this corner cupboard, which is again the play with the spine of the book and the left- and right-hand page, and where I was re, in a sense, re-doing, possibly, the piece in ‘Passage’, but in a satisfactory way that I wanted it to be done, with Helen’s interest in the idea of objects, we established the idea of three shelves, so three levels. The idea of the ground for one. So, under ground, actually we used, we made an earth pie in that bit, with potatoes, and carrots and things like that.

But that’s one of the things I was talking to Helen about. I mean, it isn’t to anyone else obvious that that’s earth.

Right. It looks like a plum pudding doesn’t it?

Mm. Did you expect it to be understood as earth, is that part of it?

It doesn’t matter really. I mean, yes, it doesn’t matter. I mean, certainly the rooty things that come out of it, there are sort of potatoes at one point, there’s... I think it’s actually the cake as well, I mean there’s no doubt, by being sliced that it is the cake. But you see the three levels still remain, there’s the bottom shelf, the middle shelf and the top shelf, and the middle shelf we had already established would be growth in some kind of way, would be actually, possibly the possibility for Helen to again, to do... Actually I think she...what was it, she had done, ‘determinated’ the flower at that point, I think it was a dead nettle up to that point in her mind, and we could...and the opportunity to do cabbage. She was never absolutely totally satisfied with the way the cabbage came over as it was shredded. However, there we are, I mean, you can see in the most recent book there is an element of it being brought again into the flower in ‘Between the Two’.

End of Track 26: Tape 13: Side B

The pea plays with the spine again, and gets podded, spread out. I mean that has again the sort of female sexual kind of context. I think we both knew that there was a symbolism there in relation to opening the page, and the vagina, but it still remained the pea, still remained the pea, there was no...it was the middle shelf, I don’t know, it was basically the growth shelf, it was... We had the, there were certain sort of symbols on that shelf. There was the spiral thing that you use in the darkroom was sitting on the shelf, which is the thing that you twist the film around when you are developing it, there are a number of references to that idea of the spiral on that particular shelf. Then there was the top shelf, and one of the nights that we were there, and Helen...Helen suddenly said in the middle of the night, ‘It’s beautiful, it’s so beautiful,’ and I said, I woke up and I said, ‘What’s beautiful?’ Because in those days we, we tried every level to try and find out, you know, more, not about each other but, is this material that we can use here? And she said, ‘The butterfly, the butterfly.’ So, I told her, and we...there was the butterfly. Again she wasn’t completely happy with the way we did the butterfly. But I mean you know, I mean, I’m talking about little...you know, this is a decision that two people are making, you can’t pretend everything comes off ideally the way you want it; there are certain pressures that it should be this or that, according to how things have been in the past. Helen had to also accept that, but also she wanted to make her contribution as well, and that was very important, and there was no...there was never really, until the very end I would say, until the very end of our collaboration were there very...although there were, there were kind of arguments about, sometimes, I mean for instance with ‘Real Fiction’ we went through about four or five different ideas which I totally rejected, that Helen brought up, and, we went on to do something that she said finally in absolute desperation, ‘Well what would you do if you were put, if you were, you know, you were up against the wall, what would be the last thing you would do?’ And I said, ‘Well I’ll go back to using models again.’ That’s how actually initially that book, we started... I mean we both... And she said, ‘Fine, well we will, let’s do that.’ But anyway, so, you know, what I’m talking about is within that, there was always dissatisfaction with the way certain things came. I mean I felt an enormous amount of pressure was taken off me with Helen’s collaboration, and I felt I wasn’t

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 27: Tape 14: Side A Page 358 actually completely sure about a lot of aspects of what I did, and I felt I could be howling in the wind and wilderness really. And I felt an immense amount of... So, you know, it was very reassuring having this collaboration happen, and I seem to remember feeling very relaxed when we got to this place, and kind of interested in this idea of living in a very different environment. I think Helen was basically fairly frustrated. I remember thinking, what on earth, why is she not satisfied with what we’re doing? What on earth, what else could she possibly want to be doing? We’ve already done one book this year, this is the second one, we’ll have that printed in one year. We’ve never under any circumstances produced two books in a year, it’s un...you know, extraordinary requirement to do, to do so much.

So what do you think her frustration was?

Well she didn’t feel fully expressed at that point.

She presumably on ‘Loophole’ was learning really, she was almost, she was helping rather than collaborating, or not?

Oh no, because, I mean in a funny sort of way a whole element to the book was left open for her, like the tail part. I mean there was collaborative element all the way through, but it was up to her to make suggestions about what she felt should go there. And I mean I remember...

But you sound as though you still had the control, I mean it wasn’t up to you to make suggestions for her, it was up to her to make suggestions for you.

Yes. Well you know, things have got to start one way or another. I mean it took, it didn’t take very long before things moved the other way round. [LAUGHS]

So the second collaboration was slightly different?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 27: Tape 14: Side A Page 359 Yes, completely. But then circumstances were completely different. The second collaboration we were talking about sort of, ‘Mim’, and the second phase of collaboration.

No, sorry, I meant ‘Chinese Whispers’.

Oh you mean, talking about ‘Chinese Whispers’. Well, it was much nearer to Helen’s content, I mean we accepted that Helen was interested in country content, if you really want to talk about it like that. I mean we weren’t going to go to, I wasn’t going to go to a place like the middle of Scotland and start doing urban work, you know; I was fascinated to say, right, I think there is content here, and I was really pleased, you know. I said, oh well, thank God there is, you know, got out of the bloody house, you know.

So, just to be very simplistic for a second, what is the Chinese whisper that runs through ‘Chinese Whispers’?

Well I think it...I think it served... I think the Chinese whisper is the cupboard, it isn’t actually a whisper in a sort of text sense or a verbal sense, it is in the visual sense, of the cupboard, the cupboard undergoing this transformation from shelf to shelf. We also had the first introduction of a text on the actual shelf which I remember us working out on the way down to London in, driving down the M6, managed to do that there.

And what is that?

Oh, life’s an open book, that kind of thing, the sort of thing I actually found on a gravestone in Highgate Cemetery in fact.

And what about colour in this book?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 27: Tape 14: Side A Page 360 Well there was, it was very...yes, that was quite decided by the idea of sky going blue for air, and the level of, on the ground, you know, green, growth, and brown, as the sort of underground.

But for someone who hasn’t seen it, the colour doesn’t run through the book, does it?

No, these are the vignettes within the...within...I think that was a very important idea. I think it dealt with a kind of, a gnawing problem about the cupboard, that, I said, ‘Well, really, what is going to happen with this cupboard? I mean, we can’t continuously keep the whole book running the cupboard; how are we going to sort of move away from it?’ And this is as bad as the house here, you know, I build the blasted thing and then finally we’re left with it, you know. So we had to find a way out of that.

And what was that way out?

Well, it’s what we call vignettes, which were to go into a different kind of paper, and print colour when it had been established that the camera had rested on one shelf or another, there were three shelves. So again, I say that, it was in...this idea of under ground, on the ground, over the ground, so you had blue for over ground, green for the growth on the ground, and brown for under ground.

But can you say literally where you placed the colour then, for someone who hasn’t seen it?

Well the colour was on the imagery, I mean you know, in other words instead of printing in black, which is what we accept as part of the printing, how do you get to an image, without, you know, without the book costing an exorbitant amount, which it would do if we were doing colour separation which we never dreamt of doing at that point. So, what happened was that instead of substituting basically green, brown or blue for what would have been printed black in those circumstances.

Am I wrong in thinking, is there not a page that’s only blue in this book?

Yes, that’s the butterfly, but that relates to the opening and shutting of the pages which the butterfly seemed to relate to.

But isn’t it just a sheet of blue? There’s no butterfly on it.

Yes, I think what happens is that, we bring...we somehow, something to do with closing the wings of the butterfly, the butterfly doesn’t assume the shape of a butterfly so much as the pages of the book, so that they become completely blue, and then there’s a shadow of the page within the page.

Right, but it’s interesting because in others of your books you do a whole sheet of blank colour so to speak, it becomes part of your way of working.

I don’t see really much connection. I think that actually why it worked like that was the idea of the wings of the butterfly and the pages of the book. When we use colour for instance in ‘Water on the Border’, that was colour really, really really kind of colour, selected colour for a particular page at a certain point, because, and it probably really, sometimes you’ve got purple because there was an iris, iris in black, in drawing, near it, and it probably related to the idea of those colours that would be in those flowers. So we ended up with a little, there’s a little sort of pink, there’s a pink colour. We had to try and think colour while we were doing the layout there, it was very difficult, and I think in the end we relied rather strongly on what we imagined was the colour of the flower.

So the colour is never arbitrary in that book?

No, not at all. Neither of the books we’re talking about were the colours arbitrary. I should say the arbitrary colours which I did use when I did ‘Ajar’ I think were fairly arbitrary. I didn’t have to be, they didn’t have to be a special blue, that’s all I’m saying; I mean it would have to be blue, it would have to be green, but I didn’t have to make a selection on what kind of green or blue it was, it was more like out of the pot.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 27: Tape 14: Side A Page 362 But presumably in the green for instance it’s the cabbage leaf isn’t it, I mean you were going roughly cabbage colour?

Yes.

And, can I just track down, when I said the next collaboration, you took it to mean something other than the next...

The next phase of collaboration.

