Post memorial...and in no particular order...

Unedited texts from Daniel Carrier, writing as John Gulliver in the Camden New Journal.


'Celebrating the life and principles of Citizen Brien'


SITTING in a flea pit cinema in Sunderland as a teenager, Alan Brien became inspired to be a journalist.
What did the trick was the film, Orson Welles classic, Citizen Kane, about a press mogul.
All around him he could hear chairs flip up as others walked out. But he was gripped…… his future was calling him.
Now the life of the extraordinary journalist, novelist, raconteur and political sage is due to be celebrated at memorial service next week in Covent Garden.
His fourth wife Jane Hill, who lives in the Highgate Village cottage the couple shared before his death aged 83 in May, tells me that among the people coming to pay their respects is the legendary folk singer Bob Davenport, jazz giants Ian Christie and Wally Fawkes and scores of his friends from journalism and broadcasting.
“He was a life long Socialist, feminist and revolutionary and that never changed,” Jane recalled when I met her on Tuesday.
“He had firm principles and he stuck by them. It cost Alan personally at times, too: “He was a serial resigner – if he was a member of an organisation and there was something he did not agree with, he'd walk out. When Rupert Murdoch bought the Sunday Times, he resigned from his post, saying his conscience would not allow him to take Murdoch's shilling. His principles cost him a News International pension.”
And he could be scathing towards those who he felt had sold out, too – but not in a cruel way.
Jane recalls him tearing strips off Malcolm Muggeridge on air in a show called Face Your Image for departing from his left wing principles he held in his younger days and finding religion.
“The thing was, when Malcolm was asked to respond, he simply said Alan was absolutely right. That is because however vitriolic Alan could be, he was always fair and always true,” said Jane. “His concern was always for truth – he was never spiteful.”
Alan's memorial is at the Actor's Church in Covent Garden next Wednesday at 2.30pm.


'Monty Python star celebrates the life of Brien'


THE life of Alan Brien, journalist, critic and broadcaster was celebrated by friends and relatives yesterday (Wednesday) at the Actor's Church in Covent Garden – and they heard Monty Python star Terry Jones reveal the debt Camden Town owes to Alan.
Before reciting one of the author's favourite poems - 'My beloved compares herself to a pint of stout' by Paul Durcan – he said playwright Sir Arnold Wesker gave Alan the credit for turning the Roundhouse into an arts venue.
Terry Jones said Alan told Sir Arnold the Roundhouse had been bought by a property developer who did not know what to do with the old engine shed.
So Alan asked Sir Anold if he could persuade him to give it to Centre 42 [Wesker's arts group]. “It was Alan that made the Roundhouse an iconic building for the arts,” he said.
His widow Jane revealed that although Alan was struck down by a rare form of dementia called Lewy Body disease, he was always brave, stoical and cheerful, calling his hallucinations 'free cinema.'
Those gathered to pay their respects heard broadcasts of the journalist, who lived in Highgate, heavily criticising Malcolm Muggeridge, and Muggeridge responding by saying Alan was absolutely right, and failing to spot that the phrase 'violence is the repartee of the illiterate' as a quote of his own on a Radio Four quiz programme.
Biographe Valerie Grove, who lives in Highgate said: “He was one those rare people I fell in love with before I'd even met him. We were both from the north east and people from the north east always get on with each other.
“When we met, I was not disappointed – he had such a large presence, and I have never known any one to be able to hold a table’s attention like him.
“In the 1960s, my economics master insisted I read the Statesman every week and I was able to recite from memory a column he had written.”
She read the passage, which typified Alan's wit: “I remember noting, when I first came to London, how often the names of stores in the ads sounded like the baby-talk of the Nanny Mafia in Kensington Gardens – 'don;t be so selfridge, Master Fortnum. Eat up your harrods, and then you can have a gorringe…. I know a child once died of the Whiteleys after too many burberries.'
Those celebrating Alan's life were also treated to Bloomsbury folk singer Bob Davenport singing two traditional songs from the north east and a version of William Blake's Jerusalem.
Among the crowd was writer Paul Johnson, Observer film critic Philip French, his son crime writer Sean French, author Deborah Moggach and illustrator and writer Posy Simmonds. They headed to the Garrick club afterwards to listen to trad jazz provided by Highgate's Wally Fawkes and Ian Christie.