From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net Mon Dec 7 10:23:41 2015 From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2015 10:23:41 -0800 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Childhood In-Reply-To: <566503EF.4090906@gmail.com> References: <000001d12f34$f6c5d460$e4517d20$@gmail.com> <56636D18.2020008@gmail.com> <566503EF.4090906@gmail.com> Message-ID: I believe some clarification is needed with regard to Durrell?s childhood and what he meant by it. First, Durrell?s childhood in India was not ?relatively brief,? as Sumantra Nag suggested. Durrell left India at the age of twelve, and by a strict definition of ?childhood,? that encompasses his entire years as a child. So it?s wrong to diminish the importance of those formative years, however romanticized they became in his memory, which, as Richard Pine has rightly said, is something we all do to some extent. Second, Durrell was in fact ?Anglo-Indian.? Despite Durrell?s joke about being of ?mixed blood? (see MacNiven?s biography, p. 2), the Victorian term is usually understood in the political sense, as Niall Ferguson defines it in Empire (p. 164). Durrell was born in India of Anglo-Indian parents who had never been to the UK. That by itself makes him ?Anglo-Indian.? Moreover, British law, as passed by a Parliamentary Act of 1966, deemed him a non-citizen for not being born in the UK and failing to claim UK citizenship within a certain period of time. So it?s wrong to suggest that he propagated a false identity and that calling himself Anglo-Indian was a ?telling stretch.? He was a displaced person and had good reason to think of himself as such. I don?t know, however, what kind of passport he traveled under after losing his citizenship. My guess is that he held a UK travel document with a special designation that didn?t allow him to reside in country (e.g., those Chinese and Indians born in Hong Kong, when it was a Crown Colony, held UK passports which identified them as ?Hong Kong Belongers? but without the right to immigrate). It?s my understanding that he had to apply for a visa to enter the UK. Third, the India of Durrell?s memory is the trickiest question. As noted before, ?From the Elephant?s Back,? his account of growing up in India, contains stories which cannot be true. James Gifford has noted some discrepancies in his recent edition of the same title (2015). The memory of India, however, remained an important part of Durrell?s identity. One of his last poems (perhaps the last) is ?Le cercle referm?,? which appears at the end of Caesar?s Vast Ghost (1990). The poem begins in colonial India (?Boom of the sunset gun / In the old fort at Benares?) and ends (presumably) in Provence with ?A disenfranchised last goodbye.? Disenfranchised or displaced he surely was?both literally and figuratively. But was Durrell ever in Benares? Is the poem accurate? I believe that Michael Haag has said he never was in the holy city. And I will take that as fact, but I see nothing phony about Durrell?s claim, which is a poetic one, after all. Keats never stood on a ?peak in Darien,? but who faults him for imagining the comparison and getting the figure wrong? I?ll give Durrell his vision of India, especially since the poem seems written from his deathbed. Bruce > On Dec 6, 2015, at 7:58 PM, James Gifford wrote: > > Hello all, > > Thank-you Gulshan for these thoughtful & careful comments. The pervasive nature of the East India Company and its systematic divisions has become an annual ranting point for my wife while teaching her year long World History course... Your phrasing is too gentle. > > Am I correct in guessing that the "anecdotal evidence of Indians and the English socialising" refers to Durrell's father? > > In any case, to my thinking, two things call out. The first is something I raised in the introduction to /Pied Piper/. The racist caricatures in the novel invariably come from the adults, such as the "sons and daughters of sows" and "raised black paws" from Brenda who is herself a caricature of the belligerent Brit in the scene (I can't help but see her as ridiculous and callous in the scene, though obviously contemporary readers may have seen her as a role model) -- immediately following this, Walsh leaves the family home to meet with "The small native boy" who is clearly brighter than him and who introduces him to secrets he would never learn from the British characters. This might be part of what Bruce is gesturing to: Durrell's insistence on India's importance (whether genuine as a part of his youth or irreverently later in life, such as in his interviews). I was suspicious in that scene over whether Durrell was offering this up as a serious vision of India (racist, and as you note, a clich?) or if he was mocking that clich? by juxtaposing it against the more na?ve meeting between children that follows. Children matter in Durrell. An open critique wouldn't do well for the novel's publication or intended readership, but the juxtaposition might give such a critique an open door. The young boy's naturalness and argument against "shame" contrast against the English reserve Brenda reasserts in the close of the chapter, and the "no shame" phrasing tied to the boy (paired with the recognition of mortality he learns from Indians and learns to represses from the English) comes back later as Walsh's most important lesson in the novel. > > I might be reading too much into that, however. An old habit in Canadian news media is to tell a story through juxtaposition rather than statement, such as never accusing a politician of lying while instead setting two things side by side that reveal it. I'm inclined to see that kind of thing in Durrell quite a lot, especially for political matters (commentary by juxtaposition) but in some respects also for race, racism, and representation. I know many other readers disagree with me for equally sound reasons (as I suspect you do, which I respect). > > The second thing is Durrell's Indian identity for his alter-ego in the novel, Walsh. Durrell, of course, wasn't Indian. Even calling himself Anglo-Indian was a telling stretch, but like his insistence on being Irish, I wonder if the matter really has little to do with any "real" DNA-basis or legal status for nationality. Rather than caring about how much Durrell was shaped by *real* India, is the point that he clung to India as a way of marking himself as *not* English? Does Irishness function in the same way? I think that's how Walsh's bi-racial status works in /Pied Piper/, marking out his alienation from England and his refutation of what he would later term the English Death. That is, India as metonym. > > As for Durrell's understanding of India, in a late interview with Lyn Goldman, he used the fairly "pat" (for him) gesture to spiritual vitality in India, much like some Julia Roberts film or more recently the equally problematic Marigold phenomenon... Lyn's response was probably the right one: "Surely you're joking" and then she laughed at him. He laughed along. I mean, the comments in interviews about India are much like your sense of how "Pomerantsev?s Newsweek write-up does everything that journalism is expected to" -- it's a glib gesture to stereotypes that might rack up a few sales from readers seeking a guru, which is what an interview is expected to do... The books themselves, in contrast, keep putting readers back on their own resources and confound the easy gestures that earn media gurus their millions. > > That's all to say, I don't know how much Durrell was clinging to his Indian childhood out of a sense of belonging to the place and the trauma of leaving it (he says as much several times, but he also lies a lot). Perhaps it's also or instead a way of commenting on his alienation from Britain, and just maybe critiquing British attitudes to India. It's worth noting that when Durrell returned to India as a topic much later in life in "From the Elephant's Back," he again retreats from the adults to consider himself and an elephant, both as children. There are still the gestures to grab the seekers into buying a copy, but I don't see the retreat to child subjects as part & parcel of that. I can't help but see it as a piece grown out from Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" (which I've often understood to show the elephant as the British Empire, destroyed by it own) -- rather than the conflict, Durrell presents a partnership between children who may obviously be unequal in privilege and opportunity but yet look for something outside of the relations they inherit. > > Our readings of the book have disagreed on this, so I'm curious about your thoughts, especially since I respect your article very much. > > All best, > James > > On 2015-12-06 10:43 AM, G. R. Taneja wrote: >> >> Bruce: >> >> To your commnet that >> >> ?It?s probably hard for us in the 21st century to appreciate, but the >> Brits in India?the ?Anglo-Indians? or the ?Anglo-Irish? (if >> correct)?were _often_ big racists??? >> >> ??the only thing I can say is that the Brits in Indiawere invariably >> racists, and nothing but racists and this fact did not emerge out of >> scholarship that emerged in 2002.This is a clich? of British Indian >> history books by both English and Indian historans. The anecdotal >> evidence of Indians and the English socialising in India are grand >> exception to the narrative. Let?s not forget the fact constantly >> underlined in British Indian history books (at all levels and throughout >> this period and since) that the English from 1857 onwards lived in >> constant terror of the native mobs attacking the English ?sections? of >> the towns. 1857 attack on the civilians and ruthless butchering of the >> English civilians during the early months of the confrontation was never >> ever forgotten for full hundred years. >> >> Also, I am not able to see how ?it?s quite remarkable that Lawrence >> Durrell identified with and honored the land of his birth.? I am sure I >> am missing the point you are making.Perhaps I shall be forgiven if I >> quote from my Durrell article that has been referred to several of my >> friends on the list: >> >> ?In /Pied Piper of Lovers/ Durrell praised the hill servants, but he >> caricatured the ordinary natives in terms that would have amused the >> most pukka sahib??they were thieving groveling, ?sons and daughters of >> sows? with . . . ?raised black paws?, and they beat their wives.? The >> book, as McNiven remarks, was to be a memorial to the Kim aspect of >> Larry?s past (1998, 91). What I regret about this remark is not that it >> is not complimentary or even incorrect but that this is a clich? that >> one could have found in any Englishman writing about India during the Raj.? >> >> Gulshan >> >> >> >> Warmly, >> >> G R Taneja >> >> In-between Website: >> >> G. R. Taneja / Editor >> In-between: Essays & Studies in Literary Criticism >> Department of English, R. L. A. College, University of Delhi >> Anand Niketan Colony, Benito Juarez Marg, >> New Delhi-110 021, India -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From james.d.gifford at gmail.com Mon Dec 7 10:56:06 2015 From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2015 10:56:06 -0800 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Childhood In-Reply-To: References: <000001d12f34$f6c5d460$e4517d20$@gmail.com> <56636D18.2020008@gmail.com> <566503EF.4090906@gmail.com> Message-ID: <5665D646.4060309@gmail.com> On 2015-12-07 10:23 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote: > British law, as passed by a Parliamentary > Act of 1966, deemed him a non-citizen for not being born in the UK and > failing to claim UK citizenship within a certain period of time. So > it?s wrong to suggest that he propagated a false identity and that > calling himself Anglo-Indian was a ?telling stretch.? He was a > displaced person and had good reason to think of himself as such. I > don?t know, however, what kind of passport he traveled under after > losing his citizenship. My guess is that he held a UK travel document > with a special designation that didn?t allow him to reside in country Strictly speaking, he became a British non-patrial. He would have needed a visa to enter or settle but kept his British passport (Michael, I think, said the French would have offered him one if needed). It was the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which aimed to curb immigration from India, Pakistan, and the West Indies -- the 1968 amendment specifically limited entry to those with a parent born in the UK, which excluded Durrell. I'm not sure how directly the 1962 impacted him, though it seems it would have. As for the call to his childhood, I'd also point to "Cities, Plains and People" from his poetry. His "In Europe" might be a real provocation as well, especially its dedication to Elie Papadimitriou. Best, James From pan.gero at hotmail.com Mon Dec 7 17:10:36 2015 From: pan.gero at hotmail.com (Panaiotis Gerontopoulos) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 03:10:36 +0200 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Childhood In-Reply-To: <5665D646.4060309@gmail.com> References: <000001d12f34$f6c5d460$e4517d20$@gmail.com>, <56636D18.2020008@gmail.com>, , , <566503EF.4090906@gmail.com>, , <5665D646.4060309@gmail.com> Message-ID: I probably miss some point but wonder when and how Lawrence Durrell, Press Attach? at the British Embassy at Belgrade between 1949 and 1953, lost his British citizenship. Note also that in his Application for the post of Director of Cyprus Broadcasting Station dated Feb. 15 1954 declares himself BRITISH. (State Archives of Cyprus, Nicosia File L. Durrell PSC2 P.4575). How possibly could the Parliamentary Act of 1966 deprive him of his Citizenship for not have claimed it in time? best, Panaiotis Gerontopoulos > To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca > From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com > Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2015 10:56:06 -0800 > Subject: Re: [ilds] Durrell's Childhood > > On 2015-12-07 10:23 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote: > > British law, as passed by a Parliamentary > > Act of 1966, deemed him a non-citizen for not being born in the UK and > > failing to claim UK citizenship within a certain period of time. So > > it?s wrong to suggest that he propagated a false identity and that > > calling himself Anglo-Indian was a ?telling stretch.? He was a > > displaced person and had good reason to think of himself as such. I > > don?t know, however, what kind of passport he traveled under after > > losing his citizenship. My guess is that he held a UK travel document > > with a special designation that didn?t allow him to reside in country > > Strictly speaking, he became a British non-patrial. He would have > needed a visa to enter or settle but kept his British passport (Michael, > I think, said the French would have offered him one if needed). It was > the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which aimed to curb immigration > from India, Pakistan, and the West Indies -- the 1968 amendment > specifically limited entry to those with a parent born in the UK, which > excluded Durrell. I'm not sure how directly the 1962 impacted him, > though it seems it would have. > > As for the call to his childhood, I'd also point to "Cities, Plains and > People" from his poetry. His "In Europe" might be a real provocation as > well, especially its dedication to Elie Papadimitriou. > > Best, > James > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net Mon Dec 7 20:42:15 2015 From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2015 20:42:15 -0800 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Childhood In-Reply-To: References: <000001d12f34$f6c5d460$e4517d20$@gmail.com> <56636D18.2020008@gmail.com> <566503EF.4090906@gmail.com> <5665D646.4060309@gmail.com> Message-ID: <222FA624-00BE-45E5-A4CF-2C3B691FD3C7@earthlink.net> Because, as I understand the Act of Parliment, British nationals born overseas were required to register or claim UK citizenship within a certain period of time. (The Act was designed to restriction immigration from the colonies.) Durrell failed to do so. He then held a British passport which did not permit him to reside in the UK. He was literally homeless and disenfranchised. So the truth of the last line of his last poem. Bruce Sent from my iPhone > On Dec 7, 2015, at 5:10 PM, Panaiotis Gerontopoulos wrote: > > I probably miss some point but wonder when and how Lawrence Durrell, Press Attach? at the British Embassy at Belgrade between 1949 and 1953, lost his British citizenship. Note also that in his Application for the post of Director of Cyprus Broadcasting Station dated Feb. 15 1954 declares himself BRITISH. (State Archives of Cyprus, Nicosia File L. Durrell PSC2 P.4575). How possibly could the Parliamentary Act of 1966 deprive him of his Citizenship for not have claimed it in time? > > best, > > Panaiotis Gerontopoulos > > > To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca > > From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com > > Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2015 10:56:06 -0800 > > Subject: Re: [ilds] Durrell's Childhood > > > > On 2015-12-07 10:23 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote: > > > British law, as passed by a Parliamentary > > > Act of 1966, deemed him a non-citizen for not being born in the UK and > > > failing to claim UK citizenship within a certain period of time. So > > > it?s wrong to suggest that he propagated a false identity and that > > > calling himself Anglo-Indian was a ?telling stretch.? He was a > > > displaced person and had good reason to think of himself as such. I > > > don?t know, however, what kind of passport he traveled under after > > > losing his citizenship. My guess is that he held a UK travel document > > > with a special designation that didn?t allow him to reside in country > > > > Strictly speaking, he became a British non-patrial. He would have > > needed a visa to enter or settle but kept his British passport (Michael, > > I think, said the French would have offered him one if needed). It was > > the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which aimed to curb immigration > > from India, Pakistan, and the West Indies -- the 1968 amendment > > specifically limited entry to those with a parent born in the UK, which > > excluded Durrell. I'm not sure how directly the 1962 impacted him, > > though it seems it would have. > > > > As for the call to his childhood, I'd also point to "Cities, Plains and > > People" from his poetry. His "In Europe" might be a real provocation as > > well, especially its dedication to Elie Papadimitriou. > > > > Best, > > James > > _______________________________________________ > > ILDS mailing list > > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From james.d.gifford at gmail.com Tue Dec 8 07:41:34 2015 From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 07:41:34 -0800 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Childhood In-Reply-To: References: <000001d12f34$f6c5d460$e4517d20$@gmail.com> <56636D18.2020008@gmail.com> <566503EF.4090906@gmail.com> <5665D646.4060309@gmail.com> Message-ID: <5666FA2E.3080700@gmail.com> Hi Panaiotis, I'm fondly remembering an afternoon in Athens with you and Beatrice. Good times. For Durrell, the non-patrial status was part of a shift by the Conservative government to limit "immigration" by British subjects from the Commonwealth. He would have been a British subject no different from many others born abroad -- the specification of non-patrial status in the 1966 amendment redefined British subjects whose parents were not born in the UK as non-patrials without the right to enter or settle in the UK (I'd have to look, but this may have extended to grand-parents). Regardless of status in the (former) colonies, it's important to note that the British born abroad to the British born abroad who did not move "home" to the UK were not able to do so after 1962. As for what Durrell would write in his application, I'd guess it would be anything that would get him the job (though I haven't seen the document). If it's the same one you posted to the list a while back, I'd make the casual observation that it's a tone and phrasing are quite unusual for Durrell's usual writing style (in other words, a begging letter). Writing "British" is a different thing from being it by one definition or another, especially if it's used as code for "white" -- many Indians from South East Asia and Africa were indeed British subjects yet couldn't enter Britain with their British passports. The same for British subjects from the Commonwealth in the East Indies and Africa. Canada was fortunate that some came here. I should probably note, I'm Canadian, and we have a distinct trait of importing and exporting our authors, so I'm by nature cantankerous about pressing nationalist labels onto figures (after all, Saul Bellow, Jack Kerouac, and Wyndham Lewis are well known "Canadian" authors, all "Canadian" for different reasons than M.G. Vassanji, Michael Ondaatje, and Thomas King...). All best, James On 2015-12-07 5:10 PM, Panaiotis Gerontopoulos wrote: > I probably miss some point but wonder when and how Lawrence > Durrell, Press Attach? at the British Embassy at Belgrade between 1949 > and 1953, lost his British citizenship. Note also that in his > Application for the post of Director of Cyprus Broadcasting Station > dated Feb. 15 1954 declares himself BRITISH. (State Archives of Cyprus, > Nicosia File L. Durrell PSC2 P.4575). How possibly could the > Parliamentary Act of 1966 deprive him of his Citizenship for not have > claimed it in time? > > best, > > Panaiotis Gerontopoulos From mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org Tue Dec 8 04:22:28 2015 From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org (mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org) Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2015 12:22:28 +0000 Subject: [ilds] Assumptions Message-ID: "All are key to the Quartet" - a comment by a contributor to this discussion. I don't care what the "all" refers to, the statement is BUNKUM - you might as well say the sun, the moon and uranus are "all key to the Quartet" - so are Nietzsche, Heraclitus, and Grotowski. Pointing out how clever one is to have spotted a tiny idea that may or may not have a bearing on a work of fiction is sheer arrogance, notable and prevalent (possibly terminal) in minor academic figures desperate to climb a greasy pole into anonymity. RP -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net Tue Dec 8 09:04:21 2015 From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 09:04:21 -0800 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Citizenship Message-ID: Attached below is a 2002 article from The Guardian. It explains Durrell?s problems with his British citizenship. I find his situation puzzling. Why did he fail to comply with ?the need to register? as required by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act? The article states, ?He had not been notified to register as a British citizen.? This is hard to believe. Surely he was aware of the requirement. Why didn?t his many contacts in the UK notify him of the Act, specifically his literary agent, his publisher at Faber, his friends, or even his ex-wife Eve Durrell (presumably in London)? I?m inclined to believe that Durrell was willfully negligent and preferred to live ?on the margins of the world? (Mountolive) and to remain ?disenfranchised? (?Le cercle referm??). Bruce * * * * * Durrell fell foul of migrant law John Ezard Monday April 29 2002 The Guardian Lawrence Durrell - one of the best selling, most celebrated English novelists of the late 20th century - was refused British citizenship at the height of his fame, it emerged yesterday. Durrell, author of the Alexandria Quartet, found himself caught in 1966 by a parliamentary act introduced with the covert aim of reducing immigration to Britain from India, Pakistan and the West Indies. In a move which alarmed and angered diplomats because of its threatened repercussions for the country's image, the writer, who held a British passport, was forced to apply for entry permits every time he wanted to visit his homeland. Papers just released by the public record office show that Sir Patrick Reilly, the ambassador in Paris, was so incensed that he wrote to his Foreign Office superiors: "I venture to suggest it might be wise to ensure that ministers, both in the Foreign Office and the Home Office, are aware that one of our greatest living writers in the English language is being debarred from the citizenship of the United Kingdom to which he is entitled. "It would surely make a very curious impression if it became generally known that he is not accepted as a citizen of the UK and that his passport carries an endorsement which suggests that there is something filthy about him. "I wonder if it is conceivable that any country in the world could allow such a thing to happen to a writer of worldwide reputation. Suppose one day he gets a Nobel prize and this story comes out. What sort of fools will we look?" Durrell - himself a former diplomat - was born in India to an English father and Anglo-Irish mother. From 1939-1945 he worked for embassies in the Mediterranean and for the British Council. By 1966 he had lived at Nimes, southern France, for eight years. At his peak The Alexandria Quartet led him to be praised in the US as a literary giant. He was paid $2,500 a week, now worth $15,000, as a Hollywood script writer. But he had not been notified that he needed to register as a British citizen under the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act, introduced by Harold Macmillan's Conservative government. He was told the Labour home secretary in 1966, Roy (now Lord) Jenkins, had no power to override his exclusion. Durrell was a lifelong satirist of British bureaucracy and sexual puritanism. Untypically, he decided not to embarrass the government and obediently applied for entry visas whenever he visited Britain. guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2012 Registered in England and Wales No. 908396 Registered office: PO Box 68164, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1P 2AP -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sumantranag at gmail.com Tue Dec 8 09:15:26 2015 From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 22:45:26 +0530 Subject: [ilds] The link to Newsweek_Remembering Lawrence Durrell Message-ID: <000001d131dc$0a233260$1e699720$@gmail.com> Maria Vlachou Secretary Durrell Library of Corfu Dear Maria Vlachou, http://www.newsweek.com/remembering-lawrence-durrell-predictor-our-postmodern-world-65077 Thank you for your E-mail. The best I can do is to attach an mht file of the article. I am also pasting the link again, in case you can use it. I hope this will help. Regards Sumantra Nag From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org [mailto:mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org] Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2015 5:45 PM To: sumantranag at gmail.com Subject: The link to Newsweek Dear Dr Nag The link you provided to the article in Newsweek would not operate for us. We would like to access this article for the Durrell Library - could you please send it in another format? Thank you Maria Vlachou Secretary Durrell Library of Corfu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Subject: Remembering Lawrence Durrell, Predictor of our Postmodern World - The Daily Beast Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2012 12:37:25 +0530 Size: 1546773 URL: From james.d.gifford at gmail.com Tue Dec 8 10:31:29 2015 From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 10:31:29 -0800 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Citizenship In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <56672201.8040904@gmail.com> Hi Bruce, My understanding is that both the 1962 and 1966 amendment went through rather quickly to block immigration from specific places where British subjects experienced significant unrest (objections from anyone?). This is an area in which I'd turn to postcolonial studies for details about how other writers were affected. After 1962 Durrell would have needed a work permit or some such, and he wasn't working in the UK. Predicting that he'd be later excluded as a non-patrial in 1966 probably wasn't on his mind at that biographical moment. I'm not sure of the accuracy of saying he lost his "citizenship." I believe Haag's biography will address this. From conversations, my impression is that Durrell could probably have remedied it through some form of regular (weekly?) consular visits or such if it had been urgent (I don't know the details), but he didn't bother. That is, he wasn't likely to want to settle in Britain after 1966... That Durrell could probably have found a way around it outlines the shape of what was essentially a race-based Act and the privileges he could have accessed. However, as you point out Bruce, the fact that he didn't is striking. Wouldn't most "Brits" have instinctively