Notes from the underground: The history of the cult British radical magazine Black Dwarf, part 1

By Douglas Gill, who was there.

The offices of the Black Dwarf occupied the top floor of a house in Soho. Like the other houses in this street and in surrounding streets, the ground floor had been turned to some commercial use — a coffee bar or shop perhaps — and the remaining floors had then become offices. Before being appointed editor, I had scarcely visited the place, and knew little of the hopes and aspirations of those in charge; even so, the process of appointment to the editorship was informal, peremptory perhaps. The job had not been advertised, but, the previous editor having suddenly resigned, the Editorial Committee then cast around for someone else to take their place.

So it was that one day in early 1969, Bob Rowthorn tapped me on the shoulder. I was sitting in the Reading Room of the British Museum. Would I walk with him to Soho, and talk to the editorial committee about the job of editing the Dwarf?

In the event, some members of that committee were already known to me. Rowthorn and Sheila Rowbotham I had known for many years, and there were others there with whom I was acquainted — Tariq Ali and Fred Halliday, for instance. I did not know John Hoyland; and there may have been more present, whose…