At the beginning of my work on a feature film called ‘King of Crime’, back in 2016, I wrote a number of blogs about the experience. Now the film has been released, a DVD is on its way, and its cinema run is over, I can post the series of blogs I wrote at the time as a kind of journal. Whilst some of the journal entries will have their original dates at the start, I have extensively rewritten some of the material. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but also at the time you don’t always realise what will stay with you most. So each entry is a bit of a mix, written at the time but with a gloss of what happened later.
18th October 2016
Had a lovely day recently, on the film set of ‘Milk and Honey: The Movie’, (the working title of what became ‘King of Crime’), starring Mark Wingett from ‘The Bill’ and Claire King from ‘Emmerdale’, written by the talented Linda Dunscombe, who is also producer on this one and has done a fantastic job of getting a great cast together. I somehow missed the auditions but was brought on board, in a minor capacity, for a day’s shoot by the equally talented Sally Luff.
The location, when I arrived early, was already busy with crew and actors and extras in various states of preparedness. After coffee and a chat with Sally, I went to make-up where Clare Nixon and Laura Henry, her assistant, were busy with numerous actors. I also saw, in passing, Richard Summers-Calvert, who I know slightly, looking extremely busy. He was there, that day, in his capacity as the third assistant director but he also plays the character Dexter in the film. I remember Mark Wingett arriving, at some point, and being struck by how calm, friendly and self-assured he seemed, which is just what a lead actor needs to be, it really helps everybody feel happy and confident about the job in hand. Linda and Peter Dunscombe were both there (it’s really their baby this film) not only making everyone feel welcome but on the phone, answering constant questions and doing dozens of jobs whilst overseeing the whole project. Also, in a corner, was a quiet and concentrated, Hainsley Lloyd Bennett (‘Tully’), another of the lead actors.
Having put on my rather dapper three-piece suit, and been made up, I was ready for action. I was pleasantly surprised and happy to find out I was to get to use some real firearms. That sounds a bit morbid, but it’s not something I’ve done before, and I thought it would be good experience for any future film work. The day was picking up and I’d not even got in front of a camera yet!
In the end, I got to fire three types of handgun, which, as I say, was a first, and I have to confess to really enjoying it! Nicholas David Lean (who I later learned was the First Assistant Director, Second Unit Director and Action choreographer, hey it’s a small indie film!) went through the firearms training with me and was very insistent, rightly, that I take it seriously. He spoke of the injuries, and even a few fatalities, that blank rounds had caused on sets over the years (the empty bullet shells fly out at some force). It certainly helped to concentrate the mind and made me focus on all his instructions about how to handle the firearms correctly.
In the event, the reason I ended up firing three guns, was that the first two jammed after a few shots. In a way this helped me, because it gave me more time to get used to being on set, the camera set-up, and what was expected of me and my fellow ‘shooter’, a big shaven-headed guy (who I never did get the name of) who I have to say looked a lot tougher than me!
The set, created by Hayden Otton, in an office block in Milton Keynes, (where a number of the interiors were amazingly quickly, erected and struck, sometimes overnight) was a mock-up of an illegal den for computing scamming. The walls were an oppressive green-greyish colour, and my partner in crime and I, were to be framed in a single shot at the entrance to the room, which was accentuated nicely by small lights, set in the wall around the door, as you might get in a seedy nightclub.
Framed with the lights glowing gently off and on, behind us, Tom Anderson, the cinematographer, and Matt Gambell, the Director, were out in front, behind the camera, giving us various instructions. The lighting was more or less set when we walked on set but still need some adjustment. We spent some time getting positioned right, making sure our eye-lines were correct and going over when to bring the guns into shot and shoot. My partner had a shotgun, but it was a ‘dummy’ in the sense that it didn’t fire blanks and to begin with I had a very large silver hand gun (something like a magnum but don’t really know, having never picked up a gun before in my life).
I got a couple of rounds off with that first gun and was truly surprised at the kick a gun firing blanks has. This gun soon jammed, and Nick quickly replaced it, with another quite impressive but smaller black automatic gun. The same thing happened, it jammed and Nick, increasingly frustrated, after safely putting the other guns away, handed me the last gun they had and the smallest of the lot, a pistol. If this hadn’t of worked, I expect, that I would just have had to pretend to shoot and in post-production (as they did with the shotgun) they’d have put in a digital effect of gunfire. As it was, the pistol worked best out of the lot, giving off a very large flame from its muzzle, which made it a very real sensation to shoot.
Two things I didn’t know on the day were, firstly, that this first day of mine would end up in the trailer for the film and secondly who I was actually ‘shooting’. All we’d been told was that we were gunning down half a dozen people at computer terminals, but none of them were actually there when we were filming (hence the need to get the eye-line right).
It turned out, that a prominent victim of our gunshots was one of the characters in the film called Lazy River Boy, played by Benji Dotan. When I finally saw the sequence, at the premiere, this made me really smile. Benji and I had worked together for a couple of years, in a small scale touring theatre company, have the same agent, and occasionally bump into each other at various arts events.
He was on set that day, and we did have a brief chat early on, which was nice and helped make me feel more at home on set. Film sets can be intimidating places, so a friendly face is always helpful for one’s confidence.
Anyway, I was thrilled to have had the day and had thoroughly enjoyed myself, and after thanking Sally Luff for having contacted me, I got out of my suit and was one the stairwell about to leave. It was at this point I heard someone talking about the need to get further ‘heavies’ for the film. I think at that point I turned around and went back to have a word with Sally. She suggested I talk to Richard, the third AD. What I said to Richard was basically that I was free to come back over the next few weeks if they needed me to play a ‘heavy’ on another day. Richard thought that might be a good idea, went back in and came back a few minutes later having had a word with Linda. Linda had agreed that it would work in terms of continuity, that is that Marcus King could well surround himself with regular bodyguards and I could be one of them, it also got rid of the headache of finding new ‘heavies’ every few days. So, overhearing a conversation by chance, a quick chat, where I suggested I was available, a nod from the writer-producer and I was on board. After that point, I became I guess ‘Bodyguard to Marcus King’ rather than just a ‘heavy’ and I had at that point an unspecified number of call-sheets coming my way (the call-sheet tells you where and when you’re needed and any necessary details for day’s filming)
The whole day was a great experience, and I’d had a ball messing about with the guns as a gangster for the day. I’d found the whole cast and crew really friendly co-operative, hardworking and helpful. The young director, Matt Gambell, seems to be doing a great job (and I’m looking forward to seeing the finished film already). I have a few more days, at least, on the film, now as one of Mark Wingett’s bodyguards, and may even have more guns to fire!
I couldn’t have asked for a better day and was walking on air when I finally exited the building
 
