Key counterculture figure, bookshop manager, editor, publisher, author, music journalist, archivist, biographer: all of this, and more, is Barry Miles, or just ‘Miles’, as he is better known.

His archive, acquired by the British Library in 2013 and recently catalogued, is a rich and unique source of information not only to anyone interested in Miles himself, but also to those researching the Beat Generation, and the ‘60s and ‘70s culture and music.

Miles organised and arranged his papers thoroughly. Divided into correspondence, projects files, folders relating to his publications, and reference material, the archive reflects all stages of Miles’s life and career, from his time as a student at Gloucestershire College of Art in the early ‘60s to the present day.

At the centre of the London underground scene, as manager of Better Books, co-founder of Indica Gallery and Bookshop and International Times (IT), and organiser of many events, Miles developed an extensive network of contacts, within and outside the UK, many of whom were also good friends. Jim Haynes, Peter Asher, Pete Brown, Victor Bockris, Caroline Coon, Piero Heliczer, Richard Neville, Gordon Ball, Simon Vinkenoog, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Urban Gwerder, to name but a few of his correspondents.

Flyer on Indica Books limited headed paper advertising The Ginsbergs at the ICA, a recording of the reading given by Allen and his father on 22 August 1967. Reproduced with kind permission from Barry Miles.

With the same people, Miles collaborated on numerous adventures: there are over 100 files in the collection relating to projects in which he was involved, for example his work as editor of Horde and Long Hair, as London correspondent of East Village Other, as co-founder of Lovebooks, Miles, Asher and Dunbar Ltd., and ECAL, as Time Out editor, as manager of Zapple, and as music journalist for New Musical Express. The files include letters, publicity material, press cuttings, newsletters, photographs, reports, notes, press releases, events programmes, draft articles and unpublished material. 

 

Trial proof of the cover of Long Hair magazine, Lovebooks second poetry publication, 1965. Miles edited the issue and contributed to the cover drawing. Reproduced with kind permission from Barry Miles.

The first interview Miles did, published in IT on 16 January 1967, was with Paul McCartney, a friend of Miles - the two had met through Peter Asher, whose sister, Jane, was Paul’s girlfriend at the time. Later interviews that Miles did with, amongst others, John Lennon, George Harrison, Mick Jagger, Ed Sanders, and The Clash, feature in the archive, either on tape or as transcripts.

After a period as a freelance editor for Omnibus Press, Miles became a prolific writer, publishing 50 books, some of which have been translated into foreign languages. Not to mention the over 400 articles he wrote and his numerous contributions to other authors’ books. For his writing, Miles conducted meticulous research and many interviews, as it emerges from the number of research files and tapes he produced. Also included amongst the material relating to his publications are various drafts, notes, correspondence with editors, letters from fans and colleagues, publicity material, royalty statements, press reviews, and cover proofs.

Handwritten notes by Barry Miles, on airline napkin. The material from these notes was used for many articles written by Miles, for magazines such as International Times, Hot Ratz, Changes. Reproduced with kind permission from Barry Miles.

His first ‘proper book’ was the biography of Allen Ginsberg, which took him five years to complete and for which Miles recorded 40 tapes of interviews with Ginsberg, his friends and family, now part of the British Library sound collection.

Biographies of other influential figures in Miles’s life followed including William Burroughs, Paul McCartney, Frank Zappa, and Charles Bukowski. His two memoirs, In the Sixties and In the Seventies, together with his London Calling, are detailed accounts of the London underground life and his major and minor players.

Included in the archive are also some rare, limited, special or signed editions of Miles publications, including an unauthorised reprint of his article 1970 ‘The Rebirth of Joy’, the 1973 catalogue of Lilia Aaron exhibition in Switzerland, a 1963 clipping of Miles's article How To Undress a Painting in Slate 2, the magazine of Gloucestershire College of Art, and a typed copy of Horde number 1, 1964.

Unused ticket for Poets of the World / Poets of Our Time, Albert Hall poetry reading, 11 June 1965. Miles was involved in the organisation of the event.

Miles created files of reference material for items he used most frequently, mainly for publications or exhibitions. Amongst these are a Better Books paper bag, designed by John Sewell; an unused ticket for Poets of the World/Poets of Our Time, the first large-scale Beat generation reading in Europe at the Albert Hall poetry reading, on 11 June 1965, which Miles helped organise; Indica Gallery and Books photographs and flyers; and a leaflet for the party at the Roundhouse for the launch of International Times, 15 October 1966.

