Forty years ago, on 30 March 1979, the Conservative MP Airey Neave was killed in a car bomb attack as he drove out of the House of Commons car park. He is remembered for the way he died, but also as a war hero who had escaped from Colditz and  as the man who organised Margaret Thatcher’s successful campaign to become Leader of the Conservative Party in February 1975, subsequently becoming Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Meeting of the Shadow Cabinet c. 1977. Airey Neave second from the left. Photograph by Tom Blau, copyright The Parliamentary Archives

However what is rarely remembered about Neave is his long-standing parliamentary interest in science and technology.

Neave was familiar with the world of scientists from childhood. His father Sheffield Neave was an eminent entomologist whose work as editor of the Nomenclator Zoologicus is remembered in this clip from an interview with Neave’s cousin Julius.

Sheffield Neave, Secretary of the Royal Entomological Society 1918-1933, President 1934-35. Copyright The Royal Entomological Society

Julius Neave describes Sheffield Neave (C409/34/03)

When elected as MP for Abingdon in a 1953 by-election, Neave became responsible for the interests of the many research scientists who lived in his constituency. They worked at a range of public and privately-owned scientific research establishments in the area. These included the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE), the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory, the Culham Laboratory for fusion research, the Esso Research Centre, the Hydraulics Research Station, and two Agricultural Research Council stations. Throughout his time at Westminster, right up until the week before his death, Neave was corresponding on their behalf with Ministers and trade unions on issues such as pay and manpower cuts.¹

John Lyons, a union negotiator for AERE staff, remembers meeting Neave at Harwell and again when giving evidence to a 1972 select committee inquiry on science policy.²

John Lyons describes Airey Neave (C1495/08/05)

The inquiry was run by the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, of which Neave had been a member since it was set up in early 1967.³ Neave was regarded as a member of the parliamentary ‘science elite’,⁴ his specialist status strengthened through his role as a legal adviser to an industrial firm that manufactured equipment for nuclear reactors.

He actively supported calls for parliamentary reform during the early 1960s, in part because he sought an improvement in MPs’ ability to scrutinise scientific and technical issues. He helped write a 1963 Conservative Political Centre (CPC) pamphlet that advocated moving detailed business from the floor of the House to standing committees,⁵ and belonged to a Parliamentary and Scientific Committee group that recommended a select committee would improve parliamentary control over scientific and technological policy. As a member of the Commons Library Committee, he supported changes that brought two science graduates onto the library staff in 1966.⁶

By 1967 he was considered enough of an authority to be invited by political scientist Professor Bernard Crick to discuss parliamentary procedure on air and to write another CPC pamphlet 'Control by committee'.

Conservative Political Centre pamphlet, 1968

Towards the end of the 1960s his opinion was being sought within the Conservative Research Department on developing policy regarding “certain criteria on which a new Government on taking office could review Government Research Establishments.”⁷ Neave pointed out that one question should be whether the establishment functions were “proper functions for government … and would they be better done in industry under contract?”

A review of government research establishments was soon underway after the 1970 Conservative victory. The resulting Rothschild Report,⁸ with its recommendation that government-funded research be conducted on a “customer-contractor principle”, caused such consternation among the scientific community that it immediately became the subject of the inquiry to which John Lyons and the report’s author Lord Rothschild gave evidence.

As a member and then chair of the Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, Neave was dealing with topics such as defence research, the UK’s nuclear reactor programme and coastal pollution, engaging with many scientists who both supplied evidence or acted as special advisers to the committee. Arthur Palmer, the committee’s first chair, wrote that “one outstanding gain from the existence and activity of the committee has been the steady building up of a network of connections, both personal and corporate, with industry, with leading scientific and engineering personalities and with the specialist journals.”⁹

Frank Land, an expert in information systems, was one of those personalities, and explains how he contributed to an inquiry on the prospects of the UK computer industry.¹⁰

Frank Land on being a select committee adviser (C1379/17/13)

Neave was a pro-active member, arranging for fellow members of sub-committee D to take part in a two-day computer course at Imperial College in January 1970.¹¹

On 3 May 1971, Neave was in the chair when Margaret Thatcher, Secretary of State for Education and Science, gave evidence to the committee on the research council system.¹² Opinions on how government should fund scientific research were fluid at that stage, so it is unclear to what extent Thatcher and Neave agreed on developments in policy.¹³ She had begun to contemplate “fundamental change”, while Neave expressed conviction in a New Scientist interview that research councils should retain control of their budgets, and he made known to Cabinet his criticism of the Rothschild report the following year.¹⁴

However there is no doubt that Thatcher and Neave shared a delight in the aspirational, ultramodern surroundings of scientific research, evident from the photos of Neave escorting her on a successful visit to Harwell in September 1973.

