I is for Island

For the latest in the Special Collections A-Z, we look at I for islands. Special Collections holds a wide range of material relating to islands from the far flung to the very near to home. For this blog we will travel to a small selection represented in the collections to give a flavour of the range of material that can be explored. 

HMS Hecla and Fury in their “winter island” as they are frozen in for the winter [MS45 A0183/2 p359]

For the more distant islands you can view the journals of William Mogg in which he describes his journeys as part of Captain William Edward Parry’s second and third Arctic expeditions, on board HMS Hecla and HMS Fury, 1821-5, including being frozen in at ‘Winter Island’ for nine months when the ice closed in. And there is a further Mogg journal when he was on aboard HMS Beagle exploring the coastline and islands of South America. Such items as Prince Louis of Battenberg’s album of his circumnavigation of the world on board HMS Inconstant provide us with glimpses of life in Japan, New Zealand or the Fiji Islands in the 1880s, as well as visits to St Helena and Gibraltar.

Fiji Islands from the album of Prince Louis of Battenberg [MS62/MB2/A20]

St Helena from the album of Prince Louis of Battenberg [MS62/MB2/A20]

A new acquisition to the Special Collections dating from 1896 is an eleven-volume travelogue of the Hon. Louis Samuel Montagu, later second Baron Swaythling, of his world tour (MS461) which includes not just his observations on his travels and the people and places he saw but some wonderful photographs from Japan. And for the 20th century we have photograph albums of Lord and Lady Mountbatten, as well as tour diaries of Lord Mountbatten, relating to visits to islands from the Mediterranean, the South Seas and the Far East, as well as Australia and New Zealand (MS62).

Images of Madeira from a photograph album of a tour taken by Lady Mountbatten, 1931 [MS62/MB2/L6 page 5]

For nearer to home, quite a variety of material has found its way to the Special Collections relating to the Isle of Wight. This includes items collected by the University’s predecessor the Hartley Institution in the late nineteenth century such as a pardon from James I to Thomas Urrey of Thorley, Isle of Wight, 8 June 1604 (MS6/1).

Pardon from James I to Thomas Urrey, 1604 [MS6/1]

Other items include descriptions of walks around the island such Sarah Jane Gilham’s “journal of seven weeks peregrinations at the most beautiful place on earth, namely the Isle of Wight”, 1850 (MS6/8), or Thomas Flood’s description of his walking tour of the island in 1845 (MS450).

The island was the inspiration for poetry by James B.Fell (MS14) as well as the long manuscript poem “Elizabeth the fair prisoner of Carisbrook”, mid-nineteenth century (MS5/32).

Within the papers of the Gordon family, who resided at Northcourt on the island, are a series of watercolours by Lady Julia Gordon that feature the house and garden (MS80). Special Collections also holds a collection of watercolours by the Revd John Lewis Petit (MS283). Those for the Isle of Wight range from Alum Bay to Yaverland and includes seascapes and landscapes as well as churches, which are the focus of many of his paintings.

Alum Bay: View from cliff top looking across to The Needles by J.L.Petit [MS283/55]

The working papers of the academic Lindsay Boynton includes considerable material on both Sir Richard Worsley and Appuldurcombe House (MS301). Special Collections also holds the editorial notes for the Victoria County History for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight (MS29) providing an interesting counterpoint to the range of published histories of the island held as part of the Cope Collection.

For politics on the island in the 19^th and 20^th centuries you can find a range of material in the papers of the first Duke of Wellington and the Broadlands Archives including extensive files for Earl Mountbatten of Burma as the Governor of the Isle of Wight.

Letter sent by internee at the Aliens’ Detention Camp, Douglas, Isle of Man, to Rabbi Dr Victor Schonfeld, 19 June 1917 [MS192 AJ413/7 f3]

Another island of the UK coast for which we hold quite a number of items is the Isle of Man. This ranges from material on the harbour defence in the 19^th century in the Wellington Archive to material in quite a number of the Jewish archive collections relating to the use of the island in the 20^th century for internment. This latter material includes not just reports on an inspection of the internment camps in the Second World War which can be found in archive of Solomon Schonfeld, but correspondence of internees in both World Wars.

