James Kelman (born 9 June 1946, in Glasgow) is an influential writer of novels, short stories, plays and political essays. His novel A Disaffection was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989. Kelman won the 1994 Booker Prize with How Late It Was, How Late and aroused something of a controversy in doing so: one of the judges, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, denounced the book as "a disgrace" when Kelman was announced as the winner. Kelman has since said that his Booker prize win, specifically the negative publicity and attacks made as a result, made publishers more reluctant to handle his work. [1] In 1998 Kelman was awarded the Scotland on Sunday/Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award. In 2008 he won Scotland's most prestigious literary award the Saltire Society's Book of the Year award for Kieron Smith, Boy (2008).

Life and work[link]

Kelman says ^[1]:

My own background is as normal or abnormal as anyone else's. Born and bred in Govan and Drumchapel, inner city tenement to the housing scheme homeland on the outer reaches of the city. Four brothers, my mother a full time parent, my father in the picture framemaking and gilding trade, trying to operate a one man business and I left school at 15 etc. etc. (...) For one reason or another, by the age of 21/22 I decided to write stories. The stories I wanted to write would derive from my own background, my own socio-cultural experience. I wanted to write as one of my own people, I wanted to write and remain a member of my own community.

During the 1970s he published a first collection of short stories. He became involved in Philip Hobsbaum's creative writing group in Glasgow along with Tom Leonard, Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead, and his short stories began to appear in magazines. These stories introduced a distinctive style, expressing first person internal monologues in a pared-down prose utilising Glaswegian speech patterns, though avoiding for the most part the quasi-phonetic rendition of Tom Leonard. Kelman's developing style has been influential on the succeeding generation of Scottish novelists, including Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner and Janice Galloway. In 1998, Kelman received the Stakis Prize for "Scottish Writer of the Year" for his collection of short stories 'The Good Times.'

Political views and activism[link]

Kelman's work has been described as flowing "not only from being an engaged writer, but a cultural and political activist".^[2] At the time of Glasgow's Year as City of Culture he was prominent in the Workers' City group, critical of the celebrations. The name was chosen as to draw attention to the renaming of part of the city centre as the Merchant City, which they described as promoting the "fallacy that Glasgow somehow exists because of (...) 18th century entrepreneurs and far-sighted politicians. (The merchants) were men who trafficked in degradation, causing untold misery, death and starvation to thousands"^[3] The Workers' City group campaigned against what was seen as the victimisation of People's Palace curator Elspeth King and a Council attempt to sell off one third of Glasgow Green. Their activities drew the ire of Labour Party councillors and commentators, Kelman, and his colleagues Hugh Savage and Farquhar McLay, being described as "an 'embarrassment' to the city's 'cultural workforce'".^[3]

Kelman has been a prominent campaigner, notably in issues of social justice and traditional left wing causes, although he is resolutely not a party man, and remains at his heart a libertarian socialist anarchist, saying "the parliamentary opposition parties are essential to the political apparatus of this country which is designed to arrest justice".^[3] He lives in Glasgow with his wife and children, though has also lived in London, Manchester, the Channel Islands, Australia and America.

In his introduction to Born up a Close: Memoirs of a Brigton Boy (2006), an edition of Glaswegian political campaigner Hugh Savage's writings, Kelman sums up his understanding of the history of national and class conflict as follows:

In an occupied country indigenous history can only be radical. It is a class issue. The intellectual life of working class people is ‘occupied’. In a colonised country intellectual occupation takes place throughout society. The closer to the ruling class we get the less difference there exists in language and culture, until finally we find that questions fundamental to society at its widest level are settled by members of the same closely knit circle, occasionally even the same family or ‘bloodline’. And the outcome of that can be war, the slaughter of working class people.