sought a remedy? Wouldn't an "up with the Empire" type have fought hard to keep that status and those rights to enter & settle? That Durrell didn't bother with it and never raised the matter publicly is telling. For what it's worth, the Reilly papers in the Bodleian don't discuss the matter in his correspondence with Durrell from 1956-68. There might very well be other correspondence elsewhere in which Durrell did request support or an intervention, but I've not seen it. Of course, it's impossible to recuperate private conversations they may have had in Paris. Perhaps someone in London would care to check in on the details from the Public Records Office? It's entirely plausible that Durrell would have spoken to Sir Reilly of the hassle, and Reilly's actions express his own ire at the policy. I'm simply not up on the details of how Reilly would have related to the fraught immigration conflicts of the Labour government in 1966. All best, James On 2015-12-08 9:04 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote: > Attached below is a 2002 article from /The Guardian./ It explains > Durrell?s problems with his British citizenship. I find his situation > puzzling. Why did he fail to comply with ?the need to register? as > required by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act? The article states, > ?He had not been notified to register as a British citizen.? This is > hard to believe. Surely he was aware of the requirement. Why didn?t > his many contacts in the UK notify him of the Act, specifically his > literary agent, his publisher at Faber, his friends, or even his ex-wife > Eve Durrell (presumably in London)? I?m inclined to believe that > Durrell was willfully negligent and preferred to live ?on the margins of > the world? /(Mountolive)/ and to remain ?disenfranchised? (?Le cercle > referm??). > > Bruce From james.d.gifford at gmail.com Tue Dec 8 11:07:56 2015 From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 11:07:56 -0800 Subject: [ilds] Admin notes Message-ID: <56672A8C.4020004@gmail.com> Hi all, A speedy note on admin policies. The listserv is moderated, which means I check all messages for "spam," profanity, and other such before approving their posting. The volume of spam has been rather high lately, so if you receive a rejection notice, please let me know -- I might accidentally include it in a large pile. Rest assured, there's no intention to censor anyone's views. All best, James From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net Tue Dec 8 11:40:39 2015 From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 11:40:39 -0800 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Citizenship In-Reply-To: <56672201.8040904@gmail.com> References: <56672201.8040904@gmail.com> Message-ID: James, Thanks for the detailed explanation. I hope Michael Haag fully explains Durrell?s status as a British ?citizen? after 1966 and gives his take on the author?s attitude, motivations, and feelings about the situation. Haag is good at all that. It may not be accurate to say Durrell ?lost his citizenship,? but if you can?t enter your own country without permission nor are you allowed to vote in that country (voting requires residency in a district, I believe), then what kind of ?citizen? are you? Not much of one, I think. Certainly someone who is marginalized and alienated, which is exactly what Durrell seems to portray himself as, on occasion. On the other hand, some people prefer foreign residency for tax purposes. I don?t know what the tax laws are in the UK, but were Durrell a ?full? British citizen, he may have been subject to tax on his total income, even though he lived in France. In the U.S., citizens pay taxes on their world-wide income. There are exclusions, of course, but the taxes are high. Some change their citizenship to avoid U.S. taxes. It?s my impression that old LD was a penny-pincher (necessitated by all that alimony he had to pay) and may have sought a tax shelter. He must have paid taxes in France. In Ireland, artists don?t pay taxes on their income (I believe). Migrating to Ireland (if possible), like the American J. P. Donleavy, was apparently never an issue for Durrell?penny-pinching only went so far. I can?t imagine him leaving his beloved ?Mediterranean shore.? Bruce > On Dec 8, 2015, at 10:31 AM, James Gifford wrote: > > Hi Bruce, > > My understanding is that both the 1962 and 1966 amendment went through rather quickly to block immigration from specific places where British subjects experienced significant unrest (objections from anyone?). This is an area in which I'd turn to postcolonial studies for details about how other writers were affected. After 1962 Durrell would have needed a work permit or some such, and he wasn't working in the UK. Predicting that he'd be later excluded as a non-patrial in 1966 probably wasn't on his mind at that biographical moment. I'm not sure of the accuracy of saying he lost his "citizenship." > > I believe Haag's biography will address this. From conversations, my impression is that Durrell could probably have remedied it through some form of regular (weekly?) consular visits or such if it had been urgent (I don't know the details), but he didn't bother. That is, he wasn't likely to want to settle in Britain after 1966... > > That Durrell could probably have found a way around it outlines the shape of what was essentially a race-based Act and the privileges he could have accessed. However, as you point out Bruce, the fact that he didn't is striking. Wouldn't most "Brits" have instinctively sought a remedy? Wouldn't an "up with the Empire" type have fought hard to keep that status and those rights to enter & settle? That Durrell didn't bother with it and never raised the matter publicly is telling. > > For what it's worth, the Reilly papers in the Bodleian don't discuss the matter in his correspondence with Durrell from 1956-68. There might very well be other correspondence elsewhere in which Durrell did request support or an intervention, but I've not seen it. Of course, it's impossible to recuperate private conversations they may have had in Paris. > > Perhaps someone in London would care to check in on the details from the Public Records Office? It's entirely plausible that Durrell would have spoken to Sir Reilly of the hassle, and Reilly's actions express his own ire at the policy. I'm simply not up on the details of how Reilly would have related to the fraught immigration conflicts of the Labour government in 1966. > > All best, > James > > On 2015-12-08 9:04 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote: >> Attached below is a 2002 article from /The Guardian./ It explains >> Durrell?s problems with his British citizenship. I find his situation >> puzzling. Why did he fail to comply with ?the need to register? as >> required by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act? The article states, >> ?He had not been notified to register as a British citizen.? This is >> hard to believe. Surely he was aware of the requirement. Why didn?t >> his many contacts in the UK notify him of the Act, specifically his >> literary agent, his publisher at Faber, his friends, or even his ex-wife >> Eve Durrell (presumably in London)? I?m inclined to believe that >> Durrell was willfully negligent and preferred to live ?on the margins of >> the world? /(Mountolive)/ and to remain ?disenfranchised? (?Le cercle >> referm??). >> >> Bruce > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dtart at bigpond.net.au Tue Dec 8 12:14:04 2015 From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2015 07:14:04 +1100 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Citizenship In-Reply-To: References: <56672201.8040904@gmail.com> Message-ID: Bruce, I think you are on the money here, as it were. Durrell said he went to France because of cheap wine and cheap cigarettes, but also then a lower tax rate. With the rapid rise of the welfare state in Britain after the war, taxes became very high and products relatively expensive. secondly, i don't think Durrell wanted to live in England or be a British citizen for the reasons previously discussed, dislike of culture, climate, food, socialism etc. he always referred to himself as someone other than British, Irish even. Had he been a third generation Australian at the time of his birth he would have regarded himself as an Australian, not as an Englishman even if, like many post colonial Aussies he had a deep love of the mother country (which he did not, a few years at an English private boarding school cured him of that). Lastly, yes the Mediterranean Shore was where he liked to be and so i'd say, as to the relevant forms, he couldn't be bothered filling them in. David PS: those citizenship laws which have been spoken about recently had a huge impact on Aussies who, up till then had been able to reside in England no problem. A whole host of our writers, artists, poets etc went to England in the 1950s and stayed. some are still there: Clive James, Germaine Greer. But the trend slowed after the new laws. The USA is now the preferred destination - or Asia. Sent from my iPad > On 9 Dec 2015, at 6:40 am, Bruce Redwine wrote: > > James, > > Thanks for the detailed explanation. I hope Michael Haag fully explains Durrell?s status as a British ?citizen? after 1966 and gives his take on the author?s attitude, motivations, and feelings about the situation. Haag is good at all that. It may not be accurate to say Durrell ?lost his citizenship,? but if you can?t enter your own country without permission nor are you allowed to vote in that country (voting requires residency in a district, I believe), then what kind of ?citizen? are you? Not much of one, I think. Certainly someone who is marginalized and alienated, which is exactly what Durrell seems to portray himself as, on occasion. > > On the other hand, some people prefer foreign residency for tax purposes. I don?t know what the tax laws are in the UK, but were Durrell a ?full? British citizen, he may have been subject to tax on his total income, even though he lived in France. In the U.S., citizens pay taxes on their world-wide income. There are exclusions, of course, but the taxes are high. Some change their citizenship to avoid U.S. taxes. It?s my impression that old LD was a penny-pincher (necessitated by all that alimony he had to pay) and may have sought a tax shelter. He must have paid taxes in France. In Ireland, artists don?t pay taxes on their income (I believe). Migrating to Ireland (if possible), like the American J. P. Donleavy, was apparently never an issue for Durrell?penny-pinching only went so far. I can?t imagine him leaving his beloved ?Mediterranean shore.? > > Bruce > > > > > >> On Dec 8, 2015, at 10:31 AM, James Gifford wrote: >> >> Hi Bruce, >> >> My understanding is that both the 1962 and 1966 amendment went through rather quickly to block immigration from specific places where British subjects experienced significant unrest (objections from anyone?). This is an area in which I'd turn to postcolonial studies for details about how other writers were affected. After 1962 Durrell would have needed a work permit or some such, and he wasn't working in the UK. Predicting that he'd be later excluded as a non-patrial in 1966 probably wasn't on his mind at that biographical moment. I'm not sure of the accuracy of saying he lost his "citizenship." >> >> I believe Haag's biography will address this. From conversations, my impression is that Durrell could probably have remedied it through some form of regular (weekly?) consular visits or such if it had been urgent (I don't know the details), but he didn't bother. That is, he wasn't likely to want to settle in Britain after 1966... >> >> That Durrell could probably have found a way around it outlines the shape of what was essentially a race-based Act and the privileges he could have accessed. However, as you point out Bruce, the fact that he didn't is striking. Wouldn't most "Brits" have instinctively sought a remedy? Wouldn't an "up with the Empire" type have fought hard to keep that status and those rights to enter & settle? That Durrell didn't bother with it and never raised the matter publicly is telling. >> >> For what it's worth, the Reilly papers in the Bodleian don't discuss the matter in his correspondence with Durrell from 1956-68. There might very well be other correspondence elsewhere in which Durrell did request support or an intervention, but I've not seen it. Of course, it's impossible to recuperate private conversations they may have had in Paris. >> >> Perhaps someone in London would care to check in on the details from the Public Records Office? It's entirely plausible that Durrell would have spoken to Sir Reilly of the hassle, and Reilly's actions express his own ire at the policy. I'm simply not up on the details of how Reilly would have related to the fraught immigration conflicts of the Labour government in 1966. >> >> All best, >> James >> >>> On 2015-12-08 9:04 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote: >>> Attached below is a 2002 article from /The Guardian./ It explains >>> Durrell?s problems with his British citizenship. I find his situation >>> puzzling. Why did he fail to comply with ?the need to register? as >>> required by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act? The article states, >>> ?He had not been notified to register as a British citizen.? This is >>> hard to believe. Surely he was aware of the requirement. Why didn?t >>> his many contacts in the UK notify him of the Act, specifically his >>> literary agent, his publisher at Faber, his friends, or even his ex-wife >>> Eve Durrell (presumably in London)? I?m inclined to believe that >>> Durrell was willfully negligent and preferred to live ?on the margins of >>> the world? /(Mountolive)/ and to remain ?disenfranchised? (?Le cercle >>> referm??). >>> >>> Bruce >> _______________________________________________ >> ILDS mailing list >> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net Tue Dec 8 12:38:45 2015 From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 12:38:45 -0800 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Citizenship In-Reply-To: References: <56672201.8040904@gmail.com> Message-ID: David, What you say makes perfect sense. Living in the UK was not to Durrell?s liking. But I wonder if, after acquiring full British citizenship, Durrell would have had to reside in Britain. Probably not. Another one of your Aussies who migrated to the UK was Peter Porter, a highly regarded poet and editor of Lawrence Durrell: Selected Poems (2006). He