Bill Richmond bookshelf: 'A sort of magic' - Writing the prizefight by David Snowdon

Over the next few months I’ll be taking the time to review some of the books, articles and research facilities which I have found useful during the decade-long process of researching and writing Richmond Unchained. So far in the series I have looked at Peter Fryer's Staying Power, Pierce Egan’s Boxiana, the biographies of Tom Cribb and Tom Spring penned by Jon Hurley and Tom Reiss' The Black Count. Today I examine David Snowdon's award-winning Writing the Prizefight: Pierce Egan's Boxiana World.

Pierce Egan is one of the most fascinating and influential figures in the history of sporting discourse. Despite his (over?) use of the idiomatic Regency lingo known as 'Flash', which renders some passages within his work nearly incomprehensible to modern readers, his breezy enthusiasm and vivid world-play and imagery remain a joy to read.

During the 1810s and 1820s, the wonderfully idiosyncratic Egan was as famous as many of the prize fighters whose exploits he recounted. Yet he has rarely received the critical attention or analysis that he deserves, either within popular or academic circles.

John Cowie Reid's 1971 book Bucks and Bruisers: Pierce Egan and Regency England was the only book I knew of from modern times devoted to Egan and his oeuvre ... until, that is, the 2013 publication of Snowdon's impeccably researched and absolutely fascinating Writing the Prizefight: Pierce Egan's Boxiana World.

Given the existence of Reid's work, which deals very efficiently indeed with the biographical paraphernalia of Egan's life and times, Snowdon wisely eschews the temptation to merely produce another biography.

Instead he attempts something far more ambitious: namely a literary, historical and socio-cultural analysis of Egan's literary style, identifying its influence on his contemporaries, as well as among writers who succeeded him, such as Charles Dickens and George Bernard Shaw. Snowdon's account of the rivalry between Egan and John Bee - who at one point 'took over' the Boxiana brand - deserves particular attention for its comprehensive nature and insightful treatment.

Snowdon's summation and analysis of Egan's unique talents is masterfully articulated. "It might be said," he writes at one point, "that Egan weaves 'a sort of magic' in his transformation of sporting scenes. It is the skilful unorthodoxy practised by similarly inventive chroniclers that particularly befits the sports-writing genre, and renders it distinguishable by their untrammelled ability to blend multifarious techniques. In terms of their linguistic inventiveness and spirit, they are effectively poets."

As well as examining Egan's significance and style, Snowdon also examines the fascinating role of what he terms 'pugilistic reporting' in the development during the early 19th century of notions of morality, 'military readiness' and British national identity.

Many scribes within boxing writing circles inevitably sneer at those writers who adopt an academic approach - an inverse snobbery aptly summed up by the fact that there still exists an award for 'excellence in boxing journalism' which is named after Nat Fleischer, one of the shoddiest boxing historians of all time - but Snowdon's work is a glorious vindication of the importance of academic rigour, research and methodology.

Writing the Prizefight illuminates our understanding of Egan, the world in which he operated and the way in which he orchestrated language to dazzling effect. Yet it is no hagiography. Lofty claims have been made in the past concerning the extent of Egan's influence on, for example, Dickens, and the sphere of sports journalism as a whole, yet Snowdon's precise analysis avoids shoddy generalisations or hyperbole. His judgements are sober and restrained - and all the more impressive for it.

The depth of Snowdon's research, coupled with his obvious passion for the subject matter at hand, is inspiring and provides an intimidating yard-stick by which all future studies of Egan will be measured. Writing the Prizefight is not only an illuminating, fiercely intelligent read, but also a clear labour of love - from the precise research, to the well-chosen illustrations, to the superlative glossary of 'Flash' terms -  every page has been lavished with an admirable attention to detail and the determination to achieve excellence. 

It is no wonder that Writing the Prizefight deservedly won the 2014 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize for Sports History, awarded by the British Society of Sports History, for it is a book which should be considered compulsory reading not only for anyone with an interest in Egan and boxing, but also for literary historians and anyone with an interest in the cultural context of Georgian times.

When awarding the Aberdare prize, the panel noted admiringly that Snowdon's work has "opened up an area of sport history that had been neglected", an appropriate summary of its groundbreaking status within sporting history circles.

Like Egan before him, Snowdon possesses 'a sort of magic' and his book has pride of place on my Bill Richmond bookshelf. If it isn't there already, it should be on your bookshelf too.

