The Alice Companion (Macmillan, London 1998 & New York University Press).

(notes on other books, see the bottom of this article).

In 1976 Jo Elwyn Jones, my partner and wife, gave a talk to the History of Science Department at Harvard where she worked. It was around the idea that Charles Darwin of evolution fame was satirized by Lewis Carroll as the Bulldog in Alice in Wonderland. Broadly she had the idea that some of the 'characters' in the two Alice books were based on real individuals within the Oxford University orbit where Lewis Carroll taught and Alice was the young daughter of his head of college, Dean Liddell of Christ Church.

Prior to her, the English poet, Walter de la Mare, has made similar suggestions. The Alice stories had satire hidden within them. And the girl and man were close by. Darwin sent his acolyte and colleague, Thomas Henry Huxley to debate evolution with the Bishop of Oxford Wilberforce. Carroll spun these tales and people the intelligent little girl ran -- the Liddell parents held a central place in British life.

In the mid '90s I worked as back up to Jo Elwyn Jones to propose a book based on these ideas. Our agent, Andrew Best, secured a small paying but prestigious contact with the publishers Jonathan Cape. Central to this was Tony Colwell, previously a publicist who made his name with the James Bond books at Cape.

The Red King's Dream seemed to be OK. It was written around travels and encounters Carroll and Alice made. We tried not to be too assertive in our views about the real Victorians mirrored in the 'characters', Darwin (bulldog), Huxley (Ugly Duchess), the then ultra-famous children's writer Charles Kingsley (Mad Hatter), Red King (Alice's imperious father).... Jonathan Cape publicized it and us, only for the book to run into a critical fire storm. Humphrey Carpenter was the co-editor of the respected Oxford Companion to Children's Literature.

He hated our book and, contrary to publishing convention, before it was available damned it in the lead review in the Sunday Observer. To some Alice is sacred as pure fantasy and those critics cannot bear the idea that the books are anchored in real life observations. The damning review was feared by Tony Colwell, our editor and ex-publicist. Other reviews followed Carpenter although later reviews in more academic journals were glowing. The book sold tepidly. Oh dear!

I think we failed to appreciate how out of order we were with many Alice devotees. When you write about Carroll and the little girl his mother asked him to photograph unclothed... you run into weirdness find yourself defending the hapless Carroll as not being a pedophile. So it goes.

As a result of the book we did have a prestigious, even if also minimally paying, offer. Macmillan had published Carroll, made a lot of money for him and for themselves and asked us to provide a companion for the centenary of his birth in 1898.

Both The Red King's Dream and The Alice Companion are available on Abebooks.

Later we sold a lot of copies of the books and many prints and cards of Alice with our captions. Perhaps too much is written about Carroll and Alice. The fact is that it sells and sells and sells. Our assertion would be that it is not pure fantasy. Even if people do not make the link between the (now obscure) Charles Kingsley and the Hatter at the Mad Teaparty, the character, the Hatter, is to us 'real', mad, outspoken, odd, egotistical and real.

And the sad pedophile assertions? Alice's mother (one of the imperious queens, white or red) was assertive and defensive of her many children to a high degree. Carroll desired this lively minded and lovely child? Of course he desired her. He created one of the great landmarks of English and comic literature from her being real. Carroll desired her, surely, and he did the opposite to abusing her. He made her unforgettably inquisitive and charming.

A footnote: Alice grew up to be a stolid woman who made a marriage to a man who sought a life playing cricket and hunting as a way of using his industrial fortune. She and Reginald Hargreaves married in Westminster Abbey, then lived in grand -- and suffocatingly dull -- style. Hargreaves died in 1923, the money ran short in the depression of the 1920s. To help she sold the treasured manuscript of Alice in Wonderland which was given to her by Carroll.

This is the version with Carroll's own illustrations. The version we know is illustrated by John Tenneil of the political satire Punch. Alice's manuscript was bought by an American collector and then bought back by the US Library of Congress to donate to the British Museum as a gift to recognize the courageous part Britain played in standing up to fascism.

The two other books I have written are modest:

1. The Politics of Planning, published by Temple Smith, London 1977. This came out of my experience making the Horizon documentary 'One Liverpool or Two'.

Strongly influenced by the doyen of modern critics of urban planning, Jane Jacobs, the Liverpool film was about a phony use of science to justify a kind of planning that put cars above buildings and modernistic concepts of architecture above people. The book was widely praised and, in another world, I would have gone on to specialize in this area. From time to time a copy shows up on Abebooks website.

And it, rooted in the '60s and '70s, it should be much more out of date than it is. Alas in 2014, blandness in many cities continues to rule under the name of 'planning' and is driven by considerations of property tax maximization. Who cares what it looks like, or how it feels for people?

2. For Derek Wyatt at Kingswood Press, I wrote The Cricketers Guide to Baseball. I loved cricket (which does not have to have a conclusion -- that is changing now, 2024) and I came to love baseball which, in an American way, does have to have an ending. I am sure I was wrong about much in this modest book. It sold its print run and it was a privilege to be allowed to write about how games are a metaphor for national temperament. I am British born, |Scottish by temperament and not domicile and feel deeply associated with the USA of which I am a non-resident citizen.