THE BOOK THEY TRIED TO KILL BECAUSE OF A DRUNKEN LAMPOST… A TRIP ROUND STAFFORDSHIRE’S SIX TOWNS

The Preservation Society tells the story of the book they tried to ban … it has remained in the wilderness for more than six years

Journalist, editor and broadcaster Leigh G Banks was commissioned by a leading publishing house to write a small book on Staffordshire’s Six Towns … then, at the last minute it all fell apart.

Now the book – described as  offensive, objectionable and  inappropriate by the publishing house – is about to hit the streets.

Out of the Darkness, takes a road-trip round Staffordshire revealing how it changed from  the ancient grime and smog-ridden home of the world famous pottery industry to become a burgeoning centre for commerce and the arts.

It’s a personal journey round the Six Towns for Leigh G Banks which began in the early 1960s when as a child he visited Trentham Gardens with his grandmother, Ada. Later,  he became a fan of Burslem’s Northern Soul fame and in the book he talks vividly about his experiences  at the notorious 1970s Hollywood rock festival near Leek.

In the 1990s he upped sticks from Manchester and moved  to Staffordshire but it wasn’t until beginning to research Out of the Darkness in 2011 he discovered that many of his ancestors hailed from Slindon, near Eccleshall.

Leigh said: “It was clear my grandmother was drawn to the Six Towns although she never told me about  our family connections. But every chance we’d get we’d jump on a bus or a train from Manchester and visit for the day.

“I suppose because I came from a dirty old city like Manchester I was never offended by the grime of   Stoke but what I was fascinated by even as a child were the buildings and the architecture. I found it all majestic.

“I would wander the streets for hours just looking up, looking up  … that’s part of the ethos of the book, look up in the Six Towns, much of the history is above your head in the friezes and inscriptions on the buildings.”

Leigh got a call from the international publisher  commissioning him to write a book on the towns.

“I didn’t approach them with the idea, they came to me,” Leigh said: “I liked the thought of taking a look at the towns, their history and how they’d changed against a backdrop of my childhood.”

But a year into the publishing process things started to go wrong. “Out of the Darkness was being advertised on Amazon and on all the major book sites, we’d been given a launch day and had arranged a venue and a couple of lucrative deals with major stores and then, out of the blue, the rug was pulled from under us. It was a real shock.”

Correspondence from the managing director of the publishing house, said ‘our advisers share our view that much of the content of your book may be considered offensive, objectionable or inappropriate by some readers and consequently may harm our reputation and potentially damage our relationship with both our readers and our trade customers’.

`They were objecting to phrases and paragraphs in the book including:

• Pubs reeked on every corner.
• Stoke was becoming a slum while the Victorian super-rich lived in imposing elevated red brick mansions. They were closer to God up there.
• Let’s begin at Trentham’s highly technical new round-about with it’s dozen or so drunken lampposts and its already grimy black and white road sign pointing to all the roads that lead to the heart of this story.

Leigh said: “The objection to the description of the Trentham round-about was the funniest though! Who in their right mind would be offended by the description of  drunken lampposts – what if we’d said they were bent!

“We couldn’t believe it … I’ve made my living as a writer for more than 30 years   and know exactly what I am doing. Why they adopted that attitude to the book I will never really understand.”

He said: “A lot of people were interested and a number of book shops had put in orders – and a major supermarket had wanted to stock it, so we thought we’d better let people know what had gone on.”