A few items from the Barry Miles archive, including a leaflet for The Roxy club and the first interview with the Clash, will feature in the forthcoming free exhibition Punk 1976-78, which opens on the 13th May 2016.

The catalogue of the Barry Miles archive is available online from Explore Archives and Manuscripts.

by Silvia Galotti, Manuscripts Cataloguer

Hamlet (1.3.73)

If Shakespeare had taken up the same trade as his father, Shakespeare in Ten Acts could well have been called ‘Shakespeare in Ten Catwalks’ for he may have had a successful career in the fashion industry…  so to speak. John Shakespeare by trade was a‘’whittawer’’ [someone who turned hide into leather], glover and also a "brogger” [an unlicensed wool dealer]. Records show he was found guilty for illegally dealing in wool and eventually lost the family inheritance. 

Early modern England marked a period of extreme style, when apparel made a transition into ‘fashion’. Dress, hair and cosmetics were employed to contort the body, creating dramatic silhouettes demonstrated par excellence by Queen Elizabeth. There is no doubt that dress held substantial power within society during this time, and this did not go unrecognised by the bard. In 1864, the London tailor E Moses noted:

“Shakespeare too well appreciated the importance of all external things and outward appearances, as emblematic of the unseen spirit, to deem it a profanation of the poet’s art to embody allusions to the subject of clothes in his majestic and immortal verse.”

The "Hardwick Hall" portrait of Elizabeth 1 of England, circa 1599, courtesy of Wikicommons.

Shakespeare’s extraordinary observations of the society of his age are communicated through the plays. It is no surprise then that these works are drenched in references to fashion and dress.  The survival of substantial evidence regarding early productions is meagre. However, the lines of dialogue are the very references which call into reflection the importance of costume.  Moreover, given the stringent hierarchy of style during the society of that age, audiences would have understood the role of garments to a character’s role. Changes in costume could construct a character, progress action, reflect society and manipulate perceived values.

Queen Elizabeth I

During the Elizabethan era, dress was a powerful element in the social structure. The famous portrait of Queen Elizabeth by Nicholas Hilliard shows her as the faerie queen, wearing veil gauze edged with lace pointed at the hairline and wired to wings at the back of the head. Consider this theatrical display by the queen, in comparison with the headdress worn by Vivien Leigh featured in the exhibition. While this piece was made using inexpensive materials, it is reminiscent of fashionable Elizabethan headdresses, resembling the original faerie queen Elizabeth herself.

Detail of: The Rainbow Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, circa 1600-1602, attributed to Issac Oliver (1556-1617) and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1561-1636), in the collection of the Marquess of Salisbury, on display at Hatfield House, courtesy of Wikicommons.

Detail of: Vivien Leigh (as Titania) from A Midsummer Night's Dream at The Old Vic Theatre, 1937, photograph by J W Debenham, courtesy of the Mander and Mitchenson collection at the University of Bristol and ARENApal www.arenapal.com

“Clothes maketh the man” [except when he’s a woman]

Theatre allowed actors to dress outside of their rank and gender. As such the stage was a transgressive space. Legally men could wear women’s clothes, but not vice versa. This is acknowledged in the section of the exhibition ‘the First Women to act Shakespeare’, which features early female actresses; Sarah Siddons, Charlotte Cushman, Dora Jordan and Mary Frith, the latter of which  was arrested for wearing male clothing on stage! Contemporary audiences are familiar with seeing actresses play male roles, for example Maxine Peak playing Hamlet, Fiona Shaw playing Richard II, but it was these early actresses who began forging the space for them.

Engraving of Charlotte and Susan Cushman in Romeo and Juliet, presumably 1846. Courtesy of Theatrical Portrait Prints (Visual Works) of Women (TCS 45). Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

The exhibition also highlights Peter Brook’s audacious production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1970. This production stripped back elaborate set design, while costume was pared down to unisex minimalist dress which visually neutralised all connotations of gender.

