Maggie, Desmond and Me 

From the late Eighties to the late Nineties, so for nearly a decade I realise, I worked for the pre-eminent bookseller chain of B. H. Blackwell Ltd here in Oxford. I ran their Art and Poster shop for eight years after they went through four managers in the first twelve months they decided to appoint a specialist and having purchased me along with the front of house shop from MOMA Oxford who better, as doubtless I knew my stuff. I did many events and books signings under the auspices of the shop. With artists and authors ranging from people like the world class master photographers Eve Arnold, Elliot Erwitt and Robert Doisneau to artists David Mach, Glen Baxter, Roger Dean, Richard Wentworth and Brian Catling’s students of performance art at The Ruskin School of Drawing, my having become firm friends with the Ruskin Master of the fine artist Stephen Farthing

B. H. Blackwell Ltd 50 Broad St., Oxford

It also included a visit by Archbishop Desmond Tutu! Not perhaps known for his interest in the arts, he had heard through his publisher of the interest of Blackwell’s Art shop manager in a new book on the legendary photographer and hero of mine, Peter Magubane [Soweto: Portrait of a City, photography by Peter Magubane, New Holland, London, 1990] and I had tried to see whether we could do a signing not knowing where Peter lived or his availability. Blackwell’s Marketing & Publicity department in the form of the wonderful Karen George, enquired and came back to me saying Peter would not travel from his native South Africa but would I be interested in a visit from the man who wrote the foreword in his book, Archbishop Desmond Tutu?!

Me greeting Archbishop Desmond Tutu upon his visit to Blackwell's Art & Poster Shop 1990

I of course leaped at the chance. I mention this if only to show that Blackwell’s was used to having visiting dignitaries and important authors throughout the years and important bigwigs personally did not faze me! Having worked at MOMA Oxford for so long I was used to dealing with artists the like of David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, R.B.Kitaj, Leon Kossoff, and visiting dignitaries like the King and Queen of Spain no less!

Study for 'After Magubane' charcoal on handmade paper c.1985 A.Swapp

Archbishop Tutu was simply a hoot and we all thoroughly enjoyed his visit. An inveterate giggler, I liked him immensely and afterwards was able to ask him as I reflected on his astonishing ability to remember people, as a lady in the queue had gushed at seeing him again, they had met at so-and-so’s house in South Africa etc etc until he let it slip that he had absolutely no idea at all as to who most of them were let alone this woman who had greeted him like a long lost friend. The man’s gifted with people I tell you, a genius!

Study II 'After Magubane' charcoal on handmade paper c.1985 A.Swapp

Over the years working for Blackwell Retail I had become accustomed to signings with all sorts of authors in the main shop General Department run at one time by the lovely & much missed Alison Hiller, then her friend and fellow “supermodel” (sic) the legendary Sharon Murray. We had signings with poets, writers, academics, I recall Ian McEwen, Nick Hornby, Mr Bean, and David Attenborough and despite some certain objections (“not really our sort of thing”!) twice I was able to shake the hand and stare admiringly into the face of Muhammad Ali. Now royalty also visited Oxford, minor I admit the Duke of Kent for example and politicians and president’s too Bill Clinton stands out as one of the most charismatic people I have ever seen but never in all the years I worked there was such a hullabaloo as to when Margaret Thatcher was scheduled to come and sign her autobiography in the late nineties (1995?). The buildings of Broad Street were checked months in advance and when I say checked I mean really checked like for no other visitor. When the Clinton’s came there wasn’t this level of searching of buildings and marksmen on the roof!  The Art and Poster Shop was further up the street but the entire shop was searched from top to bottom and had the highest level of security folk check it out with sniffer dogs and they explored nooks and crannies I didn’t even know the shop had (going up into the ceilings was a surprise). 

study for ' A British Woman ' 2013 - A. Swapp

Now the Blackwell managers were told they were expected to work the signing and all seniors were expected to be on the doors of the Sheldonian Theatre (the shop itself not being quite grand enough). I asked what could be expected if we chose to say we’d rather not! For ideological reasons you understand. To my dismay it was made clear that it was part of my job to work and be on the door but if my objections being duly noted I could be put on duty on one of the doors around the back. Not wishing to put my job in jeopardy, that would come a couple of years later, I reluctantly agreed to work the door furthest away from the hullabaloo of her arriving up the front steps of the Christopher Wren designed grand building.

study II for ' A British Woman II' 2013 A. Swapp

Now we were all vetted and checked and briefed as to what was expected by the highest security level staff I had ever met, higher than any police public protection squad I had ever met before.

Come the day of the event the hullabaloo was at full tilt. The press had gotten hold of the fact of course and the student body had a significant presence of banner waving would be revolutionaries in the street. All the managers working that day had their best suits on and I took up my position round the back of the Sheldonian by the small back door leading to the bins which also served as the toilet fire exit. Comforted I had made my protest felt and compromised enough to satisfy my parents and family that I hadn’t exactly leaped at the chance to meet the woman. Now all was going swimmingly until the head of security came round the back of the building marching towards me with glimmer of a smile on his stern set face. Working on information received and certain protocols there had been a change of plan! What was going to happen now was that Thatcher was going to come in via Catte Street not Broad Street be hustled up the side of the Clarendon building between the Bodleian Library and into, yes you guessed it, the back entrance of the Sheldonian. With what felt like hours but in reality was minutes, I had the ex-Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher stalking towards me through the rain and up the steps towards the toilet fire exit. Like nothing so much as a tiny raptor, she is small which distracted me momentarily and yet seemingly not the least fazed by any suggested ignominy of using the tradesmen’s entrance, she stalked towards me up the steps and hand firmly outstretched gave me a smile that would have frozen a wolverine in it’s tracks (they can sniff out the enemy you know) as quick as you like with barely time to think I merely stood back opening the door to allow her to pass, into the area by the bins and past the less than fragrant toilets! I had managed it! Nothing would have, or could have, made me shake the hand that had such blood upon it as far as I was concerned  and who had put so may out of work and after all had taken away my children’s school milk!

A British Woman II 2013 Andy Swapp

You may think I exaggerate but rarely have I felt in the presence of evil and yet this was one such occasion. It seemed so wholly apposite to allow her in through the back door that a somewhat malign smile may have crept across my face and she, spotting this , quickly withdrew the previously proffered hand back under her raincoat and perhaps with a passing acknowledgement that I had mastered the situation with diplomacy, I like to think at least with an element of decorum, that she realised she was not in the company of a fellow traveller but who had been polite enough to defer and yet somehow, opening the door to the bin area and the acrid smelling toilets raised such a smile upon my face that she may have been feeling this was a step too far but by this time I could not quite gauge the expression on her face! 

The things you see when you haven’t got a gun, as me Granddad used to say!

It did of course occur to me she may have had the last laugh in that after her funeral the other day it came to light that had I the gumption to get myself a copy of the book signed with her own fair claw it would now be worth some £2,500 -£3,000 but hey, all things considered I’d rather have shaken the hand of Muhammad Ali (twice!) shared a Guinness with hostage Brian Keenan in the White Horse, had a laugh with Nick Hornby, watched in awe as the painfully shy Rowan Atkinson transformed into Mr Bean as he came down the Main Shop’s back stairwell and talked about Marilyn Monroe with Eve Arnold.