Bill Richmond bookshelf: The Black Count by Tom Reiss

Over the next few months I’ll be taking the time to review some of the books, articles and research facilities which I have found useful during the decade-long process of researching and writing Richmond Unchained. So far in the series I have looked at Peter Fryer's Staying Power, Pierce Egan’s  Boxiana and the biographies of Tom Cribb and Tom Spring penned by Jon Hurley. Today I examine The Black Count, Tom Reiss' account of the life and times of General Alexandre Dumas, a talented soldier in Revolutionary France and father of one of the greatest storytellers of all time ...

The Black Count is a somewhat unusual choice of book for my 'Bill Richmond bookshelf' series, as it is a volume with no direct connection to Georgian boxing or, indeed, to Richmond himself.

True, the events of The Black Count take place within the same period of history as Richmond Unchained (Dumas was born in 1762, the year before Richmond), but the real link between this book and mine is in its purpose and intent - Tom Reiss set out to resurrect the reputation of a hitherto unjustly neglected figure from 'black history', and my aim with Richmond Unchained is exactly the same.

When I first read The Black Count in 2013, I had been researching Bill Richmond's life for ten years. I had always intended to write up my research into a full-length biography but, truth be told, I had allowed that ambition to drift and there was a very real danger that I was not going to get around to writing the book for several more years, if at all.

Reiss's passion to ensure Dumas's story was told and his remarkable life was appropriately honoured was infectious. Reading his book shook me out of my creative torpor; so consummately crafted was the narrative and so vivid, yet unpretentious, was Reiss's prose that I was immediately inspired to craft my Richmond research into a book proposal.  If I hadn't read The Black Count, I might still be sitting on my research and Richmond Unchained might still be unwritten ...

Anyway, that's more than enough egotistical self-reflection! Let's get back to the book at hand ...

The central figure of The Black Count is General Alexandre Dumas, a remarkable, larger-than-life man who was born in Saint Domingue in 1762 to a white French father and a black female slave. The mixed-race Dumas moved to France as a teenager and later enlisted in the army, ultimately rising from the rank of private to the heights of divisional general, playing a vital and prominent role in the Revolutionary Wars, and winning a reputation for military brilliance and bravery. He also fathered one of the greatest story-tellers of all time - a son, also named Alexandre, among whose works were immortal tales such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

Dumas senior was a contemporary of Napoleon Bonaparte and the connection and relationship between these two mighty men lies at the heart of the book, and provides it with plenty of its narrative energy. I won't spoil the book by giving away any more than that, but suffice it to say that Reiss's handling of the parallel lives of the two men, and how they intersect, is masterfully crafted as, indeed, is the whole book.

Reiss possesses an enviable talent for combining the rigour of a top historian with the narrative sweep of a master thriller writer. Combining these two forms within one book is a challenging feat that he accomplishes with aplomb. Impressively, he avoids the banality of lowest common denominator history and also ensures that he does not succumb to the breathless clichés of a paperback hack. The book is compulsive and thrilling, yet also possesses intellectual substance.

Ultimately, this is a book that deserves the accolade of 'masterpiece' because it works on so many levels: as biography, as a historical detective story, as a military thriller and as social and cultural comment. Many books of such technical brilliance fail to pack an emotional punch, yet, as well its immaculate word-craft, The Black Count is also infused with love. Indeed, it is, on a philosophical level, a compelling treatise on the importance of memory and love, and their interconnected nature.

Reiss's deep love of his subject shines through the entire book, yet he never falls into the trap of hagiography. However, the most touching demonstration of love within the book is the love of Dumas, the novelist, for his father, the great soldier - the love of a son for a man who, tragically, he barely ever knew. Through his painstaking research, Reiss advances the theory that Dumas used the pages of his novels to resurrect his father's memory and bring his spirit to glorious life, not only for himself but also for millions of readers.

This is a personal mission that Reiss honours nobly; indeed, he admits that he was inspired to write the book in the first place because of his own childhood memory of a vivid passage from Dumas' memoirs about his father. As he movingly explains towards the beginning of the book:

"To remember a person is the most important thing in the novels of Alexandre Dumas. The worst sin anyone can commit is to forget. The villains of The Count of Monte Cristo do not murder the hero, Edmund Dantès - they have him thrown in a dungeon where he is forgotten by the world. The heroes of Dumas never forget anything or anyone: Dantès has a perfect memory for the details of every field of human knowledge, for the history of the world and for everyone he has encountered in his life. When he confronts them one by one, he finds that the assassins of his identity have forgotten the very fact that he existed, and thus the fact of their crime.