Can I just pin down what you, how you think of the stages of your collaboration with Helen?

Yes. Well, there’s an argument about ‘Spin-Off’. It wasn’t really a collaboration, but I did put her name in it. We still argue a little bit about that.

Is this the next book? I can never remember the sequence.

No, the next book after this, well the next... Well, sorry, you see, I’m really thinking in series of books I’m afraid. The same, part of the same collaboration, you’ve got to remember, was ‘Clinkscale’ and ‘Stells’, which occurred while we were building the mill which meant in lots of ways that we could produce shorter, more concise kind of books that didn’t require so much sort of working out and thinking about. And having just said that I didn’t...what had happened with ‘Clinkscale’ was that this grant, which we had applied for years before for publishing, had come through from the British Arts Council - from the Arts Council of Great Britain, something like £1,000 I seem to remember, and we went the whole hog and did a colour separation book called ‘Clinkscale’ which, I think if you look, I’m holding the accordion strip, you can see how ingrained my fingers are with dirt. That is, that you are witnessing basically high

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 27: Tape 14: Side A Page 363 octane building work going on. And that was exactly when we were in the middle of doing the work. So that still is part of the first collaboration. But what I was going to say to you was, the second stage of collaboration came in the Eighties, and it started with ‘Mim’ and it finished with ‘Real Fiction’, and it then stopped again, and started again with two books, ‘Yarrow Cooks’ and ‘Water on the Border’, and that was basically the Nineties. So there have been three phases of collaboration as far as I can sort of work out.

And are these phases simply marked by the times in which they happened, or are the character, is the character of the collaboration also different?

Oh yes. They are both, they are, the character of collaboration is different, and they are different moments and times. I would say, I would say, if you said that, well Helen was really in a sense working as a kind of helper almost in the first book we did, which was ‘Loophole’, it was almost completely the reverse by the end, by ‘Water on the Border’, although I might say, because I was printing the book it was almost as if I was the helper at that point, although of course we had put the whole thing together together. But I failed to notice that ultimately most of the photographs had been taken by her, and that was a kind of point where she wanted to make the distinction and say, ‘Well you do actually assume a most astonishing amount of my work as yours,’ and I said, I think, having realised, having it been pointed out that I...I explained that, you know, if I didn’t accept that this wasn’t my work, I wouldn’t be able to collaborate. In other words if I was taking, if I had, if I was going to develop all these photographs in the darkroom, and put them on to film, which is the way we used to do the book, it would all be on film. I would crop it and I would decide what was taken, but I didn’t actually say to myself, this was a photograph that Helen took, or this was a photograph I took. I saw it as the material. I understand Helen’s point of view on that, but I also want it to be understood my point of view.

But, sorry, just so I am clear that I understand. What you are saying is, that had you not regarded it as material that you were going to then discuss and take to the next stage, you would have made, if you had thought it was only your own, you would have

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 27: Tape 14: Side A Page 364 made decisions in the darkroom earlier, it would have come out in a different way for the next stage, is that what you’re saying?

No. No. I made no distinctions. It was the material if you like. Whether...I am talking about the photographic stage, you know, when the actual photographs were taken of the water, or whatever it might have been, I did, I probably took as much in lots of ways as Helen, but in the end they didn’t fit in. I was actually already doing what I’m doing now, which was photographing on the hoof, you know, I was moving. A lot of my photographs were actually out of focus, blurred. We jointly accepted the fact that we didn’t, that wasn’t what this book was going to be about, so that ultimately what Helen had taken was what this book was going to be, but I was the person who did the darkroom work. When I mean the darkroom, when you’re going to print a book you have to convert the actual photographic images onto film, I would...so therefore, when the final sort of putting the book together came, all, every, all the material except perhaps the colour, which we had to imagine, had to be there on the floor in a pile, and we had to draw from this major pile and put a couple of things together, like a drawing, a photo, an image, but these were all on film; they didn’t exist as drawings by children, they didn’t exist as photographs, they existed as a piece of film, and it was me who had done that work, because I was going to be printing it, I was going to expose it to the plate. So, what my attitude to it was, was, that this was the material for the book. If I saw those images as photographs Helen had taken for the book that Helen was making, I wouldn’t have been collaborating, I would have been printing Helen’s book, but we were printing and making a book that we were both making. So my input was in the darkroom, and in the choice. But you see, where it’s necessary for people to move away and start doing their own things, it is also necessary to break down exactly what was what and who was what. I mean I think, you know, all along to keep a collaboration going you have to stop, avoid doing that, you simply do, otherwise it just doesn’t work, and it brings in all sorts of problems when you do it, and I think we have survived that, curiously. I mean I think at one point I thought we never would, but...and I think the total, the total survival will be, Helen has now finished her book, and when I have finished my book I think that will be complete.

The survival of the sort of separation of our working together and the kind of conflict that that has created in the sense that someone, Helen in this case, has gone back and claimed the material that’s hers, and I have felt in a sense rather hurt by that kind of attitude, equal to her hurt that I felt that it was mine.

And so if you think that process of survival will be complete, have you any idea what will happen next?

Well I think, I think we will both develop in our separate ways, but I think that I also notice that there’s very little likelihood that we won’t stay in touch, and, because such a sort of important part of both our lives has been in a way being in touch, you know.

Are you meaning in touch in terms of your creativity or in a very literal sense of being in the same place?

Well I think both. I mean again it’s very difficult to distinguish. I mean I think we can probably communicate quite successfully in different places, from different places, because we always communicated on a very sort of verbal basis. But on the other hand we both also have an attachment to the place we live in, very strong. I’m very, I am very happy with my working situation there and the studio and so on, and Helen is very happy at the moment with the material that she is using which is around about. I don’t know how it’s going to evolve. I mean I am aware that I do have to go elsewhere to find my material; I do have to go to a different environment, I have to go to another country. I can’t help that, I mean that is just simply part of it, I mean, I have accepted that. I mean the last few books I’ve really been involved in have been about going to different countries and coming back with material, and, you know, I feel that that is what is going to go on, as far as I know.

Can we, just before we move on to those can we just say a little bit about the character of the collaboration in the middle and the third period?

The collaborative periods I’m talking about.

Yes, OK, the middle period. Well, there was the very strong... I mean, OK, so we had the first period, we’ve covered that. Now into the second period we have already Laurie, and in a sense, Helen isn’t able to have the time with her teaching and looking after Laurie or at any rate the needs of having a child to be fully involved in the way that we could have involved ourselves together. We are in a sense talking. But what it means is that ultimately I make series of kinds of moves of my own and then I say, ‘Well, what do you think?’ you know, ‘How do you feel?’ And she might do a few things too.

Which books are we talking about at the moment?

Well we’re talking primarily about ‘Mim’. With... I mean, I acknowledge that ‘Mim’ in lots of ways comes from an idea that Helen suggested. I’m not sure whether I contributed the idea of a model or not, this idea of clothing a model, but I think, I’m not sure, it doesn’t seem to really matter, but I know that I was very strongly involved in putting ground and figure together. And I had the models in the studio and I would go in and work with it really, and she would come in and do things too. But in a sense that was set up by me. The text was split too very much between the two of us both of us altering, changing places sometimes, me doing a bit of her and she doing a bit of me. I mean I think that basically that’s really what we were doing, we were exchanging positions and continuing on with this idea and doing it. Everything was understood, it was all, it was fine. I mean, you know, the acceptance of the level of using the different papers, you know, it’s great excitement. Finally we were, I mean you know, finally there was going to be the use of different papers; I had never used different papers - well there were, there were different papers used, say for instance in ‘Chinese Whispers’, but that was only for a different purpose, but this was about the idea of different papers. We both of us photographed backgrounds, both of us photographed clothing etcetera, we went on doing that. I don’t know whose photographs were what. By the time we got to, well I’ve already gone over the

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 27: Tape 14: Side A Page 367 beginnings of ‘Real Fiction’, the next book in that series, but Helen definitely felt she should be more in the studio more of the time, and again a set situation was there, again it made it possible for her to come in and I would do something, it would go that way, she would do something and it would go that way.

What were you trying to achieve with ‘Real Fiction’?

[PAUSE FOR THOUGHT] Oh, so exhausting this! [LAUGHS] What were we trying to achieve? The real and the fictional. I think it’s...I mean it’s a look-back, ‘Real Fiction’, it’s back, it’s really back to the paperback series in a way, I mean I was conscious of that, although we were really doing it with ‘Mim’ as well, there was the clothing model, it wasn’t the model but it was the clothing model, the backgrounds we did go out and get, so we didn’t construct them. This was, OK, we were going through the same old thing of phasing, the same old phase of sort of creating the thing within the book, but having little men doing it now in model form. It was wondering whether we could take that whole thing further, and we did, and I think the great invention was that, when it finally reached a difficult point where it was an end point where the actual room had been made, we photographed that and made it into a poster, and then simply folded it into the book, into the model of the pages, and continued on, and found we could add to it physically. So it was a, the construction was physical, with little models, but it reached the point where, where do we go, what happens, this is as far as we got to before but, not in this context but this is different. And, no, it’s all right, it’s OK, you just photograph it, fold it in, make it part of the book, and see where we can go from here. And that was a very crucial stage that, and then...

When you say fold it in, what do you really mean?