Note: To any cast and crew members reading this, if there’s anything wildly inaccurate or that you dislike in the above, do let me know.

Kenneth Salzmann of Reader's Favorite has just given one of the trilogy of essays collections, that I published in 2017, a very generous review, which I thought I'd reproduce in full below.
I think I always enjoy reviews or feedback from people I don't know more than from friends and family. There are no vested interests or the distortions that come from someone knowing the writer. The support of friends is essential for one's spirit though don't get me wrong but in a way when they dislike something or are critical negatively its easier to accept! Anyway...

George Orwell, Two Guinea Pigs, A Cat and A Goat and other essays by Tim Dalgleish, reviewed by Kenneth Salzmann

As the title more than hints at, Tim Dalgleish’s ‘Orwell, Two Guinea Pigs, a Cat and a Goat and Other Essays’ is an eclectic and wide-ranging collection of writings by the British playwright-poet-essayist-editor and actor. In the more than two dozen pieces comprising the book, Dalgleish tackles such varied topics as the famous anthropological Piltdown Man hoax, the juncture of art and philosophy in American movies, the history of the Welsh language, traces of a near-vanished kingdom, Mahatma Gandhi, Tom Paine, Oscar Wilde, George Orwell, and the missing Malaysian Airlines plane, just for starters. In brief introductory remarks that precede each essay, Dalgleish shares with the reader something of the piece’s history (some are previously published magazine articles, some book reviews, some posts from a blog he maintains). 