Despite reservations about nationalism, Kelman has voiced his support for Scottish Independence, stating “Any form of nationalism is dangerous, and should be treated with caution. I cannot accept nationalism and I am not a Scottish Nationalist. But once that is said, I favour a Yes or No decision on independence and I shall vote Yes to independence.”^[4]

Bibliography[link]

Short stories[link]

• An Old Pub Near The Angel (1973)
• Not Not While The Giro (1983)
• Lean Tales (1985) (joint volume with Alasdair Gray and Agnes Owens)
• Greyhound For Breakfast (1987) (winner of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature)
• The Burn (1991)
• Busted Scotch (1997)
• The Good Times (1998)
• Remember Young Cecil (2000)
• If It Is Your Life (2010)

Novels[link]

• The Busconductor Hines (1984)
• A Chancer (1985)
• A Disaffection (1989)
• How Late It Was, How Late (1994) (winner of the Booker Prize)
• Translated Accounts (2001)
• You Have To Be Careful In The Land Of The Free (2004)
• Kieron Smith, Boy (2008)

Essays[link]

• Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural & Political. Stirling: AK Press. 1992. p. 92. ISBN 1-873176-80-5. 
• And The Judges Said (2002)

Edited[link]

• An East End Anthology, ed. Jim Kelman (1988)
• Hugh Savage, Born up a Close: memoirs of a Brigton boy, ed. James Kelman (2006)

Book-length Critical Works on Kelman[link]

• Dietmar Böhnke. Kelman Writes Back (1999)
• H. Gustav Klaus. James Kelman: Writers and their Work (2004)
• J.D. Macarthur. Claiming Your Portion of Space': A study of the short stories of James Kelman (2007)
• Simon Kovesi, James Kelman (Manchester University Press, 2007)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• James Kelman at Contemporary Writers (includes a "Critical Perspective" section)
• How Late It Was, How Late: a play created by Rude Mechanicals in Austin, Texas (2003)
• Make yer point: James Kelman, The Guardian, 11 August 2007 This article has been removed because the copyright has expired.

Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh 2004 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival
Born	(1958-09-27) 27 September 1958 (age 53) Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Heriot-Watt University
Genres	Literature, Novel
Literary movement	Modernism, Post Modernism
Notable work(s)	Trainspotting, The Acid House
Influences Louis-Ferdinand Céline, William S. Burroughs, Alexander Trocchi, Alasdair Gray, James Kelman, William McIlvanney, Alan Spence, Iggy Pop, Bertolt Brecht, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Kierkegaard, James Joyce, Jim Carroll
www.irvinewelsh.net/default.aspx

Irvine Welsh (born 27 September 1958 in Leith, Edinburgh) is a contemporary Scottish novelist, best known for his novel Trainspotting. His work is characterised by raw Scottish dialect, and brutal depiction of the realities of Edinburgh life. He has also written plays, screenplays, and directed several short films.

Biography[link]

Irvine Welsh was born in Leith, the port area of the Scottish capital Edinburgh. His family moved to Muirhouse, in Edinburgh, when he was four, where the family stayed at local housing schemes.^[1] His mother worked as a waitress. His father was a dock worker in Leith until bad health forced him to become a carpet salesman; he died when Welsh was 25. Welsh left Ainslie Park High School when he was 16 and then completed a City and Guilds course in electrical engineering. He became an apprentice TV repairman until an electric shock persuaded him to move on to a series of other jobs.^[1] He left Edinburgh for the London punk scene in 1978, where he played guitar and sang in The Pubic Lice and Stairway 13,^[1] the latter a reference to the Ibrox disaster. A series of arrests for petty crimes and finally a suspended sentence for trashing a North London community centre inspired Welsh to correct his ways. He worked for Hackney London Borough Council in London and studied computing with the support of the Manpower Services Commission.^[1]

In the mid 1980s he became a minor property speculator, renovating houses in the rapidly gentrifying North London. After the London property boom of the 1980s, Welsh returned to Edinburgh in late 80s, where he worked for the city council in the housing department. He went on to study for an MBA at Heriot-Watt University, writing his thesis on creating equal opportunities for women.

