Before Tūranga – Hobbs’ Corner

The second in a series of posts that looks at the history of the central Christchurch sites on which your new library, Tūranga, has been built.

The southwest corner of Tūranga and Cathedral Square entrance. 18 September 2018. Flickr File reference: New-Central-2018-09-18-029. Photo by Pam Carmichael Photography.

Today you can enter Tūranga via a door on Cathedral Square but in 1851 this was part of Town Section 704.

Town Section 704 (at top). Section of map Christchurch, Canterbury compiled from data supplied to City Council and District Drainage Board ; T.S. Lambert, delt.
(1877) CCL File Reference: ATLMAPS ATL-Acc-3158

Purchased from the Canterbury Association by a Mr Read, he then sold the section to John Bilton, school teacher. In 1856 John Bilton leased a retail space in his two-storey weatherboard building to William Hobbs.

Hobbs’ Building

William Hobbs, master tailor, arrived in Canterbury in 1855 from Hambleden in Buckinghamshire. Hobbs initially intended to start afresh in a new industry but soon realised that there was great demand for locally made clothing, and loot to be made.

William wasted no time setting up his business and cannily painted “Hobbs & Sons” prominently on the top floor.

Page 1 Advertisements Column 4, Star, Issue 715, 7 September 1870

He took over the full building lease in the mid-1860s and the building became known as Hobbs’s Building and later as Hobbs’s Corner. His sons Fred and William were both involved in the business, although Fred had civic and political aspirations too. In 1874 he became the eighth mayor of Christchurch and held office for two terms. Newspaper reports show Fred was particularly passionate about drains…

The Hobbs partnership was dissolved in August 1872 and Fred, in a Press advertisement, sincerely thanked “the very liberal patronage bestowed on the late firm during the past sixteen years”.

On Sunday 10 June 1883, fire, a constant danger in weatherboard colonial Christchurch, broke out on the corner of Gloucester and Colombo. Alerted by early morning revellers, the Chester Street Brigade speedily attended and focused their attention on stopping the fire from spreading to the Central, Criterion and Commercial hotels, The Lyttelton Times, Lennon’s Oyster Saloon (sounds like quite the place!) and Gaiety Theatre.

Through the sterling efforts of the fire brigade the hotels were saved but the corner block with Hobbs’ Building was gutted with only the outer walls left standing. The businesses destroyed by the fire included those of a draper, a fruiterer, a hairdresser, and the rooms of the YMCA. The greatest tragedy of the fire, to this librarian, was the loss of the Association’s library and much of the stock of one Mr Fountain Barber, bookseller, whose premises were on the Colombo St/Cathedral Square corner (where Tūranga’s magazine collection now sits ).

Cathedral Chambers

With 40 years left on the lease Fred Hobbs, William having retired, immediately proposed a new building, and plans for a new three-storey building were hastily acquired. Designed by Messrs Armson, Collins and Lloyd, the lavish description in the Press highlighted the building’s dimensions, construction materials and most importantly the provision of “fire-places and lavatory accommodation”!

The foundation stone for the new building was laid by Fred Hobbs in February 1884 with a projected construction cost in today’s money of $2,212,249.80. The building hosted 9 shops, a variety of office suites, space for a gentleman’s club and a large meeting room.

The rooms of Cathedral Chambers would come to be used by groups as varied as the Christchurch Metaphysical Club,  the Canterbury Women’s Institute, and the Atalanta Cycling Club – not to mention once hosting a concert for “the largest gathering of footballers ever seen in Christchurch” (by 1890 standards, that is). The numerous businesses to operate from the building included estate agents and dentists but also the “Central Pork Shop” which in an an 1888 advertisement boasted  a “large and commodious cellar…fitted up in first-class style”. Fancy.

The swanky new Cathedral Chambers with Warner’s Hotel to the right and James Wallace’s Central Hotel to the left. Image Reference Burton Brothers Studio Te Papa C.011553

Cathedral Chambers was built with bricks from the St Martin’s brickwork, Oamaru stone and with blue stone piers, the effect of the contrasting red brick and pale stone was of “the gingerbread order of architecture”. A handsome veranda of iron and glass ran around the ground floor.

Under the headline of City Improvements, the Press praised Fred’s audacity in building such a handsome and substantial building during “the present period of depression”. Sensibly, special precautions against fire were included with water filled roof tanks and hydrants fitted around the building.

Interestingly, despite the completely new building and new name, “Hobbs’ Building” seems to have stuck in people’s minds and it continued to be referred to by this name for many years.

Lack of care taken

A small enclosed tower on the roof of the building contained rooms for a caretaker and was sadly the scene of two tragic accidents involving their offspring.