I undertook the project of reconstructing the life of the forgotten hero General Alexandre Dumas because of that passage in his son's memoirs, which I read when I was a boy and have always remembered."

The Black Count stands as a beautiful epitaph for two great and charismatic men, both named Alexandre Dumas. It is an essential book for anyone with an interest in history, literature, the bonds between fathers and sons and the vital importance for all human beings of remembrance and love.

In short, it is a book for anyone with a pulse ... or, most important of all, a heart.

Bill Richmond bookshelf: Jon Hurley on the two Toms

Over the next few months I’ll be taking the time to review some of the books, articles and research facilities which I have found useful during the decade-long process of researching and writing Richmond Unchained. This series began with a look at Peter Fryer's Staying Power and Pierce Egan’s  Boxiana and continues today with a look at two biographies penned by Jon Hurley ...

Over the last couple of decades there have been several biographies published relating to personalities from the bare-knuckle era of boxing. Jon Hurley is responsible for two of them - namely 1996's Tom Spring: Bare-knuckle champion of All England and 2009's Tom Cribb: the life of the Black Diamond.

Truth be told, these two volumes are a somewhat mixed bag, with the Spring book far superior to the Cribb offering. As a Herefordshire man himself, Hurley's passion for Spring and his local area shines through his first volume, which successfully evokes the feeling of both rural and city life, thanks to some well-chosen references and some elegant and evocative descriptive touches. Hurley's research is sound and thorough, and the lavish use of illustrations throughout the book is admirable, attractive and illuminates his subject.

If evoking time and place is one of Hurley's strengths then the same cannot be said for his analysis of Spring's character, personality and motivations. Unlike the very best biographers, Hurley never really gets under Spring's skin or reveals anything terribly personal or insightful about him. As a result Spring emerges as a somewhat enigmatic figure. His gentlemanly nature is stressed, as well as his highly skilled pugilistic abilities and formidable powers of determination, but there is little worthwhile insight beyond that.

Nevertheless, despite its slight nature when dealing with character and motivation, Hurley does succeed in crafting a superbly readable and enjoyable narrative, for the first three-quarters of the book at least. Unfortunately, the final third of the book (once Spring has retired) often lapses into a somewhat mechanical and tiresome chronological account of fights in which Spring played a minor role, either as a second or manager of other boxers, without offering much illuminating comment. Furthermore, the book's absence of significant social and historical contextual comment or analysis is also a flaw.

These are relatively minor quibbles, however. Taken as a whole, this is an elegantly written and hugely enjoyable volume, written with both care and love, which succeeds in shining some much-needed attention on one of the many forgotten but significant figures of English sporting history.

A good measure of a biography is whether or not, after reading it, you feel the need to check if another book on the same person exists. In this case I'm happy to declare that Hurley has left little, if any, room for a further tome on Spring; in other words, aside from the shortcomings listed above, this is a pretty definitive work, which represents a fine achievement, particularly as it appears to have been Hurley's first book.

Despite its merits, the book's influence on Richmond Unchained is slight. I only found a reasonably priced second-hand copy very recently, so I had already completed several drafts of my book by the time I read it. Nevertheless, there are a couple of interesting anecdotes about Richmond within Hurley's book, even though he is wrongly referred to at one point as Tom Richmond!

All in all, Tom Spring: Bare-knuckle champion of All England is a meritorious volume which is well worth seeking out in a second-hand store (Amazon marketplace currently have several copies for sale, albeit at quite high prices). It's also worth listening to Hurley's appearance, alongside legendary sports journo Frank Keating, on Radio 4's Great Lives programme in which the duo argue for Spring's greatness.

Sadly, Hurley's second 'bare-knuckle biography', Tom Cribb: the life of the Black Diamond, is nowhere near as accomplished as his work on Spring. The research is less thorough and  and the contextual flaws of the earlier book are even more pronounced, particularly considering Cribb's vast socio-cultural significance. Hurley's account of the first Molineaux versus Cribb fight is particularly disappointing, in that it fails to address any of the controversies or conflicting accounts which surround this monumental event, as well as offer any adequate analysis of the contest's racial, national and international significance.