Welsh has made several reading tours around the world and has been involved with his beloved house music as a DJ, promoter and producer. Like many of his characters, he supports Hibs. He met an American woman Beth Quinn, 26^[when?], when he was teaching creative writing in Chicago, and they were married in July 2005. He considers the age gap inconsequential. 'I've never felt tied to any one age ... I've never thought "I must find someone a couple of years younger than I am".' Welsh was previously married to Anne Ansty from 1984 until their divorce in 2003.^[2]

On 20th April 2012, on BBC Breakfast, he advised he lives in Chicago, with his wife. Previously he lived in Dublin, Ireland.^[3][4] In an interview with The Daily Mail on 7 August 2006, he described himself as "not so much middle-class as upper-class. I'm very much a gentleman of leisure. I write. I sit and look out of my window into the garden. I enjoy books. I love the density and complexity of Jane Austen and George Eliot. I listen to music; I travel. I can go off to a film festival whenever I like." He also describes himself as monogamous: "it sounds boring but it's the way I am".

Fiction[link]

Irvine Welsh in Warsaw, Poland, 13 March 2006

To date, Welsh has published seven novels and four collections of short stories. His first novel, Trainspotting, was published in 1993, and rumor has it that Welsh wrote it in the breaks while writing his thesis at Heriot-Watt University's Library, second floor.^{[citation needed]} Set in the mid 1980s, it uses a series of loosely connected short stories to tell the story of a group of characters tied together by decaying friendships, heroin addiction and stabs at escape from the oppressive boredom and brutality of their lives in the housing schemes. It was released to shock and outrage in some circles and great acclaim in others; Time Out called it "funny, unflinchingly abrasive, authentic and inventive", and The Sunday Times called Welsh "the best thing that has happened to British writing for decades". One critic (Welsh's personal friend Kevin Williamson) went so far as to say that Trainspotting "deserves to sell more copies than The Bible". It was adapted as a play, and a film adaptation, directed by Danny Boyle and written by John Hodge, was released in 1996. Welsh himself appeared in the film as Mikey Forrester, a minor character. The film was a worldwide success. U.S. Senator Bob Dole decried its supposed moral depravity and glorification of drug use during the 1996 presidential campaign, although he admitted that he had not actually seen the film.^[5]

The novel has since achieved a cult status, aided by the global success of the film.^[6]

Next, Welsh released The Acid House, a collection of short stories from Rebel Inc., New Writing Scotland and other sources. Many of the stories take place in and around the housing schemes from Trainspotting, and employ many of the same themes; however, a touch of fantasy is apparent in stories such as The Acid House, where the minds of a baby and a drug user swap bodies, or The Granton Star Cause, where God transforms a man into a fly as punishment for wasting his life. Welsh himself adapted three of the stories for a later film, which he also appeared in.

Welsh's third book (and second novel), Marabou Stork Nightmares, alternates between a typically grim tale of thugs and schemes in sub-working class Scotland and a hallucinatory adventure tale set in South Africa. Gradually, common themes begin to emerge between the two stories, culminating in a shocking ending.

His next book, Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance (1996), became his most high-profile work since Trainspotting, released in the wave of publicity surrounding the film. It consists of three unconnected novellas: the first, Lorraine Goes To Livingston, is a bawdy satire of classic British romance novels, the second, Fortune's Always Hiding, is a revenge story involving thalidomide and the third, The Undefeated, is a sly, subtle romance between a young woman dissatisfied with the confines of her suburban life and an aging clubgoer. Most critics dismissed the first two as relatively minor affairs and focused their praise on The Undefeated. Welsh's narration imbued both characters with surprising warmth, and the story avoided easy, pro-ecstasy conclusions. The popular alternative band My Chemical Romance stated in their DVD Life On The Murder Scene that bassist Mikey Way got the name for their band from the book's subtitle.

A corrupt police officer and his tapeworm served as the narrators for his third novel, Filth (1998). Welsh had never avoided flawed characters, but the main character of Filth was a brutally vicious sociopathic policeman.

Glue (2001) was a return to the locations, themes and episodic form of Trainspotting, telling the stories of four characters spanning several decades in their lives and the bonds that held them together.

Having revisited some of them in passing in Glue, Welsh brought most of the Trainspotting characters back for a sequel, Porno, in 2002. In this book Welsh explores the impact of pornography on the individuals involved in producing it, as well as society as a whole, and the impact of aging and maturity in individuals against their will.

The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (2006), deals with a young, alcoholic civil servant who finds himself inadvertently putting a curse on his nemesis, a nerdy co-worker. In 2007, Welsh published If You Liked School You'll Love Work, his first collection of short stories in over a decade.

