An unusual Christmas present for just £5

Here’s an idea for an unusual Christmas present from Shrewsbury for just £5.
Author John Butterworth is offering signed copies of his latest book, Four Centuries at The Lion Hotel, Shrewsbury, for just £5, instead of the normal price of £6.99.

The book is the story of the historic hotel, pictured below by Richard Bishop, told through the many famous guests who have stayed there, including King William IV, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Disraeli and in more modern times the Beatles, Morecambe and Wise, Cliff Richard and many others.

Gerald Dickens, the great, great grandson of the Victorian writer Charles, who has written the foreword, said: “There is something very exciting about visiting a building where my great, great grandfather, Charles Dickens, stayed. John Butterworth’s wonderful history of The Lion Hotel takes that pleasure to new level!

“John’s extensive local knowledge and passion for his subject is evident in every sentence. As a read I felt part of every event and every anecdote, for this is certainly no dusty, academic collection of facts; it is a living, breathing, exciting addition to the rich history of an extraordinary building and town.”

He added: “Many of the stories have positively Dickensian overtones: John Ashby, the man who built the current hotel, could be straight from a Dickens novel - a kind-hearted, generous and entrepreneurial host, secretly mired in crippling debt.

“The hilarious spat between The Eddowes Journal and the Shrewsbury Chronicle over Jenny Lind’s concert is straight from The Pickwick Papers, while the room at The Lion Hotel in which Dickens himself stayed could be taken from David Copperfield, with its ‘....windows bulging into the street as if they were the stern windows of a ship.’

“However, even Charles Dickens could never invent a character as eccentric as Mad Jack Mytton, the MP for Shrewsbury!”

To buy an autographed copy of the book email john@jbutterworth.plus.com or phone 01785 817465 (there is an answerphone) or mobile 07955 262633.

For £5 the books can then be collected from the hotel reception or they can be posted to your home address in the UK for £6 each or abroad for £7.

To read the blog about John’s book on Albania, go to http://godssecretlistener.blogspot.com/

Details of Dickens celebration weekend revealed

Tickets and a full programme of events have just been released for the weekend of celebrations at The Lion Hotel, Shrewsbury, to mark the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens.

The author stayed at least twice at the hotel in the mid 19^th century, performed at the nearby Music Hall and most likely gave readings from his novels in The Lion’s Ballroom.

Actor Gerald Dickens, the great, great grandson of Charles, pictured below, will headline a weekend of celebrations in Shrewsbury’s famous coaching inn on Friday, February 3, Saturday, February 4 and Sunday, February 5, 2012.

He will perform two of his most popular one-man-shows about his great, great grandfather in The Ballroom over the weekend, just two days before the great man’s big day. 

On Friday, February 3 at 8pm there is Mr Dickens is Coming, which is a light-hearted and varied look at the life and character of Charles Dickens. Gerald includes in the play scenes from the great author’s works, diary extracts and observations from those who knew and worked with him.

On Saturday, February 4 at 8pm it’s Sikes and Nancy, which is Victorian theatre at its most dramatic. Most of Charles’ readings were safe, well-known and often comic passages from his novels, but in 1869 he introduced Sikes and Nancy to his repertoire.

When Dickens performed what he called The Murder, he judged the success of the evening by the number of ladies who had fainted with horror. Today it has lost none of its power. Scenes from the BBC TV serialisation of Oliver Twist were filmed in Shrewsbury.

Both performances will be followed by Gerald reading excerpts from A Christmas Carol on the very stage Charles read from two centuries ago!

Tickets for the above evening performances are £8.50 each, or £15 for both Friday and Saturday night.

On Sunday, February 5 it is Christmas Carol Day, which recalls the celebrated George C. Scott’s film of A Christmas Carol which was shot in Shrewsbury in 1984 and the cast and crew stayed at The Lion.

The day’s programme is:

10.30am: The Making of A Christmas Carol, which is an illustrated talk by historian David Trumper.

11.30am: A Guided Town Walk - Enjoy a walk around various local film locations.

2.30pm: A Christmas Carol - a large screen showing of the famous film.

Tickets for the day are £10. Tickets for individual Sunday events may be bought separately.

Gerald Dickens has worked as an actor, director and producer for many years and is fascinated by his great, great grandfather’s life and works. He regularly performs in major theatres, arts centres and stately homes.

He will be staying at The Lion in the same rooms Charles stayed in; which he described as “the strangest little rooms” with windows that “bulge out over the street as if they were little stern windows of a ship”.

The weekend is being arranged by Chris Eldon Lee, veteran BBC Radio 4 producer and former director of the Shrewsbury Summer Season and the events will be open to everyone.

