OLD LONDON

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27688, 18 June 1955, Page 3

OLD LONDON

[Reviewed by L;G.W.] Southwark Story. By Florence Higham. Hodder and Stoughton. 296 pp. Mrs Higham has made this story of Southwark an epitome of English history. The book is no gathering of dead bones, but a vivid tale that makes the past live again. According to tradition the first large settlement in Southwark came as the result of a flight of “displaced persons” when Queen Boadicea swept down on London in A.D. 62. For many centuries Southwark has contained the main highway from London to the Kentish coast and the Continent and so has been the scene of much coming and going. Southwark derives its name from being originally the fortified bridge-head of the City. Many are the famous names connected with South London. Gower and Chaucer, the poets, lived thereShakespeare must have known it well for the Globe Theatre was built there—the youngest brother of the poet is buried in St. Saviour’s; John Harvard, the founder of the famous American University, was born in Southwark; a bookseller, Thomas Guy founded the hospital there named after him; of this institution, Frederick Dennison Maurice was chaplain for ten years; the learned Bishop Andrews died in Winchester House, Southwark; the present Archbishop of York was once Bishop there. These arc only a few of the notables whom South London saw through its long history.

Southwark’s story, as Mrs Higham tells it, centres on the church which was made the Cathedral in 1905. Up to that time this part of London had been part of Rochester and earlier of the Winchester diocese, and the present cathedral had been since the Reformation the parish church 01 St. Saviour. Its story is told fully in this book and a strange eventful tale it is. One striking feature of the Vestry’s activities was its valiant attempts, at various periods of its history, to cope with the problems of educating the young and coping with the wide-spread poverty in the parish. Another aspect of the Vestry’s work was finding money for church repairs. In spite of foolish economies in the past, St. Saviour’s Cathedral stands today a splendid edifice. This has been made possible through the generosity of modern donors, and its Lady Chapel, once leased as a bakery, remains “one of 'the most chaste and elegant specimens of early pointed architecture of the 13th century still existing in England.” It is impossible in a short review to do justice to the mass of interesting detail in Mrs Higham’s well-told story, but it can be recommended to readers as a first-class piece of historical writing. ALL PASSION SPENT [From the “Manchester Guardian”} Miss Sackville-West has described for us the ideal old age—a life of quiet activity, a time for penetrating insight. We can see the other side of the picture in “Old Age in the Modern World” (just published by Livingstone, 355). The book is the report of a conference held in London last year, and is a study of the problems of old age to which a large group of scientists has contributed. The increasing numbers of old people are calculated and extrapolated into the future; their failing skills are catalogued, as are some of their powers that remain undiminished. There are psychological studies of old people that serve to confirm what we have all seen of the pathos of being old. It sounds inhumanly detached, but a closer reading reveals that the authors are driven by a sense of pity. They confess, here and there and between the lines, that the essential task is that of creating happiness, not simply that of lightening a burden that has been forced on : us by the achievements of medicine. It is but a symptom of our frustration that this task , must be approached in such a ponderous way, with all the dry business of correlating, analysing, and projecting. A lot must get through a sieve like this, and all the sympathetic discussions about the best means of billeting out the old people will not retrieve anything of value. We need to know the kinds of lives they want to live and the means they need to do this. The scientific study of old age is only a part of this search, but it should be encouraged not only out of pity but as a matter of self-interest. Sooner or later we shall all be old. REPRINTS AND NEW EDITIONS Night Rider. By Robert Penn Warren. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 454 pp. In the Kentucky of 50 years ago Percy Lunn, a quiet, happily-married young solicitor, joins the tobaccogrowers’ organisation formed to protest against the low prices offered by a buyers’ ring. He rises to leadership in the organisation, which increases in violence until Lunn finds himself the leader of a gang of night riders, using fire and personal violence to bend others to their will. This was Mr Warren’s first novel, published in 1939. His successful later books have encouraged his publishers to reprint his first