At the request of the Daily Telegraph, Welsh travelled with a group of authors and journalists to the Sudan in 2001. A book called The Weekenders: Travels in the Heart of Africa was the result, to which Welsh contributed a novella called Contamination, about the violence and warlords in the region. A second book, The Weekenders: Adventures in Calcutta, was published in 2004. Welsh, Ian Rankin, and Alexander McCall Smith each contributed a short story for the One City compilation published in 2005 in benefit of the One City Trust for social inclusion in Edinburgh.

Welsh's most recently published novel is entitled Crime, whose main character is Ray Lennox (who appeared in Welsh's previous work, Filth). Detective Inspector Ray Lennox is recovering from a mental breakdown induced by occupational stress and cocaine abuse, and a particularly horrifying child sex murder case back in Edinburgh. The story takes place in Florida.^[7]

Welsh is currently writing a prequel to Trainspotting, to be called Skagboys.^[8][9][10]

Film and stage[link]

As well as fiction, Irvine Welsh has written several stage plays, including Headstate, You'll Have Had Your Hole, and the musical Blackpool, which featured original songs by Vic Godard of the Subway Sect.

More recently he coauthored Babylon Heights with his screen writing partner Dean Cavanagh. The play premiered in San Francisco at the Exit Theatre and made its European premiere in Dublin, at The Mill Theatre Dundrum, directed by Graham Cantwell. The plot revolves around the behind-the-scenes antics of a group of Munchkins on the set of The Wizard of Oz. The production included the use of oversized sets with actors of regular stature.

Cavanagh and Welsh have also collaborated on a number of screenplays. The Meat Trade is based on the 19th century West Port murders. Despite the historical source material, Welsh has set the story in the familiar confines of present day Edinburgh, with Burke and Hare depicted as brothers who steal human organs to meet the demands of the global transplant market.

Wedding Belles, a film made for Channel 4 that was written by Welsh and Cavanagh, aired at the end of March 2007. The film centres around the lives of four young women, who are played by Michelle Gomez, Shirley Henderson, Shauna MacDonald, and Kathleen McDermot. Wedding Belles was nominated for a Scottish BAFTA and was subsequently sold to TV channels in Canada and Europe.

Welsh has directed several short films for bands. In 2001 he directed a 15 minute film for Gene's song "Is It Over" which is taken from the album Libertine. In 2006 he directed a short film to accompany the track "Atlantic" from Keane's album Under the Iron Sea.

Welsh directed his first short dramatic film, NUTS, which he co wrote with Cavanagh. The film features Joe McKinney as a man dealing with testicular cancer in post Celtic tiger Ireland. It was released in 2007.

Welsh co-directed 'The Right to liberty' a chapter of the documentary film The New Ten Commandments in 2008.

In 2009 Welsh directed the film Good Arrows (co-directed by Helen Grace). It was written by Welsh and Cavanagh. The film is about a darts player who suffers from depression which causes him to lose his skill.^[11]

Film adaptation[link]

• Trainspotting (1996)
• Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy based on The Undefeated from the book "Ecstasy". (2011)
• The Acid House (1998)

Theatre adaptations[link]

• Ecstasy
• Glue
• Filth
• Trainspotting
• Marabou Stork Nightmares

^[12]

Themes[link]

As well as recreational drug use, Welsh's fiction and non-fiction is dominated by the question of working class and Scottish identity in the period spanning the 1960s to the present day. Within this, he explores the rise and fall of the council housing scheme, denial of opportunity, sectarianism, football, hooliganism, sex, suppressed homosexuality, dance clubs, low-paid work, freemasonry, Irish republicanism, sodomy, class divisions, emigration and, perhaps most of all, the humour, prejudices and axioms of the Scots.

Sam Leith, writing in the Financial Times, argues that:

"Welsh’s concerns are with sin and salvation, with the exercise of free will and with the individual soul. He’s much more interested in teleology than sociology."^[13]

Style[link]

His novels share a number of characters, giving the feel of a "shared universe" within his writing. For example, characters from Trainspotting make cameo appearances in The Acid House, Marabou Stork Nightmares, Ecstasy, Filth, and slightly larger appearances in Glue, whose characters then appear in Porno.