Photo by Reg Wilson © Royal Shakespeare Company. Re-produced with kind permission of the Royal Shakespeare Company

Costume, dialogue and the sex of the actor operate as elements of the plays which can often be overlooked. In Much ado About Nothing, Beatrice dismisses beardless males for looking like women:  “what should I do with? Dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentle lady?”(2.1. 29-30). The lack of facial hair is also mentioned in Hamlet, when he doubts his courage against a beardless face [signifying a woman] and calling into question his masculinity.

A 'beardless' Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, circa 1885-1900, courtesy of Wikicommons.

Hamlet’s inner turmoil then is within the dialogue and directly linked to how he looks. As early as 1776 prints exist showing Hamlet dressed in fashionable attire. In the most recent production of Hamlet, staged by the Barbican, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Prince Hamlet sports a Ziggy Stardust T-shirt. For a play about loss of belief, a man whose internalized sense of self is in flux, a play about ghosts, a character not of this world, how perfect that David Bowie made an appearance to modernize the role of costume and interpretation.

We now live in a time without Bowie & Shakespeare, but what remains are the enduring works and their relevance to the world. The semiotics of fashion and costuming choices are not inconsequential to these works or interpretations. The plays themselves are in fact littered with references to fashion and dress. Costume functions on many levels within the dramatic space, functioning not least as an agitator of authority, as Bowie and Shakespeare knew all too well.  

by Rachel Brett, Reference Specialist

The British Library's current exhibition Shakespeare in Ten Acts is a landmark exhibition on the performances that made an icon, charting Shakespeare’s constant reinvention across the centuries and is open until Tuesday 6th September 2016. Whether you’re a student, teacher, researcher, or simply a lover of literature, our new online learning resource Discovering Literature: Shakespeare will encourage critical thinking and independent learning to enrich your understanding of all-things Shakespeare.

 

Bibliography

Fashion in the time of William Shakespeare Downing, Sarah Jane, Oxford : Shire Publications, 2014 YC.2015.a.13081

Costuming the Shakespearean stage : visual codes of representation in early modern theatre and culture / Robert I. Lublin. Farnham : Ashgate, c2011.  YC.2011.a.13726

The Norton Shakespeare : based on the Oxford edition / Stephen Greenblatt. New York ; London : W. W. Norton, c2008. YC.2009.a.9148

Costumes and scripts in the Elizabethan theatres.   Jean MacIntyre, Edmonton : University of Alberta Press, 1992. Shelfmark(s):   Document Supply 92/23467

Playgoing in Shakespeare's London / Andrew Gurr. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1987. Shelfmark(s):   Document Supply 87/18040 General Reference Collection YH.1987.b.337

Shakespeare after theory / David Scott Kasten. New York : Routledge, 1999. Shelfmark(s):   Document Supply m00/25609

Costume in the Theatre. [With plates and illustrations.]James Laver, 1899-1975 London : George G. Harrap, 1964. Shelfmark(s): General Reference Collection 07812.ggg.70. Document Supply W13/1725

Shakespeare in art. Paintings, drawings and engravings devoted to Shakespearean subjects. [London]: Arts Council, 1964. Shelfmark(s): General Reference Collection W.P.12368/620

Shakespeare and the Artist. William Moelwyn MERCHANT London : Oxford University Press, 1959. Shelfmark(s): General Reference Collection 011768.pp.2. Document Supply Wq1/941

The Tercentenary; or the three hundredth birthday of William Shakespeare. Author: E. Moses & Son. London, 1864. Shelfmark(s): General Reference Collection 11765.c.39.

The diary of Philip Henslowe, from 1591 to 1609 ... / edited by J. Payne Collier.Author: Philip Henslowe, -1616. [London] : Shakespeare Society, 1845. Series: Shakespeare society. Publications, no. 28 Shelfmark(s): Document Supply 8254.586300

 

Recently the British Library hosted an event to mark the publication of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid, published by Faber. Poets Jo Shapcott, Tom Paulin, Matthew Hollis, and Simon Armitage gave readings from the work, offered insights to Heaney’s influence on their own work, and read much-loved poems from Heaney’s celebrated collections. The translation, which details Aeneas’s descent into the Underworld, is the last collection from the Nobel Laureate, who died in 2013. Here Richard Price, Head of Contemporary British Collections, reflects on two meetings he had with the Laureate at the Library.