Well, you know a photograph of anything, it flattens something. It was a three- dimensional room had been built, like, it was like the corner of a room and you had your cut right across it, and it had been constructed in the page of the book. What had happened was, was that if we...we were obviously photographing the whole time so we had the photograph of it; why not take that and re-allocate it to being in the book in a different way? In other words, not...where the room was working into the page as

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 27: Tape 14: Side A Page 368 a construction, is not the way when you re-photograph it and folded the piece of paper because it’s been flattened, then it will fold, it will fold in a different place.

Why are you folding it in the first place?

Because it’s...because we are playing with the spine, and the left- and right-hand page, so you are talking about something that’s very important to a book, which is...it’s a signature, it’s a very important word which I for many years never really quite caught or got, but a signature is basically a folded piece of paper, and it’s formed a very important basis to a lot of moods and different aspects to the way we’ve worked with books, because we had dealt with the spine but we had dealt with the idea of signatures, the idea that if you take out a signature what have you got here? You haven’t got something, you haven’t got something like a canvas, you’ve basically got a three-dimensional thing of a piece of folded paper, which is a, you know, a dissemination of the way this book is made.

Sorry, I just want to be really literal for a moment. You have built your tiny little model literally within the pages of the book.

Well actually it’s not so tiny, it’s the same size that the actual book was going to be as a matter of fact.

Well that is tiny, for a model.

All right.

Isn’t it?

No, actually, no it wasn’t the same size, it was bigger, sorry.

OK, so it’s scaled down to fit on the pages is it?

Yes, it’s done the same scale but it’s bigger, yes.

OK. And so that image is printed in the book as if the little model is built within the gutter of the pages.

Mhm.

And you then photograph the model, so that...

Well no no, I mean, you never, you never see the model at all, all you see is the photographs of it.

Yes, OK, but you then go, in order to make your poster you take a photograph of the model...

No, it’s just one of the photographs we’ve been taking in the book.

All right, and it’s blown up?

No.

Well why does it...what’s the difference between the photograph and the poster, what is the poster?

Oh, it’s just, the poster is just on, it’s printed on a piece of paper as against photographic paper.

So it’s the same scale?

It’s the photograph that you already...it’s the same photograph that’s in the book, but, it is both blown up and then knocked down again.

What do you mean knocked down again?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 27: Tape 14: Side A Page 370 Well knocked down to the size... I mean, it’s... No sorry. OK, I explained the model was slightly bigger than the book, right? So, the photograph that I take of the model is going to be smaller, so when I make the poster I bring it up to the size of the actual model. There’s never, the photograph of the model has never been the same size as the actual model.

OK. So what you are calling a poster...

And the reason I’ve made it the same size as the model is so that it fits into the model. It won’t fit in if it was left as a photograph. Yes, what I call a poster is simply a photographic image on a piece of paper but it’s not on photographic paper.

OK. But do you literally fold this image on the piece of paper? When you are talking about it being folded, what are you folding?

I mean like a signature.

That actual literal piece of paper?

That poster, yes.

And then what happens to that?

Well the actual fold comes in a different place from what... Sorry, the corner of the room comes in a different place than you would actually...because you put it into a different size, it comes in a different place. You actually start to distort what was established as a room, as a sort of corner of a room, and the actual fold, which goes back into the model you are photographing, comes from a different place. So you started to distort what was the room. You’ve flattened it, you flattened it by making it into a poster, but you then folded it again.

So, sorry, I’m still...you’ve got, at this point you’ve got one copy of this folded signature? It’s not printed, it is literally the folded photograph?

Made into a poster.

So you’ve got one copy of it.

Yes.

How does that become printed?

Because you just photograph it again.

So... No, it can’t be... So, you don’t do it 300 times if it’s an edition of 300?

Oh no, no no no no no. Cathy you’re getting really sort of into the wrong area here. I’m only talking about the procedures for the book; you are talking 300, 500 copies.

I’m talking...I cannot get from this conversation...

What?

How you get...how the poster is used actually in ‘Real Fiction’, the book.

Because you are still thinking of a poster as something on the wall, are you?

Well you talk about the poster being folded into the book.

Yes, I’m only talking in terms of what... I am using the word poster, which is confusing you, sorry.

Yes, we’ve got over that one. But the carrying on...

You haven’t, because you’re back in there.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 27: Tape 14: Side A Page 372 No, at the moment you’ve only talked about one thing; whether you call it a photograph or a poster, there’s only one thing in the making of this book.

Yes. No...

So how do you get it...?

All right, let me explain again slowly. The model.....

End of Track 27: Tape 14: Side A

Go on.

OK. Let me start again. We are photographing, the camera in front of this model. Now you just must remember the model in scale is bigger than what is going to go into the book in just general size. We reach this point where the construction had been made, and we say, ‘Oh...’ or I do anyway, I say, ‘Where do we go from here, what’s going to happen?’ This is where we’ve reached, this is the stage we’ve reached, we’ve got to break through this. The solution to it was to take that last photograph of the model and blow it up so that it would be the same size as the model that we had been photographing. Now I call it a poster, because the way you deal with it is that it isn’t on stiff photographic paper, but poster is a light-sensitive paper which folds a bit like an ordinary piece of paper, so that this thing could be folded simply and added to the pages that you already have made your construction within or around. Now, of course the construction, we’ve moved from that model now.

So you’re adding it to the construction...

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

...not to the finished book?

No, we no longer can use the construction, we’ve moved to the pages that were behind that construction, the pages that we have been photographing originally, that this construction was made within. We’ve had...I mean, the construction is a solid three- dimensional thing, we can never put the poster back in there because something’s in the way there, all that construction, but, we can now go back to the pieces of paper that are simply folded there and put this image of the construction and fold it where it’s going to fold and we will find that the fold, because it’s undergone this straightening out from the three-dimensional, and blowing up, it’s going to be in a different place, so you’ve got a totally distorted construction.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 28: Tape 14: Side B Page 374 OK, now what’s confusing me is, you are talking about putting the, folding it into the book, where you are effectively talking about folding it into the model that you are then going to put into the book.

Yes, that’s what I was trying to say.

OK, that’s where my confusion was.

Yes, yes.

OK.

Did you see the show at...?

Yes.

Well there, that explains it.

Yes, but the tape is never going to have seen that show.

I know, but it does explain why we had seven different models, because in a way we had to [INAUDIBLE].

No, it was the way the word ‘book’ was used that became confusing.

Yes.

Because you are talking about, the model happens to be of the book...

I know, what I...

...rather than the book that’s the finished product.

Yes.

I mean it was a confusion probably created by me, yes.

No no no. But, OK. So that collaboration is pretty much the two of you working equally?

Yes, again though Helen developed the end of that book, and she has always felt very strongly about the last bit as, in a way, her, very important to her, and I acknowledge that. And it was quite interesting to see the book take off with her initiative really. The text by the way was all written by her in one afternoon, but I completely re- arranged the order of it, and I think the last bit which relates to the end bit of the book is something that she wrote early on that I said no, no, that’s not in the right place for that, that should be... And in a funny sort of way, by taking that out of the text it helped formulate that last bit. I mean, it’s interesting because I think actually in lots of ways my analysis of the book stops at a certain point where my actual total involvement was changed, and I never make an awful lot of references to the last bit myself but that was because quite straightforwardly it was very much Helen’s input. But, that is understandable, and, we can’t actually say initially what is mine and what is hers, because I did actually make a series of contributions in that bit, but I don’t own it in the same way she does.

Why do you think it’s become so important for her to own bits of the collaboration?

Oh because she wanted to make up her way, her distinctions, as opposed to ours, or the ones that we collaborated on. I felt that it has been kind of, it has been a lesson to me, which I have had to take very carefully and slowly, because I think I felt enormous hurt initially. I felt I had been really let down, and there was a certain sort of sense that, I can’t see why someone should really, you know, in a way pull away from this, but at the same time I did understand that. But I do feel that there is an

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 28: Tape 14: Side B Page 376 element of trying to re-write history, something that we never actually would ever indulge in in the process of a collaboration, and I know when that sort of situation starts there’s never any going back to it, and I would say that she effectively has completely cut it out; there’s no possibility of ever going back, because it’s created a certain amount of distinctions between what we have done. I think what, the way we went was that we didn’t want to see those distinctions; now, it’s been necessary to see them, and so once that has been established then there’s never any chance of going back to it.

But nevertheless you are stronger for having had the unity before?

Yes, and I think that in a way it’s provided luckily a new jumping-off point for both of us, and I would have said that it could have been that it was just at the right point to look at it in a good way for this to happen, because I think that things, you know, there was question marks, well question marks happening now, and, I must say I remember thinking when I was printing ‘Water on the Border’, my God! you know... I mean I locate it as this, is that Helen, as I started to print the book, Helen said, ‘Look, I really am not too certain about the paper we’re printing on,’ and she was referring to me printing it mind you, but printing, we were printing it on, and I said, and I thought, now, this is a real crucial one, I’ve got to be very careful here. I am not prepared to start printing this book all over again on different paper, I am not going to, or, we don’t have the money, anything. I said, ‘OK, how about if I go along with this printing and then when we’ve sold this book out I’ll print it again in the paper that you suggest?’ which is to be whiter. And she agreed, and I went on and finished it. And I was very relieved at that, when I said to myself, I am not going to go through this again, because this is... I could have blown my top and that book would never have got out, I mean I would have just stopped and not done it. No no no, I mean, there are lots...along the way there had been lots of possibilities where something might not have worked, and there have been along the way lots of things that haven’t worked.