died in London a couple of years ago. Porter spoke at the Durrell Celebration in Alexandria (2007). He read and commented on some of Durrell?s poetry. He was a good guy and did a great job. What a pleasure to hear a poet read poetry! Bruce > On Dec 8, 2015, at 12:14 PM, Denise Tart & David Green wrote: > > Bruce, > > I think you are on the money here, as it were. Durrell said he went to France because of cheap wine and cheap cigarettes, but also then a lower tax rate. With the rapid rise of the welfare state in Britain after the war, taxes became very high and products relatively expensive. > secondly, i don't think Durrell wanted to live in England or be a British citizen for the reasons previously discussed, dislike of culture, climate, food, socialism etc. he always referred to himself as someone other than British, Irish even. Had he been a third generation Australian at the time of his birth he would have regarded himself as an Australian, not as an Englishman even if, like many post colonial Aussies he had a deep love of the mother country (which he did not, a few years at an English private boarding school cured him of that). Lastly, yes the Mediterranean Shore was where he liked to be and so i'd say, as to the relevant forms, he couldn't be bothered filling them in. > > David > > PS: those citizenship laws which have been spoken about recently had a huge impact on Aussies who, up till then had been able to reside in England no problem. A whole host of our writers, artists, poets etc went to England in the 1950s and stayed. some are still there: Clive James, Germaine Greer. But the trend slowed after the new laws. The USA is now the preferred destination - or Asia. > > Sent from my iPad > > On 9 Dec 2015, at 6:40 am, Bruce Redwine > wrote: > >> James, >> >> Thanks for the detailed explanation. I hope Michael Haag fully explains Durrell?s status as a British ?citizen? after 1966 and gives his take on the author?s attitude, motivations, and feelings about the situation. Haag is good at all that. It may not be accurate to say Durrell ?lost his citizenship,? but if you can?t enter your own country without permission nor are you allowed to vote in that country (voting requires residency in a district, I believe), then what kind of ?citizen? are you? Not much of one, I think. Certainly someone who is marginalized and alienated, which is exactly what Durrell seems to portray himself as, on occasion. >> >> On the other hand, some people prefer foreign residency for tax purposes. I don?t know what the tax laws are in the UK, but were Durrell a ?full? British citizen, he may have been subject to tax on his total income, even though he lived in France. In the U.S., citizens pay taxes on their world-wide income. There are exclusions, of course, but the taxes are high. Some change their citizenship to avoid U.S. taxes. It?s my impression that old LD was a penny-pincher (necessitated by all that alimony he had to pay) and may have sought a tax shelter. He must have paid taxes in France. In Ireland, artists don?t pay taxes on their income (I believe). Migrating to Ireland (if possible), like the American J. P. Donleavy, was apparently never an issue for Durrell?penny-pinching only went so far. I can?t imagine him leaving his beloved ?Mediterranean shore.? >> >> Bruce >> >> >> >> >> >>> On Dec 8, 2015, at 10:31 AM, James Gifford > wrote: >>> >>> Hi Bruce, >>> >>> My understanding is that both the 1962 and 1966 amendment went through rather quickly to block immigration from specific places where British subjects experienced significant unrest (objections from anyone?). This is an area in which I'd turn to postcolonial studies for details about how other writers were affected. After 1962 Durrell would have needed a work permit or some such, and he wasn't working in the UK. Predicting that he'd be later excluded as a non-patrial in 1966 probably wasn't on his mind at that biographical moment. I'm not sure of the accuracy of saying he lost his "citizenship." >>> >>> I believe Haag's biography will address this. From conversations, my impression is that Durrell could probably have remedied it through some form of regular (weekly?) consular visits or such if it had been urgent (I don't know the details), but he didn't bother. That is, he wasn't likely to want to settle in Britain after 1966... >>> >>> That Durrell could probably have found a way around it outlines the shape of what was essentially a race-based Act and the privileges he could have accessed. However, as you point out Bruce, the fact that he didn't is striking. Wouldn't most "Brits" have instinctively sought a remedy? Wouldn't an "up with the Empire" type have fought hard to keep that status and those rights to enter & settle? That Durrell didn't bother with it and never raised the matter publicly is telling. >>> >>> For what it's worth, the Reilly papers in the Bodleian don't discuss the matter in his correspondence with Durrell from 1956-68. There might very well be other correspondence elsewhere in which Durrell did request support or an intervention, but I've not seen it. Of course, it's impossible to recuperate private conversations they may have had in Paris. >>> >>> Perhaps someone in London would care to check in on the details from the Public Records Office? It's entirely plausible that Durrell would have spoken to Sir Reilly of the hassle, and Reilly's actions express his own ire at the policy. I'm simply not up on the details of how Reilly would have related to the fraught immigration conflicts of the Labour government in 1966. >>> >>> All best, >>> James >>> >>> On 2015-12-08 9:04 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote: >>>> Attached below is a 2002 article from /The Guardian./ It explains >>>> Durrell?s problems with his British citizenship. I find his situation >>>> puzzling. Why did he fail to comply with ?the need to register? as >>>> required by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act? The article states, >>>> ?He had not been notified to register as a British citizen.? This is >>>> hard to believe. Surely he was aware of the requirement. Why didn?t >>>> his many contacts in the UK notify him of the Act, specifically his >>>> literary agent, his publisher at Faber, his friends, or even his ex-wife >>>> Eve Durrell (presumably in London)? I?m inclined to believe that >>>> Durrell was willfully negligent and preferred to live ?on the margins of >>>> the world? /(Mountolive)/ and to remain ?disenfranchised? (?Le cercle >>>> referm??). >>>> >>>> Bruce >>> _______________________________________________ >>> ILDS mailing list >>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds >> _______________________________________________ >> ILDS mailing list >> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dtart at bigpond.net.au Tue Dec 8 14:11:00 2015 From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2015 09:11:00 +1100 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Citizenship In-Reply-To: References: <56672201.8040904@gmail.com> Message-ID: <57D370AA-50E3-4AD1-8B0E-65E347DB6768@bigpond.net.au> Peter Porter is regarded with reverence and awe by some poets here. Unfortunately his lone domicile in England has led a number of nationalist poets and academics to regarding as not really Australian. The current poetic scene here is rather grim; either controlled by university cliques or slam/sham venues (performance poetry where the poetry takes second place big time). I should point out the connection between some Australian poets and writers and Greece and via that knowledge of Lawrence Durrell - Patrick White, Peggy Glanville Hicks, Porter and others. As I have stated the Durrell brothers were a big hit here in the 1960s and early 70s. You will recall Brett Whitely's painting of his wife reading Justine at the beach. Sadly Durrell/s are largely forgotten now. I doubt many of the new cohort of academics have even heard of him. I wonder what Durrell would make of the situation in France/Europe nowadays??? David Sent from my iPad > On 9 Dec 2015, at 7:38 am, Bruce Redwine wrote: > > David, > > What you say makes perfect sense. Living in the UK was not to Durrell?s liking. But I wonder if, after acquiring full British citizenship, Durrell would have had to reside in Britain. Probably not. Another one of your Aussies who migrated to the UK was Peter Porter, a highly regarded poet and editor of Lawrence Durrell: Selected Poems (2006). He died in London a couple of years ago. Porter spoke at the Durrell Celebration in Alexandria (2007). He read and commented on some of Durrell?s poetry. He was a good guy and did a great job. What a pleasure to hear a poet read poetry! > > Bruce > > > > > > >> On Dec 8, 2015, at 12:14 PM, Denise Tart & David Green wrote: >> >> Bruce, >> >> I think you are on the money here, as it were. Durrell said he went to France because of cheap wine and cheap cigarettes, but also then a lower tax rate. With the rapid rise of the welfare state in Britain after the war, taxes became very high and products relatively expensive. >> secondly, i don't think Durrell wanted to live in England or be a British citizen for the reasons previously discussed, dislike of culture, climate, food, socialism etc. he always referred to himself as someone other than British, Irish even. Had he been a third generation Australian at the time of his birth he would have regarded himself as an Australian, not as an Englishman even if, like many post colonial Aussies he had a deep love of the mother country (which he did not, a few years at an English private boarding school cured him of that). Lastly, yes the Mediterranean Shore was where he liked to be and so i'd say, as to the relevant forms, he couldn't be bothered filling them in. >> >> David >> >> PS: those citizenship laws which have been spoken about recently had a huge impact on Aussies who, up till then had been able to reside in England no problem. A whole host of our writers, artists, poets etc went to England in the 1950s and stayed. some are still there: Clive James, Germaine Greer. But the trend slowed after the new laws. The USA is now the preferred destination - or Asia. >> >> Sent from my iPad >> >>> On 9 Dec 2015, at 6:40 am, Bruce Redwine wrote: >>> >>> James, >>> >>> Thanks for the detailed explanation. I hope Michael Haag fully explains Durrell?s status as a British ?citizen? after 1966 and gives his take on the author?s attitude, motivations, and feelings about the situation. Haag is good at all that. It may not be accurate to say Durrell ?lost his citizenship,? but if you can?t enter your own country without permission nor are you allowed to vote in that country (voting requires residency in a district, I believe), then what kind of ?citizen? are you? Not much of one, I think. Certainly someone who is marginalized and alienated, which is exactly what Durrell seems to portray himself as, on occasion. >>> >>> On the other hand, some people prefer foreign residency for tax purposes. I don?t know what the tax laws are in the UK, but were Durrell a ?full? British citizen, he may have been subject to tax on his total income, even though he lived in France. In the U.S., citizens pay taxes on their world-wide income. There are exclusions, of course, but the taxes are high. Some change their citizenship to avoid U.S. taxes. It?s my impression that old LD was a penny-pincher (necessitated by all that alimony he had to pay) and may have sought a tax shelter. He must have paid taxes in France. In Ireland, artists don?t pay taxes on their income (I believe). Migrating to Ireland (if possible), like the American J. P. Donleavy, was apparently never an issue for Durrell?penny-pinching only went so far. I can?t imagine him leaving his beloved ?Mediterranean shore.? >>> >>> Bruce >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>> On Dec 8, 2015, at 10:31 AM, James Gifford wrote: >>>> >>>> Hi Bruce, >>>> >>>> My understanding is that both the 1962 and 1966 amendment went through rather quickly to block immigration from specific places where British subjects experienced significant unrest (objections from anyone?). This is an area in which I'd turn to postcolonial studies for details about how other writers were affected. After 1962 Durrell would have needed a work permit or some such, and he wasn't working in the UK. Predicting that he'd be later excluded as a non-patrial in 1966 probably wasn't on his mind at that biographical moment. I'm not sure of the accuracy of saying he lost his "citizenship." >>>> >>>> I believe Haag's biography will address this. From conversations, my impression is that Durrell could probably have remedied it through some form of regular (weekly?) consular visits or such if it had been urgent (I don't know the details), but he didn't bother. That is, he wasn't likely to want to settle in Britain after 1966... >>>> >>>> That Durrell could probably have found a way around it outlines the shape of what was essentially a race-based Act and the privileges he could have accessed. However, as you point out Bruce, the fact that he didn't is striking. Wouldn't most "Brits" have instinctively sought a remedy? Wouldn't an "up with the Empire" type have fought hard to keep that status and those rights to enter & settle? That Durrell didn't bother with it and never raised the matter publicly is telling. >>>> >>>> For what it's worth, the Reilly papers in the Bodleian don't discuss the matter in his correspondence with Durrell from 1956-68. There might very well be other correspondence elsewhere in which Durrell did request support or an intervention, but I've not seen it. Of course, it's impossible to recuperate private conversations they may have had in Paris. >>>> >>>> Perhaps someone in London would care to check in on the details from the Public Records Office? It's entirely plausible that Durrell would have spoken to Sir Reilly of the hassle, and Reilly's actions express his own ire at the policy. I'm simply not up on the details of how Reilly would have related to the fraught immigration conflicts of the Labour government in 1966. >>>> >>>> All best, >>>> James >>>> >>>>> On 2015-12-08 9:04 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote: >>>>> Attached below is a 2002 article from /The Guardian./ It explains >>>>> Durrell?s problems with his British citizenship. I find his situation >>>>> puzzling. Why did he fail to comply with ?the need to register? as >>>>> required by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act? The article states, >>>>> ?He had not been notified to register as a British citizen.? This is >>>>> hard to believe. Surely he was aware of the requirement. Why didn?t >>>>> his many contacts in the UK notify him of the Act, specifically his >>>>> literary agent, his publisher at Faber, his friends, or even his ex-wife >>>>> Eve Durrell (presumably in London)? I?m inclined to believe that >>>>> Durrell was willfully negligent and preferred to live ?on the margins of >>>>> the world? /(Mountolive)/ and to remain ?disenfranchised? (?Le cercle >>>>> referm??). >>>>> >>>>> Bruce >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> ILDS mailing list >>>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> ILDS mailing list >>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds >> _______________________________________________ >> ILDS mailing list >> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pan.gero at hotmail.com Tue Dec 8 14:52:01 2015 From: pan.gero at hotmail.com (Panaiotis Gerontopoulos) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2015 00:52:01 +0200 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Citizenship Message-ID: Dear Mr. Gifford I am very surprised. Regardless of the 1966 amendments on the nationality status of British subjects whose parents were not born in the UK, Lawrence Durrell was Press Attach? at the British Embassy of Beograd from 1949 to 1953, and in 1954 defined himself, in handwritten capitals, BRITISH in the Application for Appointment to the Cyprus Civil Service signed on Feb.15 ? 