Indeed, a lack of historical rigour permeates the whole book, with frequent examples of stories and anecdotes from later, and somewhat unreliable sources - such as Miles' Pugilistica - being accepted as fact without the slightest hesitation or any sense of due caution and historical diligence.  

Bizarrely, Hurley's writing style has also undergone an unwelcome metamorphosis since his first book - whereas the Spring book was written with elegance and restraint, the Cribb tome is littered with painfully embarrassing and inappropriate uses of figurative language, most of which rely on modern reference points. For example, when Jem Belcher is knocked down Hurley states that he "went down like Linda Lovelace", while Cribb at one point is described as "moving like Darcey Bussell". This stylistic misjudgement is so grating that it spoils what would otherwise have been a perfectly readable, albeit somewhat uninspired book.

Cribb is a huge figure in English pugilistic history - scratch that, he's a huge figure in English social and cultural history, who is deserving of a definitive, comprehensive and all-encompassing biography. Hurley's book, quite simply, isn't it. Indeed, it's a book which I can scarcely believe originates from the same source as Tom Spring: Bare-knuckle champion of All England - it fails, by quite some distance, to build on the promise shown by that volume.

One final point: in common with most other pugilistic historians and writers, Hurley makes the mistake of referring to Cribb and Bill Richmond as lifelong enemies. The truth, as you'll discover in Richmond Unchained, is much more interesting and complex than that.

Bill Richmond bookshelf: Pondering Boxiana's reliability

The iconic Boxiana, by Pierce Egan

Over the next few months I’ll be taking the time to review some of the books, articles and research facilities which I have found useful during the decade-long process of researching and writing Richmond Unchained. This series began with a look at Peter Fryer's Staying Power and continues today with my thoughts on Pierce Egan’s  Boxiana.

This is the biggie.

Pierce Egan’s Boxiana is the key text for any serious student of Georgian boxing and remains easily the best-known text connected with the bare-knuckle era. However, its iconic status within the pugilistic literary canon obscures an all too infrequently acknowledged shortcoming; namely that - as influential and brilliantly written as it is - in terms of a source for the facts, dates, circumstances and details of boxing matches of the period, some of what is written in Boxiana needs to be taken with a gigantic cellar of salt.

Before this webpage crashes under weight of outrage from Egan enthusiasts, allow me to develop my thesis ...

It’s my contention that Egan was, first and foremost, a popular writer who was also a magnificent literary stylist. His prose crackles with inventive and extravagant examples of figurative language and vivid descriptive flourishes. Furthermore, in terms of the historical evolution of the English language and of English literature, Egan is a vital and all too often overlooked figure whose widespread influence can be detected in the work of many more traditionally feted and ‘well regarded’ writers such as Charles Dickens.

Socio-cultural analysis of Egan’s idiosyncratic prose is an illuminating route to greater understanding not only of the sport of pugilism itself, but also of the culture which surrounded it. Anyone, for example, interested in emerging concepts of Englishness, patriotism and militarism during the Georgian era can find much of interest within Egan’s work.

(Before I continue, I should point out that those of you seeking to learn more about Egan's unique writing should leave this website right now and go and buy David Snowdon’s wonderful book Writing the Prizefight: Pierce Egan’s Boxiana World. When you’ve done that - and also read the book itself - you’ll be up to speed and can come back here and resume reading this article!)

OK, now that we’ve all read Writing the Prizefight, I can proceed to the second strand of my review, which will examine the limitations of Boxiana. Firstly, it’s worth remembering that the first edition of the book was not published until 1812/ 1813. As a consequence any events that Egan covers prior to this date must be treated with extreme caution, unless, of course, they can be further verified by the existence of other sources.

It is imperative to note that Egan himself was only born in 1772 and is said to have worked in the printing trade before making his name as a writer with the first volume of Boxiana. I therefore consider it highly unlikely that he would have attended the majority of the fights he writes about in the first volume of Boxiana, particularly those which took place in the 18^th century, although, admittedly, there is no way of knowing exactly which fights he did and didn't attend.

All of which begs the question: from where did Egan get his information? Well, it’s likely that some of his work was based on anecdotes he heard from fight fans and boxers themselves (hardly the most reliable of sources!) or that he cribbed details from existing reports in other newspapers and journals. There are certainly several occasions when Egan appears to have ‘lifted’ prose, ideas or details from The Sporting Magazine, which began to be published in 1792, as well as various other sources. (Could Egan have been present at some fights and written some of these original reports himself and then later recycled them in Boxiana? This is also a possibility).

