Remembered - Walter Kemsley

Martin Eve Remembered

Edited by Walter Kemsley

Seafarer Books 2013

First Published in 1999

Seafarer Books 2013

ISBN 978 1 906266 28 8

Dedicated to all the team of consultants, medical specialists, doctors, nurses, Marie Curie nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists who cared for Martin and made the last twelve years possible, especially:

Dr Norman Parker Consultant Haematologist

Dr John Scadding Consultant Neurologist

Dr Fiona C. Moore Consultant in Rehabilitation

Dr Nicholas Dodd Consultant Haematologist

Mr. Terry Mott Consultant Oncologist

Mr Simon Huddt Consultant Surgeon

Wendy Carragher Oncology Nurse

Jean Cass Hospice Nurse

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Grateful thanks to all those who have contributed to the writing and production of this story.

INTRODUCTION

When Martin Eve died in 1998 publishing lost a remarkable free spirit and the socialist-humanist cause a staunch advocate, who helped that cause by publishing the works of talented authors of different nationalities from such unlikely offices as a derelict warehouse and a former builders yard in what was the unfashionable docklands.

Martin Weston Eve was born in 1924 after his parents had settled at Orford on the Suffolk coast, and Orford was his home during boyhood and early manhood. His father, T.L.B Eve, a well-known yachtsman, came of Maldon merchant stock. Martins music-loving mother, who was partly of Hugenot descent, was a daughter of Dr. William Orange, C.B., the first deputy superintendent and second superintendent of Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. She was a Fabian Socialist, and after marriage was an active rural district councilor, following her pre-marriage career as a sanitary inspector and housing officer. Marins life showed his heritage from both his parents. Already a talented pianist and organist, he was to become, as Merlin Press, a publisher who sought to further Socialist aims for the betterment of mankind, and he brought to the readership of his Seafarer Books imprint a love of sailing and the sea, which developed from very early instruction by his father on the Ore and the Alde. His entry into publishing followed schooldays as a chorister at Winchester Cathedral and scholar at Bryanston, wartime services in the Royal Navy, and a Cambridge history degree. He founded Merlin Press in 1956 and added Seafarer Books in 1968. With a very small staff, and doing, as was necessary, everything himself from reading manuscripts to packing and delivering books by motorbike and even abroad by his old smack yacht he kept going as an independent publisher with a cause when publishing became increasingly absorbed by big business. And he managed this in later years in spite of crippling illness. His helpfulness, sincerity, good humour and understanding brought him a wide circle of friends in publishing, politics and sailing, and he won their admiration by his twelve-year fight against disease, which ended in his death in his native Suffolk in October, 1998.

This book is a collection of tributes to Martin written by family, friends, colleagues, comrades, and authors to celebrate a rich and varied life. The tributes have been assembled to follow the course of that life from its early years.

The book also includes his own account of the early years of Merlin Press: the completed part of a history begun in his last year after he had taken his work form London to the land of his roots.

Walter Kemsley

Brother-in-law

CONTENTS

Early Days

Pilgrims School , Anthony Caesar

Bryanston , Dr C.W.L. Smith

Wartime, Edward Fawcett, Karel Citroen

Cambridge Days

Dr Julian Tudor Hart

Dorothy Thompson

Family Recollectinos

Mary Kemsley

Christopher Eve

Catherine Eve

William Eve

Laurie Eve

Merlin Press: Early Years

Martin Eve

Ian Kiek

Ian Norrie

Socialist Register

Marion Kozak

Leo Panitch

Life at Merlin Press

Louis Mackay

Bill Norris

Tina Craig

Sarah Tisdall

Munro Moore

Aghdas Bidhendi

Natalie Jones

Merlin Authors

Gordon Leff

Istvn Mszros

Shelia Rowbotham

Francis Beckett

Adrian Hogben

CONTENTS (CONTD)

Seafarer Authors

Anthony Bailey

Henry Swain

Rayner Unwin

Seafaring Days

John Wainwright

Gill Jacobs

John Maxwell

Friends

Dr Michael Hathorn

Mary Hoseason

John Mahon

Drawing The Threads Together

Walter Kemsley

Dr John Scadding

Obituaries

Guardian, John Saville

Independent, David Musson

Bookseller, David Musson

East Anglian, Richard Smith

Gaffers Log, George Jago

Old Gaffers Association

Poetry Farewell

Walter Kemsley

EARLY DAYS

A FIFTY-YEAR GAP

ANTHONY CAESAR

Just before Christmas 1933 The Times newspaper published a splendid photograph of Winchester Cathedral choir in processional order in the beautiful retrochoir, supposedly on their way to sing the annual carol service.

In front of the sixteen choristers in their white surplices and ruffs, together with the six lay-clerks, the Precentor and the Sacrist, there were three young boys in purple gowns and Eton collars and facing them all was Dr Harold Rhodes, the organist and master of the choristers.

The three purple-clad boys were the Probationers hoping to qualify before too long as full choristers. The tallest was called Ollerenshaw, next to him was Caesar, and behind them was Eve - surnames only was the custom in those pre-war prep school days!

I had arrived at The Pilgrims' School, the Cathedral Choir School, for the summer term 1933 aged just nine and Martin followed in September. We must have struck up a good friendship during the following five years because I remember his kind and (so they seemed) elderly parents taking me out to lunch at the Guest House just below Westgate, where they were staying, on more than one occasion. And once, during a school holiday, probably in August 1937, I stayed at their home, Rosehill, in Orford and went sailing in their dinghy along the river Aide.

There were various highlights during those years, including an outing by boat to see the Silver Jubilee Naval review in the Solent in 1935; a choir singing-tour in Jersey and Guernsey, the Channel Islands belonging to the Diocese of Winchester; the Deanery Turkey Feast in the winter and the Strawberry Feast in the summer; the attendance at a service by the Duke and Duchess of York shortly before they became King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.

Most of the time, of course, we were hard at it in class-room, on playing field and in daily choir practices for the nine or ten services we sang every week for a good forty-two weeks each year, including staying at school over Christmas which was actually great fun.

I honestly cannot remember how good Martin was at work, or games, or music, but anyone who survived five years at The Pilgrims' in those days can't have been bad at any of them! I believe he made a few close friendships rather than a wider circle of acquaintances. In 1938 I departed for Cranleigh School and Martin for Bryanston and we soon lost touch.

Fifty years later, when I was working in London as Sub-Dean of H.M. Chapels Royal, Martin got in touch quite out of the blue and invited me to supper with Pat in their home in Savernake Road, NW3. It was wonderful to renew friendship after such a gap and to meet Pat for the first time.

Another ten years passed and then, as I began a holiday in East Anglia last August, I made it my first port of call to visit Martin and Pat in their home near Woodbridge. He and I enjoyed a good talk about many things of common interest and concern, alas for the last time, for he died eleven weeks later.