Irvine Welsh is known for writing in his native Edinburgh Scots dialect. He generally ignores the traditional conventions of literary Scots, used for example by Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Orr. Instead, he transcribes dialects phonetically.

Like Alasdair Gray before him, Welsh also experiments with typography. A notable example is the book Filth, where the tapeworm's internal monologue is imposed over the top of the protagonist's own internal monologue (the worm's host), visibly depicting the tapeworm's voracious appetite, much like the 'Climax of Voices' in Gray's novel 1982, Janine.

Bibliography[link]

Novels[link]

• Trainspotting (1993)
• Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995)
• Filth (1998)
• Glue (2001)
• Porno (2002)
• The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (2006)
• Crime (2008)
• Skagboys (2012)

Short story collections[link]

• The Acid House (1994)
• Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance (1996)
• If You Liked School You'll Love Work (2007)
• Reheated Cabbage (2009)

Script writing[link]

• You'll Have Had Your Hole (drama)
• Dose (half Hour BBC drama written with Dean Cavanagh)^[14]
• The Acid House (screenplay)
• Wedding Belles (2007 film for Channel 4 written with Dean Cavanagh)^[15]
• Four Play This is a collection of Irvine Welsh's books that have been adapted for the stage. Trainspotting, Marabou, Filth, and Ecstasy.^[16]
• Dockers (1999 one-off TV drama for Channel 4, co-written by Jimmy McGovern)^[17]
• Nuts (2007 Short film)^[18]
• Good Arrows (2009 Film) ^[19]
• Bad Blood (2005 Short film) Co-written by Irvine Welsh, based on a section of Trainspotting^[20]

Theatre[link]

• Babylon Heights
• You'll Have Had Your Hole

References[link]

External links[link]

• irvinewelsh.net Official Site
• Irvine Welsh at the Internet Movie Database
• - Info on the BLACKPOOL EP released with Vic Godard & The Subway Sect
• BBC mini-bio on Welsh
• Irvine Welsh at Random House Australia
• SF Interview about "Babylon Heights" play with writing partner Dean Cavanagh
• Interview with 3:AM Magazine
• Interview by Garrett Faber and Interview by Daniel Robert Epstein SuicideGirls

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Irvine Welsh

Aidan John Moffat (born 10 April 1973 in Falkirk, Scotland) is a Scottish vocalist and musician, best known for his work with Malcolm Middleton in Arab Strap.

Early life[link]

Moffat was born and raised in Falkirk, Scotland. The first album he bought was Elvis Sings For Kids by Elvis Presley.^[1] Whilst at Falkirk High School, he listened to such bands as Pixies, Dinosaur Jr. and Slint^[2] His first ever gig was at age 16, and was David Byrne at the Glasgow Barrowlands in 1989.^[1] In 1990, at age 17, he was expelled from school, with no Higher Qualifications.^[1] He then worked for four years at an independent record shop called Sleeves Records,^[3] resigning one morning in 1996, due to having a hangover and wanting to go home.^[4]

Career[link]

Arab Strap[link]

In 1995, Moffat and Malcolm Middleton began making music under the name "Arab Strap", and sent in demo cassettes to record companies. Only one, Chemikal Underground, replied, and they were soon signed to them.

L. Pierre[link]

In 2002, after apparently being challenged by Malcolm Middleton to release a solo album,^[5] Moffat released a solo album entitled Hypnogogia under the name "Lucky Pierre". In 2005, after changing the name to "L. Pierre", Moffat released an album called Touchpool. His latest solo album was released in 2007, and is entitled Dip.

Albums[link]

• Hypnogogia Melodic 9 September 2002
• Touchpool Melodic 4 February 2005
• Dip Melodic 12 February 2007

Other musical projects[link]

Pre-Arab Strap[link]

From 1991 to 1996, Moffat recorded with a band called The Angry Buddhists, which consisted of Aidan Moffat, Gavin Moffat, Stuart The Postman, "Cheg" Taylor and The Stobe. They recorded "over 40 songs on dictaphones and 4-tracks", but never played live. Aidan was also the drummer in Bay, a band who released two albums - Happy Being Different (1994) and Alison Rae (1995).