1954. Your hypothesis that ?it would be anything that would get him the job? is offensive to his intelligence. The loss of his nationality, in spite of the services to his home-country is baffling and as Bruce Redwine notes in his last post to this List might be due to his own choice to remain ?disenfranchised? on the margins of the empire, and let me add without malice, of the British Tax Office as well. It would be a venial sin and I am happy reading the same in a post of Bruce just entered in my mail box. What surprises and saddens me deeply, is your ?casual observation? that the tone and phrasing of Durrell?s handwritten Letter to the Governor of Cyprus on Feb. 1954, quoted in my post of Oct. 25, 2015, "are quite unusual for Durrell's usual writing (in other words a begging letter)". You seem to censure Durrell and accuse me of false. Perhaps the real Durrell does not fit to the image of your durrellian universe and I don't ask you to change it. But you do not have neither the grounds nor the right to accuse me of false. Enough is enough. By the bye, the paper 'The Classified File of Lawrence Durrell' by Barbara Papastavrou-Koroniotaki, in which are described in great detail Durrell's dealings with the Governor of Cyprus Sir Robert Armitage is included in the Issue No. XXVI of Confluences (Lawrence Durrell/Borderlands & Borderlines) 2005, to which you have contributed with the paper "The Black Body as Borderland". Am I perhaps wrong? With kind regards P. Gerontopoulos -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From james.d.gifford at gmail.com Tue Dec 8 14:59:53 2015 From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 14:59:53 -0800 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Citizenship In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <566760E9.5060008@gmail.com> On 2015-12-08 2:52 PM, Panaiotis Gerontopoulos wrote: > You seem to censure Durrell and accuse me of false. > ... you do not have neither > the grounds nor the right to accuse me of false. > Enough is enough. I think you've misunderstood me. I've not accused you of anything -- I wrote that the tone is different from his typical letters. For example, my tone in the classroom is different from my tone in the grocery store, just as Durrell's in that letter is different from much of his other correspondence (and your own tone has taken a fairly substantial turn). I'm a bit mystified why you'd think I'm accusing you of forgery... Has the authenticity of the file been challenged by someone? > By the bye, the paper 'The Classified File of Lawrence Durrell' by > Barbara Papastavrou-Koroniotaki, in which are described in > great detail Durrell's dealings with the Governor of Cyprus Sir Robert > Armitage is included in the Issue No. XXVI of Confluences (Lawrence > Durrell/Borderlands & Borderlines) 2005, to which you have contributed > with the paper "The Black Body as Borderland". Am I perhaps wrong? Anne Zahlan wrote that piece, although I did contribute another chapter on Edward Said and Durrell in the same volume. I do indeed know Papastavrou-Koroniotaki's work in the same. All best, James From pan.gero at hotmail.com Wed Dec 9 08:19:19 2015 From: pan.gero at hotmail.com (Panaiotis Gerontopoulos) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2015 18:19:19 +0200 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Citizenship In-Reply-To: <566760E9.5060008@gmail.com> References: , <566760E9.5060008@gmail.com> Message-ID: Sorry, but I prefer your tone in the grocery store. I appreciate your tardive admission of knowing both Durrell's Application for Appointment for the post of Director of Cyprus Broadcasting Station and the annexed questioner. In view of it, I find it however difficult to understand the scope of your considerations about the tone of Durrell's letter to Armitage. The document is important in understanding Durrell's adventure in Cyprus but is only the top of the iceberg of a much more complicated story, to unfold in simple words easy to understand by both grocery keepers and academics. Sincerely P.Gerontopoulos > To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca > From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com > Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 14:59:53 -0800 > Subject: Re: [ilds] Durrell's Citizenship > > On 2015-12-08 2:52 PM, Panaiotis Gerontopoulos wrote: > > You seem to censure Durrell and accuse me of false. > > ... you do not have neither > > the grounds nor the right to accuse me of false. > > Enough is enough. > > I think you've misunderstood me. I've not accused you of anything -- I > wrote that the tone is different from his typical letters. For example, > my tone in the classroom is different from my tone in the grocery store, > just as Durrell's in that letter is different from much of his other > correspondence (and your own tone has taken a fairly substantial turn). > I'm a bit mystified why you'd think I'm accusing you of forgery... > Has the authenticity of the file been challenged by someone? > > > By the bye, the paper 'The Classified File of Lawrence Durrell' by > > Barbara Papastavrou-Koroniotaki, in which are described in > > great detail Durrell's dealings with the Governor of Cyprus Sir Robert > > Armitage is included in the Issue No. XXVI of Confluences (Lawrence > > Durrell/Borderlands & Borderlines) 2005, to which you have contributed > > with the paper "The Black Body as Borderland". Am I perhaps wrong? > > Anne Zahlan wrote that piece, although I did contribute another chapter > on Edward Said and Durrell in the same volume. I do indeed know > Papastavrou-Koroniotaki's work in the same. > > All best, > James > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From james.d.gifford at gmail.com Wed Dec 9 10:20:00 2015 From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2015 10:20:00 -0800 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's Citizenship In-Reply-To: References: <566760E9.5060008@gmail.com> Message-ID: <566870D0.7000304@gmail.com> On 2015-12-09 8:19 AM, Panaiotis Gerontopoulos wrote: > The document is important in understanding > Durrell's adventure in Cyprus but is only > the top of the iceberg of a much more > complicated story, to unfold in simple > words That sounds like a fascinating game of guess what's in my pocket. Have fun with it. Cheers, James From gammage.kennedy at gmail.com Wed Dec 9 12:45:31 2015 From: gammage.kennedy at gmail.com (Kennedy Gammage) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2015 12:45:31 -0800 Subject: [ilds] We may be having some misunderstandings Message-ID: The ILDS is worldwide and speaks many languages. Instead of using English as the so-called Lingua Franca of the listserv, why not feel free to first post in our favorite languages, and then perhaps offer a quick synopsis if desired. That way some of us can try out the various translation programs on the Internet. It will be fun! Best regards - Ken -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org Wed Dec 9 14:00:00 2015 From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org (mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org) Date: Wed, 09 Dec 2015 22:00:00 +0000 Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 8 Message-ID: All of this is unnecessary, because academics, whether in the classroom, in the grocery store or sitting on the toilet (where many of them belong) can only get a part of the narrative, especially if they are academics first and only scholars secondarily. And whether they are scholars or academics or grocery store habitues, they need human feelings. The Cyprus situation will always be quite different from a Greek-Cypriot perspective, a Turkish-Cypriot perspective and a British perspective, from a Philhellenic perspective and a Greek-Greek perspective. Add together the Cypriot friendships and enmities of Durrell, with the point(s) of view of Seferis and other Greek-Greeks, add to all of that the fact that we still don't know (and never will know) the full story of D's involvement (or not) in espionage/counter-intelligence, and his acknowledged work as a civil servant in both Cyprus and Rhodes, and you have a story the complexity of which will never be satisfied by any single narrative, especially if it is haggled over by academics who don't understand Greece or, for that matter, Britishness. Look at the way D himself was doing a job (to earn essential money) while deploring the way the British were conducting the anti-enosis campaign. Heart and head in eternal conflict. As far as the citizenship laws are concerned,. Durrell didn't "lose" his citizenship, it was amended "downwards" if i can put it like that. One doesn't have to live in the UK to be a British citizen - I live full time in Greece and have not had a domicile in the UK for the past 48 years, but I am a full British citizen because I was born in London. Durrell was not, nor were his parents.The law which some describe as racist was intorduced to deal with a situation similar to the implosion of the Roman Empire, when hundreds of thousands of non-Romans clamoured for admission in the face of barbarian invasions, shouting "Civis Romanus Sum" (which they were). The British law was designed to deal with a similar situation, to designate non-British-born bearers of British passports from those who WERE born in the UK who were entitled to live in Britain. If you had lived in London during the period (1950s) when London Transport (buses and trains) imported thousands of non-whites from the Caribbean as cheap labour, and the huge explosion in mavrophobia which this caused in the cities of Britain, and if you had experienced the Notting Hill riots in the 1960s, you would at least understand why the government was learning the cruel way from its mistakes and introducing legislation to limit the eligibility of British passport-holders to entry into the UK. Add what we do know of that situation applies horribly to today's refugee problem in the EU (and Greece in particular) which makes it clear how refugees from phenomena like Islamic State are clamouring for admission to the EU (where they, probably mistakenly, think they will be safer) and you see how a whole continent can be engulfed in a humanitarian crisis which has massive racial, cultural, religious and political repercussions. But what would an academic or a scholar or a grocer know about that? To understand that, you need a human conscience and consciousness which seems to be lacking in those whose noses are glued to theory. What do we do about the refugees? Read "Habermas on Terror"? "Marcuse on Muslims"? If you've seen men, women and children drowning because they thought one shore of the sea was safer than another, you may view the "Mediterranean Shore" (with or without Paul Hogarth's pictures) somewhat differently. All the books in all the libraries won't help you, any more than they helped Durrell to feel what he felt about being British, or French, or Greek, or, god help us, Irish. Yes, there were tax reasons (these are pretty clear) and there were reasons to do with displacement and anglophobia, and the cost of living, and the simple matter of where one prefers to live, and with whom. That Durrell's citizenship status was diminished was, in my opinion, only a blip on his radar compared with all the other factors relating to his domicile and his happiness. As Anthony Burgess (a definite tax exile) said in his obit of D, he chose not to write about tepid adultery in Hampstead. I think that says a lot that reading Derrida's magnum opus "On Fucking" will never tell you. The idea of Durrell "signing on" at some consulate is so preposterous that I'm surprised anyone has raised the question. He would have signed on at the brothel next door. Let's stop all this claptrap about things we know little or nothing about and discuss IDEAS, not half-baked facts and suppositions. RP -----Original Message----- From: ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca] Sent: Wednesday, December 9, 2015 03:00 PM To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 8 Send ILDS mailing list submissions to ilds at lists.uvic.caTo subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ildsor, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to ilds-request at lists.uvic.caYou can reach the person managing the list at ilds-owner at lists.uvic.caWhen replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specificthan "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."Today's Topics: 1. Re: Durrell's Citizenship (Denise Tart & David Green) 2. Re: Durrell's Citizenship (Bruce Redwine) 3. Re: Durrell's Citizenship (Denise Tart & David Green) 4. Durrell's Citizenship (Panaiotis Gerontopoulos) 5. Re: Durrell's Citizenship (James Gifford) 6. Re: Durrell's Citizenship (Panaiotis Gerontopoulos) 7. Re: Durrell's Citizenship (James Gifford)----------------------------------------------------------------------Message: 1Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2015 07:14:04 +1100From: Denise Tart & David Green To: "ilds at lists.uvic.ca" Cc: James Gifford , Bruce Redwine Subject: Re: [ilds] Durrell's CitizenshipMessage-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"Bruce,I think you are on the money here, as it were. Durrell said he went to France because of cheap wine and cheap cigarettes, but also then a lower tax rate. With the rapid rise of the welfare state in Britain after the war, taxes became very high and products relatively expensive.secondly, i don't think Durrell wanted to live in England or be a British citizen for the reasons previously discussed, dislike of culture, climate, food, socialism etc. he always referred to himself as someone other than British, Irish even. Had he been a third generation Australian at the time of his birth he would have regarded himself as an Australian, not as an Englishman even if, like many post colonial Aussies he had a deep love of the mother country (which he did not, a few years at an English private boarding school cured him of that). Lastly, yes the Mediterranean Shore was where he liked to be and so i'd say, as to the relevant forms, he couldn't be bothered filling them in.DavidPS: those citizenship laws which have been spoken about recently had a huge impact on Aussies who, up till then had been able to reside in England no problem. A whole host of our writers, artists, poets etc went to England in the 1950s and stayed. some are still there: Clive James, Germaine Greer. But the trend slowed after the new laws. The USA is now the preferred destination - or Asia.Sent from my iPad> On 9 Dec 2015, at 6:40 am, Bruce Redwine wrote:> > James,> > Thanks for the detailed explanation. I hope Michael Haag fully explains Durrell?s status as a British ?citizen? after 1966 and gives his take on the author?s attitude, motivations, and feelings about the situation. Haag is good at all that. It may not be accurate to say Durrell ?lost his citizenship,? but if you can?t enter your own country without permission nor are you allowed to vote in that country (voting requires residency in a district, I believe), then what kind of ?citizen? are you? Not much of one, I think. Certainly someone who is marginalized and alienated, which is exactly what Durrell seems to portray himself as, on occasion.