The Virtual Stoa

Catherine Carswell, née Macfarlane, novelist and critic. Became a socialist at 14 after reading Robert Blatchford; married Herbert Jackson, who later became mentally unstable, and the Jackson v Jackson annulment case (1908) was an important one until the marriage law reforms of the 1930s. She made her way in London literary life with an epistolary novel, The Camomile (1922), a demythologising Life of Robert Burns (1930) and The Savage Pilgrimage, a portrait of her friend D. H. Lawrence. Born in Garnethill, Glasgow, 27 March 1879, died in the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, just round the corner from me, 18 February 1946.

And while we’re on the subject of the New Statesman, here’s Kingsley Martin, who edited the thing for thirty years, 1930-1960, back in the days when it was a moderately important publication. Born Hereford, 28 July 1897; died in Cairo, 16 February 1969.

Sensible observers (here and here) are observing that the New Statesman is a bit shit. It’s time for concrete suggestions to help the new editor make it a better publication, before even dinosaurs like me who spend far too much money on magazine and journal subscriptions realise just how bad it is and cancel ours. I’ll start the ball rolling.

1. Get rid of US editor Andrew Stephen who is incapable of writing anything interesting, but who is given pages and pages in which to show off his incapability.

2. Martin O’Neill‘s column to move from the web to the magazine.

3. Make sure Nick Cohen‘s occasional interviews don’t return (though this may have been sorted out alread).

Please continue in the comments…

Hugh Dalton, Labour politician; born Neath, Glamorgan, 26 August 1887; died St Pancras, 13 February 1962.

Gustav Bergenroth, historian and Saint-Simonian. A ‘48er, he later emigrated to California in 1850 to found an agricultural commune at Pillar Point, 20 miles south of San Francisco, but returned to Europe a year later. He settled in London and became a Tudor historian and an expert on the Spanish state papers of the period. Born in Treuberg, East Prussia, 26 February 1813; died in Madrid, Spain, 13 February 1869.

Paul Levi, Spartacist, born 11 March 1883, died 9 February 1930.

Pyotr Lavrov, Russian philosopher of narodnikism, born 14 June 1823, died 6 February 1890.

Over here. I think this is splendid. For some suitable banter, go here.

(The Telegraph covers the story here in a bit more detail, but inexplicably omits the all-important Capt. W. E. Johns-related statistic.)

Ernest Bader, industrial reformer and Quaker. After emigrating to England in 1912 and deserting from the armed forces in the First World War, Bader founded a chemical company in 1920, which became Scott Bader Ltd. This later became the site of several experiments, culminating in the Scott Bader Commonwealth from 1951, operating on Gandhian principles of industrial trusteeship and co-operative ownership. Born in Regensdorf, Switzerland, 24 November 1890, died in Wollaston, Northamptonshire, 5 February 1982.

G. E. M. de ste Croix, author of The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World. Born 8 February 1910; died 5 February 2000.

Robert Tressell, author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists; born in Dublin, 18 April 1870; died in Liverpool, 3 February 1911.

David Runciman, over here.