Heap , Anthony , 1910-1985 , diarist and local government officer

Heap , Anthony , 1910-1985 , diarist and local government officer

Anthony Heap, was born on 13 March 1910 and lived all his life in Holborn and St Pancras. From the late 1920s he was a regular 'first-nighter' in London theatres, extending his interest to the cinema and later television and opera. A large part of his diaries consists of his reviews of performances which towards the end of his life diverge increasingly from the judgements of professional critics. In the 1950s he began to note and review books he read. He was never employed as a professional critic but from 1969 to 1980 wrote reviews, as he says copied from his diary, for the National Association of Local Government Officers 'house' magazine, known for part of that time as Public Eye.

From 1932 to 1980 he reviewed each year at its end. His life, though full, appears from the diaries to have declined from the expectations of youth into the sadness of later life. We know from references in later diaries that he attended Mrs Kemp's School in Great Ormond Street and St Clement Danes School in Holborn. When he began keeping the diaries he was living with his parents at 139 Grays Inn Road, taking evening and correspondence courses and active in the Holborn Rovers (where he soon became acquainted with Ralph Reader). He was already working for Peter Robinson's. He was also already a frequent theatre-goer although the diaries do not contain reviews until 1931.

In 1932 he moved house twice with his mother, his parents having parted, although previous diaries give no indication of family problems. The following year his father killed himself. In 1934 he and his mother moved again. Later that year his mother was found to be suffering from cancer although she appears to have been cured or to have suffered a lengthy remission. His grandmother, whom he had visited regularly, died. In 1937 they moved again to the block of flats his mother was to live in until her death.

Although he was not accepted for military service and neither he nor his family according to the diary sustained any losses during the war, the war years were eventful for the diarist. He was not at all a jingoist, and the general tone of the diaries of the first few years is of defeatism, a preference for Germany rather than 'lefties', hostility to Churchill. In the 1930s he had admired fascism and for several years belonged to British Union of Facists, having in the late 1920s examined Moral Re-armament; in 1937 he joined the local Conservative Association (his mother was for many years a supporter). After the war he appears to have been more active in the National Association of Local Government Officers than in local or national politics. It was his son whose interest in the Young Conservatives is chronicled in the diaries 1967-1970. The diarist's own post-war political loyalties fluctuated.

After 13 and a half years he was dismissed from Peter Robinson in July 1940 but before the end of the year joined St Pancras Borough Council and stayed there until the end of his working life. He had wanted to leave Peter Robinson for most of the period covered by the diaries.

The diary for the end of 1940, with references to the blitz and life in the shelters and to 'sight-seeing in the raid devastation areas' (the diary for 1936 recorded his irritation at not having seen the fire at Crystal Palace), recorded the end of a friendship with a married woman who for some time had attempted to leave her husband, taking her children, and perhaps live with the diarist. The beginning of the friendship is not recorded but the affair seems to have been more serious than the two previous female friendships he recorded in 1932 and 1933. But in 1941 the diarist married Marjorie Heatley and moved to another flat. The marriage began happily, although there were some doubts after a year or so, but the birth of their only child Anthony in February 1949, after years of indecision about having a family, brought them both great happiness. Hence-forward the diaries are filled with the father's love of and pride in his son.

Unhappily in 1953 came the first entries recording Mrs Heap's mental illness which was to recur with increasing intensity to the end of her husband's life. She spent some years in hospital and from 1970 attended daily clinics. The diaries record only the climaxes of each bout but the strain of the daily pressure on the diarist becomes apparent in his increasing gloom, increased as his son grows up and moves to his own flat in 1971.

In 1956 the diarist purchased a television set and began to include reviews of programmes, usually plays, in his diaries. In 1958 he was sadly grieved by the death of his mother and in 1959 by the death of his 'Aunt Pop' who had emigrated to America when he was a boy and who was a regular correspondent.

From now on the regularity and strain of the diarist's life was broken by holidays with his son, first in England and then abroad, followed by holidays taken on his own (including one in 1971 which brought him a platonic friendship with a married woman which he felt unable to sustain for more than a few months). After 1974 the holidays became day trips. He arranged fairly regular meetings with old friends though not always with happy results.

In 1975 he retired from Camden Council and took up part-time work with a friend, work he continued until his death. He began to visit the Old Bailey (and watched part of the trial of the Balcombe Street IRA terrorists in 1977) and the British Library's Newspaper Library at Colindale to try to recapture the spirit of the 1930s.

In 1985 the diarist died, having previously aranged for the disposal of his diaries, his Rover log-books and his collection of theatre programmes. He continued throughout his life to visit the theatre and cinema despite times of financial stringency and of personal unhappiness. He felt himself increasingly out of step with the times and deplored innovations from the Beveridge Report to the Beeching Plan, but the diaries record clearly one man's response to post-war London.