Mogwai[link]

Moffat provided guest vocals on the Mogwai song, "R U Still in 2 It", from Mogwai Young Team, which was recorded in the same studio (MCM Studios in Hamilton) around the same time as Arab Strap were recording The Week Never Starts Round Here, in 1997. Moffat also contributes vocals to the Mogwai song "Now You're Taken", from 4 Satin. Mogwai have a song dedicated to him on their second album, Come on Die Young, entitled "Waltz for Aidan".

The Sick Anchors[link]

In 2002, Moffat, Stuart Braithwaite from Mogwai (a good friend of Moffat's), and Colin "Sheepy" McPherson released an eponymously titled EP under the name "The Sick Anchors"

Aidan John Moffat[link]

Moffat uses his full name for his 2007 poetry album, I Can Hear Your Heart.

Aidan Moffat & the Best-Ofs[link]

Aidan Moffat & the Best-Ofs are a four piece band fronted by Moffat. They played their first gig supporting American band Slint, at the Glasgow ABC in Scotland, where they debuted the songs "Big Blonde", "The Last Kiss", "Ballad of the Unsent Letter", "Living With You Now", and "Atheist's Lament". Their first album, titled How to Get to Heaven From Scotland was released on 3 March 2009.

In 2009 Moffat wrote an advice column for the online magazine The Quietus.^[6]

Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat[link]

In 2011 Moffat released Everything's Getting Older along with former Arab Strap collaborator, Bill Wells.

Personal life[link]

Moffat currently lives in a flat in Hyndland, Glasgow.^[7] Moffat is known for his distinctive facial hair, which he has commented on, saying

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Official Aidan Moffat Website

Brandon Kenneth Lewis (born 20 June 1971) is the Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth. He was elected at the 2010 general election.

Early life[link]

Brandon Lewis was born on 20 June 1971 in Harold Wood, and educated at Forest School. He received a degree in economics from the University of Buckingham,^[1] an LLB in Law from Buckingham, and an LLM with Merit from King's College London. He was called to the bar by the Inner Temple and is a qualified barrister and is a company director.

He spent time in his childhood in Great Yarmouth because of his father's work commitments, who owned a local confectionary business. He would later stand as the Conservative Prospective Member of Parliament for the town.

Local government[link]

Brandon Lewis became a Borough Councillor in May 1998 for Hutton South on Brentwood Borough Council, and later became Conservative Group leader in 2002.

Under Brandon's leadership the Conservatives took control of Brentwood Borough Council in June 2004 following 12 years of Liberal Democrat control, in doing so he took the total number of Conservative councillors from 8 to 21. As a result Brandon, as leader of the largest political group was elected Leader of the Council on 23 June 2004.

During his time as Leader he also co-hosted The Eric and Brandon Show with Eric Pickles MP on Phoenix FM, a local radio station in Brentwood.^[2]

He remained on the council in the May 2006 local elections and continued as council leader, increasing the Conservative majority from 8 to 20 (28 members in total) in that election. Taking the seats of the Liberal Democrat group leader and deputy leader and the sitting mayor.

He was chairman 2005/6 of the Essex Local Government Association.^[3]

On 18 March 2009, nearly five years since becoming leader of the council, Brandon announced his decision to step down from that position. He also resigned as a Borough Councillor ahead of the 2009 local elections in England.

Political career[link]

Brandon is the Member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth. Since his election he has become a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, as well as the Regulatory Reform Committee.

Brandon is Chairman of the Local Growth APPG including Enterprise Zones, Co Chair of the Coastal Erosion APPG and an officer and member of a range of other APPGs linked to business and economic growth.

He was selected as the Conservative candidate for Great Yarmouth for the 2010 general election in 2006. Since being in Great Yarmouth Brandon launched several local campaigns. He has also supported many local community groups and various campaigns, including the campaign to improve Great Yarmouth Train station, a Fair Fares campaign and one to Save Fritton Woods, among others.

Brandon secured the election victory in Great Yarmouth with a majority of 4,276 votes a swing to the Conservatives of over 9%.