Along the way of your whole collaboration, or of ‘Water on the Border’?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 28: Tape 14: Side B Page 377 Not just the collaboration, I think it’s been pretty good, we’ve produced lots of different books, but, I think at the time that I was at Toronto Airport and I had ‘Real Fiction’ with me and I declared it as art work and they were going to decide whether or not to let me through, and I was sweating profusely because I had this ‘flu and they obviously thought I was stoned out of my mind, you know. And they are very hot on drugs in that place. And I remember just relaxing and thinking, well there’s nothing I can do about it, it’s in the hands of this guy, and he said quite straightforwardly, he said, ‘It’s up to me to make a decision,’ and I just let go. And the ‘plane was going to go in ten minutes, and I knew Joan thingy was meeting the ‘plane, and I knew that if I didn’t arrive and get met, that book would never get printed. I mean I’m thinking of that. I think that something like ‘Real Fiction’ has been quite crucial to, at any rate for people who want to write about books. Not everybody but some. And..

In what way?

Well, I mean it offers a certain amount of sort of open contradictions, the idea that someone should...it should be entitled ‘Real Fiction’ and it sort of, the push and pull of that has attracted a lot of people to look at it, and then they have noticed that it’s an inquiry into the bookaresque, which was Helen’s contribution. They see it as a kind of, quite an intellectual exercise.

What do you see the bookaresque being?

Well I think actually, anything to do with books or bookness if you like. The sense of book. I think, I know actually that it came from the word picturesque, and that was quite a series of concerns for Helen’s thesis at the time, you know. But you know, ‘esque’ is the sense of the quality created by a particular kind of, dealing with a certain kind of approach to something.

Mm. And can you talk a little bit about the two times when you’ve done a book in America, with Nexus and Joan’s press?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 28: Tape 14: Side B Page 378 Yes, well that was a great, a great thing doing the book at Visual Studies Workshop with Brad Freeman, because he was the print man at the time, met him, and formed a very kind of, important kind of connection with particular people I wouldn’t have met otherwise.

What was important about Brad?

Well Brad’s has become in lots of ways, organised shows of books, married Joanna Drucher[ph] who has written about artist books.

No, but on this particular project, what was his contribution really?

Oh his contribution, he was the print man, he was...

Yes, but as a printer, what’s important about him?

Well, it was first... I mean, perhaps what I have missed out about ‘Real Fiction’ and why it’s important, it’s probably one of the better printed books. It also was how I set my darkroom up after I had done that book was all modelled on the darkroom at Visual Studies Workshop.

And how was it different from what you had before?

Before I just had a cupboard in the bathroom, and I used the bath to clean the, to wash the images, to wash the things which probably, wasn’t very good for us.

And after?

As a completely independent darkroom with water supplied, bringing in the process camera of our own, we invested in doing all the, making up all the kind of negatives or positives for the plate-making at the mill as against Helen going into the college and using the facilities there. And only having very short sort of periods of times to do that.

So it was really, I mean you kind of knew what you needed before but it made you actually get on and do it?

Yes, I felt that there was a whole area of making books which could involve the self in the reprographic process, which is really what that’s called, which has been overtaken by the computer completely now, but I find I still use it even though I’ve got a computer as well.

So what was it actually like working at Visual Studies Workshop?

Well it was like, you know, the classic place. It had the most incredible camera for making these plates, I mean it was like really old-fashioned because Nathan Lyons, Joan Lyons’s husband, used to work for Kodak and Kodak actually happens to be, the sort of main office of Kodak happens to be in Rochester, New York, which is where the set-up is, the whole place. I am so thankful that they hadn’t moved to Texas or Nevada, which is where they were going to go, and they had actually had sort of a break of two years or something like that because all these plans had been ditched, and they were still part of Rochester... It’s a building in Rochester which is part of I think, part of, was, or, ex-buildings to the University of Rochester. And, the other thing about being in Rochester was meeting various sort of people, like Keith Smith and, I’ve forgotten his name now, his boyfriend. Scott, Scott MacCarny[ph]. And going to see them, and stuff like that. I mean I had met Keith Smith at the Boston Book Fair, but not really got to know him very well.

Sorry, just following through, when you said you were very glad they hadn’t moved away from Kodak, what was the actual benefit, that they had this old camera, or was there some other...?

Well Nathan’s whole kind of grounding work had been in photography, and he had been, with Kodak, he had actually been employed by Kodak, and...

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 28: Tape 14: Side B Page 380 Oh what, sorry, you mean they might have gone to Texas years ago? You don’t mean just before you went to do your book?

No, no, yes, no there was this point where I witnessed Visual Studies Workshop, and they still are there but there was, there had been this likelihood that they were going to sort of move out.

But that wouldn’t have changed their equipment.

Probably not. But I mean somehow, just, I mean it’s got to be the most established kind of press workshop in the whole of America, and it wouldn’t have been quite the same.

OK, right.

I mean every other press workshop has moved 20 million times, you know.

Right. But also, I mean, there is no equivalent to them in England is there?

No, well that...

Can you say something about what difference it makes having a place like that?

Well, I did say when I was at Camberwell, I looked at the...I went down to the print room to look at the Heidelberg, which is what they all have, is gigantic Heidelbergs but much bigger than the one in Camberwell of course. I just said, well, my goodness, if this was America you would have a whole lot of book artists waiting to print their books on this, and they looked at me kind of with their mouths open. It’s just extraordinary, I mean, where you would find a big Heidelberg, you would have a whole print workshop set-up where there would be grants and a system of residencies where artists would come and print books. And I mean you’ve got, the other place I went to was Nexus in Atlanta, Georgia, where they are even more active than Visual Studies Workshop, where there are even more people involved, where, they’ve moved

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 28: Tape 14: Side B Page 381 to a really purpose-built building for their... But they are part of a very large arts centre which has a theatre, and various other attributes to it, and the press has always been a very important part of it.

And which book did you do there?

I did ‘Desire’ there.

And how did you come to do that there?

Well, when I was at, actually one thing led to another. When I was at Visual Studies Workshop there was a conference in Rochester and Joan Pascall[ph] - sorry, Jo-Ann Pascall[ph], came and I spoke to her, and said that I would have been... And she said, well was I interested in...and I said, yes I was, or perhaps I said I was interested and she said, ‘Oh are you interested?’ and I can’t remember which way round it was, but, we got on, and she said, ‘Well, we would be interested if you would let us know if there’s something you would like to do.

And how did ‘Desire’ come about, what was the trigger for you?

Well, the senses basically, this idea of the senses. How to somehow convey and amalgamate both text and image, and convey feeling if you like, strong feeling. And probably colour being very sensual and trying to be used... I mean, I was very interested in the use, of the way of trying to use colour, I think the book was very in a way for me set up for the use of colour, I felt that that basically was a development for the books at this point, and I had the darkroom established, and it was possible for me to see that I could go on for the first time and make over and over again different kinds of negatives and positives of various bits of imagery, and separate them and set them up for different colour printings, but I was seeing it very much as colour in a sense as stacking or layering of colour on top of each other. I think that... I had to find something that was a theme that went through the book, because in a way these things could float away, and that’s how the device of using the wire came in.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 28: Tape 14: Side B Page 382 Tell me, because for me in that book the wire is a very tearing thing and a harsh thing, and the colours are quite harsh, but I don’t think that’s how you see it at all, is it?

No.

How do you see it?

I see it as quite sensual. The funny thing is that that appalling incident where most people got squashed in that football ground.

Oh, Hillsborough.

Hillsborough, occurred exactly when I was printing that book, and a lot of people thought, they said, ‘Good heavens!’ and,’Did you foresee this incident?’ or something awful. But, I don’t know how you come across the tearing aspect to it, except for the cutting one where there is only parts of faces involved and images, but I thought that I was basically dealing with the senses in that, you know, peering, looking, and feeling and smelling.

The barbed wire for me is something that you get caught on and torn by.

Yes, but it’s not barbed wire.

But it’s...yes.

It’s actually known as, it’s fencing wire, which, it basically keeps sheep in.

Yes, but I suppose it’s, for me it’s very associated with the wire that...

There’s no barbs on it, but it’s true, it’s close...

It’s knotted isn’t it, I suppose...

Yes it is. And I actually chose a particular wire for it, which was kind of, you don’t see any more, it was like a particular way they had joined it which I quite like. I actually saw it as a way of composing if you like, I hate to say that, but I was actually in a sense stacking things on top of each other and the wire to me, it didn’t have that tearing sense but it was a way of actually trying to locate and keep things in place.

A fixer.

A fixer, yes. Yes.

And a thread.

Yes, but also the text was too. By the time I had disseminated it, and taken it from a series of tape recordings, and blocked various bits of it to take its original sense out, then we were left with certain sort of words, and they sort of amalgamated in a kind of, with the image and the wire and the layering.

And to me that’s a totally different book from your earlier series; I mean it’s a whole different journey. Do you see it as being very linked?

Do you not think there’s a link between one, that book and the next book?

I’m thinking backwards at the moment.

