Dedicated to C. S. Evans, Priestley's editor at Heinemann, it was begun in October 1929 and completed in April 1930. [1] It sold nearly as well as its predecessor. What an unfortunate twist of fate that proves to be. The firm, which imports veneers and inlays to sell to cabinet makers and furniture manufacturers, is struggling to cope with the consequences of poor management, declining demand and an economy hardly geared to a sudden improvement in trade. Into their world descends Golspie, the con-man with a smooth tongue and all the push and panache of the natural predator. He has just arrived in London on a Baltic cargo ship with a display case full of veneer samples and the sole UK agency for a new product, and he is looking to persuade some gullible fool that together they are set to make a fortune. The extract under analysis is written by an English novelist, playwright and a broadcaster, John Boynton Priestly. “Angel Pavement” is his novel published in 1930. It brought him a great success. Some problems are touched in this novel, for example, a problem of upbringing, a generation gap. Generally, Priestly touches upon problems in the society, emphasizes its inconsistency. The extract dwells upon a common dinner of a family. Mr. Smeeth, the head of a family, compares the behaviour of his children, George and Edna, today and several years ago. Priestley is the master of the art of describing his characters with affection and a faint touch of humour, and his flair for dialogue came to the fore long before he became a successful dramatist. He is such fun to read –even when the subject is deadly serious. At first appalled by the coarseness of Mr. Golspie, Lilian Matfield finds herself more and more attracted to him and fancies that he is responding to her in kind. Her life of quiet desperation, akin to those of the characters her Burpenfield neighbor has seen in a Chekhov play, continues its stultifying course once Mr. Golspie leaves her waiting at Victoria Station. He has forgotten the promised weekend on which she has pinned her hopes for romance.

Miss Matfield, who is approaching spinsterhood, lives in the respectable Burpenfield Club, a residential club for women from good middle-class homes in the country who are compelled by economic circumstances to live in London as cheaply as possible. Along with all the others there, she hates the club and awaits a Prince Charming to carry her away, not only from the Burpenfield but also from Angel Pavement. She would probably marry anyone who might ask her, even dull Norman Birtley, a friend from the country, who, ill at ease in the bewildering city, cannot muster either the will or the courage to ask for her hand. Edie Smeeth, his wife, in her early forties. She has two grown children and an obnoxious cousin, Fred Mitty, who irritates her husband. An eternal optimist, she is hopeful about the future despite the firm’s failure. Stanley Poole, a fifteen-year-old office boy at Twigg & Dersingham who fantasizes about aviation adventures and about becoming a detective. Mr. Smeeth falls out with his wife, and is later disturbed by the departure of the office boy Stanley and a road accident involving the tobacconist Benenden. His son George seems to be employed by crooks, and Mr Golspie makes an arrangement with Mr Dersingham which strikes Smeeth as suspicious. He goes to visit Benenden at the hospital.Odetta Odetta Holmes was born in Birmingham, Alabama (USA) in 1930 and moved with her family to Los Angeles at the… Angel Pavement is one of the great London novels: a vivid evocation of the sprawling and crowded metropolis during the era of the painful Depression of the inter-war years. It is also a splendidly perceptive examination of what happens to a small group of office staff when the destructive force of a rapacious financial predator is unleashed among them.

