Sillitoe: Then and Now - Location One: Old Market Sqaure

“Market Square lights danced around him. Each pavement threw back the sound of his shoes walking. Draughts of beer and smoke-smells came out of pub doors...Full clouds drifting like an aerial continent of milk-white mountains above the summit of Castle Rock, a crowned brownstone shaggy lion-head slouching its big snout out of the city, poised as if to gobble up uncouth suburbs hemmed in by an elbow of the turgid Trent.”

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958)

The Sillitoe Tour, Then and Now, will take visitors to five key locations from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.  Location One is the old market square. Its theme is Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

James Walker:

The first location on our virtual tour through Alan Sillitoe’s Nottingham is Cecil Hewitt’s grandiose, Neo-Baroque show-piece Council House and its attendant Old Market Square. This space is where folk from Nottingham regularly meet up by either the left or the right lion. It has also been the site of mass demonstrations over the centuries.

Our first commissioned writer is Derrick Buttress, a contemporary of Alan Sillitoe, who will lead us through the decades leading up to 1958 through five essays exploring: Processions and parades; WWII and the arrival of G.I.s; VE Day; Childhood memories and the local characters who have populated this civic space.

Derrick Buttress was born in New Basford in 1932 and grew up learning about life on the terraced streets of Radford, Hyson Green and Broxtowe Estate. He would recollect these tough but enjoyable times in two memoirs, and three poetry collections published by Shoestring Press and various plays broadcast on radio and television. At the grand age of eighty he has just had his first short story collection published, Sing to Me.

We feel Derrick Buttress is an inspiration to all writers out there, not only in that he has been able to carve out a career by drawing on his own personal circumstances, and therefore validating the voice of his community, but in starting his writing career in his forties. The Space is a new multimedia platform that promises to transform the media and arts for the 21^st century. What better way, then, to embrace this philosophy, than ensuring an eighty year-old writer is there to usher in this new and exciting digital era.

Don’t let the literati grind you down

Each location on our trail has a particular theme inspired by Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Arthur Seaton, the defiant anti-hero at the heart of the novel, is suspicious of all forms of authority and is determined to live his life on his terms. He lives by the personal credo of ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down’. James Walker, who is editing together the Sillitoe Space project, has adapted this theme to see how Alan Sillitoe and their first commissioned writer, Derrick Buttress have challenged the literary establishment through their representations of working class people. Indeed, such was the shock at the success of Sillitoe’s debut novel that his former classmates from a Radford elementary school were convinced it must have been written by Alan’s wife, who, apparently, had been to a university…

Don’t let the bastards grind you down

Our second commissioned writer for this first event is Christy Fearn, a local historical fiction writer and Byron expert. Christy is currently writing a novel about the Stocking-knitters’ demonstration of 1811/2. Saturday night is significant in her novel as this is when the demonstrators make banners to be shown in Market Square the following Sunday Morning.  

The most recent protesters to Market Square were the Occupy Movement. Christy went out and spoke to them to see if she could find a correlation between their cause, that of the Stocking-Knitters, and Arthur Seaton’s mistrust of all forms of authority. We would like to continue this debate with you via Facebook as well as sharing your Market Square memories with us via Flickr. Selected content from this will be published at the end of October in a physical book with a digital heart. 

Sillitoe: Then and Now is part of a series of projects put together by the Alan Sillitoe Committee, a voluntary organisation raising funds to have a statue of the writer commemorated in his home city. Please support us by spreading the word however you can and by joining us on The Space.

Editor: James Walker

james@jameskwalker.co.uk

Technical Editor: Paul Fillingham

paul@thinkamigo.com

For contact details of commissioned writers, please contact James.