27. John Nurden, email to the author, 3 June 2020
34. Triumph of the Sheerness Wall
1. Inselgeschichten, p. 82
2. Siegfried Unseld, Letter to Uwe Johnson, 8 September 1982, Uwe Johnson-Siegfried Unseld Der Briefwechsel, p. 1024
3. “Tidal Wave Brings Disaster to Sheppey: Stricken Island Counts its Losses”, Sheerness Times and Guardian (Emergency Edition), 2 February 1953
4. Hilda Grieve, The Great Flood: The Story of the 1953 Flood Disaster in Essex, Chelmsford: County of Essex, 1959, p. 178
5. “Royal Visitor Saw Town Rally”, Sheerness Times and Guardian, February 6 1953, p. 1
6. Roland Berkeley Thorn, The Design of Sea Defence Works, London: Butterworths Scientific Publications, 1960. p. ix
7. Ibid., pp. 48–9
8. “Terror Struck for Disabled Pensioner”, Sheerness Times Guardian, 13 January 1977, p. 2
9. Letter to Helen Wolff, 16 March 1978, quoted in Eberhard Fahlke, “Auf der Suche nach “Inselgeschichten”, Inselgeschichten, p. 174
10. Inselgeschichten, p. 38.
11. Ewan Forster, email to the author, 7 November 2014
12. “Chamber Checks All Sea Defence Work”, Sheerness Times Guardian, 22 December 1978, p. 4
13. Roger Moate, MP, House of Commons Debate, 25 January 1979, Hansard vol. 961 cc 878–90
14. See Fig. 40, Roland Berkeley Thorn and Andrew G. Roberts, Sea Defence and Coast Protection Works, London: Telford, 1981, p. 131
15. Alberto Montanari, Professor of Hydraulic Works and Hydrology at the University of Bologna. https://distart119.ing.unibo.it/albertonew/?q=node/104
16. Cement and Concrete Association, “Light Relief: Sea Defence Wall, Marine Parade, Sheerness-on-Sea, Kent”, Concrete Quarterly 143, October-December 1984, p. 16–19
17. Barbara Jones, The Unsophisticated Arts, London: Architectural Press, 1951. Also Paul Nash, “Swanage or Seaside Surrealism”, Architectural Review, 79, July 1936, pp. 150-4
18. “Titan Sees the End of Sea Defence Work for the Island”, Sheerness Times Guardian, 11 May 1984, p. 3
19. Leon Krier (ed.), Albert Speer: Architecture 1932-42, Paris & Brussels: Archives d’Architecture Moderne, 1985.
Afterword
1. Siegfried Unseld, Uwe Johnson “Für wenn ich tot bin” [1991], mit einer Nachbemerkung 1997, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997, p. 38
2. Ibid., p. 46
3. Ibid., p. 47
4. Siegfried Unseld, letter to Uwe Johnson 7 December 1982, in E. Fahlke & R. Fellinger, (eds) Uwe Johnson – Siegfried Unseld: Der Briefwechsel, Suhrkamp, 1999, p. 1032-3
5. Uwe Johnson, letter to Siegfried Unseld, 23 December 1983, Ibid., pp. 1033-5
6. For Johnson’s will of 16 October 1975, see Heinrich Lübbert, Der Streit um das Erbe des Schriftstellers Uwe Johnson, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998, pp. 17-20
7. For Johnson’s revised will of 22 March 1983, see Ibid., pp. 36-9
8. Uwe Johnson, “Statement to my Executors”, 21 February 1983, in ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 30
10. Siegfried Unseld, Uwe Johnson “Für wenn ich tot bin”, p. 64
11. Siegfried Unseld, note of 23 March 1984, in E. Fahlke & R. Fellinger, (eds) Uwe Johnson – Siegfried Unseld: Der Briefwechsel, Suhrkamp, 1999, p. 1083
12. Tilman Jens, “Der Unbekannte von der Themse: Auf den Spuren des Toten Dichters Uwe Johnson”, reportage mit Fotos von Nomi Baumgartl, Stern, 24 May 1984, pp. 126-136.
13. “Sheerness house hits the headlines in Germany”, Sheppey Gazette and North-East Kent Times, 5 July 1984, p. 1.