My point is: we don’t really know where Egan got his information from and this is why we cannot really take anything we read in Boxiana for granted. I'm sure that Egan wrote the most accurate accounts he could based on the information he possessed. Nevertheless, the haphazard nature of Boxiana's evolution and its lack of historical rigour means that we must be cautious about recycling facts from it without questioning their accuracy.

Let’s take a practical example in order to illustrate this point: namely the Cribb-Belcher fight of April 1807. Over the years I have frequently seen it cited as ‘fact’ that during this contest Cribb’s second Bill Warr effectively ‘stole’ the fight for his man by way of a cunning ‘manoeuvre’ which ensured that Cribb received a ‘long count' to recover from a heavy knockdown.

The great Jem Belcher

Egan describes this incident in his general profile of Cribb, as opposed to his round by round account of the fight, meaning it is unclear which round he claims it occurred in:

“Before the strength of Jem’s right hand had left him, the battle was saved to CRIBB by the following manoeuvre of Bill Warr – the odds were five to one on Belcher, and while Gulley, who seconded Jem, was offering the above odds to Warr, at the conclusion of a round, when CRIBB had received so severe a blow that he could not come to time, Warr, on accepting the bet, insisted that the money should be posted, and by this stratagem gained more than a minute, sufficient time for such a glutton as CRIBB perfectly to recover in.”

Bill Warr: cheat or strategist?

When considering if Egan’s account of this incident is accurate, we should bear in mind the fact that the fight took place in 1807 and Egan’s account of it did not appear until more than five years later. Furthermore, like many of the bouts he describes, we can not necessarily be sure that Egan actually attended the fight in the first place. If Egan wasn’t present at Cribb-Belcher then it begs the question – again - as to where he got his account of this incident from. Was it recounted to him by Belcher himself, before his untimely death in 1811? Perhaps. In which case, is it not likely that the embittered former champion may have exaggerated his account somewhat in order to denigrate his rival Cribb’s reputation?

Or perhaps Egan based his account on an anecdote he had heard from someone else who was present at the fight? Again, this seems feasible, in which case, once again, it is also seems reasonable to conclude that the account could easily have become exaggerated or embroidered in the years between the fight itself and Egan’s account of it being published.

While researching my upcoming book Richmond Unchained I sought to discover the truth of whether or not Belcher had been ‘cheated’, partly because my book describes the Cribb v Belcher contest (albeit briefly) and partly out of curiosity. Having read Egan’s account I then obtained and read as many newspaper accounts of the contest as I could find which were published in the fight’s immediate aftermath. In all, I found 17 newspapers that featured articles about the fight, which were as follows:

The Times, Stamford Mercury, Kentish Gazette,  Morning Post, Salisbury and Winchester Journal, Exeter Flying Post, Morning Chronicle, Staffordshire Advertiser, Oxford Journal, Bury and Norwich Post, Norfolk Chronicle, Hampshire Chronicle, Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, Derby Mercury, Hampshire Telegraph, Hereford Journal, and Ipswich Journal.

My theory was that if the ‘long count’ incident described by Egan had occurred as he recounted it, then surely one of these newspapers would include it within their narrative? After all, one would expect a detailed account of a major fight to make careful note of such a controversial incident.

However, close study of these 17 accounts revealed that not a single one made any reference whatsoever to Belcher being cheated, or shenanigans on the part of Cribb’s team. The same was true of William Oxberry’s book Pancratia, a history of boxing which marginally pre-dates Boxiana and also contains no reference to Belcher being cheated in its account of the fight. (Incidentally, Pancratia, like Boxiana, appears to draw heavily on the sources listed above, especially The Times).   

Case closed? Not quite.

Closer scrutiny of the 17 accounts revealed that the majority were very similar in their wording, and had, it seemed, originated from a very small group of original sources or writers, before being re-published in various recycled and re-written forms.

Interestingly, many of the accounts did make an interesting reference to the 18^th round, which is possibly the section of the fight Egan is referring to when he mentions Warr's chicanery. For example, the account of the 18th round in The Times reads as follows:

“18. Crib [sic.] received some most desperate body blows, as well as one of equal violence in the neck, and, on being followed up, he fell: to an ordinary spectator, it could not be supposed that he would ever rise again.”

