In late August 2025 Hilary Temple and I left Birmingham New Street station by the 8.03am Edinburgh train. Though we may have fantasised, just a little, about staying on it to the terminus we were bound for Leeds and the Brotherton Library, where we’d booked the luxury of two days amongst the Angela Thirkell collection.
We had a serious aim, to look for as yet unpublished material from Angela’s pen. I’m always looking for the next Journal contributions too, and what could be better than a contribution from the woman herself?
What’s inside the boxes?
As well as manuscripts, typescripts, and correspondence, there’s a smallish box (number 6) described as containing, “Diaries (used as engagement books only) from the 1950s”. With a few minutes to spare at the end of an afternoon, I decided to browse, to see what Angela was up to from 1952 to 1960. She was clearly a “lady who lunched”, also went to tea, dined, and made regular visits to her dentist, all scattered through with scribbled notes, asides or aide-mémoire that are illuminating and intriguing in turns.
From just my cursory glance through the 1960 diary, the year before she died and picked at random, two engagements jumped out for me. In both instances it was a name that caught my attention.
First, though, just look at what Angela managed to fit into Thursday April 28th: a lunch appointment at 1pm; a Memorial Service at 3pm for Lady Cynthia Asquith, who had died on March 30th (held at St Martin’s in the Fields); a concert at St Michael’s Hall, Graham Terrace (I believe this is in Belgravia, SW1) at 7.30pm; and she may have met a Mr Norman Tattersall at Sloane Square Station beforehand. Friday was quieter, with a private view at the Royal Academy (probably the Summer Exhibition), and a chiropodist appointment.
Mr & Mrs Bogdasarian
But what attracted me to this page appears in the notes at the bottom – “Mr & Mrs Bogdasarian (USA Fan) May 1 – 5”. Bogdasarian isn’t a common name, and I recognised it instantly. Among my collection of secondhand (I prefer to think of them as vintage) Thirkells is a copy of Pomfret Towers, signed by the author. I had to wait until I was home to check this out, and sure enough, Pomfret Towers was signed to Mr & Mrs Bogdasarian in 1960 – so Angela met up with her USA Fan, and did as was expected. She was remarkable for her attention to her readers, thank heavens, which is why there’s a pleasing quantity of signed books available, and each one a small treasure.
I moved through to late May, and proof that there’s no such thing as “engagement books only”: every page has a story to tell. On the 24th, Empire Day, something that, I imagine, would have been close to Angela’s heart, she had an appointment to be at the National Book League headquarters at 7 Albemarle Street, Piccadilly. This was the address where Hugh Walpole originally formed the “League” in 1921, for “the advancement of literature”. May 24th 1960 is significant for the opening of the May Lamberton Becker wing of the National Book League Library, and presumably why Angela Thirkell was there. A tribute to May Lamberton Becker, given at the opening, can be read here.
Angela’s health
Beneath that entry are two (sadly unclear) names with, in brackets “nice nurses friends of Cynthia”. On the opposite page, but not shown in this photograph, Angela wrote “Allcock’s plaster for lumbago”. We know that Angela was often in pain towards the end of her life, and this is a sad reminder of the limits of palliative care at the time. Allcock’s Plaster is described on the website “The Quack Doctor – History’s medical advertisers and their remedies”.
Meeting a friend of Colin
But back to the point of this blog. Wednesday May 25th saw a visit from the “Gas Man” followed, as cool as you like, by Ida Kar’s 11.30am appointment. Ida Kar was a photographer particularly known for her portraits. Angela’s son, Colin MacInnes, was a friend of Kar’s and he rented a room in the building in D’Arblay Street, Soho, where Kar and her partner, Victor Musgrave, housed the contemporary art gallery, Gallery One. MacInnes had been photographed by Kar in 1957, and now Kar was engaged (possibly by Hamish Hamilton, if not by Angela herself) to capture MacInnes’ mother.
The name leapt out at me, and I thought I knew the photograph or, at least, a photograph, of Angela by Ida Kar; could it have been from this sitting? The National Portrait Gallery put me right – it was 1960. And here it is.
(The National Portrait Gallery sells prints and greetings cards of its images, including this one.)
The painting on the wall behind Angela is a portrait of Georgiana Burne-Jones, by Edward Burne-Jones. In the full image of the painting Margaret (Angela’s mother) and Philip Burne-Jones can be seen through the open doorway.
I doubt there’s been any academic value in my browsing (yet), or the rabbit holes it sends me down, but it’s fascinating. We’ll be going back.
NB – the Brotherton Library’s Special Collections also holds manuscripts, documents, and letters relating to Arthur Ransome, Bram Stoker, Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontës, and very much more. You can book to visit and consult material in the research centre.
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