Saturday 28th November 2015.

I spend most of this week in the British Library reading rooms, researching the first essay for the MA. One of the books I order, a late 90s one on electronic literature, comes with a CD-ROM. This confuses some of the BL staff, and they have to ask amongst themselves to find out where such an ancient format can be accessed. The library’s internet computers tend to have no CD slots. Even microfilm is more popular as a resource.

* * *

Monday 30th November 2015.

Evening: MA class on Joe Sacco’s Footnotes In Gaza. It’s a bulky, large format graphic novel, investigating the slaughter of Palestinians during 1956. Quite a heated debate in the seminar, especially when it’s asked if Sacco is preaching to the converted, and can graphic novels work as a valid form of journalism? Funny how Sacco draws himself as more of a caricature than his interviewees: his glasses become blank goggles, even headlights during scenes of darkness. Thus he shows himself inside his own text, but not quite of it.

* * *

Tuesday 1st December 2015.

I’m reading Popkiss, the new book about Sarah Records by Michael White. I have a small walk-on role in the story, as part of the one-off project band, Shelley. Mr White files us under ‘Outliers’, where we are ‘the oddballs of the Sarah scene’. Given the niche appeal of this world, this must make us very outlying and odd indeed. Our EP is, he says generously, ‘one of the best’ releases on the label. However, I wince with guilt at the mention of our running up a large studio bill, incurred out of sheer slowness. Today, I know that this slowness is at least partly down to my dyspraxia, and I am legally entitled to extend my university exam time by 25%. Though I’m grateful for this adjustment, and for having the condition recognised, it never diminishes the feeling of guilt. I should be quicker.

* * *

Wednesday 2nd December 2015.

The Labour MP Hilary Benn makes a celebrated speech in the Commons, arguing in favour of military strikes against ISIS. I’m unconvinced as to its merits. He uses ‘evil’, which is religious rhetoric. And ‘fascist’. Which is Young Ones rhetoric.

* * *

Friday 4th December 2015.

Back to the British Library to take a look at the new Alice in Wonderland exhibition. Thankfully the huge queues seem confined to the weekend, and this afternoon I leisurely take my time around the display cases.  The first case tells the tale of Carroll’s original manuscript. It’s in the form of a handwritten notebook presented to Alice Liddell, the little girl he made up the story for. Alongside it are some of Carroll’s photographs of Ms Liddell and other girls, with his diary from the time recounting (in a very decorative, looping hand) the Oxford boat trip that hosted the tale-telling. Then there’s a letter in the 1920s, by the elderly Ms Liddell, recording her reluctant selling of the manuscript to an American collector. The sequence concludes with a typed note from 1946, representing the notebook’s present owner in a consortium with other US bibliophiles. They are returning it to the British government ‘in recognition of British resistance to Germany in the first years of the war’. I suppose one way of looking at this is to say, thank Hitler for Alice.

The bulk of the exhibition is a selection of the many subsequent Alice books and merchandise, taking in illustrators from Arthur Rackham to Ralph Steadman. There’s a series of 1930s advertising pamphlets by Guinness, plus sundry toys, puzzles and figurines all helping themselves to Carroll’s text. The copyright expired as early as 1907. Alice belongs to everyone.

Most of the book-based Alices on show have long blonde hair, thanks to Tenniel and Disney, though one or two replicate Alice Liddell’s dark bob. There’s also a ‘flapper Alice’ from the 1920s, and a Brownie Alice from the 30s, as in the junior girl guides. Some Alices are older than others: a post-war letter from Graham Greene to Mervyn Peake compliments Peake on being ‘the first person who has been able to illustrate the book satisfactorily since Tenniel’, only to add ‘your Alice is a little bit too much of a gamin.’ From 1902 there’s a political parody by Saki, The Westminster Alice. It’s a link kept evergreen this year when Tony Blair accused Jeremy Corbyn of creating a delusional ‘Alice in Wonderland world’ for Labour.

The Alice I am most surprised by is a version by Salvador Dali, from the 1960s. Here the Caterpillar appears in double form, a realistic rendering next to an abstract splatter of paint. Dali’s Alice, meanwhile, is an inky stick figure with a skipping rope.

Afterwards, I visit the BL’s Alice pop-up shop. It sells all manner of Carroll-themed products – chocolates, calendars, diaries – yet frustratingly, no single postcards. I now wonder if picture postcards are finally on the decline, even as cheap souvenirs of exhibitions. For some reason, they’re more likely to be available in bulky boxes of 100 at a time (eg a series of classic covers of Penguin Books).

Thankfully there’s another gallery a short walk away that does sell postcards of Alice – the Cartoon Museum in Little Russell Street. The current exhibition features Ralph Steadman, too, this time paying tribute not to Carroll but Gillray, the satirical cartoonist of the Romantic age. Here, Gillray’s prints – in startlingly fresh condition – are juxtaposed with the many pastiche cartoons in recent years. Given the tight deadlines for newspaper cartoons, a take on Gillray is always a reliable option. The most parodied image by far is Napoleon and Pitt carving up the ‘plumb-pudding’ of the world. Here, the exhibition shows how the likes of Steve Bell and Martin Rowson have updated this basic template with Blair, Cameron et al in place of the original duo. There’s also an inspired Viz cartoon strip about a Beano-esque rivalry between Gillray and Rowlandson.

I spend the evening with Fenella Hitchcock and Vadim Kosmos in Fontaine’s, an elegant Art Deco cocktail bar which somehow exists in Stoke Newington. I down some very nicely made Brandy Alexanders and find myself discussing the film work of Doug McClure, before staggering onto the Overground train home.

* * *

Tags: alice in wonderland, birkbeck, British Library, cartoon museum, fontaine's, joe sacco, popkiss, sarah records