Restoring St. George’s

Peter Campbell looks out of the window of 28 Little Russell Street

The steeple of the church of St George, Bloomsbury is an astonishing confection. A square tower rises from the ground to above roof level. It is topped by a little pedimented temple. The temple supports a stepped pyramid and the pyramid a sacrificial altar. On the altar, like a doll on a wedding cake, is a statue of George I in Roman dress. It was paid for by Mr Huck, brewer to the royal household. The lion and unicorn from the royal arms once played around the base of the pyramid: they were finally removed in a dilapidated state during G.E. Street’s renovation of 1871 – he was probably embarrassed by them in any case. Funds permitting, current restoration work will see them back in place, newly carved.

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Vol. 25 No. 22 · 20 November 2003 » Peter Campbell » Restoring St. George’s (print version)
Pages 18-20 | 4188 words

Letters

From Justin Horton

I was disappointed, on seeing the heading 'Peter Campbell looks out of the window at 28 Little Russell Street', to find that the piece was about St George's Church (LRB, 20 November). I had hoped the subject would be the house opposite the LRB, No. 5, in which my Great-Aunt Ruth lived for half a century. She was the sort of person the LRB might have appreciated.

In her younger days Ruth Howe met, and was chatted up by, Asquith at a party. She knew the Gollanczes, and was nearly expelled from the US, where she was studying, for working on the New Masses, on which Alger Hiss also worked. Having been a member of the Independent Labour Party, she joined the Labour Party because it supported the war against Hitler, and remained a member until she died, a few months before the 1997 election. Frank Dobson gave the eulogy at her funeral – she had brought him into politics when a Camden councillor, a role in which she narrowly escaped surcharge for opposing higher rents for council tenants. Ken Livingstone once visited her at No. 5, and was, apparently, the only person to whom her cats ever took an instant liking. She worked as a journalist for many years, including a period after the war in which she produced a Polish-language newspaper for expatriates in London, inventing non-existent contributors and giving them the names of her family members. It was at this time, the story goes, that Isaac Deutscher invited her to become his secretary. She turned him down, however, on the grounds that 'he smelled.'

Her life stretched over almost the entire 20th century, and she always reminded me of the people whose reminiscences are recorded in Warren Beatty's film Reds: she was of that world, part of a particular labour movement and intellectual socialist tradition which is supposed, in the new century, to be consigned to the past. Of course it is not, and the fact that people of all ages took inspiration from Ruth is evidence enough of that. It's a sad thing that she wasn't known to the people across the street.

Justin Horton
London SW2

From Rev. Perry Butler

I should make one important correction to Peter Campbell's article about the restoration of St George's. Although the church building is now closed, services continue throughout the project in the Lower Vestry House Chapel, behind the church at 6 Little Russell Street. We usually muster between thirty and forty.

Rev. Perry Butler
London WC1