Seamus Heaney at the University College Dublin, February 11, 2009, By Sean O'Connor [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I’m lucky enough to have met Seamus Heaney a couple of times, as part of my job here at the British Library. My first encounter was when he had just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was giving a lecture for the Library on the poetry of Robert Burns, an important influence on Ulster poets in the nineteenth century and perhaps still to this day.

Those were in the days of the Round Reading Room in the British Museum when I was a junior curator in the Library there. He had a little time before the event so before he took to the lectern, I met him with my then colleague Mary Doran, the Curator of Modern Irish Collections, and we ushered him into an anteroom.

We had recently acquired a very rare item relating to Heaney’s early days of writing and were excited about what his reaction might be. It was the Hilary Term 1961 issue of the magazine Gorgon (Hilary Term is the second term, at the start of the calendar year). He had been an assistant editor of the magazine as a student at Queen’s University, Belfast and this was the last issue he was involved in. Unusually, he supplied his own, extra, editorial.

 

Gorgon, Hilary Term Issue 1961. British Library shelfmark: Cup.410.f.750

It was quite something to be able to show the new Nobel Laureate this early piece of his poetry activism, a slim mimeographed magazine, crammed with poems and articles Heaney had been involved in selecting (the main editor, Pat Roche, makes a point in his editorial that the assistant editors had taken a particularly active role in the process).

Even so, the mere fact of Heaney’s involvement magazine wasn’t why we were so excited: rather, it was because of the dramatic way in which Heaney signed off his editorial. “I am not an ex-editor of Gorgon but something (I have convinced myself) more despicable,” he writes in his last sentence of the editorial, “an ex-poet.”

An extract from Seamus Heaney’s editorial in the 1961 issue of Gorgon in which he signs off as an ‘ex-poet’

What would the elder, feted, famed, Nobel prize winning, poet say to that?

He laughed, of course.

I think in that chuckle there was an affection for his younger self and for the earnest activity of all poets, young or otherwise. The high stakes of poetry, its solemnities, its purposefulness, even in humour, is particularly felt. Five years later, Heaney would publish Death of a Naturalist to worldwide acclaim. As well the first edition of Death of A Naturalist, Faber, 1966, the Library has sound recordings of him from this time and later, e.g. from our British Council collection.

Image from a handbook issued by the British Council: Catalogue of Tape Recordings (November 1974).

 

I suppose all poets are like the “young bloods” he describes in the opening of The Aeneid VI, making quick landfall, “vaulting quickly out” with their urgent poetry, metaphorically in search of flints for fire or simply to stand amazed at new rivers.

The cover of Seamus Heaney's Aeneid Book VI, with kind permission of Faber & Faber

The second time I met Seamus Heaney, sadly the last time, was in late 2003. It was in our new building at St Pancras – Heaney had been viewing the Ted Hughes exhibition I had curated because he was going to give a reading of some of Hughes’ poems for the launch. We met for a cup of coffee with Hughes’s widow, Carol. We were talking about Hughes of course, who had been an early inspiration and then a great friend to Heaney.

Then, to my surprise, Heaney began to talk about Robert Henryson, the fifteenth century Scots Makar, the name given to a Scottish poet of national standing. He said he had started to translate, or retell, Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid. This would clearly be one of Heaney’s present-in-the-past projects which followed on from his acclaimed version of Beowulf, in which contemporary battles, and contemporary hubris, seem pre-echoed. As with Edwin Morgan’s translation of Beowulf, which Morgan had described as his ‘Second World War poem’, there is a feeling in Heaney’s translations that in such epic translations the present is being addressed by the past.

 

“Fair Cresseid” © Hughie O’Donoghue, painting reproduced as a tipped-in plate, from Seamus Heaney’s Testament of Cresseid, Enitharmon Editions, 2004, used with kind permission of the publisher and artist

Testament of Cresseid is a sorrowful story about the fate of the once beautiful, vivacious Cresseid, separated from her lover Troilus. For lamenting her life intemperately she is punished by the gods with disfigurements akin to leprosy (though if anything sounds intemperate to me, those punishments do!). Years after they have parted, Troilus recognises her but does not reveal his identity, instead giving a large amount of money to the leper colony. Cresseid, realising who her patron was, dies in grief.

Henryson is in a sense writing a sequel to Chaucer’s poem Troilus and Criseyde, and is also part of a great Troilus literary chain, since Shakespeare, in one of his more bitter plays, would later dramatise the story in Troilus and Cressida.

