[meteeratymn]

Hunger and Love is a semi-autobiographical account of the intellectual development of the working-class orphan Arthur Phelps, who is about sixteen years old at the beginning of the book, and the reader learns almost nothing of his past life. Set entirely in London from 1904 or 1905 to some time during World War I, it records in some detail the extreme poverty of the uneducated Arthur, who starts his working life at a greengrocer’s and then continues by working for several booksellers. Throughout most of the book he has very few friends, and almost all of his contact with others is through his work or by chance encounters in the street. Some of his limited spare time is spent trying to make his meagre earnings last until the end of the week — by, for example, mending his shabby clothes — but most of his time is spent in the manic pursuit of the education he never received as a child. Arthur devours any scraps of knowledge that he can, reading works of science or arts indiscriminately. He buys books from the penny ‘dumps’ on the book barrows that line Farringdon Road, and works his way through the Penny Cyclopaedia and Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. The novel details how Arthur takes advantage of any opportunity to increase his learning by reading at work, when sent out on errands, and during his lunch breaks. Periods of unemployment are described, a few political activities, and Arthur’s developing intellectual education arguing with the crowd gathered around Speakers’ Corner. There are also many descriptions of the book trade from a shop assistant’s point of view.

The ‘Hunger’ in the title clearly refers to Arthur’s lack of food, but it also alludes to both sexual and intellectual frustration; the ‘Love’ too refers to sex, as well as to the love of knowledge, and to a much broader love of humanity. The narrator has complete access to Arthur’s thoughts and no one else’s, and frequently addresses him directly in the second person, often to mock him. The world is thus largely seen through Arthur’s (or the narrator’s) consciousness, and the novel contains many unspoken insults directed at the bourgeoisie, the church, the government, or the police. Any figures of authority are the targets, and they are seen not only as impediments to his freedom, but throwbacks to an earlier period of evolution.

The novel is didactic, and filled with philosophical and scientific thoughts, becoming more complex as the book develops. Thoughts hold up the story, or rather, thoughts are a large part of the story: sickened by a world where business rules and the rich perpetuate their life-styles through repressing the poor both physically and psychologically, the narrator gradually develops a blueprint for a future ruled by the human mind. It is a long inter-war howl of contempt for the rule-makers and the people whom the narrator considers to be the war-mongers, the perpetrators of a vast conspiracy. For these reasons alone, it was inevitable that there would be some hostile reactions to the novel. Britton foresaw this, and joked about it before the novel was published: ‘I don’t think six months in gaol would stop me. Most of my friends say I shall get twenty years. The unkind ones say I shall deserve it.’

When it was published in 1931, the novel gained great publicity because Bertrand Russell wrote the five-page introduction to it, in which he lavished great praise on it. But Britton had already published a play called Brain the year before, which is about a computer which is built clandestinely in the Sahara Desert, and which will eventually contain all the information in the world: a kind of prediction of the internet. Bernard Shaw had some praise for the play. Lionel Britton’s second play, Spacetime Inn, is set in spacetime and its characters — Eve (of Adam and Eve), the Queen of Sheba, Samuel Johnson, Napoleon, Karl Marx, Queen Victoria, and Bernard Shaw — are stranded in a pub with two members of the working-class. As with Brain, everyone is blown up in the end: Britton was fond of apocalyptic endings, and Hunger and Love finishes with the blood bath of World War I.

For various reasons, Britton never published a follow-up novel and died in poverty.

The link below begins with a whistlestop tour of working-class fiction from the Chartist era through to the 20th century before alighting at the 1930s for a more detailed analysis of Britton’s place in working-class fiction. The main themes covered in it are work, unemployment and the lack of money, gender, and birth control:

Dr Tony Shaw: British Working-Class Fiction and Lionel Britton’s Place in It

[Anykeylo]

I was about to mention Upward, Lionel. I read the trilogy an age ago, and wish i could remember more about it. Thank smuch for the link

[KlaraNovikoffa]

Lionel,
Britton certainly does sound like an amazing writer. No wonder you are so fascinated by him! This review is brilliant. You've outdone yourself . The subjects of Britton's plays are certainly extraordinary, aren't they? It looks as if he had prophetic visions of the internet. Although I was fortunate enough to be raised in an environment in which books were (and still are) easy to come by, my mum would certainly empathize with Arthur in Hunger and Love and with his attempts to find reading material anywhere he can. When she (my mum) was growing up, the only books kept at home were the Bible, a dictionary, and a set of encyclopedias. My grandmum doesn't believe in purchasing any books; actually, she doesn't believe in reading much besides the Bible . Thus...my mum became obsessed with collecting books a few decades ago. Now, our collection numbers somewhere close to 10,000. Mum says that having so many books "at her fingertips" is very soothing.

