BENCH DEDICATION TO MAURICE ROWDON 5th June 2014 KENSINGTON GARDENS
Introduction-greeting by Neil Norman
Soldier by Rupert Brooke read by Shura Shivarg
Music - Begin The Beguine played by Bob Sydor
Lou Gardy To read local Newspaper article about Maurice during the war
Music - Someday I'll Find You by Noel Coward played by Bob Sydor
Susannah Macmillan - I went to a marvellous party by Noel Coward
Tribute by Dash Rowdon
Music - Parole Parole Parole played by Bob Sydor
Camilla Shivarg Extract from Maurice's novel The Talking Dogs
IF by Rudyard Kipling read by Neil Norman
Music- STAND BY ME played by Bob Sydor
Crack open Champagne -Toast to Maurice Rowdon.
Medley to be played at Picnic by Bob Sydor


BENCH DEDICATION TO MAURICE ROWDON 5th June 2014 KENSINGTON GARDENS
Introduction-greeting by Neil Norman
Soldier by Rupert Brooke read by Shura Shivarg
Music Begin The Beguine played by Bob Sydor
Lou Gardy To read local Newspaper article about Maurice during the war
Music Someday I'll Find You by Noel Coward played by Bob Sydor
Susannah Macmillan I went to a marvellous party by Noel Coward
Tribute by Dash Rowdon
Music - Parole Parole Parole played by Bob Sydor
Camilla Shivarg Extract from Maurice's novel The Talking Dogs
IF by Rudyard Kipling read by Neil Norman
Music- STAND BY ME played by Bob Sydor
Crack open Champagne -Toast to Maurice Rowdon.
Medley to be played at Picnic by Bob Sydor


Dots eAny 7
Thank you for coming and sharing in this dedication with me. The Flower
Walk was Maurice's and my favorite walk. And before we knew each
other-I only got a mere 25 years with Maurice--Kensington Gardens is
where Maurice used to come to write whenever the sun graced London. He
said he would just pick up his clipboard in his Fulham home and off he
went, all the way up to the peace oft this park to write. So when at Snob's
Crossing new benches were being offered for dedication Susannah and I
came out to look and we thought this one a perfect place in which to
remember and honor Maurice. Also because of Albert Hall is SO near. We all
know how much theatre and spectacle was SO important to Maurice.
For me Maurice was a bright star thrust down upon the earth from the
heavens to spark, inspire, thrill, provoke, prod, madden, amuse, enlighten
and with such bursts of original thought and activity in SO many domains as
to make one dizzy. He was brilliant, far ahead ofhis time in thought. He was
handsome, elegant, witty, modest, filled with humanity and he had
marvelous twinkling blues eyes. In short, he was a Renaissance man, a true
gentleman.


He came from the working class and won a scholarship to Emanuel School
and from there he won another scholarship to Keble at Oxford where he
came down with two degrees, one in Modern History and one in Modern
Greats. And when he was working toward that scholarship from Petersfield
where he and his schoolmates had been evacuated from London to escape
the bombardments he was, at 17 years of age, in regular correspondence
with the imminent sociologist NORBERT ELIAS whom he later declared to
be a strong catalyst in the evolution ofhis own original and revolutionary
thought which he said, with that special Maurice twinkle in the eye, was
quite counter to everything Norbert espoused. They remained close friends
and debating buddies for many years. Recently a German historian brought
me copies of a mass ofletters from Maurice to Elias when he was just a boy-
--the originals are lodged in the German Literary Archives in Mannheim.
Frankly, they turned my head. I dare say what he was concerned with as a
boy then was quite far from what your usual 17 year old is concerned with
conesm
today. Than was far gone from even my generation. In the same breath I
must say that his generation, yours Shura, was, for me anyway, the last to be
guided by a strong and natural inner integrity and intelligence. In an
extensive fascinating collection ofletters to and from other thinkers ofhis
time, his agent James Michie and his friends you are simply drawn into the


remoue
magnitude oftheir world, their far-reaching intelligence and vision SO Otax
from the parochial. Maurice's first job was given to him when he was a
teenager by STEPHEN SPENDER and this was writing for Mass
Observation.
Maurice's studies at Oxford were interrupted by the war. He was a Forward
Observation Officer in the Italian Campaign. The picture of him I sent out to
you was one taken ofl him in uniform right before he was sent to the Front. I
found this after his death and I was SO struck by the fact that he was just a
boy. But they were mostly all boys, weren't they? And his war experience
haunted him. And that gave us his cri du Coeur against war, Sins of Winter
in which he attempts to reconcile his feelings of exile Hrom-other.creatures
the war produced in him. After practically living in his archives for some 5
years I'm pretty convinced that it was his war experiences that formed him
more than any other, gave him his strong aversion to violence of any nature.
Maurice wrote and published 14 books on many diverse subjects--Italian
civilization in general, on Venice, on Umbria, Rome, Tuscany. He wrote on
the rise of money and banking, on war and its effects on the nervous system,
on animal intelligence. His book on two dogs, Elkie and Belham, who