Special package deals are available for guests wishing to spend the weekend in Shrewsbury in the company of Mr Dickens. For details, tickets and package deals please ring The Lion Hotel on 01743 353107 or email info@thelionhotelshrewsbury.com 

Roaring success as Lion Publishing celebrates 40 years

I felt very honoured to be invited to the special service at Christ Church, Oxford, to celebrate 40 years of Lion Publishing.

More than 300 authors, illustrators, customers, clients, suppliers, shareholders, former staff, present staff and directors packed first the cathedral and then the college’s Great Hall (pictured below) for the afternoon tea.

It was very moving to hear Pat Alexander, who started the company in 1971 with her husband David, talk about their early days in publishing.

They set off for the Holy Land in a VW Camper van to undertake the research and to take the photographs for The Lion Handbook to the Bible, which sold worldwide.

Appropriately, each of the 300 or so guests at the service were given a special 40^th anniversary edition of the handbook.

Pat spoke about renting the first office containing just one electric typewriter and one fax machine and the responsibility they felt when they employed their first members of staff.

She recalled that they didn’t have enough chairs so one of them had to stay standing whenever they had a visitor.

The founder’s wife also spoke of her sadness when they had to take a back seat in the company in 1998 because of David’s unexpected illness and in November 2002 when he died.

But as she looked back over 40 years she said that she never dreamt that the business which began with just her and David would grow into the huge international company that Lion Hudson Monarch is today.

Later in the service, a former director, Tony Wales, reflected on the early days when Lion began selling worldwide. Today it translates books into more than 200 languages.

He told many stories but the one that stuck in my mind was of translating Norman Warren’s book, What’s the Point, into so many languages, one of which helped to convert and transform the life of a Russian soldier serving in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The sermon was preached by Canon Professor Keith Ward who spoke on the two readings of 2 Kings chapter 22 verses 3-13 and Acts chapter 17 verses 16-34 and encouraged the congregation to carry on publishing God’s Word as commanded to in Scripture.

Earlier in the day I visited the Bodleian Library for the first time. It was fascinating to read that Charles I was refused permission to loan one of their books as the rules stipulated that no books were to be taken out of the reference building by anyone, even if they were the king.

The Divinity School, which is the oldest lectures hall in Oxford, was opened in 1488 and all students then took their exams in oral Latin.

As I left I thought perhaps students today have life a little easier in some respects.

Overall, it was a very moving day and as I travelled home on the train I thought back over the last 40 years and my links with Lion over that period.

I was grateful they had published my second book, Cults and Modern Faiths (pictured below) back in 1981 and my fourth, God’s Secret Listener, in 2010.

 

Christian library is just the ticket

I was impressed by the Robin Woods library in Stourbridge when I was the invited author on Wednesday night this week to speak about my books, Four Centuries at The Lion Hotel, Shrewsbury and God’s Secret Listener.

I was the first writer to speak to the group in a new Evenings with an Author venture by Christians in Stourbridge.

The library in the New Road Methodist Centre on the town’s ring road is in an impressive modern building and houses nearly 4,000 Christian books.

It is open 10am-2pm Monday to Friday and has a steady stream of visitors, said one of the five volunteer librarians, Sue Amer, who is pictured below at the evening with John.

The Church of England library is linked to the one in Worcester Diocese’s The Old Palace.

It started 15 years ago and is named after a former Bishop of Worcester who donated books to the library.

The Right Reverend Robin Woods was a former chaplain to the Queen who baptised Prince Edward in 1964.

He was Bishop of Worcester from 1970 until he retired in 1981. He died in 1997 aged 83.

Eight years ago the library had to find a new home when its original Stourbridge base was knocked down and the Methodist Centre came to the rescue.

The second and third Evenings with an Author are on Wednesday, October 19 with Carol Hathorne and on Wednesday, November 16 with John Lampen.

For more details contact Sue, who is a licensed lay minister with the diocese, on 01562 66625 or email suecelticamer@tiscali.co.uk

As well as being an enjoyable evening it was also very successful as I sold a number of books and I wish the group all the best in their new venture.

Mad Tory MP's reputation spreads far and wide

The story about John ‘Mad Jack’ Mytton, the eccentric 19^th century MP who appears in Four Centuries at The Lion Hotel, has spread to the most unlikely of places.

Jan’s Uncle Michael from London sent me a recent copy of the upmarket magazine, Country Life, which included an article on the Notebook page edited by Alice Cooke about Shrewsbury’s most outrageous elected representative.

The magazine said: “John ‘Mad Jack’ Mytton’s life has been described as ‘a series of suicide attempts’.

“Born in 1796 at Halston Hall (pictured below), this son of a Shropshire squire liked to drink several bottles of port in the morning ‘to forestall the bad effect of the night air’.