“Leper house (gate”), © Hughie O’Donoghue, painting reproduced as a tipped-in plate, from Seamus Heaney’s Testament of Cresseid, Enitharmon Editions, 2004, used with kind permission of the publisher and artist

Heaney’s Beowulf had only recently been published when we met that second time. Famously, the British Library holds the original Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, and in fact, now, the manuscript of Heaney’s translation, too. Manuscripts were the link for the Henryson poem, too: Heaney had seen a Henryson manuscript at the Library and this had inspired him, after long admiring the poet, to render Henryson from Middle Scots into modern English.

Heaney’s Testament would later appear in a beautiful artist’s book with images by Hughie O’Donoghue, published by Enitharmon (British Library shelfmark: LD.31.b.557), as well as in a more commercial publication five years later.

 “Cresseid” © Hughie O’Donoghue, painting reproduced as a tipped-in plate, from Seamus Heaney’s Testament of Cresseid, Enitharmon Editions, 2004, used with kind permission of the publisher and artist

As we talked, Heaney emphasised how the Makar’s distinctly moral vision appealed to him: there is a teacher-like morality in Henryson he especially admired. As he talked I thought I detected, what, a hesitation? Knowing me as a Scottish poet, was he testing me, about Scottish reaction to ‘versioning’ this apparently sacrosanct text?

No, the moment passed, and I am still not sure if anything happened at all. In retrospect, I doubt he was worried. Henryson, Beowulf, Virgil, are each surely a gift to the world, in the original or in its re-transmission, and there would surely have been little reason for qualm.

“Where is your garden?”, © Hughie O’Donoghue, painting reproduced as a tipped-in plate, from Seamus Heaney’s Testament of Cresseid, Enitharmon Editions, 2004, used with kind permission of the publisher and artist

Seamus Heaney highlights in the British Library include

• Gorgon, Hilary Term 1961. Queen’s University literary magazine for which Heaney was an assistant editor.
• Eleven poems (Belfast: Festival Publications, [1965]), X.909/37714. Heaney’s first collection, followed in 1966 by Death of a Naturalist (Faber).
• Many sound recordings from 1966 onwards, including some made by our own curators.
• Beowulf, typewritten drafts of Heaney’s translation with MS annotations; 1995. Add MS 78917
• 'Forecast', a typewritten poem (inspired by the Shipping Forecast) with autograph annotations, extensively re-worked and edited. Presented by the author; 3 April 1998, Add MS 74089
• Correspondence between Ted Hughes and Heaney, 1991-1998 (Add MS 88918/35/12)
• Testament of Cresseid, with images by Hughie O’Donoghue, Enitharmon Editions, 2004, LD.31.b.557.

Laura Farnworth on the creation and development of ‘Calculating Kindness’

Laura is a director and theatre maker, Artistic Director of Undercurrent, and Associate Director of Shared Experience. This is an edited transcript of a talk from the North American Panel session as part of History Day at Senate House Library, 27 November 2015

_______________________________________________________________

For Undercurrent I am currently developing our new show, Calculating Kindness, which is based on the life of American evolutionary geneticist George Price, 1922 - 1975.

Price is hardly known outside of evolutionary biology and yet his story illuminates important ideas and questions about how we behave and understand ourselves.

The development of this show brought me to the British Library, where his collection of manuscripts is kept, and also that of his collaborators, William Hamilton and John Maynard Smith.

First let me tell you a little about George Price.

George Price, courtesy of Wiki Commons

Price was an eccentric American who arrived in London in 1968 hungry to make his name.

He spent weeks visiting thirteen different libraries - until he stumbled across a paper by William Hamilton, nicknamed “second Darwin”, that discussed several aspects of social behaviour, one of which was that we are genetically predisposed to be kindest to our kin.

If this were true, Price found the idea bleak. Did real selfless kindness exist?

An outsider to evolutionary theory he taught himself the basics of evolutionary genetics, and ended up formulating an equation widely acknowledged as the mathematical explanation for the evolution of altruism - something science had been trying to do since Darwin. His equation proved Hamilton right.

The Price Equation was so extraordinary that University College London gave Price an honorary position within ninety minutes of him walking in off the street.