14. See, for example, “‘stern’ ohne Scham”, Die Zeit, 1 June 1984.
15. Unseld, Uwe Johnson “Für wenn ich tot bin”, p. 56.
16. Siegfried Unseld, “Nachbemerkung 1997”, ibid., pp. 85-6.
17. Elisabeth Johnson, “Nachtwort”, in Werner Gotzmann, Uwe Johnsons Testament oder Wie der Suhrkamp Verlag Erbe wird, Berlin: Edition Lit.Europe, 1996, p. 147.
18. Anniversaries II, p. 1635
19. Ibid., p. 1227
20. Uwe Jonson, letter to Burgel Zeeh, 17 April 1983, E. Fahlke & R. Fellinger, Uwe Johnson — Siegfried Unseld Der Briefwechsel, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, p. 1070
21. “Conversation on the Novel…”
22. Anniversaries IV, p. 1481.
23. Ibid., p. 1224
24. Ibid., p. 1543
25. Ibid., p. 1247
26. Ibid., p. 1564
27. Anniversaries I, p. 35.
28. Anniversaries IV, p. 1531
29. “Berlin Wall”, BBC Radio 4, 13 August 1981
30. Nicholas Dames, “Departures and Returns”, N+1, 5 June 2020
31. Edwina Currie, Norman Tebbitt, and Currie again.
32. Brian Jenkins, interviewed in “Three ex-Chatham dockyard workers…”, KentOnline, 31 March 2014
33. “Chatham Dockyard closure ‘very positive for the area’”, BBC News, 31 March 2014
34. “Obituary: Uwe Johnson East German novelist”, The Times, 15 March 1984, p. 16
35. Anniversaries IV, pp.1250-57
36. Ibid., p.1601
37. Ibid., p. 1475
38. Ibid., pp. 1481-1484
39. Ibid., p. 1640
40. Ibid., p. 1619
41. Ibid., p. 1406
42. Ibid., p. 1404
43. Ibid., p. 1620
44. Ibid., p. 1620
45. Ibid., p. 1292
46. Ibid., p. 1265
47. Stephen Marche, “David Shield’s “Reality Hunger” in the Age of Trump; or, How to Write Now”, Los Angeles Review of Books, 5 August 2017
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I was first alerted to the existence of Johnson’s Island Stories by Heinrich von Berenberg, whom I had got to know in the Nineties, when he translated some articles of mine for publication in Wagenbach’s journal Freibeuter. It was, however, not until 2011 that I contacted Suhrkamp Editions to explore the possibility of producing an English translation. They put me in touch with Damion Searls, who was already preparing to embark on his translation of Anniversaries, published by New York Review Books in 2018. Damion has been vital to this project, providing beautifully articulate translations of a widening array of texts, and helping in so many other ways with information, questions, enthusiasm and patience.
The translations were made possible by a grant from the Patsy Wood Trust, the trustees of which generously overlooked the fact that the proposed investigation was not strictly an “environmental” initiative. The pace quickened in 2015-16 when I received a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for the project, by then entitled “Learning from Sheppey: Place, Culture and Identity at England’s Periphery”. This gave me a full year in which to concentrate on my investigations both on Sheppey and in Germany, where I have been greatly assisted by the Uwe Johnson-Gesellschaft and the associated Johnson Archive at the University of Rostock. I would have got nowhere without the assistance of Holger Helbig, Antje Pauke, Katja Leuchtenberger, Martin Fietze and their colleagues, and also of the Society’s friends and affiliated scholars in Britain, Irmgard Müller and Astrid Köhler. My thanks are also due to Miriam Häfele at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv at Marbach. More formally, I am grateful both to the Johannes and Annitta Fries Stiftung and to the Peter Suhrkamp Stiftung for permission to quote from Johnson’s “Conversation on the Novel…”, his letter to Helen Wolff (6 August 1978) and the CV he prepared for Friedrich Denk on 22 February 1984, a copy of which is among Michael Hamburger’s papers at the British Library.
I was much encouraged in my research by colleagues at the Department of English at King’s College London. I remain indebted for various hints and suggestions to Jon Day, Clare Lees, Jo McDonagh, Josh Davies, Clare Petit, Richard Kirkland, Alan Read and also to Neil Vickers, who was always encouraging about an investigation that wasn’t conceived with the Research Excellence Framework in mind. I have also benefitted greatly from conversations with the historians I encountered at meetings and events associated with K
CL’s Institute of Contemporary British History.
