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8.
Letts Royal Office Tablet Diary 1965.
Miles’s spiral-bound 1965 desk diary, filled with entries for 169 days of social engagements, meetings concerning his early foray into small press publishing, and appointments relating to his year-long role as manager of Better Books (many also feature later annotations in pencil clarifying names and places).
The earliest entries begin with Horde magazine meetings at Lee Harwood’s flat, and continue with the dates of various poetry readings at Better Books, among them: Allen Ginsberg (May 19), Ernst Jandl (May 31), and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (June 23), all of whom read at the International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall on June 11, noted by Miles at the time as simply “Albert Hall Concert”.
Other Bettter Books events include a screening of “Towers Open Fire” on October 12, and a Eduardo Paolozzi event on December 1, while some are unidentified only as “films at BBz”, or just “Better Books Evening”.
Many entries refer to social events Miles either attended or organised: a party at Hoppy’s new flat in Queensway (January 23); dinner with Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti at Julie Felix’s (June 2); and dinner with Marianne Faithfull and John Dunbar (August 30). One of them, written simply “57 Wimpole St.” (October 22) and since annotated “Paul McCartney, Peter Asher, Jane Asher”, dates from the time Miles began storing Indica’s future stock of books and magazines in the Asher family home.
Among the names of friends and contemporaries that appear at least once, some of them regularly, are Binn Tivy; Alan Beckett; Graham Keen; Hoppy; Pete Brown; Michael Horovitz; Libby Houston; Mal Dean; Paolo Lionni; Peter Wollen; Adam Ritchie; Stuart Montgomery; and Bill Butler and Bob Cobbing, Miles’s immediate predecessor and successor respectively at Better Books.
Filled with these and many other names, the diary offers a glimpse into a pivotal year in which London’s ‘underground’ began to coalesce, culminating in the mid-summer gathering at the Royal Albert Hall its writer was instrumental in organising.
