MK Today - Wednesday 8th February 2023

Could Milton Keynes be considered to be a City of Literature ?

My first reaction to such a question is to say No, it couldn’t. But let me explore a little more deeply.

Who is the most celebrated writer to be associated with Milton Keynes ? Well it aint me so we won’t go there !

I have often wondered in Lady Fanny Leon of Bletchley Park which was her home between 1883 and 1936 kept a diary. It’s the sort of thing she would have done but if she did I wonder what happened to it.

Ernest Cook, Headmaster of Bletchley Road School which later became Leon School kept a school log book, perhaps an alterative term for diary, in which he meticulously recorded the day to day activities of staff and pupils at Bletchley Road. I read page after page of his writing and shared such with my students when I worked at Leon.

This is a passage from Milton Keynes The City Of Legend where I have copied some of Headmaster Cook’s wartime entries.

October the 14th 1940 Air Raid Warning 10:50 AM   All Clear 11:10 AM  Air Raid Warning 11:20 AM   All Clear 11:30 PM  Air Raid Warning 12:35 PM  All Clear 2:05 PM

November the 6th 1940  Air Raid Warning 11:10 AM  All Clear 11:25 AM   Air Raid Warning 2:20 PM   All Clear 3:25 PM

January the 21st 1941 Air Raid Warning 10.23 AM   All Clear 10:47 AM   Air Raid  Warning 11:37 AM   All Clear 12:20 PM   Air Raid Warning 1:43 PM   All Clear 2:08 PM    Air Raid Warning 3:35 PM   All Clear 4:15 PM

And….

September 22nd1939 school reopened owing to the presence of two official evacuated schools from London. The Bletchley Senior School is meeting only from 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM 

September the 27th 1939 Mr J Haynes Assistant Secretary for Education visited the school. A conference was held between the heads of the Bletchley Schools and the evacuated London School to discuss the many problems arising from working in double sessions.

And edited by Your Truly for a chapter in Milton Keynes The City Of Legend:

The school cancelled its sports day scheduled for May 31st in fear for the worsening situation at Dunkirk. It must have been a terrible time as Britain prepared, after the fall of France, to stand alone.

On 12th June the Education Committee ordered the school be officially closed until further notice to facilitate additional preparations to receive more evacuees. But all the teachers continued to work with children attending on a voluntary basis. No less than 94% attendance is recorded for that week but very few classes were held. Instead to support of the government's dig for victory campaign every spare space within the school grounds was dug up and prepared for cultivation.

The headmaster recorded in the log book for the 17^th June 1940: Received circular letter 483/1940 this states that children should be encouraged to attend school as usual but the registers would not be marked.  The response from the children was very good. The normal timetable was worked as far as possible with exception that extra time was devoted to the gardens.

Harold Hepworth and the now legendary articles he wrote for the Bletchley and District Gazette are so often all these years later are frequently shared on social media.

In writing MK Today I am taking inspiration from Harold Hepworth, perhaps one day I will be able to match his high standard of journalism. Sadly neither Bletchley and its District nor anywhere in Milton Keynes has a publication of the quality Mr Hepworth wrote for.

Back to Bletchley Park but not to the days of Lady Leon, come with me to 1974 when Dennis Hamley was a tutor at the teacher training college located in the park and I was a student. Dennis Hamley is now a widely read author of books for children. No longer living in our City but when he did his home was on Walley Drive, Bletchley. Dennis Hamley tried hard to encourage me to write stories for children.

Who was the Chairman of Milton Keynes Development Corporation ?  Don’t you dare tell me you do not know !

John Jock Middleton Campbell, Baron Campbell of Eskan was born in 1912. In the early

stages of his career he took control of his family’s sugar estates, in Guyana. He became chairman of the company, Booker Brothers, McConnell and Co. in 1952. He was Chairman of Milton Keynes Development Corporation. NO, he didn’t keep a diary during his chairmanship.

Booker Brothers. McConnell and Co. The Booker Prize is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.  The Booker Prize was first awarded in 1969, two years after the founding of Milton Keynes.

