I suppose it makes a lot of sense to have an ‘internet archive’. I’ve used the ‘way back machine’ on several occassions but must admit to missing the archive itself.

Well worth exploring; my search query today was for ‘Christopher Nevison’. As part of a local history web project I’ve been reading a lot about the history of east London, London, the nature of history and so on. Thomas Burke and Pearl Binder really got me thinking when looking through ‘The Real East End’ - it was the graphics that were so eye catching. Here is London, not as some nostalgia but as a city in the grip of modernism, electrification and automation.  As ever, once you start really looking, you find more. This isn’t something mystical, it’s because there is more activity and searching for particular things, and you deliberately go to places not sure of what you might find. And a few days ago I consciously visited the Museum of London shop to see what books they might have (on the way to a meeting at a City bank - but that’s another story).

In the sale, ‘Twenties London: A City in the Jazz Age’ by Cathy Ross. I was almost put off by the price. Only five pounds? It can’t be much of a book. But it’s fantastic. The whole falling into London in the 1920s starts with Syncopation and then via Russia and America and Empire and England we finally reach London. It’s a wonderful technique. On the way we learn about the impact of automation, the age of the ‘masses’ and ‘democracy’. Whole new chapters of history are opened up such as the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift (who fired a green arrow through the door of 10 Downing Street in 1940 among other activities). In the book cubist paintings from Christoper Nevinson, again an artist new to me (this may only be revealing my appalling ignorance of art history).

And today looking up Christoper Nevinson on the web, I find the internet archive, which has what looks to have a complete electronic copy of his book ‘Paint and Prejudice’

http://www.archive.org/details/paintandprejudic027098mbp

And that, for the moment, is where this journey into the past ends; I simply can’t read a whole book off the screen, and there is not the same pleasure of reading in printing a great wad of paper. Eventually the book will be found in a second hand shop, hopefully in a hardcover and first edition. It will be worth waiting for.