The project’s first “output” was a BBC Radio 3 “Sunday Feature” broadcast as A Secret Life: Uwe Johnson in Sheerness on 19 April 2015 (available online at BBC Sounds). My thanks to the producer, John Goudie, to Helen Whittle, whose research was more incisive and helpful than we had any right to expect, and also to former island inhabitants Jackie Cassell and Ian Lambert, who heard the programme and got in touch with helpful reprimands and comments. Towards the end of 2015, I started planning with Chris Reed of the Sheerness arts organisation, Big Fish, to organise a community reading of selections from the translated articles and letters in which Uwe Johnson describes his impressions of Sheerness. The final outcome was a combined talk, performance and reading at Sheerness’s Little Theatre on 5 March 2016 (see photograph on p. 393). Having learned a great deal from these conversations, I am especially grateful to Chris Reed of Big Fish Arts for initiating it, and to Cliff Tester, Shirley West, Jim Enright, Sue Percival, Jo Eden, Janys & Jeremy Thornton and everyone else who squeezed into the Rose Street Cottage of Curiosities for our preliminary rehearsals, and who participated both in the main event at the Little Theatre and in a later performance on the Goodwin Sands light ship LV21, now converted into a floating arts venue and moored at Gravesend during Metal’s Estuary festival later that same year. Thanks also to Daniel Nash, who had us on his review programme for BRFM Sheppey (BRFM stands for “Best Radio For Miles”), the island’s independent answer to the BBC, which transmits from a container perched above the advancing cliff not far from the place where the now ethereal Royal Oak pub once stood.
I am very grateful to Will and Heloise Palin both for providing me with somewhere to stay and also for introducing me to diverse people and aspects of Sheppey life. Others who have helped me understand the island and its modern history include Tim Kermode, Tim Oxley, Simeon Haselton, Jane Washford, George Poule, Carol Contant, Jeanette Contant-Gallitello, Mavis Caver, and Dot Cruikshank. I owe a huge amount to the island’s journalists, especially Bel Austin (neé Norris) & John Nurden of the Sheerness Times Guardian, without whose accumulated work and present generosity this book would have been a lesser thing. My thanks to Emma and Louise Harris, who kindly provided a photograph of their father, Martin Aynscomb-Harris. A salute, too, for the “wandering shade” and Medway poet Barry Fentiman Hall, not least for his rendering of “the Poet” in his island miscellany, the unbearable sheerness of being (wordsmithery: 2016)
The project is all the better for my conversations with two filmmakers: Patrick Keiller, with whom I collaborated from 2007 on a project entitled “The Future Landscape and the Moving Image”, and Shona Illingworth, who joined me in this later exploration a few years ago, and with whom I continue to work towards a film based on the same researches. The visual perspective, which is, I hope, also embedded in this book, has been enormously helpful. I would like to thank Bevis Bowden for the cinematographic skill he brought to the day we spent — with additional thanks to the then owners Dave and Lorraine Beechinor — filming inside 26 Marine Parade, Sheerness.
I have long been indebted to Iain Sinclair, who first reminded me of Sheppey when he was at work on Downriver in the late Eighties and later hinted that north Kent was surely worth revisiting. Thanks also to Rachel Lichtenstein, author of Estuary: From London Out to the Sea, who put me in touch with John Cotgrove in Southend on-Sea, and invited me to participate in Metal’s estuary festival in 2016, and — also on the Essex shore — to my late friend Michael Thomas who gave me the benefit of his memories of growing up in Southend in the Sixties.