Tom Maschler and Graham C Green came up with the idea for the prize and found backing from Booker McConnell. Ian Fleming of James Bond fame was a good friend of Booker and Milton Keynes Development Corporation Chairman Jock Campbell. Fleming died in 1964. Before his friend died, Campbell established an authors division within Booker McConnell and bought a 51% share in the profits of Fleming’s books. The Booker Author Division would go on to acquire rights of Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Harold Pinter and others.

Amazon began life as a book seller and publisher. My first book was published in 1992 and in September 1997 Amazon accepted me to its author’s list, My first published work was  The Story Of A Teenage Entrepreneur (FAILED). Did you know that Amazon sub-contracted the printing of books in its early UK days to a factory in Milton Keynes. I now have more than 120 books, e-books, short stories and essays published by Amazon.

In posing my opening question: Could Milton Keynes be considered to be a City of Literature ? I am including fiction, no-fiction and all genre where words are placed in a order to share thoughts from the writer.

I like to write fiction but as you know I have a passion for writing about Milton Keynes. Within such my mentor is Frank Markham and I am so proud to have met this incredible man when I was a teacher trainee student in Bletchley Park. His twin volume work published in the early 1970’s THE HISTORY OF MILTON KEYNES AND DISTRICT is compulsive reading. It took him more than twenty years to write.

Over decades I have said that no person should be allowed to serve on Milton Keynes Council without having read cover to cover Sir Frank Markham’s work. However, given the universal failure of Milton Keynes councillors to respond to letters and e-mails sent to them I do wonder if any of them can actually read or write !

Within MILTON KEYNES THE CITY OF LEGEND I suggest that Stony Stratford Library should be renamed The Frank Markham Library. Frank was a Stony Stratford man. I wrote to the library, I wrote to Stony Stratford Town Council, I wrote to the Member of Parliament for Stony Stratford. Did any of them reply ? DID THEY HECK !

If you take a song and remove the words you are in many cases left with an amazing piece of literature. I use the word amazing with purpose.  Which is the song that has been recorded by more other artists than any other ? AMAZING GRACE written by John Newton in Olney Milton Keynes. Elvis Presley The King of Rock and Roll recorded a truly beautiful version with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra as his backing group. Go to YouTube and you will find US president Barack Obama singing these Milton Keynes words.

Agatha Christie is the world’s best selling writer of all time. Tentative it may be but Jock Campbell linked her writing to Milton Keynes.

Within my writing I sometimes dream plots and characters, a few weeks ago I had a very

strange dream. No make that a crazy dream where my little grey cells slumbered well into excess.

In August 2022 I held a garden party where I gave away copies of my books to guests in exchange for donations to the childrens’ department at University Hospital Milton Keyes. It was a great success raising £330. I am not planning a similar event this year, 2023, but in my dream I did. I will now share my dream as the world’s best - selling author of all time came to Milton Keynes.

So let me set the scene. A beautiful summer’s day, birds are singing and the sun is shining through the trees. I am sitting on a garden bench when a lady I thought but was not sure I recognised came and sat beside me.

ME: Hello, welcome. Welcome to the garden party.

GUEST: So you are a writer Max ?

ME; Yes, Max is my pen name. My real name is David but my friends call me Dave.

GUEST: My husband’s name is Max and my name is Agatha.

ME; Agatha Christie ? Surely not, I thought I recognised you, what are you doing here in Milton Keynes ?

AGATHA: It was Milton Keynes that brought me here, I want to talk to you about your book Milton Keynes The City Of Legend.

ME: Oh ! You’ve read  it ?

AGATHA: I have David. (Emphasis on David and not Dave.)

ME: So the world’s best-selling author has read a book from the world’s lowest-selling writer. You were the one who bought it on Amazon. That’s all a bit embarrassing.

Somehow I do not think I will be finishing that piece of rubbish and adding it to my Amazon Bookshelf !

How many books has Agatha Christie sold ? In excess of two billion. Will anyone one day overtake that number. Well it won’t be me but wouldn’t it be nice if in one of our City’s school there is a young man or lady who will.