He remained a member of the Select Committee on Science and Technology until 25 February 1975, resigning within weeks of Thatcher’s election as Leader of the Conservative Party to lead her private office and take up his Shadow Cabinet appointment. However he continued to see value in using science to promote Thatcher at home and abroad, suggesting to the FCO that Thatcher could include a visit to “some big scientific or industrial project” on her visit to the USA in September 1975.

If Airey Neave had lived to serve in Thatcher’s government he would have brought an informed view to discussions about Conservative science policy. Even more likely would have been his disappointment with the 1979 reorganisation of the select committee system that saw science, education and the arts covered by just one select committee, diminishing MPs’ ability to scrutinise science for more than a decade until a separate Science and Technology Committee was reinstated in 1992.

Blogpost by Emmeline Ledgerwood (@EmmeLedgerwood), AHRC collaborative doctoral student with the University of Leicester and the British Library Oral History department. Her PhD research is looking at governments’ attitudes to the management and funding of scientific research, 1970-2005.

---

¹ AN/110 Civil Service: Unions, Pay etc., Papers of Airey Neave, Parliamentary Archives.
² Science and Technology Committee, Research and Development: Minutes of Evidence and Appendices, 12 July 1972, HC 375 1971-72.
³ Science and Technology Committee, First Special Report, 1 Feb 1967, HC 330 1966-67.
⁴ N. J. Vig and S. A. Walkland, ‘Science Policy, Science Administration and Parliamentary Reform’, Parliamentary Affairs, 19 (3), (1966), p. 284.
⁵ Conservative Political Centre, Change or decay: Parliament and government in our industrial society, (1963).
⁶ AN/337, Library Committee (House of Commons), Papers of Airey Neave, Parliamentary Archives.
⁷ Letter to Ernest Marples, 16 May 1969. AN/303, Conservative Party Public Sector Research Unit, Papers of Airey Neave, Parliamentary Archives.
⁸ The Organisation and Management of Government R. and D., A Report by Lord Rothschild, the Head of the Central Policy Review Staff, in A Framework for Government Research and Development Cmnd 4814, (1971).
⁹ Arthur Palmer, ‘The Select Committee on Science and Technology’ in Alfred Morris, ed., The Growth of Parliamentary Scrutiny by Committee, (1970), pp. 15-30.
¹⁰ Science and Technology Committee, The Prospects for the UK Computer Industry in the 1970s, 20 Oct 1971, HC 621-I 1970-71.
¹¹ Circular from the Select Committee Clerk, 12 Dec 1969. HC/CP/2800, Parliamentary Archives.
¹² Science and Technology Committee, Research Councils, 21 July 1971, HC 522 1970-71.
¹³ Jon Agar, ‘Thatcher, Scientist’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 65, no. 3 (2011), p. 224.
¹⁴ Philip J. Aylett, Thirty Years of Reform: House of Commons Select Committees, 1960-1990, (unpublished PhD thesis, Queen Mary University of London, 2015), p. 146.

This week's selection comes from Camille Johnston, Oral History Assistant Archivist.

This week we’re travelling back to 1950s London, where a young Peter Blake was learning to draw. Peter Blake is an English Pop artist who famously co-created the cover art for the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In the 1950s he was a student at the Royal College of Art with Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff.

Peter Blake and Richard Smith (right), as Royal College of Art students c. 1956. Robert Buhler, Courtesy Royal College of Art Archive. Image not licensed for reuse

In this clip from his life story interview, Peter Blake conjures up his memories of the busy life drawing room. In the life drawing room you might find artists sitting on 'donkeys' and there would be at least 15 life models – each surrounded by a group of students jostling for space. Some artists took up more space than others, and Blake picks out the artists that one would avoid... As well as capturing the characters of his fellow students, Blake gives a vivid account of his tutors, and of the professional models:

Peter Blake on life drawing classes (C466/168)

In the recording Blake describes his tutors both as ‘vultures’ and ‘sharks’ – who would hover around the many easels and lurch in to rub out the students’ drawings and make corrections. He’s right in saying that this wouldn’t be tolerated by art students now! Despite this, in his next breath he describes how wonderful it all was.

