MEET LOCAL AUTHOR
Kennington past and present will figure in an evening with local author Ross Davies at 7pm Monday 11 May at the South Lambeth Library on South Lambeth Road. Ross is the author of the forthcoming Vauxhall: A Little History (The Nine Elms Press), a popular account of the sometimes-lurid annals of our district. The ‘Vauxhall’ of his book’s title is the parliamentary constituency of that name, which includes Kennington, Waterloo, Stockwell and parts of Brixton and Clapham as well as the area around Vauxhall Bridge.
Ross will also be launching his latest book, the biography of a Second World War poet with Kennington Links. Drummond Allison: Come, Let Us Pity Death (Cecil Woolf). Both themes come together in Ross’s talk, which is an event in this month’s Lambeth Readers and Writers Festival. South London boy Allison, who was killed in action at the age of 22 in 1943, was a keen Surrey CC fan. Shortly before his death, Allison said farewell to The Oval with a poem of that name, now one of the best-known cricket poems in the language, inspired (if that is the word) by the-then deserted, overgrown cricket pitch, set aside but never used as a prisoner-of-war camp.
Allison has had many poems written about him by other poets. ‘Come, Let Us Pity Death’ is his own elegy for his brother, Douglas, a bomber pilot lost in one of the first British air raids of the war on Germany. Admission is free to Lambeth Readers and Writers Festival events, but booking is recommended. For a free ticket, email: readersandwriters@lambeth.gov.
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