Up until then, Price had been a militant atheist. But writing the equation had a strange affect on him. He started to look at all the coincidences that had happened in his life. Incidental things, like he’d had several girlfriends called Anne, phone numbers, calendar dates. He worked out the probability of each coincidence. He finally worked out the probability of him being the man to write the equation. The outcome was so remote, that he concluded it could only be a gift from God and he converted to Christianity overnight.

From then on he started to apply mathematics to the Bible - aiming to decode the true meaning of the Bible.

He then underwent what he referred to in his letters as a ‘real conversion’. Jesus appeared to him. He understood it as a message that decoding the Bible was not important, what really mattered was helping people.

Price then embarked on a radical quest towards altruism - helping complete strangers. He would go to extraordinary lengths, giving away everything he had, including his flat, which he opened up to homeless people, until he became homeless himself.

The show weighs up the question: was Price mentally ill, or consumed by a spiritual desire to disprove his own theory: that man is only kind to his own kin?

Three years after writing the equation, Price was discovered in a squat having had slit his throat. Seven men attended his funeral - five homeless and two of Britain’s greatest evolutionary biologists, William Hamilton and John Maynard Smith.

Research begins to inform the show…

Calculating Kindness is a completely new show, developed from scratch and so the process began with research.

Scene from 'Calculating Kindness' © Photographer Richard Davenport.

To begin with I mainly focused on The George Price Collection. What I found were personal letters, grant applications, manuscripts and pieces of work.

Having been slightly obsessed with Price for so long, to now hold his letters in my hand I must admit gave me goose bumps. Often it was the very ‘normal’ letters that evoked the most for me. Such as letters to his daughters ‘Dear Babies’ from when he first arrived in London, stories about favourite Indian Restaurants and freezing cold libraries.

What started to happen was that Price began to come to life for me - with each letter I got to know him a little more. His scientific writings and grant applications I understood less but with each reading I would pick up the odd gem, even if it might be a pencil annotation that gave me a clue to what he might be thinking. I started to understand better what preoccupied Price, how he thought about things, and what was important to him. This research was invaluable and has become the bedrock of all the development work we have done over the last few years. It is material I keep coming back to, and I find that as my understanding of Price’s science improves, so I see new things in his writings, which then help me make the work stronger.

Scene from 'Calculating Kindness' © Photographer Richard Davenport.

To be scientifically accurate and sensitive to Price has always been paramount to the development of this show. Price wrote a long letter to Hamilton describing an equation he had developed to address the issues of life on earth, versus the afterlife, from both the perspective of an atheist and a Christian. He then gave extensive, very complex, reasons to justify his belief about life on earth being equivalent to an examination. This became one of the main access points into George’s state of mind. My conversations with Dr Isabel Valli, from the Institute of Psychiatry, based on this research, finally helped me begin to connect seemingly contradictory aspects of Price’s character together.

More recently, I have been lucky enough to receive the help of Rachel Foss, Jonathan Pledge and Cara Rodway from the British Library. They granted me access to Hamilton’s collection that is otherwise not open to the public. Here I found some real gems, several letters between Hamilton, and Price’s brother, and daughters, following George’s suicide. Suddenly, here was new information about conversations I did not know had happened, and fond reflections of what they thought of Price. I almost missed it, but on a torn scrap of paper, with faint pencil markings, I realised I was looking at Hamilton’s annotations about Price’s inquest, where he considered Price’s very brief suicide notes. These moments help me feel closer to Price and all the more compelled to tell his story.

 

Scene from 'Calculating Kindness' © Photographer Richard Davenport.

When Price died, Hamilton was called to his squat to tidy up his papers. Hamilton sent some of his manuscripts to the British Library; and the rest back to Price’s daughters in America. I’d like to finish with a quote from one of Hamilton’s letters, that he wrote after clearing Price’s squat, that for me sums up rather well my own experience of researching Price.

‘I regard his ideas as of such originality and of such significance for evolutionary theory that I believe that some time some one may think it worthwhile to find out something more about him and wish to go through his letters and papers with some care - - and of course the strange life he has led for the past few years makes it quite a story.’

'Calculating Kindness' is on at the Camden People's Theatre until 16th April 2016.

See the 'Calculating Kindness' website for details of post-discussion talks, including one featuring British Library curators.

Read more about the development of this production here: Science and Art in the Rehearsal Room

All images used with kind permission of Undercurrent UK.