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Talks@Trades - The Cowboy of Walthamstow: An illustrated talk by his grandson, Robert Nurden

Presented by: Walthamstow Trades Hall & Institute

0	LONDON: Walthamstow Trades Hall
P	Wednesday 19th February, 2025
N	7:30pm

Event information

Journalist and author Robert Nurden gives an illustrated talk about Stanley B James, his maverick grandfather, based on his biography, Between Heaven and Earth.
Robert will chart the extraordinary life of his maternal grandfather (1869-1951) from cowboy, navvy, newspaperman, hobo and actor in Canada; soldier in the US army in the American-Spanish war; and, on his return to England, non-conformist minister and firebrand preacher in Walthamstow 1906-17, communist, pacifist and co-worker with the philosopher Bertrand Russel; and finally, conversion to Catholicism and his last metamorphosis into one of the leading Catholic writers of his generation. He published nine books and counted G.K. Chesterton among his friends.

Yet his grandson’s discovery of secret letters and diaries in the Women’s Library of the London School of Economics shattered the image. These documents show in intriguing and often explicit detail that, as a husband and father of seven, Stanley James had illicit liaisons with three women in his church. But just how much did his family and friends know?