First in May 1907 a little girl called Dolly Ryder fell 30 feet through a skylight at Hobbs’ Building while chasing a cat. Incredibly she survived although there was concern she had sustained spinal damage. Dolly’s brush with death may have been a contributing factor in her later career of minor crime, aged 18 and 19 she was in trouble with the law for petty theft and absconding from a reformatory home. Go Dolly!

In 1929 Frank Otten, aged 19, was less lucky. Frank and his mother Blanche had gone up to the roof to check for damage after a chimney fire. Using an electric torch Frank crawled across the roof and mounted one of the parapets. He overbalanced and fell, striking the fire-escape several times, and landed in the concrete basement of the Masonic Hotel. Death was instantaneous.

Broadway Corner

Advertisement from A guide to Christchurch and Canterbury attractions, published in 1902 by P.A. Herman. Christchurch City Libraries CCL-83338-115

A variety of businesses operated from Hobbs’ Building now renamed Cathedral Chambers. One of the best known was the Broadway tearooms which operated from the first floor.

Run by William and Edward Broadway, confectioner and pastry chef respectively, the Cathedral Chambers area was informally called Broadway Corner for many years.

After Edward’s death the business name was changed to Beresford’s and it operated until 1974.

ANOTHER PICTURE OF THE CHRISTCHURCH ELECTRIC TRAMS—EXCAVATING ON THE NORTHERN SIDE OF CATHEDRAL SQUARE. Leslie Hinge Photo. New Zealand Mail, Issue 1718 1st of February 1905, Supplement

The arrival of electric trams caused chaos in the Square (plus ça change). Extensive excavating in 1905 created the double tracks necessary (note use of shovels and picks in the image below) for the tram lines.

The network officially opened on 5 June 1905 – a slightly over-excited Press article called it a day “writ large in letters of scarlet…an epoch marking day”.

When the first electric tram pulled in at the top of High Street, “a thronging human mass filled every inch of space from below the Bank, down Colombo Street, in front of the Cathedral, around the Post Office, and on every side in fact”.

The trams stopped close to Broadway Corner and there were frequent reports of tram, and later car accidents around this bustling spot.

Fred Hobbs died in 1920, his son continued the business but at another location.

CML Building

In April 1936 the building was acquired by The Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society Ltd for the princely sum of $11,630, 215.50. The owner of the building by this time was Mr C G McKellar, and the new owners were expected to extensively re-model it to accommodate their growing staff.

The Square, looking North-East 1993. Entry in the 2013 Christchurch City Libraries Photo Hunt. Kete Christchurch

The Cathedral Chambers were demolished in 1974/1975 and the new Colonial Mutual Life (CML) building was constructed to a design by Christchurch architects Warren & Mahoney. The building later operated as the Camelot Hotel and offered assorted tourism related retail space at street level.

The CML building was demolished in 2015 to make way for Tūranga.

Back in the present, we welcome those who’d like to honour the spirit of William Hobbs, master tailor, by trying out our sewing and embroidery machines in Tūranga’s Production Studio, or book one of our rooms for hire for all your footballer concert/metaphysical club meeting needs.

Next week: The Lyttelton Times and The Star

Further reading

• Round the Square: A History of Christchurch’s Cathedral Square
• Our pages about Early Christchurch
• About Tūranga, Christchurch’s central library

Before Tūranga – The Masonic Hotel and Montague’s Corner

The first in a series of posts that looks at the history of the central Christchurch sites on which your new library, Tūranga, has been built.

Tūranga, as viewed from Colombo St near Armagh St intersection, 10 October 2018, File reference: TU-2018-10-10-DSC03935

Imagine you are peeking through Tūranga’s ground floor window on the corner of Gloucester and Colombo, possibly drooling over all the yummies in Foundation Café… insert TIMEY WIMEY STUFF…

You are now back in 1855 on the very same spot and are again drooling, this time over all the yummies in Gee & Co.’s bakery and confectionery.

Thomas Gee was a biscuit maker from Lambeth who arrived in 1851. He quickly established a business in Lyttelton selling “bride cakes, jellies, blanc-manges, patties…and ginger beer”and later a shop on the corner of Gloucester and Colombo. In 1855 the Christchurch store was transferred to his son-in-law William Stringer who continued to sell baked goods but also diversified into booze. He applied for a license to sell wine and beer in 1857 and by 1860 his business was known as Stringer’s Hotel.

Colombo Street, Christchurch, looking south, with Wells’ Hotel visible to the left of the Cathedral [ca. 1930] File Reference CCL PhotoCD 9, IMG0041

In 1860 Stringer’s Hotel license was passed to George Henry Tribe who renamed the premises the Central Hotel.