This clip features on the Voices of art website. Voices of art is a new British Library resource that explores the art world from behind the scenes. Extracts from oral history recordings accompany a series of essays by writers immersed in the art world of the 20th and 21st centuries. To hear Peter Blake’s clip in context, see Tom Powell’s article 'Why can't you draw the model like that?' Remembering the life room through Artists' Lives and Lisa Tickner’s article Playing it by ear: Kasmin in the 1960s.

Peter Blake was recorded by National Life Stories for Artists’ Lives in sessions between 2003-2005. The interviewer was Linda Sandino. Listen to the full interview on BL Sounds.

Follow @BL_OralHistory and @soundarchive for all the latest news.

It's been 40 years since the release of the Acorn System 1. One of the earliest British personal computers, it was not much to look at, just a circuit board studded with electronic components, a keypad, and a digital display. Largely developed by Sophie Wilson, with contributions from Steve Furber, the System 1 was typically sold as £65 kit that had to be soldered together by the buyer themselves. The little machine couldn't do very much, but gave electronic enthusiasts the chance to play around with a personal computer of their own, a concept that was little more than science fiction a few years previously. Before the 1970s computers were large and expensive machines, electronic brains for scientists, number crunchers for corporations or Big Brother. It was thanks to affordable machines like the System 1 that computing began to come to the masses.

Steve Furber at work around the time of the BBC Micro development in the early 1980s
Photo courtesy of Chris Turner

Fittingly enough for such a futuristic idea, the System 1 would itself feature in science fiction a few years later, with an appearance as a spaceship's computer in the BBC television series Blake's 7. This was somewhat to the surprise of its developers at Acorn, as Steve Furber recalled in an interview for An Oral History of British Science.

Steve Furber on Blake's 7 and the Acorn System 1 (C1379/78)

After the System 1, Acorn's designers, led by Wilson and Furber, went on to develop a series of popular personal computers, including the Acorn BBC Micro, which introduced millions of school children to computing for the first time. In the mid 1980s they also developed the first ARM chips, a revolutionary family of computer processors. There have been over a hundred billion ARM chips manufactured since and this distant, but direct descendant of the System 1 can be found inside electronic devices the world over; there's probably one inside your smartphone. However, as Furber recalled, back in 1979 “I don’t think anybody really saw the consumer boom and the sort of computer in every house scenario.”

Steve Furber on the future of computing in 1979 (C1379/78)

This blog is by Tom Lean, National Life Stories Project Interviewer and the author of a book on the history of British home computing. Tom interviewed Steve Furber for An Oral History of British Science (reference C1379/78) in 2012 and he is featured on the Voices of Science website.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, three colleagues from the British Library Sound Archive have handpicked three oral history interviews from National Life Stories collections.

Architect Angela Brady

“The women have got to be better than the men to survive in architecture.”

Angela Brady interviewed by Niamh Dillon C467/107 Track 5

This interview was selected for International Women’s Day by Niamh Dillon, who interviewed Angela Brady from 2013-2014 for the National Life Stories project, Architects’ Lives. Niamh reflects on Angela Brady’s career:

Angela Brady was born in Dublin in 1957 and trained as an architect at Bolton Institute of Technology. During her studies, she had her first encounter with the gendered attitudes within the profession. As a response, she determined to ‘work bloody hard’, successfully qualifying as an architect. During her early career she spent periods in Denmark working on housing and moved to London, working for large practices before setting up her own practice, Brady Mallalieu. She campaigned and won election as President of the Royal Institute of British Architects campaigning on a platform to increase diversity within the profession. She was only the second woman to achieve the position and presided over the organisation during the 2012 Olympics. In 2017 she was awarded an OBE for services to architecture.

Angela Brady's interview is listed on the Sound and Moving Image catalogue (reference C467/107). For more information about Architects' Lives see the NLS project page.