Once again, splendid review! I will check out the link, as well.

~Titania

[meteeratymn]

I was about to mention Upward, Lionel. I read the trilogy an age ago, and wish i could remember more about it. Thank smuch for the link

I believe Edward Upward is still alive at 105.

Upward certainly aligned himself with the working class movement, as did early Auden, and, of course, Isherwood used to chomp away on sweets to give himself bad teeth so he could identify with the working classes! Andy Croft's Red Letter Days certainly features some of Upward's works, but his treatment of writers is indiscriminate, and it's often difficult for someone not in the know to tell which class a writer comes from. But with a public school and Russell Group university education, Upward can't be called a working-class writer, no matter what the subject matter of his work is.

Glad you like the link.

[Anykeylo]

very true, since i was as usual wandering about and remembering stuff at random, rather than seeking to align etc etc , good to see a post referencing Tressell, the Chartists. Did you ever subscribe to imprints like Readers International, i can't find anyone else who even remembers it?

[meteeratymn]

Did you ever subscribe to imprints like Readers International, i can't find anyone else who even remembers it?

Sorry, that's new to me too!

[AntonioXYZ]

I'm probably on the wrong thread here, but hey! It's Summer, it's hot, and we're all mad. (Sometimes I drink a little cider at this time: it reminds me of girls who have left their panties at home. Now a fading memory of course, but when all is said and done, what other kinds of memory are there?)

I shall look for the thread where this post will do the most good, (will it actually make a difference to anything anyway? Eric! Your opinion please!).

