JOHN LUCAS ONLINE: London Grip reveals a cache of valuable material
In the few weeks since we heard the sad news of the death of John Lucas we have seen many tributes and reminiscences on blogs and other social media, all expressing gratitude and admiration for his achievements. As a poet, novelist, teacher, reviewer, editor and publisher, he seemed tireless in generating his own prolific output; and yet he also found the time and energy unselfishly to encourage and promote the work of others. And alongside his literary reputation he is very fondly remembered for his enjoyment of the wider things in life: music (especially jazz), sport (particularly cricket), travel (chiefly to Greece) and of course the company of family and his many friends.
It has only now occurred to us to mention that London Grip possesses a rather remarkable archive of John’s recent writing. A search of our site via https://londongrip.co.uk/?s=John+Lucas shows nearly sixty articles in which John’s name appears. In some of these he simply gets a passing mention; but there are about thirty reviews by John himself of a range of books which includes poetry collections, novels, literary criticism and works on sociology, education and even machine intelligence(!). In addition, there are a dozen or so reviews of John’s own books, written by regular members of the London Grip team. Almost unbelievably, these reveal that in the ten years since 2015 John published (at least) one poetry collection, a volume of short stories, a study of some independently-minded cricketers, a memoir about friends and friendship and half a dozen novels!
This impressive online presence is all the more remarkable because John was not himself an internet user. He seems to have been quite an early adopter of word-processing tools as they began to replace the typewriter; but he subsequently resisted the idea that his hardware or software might need to be updated – let alone connected to the world-wide-web! It might seem somewhat inconsistent for John to want his reviews to appear on a medium that he would not himself read. I can only assume that it was the speed of publication that appealed to him. It might be months before a review could appear in a print magazine; but if a book caught his attention he could very quickly reach an online audience with his opinion of it. And he would then be free and clear to start thinking and writing about something else…
Inevitably, the process by which John submitted work to London Grip was a little unusual. In the first place he would phone or send a postcard asking – which characteristic courtesy – if we would be interested in his views on such and such a volume. (The answer would always be ‘yes’ unless by chance another reviewer had already been assigned to that book – which rarely happened because John usually homed in on books that had hitherto escaped our attention.) Once we had agreed, his review would normally be written in a week or two; and then the question arose of how he should deliver it. Occasionally it would arrive by post on a memory stick; but usually John would pass the memory stick to a friend or family member who could send me the contents as an email attachment. Since the contents had been composed on an obsolescent word processor they were not always completely straightforward to deal with; but fortunately London Grip does not operate at the cutting edge of technology so our own software tools could usually be persuaded to recognise older formats. Any effort expended at this stage was well rewarded because John’s views were always worth reading and were, moreover, expressed in his distinctive lively, witty and engaging prose.
It may be a wish to be reminded of John’s “voice” on the page that will prompt some readers to follow the link in the second paragraph and dip into a few of his reviews – or even to scan the accounts of John’s own recent publications in order to catch up on some they may have missed. But here we are struck by the slightly sobering thought that London Grip is not immortal. The easy availability of online material can create an illusion of permanence. As an editor remarks in A G Macdonell’s wonderfully funny novel England their England, “A subscription implies that the magazine will be delivered to the subscriber until one of the three expires”. London Grip remains freely accessible only as long as an appropriate fee is paid to our web hosting company. Moreover, that company is itself a business which conceivably might close or fall victim to some kind of hacking attack. This is absolutely not a coded warning about plans to close London Grip! But it is a way of suggesting that our small treasure trove of John Lucas material might be worth downloading and enjoying sooner rather than later.
Oct 15 2025
JOHN LUCAS ONLINE
JOHN LUCAS ONLINE: London Grip reveals a cache of valuable material
In the few weeks since we heard the sad news of the death of John Lucas we have seen many tributes and reminiscences on blogs and other social media, all expressing gratitude and admiration for his achievements. As a poet, novelist, teacher, reviewer, editor and publisher, he seemed tireless in generating his own prolific output; and yet he also found the time and energy unselfishly to encourage and promote the work of others. And alongside his literary reputation he is very fondly remembered for his enjoyment of the wider things in life: music (especially jazz), sport (particularly cricket), travel (chiefly to Greece) and of course the company of family and his many friends.
It has only now occurred to us to mention that London Grip possesses a rather remarkable archive of John’s recent writing. A search of our site via https://londongrip.co.uk/?s=John+Lucas shows nearly sixty articles in which John’s name appears. In some of these he simply gets a passing mention; but there are about thirty reviews by John himself of a range of books which includes poetry collections, novels, literary criticism and works on sociology, education and even machine intelligence(!). In addition, there are a dozen or so reviews of John’s own books, written by regular members of the London Grip team. Almost unbelievably, these reveal that in the ten years since 2015 John published (at least) one poetry collection, a volume of short stories, a study of some independently-minded cricketers, a memoir about friends and friendship and half a dozen novels!
This impressive online presence is all the more remarkable because John was not himself an internet user. He seems to have been quite an early adopter of word-processing tools as they began to replace the typewriter; but he subsequently resisted the idea that his hardware or software might need to be updated – let alone connected to the world-wide-web! It might seem somewhat inconsistent for John to want his reviews to appear on a medium that he would not himself read. I can only assume that it was the speed of publication that appealed to him. It might be months before a review could appear in a print magazine; but if a book caught his attention he could very quickly reach an online audience with his opinion of it. And he would then be free and clear to start thinking and writing about something else…
Inevitably, the process by which John submitted work to London Grip was a little unusual. In the first place he would phone or send a postcard asking – which characteristic courtesy – if we would be interested in his views on such and such a volume. (The answer would always be ‘yes’ unless by chance another reviewer had already been assigned to that book – which rarely happened because John usually homed in on books that had hitherto escaped our attention.) Once we had agreed, his review would normally be written in a week or two; and then the question arose of how he should deliver it. Occasionally it would arrive by post on a memory stick; but usually John would pass the memory stick to a friend or family member who could send me the contents as an email attachment. Since the contents had been composed on an obsolescent word processor they were not always completely straightforward to deal with; but fortunately London Grip does not operate at the cutting edge of technology so our own software tools could usually be persuaded to recognise older formats. Any effort expended at this stage was well rewarded because John’s views were always worth reading and were, moreover, expressed in his distinctive lively, witty and engaging prose.
It may be a wish to be reminded of John’s “voice” on the page that will prompt some readers to follow the link in the second paragraph and dip into a few of his reviews – or even to scan the accounts of John’s own recent publications in order to catch up on some they may have missed. But here we are struck by the slightly sobering thought that London Grip is not immortal. The easy availability of online material can create an illusion of permanence. As an editor remarks in A G Macdonell’s wonderfully funny novel England their England, “A subscription implies that the magazine will be delivered to the subscriber until one of the three expires”. London Grip remains freely accessible only as long as an appropriate fee is paid to our web hosting company. Moreover, that company is itself a business which conceivably might close or fall victim to some kind of hacking attack. This is absolutely not a coded warning about plans to close London Grip! But it is a way of suggesting that our small treasure trove of John Lucas material might be worth downloading and enjoying sooner rather than later.