Poets of Fleet Street

By Ted Harriott and John Bull

Peer Confesses,
Bishop Undresses,
Torso Wrapped in Rug,
Girl Guide Throttled,
Baronet Bottled,
J.P. Goes to Jug.

Fleet Street is perhaps hardly a place you would associate with poetry, but when Ted Harriott and John Bull started asking around, they were surprised by how many ‘closet poets’ they unearthed among their newspaper colleagues. Some, like Michael Gabbert, John Pudney and Paul Dehn (from whose poem ‘Gutter Press’ this stanza is taken), found their subjects close to hand; others, like John Arlott and Denis Botterill, looked to the cricket pitch and the natural world for their inspiration.

This collection of poetry was first published in 1969 as a privately circulated pamphlet. The poets featured include cricket commentator, wine connoisseur and Guardian writer John Arlott, Denis Botterill (London man for the Yorkshire Post), Daily Herald film critic and Goldfinger screenwriter Paul Dehn, Michael Gabbert (News of the World), feature-writer Charles Hamblett, Anthony Hunter of the Sunday Dispatch, Evening Standard film critic Philip Oakes, war correspondent Derek Patmore, Daily Express book critic John Pudney, Daily Mirror chief sub Sydney Tremayne, and Press Club habitué Sir John Waller.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chaplin Books
• Release date: Dec 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781909183094

Book preview

contents.

Introduction

Fleet Street poets! Are there any? That was the incredulous reaction of one writer to whom we mentioned our plans for this anthology. And to anyone who has been in any of the pubs of the newsmen’s village - from The Stab in the Back to Auntie’s - when the beer is flowing and the voices beginning to roar, there is much to justify the incredulity.

Having been in them all, frequently, we sometimes feel the same and there’s nothing to reinforce those doubts more than the sight of a well-known village elder, tankard in one hand, launching forth into ‘At Flores in the Azores, Sir Richard Grenville lay’ and with a particular flourish delivering the ensuing line ‘And half my men are sick’.

It must be equally difficult to persuade a Cabinet minister, who has been mauled by the vinegar brigade, a bereaved wife of a national figure, the centre of some scandal or even an unsuccessful con man, of the poetic nature of the keepers of the nation’s conscience.

Fleet Street has been its own worst propagandist in all this, contributing very largely to the public image which represents all newspaper men as cold-eyed, heartless destroyers.

Hollywood and the publicists of the Daily Mirror have added an element to the image with their representations of fearless moralists tilting, with courage - and usually success - at the windmills of corruption, vice and gangsterism in the Publish and Be Damned spirit.

Of course, there are many different types in Fleet Street and most are far from fearless. Some have courage. Most have some sort of talent with words or some special ability to track down facts. Many have a conception of the truth and there are several who shed tears and even have wives and children they care about. But poets?

The editor of the first newspaper one of us ever worked for heard of his underling’s poetic leanings and immediately shook his head. I’d keep quiet about it if you ever get another job. They don’t like poets in this game, he said. He immediately regaled the rest of the staff with gems from his fund of anecdotes about poets. The one of us concerned promptly went underground with his verses and is only now cautiously poking out