My thanks to Renate Mayntz and Wolfgang Streeck for their help in Germany; to David Spiegelhalter (light railways) and Jeremy Purseglove (floods); to Brian Dillon (Duchamp in Herne Bay and The Great Explosion); and to Humphrey Ocean, Stephen Bann, Peter Rhodes, Ed Dickinson, Germaine Dolan, Barbara Gaskin and Pete Ball, for memories of life at the University of Kent and at Canterbury College of Art in the early Seventies. I am grateful to Anne Beresford, Richard Hamburger and Claire Hamburger, who have each gone out of their way to be helpful, and also to Christian Wolff and Johnny Homer (definitely not just any “Communications Executive” at Shepherd Neame). My understanding of Ray Pahl’s work is all the better thanks to Tim Strangleman, Dawn Lyon, Graham Crow and Claire Wallace. I am grateful to Tim Meacham for various now distant memories of the island; Penny Pole of Garnham Wright Associates for being so helpful about the design and construction of the present sea wall along Marine Parade; Edmund de Waal for his recollection of growing up in the Deanery at Canterbury; Gareth Evans, for maintaining his interest in the project since February 2013, when he curated a conference on PLACE at Aldeburgh; and Ewan Forster for his memories of Sheerness. Rachel Calder gave me some very helpful advice and my publishers at Repeater have been remarkable in their contrary fearlessness, enthusiasm and attention to detail (which has extended to the choice of fonts — a version of Exelsior for the main text, and the GDR-associated Drescher Grotesk for headings and Johnson’s Sheerness writings). Special thanks, then, to Tariq Goddard, Alex Niven, Josh Turner, James Hunt, Michael Watson and everyone else involved — including Johnny Bull, whose brilliant cover stands as a tribute to the glory days of the Canterbury College of Art, where he studied too.
More obliquely, I must acknowledge the late African American baritone Aubrey Pankey, in whose memory I have identified Sheppey’s flamingo as a “firebird” (see the children’s story Pankey published during his McCarthy-induced exile in the GDR — Der Feuervogel, illustrationen von Bert Heller, Berlin: Alfred Holz Verlag, 1964). Finally, I would like to thank Dr Claire Lawton, who has accompanied me throughout this adventure as so many others, and managed to avoid following our three sons out of the front door.
ILLUSTRATIONS
By page number:
Shona Illingworth, 3, 63, 132, 492 (I & ii). Michael Thomas, 322. National Maritime Museum, 221. Royal Army Medical Corps, 206 (I & ii). J. Styles for R.E. Pahl, 431, 434; R.E. Pahl, 438 (reproduced by kind permission of Graham Crow and Dawn Lyon). Hulton Archives, 147. Race Furniture Ltd, 303, 307, 308. Wymer, F. J., 14. Richard Hamburger, 53. Brigitte Friedrich/Süddeutsche Zeitung (Alamy), 74. Alamy (Historical Images), 103. YRM archives, RIBA/Victoria and Albert Museum, 85, 88. Luftgeographische Einzelheft Großbritannien, 182. Acme NewsPictures, 123. Flight, 152, 155, 161. Tatler, 153. Race Furniture, 323, 327, 329. Martin, R. S. (Camera Press), 284. Harris, Emma and Louise, 353. Renate Mayntz, 39. Shutterstock, 286. Getty images: Jochen Blume/ullstein bild, 98; Hulton Archives, 135. Alamy, 118. Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography, 171. Poule, George, 192, 196, 373. Royal Army Medical Corps, 225 (i & ii). Garnham Wright Associates, 617. National Archives: Register of Proprietors of Copyright in Paintings, Drawings and Photographs, Stationers’ Hall, 341. Michael Blackwood Productions, 54, 59. Simeon Haselton, 620. Patrick Wright, 5, 21, 27, 28, 30, 31 (i), 87, 99, 104, 116, 117 (i & ii), 142, 202, 203, 223, 228, 231, 236, 238, 244, 266, 268, 315, 331, 342, 347, 386, 393, 474, 482, 490, 527, 559, 571, 588, 603, 619. Postcards and some other historical images are beyond meaningful acknowledgement, although eBay has played its part.
REPEATER BOOKS
is dedicated to the creation of a new reality. The landscape of twenty-first-century arts and letters is faded and inert, riven by fashionable cynicism, egotistical self-reference and a nostalgia for the recent past. Repeater intends to add its voice to those movements that wish to enter history and assert control over its currents, gathering together scattered and isolated voices with those who have already called for an escape from Capitalist Realism. Our desire is to publish in every sphere and genre, combining vigorous dissent and a pragmatic willingness to succeed where messianic abstraction and quiescent co-option have stalled: abstention is not an option: we are alive and we don’t agree.
Thank you for reading books on Archive.
The Sea View Has Me Again Page 72