The Lionel Britton thread is a little quiet at the moment, perhaps because Dr Tony Shaw feels he has said all he can for the time being.
In this respect he is in stark contrast to my Great-Uncle, who never let one word suffice when twenty would do, and basically never knew when to rest his case, but in other respects there is a meeting of minds between them. I would hesitate to pin labels on the thinking of either man, for one thing because if Dr Shaw can write a whole thesis on Uncle Lionel and thereby obtain his PhD they each defy labelling by any ordinary mortal, and for another because in the course of researching my family I have discovered my cousin in Canada, Justin Thomas, who has built his fame and fortune on Label Liberation. (Details on Dr Shaw's blog
However, if you described Tony as a wild anarchist you wouldn't be too far off, and he wouldn't bat an eyelid...(before firing off a flame e-mail of course).
Britton is rather harder to put into any convenient box, otherwise what has Tony been absorbed with all this time? If you could just tick "anarchist", "revolutionary", "mad genius", "atheist", "social non-conformist", "scourge of the bishops", "conscientious objector", "anti-capitalist", "totalitarian", "anti-totalitarian"; then it would be all over in two minutes, job done; but Dr Shaw has spent what, six years, seven, on this stuff?
When I was growing up I was told that extreme genius was just next door to madness, and Uncle Lionel was always adduced as an example. I made sure not to become an extreme genius, didn't do too well on the madness thing though.
The man was regarded by the family as a genius who happened to be a fruit cake, or vice versa. No-one doubted that he could speak 22 languages, in part of course because no-one could call him on it unless they spoke 22 as well; and not many of us could do that. Eric! you should have met him. My view of flies doesn't differ too much from President Obama's, but oh to be one on the wall at your meeting!
We had a book, which sadly I have now lost, called "Batu Khan". This was an immensely long Russian saga about the son of Ghengis, who was hardly less of an ogre than his old man. It was translated out of the Russian language by Lionel Britton. According to all the known beliefs of my uncle, Ghengis & Son would have been anathema; but by a huge irony the connection has sometimes made me a a bit of a celebrity in Turkey, where these guys are hugely revered! Anyone who could translate that thing out of the Russian and get away with it probably knew his stuff, after all somebody probably actually read it, which was more than I ever did.
Apart from his huge facility with languages, Uncle Lionel's achievement is questionable, but that is all discussed in Tony Shaw's thesis, which appears in full on .
Tony's work is centred on Lionel Britton's seminal "Hunger and Love", and while I cannot add anything to a thesis so comprehensive, I do happen to be one of about three people on the Planet who have actually waded through the novel, and so I hope no-one minds if I offer an opinion.
When I was a young man, about the age Lionel was when he was a shop assistant in London, I was...a shop assistant in London. The passages about Arthur Phelps' daily grind are so authentic it almost hurts. The holes in his strides, and his lack of any funds to do something about it, why, I have been there!
The refrain about the lack of love and sex resulting from his lack of material means is also authentic because so familiar.
So far so good. He was at least as convincing as Orwell, who was if anything an imitator, while achieving the commercial success that Britton not merely eluded but eschewed. Whereas I totally believe in Lionel's personal experience of the bollocks he went through, (in the 1911 census there he is in black and white: shop assistant), we know that Orwell was conducting an experiment, which became "Down and out...etc."
Where it starts to go tits-up, (an authentic English expression particularly well-understood in such places as Boston, Lincolnshire. Sorry, Eric!), is that Orwell beat Britton to the punch by writing "Animal Farm" and "1984". Britton was every bit as perceptive as Orwell: he visited Russia only to become disillusioned with Stalinism by seeing it at first hand.
The problem is that while Orwell wrote two definitive works challenging the collectivist, even totalitarian, orthodoxies of his time, Britton seems stuck in a 1930s timewarp. Taking "Hunger and Love" together with his off-the-wall "Brain", it appears that he doesn't so much think "the man in Whitehall really does know best...", but that a disembodied power should rule us all!
There are two paradoxes here then, aren't there?
A deeply philosophical thinker who scoffed at the notion of a higher power as conceived by contemporary religions, (and religious scepticism extended to his brother, my grandfather, and also very likely to his father Richard), he nevertheless dreamed of rule by a Universal Intelligence. "Ah," you may say, "but he wanted a rational man-made one, nothing to do with the irrational beliefs of old". The problem there of course is that one man's rationality is another man's tyranny.
The second paradox is not in the fact that he railed against "trade" or the capitalist system despite being a product of the commercial classes. I was in Birmingham at this last New Year researching the family, and have only just begun to discover how deeply embedded the family was in the whole process which Lionel describes as "trade". We were his "beast-men": those who turned out trinkets and baubles for princes and fraudsters. The Brittons, the Smiths, the Waddams, Taylors and Hortons: they were all at it, conniving in a huge conspiracy to take away man's humanity. It is not of course only the manufacturers and traders who cop it from the pen of Lionel, the legal profession takes quite a big hit, (father Richard was a solicitor, as was grandfather John James Britton). And as for the Church, well, you can hardly flip open "Hunger and Love" at any page without noting an excoriation of "Milord Bishop" and his co-conspirators in the government, the army, the police force, etc. etc. One of John James Britton's forebears was supposed to have been Dean of Durham, and two of his sons, (Lionel's uncles), were vicars. And a big family friend was the Reverend Thomas Perkins, who wrote books about ecclesiastic architecture, and went on to marry Ethel Alice Britton, Lionel's aunt. This, then, was not unconscious self-loathing, but completely conscious rejection by Lionel of everything which had formed him. Oh, and I nearly forgot that his great-grandfather Samuel Thomas had become one of the foremost needle manufacturers in Redditch, Worcestershire, having established a huge factory there supplanting what had previously been largely a cottage industry. One of my cousins has told me that at one time Samuel needed sixteen bodyguards to protect him from the stonesthrowing populace of the town. Lionel's grandfather Samuel Thomas appears to have been cut off from any substantial fortune and was condemned to travel around Europe touting the needles. Trade, trade, trade.