This account is almost identical to Egan's later account of the 18th round, and also very similar to Oxberry's, suggesting they may all originate from the same single source. This also strengthens my belief that Egan predominantly used existing newspaper accounts as his sources, particularly in the first volume of Boxiana, while at the same time adding anecdotal information into his reports that he had gleaned from a mixture of fighters and fellow pugilistic enthusiasts.

Taken as a whole, the series of sources we have concerning the Cribb-Belcher fight strongly suggest that Cribb was knocked down in the 18th round so heavily that many spectators thought the fight was over. If we accept this as fact, then Egan’s claim that Warr needed to wangle extra time for Cribb to recover seems plausible, nevertheless until at least one further source from 1807 emerges which further backs up Egan's claim, it remains an unproven and unsubstantiated rumour. However, despite its shaky provenance, numerous boxing books that describe the Cribb-Belcher fight do not make it clear that the cheating theory is just that: a theory, a rumour, an unsubstantiated anecdote. We cannot say with any certainty that Belcher was ‘cheated’ when this theory rests on just one account of the fight, and an account that was composed several years after the fight occurred to boot!

This is not to say that Egan’s account of what happened is necessarily wrong, merely that the presumption that Belcher was ‘cheated’ of victory appears to have entered the public historical discourse without corroboration from any sources, save for Egan. (If someone can find a source which contradicts me on this then please email me at lgw007@yahoo.com)

This somewhat long-winded example is a very roundabout way of making the point that when researching Richmond Unchained I quickly realised that the contents of Boxiana had to be treated cautiously.

Yes, Boxiana is a rich and fascinating source, as well as wonderfully written, but it must always be used in conjunction with as many other sources as possible.

To a historian, I’m sure this is a pretty obvious conclusion, but I think it’s fair to say that not all boxing writers out there are adept historians. A deficit of rigorous historical research and methodology is certainly evident in many of the books that have been written about the bareknuckle boxing era, chief among them Ring Magazine founder Nat Fleischer’s utterly unreliable and borderline ridiculous Black Dynamite series (which I will examine in a future post).

To conclude, a few general observations about Boxiana and its reliability as far as Bill Richmond is concerned (this is, after all, a Bill Richmond blog!).

Several of these observations are explored in more detail in my forthcoming book Richmond Unchained, which will be published in August:

1. In terms of the first Cribb v Molineaux fight, for which Richmond trained Molineaux, Egan’s account leaves much room for interpretation, misinterpretation and debate (as do other sources). This is something I examine in detail in Richmond Unchained.
2. Egan’s account of Richmond’s first fight, against George Maddox is flawed, and has been responsible for an incorrect conclusion (namely that the fight lasted only three rounds) entering into the public domain.
3. Egan does not score well on American geography. His stated birthplace for Richmond of Cuckold’s Town in Sturton Island is wrong on many levels.
4. Egan’s chronology of Richmond’s career in 1808 and 1809 is all over the place – which has again led to misperceptions becoming commonly accepted as fact.
   
   

   

   Bill Richmond - Egan makes undoubted errors when detailing his career

To close, I think it’s worth emphasising that none of the above alters my admiration for Egan in any way. I remain a huge fan of his energy, his invention and his incredible facility with words.

Reading Egan is one of the great pleasures of life, particular for a boxing fan. However, he was primarily a dramatic and vivid writer, not a historian – and that’s something to always bear in mind when you leaf through Boxiana.

Bill Richmond bookshelf: Staying Power

Over the next few months I’ll be taking the time to review some of the books, articles and research facilities which I have found useful during the decade-long process of researching and writing Richmond Unchained. This series begins with my thoughts on Peter Fryer’s Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain.

Quite simply, any writer, historian or reader with an interest in ‘black history’ needs to own a copy of this book. Since its publication in 1984 Fryer’s near masterpiece has become the standard text on black British history, and it remains a model of concision, elegance and historical analysis.

Many would argue that ‘black history’ is still a neglected area of study, both within academic circles and also within the mainstream, however when this book first appeared the paucity of books on the subject was even more pronounced than it is today. Nevertheless, although many worthy books have appeared since examining the hitherto shamefully hidden and neglected histories of ‘minority’ groups in Britain, it remains disappointing that no ‘overview’ of black British history since Fryer’s work has come close to matching its comprehensive sweep.