> > On the other hand, some people prefer foreign residency for tax purposes. I don?t know what the tax laws are in the UK, but were Durrell a ?full? British citizen, he may have been subject to tax on his total income, even though he lived in France. In the U.S., citizens pay taxes on their world-wide income. There are exclusions, of course, but the taxes are high. Some change their citizenship to avoid U.S. taxes. It?s my impression that old LD was a penny-pincher (necessitated by all that alimony he had to pay) and may have sought a tax shelter. He must have paid taxes in France. In Ireland, artists don?t pay taxes on their income (I believe). Migrating to Ireland (if possible), like the American J. P. Donleavy, was apparently never an issue for Durrell?penny-pinching only went so far. I can?t imagine him leaving his beloved ?Mediterranean shore.?> > Bruce> > > > > >> On Dec 8, 2015, at 10:31 AM, James Gifford wrote:>> >> Hi Bruce,>> >> My understanding is that both the 1962 and 1966 amendment went through rather quickly to block immigration from specific places where British subjects experienced significant unrest (objections from anyone?). This is an area in which I'd turn to postcolonial studies for details about how other writers were affected. After 1962 Durrell would have needed a work permit or some such, and he wasn't working in the UK. Predicting that he'd be later excluded as a non-patrial in 1966 probably wasn't on his mind at that biographical moment. I'm not sure of the accuracy of saying he lost his "citizenship.">> >> I believe Haag's biography will address this. From conversations, my impression is that Durrell could probably have remedied it through some form of regular (weekly?) consular visits or such if it had been urgent (I don't know the details), but he didn't bother. That is, he wasn't likely to want to settle in Britain after 1966...>> >> That Durrell could probably have found a way around it outlines the shape of what was essentially a race-based Act and the privileges he could have accessed. However, as you point out Bruce, the fact that he didn't is striking. Wouldn't most "Brits" have instinctively sought a remedy? Wouldn't an "up with the Empire" type have fought hard to keep that status and those rights to enter & settle? That Durrell didn't bother with it and never raised the matter publicly is telling.>> >> For what it's worth, the Reilly papers in the Bodleian don't discuss the matter in his correspondence with Durrell from 1956-68. There might very well be other correspondence elsewhere in which Durrell did request support or an intervention, but I've not seen it. Of course, it's impossible to recuperate private conversations they may have had in Paris.>> >> Perhaps someone in London would care to check in on the details from the Public Records Office? It's entirely plausible that Durrell would have spoken to Sir Reilly of the hassle, and Reilly's actions express his own ire at the policy. I'm simply not up on the details of how Reilly would have related to the fraught immigration conflicts of the Labour government in 1966.>> >> All best,>> James>> >>> On 2015-12-08 9:04 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:>>> Attached below is a 2002 article from /The Guardian./ It explains>>> Durrell?s problems with his British citizenship. I find his situation>>> puzzling. Why did he fail to comply with ?the need to register? as>>> required by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act? The article states,>>> ?He had not been notified to register as a British citizen.? This is>>> hard to believe. Surely he was aware of the requirement. Why didn?t>>> his many contacts in the UK notify him of the Act, specifically his>>> literary agent, his publisher at Faber, his friends, or even his ex-wife>>> Eve Durrell (presumably in London)? I?m inclined to believe that>>> Durrell was willfully negligent and preferred to live ?on the margins of>>> the world? /(Mountolive)/ and to remain ?disenfranchised? (?Le cercle>>> referm??).>>> >>> Bruce>> _______________________________________________>> ILDS mailing list>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds> > _______________________________________________> ILDS mailing list> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 2Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 12:38:45 -0800From: Bruce Redwine To: James Gifford , David Green Cc: James Gifford , Bruce Redwine , David Green Subject: Re: [ilds] Durrell's CitizenshipMessage-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"David,What you say makes perfect sense. Living in the UK was not to Durrell?s liking. But I wonder if, after acquiring full British citizenship, Durrell would have had to reside in Britain. Probably not. Another one of your Aussies who migrated to the UK was Peter Porter, a highly regarded poet and editor of Lawrence Durrell: Selected Poems (2006). He died in London a couple of years ago. Porter spoke at the Durrell Celebration in Alexandria (2007). He read and commented on some of Durrell?s poetry. He was a good guy and did a great job. What a pleasure to hear a poet read poetry!Bruce> On Dec 8, 2015, at 12:14 PM, Denise Tart & David Green wrote:> > Bruce,> > I think you are on the money here, as it were. Durrell said he went to France because of cheap wine and cheap cigarettes, but also then a lower tax rate. With the rapid rise of the welfare state in Britain after the war, taxes became very high and products relatively expensive.> secondly, i don't think Durrell wanted to live in England or be a British citizen for the reasons previously discussed, dislike of culture, climate, food, socialism etc. he always referred to himself as someone other than British, Irish even. Had he been a third generation Australian at the time of his birth he would have regarded himself as an Australian, not as an Englishman even if, like many post colonial Aussies he had a deep love of the mother country (which he did not, a few years at an English private boarding school cured him of that). Lastly, yes the Mediterranean Shore was where he liked to be and so i'd say, as to the relevant forms, he couldn't be bothered filling them in.> > David> > PS: those citizenship laws which have been spoken about recently had a huge impact on Aussies who, up till then had been able to reside in England no problem. A whole host of our writers, artists, poets etc went to England in the 1950s and stayed. some are still there: Clive James, Germaine Greer. But the trend slowed after the new laws. The USA is now the preferred destination - or Asia.> > Sent from my iPad> > On 9 Dec 2015, at 6:40 am, Bruce Redwine > wrote:> >> James,>> >> Thanks for the detailed explanation. I hope Michael Haag fully explains Durrell?s status as a British ?citizen? after 1966 and gives his take on the author?s attitude, motivations, and feelings about the situation. Haag is good at all that. It may not be accurate to say Durrell ?lost his citizenship,? but if you can?t enter your own country without permission nor are you allowed to vote in that country (voting requires residency in a district, I believe), then what kind of ?citizen? are you? Not much of one, I think. Certainly someone who is marginalized and alienated, which is exactly what Durrell seems to portray himself as, on occasion.>> >> On the other hand, some people prefer foreign residency for tax purposes. I don?t know what the tax laws are in the UK, but were Durrell a ?full? British citizen, he may have been subject to tax on his total income, even though he lived in France. In the U.S., citizens pay taxes on their world-wide income. There are exclusions, of course, but the taxes are high. Some change their citizenship to avoid U.S. taxes. It?s my impression that old LD was a penny-pincher (necessitated by all that alimony he had to pay) and may have sought a tax shelter. He must have paid taxes in France. In Ireland, artists don?t pay taxes on their income (I believe). Migrating to Ireland (if possible), like the American J. P. Donleavy, was apparently never an issue for Durrell?penny-pinching only went so far. I can?t imagine him leaving his beloved ?Mediterranean shore.?>> >> Bruce>> >> >> >> >> >>> On Dec 8, 2015, at 10:31 AM, James Gifford > wrote:>>> >>> Hi Bruce,>>> >>> My understanding is that both the 1962 and 1966 amendment went through rather quickly to block immigration from specific places where British subjects experienced significant unrest (objections from anyone?). This is an area in which I'd turn to postcolonial studies for details about how other writers were affected. After 1962 Durrell would have needed a work permit or some such, and he wasn't working in the UK. Predicting that he'd be later excluded as a non-patrial in 1966 probably wasn't on his mind at that biographical moment. I'm not sure of the accuracy of saying he lost his "citizenship.">>> >>> I believe Haag's biography will address this. From conversations, my impression is that Durrell could probably have remedied it through some form of regular (weekly?) consular visits or such if it had been urgent (I don't know the details), but he didn't bother. That is, he wasn't likely to want to settle in Britain after 1966...>>> >>> That Durrell could probably have found a way around it outlines the shape of what was essentially a race-based Act and the privileges he could have accessed. However, as you point out Bruce, the fact that he didn't is striking. Wouldn't most "Brits" have instinctively sought a remedy? Wouldn't an "up with the Empire" type have fought hard to keep that status and those rights to enter & settle? That Durrell didn't bother with it and never raised the matter publicly is telling.>>> >>> For what it's worth, the Reilly papers in the Bodleian don't discuss the matter in his correspondence with Durrell from 1956-68. There might very well be other correspondence elsewhere in which Durrell did request support or an intervention, but I've not seen it. Of course, it's impossible to recuperate private conversations they may have had in Paris.>>> >>> Perhaps someone in London would care to check in on the details from the Public Records Office? It's entirely plausible that Durrell would have spoken to Sir Reilly of the hassle, and Reilly's actions express his own ire at the policy. I'm simply not up on the details of how Reilly would have related to the fraught immigration conflicts of the Labour government in 1966.>>> >>> All best,>>> James>>> >>> On 2015-12-08 9:04 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:>>>> Attached below is a 2002 article from /The Guardian./ It explains>>>> Durrell?s problems with his British citizenship. I find his situation>>>> puzzling. Why did he fail to comply with ?the need to register? as>>>> required by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act? The article states,>>>> ?He had not been notified to register as a British citizen.? This is>>>> hard to believe. Surely he was aware of the requirement. Why didn?t>>>> his many contacts in the UK notify him of the Act, specifically his>>>> literary agent, his publisher at Faber, his friends, or even his ex-wife>>>> Eve Durrell (presumably in London)? I?m inclined to believe that>>>> Durrell was willfully negligent and preferred to live ?on the margins of>>>> the world? /(Mountolive)/ and to remain ?disenfranchised? (?Le cercle>>>> referm??).