“When none was available he would swig eau de cologne instead.

“Thus fortified he would tear around the countryside in his four-horse gig, aiming for hairpin bends, pot holes, and on one memorable occasion a toll booth.

“He once drove at full speed over a rabbit warren, just to see what would happen.

“Socially things were no better – ‘Mad Jack’ would arrive at dinner parties riding a bear and liked nothing better than pretending to be a highwaymen and holding up his departing guests.

“The apogee of his hell-raising career came, when in a bid to cure a case of hiccups, he set fire to himself.

“He survived, but the trail of devastation he left in his wake proved ruinously expensive, and he ended his days in a Southwark debtors’ prison.”  

To find out more about Mad Jack’s life, contact John Butterworth at John@jbutterworth.plus.com to order a signed copy of the book at the special price of £5 plus postage.

From Shrewsbury to southern Spain

I have just returned home after a week’s break from writing and marketing my two books, Four Centuries at The Lion Hotel, Shrewsbury and God’s Secret Listener.

My favourite European country is Italy, but this time my wife, Jan, and I decided to go on a tour of Andalucia.

I must admit I have never been a great fan of Spain, its food and coach tours believing they were for older people than me.

However, I knew the Alhambra in Granada (pictured below), which was on my must see before I die list, was difficult to do on your own, hence the coach.

But I must say the tour with Riviera Travel of Burton-on-Trent was well arranged while our first class guide, Cilla Cameron, provided the right balance between organised trips and free time. With superb tapas bars and temperatures in the late 30s all week, what more could we want?

After leaving the cold of  Manchester Airport where we had to queue outside for passport control we soon arrived at Malaga and the warmth of the four-star Puerta del Sol in Mijas, which certainly lived up to its rating.

Next morning it was off to Ronda, a spectacular city built on a ridge, split by a deep gorge and joined by a massive stone bridge. Because of its impregnable position Ronda was one of the last Moorish bastions of power, only falling to the Christians in 1485.

That evening we arrived in Seville, one of the most beautiful cities in the world and in the 15^th and 16^th centuries the wealthiest thanks to the discovery of America.

With its imposing cathedral where Christopher Columbus is buried; the amazing fortified palace of the Moors, the Alcazar; plus the majestic 1929 World Exhibition buildings we certainly needed three nights to explore this city, the home of flamenco dancing and the setting for the opera Carmen.

Next on the tour was Cordoba, its immense Roman bridge and The Mezquita, surely the most beautiful Moorish mosque, before arriving in Granada for two nights.

There is a daily limit on the number of visitors to the extraordinary Alhambra so we were fortunate to get 8.30am tickets which meant we could see this Moorish palace, fortress and gardens before it was too crowded and too hot.

The early start also gave us a free time that afternoon and the following morning before flying home.

It was a great holiday and I must admit I am now a convert to southern Spain – and even coach tours.

Amazon brings USA order and hotel link

The Four Centuries at The Lion Hotel book is now for sale on Amazon – and this valuable outlet has already produced results.

As well as providing a number of book orders I have had an email from the USA.

Shanyn Kay Stewart, a Senior Wealth Manager with Cambridge Investment Research, wrote to say: “In researching our family line I learned that distant relatives once owned The Lion Hotel.” 

In ordering a copy he added: “This will be an interesting book to add to my library.”

To buy a book online go to www.amazon.co.uk

From Croft Castle to the Polite Vicar

I have just returned from a very enjoyable and successful few days promoting and selling my two books,  Four Centuries at The Lion Hotel, Shrewsbury and God’s Secret Listener.

Over the weekend we went to Hereford stopping off to see the impressive Croft Castle and its ancient church, pictured below, which is a lavish country mansion that began life as a Norman stronghold on the border of Wales.

On Sunday morning I went to preach at St John’s Methodist Church at the invitation of the Rev Dave Meachem. I hadn’t seen him for more than 40 years when we both went to the large and highly-successful Tunstall Methodist Youth Group, but I bumped into him by chance in Hereford Cathedral last autumn and he invited me down to speak.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people come up to talk to me after a service to say that while they were on holiday in Corfu in the 1980s they looked across the sea to the forbidding and dark landscape of that closed county and its large penetrating searchlights. Again many Hereford people were fascinated to find out more about Albania.

In the evening it was on to Newcastle Congregational Church to meet an old friend and journalist colleague, the Rev Ian Gregory.

Ian, who was a part-time church minister and part-time journalist, is the only ordained person I know who has had a pub named after him – The Polite Vicar in Basford, Newcastle-under-Lyme (pictured below).

He had founded the Polite Society in 1986 encouraging politeness in society and in particular in sport. It made national headlines turning him into a well-known figure.

