B.C.S.A. Members’ Interests: Nigel Sinnott
Australia: indigenous people; natural history (esp. plants and fungi). Books by anthropologist W. H. Stanner.
China. 1899 – 1950; history, civil wars; Japanese aggression. Sun Yat-sen.
“English” Civil War(s) 1640–60, 1688–90. Levellers, Ranters and Diggers.
Flags, banners and heraldry; air force markings.
Freethought and rationalism, esp. in the 19th century; writings, histories and biographies. Books by Chapman Cohen, G. W. Foote, Joseph McCabe and esp. J. M. Robertson (1855 – 1933).
Ireland: history, natural history, language.
Italy: Risorgimento.
Mycology: larger fungi of esp. Australia and Europe.
Names of people, places and rivers and their meanings.
19th century Darwinists. Ernst Haeckel, J. D. Hooker, T. H. Huxley, Sir John Lubbock, Oscar Schmidt.
North America: indigenous people; Grey Owl (Archibald Stansfeld Belaney), books by and on. Anti-slavery movement; American Civil War. Books by and on M. D. Conway.
Oxfordshire: northern part.
Poetry.
Publishers. Watts & Co., London; Freethought Publishing Co., London.
Second World War. Nazism, the Holocaust.
Spanish Civil War, 1936–39.
Taiwan. Books in English about its geography and history.
Vegetarians and vegans. Books by and about H. S. Salt.
Writers. Macaulays and Trevelyans, esp. G. M. Trevelyan (historian). Bertrand Russell.
Nigel included this story behind one book in his collection:
In my late teens I discovered and liked the poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne. While wandering round second-hand bookshops I picked up one or two selections of his poems, but I eventually decided I needed his complete poetical works. I vaguely remember that (I think) I spotted one set of his complete poems, but either the price was rather high or the condition was not too good. I decided to wait and see if I could do better. Two or three weeks later, in July 1965, in a dusty shop in Kingston-upon-Thames, I spotted an American edition of Swinburne’s poems (6 vols., 1904) and the covers looked in good condition. When I opened vol. 1 my jaw dropped: the front endpaper was inscribed “F. L. Leipnik / ACSwinburne”. I bought the set and probably didn’t worry about the price. The writing was clearly that of the elderly Swinburne. I expected to wake up and find I had been dreaming!
So I had an author-autographed complete set of the poems of Swinburne. (I bought the posthumous poems later.) But who was Leipnik? I kept looking for clues about Leipnik over the years and decades but got nowhere until about 2007 when, thanks to the internet, I got an answer. He was an Anglophile Austrian who (after Swinburne’s death) was involved in secret negotiations (that failed) in about 1917 between the Allies and Austria-Hungary who wanted to make a separate peace with the Allies.
For more information see Biblionews 358, 2008: 64 – 67.