Charles Dickens Bicentenary 2012 - image by David Levine

LUCKY WEST HILL

How lucky we are, in the West Hill, to have so many community-minded individuals and at the heart of the community, to have a store, Bright News, owned and run by Vinod & Meena Mashru, who organised a most successful and happy Christmas party. Held at the West Hill Hall, the evening was full of fun and good humour. Unfortunately the Carol Concert, which has been such a great success in past years, had to be cancelled due to the lack of a pianist at short notice, but we hope to hold it again this December.

The community quiz continues on the last Tuesday of the month at West Hill Hall and more participants are welcome to the quiz where the quiz master/mistress actually gives the teams clues to the answers! It’s not taken seriously, but it’s seriously good fun.

2012 is an amazing year for celebrations — the Olympics, the Cultural Olympiad, the bicentenary of Charles Dickens, Brighton Pride’s 20th anniversary, and the royal Diamond Jubilee where we can enjoy an extended holiday in June and another round of street parties. Is there anything planned for West Hill and its surrounds? Write and let us know your thoughts so we can get that community spirit working together again.

Richard Ford

There will be some great raffle prizes but she is looking for more, corporate or individual ones, so if you would like to donate a prize, please get in touch with The Whistler at whwhistler@aol.com or leave a comment here.

Thursday 2 February, 7.30pm, Komedia Studio, 44-47 Gardner Street, Brighton, BN1 1UN, 01273 647 100.
Tickets £5/£4, available on the door

Marcus Brigstocke – God Collar
‘My best friend died a few years ago and it broke my heart. I miss my friend and I wonder where he is.’ Based on Marcus’ award-winning Edinburgh and West End show of the same name, God Collar explores religion, his need for it, his lack of it, the myths surrounding it and the bits that he whole-heartedly disagrees with within it. It is a scathing look at modern faith that will leave you laughing out loud and examining your own beliefs in equal measure.

Friday 10 February, 7.30pm, Sallis Benney Theatre, University of Brighton, 58-67 Grand Parade, BN2 0JY.

Helen Keen – Robot Woman of the Future
Award-winning comedian & creator of BBC Radio 4’s It Is Rocket Science, returns to Brighton with her mix of stand-up comedy, science and shadow puppetry. From clockwork French ducks to human computers, Keen presents an idiosyncratic guide to the way the “cutting-edge” has changed the everyday world in which we live.

Sunday 12 February, 8.00pm, Latest Music Bar, 14-17 Manchester Street Brighton, BN2 1TF.

Quabinet of Quantum Quriosities
Just when we think we’re catching a glimpse of the Higgs Boson, those naughty neutrinos make a break for it, faster than the speed of light. What is quantum all about? It seems a mad, mad, mad world, yet all our modern gizmos depend on it. This is the day to ask simple questions and expect simple answers.

Sunday 19 February, 10.00am–4.30pm Latest Music Bar, 14-17 Manchester Street, Brighton, BN2 1TF.

The Science of Bees
Want to learn the waggle dance? Everyone’s talking about the plight of British bees – find out more about the life of the bees, what Sussex is doing to save them, and what you can do in your own gardens and window boxes. With Speakers from the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects at Sussex University and the Brighton Beekeepers Association.

Thursday 23 February, 6.30-8.30pm, Friends Meeting House, Ship Street, BN1 1AF Free

Big Science Saturday
Talks and debates of the highest quality for those who want to understand the future before we get there.

Saturday 25 February 10.00am-6.00pm, Sallis Benney Theatre, University of Brighton, 58-67 Grand Parade, BN2 0JY. Tickets £10/£6 available from www.brightonscience.com or on the door. 

See the full programme and buy tickets at www.brightonscience.com

But it’s not to save an hour’s electricity. It’s something much bigger. WWF’s Earth Hour is about people coming together to put the focus on this brilliant world we all share – and how we need to protect it. Not just for an hour a year, but every day.

Because a healthy planet isn’t just good for polar bears or tropical tree frogs. It’s essential for us all. It’s easy to forget how much we depend on it for food, fuel, water, fresh air… And the truth is, our modern lifestyles have been taking a toll on our planet.

WWF already tackles a lot of the environmental impacts – like deforestation, endangered species, and the impacts of climate change. But Earth Hour is a chance for everyone to say they’ll do their bit.

