Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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Jazzin’ up the revolutionary prison poetry of Ho Chi Minh
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Songs from a Prison Diary (Poems by Ho Chi Minh)
Phil Minton and Veryan Weston
(Leo Records, CDLR 196)
I REMEMBER buying it in 1971 in Collett’s London Bookshop on Charing Cross Road, a true goldmine of people’s texts and literatures — and right opposite another precious emporium, Dobell’s Jazz Record Shop with it’s basement cavern of second-hand vinyl.
The Prison Diary of Ho Chi Minh was written between 1942-43 when its writer was a prisoner of Chiang Kai-Shek’s police in a south China jail. It is a diary in poetry of 115 verses in the classical Chinese style.
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