JIM BOSWELL I met James Boswell’s daughter Sal in January 1954 the very first day I arrived at the Central School of Art in London. A green-as-grass eighteen-year-old from Ireland, covered in confusion in strange surroundings, in a studio with an actual naked lady I was expected to look at, must have appealed to her maternal instincts for she took me under her wing and we have been together ever since.

My childhood is, of course, another story though it wasn’t unhappy. Even so, when I arrived in London I was looking forward to beginning a whole new life. What I hadn’t realised, though, was that what I needed was a family...

Enter the Boswells. It wasn’t long before I was absorbed into their circle bewitched by their ‘bohemian’ way of life, so different from Anglo-Irish convention where ‘art’ was something to be discussed in whispers. It soon became apparent that Sal and I were in earnest, which her mother Betty accepted with enthusiasm. Apparently she thought I was well brought up, polite, fairly clean and reliable, and didn’t talk too much, just what Sal needed. On the other hand Jim, Sal reported, thought exactly the same things, which were evidently just what Sal didn’t need. Who was going to be good enough for his little girl?

He was right, of course. They both were. But Jim Boswell never once showed the slightest antagonism towards me. Perhaps he figured that I would be fine for the time being but would surely be history before long. Meanwhile he was happy enough to have an acolyte at his feet. I was much too shy and in awe to get close but I knew he had been art editor of the legendary (but recently closed) Lilliput magazine, that he had done Ealing film posters and illustrated well-known books. At that stage I knew nothing about his pre-war New Left Review work, his war drawings, his AIA lithographs. Still I could appreciate that he was an amazingly versatile and professional illustrator and indeed I regarded this as his prime function. He did paint but his paintings seemed to me more personal, more complex illustrations. The most important thing to me, though, was that he was such amazingly good company.

Still, there was one thing I really didn’t understand about him - which eventually turned out to be what cemented our friendship. Jim was the editor of Sainsbury’s house magazine, which seemed bizarre for such a distinguished artist and man about town. I suppose it suited him; it paid well and left him plenty of time to do whatever else he wanted. I have since discovered that Sainsbury’s just asked him out of the blue, but they can have had little idea what they were actually going to get. ‘JS Journal’ was an entirely new venture for the company and Jim came up with a pocket magazine (not totally unlike Lilliput!), full of company affairs it is true but also fascinating features about food production (on a huge scale much more interesting than you might think!), well researched histories of the towns where new branches were to open, but also items much more tenuously related to the grocery business - a series of extracts from the diaries of the food-obsessed Parson Woodforde were memorable. Of course the whole thing was lavishly illustrated with his own drawings. As house magazines go it was in a class of its own. He did grumble about it from time to time but he he was quite proud of JS Journal which he edited for the rest of his life, best part of twenty years.

In 1960 Jim unexpectedly asked me if I would like to be art editor. I was reasonably qualified, not only with a graphics diploma but experience in both an advertising agency and a design group. However national service had made me a photographer (cameras were cheap in Singapore) and I wanted to change from one thing to the other. This was the opportunity which would make it possible. The fact that by this time I had become his son-in-law was not seen as a problem - there were no less than seven Sainsburys on the board at that time! For years we went on stories together, at least until he was sure I could do the job by myself. We chatted endlessly in the car. And he gave me the best lesson I ever had - having handed him a more than usually poor set of pictures, accompanied by many pathetic excuses, he said kindly ‘Don’t worry, my boy, I’ll put all that in the captions’!

From the late fifties Jim Boswell was also involved with Topic Records. Topic was started by the Communist Party in 1939. By the fifties it was still very left wing but more to do with authentic ‘folk’ music than political propaganda. It survives to this day, claiming to be the oldest independent record label in the world. Because of his socialist credentials Jim was invited onto the board of trustees - so that he could produce all their sleeves and publicity material absolutely free! He knew the people but absolutely nothing about folk music but, typically, he treated this apparent chore with good humour and complete commitment for the rest of his life. His early sleeves were entirely graphic but by the early sixties he was beginning to feel he should find out what was actually going on in the folk world. He suggested a voyage of discovery which, as a budding photojournalist, seemed to me a great idea for a magazine story...

The two of us set off on a major tour of England and Scotland to ‘dig the scene’. A diversion to the Aberdeen area on behalf of Sainsburys looked after the travel expenses. The trip was a crucial experience for me (again, that’s another story) for it was the beginning of a lifelong interest in folklore and customs. One Boxing Day years later we persuaded Jim to see his one and only traditional custom, when he was amazed by the Marshfield Mummers. The unique results are above. In that autumn of 1962 we had a great time, met lots of interesting singers and folklorists and Jim did indeed get a feel for this peculiar world - even if the trip came nowhere near turning him into a folkie. For the next decade he used lots of my photographs on Topic sleeves but his last, and best, were illustrations for their influential ten volume series ‘Folksongs of Britain’. These were recordings of genuine ‘traditional’ performers, subsequently much plundered by ‘revival’ singers. Each volume covered a different theme, each sleeve had a Boswell drawing incorporating a mandala, which gave them wonderful series identity. Alas, after he died I had to complete the last one myself. Luckily he had left enough material for me to make a reasonable attempt at this impossible task.

There was one other thing we did together. We won the 1964 election for the Labour Party. Jim designed all the publicity. The theme, somewhat corny, was ‘Let’s go with Labour’ and all the posters featured a simple thumbs-up.

The picture was mine and the thumb was his...