Earth Hour is a celebration. It’s always a night to remember – whether it’s a special candlelit evening at home with friends or family, or a night out on the town, or watching the spectacular global switch-offs from landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids of Giza, Times Square, Sydney Opera House, The Whistler office in West Hill Road.

For more information and to sign up, visit the website at: www.earthhour.wwf.org.uk

Recently, whenever I search for a book on Amazon, I am invited to purchase a ‘Kindle’. This, I am told, will give me access to hundreds of books. But how will I know which I will want to read?

This is a question which several of my English teachers of 60 years ago would have been eager to answer for me. They were very sure of the importance of ‘English’ in the school curriculum. In their view, which had been formed by their tutors at Cambridge, our culture was at a vital moment of change. For several centuries the foundation of our culture had been the study of Latin and Greek, but that foundation was crumbling. Our salvation would be the development of English studies, based on a carefully-trained reading of our literature. As their tutors had guided them, so would they teach us to “discriminate”, to separate the wheat from the chaff and benefit from reading the finest examples of our literature.

Such teachers flourished from the 1940s through to the 1970s; there are still a few of them at work today. Their influence waned because the study of literature expanded to embrace a number of academic disciplines and philosophies: sociology, psychoanalysis, linguistics, anthropology, Marxism, Feminism, Deconstruction, and several more. For a time there was an almost overwhelming influence from France. The character of the study of literature in Universities changed remarkably. My teachers of 60 years ago were very short on philosophy, often ignorant about psychology, and generally very narrow in outlook. The explosion of literary studies left them at best bewildered and at worst angrily defensive. If you want an introduction to where things are now, get hold of the latest edition of Literature, Criticism and Theory by Professor Royle of the University of Sussex and his colleague, Andrew Bennett.

I must confess the reason for my interest in this subject. Although I never planned to become a teacher, I have spent much of my life teaching teenagers and adults about literature. Over 20 years ago I became the tutor for an adult class entitled “Reading for Pleasure”, which I still take a few times each year. Part of my job was to try to bridge the gap between the approach of the average educated reader and the way literature is studied at university. But a bigger task was to choose the books for our winter programme of reading. For several years we used a formula: one early novel, one Victorian novel, three recent novels, one European novel, etc.

The same problem faces the Kindle reader, or the members of an untutored reading group, “How do you plan your reading?”. My advice would be that there are benefits, both for learning or just for pleasure, from having a plan. In my own case I tend to stay with an author for some time and read several of their novels. I did this in the past with Iris Murdoch and more recently I have explored some major German novelists and the short story collections of William Trevor. You can find some helpful lists on the Internet, or for a very posh list try How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom. [pub. Fourth Estate]. Good reading!

PS. Two quick suggestions for reasonably short novels: The Victim by Saul Bellow and Surfacing by Margaret Atwood. Both beautifully constructed, beautifully written and raising interesting questions. For a longer read why not try Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend?

Shakespeare United 2012 is to be a Great British Shakespeare event, embracing schools, amateur groups, youth clubs, senior organisations, all races and cultures, in every city, town and village – with the support and encouragement of professionals – which will be a joyful and unrivalled unifying occasion. There has never been a national Shakespeare celebration in our entire history.

For more information about Shakespeare United 2012 see the website

Sunday 12 February, 2.30-3.15pm Free

Guest curator Alexandra Loske introduces Hove-based artist Robert Goff’s work and discusses his atmospheric etchings of Sussex, Italy, Egypt and Japan.

Charlotte, the Forgotten Princess, at the Royal Pavilion

10 March 2012 to 10 March 2013, Admission payable, members free

The only daughter of George, Prince of Wales and Princess Caroline of Brunswick, Charlotte was a feisty and headstrong child, who became very popular with the public, in stark contrast to her father. Charlotte married in 1816, but then tragically died the following year shortly after giving birth, aged only 21. Her sudden death sent shockwaves across the country and the public outpouring of grief was exceeded in English history only by that following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Charles Dickens, the Royal Pavilion and Brighton at the Pavilion

Wednesday 28 March 11.30am-12.30pm £10, members £8.50

Lecturer in 19th century literature Dr Peter Blake discusses the importance of the Royal Pavilion and Brighton to the life and work of Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens

The variety and contrasts of London – gentility and beggary – great spaces and cramped crooked streets, leisure and brute work, families, and orphans, “strange experiences and sordid things”, would add to his humiliation. They would fill his imagination, stock his memory, shape his psychology, become his education, feed the “quite astonishing fictions” he began to tell to others. The streets he wandered between the Blacking Factory, the Marshalsea and his lodgings on Lant Street, today bear the names of the characters who sprang out of them, Pickwick Street, Little Dorrit Court. The cityscape, as Peter Ackroyd says in his biography, was still largely an eighteenth century one, and “the London of his novels always remains the London of his youth”.