In my opinion, Dalgleish is a thorough researcher, an original thinker, and an erudite writer whose essays can be counted on to offer readers fresh facts or unexpected linkages on every page. The breadth and depth of the works make for a potpourri that can be enjoyed in short bursts as much as a cover-to-cover reading. On the one hand, this is a book that invites the reader to dive in at any point, whenever a title piques his or her interest. On the other hand, though, the stitching together of so many different pieces sometimes results in essays that repeat information from previous entries. This happens, for example, in some of the several essays devoted to George Orwell, a “literary hero” of Dalgleish’s. However, overall, I found this collection is consistently engaging and instructive and likely to capture many readers’ interest.
​

I was recently contacted by an academic, Dr Samantha Mitschke, who specialises in British and American theatre about the Holocaust, about an old play of mine ‘The Last Days of Adam’. She is planning to use it at a conference ‘Lessons and Legacies’ at Washington University in St Louis (1st - 4th November) along with two other works.
A workshop is planned entitled "Holocaust Theatre and the Quest for Empathy," and the participants will have three case studies: The Diary of Anne Frank, Primo by Antony Sher, and my play, which I published in 2015. ‘The workshop involves looking at how writers have adapted Holocaust diaries and memoirs for the stage, and the various factors of empathy involved, including an overview of empathy theory, notions of empathic factors, and so on.’ says Samantha and has asked me for my memories of the process.
Fortunately, a few of those memories are already in print, in a collection of essays I published last year, called ‘Orwell, Two Guinea Pigs, A Cat and A Goat’. In that collection is a post-script, to an essay about the Judenrat leader Jacob Gens, who ran the Vilna Ghetto. The post-script talks about my experience with ‘Voices of the Holocaust’, a theatre company I was heavily involved with for two years, and the off shoot of that experience, the writing of ‘The Last Days of Adam: The True Story of Adam Czerniakow’.
I have to say, it’s rather an unexpected honour to be included as part of an academic conference in the States and alongside such illustrious texts. Anne Frank’s is probably the most famous diary of the Holocaust and Anthony Sher is an actor I’ve admired since I first saw him in a blistering TV adaptation of Malcolm Bradbury’s ‘The History Man’.
I had ‘True Story’ as part of the title of my play because I very much tried to make the play a ‘document’ which condensed and closely ‘translated’ Czerniakow’s own diary onto the stage. It will, therefore, be interesting to hear back from Samantha about how the participants to the workshop respond and interpret my interpretation of events.
The play itself had its earliest origins in another play I help write called ‘Fragile Fire’. ‘Fragile Fire’ was a play written and devised by ‘Voices’ a small touring theatre company. ‘Fire’ was largely concerned with Mordechai ‘Angel’ Anielewicz and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the character I played was Adam Czerniakow. Czerniakow died halfway through ‘Fire’, which in fact was largely a physical theatre piece perhaps less concerned with a text ‘heavy’ version of events as the dramatic, visceral portrayal of events. Perhaps the last quarter of the play, was a set piece of flying bodies, jumping and diving off a spinning scaffolding. The scaffolding was on wheels, and I was the pivot with the fate of four or five other actors, literally in my hands, with the colossal frame occasionally heading rather closer to the edge, of the variously sized stages we performed on than I necessarily felt comfortable with!
Anyway, from the research and creation of that character and that play, I decided the story of Czerniakow himself was worth telling. Part of the reason being related to, I think, Yehuda Bauer’s notion of ‘Perpetrator, bystander, victim’. This trilogy of types, involved in the events of the Holocaust, was one we used in our workshops and teaching sessions pre- or post the show. And in a sense, Czerniakow seemed to fit all three ‘types’. The Judenrat of the Ghettoes, created by the Nazi’s, were essentially Jewish councils who were given the job of running matters within the Ghetto. Leaders of the Judenrat came in a variety of types, Gens, for instance, was a much harder and harsher character than Czerniakow, and perhaps due to that, it might be said he was much closer to being a ‘Perpetrator’ than a victim. Czerniakow was a subtler, gentler man and certainly conceived his task as one of trying to ameliorate the suffering of the Jewish community in the Ghetto. In the end, he certainly realised that he had been duped or played the fool by the Nazi’s who really had never really intended to ‘live and let live’ when it came to the Jews. The Ghettoes were not an apartheid, they were a step, a part of a process, toward the Holocaust. How clearly the pathway to genocide was laid out is a matter of debate, but certainly, the Nazi’s generally knew that the Judenrat and its people were mere instruments to be discarded when the time came.
Like many Jews and others at the time, Czerniakow thought eventually things would ‘blow over’, there had been ghettoes and pogroms before, the majority would survive it was a case of protecting as many as possible for as long as possible, until a brighter day. Tragically it was a very dark night he was walking into. Eventually, he took his own life. The ways in which he combined the three ‘types’ of Bauer’s are not so much investigated in the play as merely portrayed. The ‘True Story’ is really ‘this is how he felt, this is what he did’. It is less didactic and more open-ended, in a sense, than it could have been, at least, that was the intention.
The participants of the conference may well have differing perspectives, but if the play stirs any of the debates in any way it will have served its purpose. 

