Fifty years ago I was a pupil at St Michael and All Angels secondary modern school in Camberwell. One of the books we were given to read was Valerie Avery’s London Morning, first published in 1964, writes Stephen Bourne.
I thoroughly enjoyed this semi-autobiographical novel about working-class life around the Old Kent Road as seen through the eyes of a child. This was a refreshing contrast to some of the other books we were given to read which I found difficult to comprehend. These included Shakespeare’s Macbeth and George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
I remember one girl in my class who challenged our teacher about Animal Farm. There was a memorable stand-off when the girl explained to the teacher that Orwell’s novel was a political allegory about a revolt against authoritarianism and oppression. The teacher insisted it was a lovely fairy tale about farm animals. In 1974 working-class kids were not expected (or encouraged) to think.
London Morning was a wake-up call for me. It was the first book I read that made me realise that it was possible to write about subjects I was familiar with and composed in my own language. I discovered that I didn’t have to read ‘classic’ English literature (I later struggled with Austen, Dickens and Keats’s poetry) or go to University (which wasn’t an option) to pursue my interest in writing.
It took only 17 years for me to have my first book published and it was not a novel but a co-authored autobiographical sketch of my adopted Aunt Esther. I also had an article about my childhood in Peckham and Camberwell published in a magazine. I sent them to David Robinson, a professional writer who was also a friend. He was the film critic for The Times and Charlie Chaplin’s official biographer. He was most enthusiastic: “I think they are absolutely terrific. You have achieved a style that is absolutely pure and direct; and succeeded in the almost impossible – eradicating any ‘literary’ taint. I think you should do a lot of writing while you have this beautiful, incomparable style. Believe me – and always heed the word of an older man.”
Fifty years after reading London Morning I recently found a rare second hand copy of the book and read it again. I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting the book, but I was disappointed to find that it was out of print. Copies are difficult to find. However, fifty years ago we did not have the internet and today two online resources – Ancestry.co.uk and the British Newspaper Archive – have made it possible to undertake research into Valerie Avery, her family and the locations she described.
As stated in the book, London Morning is set in a house off the Old Kent Road, which I have now identified as 45 Cowan Street in the former Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell. Cowan Street was demolished in the 1970s to make way for Burgess Park. The site is now marked by a path between Chumleigh Gardens and the lake.
Valerie, born in 1940, barely knew her father, Richard Avery, a labourer, who joined the army but was killed in action in 1945. He was buried in a war cemetery in Italy. Valerie gave first-hand testimony from a child’s point of view of events in her young life. In 1945 a V2 rocket destroyed her primary school in Scarsdale Road without any warning: “I was standing in the assembly hall with my hands together, eyes shut, saying the Lord’s Prayer, when suddenly there was a shattering, terrible crash. Then everything went black…a cold wind roared through the hall.” Valerie survived the blast, but part of nearby Cowan Street was also destroyed, including No 45: “Our house had been hit by the same bomb. That morning it had towered strong and solid and now it was crumbling down as though it had been made from cornflakes.”
Afterwards Valerie and her mother, Vi, moved to her father’s parents’ house, which I have identified as 36 Astley Street. Valerie described this as “dying in a back turning off the Old Kent Road. The roads and pavements were narrow, and beetle-like houses hunched together for warmth and support, their walls choked by factory smoke and chalked upon by children. A lamp-post bent like a walking-stick leant against Gran’s house that was old, black and humped.” Valerie’s Grandad worked as a rag and bone man.
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After failing the ’11-plus’ exam, which meant that she could not benefit from a grammar school education with the possibility of going to university, the academically bright Valerie became a pupil at the experimental Walworth School (now the Ark Walworth Academy). At the age of sixteen she completed the first draft of her autobiography. Meanwhile, her first literary success came in 1958 when a friend submitted one of her essays for a competition in the Spectator and she won a prize. Consequently the BBC invited Valerie to read selections from her essays on the radio. The first was ‘My Lucky Sovereign’ in 1958.
The following year, in another radio broadcast, she recalled ‘the street games and characters of her childhood in the smoke-smitten slums.’ London Morning was published in 1964 and eventually found its way into schools. After leaving Walworth School, Valerie trained and qualified as a teacher, married in 1961 and started a family.
