//The premises of Jack English Snr’s lighting shop in Leicester’s Granby Street provide the book’s cover image//

//Will English (right) with Helen Robinson and Steph Raynor in a transport cafe c.1970. Photo by Rose Kendall//

//David Parkinson and his Messerschmitt bubble car, 1974. Photography: Will English//

Perfect Binding, the recently published book by British experimental filmmaker/broadcaster/bookseller William English, is a psychogeographic portrait of a particular strain of cultural activity in a particular place at a particular time: the Midlands city of Leicester from the 1950s to the 70s.

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Tags: Acme Attractions, Bill Burns, Boy, Captain Maurice Seddon, Cecilia Green, David Parkinson, Helen Robinson, Hugh de la Cruz, Jansje Schoen, Jim Mellors, Kirby Muxloe, Leicester, Perfect Binding, PX, Ray Gosling, Steph Raynor, The Dining Room, Victoria Ashley, Vivienne Westwood, William English, Young Fabian

//Maquette for Great Big Biggest Wide London, 1958. 5.6 x 61cm//

//Robyn Denny, 1961. Photo: Bernard Jacobson Gallery//

The late British abstract artist Robyn Denny is best known for his large-scale works, such as Great Big Biggest Wide London, the giant 1959 mural for menswear company Austin Reed’s Regent Street store.

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Tags: Austin Reed, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, Dominic Denny, Great Big Biggest Wide London, Portuguese Airlines, Richard Smith, Robyn Denny, Royal College Of Art, the Beatles

“No fool can be silent at a feast” Solon, Greek lawmaker and philosopher 630-560 BC

West London antiques dealer James Jackson is inaugurating his newly refurbished premises with Fête des Imbéciles, an exhibition of works by the British artist Robert Rubbish.

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Tags: Federico Fellini, James Jackson, Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Russell, Le Gun, Meret Oppenheim, Robert Rubbish, Solon

//Window display for Impresario at the New Museum, Sept 16 – Nov 20, 1988. Image from the New Museum Digital Archive//

//Introduction to the show. Image from the New Museum Digital Archive//

My biography of the late Malcolm McLaren will now be published in April 2020, exactly 10 years after his premature death at the age of 64.

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Tags: Adam Ant, Art & Text, Catherine McGann, Impresario: Malcolm McLaren & The British New Wave, Keith Haring, Marcia Tucker, New Museum Of Contemporary Art, Paul Taylor, Vivienne Westwood, William Olander, Witches

The third edition of Scott King and Matt Worley’s CRASH! has arrived. Entitled Nostalgia For The Jet Age, it is an “exhibition in a box” which coincides with an actual exhibition of the same name currently being held at Scotland’s Timespan.

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Tags: Claire Catterall, Come Taste My Mind, Earl Brutus, Esperanto, Hawkwind, ICA, Margo Leadbetter, Matthew Worley, Neil Armstrong, Nostalgia For The Jet Age, Sadie Young, Scott King, The Good Life, Timespan, Wolfgang Tillmans

When he was growing up in Minneapolis in the 1950s, the painter Duncan Hannah’s father advised him: “You never know what kind of squirrel cage a man goes home to at the end of the day.”

Hannah’s book 20th Century Boy allows the reader full access to the squirrel cage inhabited by this charming man in 1970s New York.

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Tags: 20th Century Boy, Amos Poe, Andy Warhol, Ashenden, Bryan Ferry, Claudine, Colette, David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Duncan Hannah, Gato Barbieri, Harlem, John Cale, Justine, Last Tango In Paris, Lawrence Durrell, Roxy Music, Somerset Maugham, Unmade Bed, Vintage Violence

“It’s like reconstructing the debris of old pop paraphernalia… what’s exciting about it is that you no longer need to buy guitars. You can choose a friend up the road, put your decks together with a beatbox and make your own records, demoralising [sic] the pop myth and beginning to find a way of using material yourself .”

On November 19 1982, the UK’s national weekly youth music programme The Tube included a segment marking the occasion when the terms (and concepts of) “scratching”, “break-dancing” and “hip-hop” were introduced to a mass British audience for the first time.

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Tags: Adam & The Ants, Afrika Bambaataa, Bond's, Funkapolitan, Gaz's Rocking Blues, Grandmaster Flash, Jools Holland, Meard Street, Melle Mel, Michael Holman, Nick Jones, Sugarhill Gang, The Clash, The Gargoyle, The Tube, Tom Dixon, Wham, Zulu Nation

//Relation of Aesthetic Choice to Life Activity (Function) of the Subject, Billy Apple, 1961-2. From Tate Britain//

I’m indebted to Tate Liverpool curator Darren Pih for the connection between a photograph which appeared in ARK 33 – the edition of the Royal College Of Art magazine which was the subject of my last post – and a contemporaneous work by the artist Billy Apple.

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Tags: Andrew Wilson, ARK 33, Barrie Bates, Billy Apple, Darren Pih, David Hockney, Keith Branscombe, Lady Clairol Instant Crème Whip, Royal College Of Art, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool

//Wild youth: Scenes of abandon from Twist Drunk/Drunk Twist in Ark 33. Photos: Keith Branscombe//

//Cover, Ark 33, Autumn 1962. Photography: Keith Branscombe//

The publication of issue 33 of the Royal College of Art’s magazine ARK in the autumn of 1962 hit the moment in terms of the turbo-charging of contemporary youth culture.

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Tags: ARK, Bill James, Brian Haynes, David Clarke, Derek Boshier, Don McCullin, Dougie Millings, Eric Mottram, Geof Reeve, John Stephen, Keith Branscombe, Marc Bolan, Mark Boxer, Mark Feld, Pauline Boty, Peter Blake, Royal College Of Art, Shashi Rawal, the Beatles, Town

//PRINT! is staged in Somerset House’s Terrace Rooms; the exhibition’s graphic identity was created by Scott King. His distinctive fluoro pink logo is on the lightbox at the far end of room 1. Photo: Doug Peters//

//With my wife and PRINT! contributor Caz Facey, rock legend Jimmy Page and poet Scarlett Sabet at the private view this week//

//Each room has wall grids divided into subjects – this, the main wall in room 1, presents magazines expressing dissent and protest. Photo: Doug Peters//

//In the courtyard at Somerset House; socks courtesy Pavement Licker//

//Private view attendees Duggie Fields and Jarvis Cocker. Photo: Martin Green//

PRINT! Tearing It Up – the exhibition at central London’s Somerset House I have organised with the SH Trust’s senior curator Claire Catterall – is now open.

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Tags: Arena, BLast, Claire Catterall, David Harrison, Elisabeth Krohn, Eoin Donnelly, John May, Martin Green, Mushpit, Nick Logan, Paul Kindersley, Pavement Licker, Private Eye, Rhys Atkinson, Sabat, Scott King, Somerset House Trust, Suspira, The Face, The Generalist, Vorticists, William Sieghart