(As an aside, the edition I own of the book is the sixth impression from 1992 and I’d be interested to know if the book has been updated at all since then or, indeed, since Fryer’s death in 2006 – I suspect not, which is a shame as it certainly warrants regular updating, even though Fryer is sadly not alive to perform the task himself).

Fryer himself was a fascinating figure.  Born in Hull in 1927, he later became a Communist Party member and wrote for the Yorkshire Post and Daily Worker. However he was apparently expelled from the party after dissatisfaction was expressed with his accounts of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and its suppression by the Soviets – events which Fryer, to his credit, condemned having observed them first-hand.

While working as a journalist, Fryer had also witnessed the arrival of the MV Empire Windrush in England in 1948, an ocean liner which brought with it many West Indian immigrants. This event ignited in him an interest in black British history, which he researched for many years before writing Staying Power.

Chief among Staying Power’s many virtues is its ability to puncture the many myths and untruths surrounding black history in Britain. Laudably, Fryer does this is a calm, measured way which avoids needless pontification or ideological grandstanding; witness for example, the masterful first sentence of the book - “There were Africans in Britain before the English came here” - which instantly undercuts the lazy assumptions often made by the ignorant or the bigoted. (Nigel Farage, for one, might do well to read Fryer's book!)

Despite Fryer’s Marxist / Communist leanings, the book never veers into didacticism and retains a simplicity of approach which is refreshing. It is at once academically rigorous and also accessible. Fryer’s own political sympathies are clear, and naturally influence his viewpoints but, to this reader at least, they are logically and reasonably outlined, without needless rhetorical flourishes that lesser writers might rely on to paper over gaps in their arguments or research. The book is all the more convincing as a result; for example, Fryer’s analysis of the link between slavery and the development of the British economy is extremely well explained.

During the first two or three months when I was researching Bill Richmond’s life (way back in 2003) I devoured Fryer’s book in about two days. I found it hugely valuable in enabling someone such as myself with a decent grasp of ‘black history’ - albeit one lacking in detail and refinement - to understand the social and cultural context of the times in which Bill Richmond lived, as well as the times which preceded and followed him. For example, references within Fryer’s book to Malachy Postlethwayt and Ukawsaw Gronniosaw opened up fruitful research avenues for me that have found their way, in one form or another, into the texture of Richmond Unchained, particularly the chapter where I take a brief detour myself into the history of black people’s presence in Britain.

Amid my otherwise fulsome praise, though, I do have one caveat.

I described the book earlier as a ‘near masterpiece’ and I use this phrase deliberately so, for the simple reason that I found Fryer’s work on Bill Richmond himself, and his protégé Tom Molineaux, somewhat sloppy and over-reliant on second-hand rather than primary sources. Several of the ‘facts’ Fryer recounts about Richmond are, to be blunt, not accurate, or at any rate cannot be proved correct beyond reasonable doubt based on existing sources or the sources which Fryer cites. To give one such example, Fryer states that Richmond’s parents were “Georgia-born slaves”, which has never actually been proven. He also accepts too readily (and over-relies on) Pierce Egan’s accounts of Richmond’s boxing career, with seemingly no consideration for the dramatic licence Egan may have employed, or the errors he may have made. Other factual errors also creep in; for example, Fryer states that Richmond fought Jack Carter in 1808 – which is incorrect. In common with many other writers, Fryer also claims that it was Richmond’s wife’s wealth that enabled him to come landlord of the Horse and Dolphin pub – a myth that I believe I pretty definitively debunk in Richmond Unchained. Fryer also makes a major error of omission by not mentioning Richmond’s role at George IV’s coronation celebrations, which it seems to me are a crucial symbol for the lofty status he managed to achieve – through boxing – within Georgian society.

Perhaps, given that his accounts of Richmond and Molineaux’s lives appear in an appendix, rather than the main body of his narrative, Fryer did not feel the need to research them as meticulously as the rest of the book. This is a rare miscalculation on his part, as is his decision to relegate these two crucial historical figures to an appendix in the first place, rather than the book’s main narrative, where they really belong.

I could go on in terms of the shortcomings of Fryer’s accounts of Richmond and Molineaux’s careers, but it would probably be churlish to do so; especially when, in the final analysis, Staying Power is a work of rare integrity and significance as well as lasting historical value.