Sketch of Mooragh internment camp, Ramsay, Isle of Man, by K.Rothschild, c.1940 [MS297/A890/2/1]

Sketch of Ramsay, Isle of Man, by Manfred Steinhardt, 1940 [MS297/A890/2/1]

To complement the more recent material relating to islands in the Mediterranean found in the papers of Lord and Lady Mountbatten, there is 19th-century papers in both the archive of the first Duke of Wellington and those of third Viscount Palmerston relating to the Ionian Islands, the seven islands that include Corfu, Paxos and Cefalonia. This covers the period from the Treaty of Paris in 1815 when the islands were placed under British protectorship, to 1864 when they were officially reunified with Greece.

First page of synopsis for “Refugee island” a proposed TV play by Norman Crisp [MS199/101/1]

And we travel even further with a fictional island although potentially situated in the South Seas. Taken from the archive of the writer Norman Crisp (MS199), this is a synopsis and script for a proposed TV play “Refuge Island”. Written in the response to the threat of the H-bomb, the play follows the story of an individual, who may or may not be a confidence trickster, and his scheme to create a “refuge island”.

To find more islands, or to find out more about any of the items mentioned, do explore the Epexio Archive Catalogue which contains details of the archival collections that we hold.

And do join us next week when we will have reached J for Jewish archives.

Norman J.Crisp

Today’s blog focuses on the career of a local writer – Norman J. Crisp, born in Southampton in 1923. Crisp held a number of jobs, including a period in the RAF, before he became a full-time writer. He wrote principally short stories before selling his first script to the BBC in the late 1950s. He wrote extensively for the screen and the stage, contributing to series including Dixon of Dock Green, Dr Finlay’s Casebook, Secret army and Compact, as well as creating, with his collaborator the producer Gerard Glaister, two other series, The brothers and The expert. He won a Writers’ Guild of Great Britain screenwriters award in 1968.

His papers can be found under MS199 at the University of Southampton’s Special Collections.

This collection includes a range of material dating from the mid-1950s up to the early 1990s such as drafts, research notes and scripts for various films including Murder elite as well as television productions for many of the series in which he was involved, The brothers and Dixon of Dock Green amongst them. Crisp was also a published novelist and the collection includes reviews, correspondence and research notes relating to some of his books including Gotland deal, The odd job man and In the long run. Last but not least, the collection also includes papers and correspondence relating to the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (of which Crisp was a committee member), dating from 1959-71.

Title page for an episode of The Brothers written by N. J. Crisp, noting a change in the script [MS199 A807/1/3]

The collection would be of interest not only to those curious about Crisp’s unique career in television and film specifically, but also to those keen to learn about the development of the industry more generally. For example, a letter dated 8 January 1962 [MS199 A807/140/1] and addressed to Crisp from the Joint Editor of Guild News (the Television and Screenwriters Guild’s publication) expresses intrigue (and some scepticism) at the emergence of the new academic study of film-making, whilst questioning the objectives and experience of lecturers in the subject:

[…] Knowing how you feel about the idea that people can be taught to write, I wonder if you think there might be a Guild News article here?[…] Now a number of questions leap to mind. Just what does this course [at London University] cover? Is writing a part of it? And if not, then are students given to understand that writing is an unimportant part of film-making? Who are the people who do the teaching? What experience do they have? […] Do they seriously intend to produce “graduate film-makers” like lawyers and chemists?

Simultaneous with this scepticism on the academicizing of film production and writing, there is nevertheless a strong drive to formalise and protect the economic interests of writers working in the television and film industry, through professional organisation and the promotion of solidarity amongst writers. Crisp’s papers include issues of the Screen Writers Guild Newsletter from the early 1960s, documenting the Guild’s attempts to affiliate with the Trade Unions Congress as well as its negotiations, on behalf of screenwriters, with the BBC and other companies seeking a greater percentage of revenues for writers based on the success of their productions. Circulars from the Writers Guild of Great Britain reveal attempts to co-operate with the Writers Guild of America (WGA) in urging British writers only to accept work from American production companies that had signed appropriate agreements with the WGA, thus preventing them from undercutting American writers by using cheaper British talent and vice versa with American writers.