By 1872 mine genial host was Edward Hiorns. Edward originally hailed from Warwickshire and arrived in Christchurch during the 1860s, marrying Amelia Heighton in August 1868. He was heavily involved in the community both as a member of the Christchurch City Council, and later the Linwood Borough Council, and as a Freemason. He must have found the hotel trade financially advantageous as he was able to buy Linwood House, a very fine residence built in 1857 for Joseph Brittan.

In August 1897 architect Joseph C Maddison was retained by Edward Hiorns to draw up a plan for a new section to the Central Hotel. In brick and stucco the new hotel had 30 rooms, and two shops on the ground floor one of which had frontage on both Colombo and Gloucester. The main entrance was on Gloucester Street with a private and public bar on the ground floor, dining room overlooking Colombo Street on the first floor and bedrooms and bathrooms, with hot and cold water and showers, on the second.

The Cyclopedia of New Zealand in 1903 had a delightful puff-piece where the hotel was described as an “ornament to the street architecture of Christchurch” and as being “furnished throughout with luxury and excellent taste.”

Page 2 Advertisements Column 3, Press, Volume LV, Issue 10182, 1 November 1898

The hotel was renamed The Masonic and the license was transferred to William James, then E. Carroll.

The Masonic Hotel was the scene of a “Strange Death” in 1912. Loyal Stawell Cherry (yes, that was his name) fell 6 feet from his bedroom window to a recess while feverish with influenza. His cries alerted staff who returned him to bed and sent for medical assistance but the Hobart-native died 30 minutes later.

Montague’s Corner, Colombo and Gloucester Streets, Christchurch looking towards Cathedral Square. Webb, Steffano, 1880-1967 : Collection of negatives. Ref: 1/1-005316-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22479010

One of the most memorable businesses to lease shop space in the rebuilt Masonic Hotel was Montague’s Corner. Owned by the exotically named Israel Montague, Montague’s Corner sold fancy goods and toys. Fancy goods, I’m reliably informed are “items (as novelties, accessories, or notions) that are primarily ornamental or designed to appeal to taste or fancy rather than essential” but I’m sure the major draw was the underground toy cave.

Page 9 Advertisements Column 4, Star, issue 9715, 4 December 1909

Bankrupted back in the 1880s when he owned his own fancy goods business in Strange’s Building, Israel then spent 22 years at the D.I.C. (Drapery and General Importing Company of New Zealand Ltd) before opening up again on his own in August 1906.

Israel fell foul of the law several times for breaching the Shop and Offices Act by staying open outside the prescribed hours but hey, fancy goods don’t sell themselves!

Israel died in 1936 and is buried in the Jewish cemetery at Linwood. His wife Ada, daughter of  Simeon Isaacs, former President of  the Jewish Congregation of Dunedin, had predeceased him by many years.

Page 3 Advertisements Column 2, Press, Volume LX, Issue 18010, 29 February 1924

Montague’s Toy Cave and fancy goods was replaced by J R McKenzie’s. Modelled on America’s five and dime stores, John Robert Hugh McKenzie eventually owned over 70 stores throughout New Zealand and employed over 1800 staff. John McKenzie was also well known in horsey circles owning Roydon Lodge Stud on Yaldhurst Road. Throughout his lifetime McKenzie gave generously to charities and was actively involved in Rotary. he later set up the J R McKenzie Youth Education Fund and the J R McKenzie Trust, both of which still operate today.

Looking south down Colombo Street through Cathedral Square from the corner of Gloucester and Colombo Street, Christchurch, with J R McKenzie signage visible on Wells’ Hotel building [ca. 1925]. File Reference CCL PhotoCD 14 IMG0009

The Masonic Hotel went through several modifications and licensees. Alfred William Wells and his wife Eva owned and ran the Masonic for many years. Alfred died in 1961 leaving Eva a generous annuity and the rest of his estate including the freehold of the Masonic in trust for up to 21 years. The Church of England bought the hotel, and on Saturday 12th of September 1981 the Masonic Hotel closed its doors for the last time and was shortly after demolished.

Construction started on a new seven storey building in early 1982. Completed in November 1982 it included a basement car park, offices and ground floor retail.

A variety of businesses populated this space over the years most recently an internet café and Mum’s 24 café and restaurant with its awesome replica/fake food displays.

The intersection of Colombo and Gloucester Streets looking south-east by BeckerFraserPhotos, 15 October 2011. Creative Commons BY-NC 3.0

And so, we end up back where we started, peering in at a café window.