Brandon previously stood as the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Sherwood in the 2001 general election,^[1] achieving a swing of 5.0% to the Conservatives.^[4]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Brandon Lewis' website
• Great Yarmouth Conservatives

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (April 2012)

Jeremy John Ratter (born 8 June 1943, Northwood, England), better known under his pseudonym of Penny Rimbaud, is a drummer, writer, poet, former member of performance art groups EXIT and Ceres Confusion, and co-founder of the anarchist punk band Crass with Steve Ignorant in 1977.

Biography[link]

Rimbaud (so named as a tribute to poet Arthur Rimbaud, the 'Penny' being a pun on the phrase "arfer (half a) penny", referring to the long discontinued British Ha'penny coin^{[citation needed]}) was expelled from two public schools, Brentwood School and Lindisfarne College, and went on to study philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford, before quickly realising that, in his own words, 'Oxford wasn't about learning, but about a peculiarly unpleasant form of class indoctrination'.^[1] From there he worked briefly in the rag-trade at Warner & Sons of Berners Street, purveyors of fine furnishing fabrics, from which he was sacked for 'liberating' a length of silk brocade out of which his girlfriend had fashioned a ball gown. After a period of bohemian wandering in Spain he enrolled at the South East Essex Technical College and School of Art in the early 1960s, where he met his life-long creative partner Gee Vaucher. While there, he exhibited a talent for tailoring, and quick to realise the potential within the then fledgling Pop Art movement, he scored considerable success as an innovator.

In 1964 he appeared on Granada TV's Ready Steady Go! to receive a prize from Lennon for winning a competition to produce a piece of artwork depicting The Beatles' song "I Wanna Hold Your Hand".^[2] His prize was a copy of Mingus by Charlie Mingus and Dmitri Shostakovich's Cello Concerto, to which Lennon, clearly discomfited, remarked 'Rocker!', adding as an aside, 'That's nowhere, man. I'll get you for that'.

In 1962, while travelling around the Costa Brava Rimbaud and his friend Mick Smee (also known as "the Pope") made up a dance called Le Twiddle as a riposte to both the Twist and to a lesser extent Johnny Hallyday's Le Madison. Le Twiddle was particularly licentious and became popular with young men in bars and nightclubs leading to outraged reports in the Spanish press ("English Claim Pope Invented New Dance"), which in turn attracted the attention of Franco's Fascist Guardia who banned it, making several arrests to prove their point. Rimbaud and Smee managed to escape unscathed.^{[citation needed]}

Inspired by the film Inn of the Sixth Happiness,^[3] Rimbaud set up the anarchist/pacifist Dial House community in 1967 with Gee Vaucher, and, together with his friend Phil Russell (aka Wally Hope), helped to instigate the free festival movement at Windsor and later Stonehenge during the early 1970s.

As documented in Rimbaud's essay Last of the Hippies^[4] and his autobiography Shibboleth, Russell was arrested and incarcerated in a mental institution after having been found in possession of a small amount of LSD. He was later released, but appeared to have been seriously mentally damaged by his experiences, especially the side effects of prescription drugs that he had been administered, and subsequently died. The official verdict is that Russell committed suicide, although Rimbaud claims that he uncovered strong evidence that he was murdered. Rimbaud has claimed that it was his anger over unanswered questions surrounding his friend's death that fueled and inspired him to form Crass.

Penny Rimbaud (on the composting toilet) and Gee Vaucher, 2002

Although Crass disbanded in 1984, Rimbaud continued to write and perform both as a solo artist and as a part of the Crass Collective alongside other ex members of the band such as Eve Libertine, Gee Vaucher and Steve Ignorant, as well as other artists and musicians.

His works include the originally self-published Reality Asylum,^[5] a vitriolic attack on Christianity which has appeared as a 2 minute track on Crass' 1978 debut album The Feeding of the 5000, as a longer single^[6] and as a 45 minute spoken word monologue.