A 1968 letterhead of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, featuring their motto ‘Ante omnia verbum’, which translates roughly as ‘The word before all else’ [MS199 A807/145/1]

Agendas produced by the Screenwriter’s Guild (based on Harley Street in London) reveal alarm in 1964 with “the serious decrease in the production of TV drama by the BBC, and instructs the Council to hold immediate joint discussion with Equity and ACTT with a view to making a joint approach to the BBC…”. Attempts were being made to influence broadcasters in terms of the kinds of material they were producing. The notion that the content of television productions should be based, at least in part, on the demands or financial interests of writers rather than the preferences of audiences or ‘the marketplace’ reveal interesting aspects at work in the industry.

As well as exposing the economics and power-relations within the film and television industry, the collection includes correspondence between Crisp and his agents as well as publishers from the early 1950s onwards. This correspondences provides a flavour of what was, or was not, selling well at any given time, thus documenting the evolving preferences of audiences, or at least of the writers, publishers and production companies who vied for their attention. A letter from Crisp’s agent dated 26^th August 1955 informs him: “I am very sorry indeed to return The camel and the eye but unfortunately there is not a very good chance of placing scientific stories and as you will see I have offered it as widely as I could. I am disappointed that I had no good editorial reaction.” This letter does mention, however, that Crisp’s story titled Girls by the gallon had sold for nine guineas. Another letter from the same agent dated 9 September 1955 notes: “I have only tried A twitch in time with three Editors, but alas, Time/Space stories are out of fashion at the moment. With regret…” Perhaps audiences would have been more receptive to scientific stories a few years later, following Sputnik and the beginnings of the Space Race. In fact, Crisp did later write for the BBC science fiction series Doomwatch in the early 1970s.

Crisp’s agents consistently offered their advice on both the preferences of publishers and audiences as well as the style or quality of his writing. As his agents informed him in a letter dated 9 February 1955:

…I expect you know that American editors buying English stories like an English story from an Englishman. There is really little chance of selling a pseudo-American story over there. Many American editors I have met in England have warned me about this… there is more chance of good proportion selling if sufficient time and consideration is given both to the plot and to the style of writing. The best way of finding out what editors are buying is to read the current magazines.

Criticism came not only from editors but directly from his agents too. One story being described as ‘terribly complicated’ [26 March 1955] and another being re-written under a new title altogether after poor feedback. One editor requested that a story involving marital infidelity and bank fraud, which he liked in many ways, should nonetheless be re-written because “it poses a difficult moral problem and is also rather depressing”. [10 January 1955]

Despite some of the negative feedback that Crisp received (he would have been an aspiring writer in his early thirties at this point) he was nevertheless rather gracious in his acceptance of the criticism and often succeeded, eventually, in giving publishers what they wanted. An agent tells him in a letter dated 8 March 1955 “I found The Saturday match particularly attractive and it had also a nice touch of humour. Your real difficulty, as far as selling to the popular magazines goes, is the type of plot. As you perhaps know, stories with a strong romantic interest are the most easily sold and a young love story is often popular.”

The collection would be of interest to any aspiring writer, not merely because of what Crisp had to say about his own creative journey and experiences, but because of his ruminations on the life of the writer. In a speech given by Crisp at an Independent Television luncheon he notes the following: “The writer knows that his script is the foundation on which all else is built, and that knowledge constitutes his essential pride in his craft.” Crisp informs his audience that the occupation of a writer is rather precarious – there is vigorous competition amongst writers and the television industry moves quickly. Within eight years of having his first television play transmitted in 1959 one critic called him ‘the Grand Old Man of television’, even though he was only forty-three years of age at the time. Crisp laments that: “A writer can become a dinosaur before he knows it, and is no longer fitted for survival.”

Crisp also notes that if writers get sick they don’t earn money (at least not back then) and that their talent typically dries up before they die, so they have no earnings on which to depend in their later years. These observations were made to an audience of writers and television executives in the aim of inducing them to support proposals for the introduction of pension contributions from the television companies and other employers, as well as from the writers themselves: “So, gentlemen, what we want to put to you today, is the necessity for, and the justice of, an Industry Pension and Sickness Scheme for writers. For the sake of brevity, a Social Security Scheme.”

Despite his warnings on the precariousness of the writer’s situation and his musings on the life of what others have called the ‘poor impecunious poet’, Crisp was nevertheless very successful for many years after this speech and until his passing in 2005. His papers also include the scripts, drafts, reviews and correspondence for his 1996 play That good night [A1060/18 and A1080/19], which was adapted for the 2017 film of the same name, starring John Hurt in his final film role.