I was a panellist on the inter-church Faith Faces Reality monthly discussion joining Joel Moors, Radio Stoke’s News Editor, and Jackie Whittaker, ex-Sentinel journalist and journalism lecturer at Staffordshire University, to discuss the media. It was a lively evening and a good audience asking many probing questions.

On Monday lunchtime it was off to Stone Golf Club to talk to the town’s Probus Club against the backdrop of the ninth green. It was again a fine occasion meeting up with some old friends over an excellent braised steak lunch before talking about Albania and The Lion Hotel and selling more copies of both books.

Tomorrow night it is off to a fellowship in Hartshill in the Potteries to talk about Albania.

Anniversary of the origin of an epic journey

On this day 180 years ago an epic journey began from The Lion Hotel in Shrewsbury that was to have worldwide implications.

On Monday, September 5, 1831, twenty-two-year-old Charles Darwin left the hotel in haste by stagecoach to London on his way to join HMS Beagle for a five-year trip.

The reason he left in such a rush was that a second person had been offered the job as naturalist on the ship on what had planned to be a two-year survey of South America.

Darwin had accepted the position a week earlier but his father, Robert, supported by Charles’ sisters, refused to let him go saying the trip would get in the way of him becoming a clergyman.

After what must have been a heated family discussion his father relented and said he could go, if he could find a man with common sense who thought it would be a good idea.

The next afternoon Charles rode over to see uncle, Josiah Wedgwood II, at his home at Maer Hall, just over the border in Staffordshire, where he wanted to put his case to the member of the famous pottery family.

The plan worked. His uncle wrote to Darwin’s father answering all the objections and Robert agreed to support his son financially.

Since the Whitehall Admiralty hadn’t heard from Darwin (pictured below) for a few days, they presumed he had changed his mind and offered the job to someone else.

Darwin hurried off to London on the first available stagecoach from The Lion to see Captain Robert FitzRoy who asked him if he was still interested in the job, as the other person had turned it down.

Charles again accepted the job, and was told to report to Plymouth in time for the new sailing date of October 10, although the ship didn’t eventually leave until 11am on Tuesday, December 27, on the  expedition which in the end took more than five years.

Eventually, the HMS Beagle reached the Galapagos Islands on September 16, 1835, the scene of Darwin’s major research on the origin of species and his evolution theory, before returning to Falmouth on October 2, 1836, where Charles caught the stagecoach back to The Lion Hotel.

Back in England he wrote his book on evolution, On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, which earned him international fame and 180 years later his theory is still being talked about.

If you want to read more about Darwin’s story email John@jbutterworth.plus.com to order an autographed copy of Four Centuries at The Lion Hotel, Shrewsbury, for the special price of £5 plus £1 postage, cheques payable to J Butterworth.

Museum appeal launched at former Dickens home

I really enjoyed doing all the research for The Lion with one of the many people I learnt much more about was Charles Dickens who stayed at the hotel on a number of occasions.

So I was interested to find out that a big appeal has been launched at the Charles Dickens Museum, which was one of his former homes at 48 Doughty Street, in Holborn, and has been open to the public for 86 years.

The Georgian terraced house (pictured below) was Dickens’ home from March 25, 1837, until December 1839 when Charles and his wife Catherine moved on to grander properties as the author’s wealth increased and his family grew to ten children.

Two of their daughters, Mary and Kate Macready, were born in the house, which is the only surviving one of the family's London homes.

While living there Dickens completed The Pickwick Papers (1836), wrote the whole of Oliver Twist (1838) and Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39) and worked on Barnaby Rudge (1840–41).

The building was threatened with demolition in 1923 but was saved by the Dickens Fellowship who bought the property and renovated it. The Dickens House Museum, later renamed the Charles Dickens Museum, was opened in 1925 and is run by an independent trust.

Since then more than two million people have visited the museum which is spread over four floors and houses the world’s most important collection of paintings, rare editions, manuscripts, original furniture and other items relating to the author’s life and work.

Now a new £3.1m project, entitled Great Expectations, has been launched to restore the rooms to their traditional Victorian era appearance and to improve the museum and to turn it into an education and information centre to coincide with the bicentenary of Dickens’s birth in 2012.

The project has already been recognized by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the museum is now raising £1.1m to match public funding of £1.7m.

Next time I am in London I shall definitely visit the museum, whose website is www.dickensmuseum.com

Incidentally, The Lion Hotel in Shrewsbury is hosting a weekend of Dickens celebrations on Saturday, February 5 and Sunday, February 6, 2012, when Gerald Dickens, the great, great grandson of Charles, will be reading some of  the author's works.

For more details ring 01743 353107 or go to www.thelionhotelshrewsbury.com/