Even Irza Thomas, my great-grandmother and Lionel Britton's mother, was a "commercial traveller" in the 1911 census, but enough family history already, you will have the idea by now.
In Lionel's worldview the conspiracy against the likes of Arthur Phelps ran from the King and his ministers, through the ranks of the armed forces and the massed cohorts of the "beast-men", (those churning out the junk that people wanted to buy, like clothes), through the bishops and clergy, right down to the humble shopkeeper, (exploits the worker and customer all at once), and landlady (rents him a roof over his head, but not from the goodness of her heart). Arthur's environment, his life in fact, is totally controlled by the conspirators. Would it be too much to ask whether Lionel believed the system he opposed to be a totalitarian one?
I was never taken to see my Great-Uncle, not even once. For that matter, I never met old Irza Britton who lived to 92 surrounded by cages of cats. I suspect in Lionel's case it was mostly because he wasn't easy company. You will find an account on Dr Shaw's blog of the person who said he didn't want to go and meet Lionel at Lyons Corner House because he didn't relish being shouted at for an hour or so.In Great-grandmother Irza's it could have been the cats. My cousin Dorothy, (one of only three living people who knew Lionel personally, to my knowledge), attests that she had to climb three flights of stairs up to the top flat of the spooky old house, only to be confronted by the malevolent stares of those cats. She didn't like the experience!
If I could rewind time and ask Great-Uncle Lionel one thing, (assuming of course I could get a word in edgeways), it would be whether he believed the system was totalitarian. I might just have made him nail his colours to the wall and say "yes!". In that case, I would have asked what "Brain" was all about?
There is our second paradox.
(If this doesn't get Dr Shaw leaping out of his bath-chair and reaching for his flamethrower, nothing will!)
Even hardened literary freaks, (and are there any other kind visiting WLF?), may well find it a challenge wading through the Lionel Britton oeuvre. "Brain", for example, even though we know exactly what it's all about, is widely regarded as impenetrable gibberish according to a number of reviews, but don't take my word for it, go to the world's incontrovertible expert. "Hunger and Love", a copy of which I had to purchase at vast expense, is readable just about, but padded with what I might politely term a stream of consciousness, (there is a more scatological term, but Eric, are you out there?). One of these days I might get around to "Spacetime Inn", if only because Lionel inscribed it so beautifully to my mother on her thirteenth birthday, in the flyleaf of a copy which I actually have in my possession. I remember her telling me many, many, years ago that it was decidedly odd and that there were various characters including Queen Victoria, all hanging around in a pub. You can see this sample of Lionel's handwriting on
You may wonder if I'm puffing Dr Shaw's blog. HaHaHaHaHa! Whatever gives you that idea???
Some people have even questioned whether I AM Tony Shaw! You know, there are things they can do now with computers which analyse writing styles and can tell which horny old goat wrote what part of Shakespeare. Well, if anyone can prove to me incontrovertibly that I am Tony Shaw, (Eric?), I will personally hand them ?10,000 in used notes. (I haven't got them, but then I'm not Tony Shaw).
Why I heartily recommend his blog is precisely because he knows how to cut to the chase, which is the key distinction between him and my poor old Great-Uncle, whom Tony admires while by no means being blind to Lionel's deficiencies.
I am reminded of one of Keebah's jokes. (Keebah was my grandfather, Lionel's brother, and don't ask me how he got the name as I can't remember, but I made it up and then the cousins copied it. It was no dafter than Bob, which he is said to have been called because when a toddler he came down the stairs on his butt, bob, bob, bob. His real name was Reginald Percy Leopold of course).
The inspector goes into the lunatic asylum and discovers a chap who appears perfectly sane. After a few conversations, he decides to confide in him that he intends to recommend him for release. "Oh, thank goodness for that!", says the lunatic, (not very PC is it? I should be saying "person of challenged societal functionality", and then probably go on a course to cure my thought-crime. Gordo has to stimulate the economy somehow).
As the inspector prepares to leave, the loony says "Now look, you're not going to forget about me are you? They've been before, and promised me stuff, then they seem to forget!" "Good heavens, no!", says the inspector, "in my professional opinion, you're as sane as I am!" Once again, as he is being checked out of the gate, the inspector finds the individual bounding up to him and saying "look, you do know it's really important to me don't you? It's not a lot of fun being banged up in here with all these Lunatics!"
"You can depend on me," says the inspector. As he walks away down the drive, a brick hits him in the back of the neck. Barely clinging to consciousness, he turns around to see the lunatic grinning at him over the wall of the asylum: "Don't forget now!"
Having a look at Dr Tony Shaw's blog is a delight not merely because of the discourse about Lionel Britton, but because he covers a massive array of other topics, mostly literary but including pubs he likes and lots more. Oh, and you get to meet my relatives!
Just viewing the side bar where he displays books which he has read and could give you a considered opinion upon will alert you to the awesome range of the man.
Tony's view of the world is in certain respects not my own, but that's hardly the point, is it? What he shares with me, and with my Great-Uncle Lionel, is a loathing of pomposity and hypocrisy dressed up as an excuse to stuff us all for our own greater good.
I make no bones about saying that Dr Shaw is an imcomparably better writer than Great-Uncle Lionel, mainly because Tony knows when to quit and Lionel didn't. If Shaw writes about Lionel Britton, then you may do better reading his writing than going back to the source. Trust me, I've been there!
If you have read Tony's thesis and you STILL want more, I expect they have a bed for you somewhere; although being England you may have to wait howling for a few months. A joke, guys. Remember them? Before PC?
Take a butcher's at his blog:
Repetitive, moi?
It must be better than a brick in the back of the neck, that's for sure.