It’s good to know that Tūranga’s café and Lego play area (not exactly a “toy cave” but close enough) are just an extension of a long history of businesses and institutions that have brought life and activity to this particular corner of the central city.

Next week: Hobbs’ Corner

Further reading

• Round the Square: A History of Christchurch’s Cathedral Square
• Our pages about Early Christchurch
• About Tūranga, Christchurch’s central library

For Book Collectors Old and New: WORD Christchurch 2018

Held in The Piano this was a small select audience of self-confessed book lovers, book accumulators and book collectors. The speakers were Shaun Bythell owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland (and author of novel The diary of a bookseller)and Brian Phillips who has after a long career in publishing in New Zealand now sells collectable New Zealand books.

Shaun, I’m pleased to say, was rocking a “Black Books” Dylan Moran look with a delightfully frayed sports jacket and generally casually disheveled vibe. Excellent. He modestly introduced himself as a general bookseller and someone “generally knowing not very much about everything”.

The Smallest Scottish Bookshop in the World at The Piano

To warm us up we played a guess the value of some dusty old books game. With seven second hand titles from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations to James Clavell’s Shogun, and with a little Harry Potter and Hone Tuwhare thrown in, the books ranged in value from $10 to $500. I can report that everyone including Shaun Bythell got the valuations wrong showing the vagaries and conundrum of book selling and collecting. The book with the highest value turned out to be Shogun.

The conversation meandered somewhat but generally covered: how to sell your own book collections, what to keep and what to collect.

• Brian’s advice for would-be sellers was to consider selling books with a value over $500 at auction, and lower valued stock yourselves online using Trade Me.
• What to keep was easily answered by what you love, book collecting is about passion.
• Finally, what to collect? Shaun praised Folio Society books for their high production standards, beautifully decorated covers and great illustrations. They are relatively inexpensive to buy but exquisite and would hold their value.
• Brian recommended several New Zealand titles to keep an eye out for including Wash day at the Pa originally published by the Department of Education as a bulletin for schools and later withdrawn because of its unflattering picture of Maori rural life, Man Alone by John Mulgan (the 1939 English edition) and South Island of New Zealand from the Road by Robin Morrison, preferably with dust jacket intact.

There was some discussion on the added value of author signatures on books. Here Shaun took the view that an author signature only added 10% to the value of the book unless the author was very famous or very reclusive. Janet Frame was considered a good example of an author who signed relatively few books and was very collectable. Establishing the provenance of the book, and the authenticity of the signature was also something to consider, and several online sites hosting authenticated author signatures were mentioned.

Featherston got, for me, an unexpected shout-out as New Zealand’s first booktown. With an increasing number of second hand bookshops Featherston is positioning itself to join the likes of Wigtown in Scotland and Hay-on-Wye in Wales as a book buying and book event destination. Shaun visited Featherston this week and described it as “rough and ready, not too polished but worth a visit”. He hopes the book trade will help reverse the area’s economic decline.

On a less positive note Shaun described the activities of megalisters, online sellers of second hand books with more than 100,000 listings. In the UK second hand books can be bought from institutions for as little as 10 pence per kilo. These pallets of books are then processed at huge warehouses with little or no attention paid to the individual titles. Re-sold on Amazon and Abe Books these books often make more money for the supplier from the hiked up postage charges than from the value of the book itself but through economy of scale profits are made, and the sustainability of the independent secondhand bookseller made more tenuous.

A slightly blurry Shaun Bythell about to meet a firing squad of librarians

Shaun also saved some scorn for librarians, and our irritating habit of covering library books with plastic covers that leak glue, tape and labels that yellow and cancellation stamps that blot endpapers, not to mention RFID tags, barcodes and all the other staff and customer created mayhem that a poor public library book endures over its short, brutal life. When challenged he did mutter something about libraries as cornerstones of democracy and bastions of learning but I might have imagined that.

A bit more Shaun and a little less Brian, affable and knowledgeable though he is, would have created a better balanced and less parochial workshop but overall this was a super interesting insight into the joys and perils of book collecting and book selling.

Find out more

• Find titles by Shaun Bythell
• Our WORD Christchurch 2018 page
• WORD Christchurch festival programme

WORD Christchurch Festival 2018: Joyce’s picks

It has taken me a full seven days to sufficiently cogitate and ponder the wonders of this year’s WORD Christchurch Festival and come up with some definitive highlights. This glacially slow digestion is both testament to the breadth, depth and range of the festival content and the sluggishness of my overwhelmed brain. But isn’t it nice to be spoiled by literary choice? Explore the full programme and spin out!

