Christopher Hampton (left), and Dinah Livingstone

Published: 26 July, 2012

A MEMORIAL meeting was held at Conway Hall on Saturday for the poet, teacher and activist Christopher Hampton, who died, aged 82, at home in France on April 28.

Christopher taught for 28 years at the Polytechnic of Central London (now University of Westminster) and at the City Literary Institute.
He was mourned by his family, friends and grateful former students.

At the memorial meeting, Dinah Livingstone, a friend of the poet, said: “I met Christopher through London poetry circles and in the 1970s we had a poetry and discussion group called the Colloque. The members included Christopher, Libby Houston, Patrick Fetherston, and Fred Grubb."

“In the 1980s, Christopher found a sympathetic editor at Penguin, Neil Middleton, who enthusiastically published Christopher’s monumental Radical Reader, which has recently been reissued by Spokesman Press, and his Socialism in a Crippled World. That was very exciting when I heard about it at the time."

“Christopher was always a great encouragement to me in my own work and in 1989 when my small press, Katabasis, was able to progress from publishing pamphlets to its first two proper books, he reviewed one of these, my translation of The Nicaraguan Epic, in Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!: ‘You see the faces, sense the presence of the particular histories of people intent on the realisation of a vision that mattered more to them than their lives.’

“Actually, I think this applies to Christopher’s own particular history too: intent on the realisation of a vision that mattered more to him than his life.

“Later on, Katabasis was privileged to publish two collections of Christopher’s poetry, Against the Current in 1995 and Border Crossings in 2005.
Christopher also gave me a lot of support in my editorship of the magazine Sofia, a job which began in 2004.

“Years ago Christopher and his wife Kathleen invited me to dinner at their flat in Highgate and later also to their cottage in Arrington, near Cambridge.

“After they moved to France they invited me out there twice to stay in their beautiful house. Christopher was still strong and active then, keeping their wonderful garden and driving us about to interesting places.

“I saw him again when he gave a forceful poetry reading at Lauderdale House in Highgate.

“Kathleen tells me that, although later he wasted away physically, his mind was lucid till the day he died.

“As it happens, on that day Kathleen phoned me in the morning to tell me that Christopher was dying. I thought that meant he only had a few months to go. Kathleen suggested I sent him an email which she could read out to him. I sent one that morning, which she did read to him and he heard it.

“Later that afternoon she phoned me again and told me he had died.

“In my email I had said: ‘I am writing to say, if I can, how much your friendship has meant to me over so many years.

‘Your energy and kindness have always encouraged me. Your enthusiasm, commitment and breadth of insight and knowledge have been a constant joy and inspiration, not only to me, but to many other friends, as well as a whole generation of students.

‘Your whole life has been a positive influence for good on so many people’.”

DINAH LIVINGSTONE

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