I once met….Bryan Forbes

It was in the summer of 1999 that the actor, screenwriter, director (Stepford Wives, Whistle Down the Wind, Séance on a wet Afternoon), turned crime writer, who died last May, had asked me to meet him at his second hand bookshop in Virginia Water.

It was an odd sort of shop—not the type one would come across in most provincial towns or indeed most parts of London. Here were no grubby leather-bound tomes in tottering piles, or cabinet of curiosities. I think it sold new as well as second books and indeed most volumes seemed to be of the twentieth century. I glanced around expecting to find rare books on golf or lawn tennis, classic American hard boiled thrillers or collections of recipes for cocktails.
But there no time to look further as Forbes appeared in person and we were soon speeding along in what was probably his Aston Martin to his home on the ultra- exclusive Wentworth estate. I only caught a glance of its exterior, but it seemed to be a huge and classic twenties film-star mansion, which it was, in the sense that Forbes later told me that as a young budding film star in the fifties he had bought it as a total wreck and had spent  many thousands of pounds doing it up. Something to admire, I thought.

I wanted to meet his wife Nannette 'Fairy Liquid' Newman, but Forbes told me that she had injured her back and was lying prostrate upstairs. We made ourselves comfortable and Forbes lit up a fag almost immediately and continued smoking throughout the interview. I asked him how he had begun to collect books and what his particular tastes were. He told me that he was mentored in his initial forays into bibliophilia by a well known 'book man'. He had become a great admirer of limited editions, though I kept quiet when he mentioned the Folio Society. He was also, it transpired, an avid admirer of Napoleon and he had managed to collect a fine library of books on him, all of which he had uniformly re-bound in crimson morocco. Something less admirable, I thought.

There were some showbiz anecdotes. I particularly remember the sad story of Dame Edith Evans in her final years being cheated of some irreplaceable signed books (one of which had been presented to her by George Bernard Shaw) by some unscrupulous knocker, who had offered her a fraction of their worth.

Before I left, Forbes gave me a signed copy of some poems his daughter had published. Ten years later, in my local auction, I saw a throne-like French armchair emblazoned with the letter ‘N ‘ for Napoleon. I phoned Forbes to see if he wanted to me to bid for it, but he politely declined the offer.[RH]

I once met….Kenneth Griffiths

Younger movie goers may remember him as the irascible elderly wedding guest (‘ Don’t you think I know my own brother ?’ ) in Four Weddings and a Funeral but cineastes would prefer to see him as the enfant terrible of the British film industry, if you can call a man in his seventies, a child. Perhaps maverick is a better word. He wanted to make films of deeply controversial figures in history but often ran up against the usual stuffed shirts. He asked awkward questions about Britain’s imperial past, and about the British in Ireland. I had been invited to talk to him about his Boer War collection, but we ended up chatting about the time when the IRA came to tea.

He lived in a four story stuccoed Victorian house in Barnsbury called ‘Michael Collins House’. Griffith’s Boer War archive was huuuuuge. Said to be the largest of its kind in private hands, it occupied all four floors. Apparently Griffith’s interest had started when he worked in a stamp shop for a while and became interested in Boer War postmarks. It developed apace in 1952 when he went to South Africa to act with the Old Vic company and was taken around the battle sites by a friend.

In amongst the Boer War material were hundreds of books, pamphlets, prints and letters relating to the British radical tradition. Although a Protestant, the history of Irish nationalism was an abiding passion, which led to death threats from the UVF. He showed me the receipt he received for the postcard he sent to Bobby Sands before he died. In his 'Gladstone Corner' I saw a piece of one of trees that the great man used to cut down. When some IRA leaders came to tea one of them noticed a photo of Queen Victoria and remarked that she was 'a very interesting old lady'. However, the visitor 'was very uneasy with me from then on...' said Griffiths.[RMH]