The overarching awesomeness of this year’s festival is the tartan tint to everything. Programme Director Rachael King is bringing a wee slice of literary Scotland to our far flung shores (gallus move lassie!) with the likes of:

Crime writer extraordinaire Denise Mina

With several gritty but character-rich mystery series under her belt Denise Mina‘s latest novel draws on a real-life crime from 1950s Glasgow. She is, I have it on good authority, a witty and engaging speaker and will appear at The Great WORD Debate, Whisky Galore! and at her own Masterclass event. She also brings a very impressive hairdo.

Bookseller Shaun Bythell

His Diary of a Bookseller has been, for me, a slightly surprising hit here at Christchurch City Libraries. Who knew there was so much interest in flogging dusty tomes? I’ve just started reading it and I’m already seeing library parallels, lots of eccentric people buy and borrow books. Hurrah. Shaun is also appearing at Whisky Galore! At a session called For Book Collectors Old and New, and in conversation with Brian Phillips at The Diary of a Bookseller. Shaun is from Wigtown and also has epic hair.

 

Poet Robin Robertson

I don’t normally have much truck with poetry (yes, I am a philistine) but Robin Robertson’s session Mortification sounds like my bag. Here a mixed cast of Kiwi and Scots authors will share their true tales of hideous embarrassment. It promises strong language and requires a stiff drink. He’ll also appear at Starry, Starry Night, Whisky Galore! and The Long Take. His hair game is average but as he just got longlisted for The Man Booker Prize I’m sure he has bigger aspirations and he still has more wig than Irvine Welsh!

Apart from all the Scottish loveliness, I’m also looking forward to:

• 125 Years: Are we there yet?
• Diana Wichtel’s Driving to Treblinka
• and The Ngaio Marsh House Open Day.

See you there!

 

A Feast of Francis – An hour with Francis Spufford

Book event blog posts have a formula: introducing the author, setting the scene and then a chronological or thematic account of the literary chit-chat. But I’m feeling rebellious, so no entrée, no mains and straight to dessert. What is Francis Spufford going to serve up next on the fiction front?

Francis Spufford at The Piano. Wednesday 7 March 2018. Flickr WORD7March2018-IMG_6594

He is currently working on a new novel (hurrah!) set in South London and starting in the year 1944 when a German V2 rocket fell on a branch of Woolworths in New Cross killing 168 people. Each chapter is set in a different year, so far he has got to 1949, and the volume and diversity of research has been hugely challenging. To date he has had to get his head around the intricacies of lino printing, 1970s reel-to-reel technology, what working on a suicide prevention helpline would be like, Nazi skinheads and being a female backing singer in Los Angeles in 1979…whew!

Back on book blog script – Francis Spufford is a non-fiction writer who has moved into novel writing to great acclaim, winning both the Costa Book Award for first novel and the Ondaatje prize. He appeared as part of New Zealand Festival Writers & Readers in association with the WORD Christchurch. Chris Moore was in the interviewer chair at The Piano and the audience was well-dressed and largely mature female in makeup.

Asked about his late-in-life move into fiction, Francis Spufford replied that as an academic teaching creative writing, at Goldsmiths University of London, he felt ashamed giving advice and guidance on writing fiction without have dipped his own pen in the fiction ink.

He set himself an ambitious agenda for his first novel as he wanted to include: “a duel, a rooftop chase, a trial scene, a love story, bone-crunching violence, rude sex, a mystery and jokes” plus set it in the 18^th Century New York and with at least a nod and a wink towards the language and style of the new 18^th Century novel. “A mass of incompatible pleasures now but quite in keeping with the period” where “serious intentions and low pleasures could be stuck in together”. It did involve compromise and became essentially a 21^st Century novel in an 18^th Century manner but one which allows the reader to feel a sense of time travel but without the style being too verbally off-putting.

Francis Spufford and Chris Moore at The Piano. Flickr WORD7March2018-IMG_6587

He included lots of authentic 18^th Century slang. Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English in particular delivered an abundance of “wonderful, elaborately gross stuff”.

Setting the novel in historic New York was also important to him as he was drawn to the satisfying reversal of the city past and present:

• The sheer tininess of the place then — some 7,000 people — versus the densely populated urban craziness of today.
• The fact old New York was parochial versus its current cosmopolitan outlook.
• That it was pious, Protestant, and ethnically limited compared with today’s predominantly secular and ethnically complex society.

Mr Smith, the mysterious central character, is a city-slicker — a London sophisticate travelling to the small and provincial New York “a Jane Austen sized village”. This New York is highly politicised and on surface level patriotically Royalist but the reader is aware that change is coming and that British influence is waning.