>>>> >>>> Bruce>>> _______________________________________________>>> ILDS mailing list>>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds >> _______________________________________________>> ILDS mailing list>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > _______________________________________________> ILDS mailing list> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 3Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2015 09:11:00 +1100From: Denise Tart & David Green To: Bruce Redwine Cc: James Gifford , James Gifford Subject: Re: [ilds] Durrell's CitizenshipMessage-ID: <57D370AA-50E3-4AD1-8B0E-65E347DB6768 at bigpond.net.au>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"Peter Porter is regarded with reverence and awe by some poets here. Unfortunately his lone domicile in England has led a number of nationalist poets and academics to regarding as not really Australian. The current poetic scene here is rather grim; either controlled by university cliques or slam/sham venues (performance poetry where the poetry takes second place big time). I should point out the connection between some Australian poets and writers and Greece and via that knowledge of Lawrence Durrell - Patrick White, Peggy Glanville Hicks, Porter and others. As I have stated the Durrell brothers were a big hit here in the 1960s and early 70s. You will recall Brett Whitely's painting of his wife reading Justine at the beach. Sadly Durrell/s are largely forgotten now. I doubt many of the new cohort of academics have even heard of him.I wonder what Durrell would make of the situation in France/Europe nowadays???DavidSent from my iPad> On 9 Dec 2015, at 7:38 am, Bruce Redwine wrote:> > David,> > What you say makes perfect sense. Living in the UK was not to Durrell?s liking. But I wonder if, after acquiring full British citizenship, Durrell would have had to reside in Britain. Probably not. Another one of your Aussies who migrated to the UK was Peter Porter, a highly regarded poet and editor of Lawrence Durrell: Selected Poems (2006). He died in London a couple of years ago. Porter spoke at the Durrell Celebration in Alexandria (2007). He read and commented on some of Durrell?s poetry. He was a good guy and did a great job. What a pleasure to hear a poet read poetry!> > Bruce> > > > > > >> On Dec 8, 2015, at 12:14 PM, Denise Tart & David Green wrote:>> >> Bruce,>> >> I think you are on the money here, as it were. Durrell said he went to France because of cheap wine and cheap cigarettes, but also then a lower tax rate. With the rapid rise of the welfare state in Britain after the war, taxes became very high and products relatively expensive.>> secondly, i don't think Durrell wanted to live in England or be a British citizen for the reasons previously discussed, dislike of culture, climate, food, socialism etc. he always referred to himself as someone other than British, Irish even. Had he been a third generation Australian at the time of his birth he would have regarded himself as an Australian, not as an Englishman even if, like many post colonial Aussies he had a deep love of the mother country (which he did not, a few years at an English private boarding school cured him of that). Lastly, yes the Mediterranean Shore was where he liked to be and so i'd say, as to the relevant forms, he couldn't be bothered filling them in.>> >> David>> >> PS: those citizenship laws which have been spoken about recently had a huge impact on Aussies who, up till then had been able to reside in England no problem. A whole host of our writers, artists, poets etc went to England in the 1950s and stayed. some are still there: Clive James, Germaine Greer. But the trend slowed after the new laws. The USA is now the preferred destination - or Asia.>> >> Sent from my iPad>> >>> On 9 Dec 2015, at 6:40 am, Bruce Redwine wrote:>>> >>> James,>>> >>> Thanks for the detailed explanation. I hope Michael Haag fully explains Durrell?s status as a British ?citizen? after 1966 and gives his take on the author?s attitude, motivations, and feelings about the situation. Haag is good at all that. It may not be accurate to say Durrell ?lost his citizenship,? but if you can?t enter your own country without permission nor are you allowed to vote in that country (voting requires residency in a district, I believe), then what kind of ?citizen? are you? Not much of one, I think. Certainly someone who is marginalized and alienated, which is exactly what Durrell seems to portray himself as, on occasion.>>> >>> On the other hand, some people prefer foreign residency for tax purposes. I don?t know what the tax laws are in the UK, but were Durrell a ?full? British citizen, he may have been subject to tax on his total income, even though he lived in France. In the U.S., citizens pay taxes on their world-wide income. There are exclusions, of course, but the taxes are high. Some change their citizenship to avoid U.S. taxes. It?s my impression that old LD was a penny-pincher (necessitated by all that alimony he had to pay) and may have sought a tax shelter. He must have paid taxes in France. In Ireland, artists don?t pay taxes on their income (I believe). Migrating to Ireland (if possible), like the American J. P. Donleavy, was apparently never an issue for Durrell?penny-pinching only went so far. I can?t imagine him leaving his beloved ?Mediterranean shore.?>>> >>> Bruce>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>> On Dec 8, 2015, at 10:31 AM, James Gifford wrote:>>>> >>>> Hi Bruce,>>>> >>>> My understanding is that both the 1962 and 1966 amendment went through rather quickly to block immigration from specific places where British subjects experienced significant unrest (objections from anyone?). This is an area in which I'd turn to postcolonial studies for details about how other writers were affected. After 1962 Durrell would have needed a work permit or some such, and he wasn't working in the UK. Predicting that he'd be later excluded as a non-patrial in 1966 probably wasn't on his mind at that biographical moment. I'm not sure of the accuracy of saying he lost his "citizenship.">>>> >>>> I believe Haag's biography will address this. From conversations, my impression is that Durrell could probably have remedied it through some form of regular (weekly?) consular visits or such if it had been urgent (I don't know the details), but he didn't bother. That is, he wasn't likely to want to settle in Britain after 1966...>>>> >>>> That Durrell could probably have found a way around it outlines the shape of what was essentially a race-based Act and the privileges he could have accessed. However, as you point out Bruce, the fact that he didn't is striking. Wouldn't most "Brits" have instinctively sought a remedy? Wouldn't an "up with the Empire" type have fought hard to keep that status and those rights to enter & settle? That Durrell didn't bother with it and never raised the matter publicly is telling.>>>> >>>> For what it's worth, the Reilly papers in the Bodleian don't discuss the matter in his correspondence with Durrell from 1956-68. There might very well be other correspondence elsewhere in which Durrell did request support or an intervention, but I've not seen it. Of course, it's impossible to recuperate private conversations they may have had in Paris.>>>> >>>> Perhaps someone in London would care to check in on the details from the Public Records Office? It's entirely plausible that Durrell would have spoken to Sir Reilly of the hassle, and Reilly's actions express his own ire at the policy. I'm simply not up on the details of how Reilly would have related to the fraught immigration conflicts of the Labour government in 1966.>>>> >>>> All best,>>>> James>>>> >>>>> On 2015-12-08 9:04 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:>>>>> Attached below is a 2002 article from /The Guardian./ It explains>>>>> Durrell?s problems with his British citizenship. I find his situation>>>>> puzzling. Why did he fail to comply with ?the need to register? as>>>>> required by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act? The article states,>>>>> ?He had not been notified to register as a British citizen.? This is>>>>> hard to believe. Surely he was aware of the requirement. Why didn?t>>>>> his many contacts in the UK notify him of the Act, specifically his>>>>> literary agent, his publisher at Faber, his friends, or even his ex-wife>>>>> Eve Durrell (presumably in London)? I?m inclined to believe that>>>>> Durrell was willfully negligent and preferred to live ?on the margins of>>>>> the world? /(Mountolive)/ and to remain ?disenfranchised? (?Le cercle>>>>> referm??).>>>>> >>>>> Bruce>>>> _______________________________________________>>>> ILDS mailing list>>>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds>>> >>> _______________________________________________>>> ILDS mailing list>>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds>> _______________________________________________>> ILDS mailing list>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds> -------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 4Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2015 00:52:01 +0200From: Panaiotis Gerontopoulos To: "james.d.gifford at gmail.com" Cc: "ilds at lists.uvic.ca" , Bruce Redwine Subject: [ilds] Durrell's CitizenshipMessage-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Dear Mr. Gifford I am verysurprised. Regardless of the 1966 amendments on the nationality statusof British subjects whose parents were not born in the UK, Lawrence Durrell was Press Attach? at the British Embassy of Beograd from 1949 to 1953, and in 1954defined himself, in handwritten capitals, BRITISH in the Application forAppointment to the Cyprus Civil Service signed on Feb.15 ? 1954. Yourhypothesis that ?it would be anything that would get him the job? is offensive to his intelligence. The loss of hisnationality, in spite of the services to his home-country isbaffling and as Bruce Redwine notes in his last post to this List might be due to his ownchoice to remain ?disenfranchised? onthe margins of the empire, and let me add without malice, of the British TaxOffice as well. It would be a venial sin and I am happy reading the same in a post of Bruce just entered in my mail box. Whatsurprises and saddens me deeply, is your ?casualobservation? that the tone and phrasing of Durrell?s handwritten Letter tothe Governor of Cyprus on Feb. 1954, quoted in my post of Oct. 25, 2015, "are quite unusual for Durrell's usual writing (in other words a begging letter)".You seem to censure Durrell and accuse me of false. Perhaps the real Durrell does not fit to the image of your durrellian universe and I don't ask you to change it. But you do not have neither the grounds nor the right to accuse me of false. Enough is enough. By the bye, the paper 'The Classified File of Lawrence Durrell' by Barbara Papastavrou-Koroniotaki, in which are described in great detail Durrell's dealings with the Governor of Cyprus Sir Robert Armitage is included in the Issue No. XXVI of Confluences (Lawrence Durrell/Borderlands & Borderlines) 2005, to which you have contributed with the paper "The Black Body as Borderland". Am I perhaps wrong? With kind regards P. Gerontopoulos -------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 5Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 14:59:53 -0800From: James Gifford To: ILDS Listserv Subject: Re: [ilds] Durrell's CitizenshipMessage-ID: <566760E9.5060008 at gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowedOn 2015-12-08 2:52 PM, Panaiotis Gerontopoulos wrote:> You seem to censure Durrell and accuse me of false.> ... you do not have neither> the grounds nor the right to accuse me of false.> Enough is enough.I think you've misunderstood me. I've not accused you of anything -- I wrote that the tone is different from his typical letters. For example, my tone in the classroom is different from my tone in the grocery store, just as Durrell's in that letter is different from much of his other correspondence (and your own tone has taken a fairly substantial turn). I'm a bit mystified why you'd think I'm accusing you of forgery... Has the authenticity of the file been challenged by someone?> By the bye, the paper 'The Classified File of Lawrence Durrell' by> Barbara Papastavrou-Koroniotaki, in which are described in> great detail Durrell's dealings with the Governor of Cyprus Sir Robert> Armitage is included in the Issue No. XXVI of Confluences (Lawrence> Durrell/Borderlands & Borderlines) 2005, to which you have contributed> with the paper "The Black Body as Borderland". Am I perhaps wrong?Anne Zahlan wrote that piece, although I did contribute another chapter on Edward Said and Durrell in the same volume. I do indeed know Papastavrou-Koroniotaki's work in the same.All best,James------------------------------Message: 6Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2015 18:19:19 +0200From: Panaiotis Gerontopoulos To: "james.d.gifford at gmail.com" Subject: Re: [ilds] Durrell's CitizenshipMessage-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-7" Sorry, but I prefer your tone in the grocery store. I appreciate your tardive admission of knowing both Durrell's Application for Appointment for the post of Director of Cyprus Broadcasting Station and the annexed questioner. In view of it, I find it however difficult to understand the scope of your considerations about the tone of Durrell's letter to Armitage. The document is important in understanding Durrell's adventure in Cyprus but is only the top of the iceberg of a much more complicated story, to unfold in simple words easy to understand by both grocery keepers and academics. Sincerely P.Gerontopoulos > To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca> From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com> Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 14:59:53 -0800> Subject: Re: [ilds] Durrell's Citizenship> > On 2015-12-08 2:52 PM, Panaiotis Gerontopoulos wrote:> > You seem to censure Durrell and accuse me of false.> > ... you do not have neither > > the grounds nor the right to accuse me of false.> > Enough is enough.> > I think you've misunderstood me. I've not accused you of anything -- I > wrote that the tone is different from his typical letters. For example, > my tone in the classroom is different from my tone in the grocery store, > just as Durrell's in that letter is different from much of his other > correspondence (and your own tone has taken a fairly substantial turn). > I'm a bit mystified why you'd think I'm accusing you of forgery... > Has the authenticity of the file been challenged by someone?> > > By the bye, the paper 'The Classified File of Lawrence Durrell' by> > Barbara Papastavrou-Koroniotaki, in which are described in> > great detail Durrell's dealings with the Governor of Cyprus Sir Robert> > Armitage is included in the Issue No. XXVI of Confluences (Lawrence> > Durrell/Borderlands & Borderlines) 2005, to which you have contributed> > with the paper "The Black Body as Borderland". Am I perhaps wrong?> > Anne Zahlan wrote that piece, although I did contribute another chapter > on Edward Said and Durrell in the same volume. I do indeed know > Papastavrou-Koroniotaki's work in the same.