Penny Rimbaud performing with Last Amendment at The Vortex, Hackney, 30 November 2006

He also wrote Rocky Eyed, an extended poem attacking then prime minister Margaret Thatcher and her government following the 1982 Falklands War which was recorded as the Crass album Yes Sir, I Will,^[7] The Death of Imagination (a 'musical drama in 4 parts'), The Diamond Signature (published by AK Press) and Oh America, a response to the events of September 11, 2001 and America's subsequent War on Terror which includes the line Give us justice which is not the searing spite of revenge, peace which is not the product of war nor dependent upon it.^[8]

Since 2003 he has worked as part of Crass Agenda (latterly Last Amendment), performing live and releasing material in CD format including Savage Utopia, a collaboration with Coldcut's Matt Black and other jazz musicians, and How?, a reworking of Allen Ginsberg's beat poem Howl, recorded live at the Vortex Jazz Club.

During 2005 Rimbaud completed a philosophical work "This Crippled Flesh" (first and second editions published by Bracketpress, 2010), as well as appearing in Dominic Thackray's short film Girlfriend in a Kimono.

He has written introductions to books including the controversial The Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined the World and Graham Burnett's 'Earth Writings' and is currently (as of 2007) working on a "Jazz Requiem" with saxophonist Ed Jones. He is also a regular columnist for the Stoke Newington based magazine "N16".

He contributed several spoken word tracks to the 2008 Japanther album Tut Tut Now Shake Ya Butt. Rimbaud also features on the 2010 album by The Charlatans (UK band) Who We Touch.^[9] Most recently (September/October/November 2010), he has been studying with Dr Matthew W Griffiths, Professor of Physics at the University of New Haven. They are currently co-authoring a book - Tricking the Impossible: An Investigation into Modern Alchemic Thought - about which Rimbaud asserts on Street Carnage that 'quantum is the new poetry of the soul'.

Bibliography[link]

• A Series Of Shock Slogans And Mindless Token Tantrums (Exitstencil Press, 1982) (originally issued as a pamphlet with the LP Christ - The Album, much of the text is now published online at [1])
• Shibboleth- My Revolting Life (Penny Rimbaud, 1999, AK Press)
• The Diamond Signature (Penny Rimbaud, 1999, AK Press)
• An extensive interview with Rimbaud appears in issue 29 of The Idler magazine
• In The Beginning…Was The Word (Penny Rimbaud, 2005, Bracketpress)
• Freedom Is Such A Big Word (Penny Rimbaud, 2006, Bracketpress)
• Methinks (Penny Rimbaud, 2006, Bracketpress)
• How? (Penny Rimbaud, 2006, Bracketpress)
• The Conveniences of Philosophy (Penny Rimbaud, 2007, Bracketpress)
• Smile or Smirk? (Penny Rimbaud, 2007, Bracketpress)
• And Now It Rains (Penny Rimbaud, 2007, Bracketpress)
• I The Indigene & Africa Seems So Far Away (Penny Rimbaud, 2007, Bracketpress)
• Turn On, Tune In, Cop Out (Penny Rimbaud, 2008, Bracketpress)
• Nobody’s Child (Penny Rimbaud, 2008, Bracketpress)
• The Last Of The Hippies (Penny Rimbaud, 2008, Active Distribution)
• This Crippled Flesh – A Book of Philosophy and Filth (Penny Rimbaud, 2010, Bracketpress/Exitstencil Press)
• Particular Nonsense (essay) The Idler, No.43 'Back To The Land' May 2010

Discography[link]

(See also full Crass discography. Rimbaud plays on all albums and singles)

• Christ's Reality Asylum (Crass records, 1992, spoken word cassette)
• The Death of Imagination (Red Herring Records)
• Savage Utopia (Babel Label, 2004, performed by Crass Agenda)
• How? (Babel Label, 2004, Rimbauds interpretation of Ginsberg's Howl)
• In the Beginning Was the WORD - Live DVD recorded at the Progress Bar, Tufnell Park, London, 18 November 2004, performed by Crass Agenda (Gallery gallery Productions @ Le Chaos Factory, 2006)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Rimbaud's website
• Southern Studio website pages on Rimbaud
• Interview with Penny Rimbaud
• The Pig's Head Controversy
• Extract from Fierce dancing by C.J.Stone, Rimbaud talking about Wally Hope
• PUNKCAST#1065 Video of Rimbaud/Elliott - Last Amendment - at Gavin Brown Passerby NYC on Nov 8 2006.
• bracketpress.co.uk Bracketpress website, publishers of Rimbaud's essays and poetry.