Francis Spufford was extremely knowledgeable and passionate about early US history, his retention of information researched some time ago but instantly recalled was enviable! He drew parallels between early New York and the US today saying “paranoia about tyranny has featured throughout its history” but he also lamented the topicality of his novel. He hadn’t anticipated Donald Trump and the focus on modern America’s paranoia and darkness.

Francis Spufford also spoke about his Christian faith and the process of writing Unapologetic — his response to Dawkins’ God Delusion. His aim he said “was to write a book that wouldn’t convert but would make belief recognisable to the reader” that faith was not “superstition or madness but meeting some human need”. He was anxious about creating a backlash as he wrote it not as “a good-tempered argument between faith and atheism” but in a more pugnacious attempt to show “that religion didn’t belong in a zoo of weird things but was a human norm”.

This was a bookishly warm and entertaining hour and if you haven’t read Francis Spufford,  pull finger and get on with it!

More about Francis Spufford

• Dip your pen in your own psyche: An interview with Francis Spufford
• Our photos from the event
• NZF Writers & Readers: Elizabeth Knox and Francis Spufford talk about God

NZF Writers & Readers: Elizabeth Knox and Francis Spufford talk about God @ElizabethKnoxNZ @ablack_art @NZFWriters @NZFestival https://t.co/JzI4bqy0Cj pic.twitter.com/qij8Fcd5jy

— Booksellers NZ (@BooksellersNZ) March 10, 2018

 

Dip your pen in your own psyche: An interview with Francis Spufford (WORD Christchurch event, Weds 7 March 7pm)

WORD Christchurch is bringing Francis Spufford to Christchurch, next Wednesday 7 March, 7pm at the salubrious venue of The Piano. Francis is in New Zealand as a guest of New Zealand Festival Writers and Readers. He has written seven books, on topics as diverse as science, history, theology, and politics. The Child That Books Built was a love letter to literature, and his first novel Golden Hill won the Costa Award for Best First Novel – it’s “a rollicking, suspenseful tale set in mid-18th century Manhattan, the novel pays loving tribute to the literature of that era”. Francis Spufford appears in conversation with Chris Moore.

• Find out more about the event on Wednesday 7 March, 7pm
• Buy tickets from Dash Tickets

INTERVIEW

Joyce is heading along to the session, and asked Francis some choice questions:

I read in a previous interview that you wished you’d had the gumption to write fiction earlier in your career. What held you back? And did you ever feel pigeon-holed by your publishers and readers?

The short answer is cowardice. I was and am a great believer in the scope for non-fiction to do adventurous things, revealing things. I never felt pigeon-holed or limited by non-fiction. But still, it seems to me that fiction draws much more directly on the writer’s understanding of human character and human behaviour. When you write a novel, you dip your pen in your own psyche, inevitably. You have to. And for a long time I was afraid that I didn’t know enough to write imaginary people without making a fool of myself.

The sex scene in Golden Hill was particularly squelchy, torrid and memorable! Traumatising as a reader, how on earth did you manage to conceive the scene and write it?!

Good! I wanted it to be clear that both parties were doing something completely disastrous, carried away by different kinds of fear: but which was very pleasurable to them both in the moment, in a greedy kind of way. I wanted the reader to be peeking through their fingers going ‘No! No!’ yet also feeling the gross turn-on of what they were doing. And to this I could bring the pre-Victorian novel’s ability to be a lot lewder than you were expecting, complicated by the grossness being channeled through a very book-dependent narrator who, though mischievous, is really not enjoying themselves at this point. That’s about six literary ambitions for one episode of torrid squelching.

I loved the contrariness, passion and conviction of your youthful characters, especially juxtaposed with the complacency and corruption of New York’s elder figures. Do you see that generational gulf in action in modern society too?

Isn’t it permanent that youth is contrary and passionate and idealistic, and age is complacent and corrupt? (Or at least corrupt-seeming to young people.) Having said that, I do think this is a moment in history when, in the U.K. and the US at least, the fears and the weaknesses of the middle-aged and the old really have led us into stupidities at which young people are rightly gazing with horror – because they’re stupidities at their expense, at the expense of the future. As a fifty-something writer I enjoyed getting to be, temporarily, twenty four-year-old Mr Smith and nineteen-year-old Tabitha.

Golden Hill portrays a young New York and embryonic America, with considerably more time passed do you see the USA as a successful society?

I think America grew up into a reservoir of idealism and principle which the world needs, and has benefited by incalculably. But I think that contemporary America, like the embryonic America Mr Smith visits, is also a culture which is not very self-knowing: a place which, to a dangerous degree, contrives to forget the darkness which has always been the flip side of its virtues.