Yes. No well I was trying to make this move. I considered that to be a change. But you know, there’s a kind of connection with ‘Mim’, there is a connection in ‘Mim’ there, so I am not so sure it is so completely different.

I don’t think it’s totally different. I suppose it is like a Chinese whisper going through those books actually.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 28: Tape 14: Side B Page 384 I’ll tell you what there is a difference is that I decided to print on one side only, you know, so you’ve got the open page, and instead of opening, instead of printing left and right page, you’ve got a right-hand page with image. But actually you’ve got the rest of the colour on the left-hand side, and it was essential to establish the ground colour, that everything had been printed, and then on the right-hand side you had all the things that were printed on top of each other, so that...so that...

Stacking.

Yes, so that you establish that it wasn’t paper, colour paper. A lot of people rather irrititatingly thought it was different coloured paper which, I was doing great efforts to try and point out it wasn’t.

And, so you did a lot of preparatory work in England, and then actually printed at Nexus?

Yes, no, all our darkroom work was done in Scotland, yes.

And so what was the function of Nexus, that it paid for it effectively, or what?

They gave me something like $1,000 to do the book, and an artist-in-residency thing where certain things were covered. I overdid the budget twice; I went on paying for that. I never had such an expensive book.

But, sorry, if most of the work was done in Scotland, did you actually go to Nexus? What was done at Nexus?

Oh yes, no you must point out that both these residencies were, I went with the work, that’s why I was talking about Toronto Airport.

So you went to print in both places, having got to that point?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 28: Tape 14: Side B Page 385 Yes, no the only difference is that I pick up about the darkroom by going to the Visual Studies Workshop, I didn’t, I had my photograph, my art work with me originally for that, I had to do the darkroom work there. With Nexus I had moved on a stage, I had established the darkroom, and I didn’t have to go through that stage there at all, we were straight into the printing when I got there. But it didn’t get finished, the book. I mean one of the things that was a great pity was, there was a great deal of problems. Unlike with Visual Studies Workshop where I met Brad, the print operator, the printer, Nexus was going through a very odd stage where the printer who was there, and I can’t remember his name now, was leaving, and he didn’t like working there, and he was having problems, there was all sorts of internal politics, and he was just, he was literally on strike. And so only half the book finally was printed. I mean we had the time to do it while I was there but thingy, whatever he did he did, and, I think, a lot of people couldn’t believe I could put up with this.

So it was printed by somebody else after you had gone, or it was printed at home, or what?

No, what happened was that I wasn’t present for half of the printing.

And did that make a difference?

Yes. Yes. I wasn’t very, I was...I was pretty disappointed with...and they certainly didn’t... I used to be mixing, the other thing was that I mixed all the colours when I was there, I had to...I mean, let’s say, it was done in stages, so when I left, I mean all the printing, first printing, second printing levels were more or less complete. The wire hadn’t been printed in completely, so that was OK because there was not much problem about that, but some of the images hadn’t been printed by them, so it was sort of incomplete like that. So when they printed the images they never used, I kept on saying, use more ink, use more ink, I want it heavier, heavier here, and they didn’t, they didn’t have me, my words to follow for them to do it.

Were they sending you proofs, or was it all done...?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 28: Tape 14: Side B Page 386 No there was not much left to do, but you know, I still look at certain of the pages and say, oh shit, I wish I’d been there for that.

And the next book was ‘Ajar’, is that right?

Yes, the next was ‘Ajar’.

And how does that lead on?

Well, I suppose I was slightly dissatisfied with ‘Desire’, but then I still remain dissatisfied with ‘Ajar’ as well, I mean I can’t say I am absolutely... However, this is the virtue of using colour. I mean you said earlier, very different from previous books. In lots of ways if we say there is image and there is text, and I say also that there is colour and there is a way of using it, it’s in total contradiction to the two things that have been established, image and text. I mean, you can’t pretend that colour is something that fills in an image, you know. It’s something of its own, and I think it’s a major, major thing to... And I did actually withdraw from the use of colour in a sense by going into another collaboration with Helen where we used colour rather differently.

Which is?

Well the two following books, ‘Yarrow Cooks’ and ‘Water on the Border’. And so, in a funny sort of way I felt the adventure into colour had only partially succeeded. I don’t mind saying these things, I don’t think that you expect...I don’t think you could expect the world with everything. I still at the present are (sic), and going to be using colour, but I think, and I still am going to be stacking it, but I am using it in another way again.

And what were you doing with it in ‘Ajar’?

Well in ‘Ajar’ I no longer was establishing a ground colour with no image, and then printing images on top of that. I was actually having different forms set up for each

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 28: Tape 14: Side B Page 387 layer. So, initially it was just two, one on top of another. This is...I am talking about the double spreads which, I split the pages up so there were singles and doubles, and the singles had one sort of approach and the doubles had another. I was trying to amalgamate the Russian text into the image as well. I was also translating in the other pages the English, the Russian from the English, and also showing the Russian as well within image. Where the double spreads were I used three colours, there was a stacking of colours, yes, one two three, but there was also different images in each layer. This was quite a complicated process because what I was doing was using the actual press, printing things, rejecting or accepting certain sort of configurations and going on and re-printing, so I was printing on a kind of proof stage thing. I don’t think I want to do a book again like that ever again.

When did you get your press?

The press came in, well the first press I bought was in ‘79 which was a letterpress which I did ‘Back to Back’ on. The offset press was in, I did, the first book I printed on was ‘Spin-Off’, so, that was about ‘83. I mean, I might have got it before ‘Spin- Off’, so it might have been ‘82 to 3. I was doing the, I was doing building work in London in ‘81 so I wasn’t in Scotland at all for a whole year, and I then did, then I was commissioned to do the American book for the Museum of Modern Art, so I then went back and did all that and sent them the art work, or rather I met someone in London who took the art work back for the museum. And so I hadn’t, in a sense I hadn’t at that point, if I had the press I hadn’t printed anything on it, that is the offset press. I had printed on the letterpress though. I won’t ever go back to letterpress to print a book because of course each page is taken off by hand separately, and that took an awful long time.

And that was in ‘Ajar’?

No, no no, that was ‘Back to Back’.

Right, which we have never talked about. I’m just going to.....

....to let the noise in that strong. It’s all right, I’m going to let you out soon, you’re feeling trapped in another house aren’t you, in another space.

No not quite.

You said that, actually just before we really go back, just for the sake of my piece for Linda, can you just sum up for me the third phase of your collaboration with Helen, not necessarily in very much detail but in terms of the balance between you, those last two books you did together?

Well, ‘Yarrow Cooks’ and ‘Water on the Border’, which we did with, in collaboration with school children, and the idea of the use of drawing classes to initiate images for the book. Initially ‘Yarrow Cooks’ was a cookery book where, I didn’t put any, I don’t take any responsibility whatsoever for the actual recipes I must say. It was like a community project that we did locally, and it does bear the relationship with the fact that our son was at the local school, and his drawings are in it. I mean it wasn’t the reason, but he did actually say at one point, ‘I’d like to be in it, I’d like to do a book,’ or something like that, and we said, ‘Well yes, yes, here’s an opportunity,’ you know, but... And Helen went to the school and she got...I had nothing to do with the drawings whatsoever, and she did the drawing classes, and then had a lot of drawings on bits of paper and I went, as usual, into the darkroom, did the work on it, got it to the same sort of, manageable material. The same thing with ‘Water on the Border’ but much more complicated, this was another idea initiated by Helen, this idea that we could take classes but on a more elaborate basis, that we could get money for this book, which I started working on, writing off to, and we had a long long correspondence with the British Council about this.

But, don’t worry about going into that at the moment.

Oh right, mm.

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 29: Tape 15: Side A Page 390 But how, compared to the previous phases of collaboration, how was the collaboration working between you in terms of balance and...? Can you just sort of sum up, sum it up fairly briefly, or not?

How do you mean, balance, Cathy?

Well you...

Where my part in it lay you mean?

Well both, well therefore and hers as well, because they are inseparable aren’t they? I mean was it an easy collaboration, was it...?

Well, I mean you know, the actual moment of putting things together, which was what I always said, you have to have this pile, that pile, that pile, and we put these things, we put this book together, was done absolutely, there was no distinction between me and her, we were simply working towards doing something. On that basis, both those books were produced like that, where you sit on the floor in the mill with all this material around, and we just make choices, and I can never remember what and who, and what did which; there wasn’t any...

Right. And just before we move off those two, can you just document for me what happened with Printed Matter over ‘Yarrow Cooks’?

Well they had sent the, they wrote a letter back saying they weren’t quite certain that it was an artist book, and so we composed a letter which changed their mind, that’s about it.

How did you change their minds?

I was absolutely astonished that they should think like that. Well I, initially I said, well good heavens, you know, there’s got to be a point where people are working in a certain way, and they’ve got to be able to go in whatever direction they want to go in,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 29: Tape 15: Side A Page 391 and if they’re going to use...in a way to use children’s drawings with the idea that it’s not an artist book is absolute nonsense. I mean I said, well I saw that very much as, I mean it’s awful to say this but I saw that as the material for the book, and whether they were done by children or not, it was what we chose. And that was very important.

Was that what their problem was? I have always assumed it was because it was more like a conventional recipe book.

