21 Tavistock Place, St Pancras — 1908 In May 1908, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin arrives back in London carrying a written recommendation from Joseph J. Terrett in support of a request for entry into the British Museum Library. Sadly, on being unable to find a Joseph J. Terrett at the address provided on the reference, the…
Forgotten Man — Fitzgerald’s Fascist Neighbours, American Dream in Crisis
In the 1930s, F. Scott Fitzgerald, suffering personal and professional decline, struggled for recognition as The Great Gatsby faded from memory. Amid Zelda’s worsening mental health and the rise of American fascism, Fitzgerald mingled with Marxist intellectuals and radicals in Asheville, North Carolina. Among his neighbours was the American fascist, William Dudley Pelley. But what…
Lenin at 30 Holford Square, London 1902
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya resided at 30 Holford Square from April 1902 until May 1903. As Bob Henderson’s seminal article, Lenin and the British Museum (Solanus, Vol 4) points out, it was from this address that Lenin, using his now customary pseudonym, Jacob Richter, first wrote to the Director of the…
Who Turned The Great Gatsby into an Allegory of the American Dream? Podcast
“Gatsby, may be taken not only as an individual character but also as a symbolic or even allegorical character. It comes to seem more and more plausible that Gatsby, divided between power and dream, is to be thought of as standing for America itself. Ours is the only nation that prides itself upon a dream…
America, My Glorious Land. Poets, Assassins and The American Dream
In 1900, Captain James V. Martin, the man at the centre of the American Relief Administration scandal, published an anti-Expansionist pamphlet sponsored by Andrew Carnegie and William Jennings Bryan. This story explores the unlikely hand of friendship extended by American Populists to Russian Revolutionaries at the time of the McKinley Assassination. No one event, however…
American Relief Administration Scandal – Captain James V. Martin, Herbert Hoover & Russia
The Original Russian Job: The forgotten story of how a ‘secret compact’ between Churchill and America very nearly saved Russia from Lenin and the Soviet Union. This is the story of James V. Martin, an aviation pioneer who blew the whistle on American plans to smash the Bolsheviks at the height of post-war trade negotiations…
Absolution — F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby’s Forgotten Prologue
Many people won’t know that The Great Gatsby once had a prologue. It was ditched by Fitzgerald when he realised that it didn’t fit with the ’general neatness’ of the book’s design. Instead, he offered to H. L. Mencken’s new American Mercury magazine for a $118. It’ s a deeply enigmatic tale, so what is…
The Phantom of the Jazz Age
The Phantom of the Jazz Age – 100 Years of Gatsby It’s 100 years since The Great Gatsby was published. Jay Gatsby has followed the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald to Paris determined to uncover the truth about his identity. Is Scott prepared to tell everybody the truth after all these years? Although a fictional scene,…
A ‘Secret Mission’ to Russia. How F. Scott Fitzgerald very nearly became a spy.
In 1917, F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, was nearly recruited for a covert mission to Russia, posing as a Red Cross secretary for Father Sigourney Fay. The mission, tied to US State Department interests during the Russian Revolution, aimed to gauge religious freedom and political shifts. Complicated by secret diplomacy and escalating…
Descendents of the Real Jay Gatsby — Alfred A. Stork aka Charles A. Stork I
Pleased to say that after a long search I’ve finally been able to trace the living descendants of Max Stork Gerlach, the man that author F. Scott Fitzgerald used as a partial basis for his most famous character, Jay Gatsby. I have found through them through following the family line of Max’s half-brother Alfred Andrew…
The Usual ‘Unusual’ Suspects. The Lindbergh Kidnapping, Arms Deals and a New York Prohibition Scandal.
“I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry, and all talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans.” The Great Gatsby I’d like to go back to another Max Gerlach conundrum. On Max’s 1942 World War II Draft Registration Card, Gerlach…
Repeating the Past with Genius: Understanding the role played by Americanism & the Catholic Church in the creation of The Great Gatsby
“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.” “You can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously.“Why of course you can!” He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. The Great Gatbsy With…
Max von Gerlach aka Max Stork – The Original Great Gatsby?
“He started as one man I knew and then changed into myself.” That’s how the author described his most famous creation, Jay Gatsby. And on the evidence currently available there’s no reason to doubt him. Discoveries made by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Horst Kruse suggest that the ‘one man’ he knew was Max Gerlach, whose…
The Eyes of T. J. Eckleburg, The Valley of Ashes and the Meaning and Inspiration Behind Them.
Blending into the background and creating a mask is all part of the tradecraft of being a spy, and whether it’s the endless whirring rumours at Gatsby’s parties, the private investigations into his business affairs carried out by his love rival Tom Buchannan, or the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg staring out with haunting…
The Cult of Tradition: Let’s Make The Past Great Again! ™
Before you went to the bar, Mr Farage, we were talking about why people like you and me were jumping into our little spaceships and hurtling back through time. I was talking about time just being another modern consumable and argued that providing there were enough independent time traders like your good self around, going…
George Shanks and the Protocols Matrix
On the 100th anniversary of the book being exposed as a forgery, a recent discovery I made in the archives in Dublin suggests that the 1920 British translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (The Jewish Peril) was not the work of ‘lone wolf’ anti-Semite George Shanks, but part of a sophisticated propaganda…
Monocled Mutineer – Mutiny at the BBC
Why did Bleasdale’s drama cause such a media storm? Why was the BBC Director Alasdair Milne removed? And what were Willie Whitelaw’s links to Toplis’ killer?
The Enchanting Secret Behind the Monocled Mutineer
Unhappy is the land that needs a hero. What makes the legend of the Monocled Mutineer such a compelling mystery?
The Garden of the Dead: The Cult of Nostalgia & Romantic Nationalism in Europe
Take a good look at this picture from The Daily Telegraph in 2015. This is Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, but then serving as leader of the UK Independence Party. By the way, Nigel doesn’t have a life outside of this picture. He doesn’t have family, he doesn’t have friends, he doesn’t come from…
The Glorious Fourth – A Writer’s Declaration. A Listenable 10-page storybook
At 10.00am yesterday morning I received an email prompt from Google asking me to check out a new A.I feature called Gemini Storybook. I was busy proofing a book that I am writing on F. Scott Fitzgerald, but curious, I took a look. And I’m glad I did. It was fun to use. Here’s the…