A year ago this week corybantic celebrations broke out on the announcement that Alan Shelley, co-proprietor of Bow Windows Bookshop, would not be retiring. Now his resolve is rewarded with his election as president of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association.
The correspondence between George Lyttelton and Rupert Hart-Davis was published as the 'Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters' (not 'I say, Rupert', as originally suggested). In the second of the six volumes Hart-Davis muses on whether to begin his speech to the annual dinner of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association by saying that as a child he thought 'antiquarian' meant 'very old', but that as a book buyer he had learnt that it meant 'very expensive'.
His sister, Deirdre, ran the Southover Gallery in Lewes from 1973 until 1987. One of her successors, the Thebes Gallery, is holding an exhibition of paintings and ceramics by the late Nerissa Garnett. Nerissa was one of four daughters of David and Angelica Garnett. David was Hart-Davis' first publishing partner. Angelica painted the signboard of a fox to hang over the office window; a reference to David Garnett's popular novel 'Lady into Fox'. She appears at the Charleston Festival on May 26th.
Sometimes these connections become a little hard to bear.
But to return to George Lyttleton. An entry in his commonplace book reads, 'Mayor of Lancashire town, presented with nude statues, protested. "Art is Art and nothing can be done to prevent it, but there is the Mayoress’ decency to be considered".' Echoes of Lewes and Rodin's 'Kiss'? With the annual lurgi of Artists' open houses laying waste to Brighton I think I know what the Mayor meant.