Roger McGough's Archive Joins University of Liverpool
Archivist Jo Klett has stated that the 40 boxes of material recently acquired will offer “a full picture of Roger’s entire working career.”
“It’s a joy to be old,”wrote Roger McGough, one of Britain’s most popular, prolific, and humorous poets.
“The dog dead and the car sold.”
Another joy, McGough suggests, might be decluttering. Following the transfer of dozens of boxes containing notebooks, manuscripts, drafts, project files, journals, posters, letters, personal artworks, and more, McGough has acknowledged that his house is now significantly emptier.
“If anyone wants to buy some old empty filing cabinets then get in touch … through you,”he joked.
The University of Liverpool has announced it has acquired McGough’s entire archive. The institution already held a substantial collection of personal papers relating to his life up to 2007. The new acquisition includes material accumulated since then, as well as items such as travel journals that McGough had initially been reluctant to part with.
McGough, aged 88, described it as an
“honour to be asked,”adding:
“Where else but Liverpool, really.”
McGough was a teacher when he formed The Scaffold, known for the hit “Lily the Pink,” with Mike McCartney and John Gorman in the 1960s. He was also one of the Liverpool poets, alongside Brian Patten and Adrian Henri, who featured in The Mersey Sound, one of the bestselling poetry anthologies of all time.
Over his career, McGough has published more than 100 poetry books for adults and children and has hosted Radio 4’s Poetry Please for over 25 years.
The archive illuminates significant moments in cultural history and includes correspondence with a wide variety of individuals, such as Victoria Wood, Eric Idle, Harold Wilson, Esther Rantzen, and Philip Larkin.
Larkin, known for his reputation as being reserved, is remembered by McGough, who was a student at the University of Hull when Larkin was the librarian, with fondness and appreciation for his kindness and encouragement.
“He would say take no notice of what critics are going to say before I even knew there were going to be critics. He said: ‘Ignore them, do what you do and go on doing it’.
This is what I’ve tried to do in my own writing.”
Larkin later wrote to McGough, poet to poet, with a congratulatory note.
“He wrote a nice thing saying: ‘Very pleased to see your latest volume is more well-thumbed than mine. Congratulations.’”
The archive also contains material shedding light on McGough’s involvement in the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, which described at the time as a
“rather pretentious piece of popular entertainment.”
McGough was invited to “Liverpudlianise” the script.
“By the time I was brought in, there had been 17 writers and the Beatles didn’t like it,”he said.
“It was too American.”
He was paid a fee but was informed by US producers that he would receive no credit, and the archive contains correspondence confirming this arrangement.
“These things happen,”McGough reflected.
“It didn’t worry me at the time, but a credit would have meant more money. I’d be in LA now surrounded by models on a beach, not talking to you.”
McGough noted that items in the archive evoked many emotions and memories, including some he had forgotten.
One such item was a script for Thames TV, which McGough discovered he had initially wanted to title Your Dinner Has Gone to the Hairdressers, I am in the Oven.
“It was a great title but I had to change it to The Life Swappers,”he explained.
Among the more than 40 large boxes of material in this second tranche are hundreds of diaries McGough kept during his travels.
“What happened to me, where I went, what I read, what I wore, what I ate. A lot of it was quite boring, but a lot of it was quite interesting and funny.”
There is also an undated but 1960s brooding self-portrait McGough painted of himself.
The announcement of the archive acquisition was timed to coincide with National Poetry Day on Saturday.
The material joins nearly two miles of archives held by the university, including Europe’s largest catalogued collection of science fiction material and the Cunard archive.
The university’s archivist, Jo Klett, said the latest McGough material would be catalogued and made available for public viewing to help provide
“a full picture of Roger’s entire working career.”
When asked to provide a comment for the university on the archive acquisition, McGough naturally chose verse.
“Seeking a suitable quote, I delved deep into my University of Liverpool archive. Unfortunately, without success! Will this do? ‘Honoured and Excited?’”