Well, well it might have been just that we were... It might have been that they felt that they only wanted to be dealing with books when anyone wanted to buy, which is pretty horrifying. In other words, that they saw, as you say, that, they saw the book as a cookery book so therefore they had a market which they didn’t have to fulfil in certain sort of ways. But the thing is, there was a whole aspect to it. I mean that’s why I brought in the whole history of our books in general, and I said, you can’t just say that one book of them, if you’re going to accept any of them then you have to accept them all, because in a way it’s all a development, and there are certain aspects brought out in certain ways at certain times. I think that, and it’s also a rather horrific kind of conclusion about their actual existence, which is that they are only there to supply books that don’t have any other outlet for. In other words these books had other outlets which other people should take on, and they didn’t have to, I thought that was absolutely horrific. I suppose they could have had a point about that, but I wasn’t going to accept it, you know.

In other words that their policy might be, they only sold books that nobody would buy elsewhere?

Well that’s what I’m saying, that’s what I’m saying, yes, and, I did actually put that point, or we did, in our letter.

But was there a part of their point to do with intellectual content, conceptual content, or not?

So it was a funny kind of censorship coming across?

Yes, but it was only very tentative. And they certainly accepted the next book without any kind of qualms. But it’s funny, it’s interesting that none of the books, those, either of those books sold particularly well in America.

Did you get a reply to your letter about your books?

Yes, they apologised, yes they did apologise. But, I’ve come to the conclusion that no books sell very well in America unless they’re about America, and relating to America, and I think the books that we did best are the books that have basically been printed in America, or have been in a sense composed or thought about in America.

I mean, is some of it to do with, presumably if you do a book at Nexus or Visual Studies Workshop, then it goes out with all their literature, and there is sort of help in distributing isn’t there, is that part of it?

Yes, yes. But of course with Nexus we never benefited from that because the deal was pretty good in their favour. They said we had...we had to split it down the line, I mean not many people want to distribute their own books, especially when they go to Nexus, they leave it up to Nexus to distribute their books, and I said, well I do, I mean I want to distribute our books. And they said, ‘OK, well we’ve got America and you’ve got the rest of the world.’ And actually at that time our market was in America.

And is it now, or not?

What? Oh, no it isn’t, it’s much more even.

Between America and England, or...?

Well just much more general, it isn’t, it’s in different places, and I mean we could even bring in Scotland at this point which never existed before.

Why do you think it’s changed?

Well I think a lot of, I mean you know, I mean there might have been... Well in doing a local book let’s say there was...we were sort of saying, OK, there are ways of selling books, and there are...and we got a way of doing books, but we could apply that to making, selling. I mean why do so-and-so sell so many books and not us, and they do complete rubbish? So, in a funny sort of way, it was relevant to sort of think that, yes, we could do something which would sell in Scotland, because it...but that was because of the input that the local people put in. But I mean our books sold within, with the help of the, well not the help of the school, I mean the school didn’t help at all, they just remained a, where the children were and where our son was going, they simply remained a place that people came in to buy, get the book if they wanted it, and people did, they just did, I mean that book went out of print, there were 600 books printed and it went out of print within three months. And again we sold it for very little money, but it allocated itself in that area where you couldn’t really...you couldn’t...I mean I couldn’t price it other than, I priced it only related to the material, but I didn’t take any money or value on my time spent printing it.

Yes. But I mean that said, I mean you couldn’t have sold ‘Water on the Border’ through the school in the same way, could you?

Well I thought we could, but it turned out that we couldn’t, no. I mean we did, we did, but nothing, nothing compared.

But although you say there’s a Scottish market now, I mean that was a bit of an anomaly wasn’t it.

Well it isn’t, because it’s not to do with the school now, it’s to do with the Fruitmarket in Edinburgh which is has sold our books quite well.

Since when?

Well they used to have our books going right back, instead of Graham Murray when he had a gallery, but in the last two or three years they’ve sold our books regularly.

And why do you think that’s changed?

I don’t know, I think it’s a personality. I mean it’s almost as if people know us, so they know if we’ve done books and so they go...

Is David Banningham[ph] still there, was he there for a while?

Yes, he’s in Glasgow.

Oh right.

Yes.

OK.

He’s in Glasgow.

And going back into your books, I mean you’ve said that..

I thought you said yoghurts then, but you said ‘your books’.

Afraid not, no, we can’t talk about yoghurt, there just simply isn’t time Telfer.

[INAUDIBLE]. [LAUGHS]

When did you...

Absolutely. Perhaps you’ll meet one day. It’s like a book within a book.

I hope there’s a smile comes to her face.

She might be smiling at this very moment. When...you said a little while ago that you’ve realised that you need to go away to make your books. When did that start to be true?

In a sense to find material you mean? Well it didn’t actually, it wasn’t kind of completely...I mean, I was aware that I couldn’t necessarily in the environment we live in find material for books, I mean it just, I knew it, and I began to wonder if I shouldn’t cast the net a bit wider and I became... But I was also, it was really initiated by the idea of the interest in Russia, and wanting to go to Russia, and realising this is the first, possibly...I mean I am not the first person to go in after the Berlin Wall went down, but, certainly it was possible now and it was much easier and all that, and this would be great, I would like to do it, because... But it also coincided with this interest in text, and Cyrillic writing, and, I wasn’t going to learn to talk in Russian, that was not the point, but, I don’t consider myself a linguist in any sense of the word, but I am still fascinated by dominant cultures if you like. I mean if I had been to America and initially accepted that as the dominant culture I certainly wanted to go to Russia and find out what that was about too, and I found out a lot of very interesting things, and it did form the seeds, a lot of the images I did, well some of them anyway that I did acquire, and certain sort of things like the text and so on, were found by going there. So, the further development of that was the Chinese trip, and again there was all sorts of reasons about the pictographic formation of whether there was an image in the letter or not, I mean these were investigations that were there and were important, and then Helen’s interest in the Chinese thing as she has always felt there was a kind of link for her. So there was...so again that was another great adventure into a rather different kind of world which had been closed, and again it was open. Since then there’s been the trip to India, and that is a trip again to, yes, to find material for a book, but also something I really wanted to do right back in the Seventies. And I felt

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 29: Tape 15: Side A Page 396 very at home in India, really at home, I was terrified of going in the sense initially and getting ill and getting very sick, and I am aware that I am much more kind of vulnerable to things like that nowadays, and much more nervous about travelling and all these sort of things, but I think I do push myself into these situations as well, there’s a certain element of pushing myself on, and wanting to get there, and getting a certain amount of satisfaction in being able to cope with it and come back with some material.

And when you went to Russia, had you any idea that you were looking for a text from someone? How did that happen? Because that’s the only time it’s happened in that very special way.

Yes.

Can you just tell the story of what happened?

Oh what, about Gennadi Aygi?

I mean when you went, did you know there would be a text? Did you have anything in mind?

No, because I met Gennadi Aygi at the mill initially. Helen’s sister, who had been to Russia in the Seventies and had studied at Moscow University, had met him, and he was then suddenly in Edinburgh and had got in touch with her.

Could you spell his name?

Oh Gennadi Aygi, A-Y-G-I.

And Gennadi is G-N...?

G-N...Gennadi...I can never get it.

It’s in the book - well it isn’t in the book, sorry, but it’s certainly...I could post it through to you or something like that, I’ve certainly got one of his books at home.

So he had come to the mill and you had met him?

I met him, and he, oh yes, he did say, ‘Would you like to do a book with me?’ I use that as a really good excuse to do something.

So is that really how the idea of Russia began, going to Russia, or not?

I think it did actually, yes. Actually someone else suggested it, so it wasn’t just that person. Someone in Edinburgh said, ‘Why don’t you go to Russia?’ and explained that I could go on a tour thing, they showed me how to do it. So, actually there were two...it was often with a lot of these things, it’s not just one, there’s two things that push you into it, and I felt I should make, should really do something about it and do it.

And so, you went thinking you would go to see him and that a text would be a trigger for a book, or...?

Well, I was quite happy, open to any situation, and I actually did go and see him. I split away from this tour and stayed in Moscow for about a week while the tour did sort of tour, and then I joined up with the tour and we went to Leningrad, and then we went back, and came back, and it was something like two weeks I think, I think, or something like that, fourteen days, yes. And I spent at least a week in Moscow in a way, now where was I staying? That’s right, someone on the tour said, ‘Don’t tell anybody but we’ll...I know somewhere you can stay. Make sure you don’t look as if you’re moving when you go by underground,’ or what you want to call it, metro, to this place, and they explained. ‘And don’t say...’ And so I was told all these sort of things. And I was housed as it were in a family of Jewish people that were trying to work out whether they should go to Israel or not, and curiously enough they had a car,

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 29: Tape 15: Side A Page 398 which is very unusual for a family living in the middle of Moscow, but the guy used to have to park it miles and miles away so it didn’t get broken up by his neighbours. And there was all sorts of things that I met and found out about and heard. Grandmother was still living in the apartment, and I was actually given the son’s room to stay in. I felt really I was imposing myself on these people terribly, but they desperately wanted me to be staying with them, so, it was very nice. I mean it was quite strange, I mean, it really was, but an experience. And, I mean it really was, I must say, an experience, I really had the most extraordinary time. I met a lot of people I had been given names of, and in one way and another they introduced me to more people and more people, and ultimately this is how I came into touch with Nakrasov, simply through about three levels of meeting different people. And finally I was, I had been talking to this woman for two, three days or something like that, we would split and meet up again, and she said, ‘Oh well you must meet...’ Oh that’s right, she couldn’t understand why I was so critical of all the...she wanted me to see all these exhibitions of work of Russian art and, we went into this exhibition and she said, ‘Now what do you...what have you got to say about this?’ you see. She spoke pretty good English. And I said, ‘Well I do like this poetry here, this writing on the wall.’ I didn’t call it poetry, I said...and it was Nakrasov’s work. And she said, ‘Oh well, I’ll arrange for you to meet him.’ I mean I...

