JAGO STONE - THE AMERICAN CONNECTION - PART 4

At some point next year, in 2018, I will be making contact with mainstream publishers to see who may be interested in putting their money into my biography of Jago Stone. Self-publishing - as I did with 'The Road to Corbyn' - remains on the table as an option. Either way, the more people who express an interest at this stage the better the sales will be come publication. That's why both the Jago Stone website and the Jago Stone Facebook page contain a box to fill in to express an interest in purchasing on publication - and being kept updated on the progress  towards that point.

Do please look and find the box and if you're interested fill in the box.

Here's the link for the UK readers.

Here's the link in The Page for America.
        

As you will know from my last Jago blog, there has been much new detail emerging ever since the New Year began. Here is the input from Marie-Elena Baker - Laina Baker - who left a comment on the first of my earlier American Connection blogs:

'This is so much fun to read! A real trip down memory lane. We (my husband and I) were stationed  at RAF Croughton, near USAF Upper Heyford) from the late 1960s through to 1981. I have 2 lovely watercolours, signed to my husband and I  from Jago Stone (1976) - Anne Hathaway's House and Trinity Church - two Stratford-upon-Avon views ... I would be happy to send them to  you. Jago even wrote notes on how it should  be framed on one of 

Trinity Church. Stratford-upon-Avon - Jago Stone (1976) - Specially painted for Laina and Rick Baker 

the pictures ... We met him though a friend who was stationed at Upper Heyford hospital ... He even sold  us one of his newly published books'.

That would have been 'The Burglar's  Bedside  Companion'- Jago's autobiography, published in 1975. Laina communicated with me
further and gave me permission to use names and show the

JAGO STONE - TWO DAYS EXPLORED: A BBC RADIO 4 INTERVIEW IN 1971 AND ITS AIRING AGAIN IN 2017

As each week goes past and fresh discoveries emerge from the online search for the identity of Jago Stone as a character and as an artist, I feel more and more excited as his biographer. My gut academic instinct that this style of research would pay rich dividends has been fully vindicated. I remember with pleasure the excitement of my research discoveries during the years from 1995-2003 spent exploring the subject of Drink in Victorian Norwich for my Ph.D. Now with the subject as Jago Stone and his times there is fresh delight in being the historian and practising the skills of this profession.

Using the material that comes to light, together with the detail that can be taken as fact already, the historian makes an interpretation of the past. That is what I am doing. My subject matter is not just Jago Stone. His 20th century world in all its complexity and change is a critical part of my focus. To understand Jago, make sense of the social  worlds he inhabited. And always remember the prerequisite of the good historian is the capacity for empathy.

And so to a day in 2017 - last Thursday, in fact, the 16th of February. The day of my appointment at the British Library in London. The British Library opens at 9.30 am. Here is a photo I took of the queue ahead of me shortly after I joined it at 9.15. By 9.32 when the doors opened, the queue had increased nearly ten-fold and snaked around the piazza outside.

Queuing for the opening of The British Library on 16.02.2017

By 10.10 am I had completed my full registration and was sitting in a listening booth ready for the first of the three twenty minute plays of the item I had travelled overnight from Cornwall to hear. My four and a half hours inside the booth gave me the opportunity to make a full transcript of

COUNTDOWN TO THE LONDON MARATHON 2017 - PART 2

The London Marathon this year is on St George's Day, April 23, 2017. April 23 is an important day for national treasures other than St George and the London Marathon. It's also William Shakespeare's birthday - and death day. Factoids are so Radio 2. I love them.

I thought I'd treat my readers and any sponsors, actual or potential, to the good news of my continuing and extending long runs for the last two Sundays - and at the same time explore the theme of  'The Back Garden'. A visual exploration of the role of the back garden in my journey through life.

The back garden of our terraced home in St Ives - 2017

A contemporary shot. I used a cropped version of this picture for my Countdown to the London Marathon 2017 - Part 1 blog on January 17 last month but did not contextualise. Here I am in the back garden of our terraced home in St Ives in Cornwall, Dig down deep enough and you are highly