The Altar in the Loft / Kent Reading Detectives

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The Altar in the Loft Find!

All the local history collections in Kent Libraries & Archives include fictional works. This could be fiction written by authors with local connections, or fiction that evokes local places. Often, the fiction sections of the local history collections are overlooked. So, for me, Reading Detectives has been a good opportunity to draw attention to a different facet of the collections.

There's a strongly autobiographical strain to the fiction in the Tonbridge Library local history collection, be it the nostalgia of "George Sherston" (an alter-ego of Siegfried Sassoon,) or the alienation of Denton Welch, (surely the laureate of Tonbridge & district?)

Despite writing over 100 books, Rupert Croft-Cooke is, perhaps, one of the more obscure writers represented in the collection. He was best known as the thriller writer Leo Bruce, but also wrote novels, poems, short stories, biographies, and non-fiction, (with a subject range from circus life to pub darts!) Oh, and he wrote over 20 volumes of his own autobiography!! The Altar in the Loft is one of these autobiographical volumes.

During the first world war, Croft-Cooke's family moved to Cage Farm on the outskirts of Tonbridge: "Cage Farm lay in the fork two roads out of Tonbridge, one of which climbed Shipbourne Hill and reached the upland wooded villages of Plaxtol and Shipbourne." One of the main reasons for this was to allow Rupert to attend Tonbridge School as a day boy. While he satirises aspects of the regime, his is a largely affectionate portrait of the public school. The book deals with his craze for the ritual of the Anglican High Church. The apex of this obsession comes when he & a small company of acolytes construct an altar in the attic of Cage Farm.

Croft-Cooke's school career is undistinguished but, inspired by two eccentric journalists Douglas Blackburn & Bart Kennedy, he takes on writing as his vocation. Rupert Croft-Cooke was born in Edenbridge, was an antiquarian bookseller in Rochester and a one-time resident of Smarden, but that doesn't begin to tell his intriguing life story. However, i'll spare you the other 20 volumes of his autobiography and recommend that you check out this webpage: http://www.circa-club.com/gallery/gay_history_icons_rupert_croft_cooke_leo_bruce.php

2 September 2009 from Rob Illingworth

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