Was it in Russian, the writing?

Yes it was, it was.

So you were responding to it visually?

Yes. And it was on the wall, and it was in an exhibition of paintings, and I said I hated all the work but I found this was...

Was it printed, written, or painted, or, what was...?

Typed I think.

It was visual, there was no doubt, everything about it was visual.

But was it in its own right, or did it accompany something?

It was on a piece of paper, yes, it was on the wall.

But everything else was a painting and there was this one piece of paper?

Yes, yes.

So you don’t know why it was there?

Well he maintained that he felt he was, he wrote from visual...that his things were or... I agreed with him, I felt that they had a visual quality that I could look at without even being able to read, which I actually found satisfying.

What sort of size of paper was it?

Just an ordinary foolscap.

And what sort of scale were the paintings? I mean did it relate to the rest of the exhibition?

Not really, no, it was on a kind of pillar I think, in the show.

Oh right. But it had been, the person who had curated the show had put it there, it wasn’t...?

I’m not sure whether everyone had put their work up or, I’m not...you know, I don’t know if that was the scene or not.

Right.

I mean, it was absolutely astonishing going through Moscow in this kind of strange strange [INAUDIBLE], mostly only women in the street, I mean men apparently never used to get up, never got out of bed, and the women would go foraging basically. And...

And...sorry.

You would then come to this building, this modern building which actually was this major gallery, and you would think, oh, there’s no one around, I wonder if there’s anyone in here. And if you had actually taken into account the way it would have been if it had been any other country, there would be no one, you would just find... And then you would just find hundreds and hundreds of people, all the day long, in this gallery, because there’s nothing else for them to do, and it had heating and they could meet up and talk.

And when you met the poet, what was he like, what kind of age was he, what...?

He apparently is the same age as me but looks very much older, which, I mean he had... Yes, we found out that he was born the same year as me.

And did you speak each other’s language, or not?

He didn’t speak very... No, so there was a major kind of problem. His wife spoke a bit of French. But I actually didn’t end up by going on my own. I can’t remember how I went to him. I had the group of people, they were desperate to see... You see my trade in a way was that I was going to go and see Gennadi Aygi, they wanted to meet him, and they were going to introduce me to Nakrasov, so...

Did you have any of your work with you? I mean how did you present yourself?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 29: Tape 15: Side A Page 401 Yes I think I had, I had the books. I can’t remember on what occasion, I know I went to, Gennadi Aygi I went to the first time, but I can’t remember who I went with. I think someone, someone came with me. I think it was the second occasion that these other Russians came with me, because they wanted to meet him. I can’t remember what happened the first occasion, I really can’t, it’s really rather blurred, because after all what happened was that I went back, re-visited and took the book with me that I had done, and presented everybody with a free copy basically. I distributed the book in... The reason there was not many ‘Ajar’ left is because I took as many as I could in my luggage and gave them away. No one could have bought them in Russia.

And how did people react?

Well, I gave them away, I didn’t just give them to people on the street like that. The whole thing was organised by Yuri to meet all these other artists, who made books. And there was a sort of very loose sort of feeling about them as book-makers, to be honest they were just, they did certain sort of printing and some... I mean you know, you get involved with livres d’artistes here and all sorts of things. And that was an exchange.

And how did they react?

Oh they were very, I mean they were...they had obviously heard, by the time we had been going for about a week, the grapevine knew that this guy called Yuri was bringing round this man with a book.

So how did they react to the book?

And so, the reactions were different when I began, which was surprise, but after a bit there was this expectancy that they were going to be given a book, so obviously I, you know, was...

But how did they respond to the book itself, rather than to being given it?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 29: Tape 15: Side A Page 402 Well they didn’t, they...in general, can I talk generally about how people responded? I don’t really get any impression. I mean it was a bit like exchange of gifts, you know.

Mm. But, sorry, going back a stage, when you went to see the poet for the first time, I mean, did you go thinking that you wanted to work with him? How did it happen?

The second time?

No, the very first time when you were taken to meet him.

Yes. I thought that we were, I thought it had been established that he was going to send me something, that’s what he said.

And had that been what you went to ask for?

Well, I took up from the meeting we had in Scotland, which was...

No no no, but he wasn’t the one that did it. The poet who you did use the text of...

Yes, Nakrasov.

...who you had met through going to this exhibition.

Oh right, yes, him.

Did you go to see him with a view to saying to him, ‘May I work with you?’

No, he presented me with the Russian text for his poems completely out of the blue with an English translation. And I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m already doing something with Gennadi Aygi; if I hadn’t I would have used you, used your work.’ And then I didn’t inform him that nothing came from Gennadi, so I started using his. I mean I was...I had already half-printed the book, and I was taking words out of various small bits of stuff and even probably took a word out of his poem, wrote it out and put it

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 29: Tape 15: Side A Page 403 into one of the double spreads, you know. And I was sort of...there’s no way you could communicate with Russia, I mean you know, it was either it was going to arrive or it wasn’t, and, I was just so relieved that I had received this typescript that he gave me. He gave it to me, I didn’t ask for it.

So you, when you next saw him it was a surprise to him that you had used it?

Absolutely, he was gob-stopped.

And how did he respond?

He didn’t know what to do, he was all over the place. First of all he looked as if he was rather annoyed, but I can’t tell what he was saying because he didn’t speak any more English than anybody else. He then arranged for another meeting so that he had had someone who translated, who was going to be there, and that was arranged, and by that time he was a little bit calmer. But I think he was almost taken out of, you know, he just didn’t know what...you know, he...he really had no idea.

And at the end was he sort of happy about it, or...?

Yes he was, because he kept on ordering...I mean he kept on trying to get more and more copies of the book and I would send him... The one quite important link was someone called Olga, Olga, at the All-Union library, I can’t even remember the full name of it, All-Union, of foreign literature, yes. Someone called Olga, Olga Sinistina[ph] or Sinisti...I don’t know what her name was. And she, I was able to send books to her and she would just, she has been very good.

And are you still in touch with him?

Not with him, but with her I am, and they have actually got a copy of ‘Ajar’ which I did; the other thing was that I...they said that they would re-publish it in Russia, and I did the whole thing all over again in the darkroom and sent it to them, got it delivered,

Oh right. And so, really, what you were doing with his poems, you were extracting elements from them to use visually, I mean the meaning of those words is not really important to you in that sense?

I had no idea what the Russian read.

Yes.

None, no. I was really interpreting kind of, what I considered to be a nice looking, you know, a sound or word, you know, it was really a sound actually.

And what about the images in that book?

‘Ajar’? Well like I said, there was the kind of layering and the printing of different images on top of each other. I just, I fastened on using certain sorts of images out of a kind of hardware catalogue, and from various sort of newspapers that I had accumulated.

But none of these were Russian were they, they were British?

No, no.

Why did you make the combination?

Well some of the sort of points were, I mean, the newspaper that was an ‘Independent’ about the time that the Berlin Wall went down, so I thought that was very significant. But the other one was a newspaper I had had for years about the General Strike in 1923 or 4, or ‘22?

Oh really? ‘26. OK. And I felt that that was the nearest thing that came to a similar thing happening as the Bolshevik Revolution in this country. And there’s a lot of descriptions about what actually happened with that, which I thought was quite interesting; it didn’t actually feed itself into the book but when people asked me about the book I gave them a whole description of my interpretation of what happened in the General Strike.

Which is what?

A series of events where the sort of aristocracy set up soup kitchens in Hyde Park to...so they laid down their tennis rackets, to feed the miners and the marchers from the north. And as time went by more and more of them just left, got up and left, and the last things to pack up were the soup kitchens. It was a rather sad incident. But the fact of the matter is, there was no great underground, which was attempting to come into power to change things, and there was just support, and the ruling status quo held sway. But what was interesting, I thought, was the element of the way the ruling class in a way played a part in the actual kind of, in helping out those poor marchers, and handing out food and so on.

Other members of the ruling classes went and broke the strike by driving buses.

Right. OK. Well they played a part, that’s the point isn’t it. I didn’t even know that. You see it wasn’t, you know, it’s my little bit of... I mean, my information on this was, I actually in a street stall picked up this newspaper and knew nothing about the General Strike, so I learnt about it by, from this newspaper. Anyway, it seemed to be relevant, yes.

And so, let’s move on to the trip to India. You went there intending to make a book as a result, or you went to India to find out what would happen and whether it would...?

I was hoping that I would find material to make a book, and what I came back with I thought was just background.

Where did you actually go within India?

I went to Bombay, because what I was looking at were these Buddhist caves and I had bought, knowing very little about Indian culture, I bought a book about Indian sculptures and, architecture and sculpture, and immediately realised what I wanted to go and look at, as soon as I saw it.

Which was what?