Artist Sheila Girling

“…trying to fit two lives. It’s a great strain on women I think really, to have to cope. Because children are not just things you can put down and put away.”

Sheila Girling with Anthony Caro. Courtesy Barford Sculptures Limited. Image not licensed for reuse.

This interview was selected for International Women’s Day by Hester Westley, who interviewed Sheila Girling in 2009 for the National Life Stories project, Artists’ Lives. Hester describes Sheila Girling’s approach to her artistic practice and family life:

Sheila Girling’s life story addresses the challenges which restricted women artists before the days of equality movements and general awareness of gender inequality. Girling trained as an artist at the Royal Academy Schools at a time when women students were expected to treat such training, the same as any male student’s, not as a step towards a profession but more like a finishing school. Following her marriage to the famous abstract sculptor Sir Anthony Caro, Girling put her own practice as a painter on hold, raising their two sons before returning to her studio practice in later life. In this recording she discusses with frankness and compassion the difficult choices she made as she sacrificed her own needs for the needs of others; without bitterness, her candid discussion of what it means to be a woman artist will speak to generations of women as they navigate marriage, motherhood and a professional life.

In this clip, Sheila Girling discusses how she balanced her artistic career, family life, and the career of her husband, Anthony Caro:

Sheila Girling interviewed by Hester Westley C466/296

Sheila Girling features on the new British Library website Voices of art. To read more about Girling’s life and work, see Hester Westley’s essay Coaching from the side lines: Sheila Girling and Anthony Caro. Read a written summary of Sheila Girling’s interview on the Sound and Moving Image catalogue (reference C466/296).

Doctor Una Kroll

“...we’re partners and we should be equal and we should be contributing equally.”

This interview was selected for International Women’s Day by Lucia Cavorsi, Audio Project Cataloguer for Unlocking our Sound Heritage who has enhanced the catalogue records for Una Kroll’s interview. Una Kroll was interviewed by Rebecca Abrams in 1991 for National Life Stories. Lucia shares her experiences of listening to the interview and learning about Una Kroll’s life and work:

Getting closer to women coming from completely different paths of life is nowadays not only edifying, but crucial for women’s rights. That’s what happened to me when I worked with this collection item. I got captured by the words of Una Kroll; by her vision of the world; by her incorruptible idealism. A doctor, a feminist, a deaconess (at the time of the interview), an activist, a mother, Una Kroll channelled her anger for social injustice towards service and fight. As a doctor, she set up the first local services for cervical screening and breast analysis at her St. Paul’s Cray practice. As an activist she campaigned relentlessly and cleverly for the ordination of women. As a deaconess and profoundly religious person she challenged the patronising attitude of a male dominated Church.

As a feminist she didn’t conform to given rules and started wondering why women had handed so much power to men; why rules were made by men to hold up women. As a mother she was concerned to see justice and harmony for people who were oppressed, so to offer a fairer world to her daughter. As a woman, she wanted to show how good it was to be a woman; how women’s role in society is to explore better ways to live in harmony, without anyone undergoing segregation. She taught me that opposition to men is a necessary phase both for our political struggles and our growth as women, but it’s just a phase. That what we all need to aim for, is to truly recognise the equal nature of all human beings. To appreciate and understand the inherent dual nature, feminine and masculine, of God. Whatever this is.

To listen to Una Kroll speaking about the stuggle for the ordination of women, head to the Sisterhood and after website. Una Kroll’s interview has very recently been digitised by Unlocking our Sound Heritage. It can currently be accessed at the British Library through the Listening and Viewing Service and will be available more widely soon. Read a written summary of Una Kroll’s interview on the Sound and Moving Image catalogue (reference C464/10).

Artist Patricia Townsend writes about her collection, 'Interviews exploring artists and the creative process', recently deposited and made available at the British Library.

What does it feel like to be an artist? Are there common threads between the experiences of individual artists or does each artist work in his or her own idiosyncratic way?