Quickfire Questions!

Last time you cried?

While watching *Coco* at the cinema.

Book you wish you’d written?

Marilynne Robinson’s GILEAD.

Favourite biscuit?

I’m a slut for the chocolatey ones.

Describe the role of public libraries in 5 words

Portals to past, present [and] future.

Thanks, Francis!

 

Fife-ing it up with Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin was born in Fife. I was born in Fife. Ian Rankin studied at Edinburgh University. I studied at Edinburgh University. Ian Rankin writes successful, suspenseful and gritty crime fiction. Nope, nothing. But I am most affirmatively a mahoosive fan-lassie for his thrillers set in the Athens of the North a.k.a. Edinburgh and featuring Mr Booze John Rebus.

Marcus Elliott and Ian Rankin. WORD Christchurch Autumn Season. Charles Luney Auditorium, St Margaret’s College. Sunday 14 May 2017. Flickr 2017-05-14-IMG_0127

Last night Christchurch played host to Ian Rankin as the opening event of the WORD Christchurch Autumn Season and it was a full house at the Charles Luney Auditorium of St Margaret’s College. It was also a slightly more blokey audience than most book events attract, albeit it in a very metro, groomed and grizzled with grey fashion. Marcus Elliott, the Christchurch coroner, was asking the probing questions.

Rankin claims most crime writers would rather be rock stars than writers. Aged 12 he created a band called The Amoebas. With no musical ability himself – and no friends who actually wanted to be in a band – The Amoebas were entirely fictitious, but Rankin still managed to create world tour itineraries, lyrics for top 10 hits and music press interviews.

Writers are shy, nerdy kids who create worlds

he said, and while for most people the adult world draws a halt to childish imagination, for writers it keeps going. Rebus is his imaginary friend, but one who wouldn’t like Rankin in the real world. Rankin claimed Rebus would label him “a wishy-washy liberal”.

The first Rebus novel, Knot and Crosses is celebrating its 30th anniversary and Rankin said the character of Rebus leapt “fully formed” into his head. He didn’t entirely realise he was writing a crime novel and was a little perturbed to see what he thought was the next great Scottish novel appearing in the then “not sexy” crime section of his local bookstore.

He was aware early on he needed help with creating an authentic police world and wrote to the then Lothian Police to get some advice. He was also briefly a suspect in a missing person/murder case!

Asked if he counted policeman amongst his fans, Rankin said “weirdly yes”. Everyone likes a maverick and Rebus is his own man but also on the right side. His novels represent authentic investigations but with all the boring bits taken out, a streamlined version of a real investigation.

Ian Rankin: Writing Rebus. WORD Christchurch Autumn Season. Charles Luney Auditorium, St Margaret’s College. Sunday 14 May 2017. Flickr 2017-05-14-IMG_0140

Rankin added that keeping the series fresh wasn’t too challenging as Edinburgh, Scotland and Rebus had all changed. Rebus has retired, and after years of booze, fags and fried food, his body is starting to wind down. Rankin has recently gifted Rebus Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) but added he needs to work hard at remembering new story elements, for example he forgot he’d written in a pet dog for Rebus and then had to re-write and add the pooch in later!

Rankin said he likes to explore different social issues and each novel starts with a theme: immigration, people trafficking, xenophobia, banking crisis or business scam – but he is mindful that he also needs to create an exciting read. He says he doesn’t plan too much and sometimes the ending changes because the narrative knows better and he has to “trust to the muse”. All his books end before the criminal trial because, he says, he knows nothing about the Scottish criminal system and is too lazy to do the research.

Marcus Elliott asked about the TV versions of Rebus, and Rankin said there was early interest from the actor Leslie Grantham better known as Dirty Den of Eastenders’ fame. Later the BBC wanted the rather rotund Robbie Coltrane to play Rebus, and Rankin was like “Jesus you know he (Rebus) was in the SAS”! He recently got the rights back and would like to see them filmed in a more leisurely Scandi-style rather than the breakneck a-novel-condensed-to-an-hour speed of the ITV series. Writer, and fellow Fifer Gregory Burke is involved and the actor Ken Stott may even reprise his role.

There was time for a few questions from the audience, and it was the usual mixed bag with questions that aren’t questions and some sneaky self-aggrandisement. Rankin was asked about his love for the music of the late Jackie Leven, a prolific Scottish singer-songwriter, who he collaborated with on a CD and series of stage performances. He was also asked how he researches and makes authentic the criminals that appear in his fiction. He has spent time in prisons particularly through literacy in prison programmes, but was recently shocked when a fan described his recurring crime boss “Big Ger” Cafferty as a “big, huggable, loveable bear of a guy”. He fears he has perhaps over-identified with Big Ger and is going to make him horrible again.

