A Jolly Day Out in London

Steerforth's 'Photographs Found in Books' series returns with an enchanting record of a 1930s school trip ... This is another gem rescued from being thrown into a skip. It's a project book, compiled by a group of Middlesborough schoolgirls in 1935, describing their day trip to London. The book has no financial ... Read More...

James Barlow: the revival starts here

Having successfully revived the novelist David Karp, Steerforth champions another undeservedly forgotten author... It isn't easy to find a more obscure novelist than David Karp, but I think I've succeeded. A  visit to Camilla's Bookshop in Eastbourne yielded this novel, published in 1961: Yes, that is Larry Olivier on the front cover ... Read More...

David Karp: The revival starts here

Steerforth discovers David Karp, a cerebral novelist whose name has unaccountably vanished from the literary canon... Until I found this novel in the cavernous basement of Camilla's Bookshop in Eastbourne, I had never heard of David Karp. I can't remember why One caught my eye, but as soon as I read ... Read More...

Lord Berners – The man who left Lesbos

Steerforth remembers one of the more flamboyant dabblers of the 20th century... One of the most colourful and unjustly forgotten characters of the last century is Lord Berners. Born Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson in 1883, Berners went to Eton and worked as a diplomat until he inherited his title. For the remainder of ... Read More...

The Museum of Forgotten Lives

Will our children's children bother to keep any record of our existence at all? The flea markets suggest otherwise, finds Steerforth... One of the best things about my home town of Lewes is its Flea Market - a vast emporium of antiques and collectables housed in a large, converted Methodist Chapel. At ... Read More...

Forgotten authors: Warwick Deeping

Steerforth discovers Warwick Deeping, once a prolific writer of bestsellers, now all but forgotten (and in this case, perhaps deservedly so)... In his wonderful essay Bookshop Memories, Orwell lamented that the authors who were most popular with his customers were Ethel M Dell and Warwick Deeping. I didn't recognise the first ... Read More...

Cecil Beaton and the Baroness

When Steerforth came across the strange-looking autobiography by one Baroness Von Bülop, he was intrigued - especially as she seemed to have enlisted the celebrated photographer Cecil Beaton... One stormy afternoon, I came across an illustrated 1939 autobiography called 'My Royal Past', by Baroness Von Bülop: It didn't look terribly inspiring, but then I noticed ... Read More...

My life as a failed stamp collector

Steerforth recalls, with pathos and bemusement, his brief attempt at being an entrepreneurial philatelist... When I was 11-years-old I became friends with a boy whose parents were divorced. I'd never met anyone whose mother and father lived apart and I remember feeling quite jealous that he had two homes. In my ... Read More...