As an artist myself, I began to think about what happens in my mind as I create new artworks and to wonder whether my experiences are shared by others. Do other artists also begin with a vague intimation of what they want their subject to be, but with little sense of what form the potential artwork might take? Do they also sometimes have the experience of an idea for a new work bursting suddenly and unexpectedly into their minds? And if so, do they, like me, initially feel a sense of elation as if the new idea is perfect even though they know from experience that sooner or later (and usually sooner) this elation will evaporate and the idea won’t seem so wonderful after all? I set out to explore these questions and more in a series of interviews with professional artists working in a variety of media. These interviews, many of which are now archived in the British Library, formed the basis of my research for a PhD at the Slade School of Fine Art and for the book ‘Creative States of Mind: Psychoanalysis and the Artist’s Process’ (Routledge 2019).

When I began this project I didn’t know whether the artists I interviewed would be able to put their experiences into words. After all, I was speaking to visual artists who have deliberately chosen a non-verbal medium in which to express themselves. Many of them were accustomed to being asked about their material processes and their motivations but I was asking them to talk about how it feels to make a work of art, something they might not have considered in depth before. Would it be possible to express this verbally? If the answer had been no, my whole project would have fallen flat, but as it turned out I needn’t have worried. Many of the artists were wonderfully articulate, often finding poetic images that vividly conveyed the qualities of their experiences. For instance, painter Hughie O’Donoghue used the metaphors of archeological digs and of dredging to describe his process of unearthing something from the subconscious as he paints:

Hughie O'Donohue interviewed by Patricia Townsend (C1801/17)

This recording adds another dimension to the understanding of O’Donoghue’s work that we might not have gained through the written word alone. His reflective way of speaking mirrors his deeply thoughtful engagement with his developing painting.

Another example is provided by photographer Sian Bonnell who describes how it feels to be immersed in her work, even to the point of making herself ill:

Sian Bonnell interviewed by Patricia Townsend (C1801/03)

This recording takes us, as listeners, inside this artist’s experience. Through the way in which Bonnell speaks, as much as through her language, we get a feel for the intensity of the state of mind she is in.

These examples attest to the individuality of each artist’s experience. And yet, the interviews reveal many shared threads too. O’Donoghue speaks of his painting as acquiring ‘some kind of life’ through his work on it. A number of other interviewees also speak of a point in their process when their developing artwork begins to come to life. And the state of complete absorption described so vividly by Bonnell is also referred to by many other artists, each of whom finds his or her own particular way to convey the quality of the experience.

In conducting the interviews, I wanted to find out whether there would be enough common threads in the artists’ accounts to enable me to trace the journey from the artist’s first inkling that he or she is onto something, through the artist’s work with a medium to the completion of the artwork and its launch into the outside world. It seemed clear to me that the making of a work of art involves unconscious as well as conscious processes but, of course, neither I nor the artists I interviewed could provide information about processes that are out of our awareness. Therefore I looked to psychoanalytic theory to try to fill the inevitable gaps and to shed light on the artists’ narratives. But in the interviews I was not attempting to analyse the artists as individuals (something that psychoanalysis has been accused of in the past). Rather I wanted to use psychoanalytic theory to analyse the creative process through factors in common across many interviews. This is what I aimed to do in the book ‘Creative States of Mind; Psychoanalysis and the Artist’s Process’.

It was a great privilege to have the opportunity to interview these artists and each encounter gave me enormous pleasure. I am delighted that 25 recordings are now available through the British Library so that others can hear the voices of these remarkable artists for themselves.

Patricia Townsend
www.patriciatownsend.net
www.routledge.com/9780367146160

To find 'Interviews exploring artists and the creative process' search C1801 at sami.bl.uk. For other collections of oral history interviews with artists, sculptors, craftspeople, theatre designers, photographers, and fashion designers explore our collection guide to Oral histories of visual arts and crafts.

We’re sad to hear of the death of novelist Andrea Levy who passed away yesterday, aged 62.

Andrea grew up in north London, the daughter of Jamaican-born Winston and Amy Levy. She attended Highbury Hill Grammar School before studying textile design at Middlesex Polytechnic. After working as a costume assistant at The Royal Opera House and the BBC she began to attend a writers’ class at City Lit and published her first novel, Every Light in the House Burnin’, in 1994. Today she is best known for the award-winning Small Island and The Long Song.

In 2014, Andrea agreed to make a recording for Authors’ Lives which will be made available to listeners in the weeks to come. She was at that time living with the knowledge that she had a life-limiting illness.