The fourth chapter depicts one of the miserable weekends of the lonely young clerk, Mr Turgis, who wanders around London taking in any amusements he can afford. On the Monday after, he sees Lena Golspie for the first time, and is smitten. The fifth chapter depicts the narrow world of the typist, Miss Matfield, and her disastrous date with Norman Birtley, which is enlivened only by an accidental meeting with Mr Golspie, who gives her a box of chocolates on a whim. Later on Mr Golspie seems even more glamorous, when, shortly before leaving for a short trip, he asks her to take down letters on board the moored steamship Lemmala, and pours her some vodka. Around this time Angel Pavement also amicably parted from their manager Mal Spence. It was agreed that Mal had probably taken the group as far as he could go and they really needed to be with a recognised management agency. So it was that they were signed up by Dave Cullen, a South Yorkshire businessman who amongst other things owned a nightclub in York called The Hypnotique which regularly featured live bands. It was ideal for the band to rehearse in and occasionally perform to try new material. The problem was that Cullen’s connections were in the club world e.g. Pete Stringfellow, who at that time was based in Wakefield and the gigs on offer were increasingly becoming nightclubs – he even tried to persuade them to take a booking at Batley Variety Club! Angel Pavement’s stage act was very much university/dance hall structured so, somewhat disillusioned, they called it a day and played their last gig in York at York Rowing Club on New Years Eve 1970. This is a fat slab of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, snap some off and shove it in your gob. I defy you to tell me you don’t like it. Well, I am very sorry if you are on a diet. Oops. George Smeeth, their twenty-year-old son, a mechanic. He lives a relaxed life that Herbert Smeeth cannot understand. Angel Pavement is a novel by J. B. Priestley, published in 1930 after the enormous success of The Good Companions (1929).Spencer Davis Group Stevie Winwood's soul-drenched vocals powered The Spencer Davis Group through three major US hits during the band's brief lifespan as… Sadly, Dave Smith died in 2011 after a short illness aged 61 years. He carried on playing as a member of local York bands in pubs and clubs right up to the end. The fool in question is Howard Bromport Dersingham, the ineffective, conceited owner of Twigg & Dersingham, a man not really suited to the cut-and-thrust of business (he got into it almost by accident) and soon out of his depth in his dealings with an experienced swindler like Golspie. Chocolate Watch Band Extensive promotion directed at the "flower power" market, catchy psychedelic covers – nothing seemed to work for the Stones-loving Chocolate… There are signs of our society to come, in the attitude of the young people, seeking something they cannot quite put into words, something different. The grip of 'the talkies' in a pre TV and computer age is interesting, and the social venues of tea rooms and pubs are still recognisable. There is a marvellous description of London in the grip of the run-up to Christmas, which applies absolutely to us now.

No, sorry, that sounds a little mean. We can’t all be reading everything that people used to think was the bee’s pyjamas and the cat’s toboggan, or whatever the saying is. If we did there wouldn’t be any space for new stuff. Angel Pavement is a British television drama series which first aired on BBC 1 between 27 December 1957 and 17 January 1958. [1] It is an adaptation of the 1930 novel Angel Pavement by J.B. Priestley. It follows the fortunes of a small London-based company just before the outbreak of the Great Depression. He does not accept their views. A protagonist, Mr. Smeeth, presents a common father who wants an atmosphere of mutual aid, understanding and warmth in his family. Initially, Mr. Smeeth is disappointed by his daughter, he can’t understand her. She seems like smthunattractive for him anymore, for instance such words as with the help of which Mr. Smeeth describes his daughter “grayish-greenish-bluish eyes”, now he’s not sure, moreover he talks about it with some degree of disgust resorting to such kind of derivative. Herbert Norman Smeeth, the cashier and senior clerk of the firm, approximately in his fifties. Apprehensive by nature and conservative by habit, he is continually concerned about his and his family’s future financial status. The temporary business success brought about by Golspie only slightly modifies his attitude, which is a cautious approach to life and business not shared by his family or his employer.JB never got called a classic because the critics hated him and he hated them along with their darling James Joyce which from JB’s point of view they could shove up their arse. So this is why they always said that JB was middlebrow rubbish. And he is if you live on the Parthenon heights where you breakfast on sliced Thomas Bernhard and dine on a huge wedge of Robert Musil with a soupcon of Clarice Lispector to follow.

The novel has been twice adapted by BBC Television, in 1957 and 1967, and there is also a fascinating (and surprising) Russian television version dating from 1969.Lilian Matfield, the typist for the firm of Twigg & Dersingham. Aloof and cold to her fellow workers, she dominates them all, even though she is relatively new to the firm and only in her late twenties. She lives at the Burpenfield Club, a residence for working girls and women. Her relationships with her fellow boarders reveals much about her thinking. Incurably romantic, a dreamer of perfection, she is at first annoyed by Golspie, then fascinated by him. She dates him but refuses to spend a weekend at the coast with him. She later agrees to go, only to be left waiting in Victoria Station as he sails for South America. What do they call this street? Angel Pavement, isn't it? That's a dam' queer name for a street, though I've known queerer names in my time." (Golspie).