Legendary London writer Iain Sinclair takes us on a tour of his exhibition, Histories and Hauntings, at Swedenborg House in Central London. Histories and Hauntings was partly a re-staging of an exhibition that Iain Sinclair organised at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1974 with Brian Catling, Renchi Bicknell, Sam Torrance and others, Albion Island Vortex, but with the addition of subsequent works that continue the themes of that highly influential show.
Stephen McNeilly and Iain Sinclair at Swedenborg House
Filmed by John Rogers December 2023.
Thanks to Iain Sinclair, Stephen McNeilly, and Victor Rees
I’m delighted to be celebrating Dalloway Day at the brilliant Hatchards Piccadilly on 22nd June 2024. I’ll be in conversation with writer Matthew Beaumont “to reflect on walking in London both in Mrs Dalloway’s 1920s and today.”
“In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.” Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Lost river walk that links two of the magnificent seven
The Counters Creek has haunted me for a few years, just as the lost rivers of London collectively haunt London. It was there as a presence when I’d documented the protests to save the communities and buildings in Earls Court in 2015 & 2016. It reverberated beneath the tombstones of Brompton Cemetery when I filmed Andrew Kötting dressed as Straw Bear drifting through the portico. And one possible source of the Counters Creek was a marker on my psychogeographic sound trail around Kensal Rise for Brent 2020 London Borough of Culture. So I was well overdue a walk along its course.
One possible source of the Counters Creek on the Brondesbury Ridge
Kensal Green Cemetery Chapel – near the source of the Counters Creek
The recognised source of the Counters Creek is not up on the Brondesbury Ridge at the junction of All Souls Avenue and Chamberlayne Road, although it seems highly likely that springs from this high ground feed into the river. Both Nicholas Barton in his classic Lost Rivers of London, and Tom Bolton in London’s Lost Rivers – a Walkers Guide, place the source in Kensal Green Cemetery hidden beneath a large stone slab. From here it crosses the Grand Union Canal and flows across Little Wormwood Scrubs, beneath the Westway and down through Notting Dale, the edge of Holland Park to Olympia (where I stopped for a pint and accidentally realised the pub was close to the Countess’ Bridge that gave the river its contemporary name), Earls Court, Brompton Cemetery, Fulham Road, Kings Road, Lots Road, before making a glorious confluence with the Thames in its above ground guise as Chelsea Creek.
Interestingly, Nicholas Barton only dedicates one paragraph to the Counters Creek
I was guided along the course of the Counters Creek by Tom Bolton’s brilliant London’s Lost Rivers – a walker’s guide published by Strange Attractor Press
It truly is one of the great lost river walks – not as celebrated as the Fleet, Tyburn, Westbourne, or Effra – but certainly worthy of a song as Paul Whitehouse had improvised from the deck of a Thames Clipper as we filmed a chat about the Thames and passed the confluence. It’s a shame that song never made the final cut of Episode 2 of Our Troubled Rivers. But the song of the Counters Creek can still be felt rising through its culvert beneath the streets of west London.
John Rogers and Paul Whitehouse during the filming of Paul Whitehouse Our Troubled Rivers
A 3-day trip to the capital city of Slovenia in the former Yugoslavia with my wife at Easter. Featuring some of the major architectural sites of Ljubljana and a trip to Lake Bled in the Julian Alps.
We arrived in Ljubljana to a downpour that lasted into the evening, Easter Monday. We wandered the rainy streets taking in Jože Plečnik’s Central Market and the Dragon Bridge, then ate Ossobuco with crispy greens and risotto for a late lunch. The youngsters in the restaurant spoke with the intonation of Italian but containing Slovenian words. I’ve been fascinated with this cultural soup ever since my wife started to explain her father’s complex personal history – born in interwar Italy in a region that became Yugoslavia after the Second World War rendering his family stateless. His parents though, had been born in the same town when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, his father an ethnic Italian, mother Slovene-Hungarian. That town is now in Slovenia. We recently discovered Heidi’s great uncle Zorco’s Wikipedia page where his Profession is listed as ‘Warlord’. After the war he served as the Italian military attaché in Czechoslovakia and died on a level crossing in the Czech Republic some years later. We once visited the castle in Merano, Italy near Bolzano where he served in the Italian military – a place where the primary language is German. The old buildings in Ljubljana reeked of the postcard idea of Mittle Europe I’d been carrying in my head. A city long held by the Habsburg Dynasty it’s threaded through with European history, and now ranks amongst the continent’s most successful cities (depending on which metrics you apply).
On our second day we took the bus to Lake Bled in the Julian Alps. We arrived to an intense hail storm and took refuge in a cafe where I became fixated by a painting of a rural scene showing an old house with a round-towered church on a hill. It’s exactly the kind of feature that W.G Sebald would have injected meaning into – I guess here I’m thinking of his brilliant book Vertigo which I associate with the border regions of this area. (I later discovered that the painting appears to be by German artist Christian Friedrich Mali, Ländliche Idylle , 1860)
The rain cleared and we walked the path that lapped around the shimmering alpine body of water. Sunbeams broke through the storm clouds to illuminate the church on an island in the lake. We ate a traditional apple cake with cream.
Back in Ljubljana early evening we went hunting a socialist modernist (soc mod) masterpiece spotted from the bus. I got a rush of adrenalin when we found Milan Mihelič’s Petrol station on the edge of the city centre. The concrete bloom caught the sunset. Aside from the time spent with Heidi it was the highlight of the trip.
On our final day we took a boat trip on the Ljubljanica River, and wandered the streets spotting more Soc Mod masterpieces and other fine buildings. It was the first of what I feel will be more journeys exploring this part of Mittle Europe.
Sunny day spent editing this illuminating video of a trek across Northampton with Iain Sinclair to the home of Alan Moore. How do I cut anything from this footage? Feels like a crime.
Screening of Unearthing Alan Moore at Swedenborg House, 23rd May. Extended YouTube version shortly afterwards.
Episode 3 of Pub Chat finds me having a pint at the brilliant Filly Brook, Leytonstone. This is obviously my favourite ‘pub’ name in the world (Filly Brook isn’t strictly a pub, more of a tap room) being named after Leytonstone’s lost river that gurgles beneath the street just yards away. In fact, Weston’s map of the Philley Brook / Filly Brook from this very blog is framed on the wall inside. The beer’s great as well. On this occasion I was supping a collaboration between Filly Brook and Pretty Decent Beer Co., Connections Pale Ale, in celebration of the month-long cultural festival hosted by Filly Brook with £1 from every pint being donated to charity.
“All I know is that place dictates the story. The petty interventions of humans are of no account. We raid the past to make the present bearable. But there is no present. Just images, scratches, blood colours. Chalk, oil, aerosol: legacy. And outliers to record it.” P.61
