Bring me (to) the Head of William Roscoe
"His influence on the cultural life of the town was immense" - the town being Liverpool, Linz's predecessor as European Kulturhaupstadt; the cultural influencer (yes, I've made that word up) being William Roscoe.
Roscoe (1753-1831) was a poet, historian, briefly an MP, staunch crusader against slavery, all-round eminent Liverpudlian for several decades, whose name lives on in Roscoe Street, not far from the commanding heights of the red-stone Anglican cathedral and only a short walk from Lime Street train station. And on Roscoe Street, number 24, you will find the Roscoe Head public house - where, on a wall, you'll find the biographical sketch of Roscoe which provided the opening line for this entry.
7.40pm, a warmish spring Friday evening (3rd April, 2009) finds me in one of the Roscoe Head's four semi-private drinking areas (or "snugs"), enjoying a £2.40 pint of Jennings Ale (brewed not too far away, on the Cumbrian coast).
On the wall above my seat, a print reproduction shows Roscoe's birthplace - another pub, as it happens, the Bowling Green in the outlying area known as Mount Pleasant. The bar - of the Roscoe Head, that is, not the Bowling Green - is busy tonight, and it seems most of the patrons, audibly good-natured in the stereotypical Scouse fashion ("he once sang 23 verses -- of American Pie!") have been to the horse-races up at Aintree - another of the city's countless outlying areas.
Because this evening just happens to be slap-bang in the middle of one of Liverpool's major annual cultural events - one of the things (along with the Beatles and the mighty football team[s]) for which the city is best known in the UK as a whole: the three-day Grand National meeting. It was Ladies Day' this afternoon, and tomorrow the jamboree culminates in a spectacular, four-mile, forty-runner handicap steeplechase that is by far the UK's most watched, talked-about and most gambled-upon horse-race.
My pint quickly diminishes in my glass - I only have time for the one, as I've a dinner appointment at 8.00. In Penny Lane, as it happens, a street named, I have learned, after a notorious slave-trader. The city council, impeccably left-wing as ever, wanted to change it a few years ago, but were dissuaded from doing so because of a potential knock-on effect on Beatles-related tourism.
I ponder the different types of culture which find their vibrant, sometimes wayward confluence in Liverpool, like the tributaries of the Mersey that propel it onward towards theNorth Irish Sea. Trophy-laden footy and the Sea Shanty; Lita Roza, Terence Davies, Tom Baker, and Billy Fury; Julian Cope, Peter Whitehead and Brookside; Gilbert Scott's vast redstone Anglican cathedral and the graffiti-artist known as STOK (Merseyside cousin of enigmatic Linzer KOT?) charged with criminal damage in 2005 after daubing the walls of ... Roscoe Street.
I look up from this somewhat idle musing, and note that one of my fellow drinkers - a lad in his late 20s, pointy boots, gelled hair, eyeliner, fashionable green army-type coat - is wearing a small black badge, with I AM CULTURE written on it in white letters. The apparent intent of this proclamation: quizzical, challenging, brazen, cheeky. In a word, very 'Scouse'.
I suspect W.Roscoe himself would have approved. After all, he was cited by local scribe Paul Du Noyer as a "presiding spirit over our Capital of Counter Culture... whether it be for his moral bravery or his quixotic brilliance. [He] lambasted the slave trade when such opinions were actually controversial and genuinely risky. Especially in Liverpool.
"He was a man of libertarian instincts, nobility of heart and a gift for poetic strangeness. In each of those respects he remains an emblem of all that is best in Liverpool. His name survives in a handful of streets and at least one excellent pub. Does modern Liverpool realise what a man of genius this was? I hope so."
Anyway, April 2009 is upon us. It's the month of the sixth Crossing Europe, 889 miles away (give or take), near the banks of another great European river, the Danube, and preparations are of course nearing completion. I've had a glimpse of the programme in advance - it looks like a good one - and will post my "tips" once the schedule goes online next week.
In the meantime, here's to William Roscoe, a man who, though "sober and industrious ... saw nymphs and sea-gods by the power of his own, classically-informed imagination." As Jean-Luc Godard used to say (maybe still does): Everything Is Cinema.
Roscoe (1753-1831) was a poet, historian, briefly an MP, staunch crusader against slavery, all-round eminent Liverpudlian for several decades, whose name lives on in Roscoe Street, not far from the commanding heights of the red-stone Anglican cathedral and only a short walk from Lime Street train station. And on Roscoe Street, number 24, you will find the Roscoe Head public house - where, on a wall, you'll find the biographical sketch of Roscoe which provided the opening line for this entry.
7.40pm, a warmish spring Friday evening (3rd April, 2009) finds me in one of the Roscoe Head's four semi-private drinking areas (or "snugs"), enjoying a £2.40 pint of Jennings Ale (brewed not too far away, on the Cumbrian coast).
On the wall above my seat, a print reproduction shows Roscoe's birthplace - another pub, as it happens, the Bowling Green in the outlying area known as Mount Pleasant. The bar - of the Roscoe Head, that is, not the Bowling Green - is busy tonight, and it seems most of the patrons, audibly good-natured in the stereotypical Scouse fashion ("he once sang 23 verses -- of American Pie!") have been to the horse-races up at Aintree - another of the city's countless outlying areas.
Because this evening just happens to be slap-bang in the middle of one of Liverpool's major annual cultural events - one of the things (along with the Beatles and the mighty football team[s]) for which the city is best known in the UK as a whole: the three-day Grand National meeting. It was Ladies Day' this afternoon, and tomorrow the jamboree culminates in a spectacular, four-mile, forty-runner handicap steeplechase that is by far the UK's most watched, talked-about and most gambled-upon horse-race.
My pint quickly diminishes in my glass - I only have time for the one, as I've a dinner appointment at 8.00. In Penny Lane, as it happens, a street named, I have learned, after a notorious slave-trader. The city council, impeccably left-wing as ever, wanted to change it a few years ago, but were dissuaded from doing so because of a potential knock-on effect on Beatles-related tourism.
I ponder the different types of culture which find their vibrant, sometimes wayward confluence in Liverpool, like the tributaries of the Mersey that propel it onward towards the
I look up from this somewhat idle musing, and note that one of my fellow drinkers - a lad in his late 20s, pointy boots, gelled hair, eyeliner, fashionable green army-type coat - is wearing a small black badge, with I AM CULTURE written on it in white letters. The apparent intent of this proclamation: quizzical, challenging, brazen, cheeky. In a word, very 'Scouse'.
I suspect W.Roscoe himself would have approved. After all, he was cited by local scribe Paul Du Noyer as a "presiding spirit over our Capital of Counter Culture... whether it be for his moral bravery or his quixotic brilliance. [He] lambasted the slave trade when such opinions were actually controversial and genuinely risky. Especially in Liverpool.
"He was a man of libertarian instincts, nobility of heart and a gift for poetic strangeness. In each of those respects he remains an emblem of all that is best in Liverpool. His name survives in a handful of streets and at least one excellent pub. Does modern Liverpool realise what a man of genius this was? I hope so."
Anyway, April 2009 is upon us. It's the month of the sixth Crossing Europe, 889 miles away (give or take), near the banks of another great European river, the Danube, and preparations are of course nearing completion. I've had a glimpse of the programme in advance - it looks like a good one - and will post my "tips" once the schedule goes online next week.
In the meantime, here's to William Roscoe, a man who, though "sober and industrious ... saw nymphs and sea-gods by the power of his own, classically-informed imagination." As Jean-Luc Godard used to say (maybe still does): Everything Is Cinema.
Neil Young - 6. Apr, 23:58
