The Surrender of Silence
The Memoir of Ironfoot Jack, King of the Bohemians
Ironfoot Jack; ed: Colin Stanley
Strange Attractor Press 2018
Pb, 264pp, illus, notes, bib, appx, ind, £12.99, ISBN 9781907222658
Ironfoot Jack Neave is the definition of an unreliable narrator. He deals only with things that are important to him, glossing over arrests and police raids, already covered in the biography What Rough Beast? by Mark Benney. This perspective makes The Surrender of Silence all the more compelling.
The book, taken from transcribed tapes of Neave’s own words, mainly focuses on “how to solve the problem of existence” – making enough of a living that he didn’t starve and not working more than necessary. At times this approach involved reselling antiques, books, telling fortunes, selling charms, or fragrances. This is a world of Needies and Grafters, Pearl Divers and China Fakers, the text conjuring a world adjacent to the more settled communities of pre-war Britain.
At a time when there is discussion about the changing character of London, it is interesting to read about a city long-since lost; of Bohemian clubs and occult circles, Caledonian Road Market, and underground cafés. This is a London of black magic and Buddha statues, self-styled yogis and basement temples. In damp cellars across the capital, different philosophies were fused into constantly changing cults, and Ironfoot Jack is a good guide to that mostly hidden world.
Colin Stanley found the transcript while cataloguing Colin Wilson’s papers, and has done an excellent job of presenting the self-styled King of the Bohemians in his own words, clarifying points in footnotes and letting Jack speak for himself, something that he was more than capable of doing.
Whether you think ‘Professor’ Neave was a conman, an expert on the occult, an artist, or just a man constantly on the brink of destitution, this is a highly entertaining book. The Surrender of Silence takes us into a colourful, hidden side of London long before punk or the Swinging Sixties, that has, in Ironfoot Jack’s phrase, gone with the wind.
Steve Toase
★★★★★