​Going Viral
I’m busy at work on my latest audio book which is the life of Edward Upward by Peter Stansky. Upward was ‘the fourth man’ in the literary grouping of WH Auden, Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender. He is in the literary shadows, but in the 1930s he was a massive influence on all the writers above and the decade itself.
He tends to be a somewhat overlooked now, but Stansky’s biography goes some way to restoring his reputation a little. His personality and writings were split between ‘Art and Life’ (the subtitle of the biography) that is, between his writing and his political life. Like George Orwell, he felt that given the politics of his era he had to be political though he never much enjoyed this activity. For his generation being political meant joining the Communist Party.
However, he was always conflicted because his imaginative, artistic self was drawn to writing a brand of surrealism or fantasy. With Christopher Isherwood, his life-long friend, he created ‘The Mortmere Stories’ which is what (along with his political and autobiographical trilogy The Spiral Ascent’) he is now most remembered for.
Stansky wrote a biography of Orwell years ago, which I read and very much enjoyed, so it was rather a thrill to be given the job of transferring this new biography, from the Enitharmon Press, into an audiobook.
In this era of the rise of the right in Europe and America, it’s good to be reminded of the values of the left and how essential the notion of fraternity, equality and community is over the I-generation’s focus on ‘me’ and ‘my rights’. Rights, in a sense, do need to be earned or at a minimum appreciated not as God-given, but as a human creation and one that needs to be fought for and then maintained. People have, and do, die to preserve these central values of decency to others, economic equality and justice.
Mobile phones and Facebook are a supplement to society, but true communion is made between human beings speaking and debating face to face. It is much harder to insult someone face to face, for various reasons: you can see the hurt you inflict, your own morality can be questioned because it’s not protected by anonymity, the reactions of your community can temper your disregard for others. etc. Of course, face to face contact can bring conflict too; it’s just that digital communication is more susceptible to certain abuses and can go much wider, much quicker. There’s a small clue in the phrase ‘going viral’, a few viruses do bring benefits, but most do not.  As is becoming recognized, we need to be wary of technology dictating human actions rather than the reverse. I heard one teenager, on Radio Four recently, who banned her friends using their mobile phones whilst they were visiting her. It is a classic scenario these days to see a group of friends together, no-one is talking, and everyone is on their mobile! There are more important issues, but our technological attributes are symptoms of greater ills.

Two Audio books out this week, both written by Max Ehrmann and narrated by myself. ‘Lifting the Veil’ originally appeared in the Harvard Graduates Magazine in 1927, and was this American writer’s longest prose inquiry into the nature of existence. He was a spiritual man, a poet and playwright, who never lost his love for nature, the night sky and long walks. His poetry always brings us back to the magnificence and beauty below the surface or behind the veil. In the title essay of this collection which I put together earlier this year, Ehrmann rejects the metaphysical tomes of Kant and Schopenhauer and returns to what he conceives as the more fundamental experience which accepts science straightforwardly but feels there is more to existence. His view is similar to that of Emerson and Thoreau full of pragmatism but with a vein of what is almost paganism or pantheism. Science engages the intellect, nature inflames the emotions, burns at the edges of the veil of Maya. The book also includes other essays by Ehrmann and biographical sketches of him by literary critics and people in his circle.
‘Worldly Wisdom Revisited: The Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach’ is his version, in verse, of the book of Ecclesiastes from the Christian Bible. He lost his Christianity early but maintained a respect for some of the wisdom Jesus. I wrote a long introduction to the book and it’s part of a long term plan to write a biography of this author. If you want a taste of his work take a look at ‘Desidarata’ his most famous poem which is all about taking life calmly and appreciating what you have and what there is out there if you have the eyes to see.