[meteeratymn]

I'll get back to this huge subject on the Lionel Britton thread when it's cooled down. You bring up a mass of interesting questions, but you (no, not you) still have to read the original work to know what you're talking about. Many thanks for the flattery though, George.

Tony

[meteeratymn]

PS More than three living people have read Hunger and Love in its entirety, and I'll name and shame those people, believe me, as these are people who have admitted to this insanity.

[Dilangfh]

If you can assure me that it is an utterly silly thing to do I will consider reading it myself

[meteeratymn]

If you can assure me that it is an utterly silly thing to do I will consider reading it myself

Good question, Ramblingsid. Not too sure what the answer is, though. Many might argue that it would be a totally stupid thing to do, as opposed to silly. It was never intended to be either, but then is intention relevant? Oh no, that last sentence was very unsilly!

Hunger and Love is a very, very weird read. That still doesn't answer your question, but it's the best I can do!

[AntonioXYZ]

I'm not sure where you're coming from, Ramblingsid, but you are on the right lines if you think Lionel Britton was counter just about everything.

I think I have alluded to the strengths I perceived in him, (see above post). I can't add much except to say that we are a little perverse in our family: we don't especially welcome convention and conformity.

My grandfather Bob Britton, Lionel's brother, (I called him Keebah, see Tony Shaw's blog: Dr Tony Shaw), was outwardly a very conventional man, a pillar of the community, air raid warden in the Second World War, and in his later years a stalwart of the Ross-on-Wye Amateur winemakers' Society; but behind all this, he was to his dying day a bit of a wild radical himself.

I remember times in the late '50s when I would be in bed but heard my parents and grandparents fervently discussing politics.
One daytime my father said to my mother something about Keebah being a Communist.
"Oh no, not a Communist!" said my mother.
"I don't know what card he carries," said my father, "but his politics are those of a Communist!"

Poor Keebah was a good man and a kind man, but not always totally worldly, never mind a man of the world. My mother told the story of how Keebah went to Spain on a business trip. It was no big deal for all the guys to repair to a brothel in the evening, but my grandfather was totally outraged, and being a respectably married man, he not only refused to take part, but recounted the ordeal in scandalised terms to his family on his return home!

When the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, I remember Keebah shaking his head sadly.
"I never thought they would do that." he said.

I don't know whether he missed 1956 altogether: the Russians did Hungary all right.

But even though I was a very small boy at the time, I can tell you something very vivid in my mind. Keebah and I used to do the Picture Puzzle in the London Evening News, when we went to stay with my grandparents in Battersea. Keebah was a scientist, in the field of industrial chemistry, but this puzzle was no rocket science. We had nearly finished, but one clue at least was eluding us. There was a drawing of an actress, and the clue 'Betty _____". Keebah went to speak to my parents: "Is there an actress called something like Betty Grible, Betty Gruble?"

He wasn't joking. It was only in later years that I understood the expression which crossed my parents' faces in that moment.

Keebah never made it to Russia, but he was at some point planning a trip there, to the extent that he bought a sheaf of paper Roubles. For whatever reason, the trip never took place, and we put the Roubles on the bonfire fifty years or so later, having ascertained that they were literally not worth the paper they were printed on.

Great-Uncle Lionel, on the other hand, certainly did make it to Russia. His seminal 'Hunger and Love' was translated into the Russian by the 'hatchet-faced bitch' and published there; but Lionel saw Stalin's society at first hand, and was not slow to see some of the flaws. This topic, as so many others, is dealt with in Dr Shaw's awesomely wide-ranging blog:-
Dr Tony Shaw

I have already said, (see above post), that Lionel seemed to embrace totalitarianism while also being viscerally against it; and I would have liked to have had a discussion with him if only I could have got a word in edgeways, which would by no means have been guaranteed.

I never met the man.

But if you have a look at Dr Tony Shaw you will come a lot closer to doing so than I ever managed, and you might even discover some other surprising stuff along the way!