With typical courage and eloquence, she ended her Authors’ Lives recording by reflecting on mortality, and the impact she hoped her books might have had in the world:

‘Everybody dies, and everybody knows they’re going to die. But while other people have it in the back of their heads, I have it here, right in front of my face: I see it and I know it.

But in the meantime I’m fit and well and I’m loving life. There’s a certain freedom that comes from knowing that this is the time you’ve got, and every minute is going to be dedicated to what you want to do because you really don’t have long. If you can go day by day, there’s some sort of release in it.

[Living with cancer] is a process of forgetting and never forgetting that you have to do at one and the same time: I never forget, but I just get on with it. I’ve had a very good life, I’ve loved it. I’ve worked hard and produced some good work I think, and the confidence I have now is because of writing: because I was able to quietly, in my own time and my own way, to show my worth.

I hope my books have a life beyond me. I hope I made a contribution to something, to the end of racism and the coming equality. I hope that the life that I’ve lived goes some way to make things easier. That’s the only posterity.’

Sarah O’Reilly, Interviewer, Authors’ Lives

On 8 February 1869 the Board of the Treasury met to discuss “the drafting or preparing of Bills introduced into Parliament on the part of Her Majesty’s Government.” The Treasury minute goes on to note “the advantage of bringing all important Government Bills under the view of one person,” and being “pleased to direct that the office as proposed shall be constituted to be called the “Office of the Parliamentary Counsel”.

The Office of Parliamentary Counsel has grown from one man and his assistant in 1869 to consist of a staff of 60, including some 50 experienced barristers and solicitors. Led by Elizabeth Gardiner, the team’s job is to assist government departments in preparing Bills.

In a BBC interview Gardiner remarked that, "what they used to say was that every Labour government legislated more than a Tory government but that every government legislated more than the previous one, of that colour.”

The experience of Patrick Macrory, director of Unilever, seems to corroborate that view. He worked as an assistant at the Parliamentary Counsel Office during the late 1940s under Granville Ram (known as the ‘Maestro’) and alongside Harold Kent who later became Treasury Solicitor.

Interview with Patrick Macrory, C408/005, Tape 1, Side 2, 00:23:18 – 00:24:31

In this excerpt from her 1988 interview for NLS Legal Lives, Baroness Hale explains how parliamentary draftsmen contribute to the work of the Law Commission on law reform.


University of Salford Press Office [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Interview with Baroness Hale, C736/008, Track 4, 00:17:29 – 00:20:52

Those currently working in the Office of Parliamentary Counsel are facing unprecedented challenges, drafting legislation to accommodate the constitutional novelty that is Brexit.

Blogpost by Emmeline Ledgerwood (@EmmeLedgerwood), AHRC collaborative doctoral student with the University of Leicester and the British Library Oral History department. Her PhD research is looking at governments’ attitudes to the management and funding of scientific research, 1970-2005. 

This week's selection comes from Camille Johnston, Oral History Assistant Archivist.

Sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) describes how it felt to be an artist in the 1950s. Post-war Britain was changing but there was nonetheless a pervading sense of austerity. Paolozzi says, 'we were all grey'.

This sense of austerity was, for Paolozzi, coupled with a sense of apprehension towards foreign art and foreign food. Picasso was deemed 'interesting but foreign'. Spaghetti was unheard of!

He mentions the Festival of Britain, a national exhibition that took place on London's South Bank in 1951. The Festival attracted millions of visitors and was seen as a turning point in Britain, where minds were opened to new achievements in the arts and new developments in industry.

Eduardo Paolozzi was recorded by National Life Stories for Artists’ Lives in sessions between 1993-1995. The interviewer was Frank Whitford.

Eduardo Paolozzi on post-war Britain (C466/17)

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi with his sculpture of Newton at the British Library, photographed by Chris Lee. © British Library. Image not licensed for reuse.

This clip features on the Voices of art website. Voices of art is a new British Library resource that explores the art world from behind the scenes. Extracts from oral history recordings accompany a series of essays by writers who have been immersed in the art world of the 20th and 21st centuries. To hear Paolozzi's clip in context, see Duncan Robinson's article The London art world, 1950-1965.

Follow @BL_OralHistory and @soundarchive for all the latest news.