I texted the thought below to a friend of mine recently who’d said he sometimes found poetry impenetrable. It’s half-way to being a tweet but as I don’t tweet I thought I’d post it here. It was off the cuff but I liked it so I’m preserving it perhaps to be worked on later.
‘Poetry is the broadest class of writing, has the most forms and is the most individual and personal, along with being the most formal and artificial too. Prose fiction generally is sequential and narrative driven even when its experimental it tends to have a contextual narrative, simply put it tells a story, poetry is feelings attached to words.
So you are like most readers (myself included) more inclined to find prose, fact and fiction, easier than poetry which is often both fact and fiction at the same time!’
I composed a bit of doggerel for my friend on the day of the recent royal wedding too, as I juggled feeding my two girls at the leisure centre after swimming. He said as he’d requested them (he was at work and wanted some entertainment, and read them out to his colleagues as I sent them) they were commissions. So as they are commissioned work I thought I’d preserve them too! I think I’ll call them my ‘Anti-royal Dogs’:
First Dog:
‘Markle and His Majesty are getting wed,
That’s what the papers and tv endlessly said,
I missed it, dreaming they’d gone forever,
And of their kind I’d have to hear again, never!’
 
The office crowd gave a ‘mixed response’ and asked for something that rhymed with ‘parasite’
Second Dog:
‘The Royals are the greatest parasite,
Sucking our blood out morning ‘til night,
Wish I could squash them flat,
I’d be happy for the papers to report that!’
 
There was a short interval whilst I took both my girls to the loo, then
Third Dog:
‘If you are a parasite given wings of old
Just remember who gave you gold,
One day again instead of a wedding ring,
We’ll do that old Cromwell thing,
Take those wings and bind them tight,
Make who you call ‘insects’ feel the might
You have had all your life,
Not god given but taken with the knife
And sword of ages past,
May your blood-sucking reign not last!’
 
Sure they don’t quite scan but I was juggling children whilst composing and texting which was good for the parental mind! 

The audiobook of 'Lifting the Veil' is complete and coming out in the next couple of weeks which I'm happy about and as I mentioned in the last blog 'Worldly Wisdom Revisted' a book by and about Max Ehrmann which I've edited is close to coming out too. I'm pleased with the introduction which is 15 or so pages and being worked over by Sarah my wife right now.
The book is completed really I'm just doing some final adjustments, I changed the size formatt which slowed things down a little but this is all part of a master plan to edit a whole raft of books on Ehrmann before I publish a biography. The biography will take a few years I expect but all the books inbetween I'm going to form part of a fascinating and enjoyable journey I think. 
The cover blurb for Worldly is as follows:
This is a fully revised version of Max Ehrmann’s 1934 classic ‘Worldly Wisdom’. Ehrmann’s famous poem ’Desiderata’ has delighted the world for many years and is one of the most popularly searched poems on the internet. Like ‘Desiderata’ this new book is full of gentle soulful advice on how to lead one’s life. A detailed introductory essay, by Tim Dalgleish, investigates Ehrmann’s relationships with Theodore Dreiser, Eugene Debs and others, and is full of interesting biographical facts about the author himself, all of which helps us ‘revisit’ this spiritual classic with fresh eyes.

My latest book which I've edited and written an introduction to is 'Lifting the Veil: Beloved Dead, Biography and other appreciations' is now available on Amazon. This is a collection of writings by and about Max Ehrmann an American poet who I'm writing a biography of at present. He is famous for his poem 'Desiderata' which is included in this volume but the title essay is a spiritual investigation into the nature of reality! Biography is a new territory for me and so far I'm finding it fascinating. I'm planning a series of books that include material by Ehrmann which will be edited and introduced by me. The cover of the next book, which will follow hot on the heels of Lifting the Veil, is below!