> > All best,> James> _______________________________________________> ILDS mailing list> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 7Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2015 10:20:00 -0800From: James Gifford To: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: Re: [ilds] Durrell's CitizenshipMessage-ID: <566870D0.7000304 at gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowedOn 2015-12-09 8:19 AM, Panaiotis Gerontopoulos wrote:> The document is important in understanding> Durrell's adventure in Cyprus but is only> the top of the iceberg of a much more> complicated story, to unfold in simple> wordsThat sounds like a fascinating game of guess what's in my pocket. Have fun with it.Cheers,James------------------------------Subject: Digest Footer_______________________________________________ILDS mailing listILDS at lists.uvic.cahttps://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds------------------------------End of ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 8************************************ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net Thu Dec 10 08:23:18 2015 From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine) Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2015 08:23:18 -0800 Subject: [ilds] The need for biographies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I?m currently reading The Shakespeare Circle: An Alternative Biography (Cambridge UP: 2015). It?s a collection of twenty-five essays written by academic and ?independent? scholars. The essays deal with various aspects of Shakespeare?s life peripheral to the man himself (family, friends/neighbors, colleagues/patrons). The editors are Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells. They state their purpose in the first sentence of their general introduction: ?Imagination is needed if we are to bring the information we have about another human being to life.? They have invited their contributors to use their imaginations and to make suppositions (within reason, of course?these essays are not pieces of fiction). Now, it may be argued that Edmondson and Wells?s approach is necessitated by the dearth of hard information about Shakespeare himself. But I don?t think so. We know a lot about Lord Byron, but this doesn?t stop a new biography of the poet coming out every few years or so (even if little or nothing new is added to the story). I think there?s a basic need to write biographies, particularly about great writers who led interesting lives, and a basic need to read them. So I see nothing wrong with speculations about another great writer, Lawrence Durrell. Bruce > On Dec 9, 2015, at 2:00 PM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org wrote: > > All of this is unnecessary, because academics, whether in the classroom, in the grocery store or sitting on the toilet (where many of them belong) can only get a part of the narrative, especially if they are academics first and only scholars secondarily. And whether they are scholars or academics or grocery store habitues, they need human feelings. The Cyprus situation will always be quite different from a Greek-Cypriot perspective, a Turkish-Cypriot perspective and a British perspective, from a Philhellenic perspective and a Greek-Greek perspective. Add together the Cypriot friendships and enmities of Durrell, with the point(s) of view of Seferis and other Greek-Greeks, add to all of that the fact that we still don't know (and never will know) the full story of D's involvement (or not) in espionage/counter-intelligence, and his acknowledged work as a civil servant in both Cyprus and Rhodes, and you have a story the complexity of which will never be satisfied by any single narrative, especially if it is haggled over by academics who don't understand Greece or, for that matter, Britishness. Look at the way D himself was doing a job (to earn essential money) while deploring the way the British were conducting the anti-enosis campaign. Heart and head in eternal conflict. > As far as the citizenship laws are concerned,. Durrell didn't "lose" his citizenship, it was amended "downwards" if i can put it like that. One doesn't have to live in the UK to be a British citizen - I live full time in Greece and have not had a domicile in the UK for the past 48 years, but I am a full British citizen because I was born in London. Durrell was not, nor were his parents.The law which some describe as racist was intorduced to deal with a situation similar to the implosion of the Roman Empire, when hundreds of thousands of non-Romans clamoured for admission in the face of barbarian invasions, shouting "Civis Romanus Sum" (which they were). The British law was designed to deal with a similar situation, to designate non-British-born bearers of British passports from those who WERE born in the UK who were entitled to live in Britain. If you had lived in London during the period (1950s) when London Transport (buses and trains) imported thousands of non-whites from the Caribbean as cheap labour, and the huge explosion in mavrophobia which this caused in the cities of Britain, and if you had experienced the Notting Hill riots in the 1960s, you would at least understand why the government was learning the cruel way from its mistakes and introducing legislation to limit the eligibility of British passport-holders to entry into the UK. > Add what we do know of that situation applies horribly to today's refugee problem in the EU (and Greece in particular) which makes it clear how refugees from phenomena like Islamic State are clamouring for admission to the EU (where they, probably mistakenly, think they will be safer) and you see how a whole continent can be engulfed in a humanitarian crisis which has massive racial, cultural, religious and political repercussions. > But what would an academic or a scholar or a grocer know about that? To understand that, you need a human conscience and consciousness which seems to be lacking in those whose noses are glued to theory. What do we do about the refugees? Read "Habermas on Terror"? "Marcuse on Muslims"? If you've seen men, women and children drowning because they thought one shore of the sea was safer than another, you may view the "Mediterranean Shore" (with or without Paul Hogarth's pictures) somewhat differently. All the books in all the libraries won't help you, any more than they helped Durrell to feel what he felt about being British, or French, or Greek, or, god help us, Irish. Yes, there were tax reasons (these are pretty clear) and there were reasons to do with displacement and anglophobia, and the cost of living, and the simple matter of where one prefers to live, and with whom. That Durrell's citizenship status was diminished was, in my opinion, only a blip on his radar compared with all the other factors relating to his domicile and his happiness. As Anthony Burgess (a definite tax exile) said in his obit of D, he chose not to write about tepid adultery in Hampstead. I think that says a lot that reading Derrida's magnum opus "On Fucking" will never tell you. The idea of Durrell "signing on" at some consulate is so preposterous that I'm surprised anyone has raised the question. He would have signed on at the brothel next door. > Let's stop all this claptrap about things we know little or nothing about and discuss IDEAS, not half-baked facts and suppositions. > RP > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org Sun Dec 13 08:57:58 2015 From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org (mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org) Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2015 16:57:58 +0000 Subject: [ilds] A teaser Message-ID: Here's a teaser. The following is a quote from a source I won't identify. If you know the source, you already know it, it you don't, you don't need to know, but it's a fictional story> "---- played a horrid trick on ---- and got a sculptor he knows to make a [statue of Apollo] and fake it to look old. Then he pretended that a friend of his had found it in Sicily". ---- fell for this beastly thing and wrote an article on it for "The Archaeolgist" ...." It's from a novel published in 1937. Ring any bells? The question is: it's almost certain that LD did not know of this novel. Therefore he could not have had the idea from this novel of a fake statue "found" in Sicily (which in the novel leads to a vendetta between the progenitor of the fake and its victim). So, if the same idea came into LD's head when conceiving Dark Labyrinth, was such an idea common at that time or is this an extraordinary coincidence? Should literary sleuths bend every sinew to try to establish that L D DID in fact know this specific story or would their time be better spent arguing over the uniquity of such fictions or such pranks in the 1930s? Or should they just get on with enjoying Dark Labyrinth? (The novel from which the idea is taken is not, in fact, a great read - another reason for my not identifying it to those who don't recognise the story) RP -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org Sun Dec 13 13:29:43 2015 From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org (mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org) Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2015 21:29:43 +0000 Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 10 Message-ID: Sorry - my typing is bad - for "uniquity" read "ubiquity" - rather a difference! RP -----Original Message----- From: ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca] Sent: Sunday, December 13, 2015 03:00 PM To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 10 Send ILDS mailing list submissions to ilds at lists.uvic.caTo subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ildsor, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to ilds-request at lists.uvic.caYou can reach the person managing the list at ilds-owner at lists.uvic.caWhen replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specificthan "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."Today's Topics: 1. A teaser (mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org)----------------------------------------------------------------------Message: 1Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2015 16:57:58 +0000From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.orgTo: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: [ilds] A teaserMessage-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"Here's a teaser. The following is a quote from a source I won't identify. If you know the source, you already know it, it you don't, you don't need to know, but it's a fictional story>"---- played a horrid trick on ---- and got a sculptor he knows to make a [statue of Apollo] and fake it to look old. Then he pretended that a friend of his had found it in Sicily". ---- fell for this beastly thing and wrote an article on it for "The Archaeolgist" ...."It's from a novel published in 1937. Ring any bells? The question is: it's almost certain that LD did not know of this novel. Therefore he could not have had the idea from this novel of a fake statue "found" in Sicily (which in the novel leads to a vendetta between the progenitor of the fake and its victim). So, if the same idea came into LD's head when conceiving Dark Labyrinth, was such an idea common at that time or is this an extraordinary coincidence?Should literary sleuths bend every sinew to try to establish that L D DID in fact know this specific story or would their time be better spent arguing over the uniquity of such fictions or such pranks in the 1930s? Or should they just get on with enjoying Dark Labyrinth?(The novel from which the idea is taken is not, in fact, a great read - another reason for my not identifying it to those who don't recognise the story)RP-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Subject: Digest Footer_______________________________________________ILDS mailing listILDS at lists.uvic.cahttps://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds------------------------------End of ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 10************************************* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sumantranag at gmail.com Sun Dec 13 21:51:13 2015 From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2015 11:21:13 +0530 Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 10_Fake statues Message-ID: If I remember correctly there is a character (the Duke?) in the novel South Wind (Norman Douglas) who sculpts fake ancient statues and sells them to gullible Americans. Sumantra Nag Sent from my Asus Zenfone On 14 Dec 2015 01:36, wrote: > Send ILDS mailing list submissions to > ilds at lists.uvic.ca > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca > > You can reach the person managing the list at > ilds-owner at lists.uvic.ca > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. A teaser (mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2015 16:57:58 +0000 > From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org > To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca > Subject: [ilds] A teaser > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Here's a teaser. The following is a quote from a source I won't identify. > If you know the source, you already know it, it you don't, you don't need > to know, but it's a fictional story> > > > "---- played a horrid trick on ---- and got a sculptor he knows to make a > [statue of Apollo] and fake it to look old. Then he pretended that a friend > of his had found it in Sicily". ---- fell for this beastly thing and wrote > an article on it for "The Archaeolgist" ...." > > > It's from a novel published in 1937. Ring any bells? > The question is: it's almost certain that LD did not know of this novel. > Therefore he could not have had the idea from this novel of a fake statue > "found" in Sicily (which in the novel leads to a vendetta between the > progenitor of the fake and its victim). So, if the same idea came into LD's > head when conceiving Dark Labyrinth, was such an idea common at that time > or is this an extraordinary coincidence? > Should literary sleuths bend every sinew to try to establish that L D DID > in fact know this specific story or would their time be better spent > arguing over the uniquity of such fictions or such pranks in the 1930s? Or > should they just get on with enjoying Dark Labyrinth? > > > (The novel from which the idea is taken is not, in fact, a great read - > another reason for my not identifying it to those who don't recognise the > story) > RP > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20151213/da677ebd/attachment-0001.html > > > > ------------------------------ > > Subject: Digest Footer > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > > > ------------------------------ > > End of ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 10 > ************************************* > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: