FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (24) - QUAKERS, THE YEARLY MEETING (2026), 'QUAKERS, ENSLAVEMENT AND REPARATION'

 Geoff Watson, our clerk, handed me a copy of this important publication last Sunday and here below is my introduction to the book by way of summary and with some personal responses. This is a work of Quaker scholarship which provides groundbreaking and cutting-edge insights into the issue of racism within the history of Quakers and in our lives today. It is clear that George Fox and other early Quakers, despite their spiritual insights, remained blind to their own racial sin. 

Quakers, enslavement and reparation - a very important read

The cover imagery is important and an explanation appears in the book straightaway: 

In the 18th and 19th century, a single trunk giving rise to subordinate lines was used in European genealogy to naturalise racial hierarchy. The authors of this volume want to make the tree a theological image; they have chosen roots as their primary visual anchor to reclaim the image of the tree from its colonial misuse and instead allow it to 'hold a truth of interconnection, unearthing, and continuity.' 

The collage acts as a meditative piece, enabling the focus on what they call the "gap" - 'the profound sense of absence and broken history'. There is so little in the archives that represents black voices and

FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (23) - ROB DONOVAN (2024) 'MINE TO DIE'

 I self-published Mine to Die through Troubador in 2024. After I retired from the classroom in 2009, I became the writer determined to create books that read well and above all were worth reading. 

The 'widow-maker' - using the rock drill in the Dolcoath mine, taken by J.C. Burrows in 1904

As I experienced and researched the consequences of the Coalition Government's policy of Austerity between 2010 and 2015, I was also planning and writing my first book which I called 'Deception'. This work was self-published through Troubador in 2016 under the title: The Road to Corbyn. 

My next book - a biography of a remarkable artist, Jago Stone, who had spent his early life as a burglar and prisoner - was published by Unicorn in 2020. I became a pulped author very soon after the book went on sale; I had offended against copyright law in my ignorance. The publisher and I apologized to the complainant. My learning curve ....

Undaunted, I offered my take on the coronavirus pandemic in a well-received piece of history, science, politics and autobiography in Dying to Know (Troubador, 2022). 

Two years later, Mine to Die (Troubador, 2024) saw the light of day and is still selling well in the Geevor Mine Shop, the Cornwall Museum and Gallery Book Shop in Truro, the Edge of the World Bookshop in Penzance, and the Bookseller in St Ives. By January of this year, around 250 copies had been sold and another fifty gifted to friends.

My next book, Soul Time, will be self-published, again through Troubador, in the spring of 2027. 

Meanwhile, I have now gifted a copy of Mine to Die to the Marazion Quaker library. It has been written with a Quaker message. As the text says on p. 211: 'Let me be transparent. I am a Quaker socialist.' 

Here below are extracts from some of the reviews of the book:

                                                        Bishop Dr Bill Musk (East Sussex, UK)

'Through the recorded experiences of youngish Cornish tin miners and their families, the reader is confronted with a dramatic illustration of Donovan's main thesis: In an economically and politically hierarchical society, profits are valued more than people ... The quotations are powerful; the naming of the frequently dead makes the records audible. Donovan's argument is sustained, angry at times, wistful at others.'

                                                        Professor John Reid (Nova Scotia, Canada)

'This book successfully combines historical analysis with ethical enquiry. Should, Rob Donovan asks, profit-making be pursued at the expense of the safety and health of working people? That the healthy life of nineteenth-century Cornish tin-miners typically extended to only 28 years old, even

FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (22) - STEPHEN GROSZ (2025) 'LOVE'S LABOUR'

 Around forty years ago, I had my quiet conversion experience and accepted what I understood to be the essence of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. My training as a historian left me in little doubt that there was much in the biblical account that was not what we call literal truth - but it seemed to me that the sayings of this historical Jesus had a power and insight that made me want to follow his path for a more fruitful way of understanding myself and the art of living well with others. I found this truth encapsulated in the biblical text: 1 John 4:16 - "God is Love."

Stephen Grosz, psychoanalyst

Stephen Grosz' book, 'Love's Labour', makes no leap to connect love with God but it is about the nature of love - and there are insights that can deepen our understanding. Grosz is a psychoanalyst who has worked with patients for more than forty years. Protecting their confidentiality, Grosz presents the details of some of his most revealing cases that amply bear witness to a quotation from Rainer Maria Rilke that prefaces the book itself: "For one person to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the work for which all other work is but preparation."

Grosz began his own psychoanalysis - the necessary precursor to becoming a psychoanalyst - aged 31; his listing of the things he didn't understand about himself at that time tell a powerful story of what he

FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (21) - JEANETTE WINTERSON (2025) 'ONE ALADDIN TWO LAMPS'

 Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester in 1959 to a 17 year-old mother who looked after her for six weeks in a mother and baby home. Jeanette was then adopted by Mr and Mrs Winterson whose home was in Accrington. They were Pentecostal evangelical Christians who brought up Jeanette to be a Pentecostal missionary. That did not work out, as you can discover by reading Winterson's magnificent first book - Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit - published when she was 26. In 1975 when she was 16, Jeanette fell in love with another girl, a convert to the local Pentecostal church; her parents found out; Jeanette left home and somehow supported herself through A-levels at a local technical college. By the time she was 19, she had been accepted at my Oxford college, St Catherine's (Catz), to read English Literature. Three years later, she emerged with her degree. 

Jeanette Winterson

The story got even more personal for me as I watched a TV documentary about this contemporary star of English Literature who is now the Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. The camera shot half-way through the programme took the viewer into the inner quad of the college. This was the view from her room at college. I swear it was my room in my first year, back in 1967-68: Room Number 4:12. I had a definite frisson of recognition and excitement.   

Jeanette spins her tale around the stories in The Arabian Nights, including Aladdin and his Magic Lamp. The Nights begin with a Sultan called Shahryar who discovers that his wife and his brother's wife have both been unfaithful. In an appalling act of misogyny, Shahryar decrees he will marry a fresh virgin every night and then execute her the next morning. And so the slaughter goes on until it's Shahrazad's

FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (20) - RICHARD LANNOWE HALL (2021) 'SAILADAY OK - RECOVERY FROM ADDICTIONS THROUGH MARINE-BASED ADVENTURE PSYCHOTHERAPY'

 Richard Hall is a member of the Marazion Quaker Meeting and he recently gifted our library a copy of his inspiring account of a remarkable new venture in psychotherapeutic practice which he pioneered so successfully he was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM). Over a period of a decade and more, Richard employed his skills as a sailor and psychotherapist to help small groups of recovering addicts to develop their own self-esteem and resilience through learning how to sail, aboard his boat and under his supervision in a programmed period of several days. For Richard, the essence of being at sea was that everyone on board was immersed in being in nature, in the natural world - and therefore within its healing power. His book is a cry from the heart - so many forces are at work in the modern world that alienate us from nature, from what makes us whole. Here, at sea, wounded souls could mend and recover.

Richard Hall's account of his own life and recovery from addictions - and his development of marine-based adventure psychotherapy.

The success of Richard's approach is vividly represented in the pages of the book which relate scores of feedback responses from participants who experienced these days and nights at sea. As Sue Parker Hall, his partner at the time, says in the Foreword: 

'What Richard doesn't mention are the occasions that he would receive... some time later...  a postcard or an email thanking him again for all his help and telling him that their experience with him had literally saved their life.'   

Richard explains his insight and practice here:

'The essence of adventure therapy... is making this connection with nature and tuning in and adapting to what we have been given and making this work for us, to help in our growth. This is not something you

FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (19) - FRED MURFIN (1965/2026) 'PRISONERS FOR PEACE'

 Six weeks ago at the Marazion Meeting House, I was handed a folder which contained the printed account of Fred Murfin's three years in prison as a C.O. (Conscientious Objector) during World War One. I had not seen this treasure in the Marazion Quaker archive before and now I was being asked, as the Meeting's librarian, to do whatever I felt fit with this document. The pages had been punch-holed and fixed together - but out of sequence at one point - and there was no proper cover. It had been written by Fred Murfin in 1965, six years before his death in 1971, and first published through the Tottenham Meeting House in 1965. At some point in his later life, Fred Murfin became a member of the Marazion Quaker community and worshipped here with Wilfred Tregenza, another C.O. who served time in prison for refusing to kill in World War One (see my earlier blogpost here by pressing this link). When our most senior member today, Tony Fitt, first attended the Marazion Quaker community with his wife, the late Moira Fitt, in the 1960s, he had the privilege of knowing both these gentlemen.

Fred Murfin (1888-1971) - a Quaker C.O. during WW1 and author of PRISONERS FOR PEACE

It has now been my privilege to bring this invaluable historical document to fresh life through the services of PlusPrint at Long Rock, Penzance. I cannot be sure how many copies were in existence before this reprint at the end of last year but apart from the Marazion copy there are only four others recorded: one in the Cornwall Area Meeting (CAM) library (CAM have the copyright); one in the Euston Road Quaker library in London (their catalogue card says "the original is with Bertha Fox"); and one in the Liddle Collection of the University of Leeds library. I have had 25 copies printed of this new

LIVING THE GOOD LIFE - MEET BERYL BROOKMAN, A MARAZION QUAKER

 

Beryl Brookman is now 83. Louise and I have known Beryl as a Quaker of deep faith and strength of character for the four years we have been attending the Marazion Meeting. I interviewed Alan Newton, her husband, and wrote up the outline story of his extraordinary life last year (see the blogpost here); now it is Beryl’s turn .

 

Beryl and Alan in their Gonewoods home in April 2024

Beryl Brookman was born in 1942 in Lancashire. Her guardian angels sprung into action immediately. Unresponsive, the doctor resorted to giving Beryl, the newborn baby, the ‘kiss of life’, a technique then new to the world. Beryl had had her first lesson in the art of survival and passed with flying colours.

 

Beryl was born into adversity. She was the second child of her mother, Betty and her father’s first and only child. Mum had married Jack who worked on the Manchester Ship Canal and they lived in Manchester. Then in 1939 came a tragedy which was to have such ripple effects. Jack suffered a broken neck in an industrial accident when a load fell on him. As he lay on the ground dying, he turned to his best mate, Henry Tobin, and said: ‘Look after Betty’. Betty was eight months pregnant. Henry was a