The session started to wind up but Rankin still had time to apologise for Donald Trump being half-Scots and to warn us of the seething rage and stabby darkness carried inside romantic fiction writers. This was a witty and polished session with truck loads of well-executed anecdotes and crime fiction insights.

• Read Dan’s post The Rankin File
• Our photos from the Ian Rankin event
• Find books by Ian Rankin in our collection.

Ian Rankin. Charles Luney Auditorium, St Margaret’s College. Sunday 14 May 2017. Flickr 2017-05-14-IMG_0150

WORD Writers & Readers Festival 2016 – Bringing the BIG names to town!

The biennial book binge that is the WORD Writers & Readers Festival is back for 2016, and the programme launched tonight at The Press building on Gloucester Street is bursting with authorial tastiness.

Christchurch will play host to over 150 writers and speakers over four crazy, crazy days and nights on the 24th to the 28th August. The range of events embraces the standard hour-long author talk, panel debates, poetry readings, book launches, a comedy panel show, Pechakucha night, exhibitions, workshops, storytelling, the Ngaio Marsh Award Ceremony for Best Crime Novel, lectures, family events, a historical walking tour and a fringe festival. Blimey.

Literary Director Rachael King has put together a programme with themes that cover the full torrid schmozzle of humanity: life and death, gender, sexuality, indigenous rights, migration, the climate and yes, even the F-word …feminism.

Some stand-out events include:

No Sex Please, We’re Teenagers
Young Adult novelists David Levithan, Ted Dawe and sex-therapist Frances Young discuss with chair Mandy Hager the role of sex in literature. What are the risks and rewards?

2050
Tim Flannery, Mai Chen, Bronwyn Hayward and Shelia Watt-Cloutier chaired by Kim Hill paint a picture of earth in 2050 with reference to climate, diversity, indigenous rights and citizenship. Utopia or dystopia?

Busted: Feminism & Pop Culture
Debbie Stoller is the co-founder and editor of BUST magazine and authored the Stitch n Bitch craft series. She talks craftiness and feminism.

Oratory on the Ōtākaro (Avon River)
Join Joseph Hullen for a 40 minute tour and discover the rich shared Māori and European history of the river Avon.

The programme is positively bulging with energising, stimulating and inspiring book-ish events, so unleash the Christchurch culture vultures!

Spring is sprung!

Have an eyeful with this bouquet of blossom reads:

    

Dark and Chilling – Northern lights

The lovely criminal duo of  Yrsa Sigurdardottir (go on do have a try…ỨR-suh SIG-ur-dar-daughter..easy!) and Liam McIlvanney chatted with Crime Watch blogger Craig Sisterson.

Liam McIlvanney was scheduled to appear in the 2010 Press Christchurch Writers Festival but the Darfield Earthquake put the kibosh on that. Four years later he has published the second in his Gerry Conway trilogy Where the dead men go and recently won the 2014 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel.

The panel talked at length about the importance of setting in crime fiction. Liam uses Glasgow, the crime capital of Western Europe, as his backdrop and believes Scotland’s history of dour Calvinism has developed into a dark obsession with sin. Scotland’s complex relationship with England particularly prior to devolved power has also allowed crime writers to pose politicised questions about wider society without the necessity of providing answers.

Yrsa acknowledged Iceland’s unforgiving climate lends itself to the idea, if not the reality, of murder. With no real crime to speak of in the Iceland she has to work hard to make her fictional crimes seem authentic and uses social and political context “to add meat to the bone”. Yrsa also plunders Iceland’s long-standing fascination with the supernatural to great and creepy affect.

Asked about memorable early reading experiences, Yrsa admitted to being fascinated by her father’s textbook on gruesome infectious diseases. Horrific but enthralling. Liam’s rather more pedestrian fare included Ray Bradbury and Robert Louis Stevenson. Current crime reading included Sophie Hannah for Yrsa while Liam mentioned David Whish-Wilson and Peter Temple, who he credited as the best crime writer in the English language.

Both Liam and Yrsa hold down day jobs; Yrsa is an engineer working in hydro-electric generation while Liam holds the Stuart Chair in Scottish Studies at Otago University, an academic occupation which could be viewed as “boring and nerdy” but which allows him time to write about evil and achieve cathartic release.

Not particularly dark or chilling but instead a rather cosy and engaging peek at the craft of crime writing.

WORD Christchurch:

• Read more WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival Posts
• Our page on WORD Christchurch