Bill Fay has been dubbed “Britain’s musical Salinger” and is arguably one of the country’s most criminally undervalued songwriters, releasing two albums for Decca in the 1970’s and then disappearing from the music landscape after the label rashly dropped him. An aura of mystery has been placed upon Bill’s shoulders by the music press, but his absence from the scene has been forced rather than purposely maintained. He has written and recorded all his life […]
Edith was all corduroy and whispers, a girl who tended to flirt with the tip of the odd cigarette and look daringly into the eyes of anyone who chanced to look back. She was a charmer, afforded the dreams and time which youth lends sparingly, but takes away with crow’s-feet. Edith lived with a mysterious fellow, of whom I knew little, only that two plain clothes police officers used to stand around his gate and […]
In 1931 Gandhi visited Manchester, well he actually visited Darwen, which is in Lancashire, but it is close enough to illustrate the point I’m labouring to make. It is perhaps much better to say he visited the North of England, a place with a particular feel for life, with a populace that harbours a prickly wit, twinned with a whimsical sense of pessimism and a well instilled favour for kindness. Yet in 1931 the North […]
Robert Leeming 