Well, basically these figures, these carved figures out of stone. And I found out that a number of caves where you could find them were near Bombay. You had to land, so I had to decide about where I was going to land, and it was to be Bombay, so, it was to be Bombay. But I actually found when I got into Bombay that I couldn’t get out of Bombay, and I would say quite straightforwardly that it was a bit like Hell on Earth, Bombay, it was a quite, quite sobering kind of experience.

Because?

Well because, the very day I landed I couldn’t quite understand why everyone seemed to be sleeping on the street, and it turns out that there’s something like, out of 14, 12 million people, which is the population of Bombay, 3 to 4 million have nowhere to sleep, nowhere to live, nothing to eat. So they are basically, you know, I hadn’t come across that kind of number of what this man I met termed as beggars and scoundrels, of which he probably was one of them.

And who was he?

I don’t know who he was. But what happened was that the text that has evolved in this book is through the voice that I’ve heard over and over again since I was in Bombay, which, it’s probably gone through a series of filters.....

End of Track 29: Tape 15: Side A

But whose is the voice to start with?

An Indian, an Indian who ultimately, I mean what he did say was, initially, I mean you could say he picked me up on the street if you like. I was coming out of one of the few galleries in Bombay, and this guy just said, ‘You are wearing sandals; I thought the British introduced slippers to India’. I said, ‘I am not...’ Actually he said, ‘I thought the English introduced slippers to India,’ and I said, ‘Well I am not English, I am British’. But actually, that is actually what I say, so, but actually he said something else, like, ‘I think you are German,’ or something like that, and I said, ‘No, I’m not’. I said... So you know, it’s already as I say gone through a series of transformations.

But, so you encounter him in the street, and then what happened?

Well, what he, I mean you know, fact from fiction; we will never know. But the fact was that we were walking along the street and we were talking, and I was very happy to speak to this very articulate man, big, fat, perspiring, but spoke English very well, I mean as a lot of people did. And he said, ‘Would you like to come for a drink?’ and I said yes, and he said, later on he said, ‘Would you mind paying for it?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t mind paying for it.’ And there followed the series of kind of meetings as it were in these bars, where he ordered the strongest beer he could get and all I could eat that night was a series of peanuts and little bits of potato which wasn’t good for me but I survived till the next night. It was still worst for me, but I still survived for the next night. A lot of it was a great deal of advice that he gave me, you know, how to do this and how to do that and so on. But I certainly...

Within India or in the world?

Well be afraid, be wary, don’t go here, you know, watch out, you know. But the funny thing is it all turned in on itself, because ultimately he ended up by I saying, well, after we had gone through a few nights of drinking and in a way him examining

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 31-44 Page 408 me in quite a big detail about where I came from, what I did, and really what he wanted to know was how well off I was, he ultimately started... I made the comment that, I said, you know, ‘You’re always talking about these different classes of beggars and scoundrels, but I think you are probably the most sophisticated.’ And he said, ‘If you think I am one of them, the lowest is in the gutter, but if you think I am one of them, I’m going to get up and go.’ And I said, ‘Oh no, but I don’t think you are, it’s all right, don’t worry, just stay where you are.’

And did he stay?

Yes. Oh yes. He had, all he wanted was an excuse to stay, he didn’t need very much.

And so how has this continued into the work, these series of conversations?

Well I never thought that any of those conversations would work itself into the book at all, because I felt that there was a very highly political, politicised part to it. I mean we did discuss and talk about the poverty, and I would say that this book has ended up by being about the poverty. I mean it isn’t the confrontation between pale skin, which is what he called me at one point, and brown skin, which he probably is, what he is, at all; there was a certain amount of reference, back reference to the fact that I am, you know, ‘you are wearing sandals’ and things like that. ‘You have, you wear a cheap watch,’ and, ‘You have, you don’t smoke and you do wear a cheap watch.’ And, ‘Do you use a Wilkinson when you shave?’ you know. I mean this kind of curious, I’m sorry but that isn’t actually the way...I mean I’m sorry, I’m not being able to quote my book very well, but I mean I know that the question ends on the word ‘Wilkinson’, so you know, I’ve got it the wrong way round. But anyway... There were sets of references to me, but that’s not the important part. There are sort of political concerns and situation concerns about population, population growth, poverty, the way people live, which come into this, it’s a sort of haranguing thing. And then of course my fascination with the poverty, I mean to be honest the only thing I wanted to shoot was the kind of, the way people slept on the streets, the way people made little temporary sort of housing elements for themselves if you want to call them, whatever they are, structures, to sleep in.

And so those are the images that will go in the book?

Yes.

And it also includes the sequence we were talking about yesterday, of Margaret and your tent, does it?

They don’t go together, but they’re in something called ‘Covers’, which is the preliminary elements that lead up to this. They are also in that bit as well. I wouldn’t say they’re separated but, according to what title comes up, an image is resurrected in some way or another.

So, the main body of the book is really images from India and this voice, and also relates to ‘Covers’?

Yes.

There isn’t any other ingredient coming in?

Oh, well I don’t know.

In a literal sense, there’s no material that comes from somewhere?

No, no none of the material comes from...no, that’s right. And actually what I initially thought was, a background, I found that in the end I had to just adjust myself to realising what I had was what the book was going to be, and I might have had ideas of what it was going to be before I went to India, and I had ideas of, ideas of what it was going to be after I came back from India. But when I was presented with what I had actually found, that was really what, what I had found when I photographed was actually the way the book was going to be.

And what technology are you using to make it?

Well I have, a new bit of technology is a computer. I have done sections of the book on the computer where I have layered various different images on top of each other, and then scrubbed away so that they come through. And they are, well the way I’ve used it is that it’s never been used directly on...I’ve had to print those out and then go back into the darkroom and get them to be the right size, because I was utterly and completely incapable of manipulating the computer to basically something that has always been important to me, which is that I have to work with the page scale in mind.

What size is this book?

It’s the same size as the last book we did, which is ‘Water on the Border’, it’s the same size, that’s about the biggest size image book I can print on the existing press I’ve got.

And has it made a difference working on the computer?

I think it has, and it will make even more so, and I think it will become more important.

And what is the difference do you think?

Well I’ve only used it very primarily, and I think there’s a lot more for me to learn. I think it’s a machine that’s got a lot more for me in it, which I haven’t discovered yet.

But up till now, what is the difference, how is it different?

Well the whole area, there’s whole bits of this book that wouldn’t have come out that way if it hadn’t been that I had used the computer.

Because it would have been impossible to achieve?

I don’t think I would have thought of doing it like that.

Right. And as well as the computer, what other technology is going to be used?

None other than just printing the book as I’ve done it before.

But what will that be printed on?

Oh well this will be on the offset press that I used for the last book, which was ‘Water on the Border’. It’s not Helen’s book because Helen got that printed at, that is the last book that’s been printed by Weproductions but that was printed by McQueens[ph], at the printers in Galashiels.

And the title of this one?

Is ‘Song of the Thrush’.

Why?

Well, I’ll tell you why, because this is a musical book, in a sense that the text is a little bit like music, and the images become rather clumped up like the way you read music, or as you could read music. The text isn’t in a straight line. I mean, we start from one stage of this book and it evolves, and ultimately everything starts to wander, and it has its own way, so I start distorting the actual, the actual words and the phrases and the images. There’s a very strong physical presence to this book in that the first part of it, as I said before, are a series of covers, which are bound conventionally into a book, like single spread pages, one after the other, and then stitched. But then the second part of the book, which is ‘Song of the Thrush’, is the reverse; in other words the, if you take the signature, I have...you are not...the signature is bound, the open side of the signature of the one single folded page is bound into the book, so that you’ve got an image going, travelling round the outside of the page and back into the book.

And why did you do that?

© The British Library Board Telfer Stokes C466/61 Track 31-44 Page 412 Well it’s a development from ‘Water on the Border’, where the images were doing that without doing that to the paper. This suggests itself as a way of doing, working on the outside of the paper rather than in the spine, and I think that the move has been very strongly to start doing that, so that this is one area that I’ve never really worked with. I also am quite interested in the idea of it not joining necessarily in the spine. I’ve certain things I will join to make it readable, the text for instance, there’s an overlap so that it will read and hopefully it won’t go out of sync. But image-wise, I have actually purposely made it so that one thing stops when it gets to the spine and then it kind of starts but possibly not quite in sync, and goes on and again stops. And the text works so that it starts to link it, so where it doesn’t join the text takes the sort of load of doing the job.

And didn’t you say there actually was a bird that you heard, that’s why it’s the title?

Yes, I had actually come, I mean, often with these things I come out with a title. The accuracy of whether it really was a thrush or a blackbird is really fairly irrelevant.

Did you hear it in India?

No, I didn’t, I heard it at the mill before I left.

Before you left?

Long before, it was written in my notebook as the title.

Right.

And it’s just that, these are things that, the way I can probably work and always have been able to work is that, if I cut out something from the ‘Guardian’ newspaper in 1974, like ‘Miss Mousetrap’, and then end up by finding a ladder and a chair conversion in a loft that I‘m in in New York, there is a correlation and, because I haven’t done many things like that up to that point, but I think...

Oh no, I recorded it when I was in New York, mm.

OK.

End of Track 30: Tape 15: Side B

Tracks 31-44 are closed until December 2028.