When Dickens’s father was released from prison the family moved to Somers Town. After some schooling, Dickens became a lawyer’s clerk in Grays Inn. He began writing for the theatre and magazines, and became a shorthand reporter in the law courts and at the House of Commons. He produced Sketches of London for the Evening Chronicle, striking for its portraits of working people, vagrants, circus performers, poor and criminal districts, prisons like Newgate, amusement places like Vauxhall.

In the 1830s the young reporter became the wonder writer of the day. Living in Marylebone, he wrote and published his first book, Sketches by Boz (1836), a vivid collection of London scenes, accompanied by illustrations from the great caricaturist George Cruikshank. Invited to follow up its success, he developed Pickwick Papers (1836-7) in 20 monthly parts, which grew in scale as the public fell in love with each new episode. Here, with the Pickwickians and Sam and Tony Weller, was Cockney London in full voice; he had created new, deeply English comic characters who fascinated readers of every kind.

In 1836 Dickens married Catherine Hogarth and they rented lodgings at Furnival’s Inn. In 1837 they took a twelve-roomed house at 48 Doughty Street, Bloomsbury. He had signed contracts for 5 novels, produced at enormous speed, in monthly parts. First came Oliver Twist (1838) with its portrayal of London orphans, the criminal den of Fagin, the slum of the Rookery, where Bill Sykes meets his end. Then followed Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1), where Quilp dies dramatically in the Thames, and Barnaby Rudge (1841). Finished before he was 30, these books form a great vision of the new Victorian age. With them he became a world famous writer. When, in 1842, he toured the USA, he was feted as no visiting author had been before.

In I839 the Dickens family moved to 1 Devonshire Terrace, by Regent’s Park. Dickens also acquired Fort House, Broadstairs, to take his family out of London. His comic imagination began to darken, the “giant phantom” of London taking a more complex shape. He wrote works of social and moral criticism like Martin Chuzzlewit (1843) which probed the selfishness and fraudulent corruption of his day. Half way through his career, Dickens wrote Dombey and Son (1846-48) in which the ailing Paul Dombey is sent to Brighton for the air, to be looked after by the “ogress and child queller” Mrs Pipchin and then to attend Dr Blimber’s appalling school. It is a great novel in which Dickens writes of a father who desired a son but is left with just a daughter, and turns wicked because of life’s unjust blows.

To be continued

At a recent meeting with a Fund Manager, he confessed to me that he had absolutely no idea of where the markets would end up this year, despite his being sure that there was considerable value to be found in the many stocks that he has on his buy list. The problem is what Mr Rumsfeld might refer to as “unknown unknowns”. With the best will in the world, and the finest research, there is no way that we can foretell the sentiment of the markets. Mostly driven by economic and political events, it is also a slave to the kind of event that no-one expects, the like of which include the 1987 storm, the Kobe earthquake in 1995 and September 11 2001. Even without any dramatic events, such as these, the world economic situation is in a sufficient state of uncertainty, (over the Eurozone to start with) to ensure that volatility is going to be the name of the game, for some while to come.

Acutely aware of the fact that it may look like I am hiding behind a cloak of volatility in order to avoid making any predictions, I will, with no huge feeling of certainty, give a few glimpses of the coming year, as I see it. I think the price of gold will go up. It is, customarily, a safe haven in times of uncertainty, and will probably remain so: I think the anomaly that has seen a rising gold price, yet a fall in gold mining share prices, will end. In addition, I think that the US market will do reasonably well, as their Presidential election looms up, and I think that in the UK, the Footsie will probably end the year higher.

There, that should be enough to spark a world crash, but if it does, that will be a buying opportunity! Remember, buying little and often can help reduce risk, and don’t keep all your eggs in one basket, unless you like omelettes.

David Foot

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