This edition appears a season later than initially planned. We needed some time to regroup following the passing of the much-missed Mark Jones, and for other reasons it was decided to revert to a summer and winter schedule.
Amidst the rapid change of the present age, it is comforting to reflect that the Copper Family of Rottingdean continue to sing their extraordinary traditional songs, and have been doing so for at least eight generations. This repertoire is very moving, with its innocent optimism and expression of joy in the beauties of nature. I have been an admirer of it for many years, so it was a delight and an honour --not to mention tremendous fun-- to sit down with Jill Copper and her husband Jon Dudley to hear about the songs, Rottingdean social history, and how the successive generations (particularly Jill's father Bob) have worked to keep the canon alive. In the process some fascinating detail about the memory practices of pre-literate agricultural communities came to light, as well as Bob Copper's great love of the Blues, a fact not widely known on the English folk scene. It would serve us all well to take a page out of this luminous family songbook in preference to being (in the words of Jim Copper, Jill's grandfather) "prostrate with dismal," for as The Banks of the Sweet Primroses impresses upon us,"there's many a dark and cloudy morning/Turns out to be a sunshiny day."
Shelagh Delaney's play A Taste of Honey, written when she was only eighteen, is a remarkable social document --not just a problem play but a problems play, in which Northern female working-class characters take centre stage. It is no exaggeration to say that it changed postwar English culture forever, and in our Cinema section Neil Jackson provides a tender and thoughtful analysis of the film version, starring the remarkable Rita Tushingham as the vulnerable teenage protagonist and Dora Bryan as her toxic, irresponsible mother. Women's lives are also the focus of the very different middle-class comedy Excellent Women by Barbara Pym from 1952, reviewed here appreciatively by Mary Thaler, which skewers society's lack of appreciation for the energetic volunteerism of unmarried women (or as they were then described, 'spinsters').
Paul Flux covers both traditional and modern art with reviews of two major shows, Grayson Perry's Delusions of Grandeur at the Wallace Collection and the National Gallery's Wright of Derby: From the Shadows, which evokes some deep questions about Newtonian science and religion. He also takes a tour around the extravagant Brighton Pavilion, courtesy of a new book by Alexandra Loske which evokes the individual rooms in great detail.
Finally, Em reviews a wide selection of new releases of English classical music, including Maurice Greene's opera Jephtha, and works by the County Durham-born William Shield, Cipriani Potter, and others. We hope that you enjoy this edition, and look forward to seeing you again in the summer. --The Editor
