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Strung along the A22 like grave markings for a vanished transport system, the Bow In 1906, George Cadbury, visionary industrialist, chocolate magnate, and founder of the remarkable model village Bournville, visited Bruges in Belgium. While there he heard the famous carillon of the Belfry of Bruges and decided, there and then, that Bournville should have a carillon too. The Cadburys were a Quaker family, which meant the village had no pubs. There were sports facilities aplenty to keep the Cadbury workforce occupied in their leisure time, but man and woman cannot live by ball games alone.

As well as the pleasure it would provide to the inhabitants of Bournville, Cadbury saw the carillon as a potential source of civic pride for the village. On his return to England, he commissioned John Taylor & Co, a bell foundry in Loughborough, to produce twenty-two bells, which were installed in the tower's belfry. Over the years, another twenty-six bells have been added, cast by Gillette and Johnson of Croydon, who also replaced most of the original bells as they deteriorated over the years.

The carillon originated in the Low Countries and, besides the bells, the instrument comprises a keyboard of ‘batons’, wooden levers which are pressed with the fist, and pedals for the heavier bells. The batons and pedals are attached to the bell clappers by wires. At Bournville, this machinery is housed in a cabin beneath the belfry, reached by a tiny spiral staircase. The person who plays a carillon is called a carillonneur. I have seen Bournville’s carillonneur, Trevor Workman, play, and what struck me about the performance was not only the skill and coordination involved, but the sheer physical effort required to strike the batons in the correct way.

The forty-eight bells weigh 17.5 tons in total. The lowest in tone, called the bourdon, is 3.4 tons and the smallest treble bell is 12 lbs. Together, the Bournville bells have a range of four octaves, providing the musical resources for concert performances. Music for the carillon must be specially composed or arranged: as well as the constraints of playing the instrument, foundry bells have unique harmonic characteristics which can sometimes result in the bells sounding slightly out of tune even when tuned correctly. Listening to a carillon is a unique musical experience, and the sound is much more fluid and expressive than that achieved through standard bell ringing.

The company paternalism that gave rise to the carillon, to Bournville itself, and to other model villages built by other magnates, is long in the past. And this is no bad thing: better to have achieved democratic equality than to depend on the largesse of a plutocrat, however enlightened. Yet one can’t help but admire the drive of George Cadbury and his desire to improve the lives of his workers, to provide them with housing and parks, schools and churches, libraries and music. But no pubs. A very Quaker utopia. The carillon at Bournville is a beautiful component of his impressive legacy.

A couple of newsletters ago, I wrote about John Drinkwater’s 1937 novel, Robinson of England. I’d picked up the book in a second-hand bookshop and enjoyed its whimsical, patriotic take on my homeland. Though I knew nothing about Drinkwater, I soon found a website dedicated to the man and his works. In that post, I referred to him as ‘obscure’ rather than ‘forgotten’, and I suspect it may have been a semi-conscious memory of an article by the critic BD McClay which prevented me from using that ‘tired, contrived hook’ (McClay’s phrase).

In ‘Enough with the “forgotten” writers’, McClay expresses her irritation and impatience with the regular flow of literary essays in which ‘forgotten’ writers are ‘rediscovered’. Her prime example is Barbara Pym, a writer who achieved the high honour of appearing on Desert Island Discs, and was praised by Philip Larkin in her lifetime, McClay cites several recent essays about this allegedly ‘forgotten’ writer, including one of her own. She’s right, of course. And as if to prove her point, not long after I read her piece, Pym was on the cover of the Times Literary Supplement.

The probability of any writer of merit or interest, however minor, being entirely forgotten seems unlikely in our present age. McClay cites the work of small literary publishers in excavating writers and novels of the past, but there is also the vast and ever-increasing repository of the World Wide Web. In addition,electronic publishing has made it cheap and easy to republish books of all types and ages. It seems inconceivable that any book will ever go ‘out of print’ again. There is also, thanks again to the Web, the means for anyone to create a page or two in tribute to their particular favourite.

Some writers, like John Drinkwater, are indeed obscure. But forgotten? Not a chance. There is no escape from the search bots diligently crawling into every nook and cranny of the internet. Though the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in 2014 that there is, in certain circumstances, a right to be forgotten, I can’t imagine many writers actually wanting to be erased from the collective electronic memory. And we won’t be, not now.

The driver is a taciturn man but holds immense power over the passengers on the journey. He determines the route but does not share it with them; he speaks to the border officials in incomprehensible tongues; he tells them when and where they can eat, piss, and shit. He has a sense of humour, though, and laughs to himself when one of them shows their naivety or nearly gets left behind at a stop. They feel, vaguely, that they must appease him for the incorrect things they may have done, so they buy him drinks, cigarettes, and chocolate bars at regular intervals. He accepts these without thanks. They know the journey is long and uncomfortable, but know also know that the rewards are great. They must trust in the driver and in the future gifts of Anglia. Their interest in the unfamiliar countryside and towns of the countries they pass through soon fades. The young ones among them swing between optimism and fear. The older ones accept the mystery of it and take comfort in the little rituals of the journey: the first cigarette of the day, coffee stops, showers in cheap hotels. With little expectation, they ask the driver about Anglia, but he tells them nothing, other than that they will find out soon enough. When they reach Thurrock Services and go to the cafeteria, one of them spills their coffee. They interpret this as a sign of good fortune to come.

[Photograph taken at Thurrock Services, Essex.]