Edinburgh Book Festival, Jim Haynes, Edinburgh's Cultural Freedom Fighter, Review

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Rating (out of 5)
5
Show info
Performers
Jim Haynes, Peggy Hughes (chair)
Running time
60mins

To celebrate his 60th visit to the Edinburgh Festival, the influential, indomitable cultural entrepreneur, Jim Haynes has published his second volume of Memoirs, “World Citizen, at home in Paris.” The quintessential American in Paris, indeed.

During this scintillating hour of conversation, chaired exceptionally well by Peggy Hughes (Dundee Book Festival), we were taken on a whirlwind journey from his birthplace in Louisiana, to the American Air Force and by sheer serendipity, in 1956 he arrived in Edinburgh, the city which quickly became his spiritual home.

With a painterly vision, he reminisces with colourful anecdotes, how he devised an ingenious double life, attending Edinburgh University by day studying history and economics, and working on Russian surveillance at Kirknewton military base by night. He was the only student with a car, a VW Beetle, and with strict Sunday licencing laws, he and his friends would set off to get a drink at a hotel out of town.

Then there's the story of how he launched the first paperback bookshop in the UK. One day in 1959, he passed an old antique shop near George Square, and asked if he could buy it. £ 300 was agreed and the deal made. This was the era of Penguin paperbacks and most notably the publication of D H Lawrence’s so called scandalous novel, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” A woman came into Jim’s shop to buy a copy but then proceeded to burn it outside in the street but this act of contempt was photographed creating great publicity to increase sales! The Bookshop was also used for signings, poetry readings and theatre performances and this passion for books led to the 1962 International Writers’ Conference, which was a great success, and the predecessor of today’s Edinburgh Book Festival.

Always a pioneer, a lasting legacy is The Traverse Theatre founded in 1963 by Jim and fellow arts enthusiasts keen to develop the Festival ambience year round. “The Fringe venue which got away” is well documented but then he said, rather conspiratorially, that he was not going to reveal the true romantic background of the Traverse, which had been the product of two love affairs.

We all sat up to listen avidly to this romantic, theatrical tale. He met an American actress Jane Quigley when she was playing in Tennessee William’s Orpheus Descending at the Festival, 1960. Having fallen in love, he wanted to create a theatre space, to entice her back to Edinburgh. Meanwhile a gentleman called Tom Mitchell was travelling in England and met Tamara Alferoff, and he was smitten by this great beauty. He followed her to Edinburgh where he began buying properties, one of these was a building in James Court. Jim persuaded him to rent it for one shilling a week and he would turn it into a Theatre Club specialising in new contemporary plays. Within three years the tiny theatre had produced 110 productions, including 28 British premieres and 33 world premieres. The rest is history.

Jim Haynes appreciates the simple pleasures as experienced through travel, music, art, theatre, film, photography and Festivals, but most of all, he says, “I love life, people and food”. When he is at home in Paris, he welcomes friends, old and new to an open dinner party on Sunday night, running now for 37 years, and last month at such an party, there were 119 international guests. He believes this should be added to the Guinness Book of Records!

As he documents in “World Citizen, “… my 60th Edinburgh Festival. I depart Paris on 9th August by train, then another train journey to join a joy-filled city of revellers, in the greatest celebration of the creative life on Earth.”

Performance Details
This event, Jim Haynes, Edinburgh’s Cultural Freedom Fighter, took place on 21st August.

“World Citizen, at home in Paris” by Jim Haynes, Polwarth Publishing 2016.
The Jim Haynes Living Archives has recently been created at Edinburgh Napier University to curate and preserve his papers, photographs, books and memoirs