Bright Particular Stars: A Gallery of Glorious British Eccentrics

by David McKie

In Bright Particular Stars, David McKie examines the impact of twenty-six remarkable British eccentrics on twenty-six unremarkable British locations. From Broadway in the Cotswolds, where the Victorian bibliomaniac Sir Thomas Phillipps nurtured dreams of possessing every book in the world, to Kilwinning in Scotland, where in 1839 the Earl of Eglinton mounted a tournament that was Renaissance in its extravagance and disastrous in its execution, McKie leads us to places transformed, inspired and sometimes scandalized by the obsessional endeavours of visionary mavericks. Some of McKie's eccentrics, such as Mary Macarthur, who helped the women chainmakers of Cradley Heath win the right to a fair wage in 1910, were good to the point of saintliness; others, including the composer Peter Heseltine, who in the 1920s set net curtains twitching by his hard drinking and naked motorbike riding, rather less so. But together their fascinating stories illuminate some of the most secret and most extraordinary byways of our national and local history.In Bright Particular Stars quiet, unassuming streetscapes become sites of eccentric and uproarious sites of action. The triumphs and failures of the visionaries who thus transformed them - recaptured here by David McKie in vivid and beguiling fashion - have each, in their own way, helped shape our island's rich and chequered history.

354 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 28, 2011

About the author

David McKie (born 1935) is an English journalist and historian. He was deputy editor of The Guardian and continued to write a weekly column for that paper until 4 October 2007, with the byline Elsewhere. Until September 10, 2005, he also wrote a second weekly column, under the pseudonym "Smallweed".

His book Jabez: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Scoundrel, a biography of the Victorian era politician and swindler Jabez Balfour, was shortlisted for the Saga Award for Wit, also known as the Silver Booker, as well as the Whitbread Book Award for biography. Great British Bus Journeys was shortlisted for a Dolman Best Travel Book Award in 2007.

Reviews

[Rachel Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used to enjoy the Smallweed columns in the Guardian and so was interested in reading a full length book by David McKie, although this one is a bit of a misnomer. There are some stories of eccentrics here – Barnard Gregory who set up the first tabloid/scandal sheet, William Gilpin, who tried to scientifically measure the picturesque, Peter Warlock, composer and occultist, Hugh Miller, an untrained Scottish geologist, George Muntz, the first parliamentarian to wear a beard, James Jershom Jezreel who founded a cult of Jezreelites in, erm, Gillingham, but some seem to be suffering from hubris rather than eccentricity, such as the Ayrshire Earl who put on a grand jousting tournament for 100,000 people only for it to be spoiled by rain, or tyranny – the bibliophile who collected books but refused to pay book-sellers, or mental health problems (Mary Smith who tried to sue an Earl for not marrying her, despite the fact they’d only met once). There are also ruthless entrepreneurs (Ralph Ward Jackson who built West Hartlepool, which eventually became the main town of Hartlepool), feminists: Adelaide Proctor who founded the first women's printing press and Mary Macarthur, the Annie Besant of Staffordshire, and Sydney Yates, who managed Blackburn Olympic who were the first working class football team to beat the Old Etonians in the final of the FA cup, and an Italian general better known as a biscuit (Garibaldi).

It seemed as if McKie started off with the idea of eccentrics (mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries: he doesn't go into the 20th century until the last third of the book; he doesn't, for instance, mention Edith Sitwell or Stephen Tenant or Jane Rebecca Yorke (the last woman to be imprisoned under the witchcraft act) or Paddy Roy Bates (King of Sealand) or Andy Park (the man who cerebrates Xmas every day)), but then couldn't find enough to write about, so added in short (10-15 pages) slices of social history/biography as well, which are interesting but not that eccentric (the horrible account of workhouse children enslaved in a Georgian mill, William Paxton, who tried to dine his way into parliament) in order to meet the publisher's 300 page requirement.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is definitely full of fun stories about some very odd people. Whether it actually makes a coherent whole is open to question. I enjoyed, it is well researched and written - not just scissors and paste job - you'll recognise if it is your sort of book - but I couldn't help feeling that something was missing, some challenge or opportunity missed. If you are going to write a book about odd people doing odd things I always feel the need for an author who thinks out of left field - like Phillip Blom whose book 'To Have and to Hold' on collectors and collecting is everything this work is not.

But I often end up wishing for the books that the author could have but did not write, maybe couldn't write, rather then dealing with the dross they do write.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A real curiosity, this one. The title bears no relation to the content, for a start. The whole book is based on geographical places around Britain, some more famous than others, and each chapter is centred on one place. Then we often get a few characters associated with the place, but not always. Some of these people might have been once famous, some not, and sometimes there's no one person of focus. And the people on whom the tale is focused does not in any way fit the category of 'eccentric'. Some were hard working, some born to riches, some became famous and remained so, such as the trade union official, some lost riches, such as the Peel family, but 'eccentric' is a complete misnomer.
However, having said that, some of the tales are most engaging, although some are quite banal. As I said, a curiosity, and a very mixed bunch.

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

c2011: Now, most of the members of the normal crew know that I love a bit of word play, sarcasm and the like. This book should have been funnier that it was and not a pun to be seen. I also felt that it hadn't quite made up its mind as to whether it was about the people or the places and consequently, imho, that made a bit of a jarring dichotomy. It did have its moments though which gained it a second star from me. For those Anglophiles within the normal crew, its recommended. "Moses had been notorious even before this event"

[Risto Pyykkö · Rating 3 out of 5]

An idiosyncratic miscellany of eccentrics, important but forgotten historical figures, UFO sightings and theatre companies.