tapped messages, really who talked through tapping and pronounced rather
amazing thoughts on the human was serialized in the Daily Express in the
70s. He was fascinated by genius and wrote on Leonardo da vinci, Lorenzo
de'Medici, Diaghaliv, Kokoshka, Mahler among others. He wrote on
political figures such as the Borgias, queen Kristina, Hitler, Christophe the
black Haitian king. In his archives I have thus far found some 38 plays. I
know he directed several oft them both in the West End and in Germany. He
mounted his own theatre company, he worked toward mounting the first
black theatre company in Britain. I have found a giant collection of poetry,
poems pertaining to war-andhis war experiences, the working class, politics,
animal welfare, human cruelty toward animals. I have in his archives found
a harrowing novel on animal experimentation. His love of animals was
paramount and it must have burned Maurice's soul the writing ofthis. But
Maurice was fearless. He would tackle any subject in a effort to stem
violence against any sentient creature sometimes in a chilling manner and
other times in light-hearted fun such as his play entitled Genes in which a
researcher befriends his laboratory mice quite convinced they are far more
whole and sane than humans are. And of course, Maurice wrote on sexuality
and love---every kind oflove. In particular he explored the collapse of
sexuality between men and women, wrote extensively on this subject


including several quite humorous novels and plays and a most captivating
novel on hermaphroditism. In the seventies he was commissioned to do a
BBC special based on his non-fiction of 18th century decadent Venice in
which Casanova featured with all his sexual rompings and to this Maurice
linked his fears in regard to the environmental dangers Venice was
beginning to face in the 20th century. More than anything else, Maurice was
most concerned about human activity and its effects on the planet. He
agonized for us humans, pondered how we had gone wrong to damage our
planet, it appears now probably, irreparably. He agonized for all creatures on
this planet dependent upon us for their survival. In his archives I have found
several chilling Apocolyptic novels dating back to the 1950s.
Very early on, Maurice delved into oriental thought, read the major eastern
spiritual masters, Ramakrishna, Sri Ramana, Vivekanda and others, finally
chose his guru, began meditating and practicing Yoga- all before he
reached the age of 40. He spent long periods in solitude experimenting with
various ancient hermetic practices from Sufism and other wisdom paths,
including that of fasting and cosmic nourishment, an ancient practice akin to
sun-gazing to receive nourishment from the sun's energy, thus eliminating
the need to eat. That was all hokus-pokus in the west forty years ago. Today


there is a world wide movement for sun gazing. He wrote newspaper articles
on this practice in the seventies. He also delved into pranayama, the
breathing disciplines from yoga. From this he was inspired to try out, in its
infancy, Rebirthing newly developed by Leonard Orr in the USA. Maurice
was SO captivated by this hyperventilatory technique that he became a
rebirther and after pushing that to its limits in experimentation he decided
rebirthing was dangerous if made into a habit. This inspired him to
experiment all the more with the breath on his own and gradually he
developed his own meticulous breathing system to induce a cellular repose,
quite the contrary ofthe goal of rebirthing. He called this Oxygenesis and he
took this to California where he meant to stay a few weeks and stayed for
almost a decade. I think in California his exchanging breaths with the now
famous gorilla KoKo who speaks' through sign language was a deciding
factor to stay put. He told me that after exchanging breaths, their way of
introducing each to the other, he felt they needed to also change sides ofthe
bars. He needed to be on the inside and she needed to be where he was.
This is where I met Maurice, in San Francisco. I was one ofhis many
clients. It was in 1984. He was 62, a tall, elegant and slim Englishman with a
remarkable ease about him and an openness that inspired trust in all who


knew him. With Maurice you could be whomever you were, you could be
your authentic self without any hesitation and you knew you were going to
be received and seen. How could I not fall for Maurice? He dazzled me . I
could see quite clearly when I met him that his concerns did not turn around
his personal happiness. Nor did they turn around personal ambition either.
He was on another wicket altogether and that was going to lead us down an
unusual path. We hadn't been together two months when he started his most
important book that was the culmination of all his years of exploration. This
was the non-fiction now entitled The Ape of Sorrows that I put out after his
death in 2009. I didn't realize back in 1984 how ambitious a project this was
for him. He said it was the book for which a writer can wait a lifetime--- and
maybe never get. I wasn't quite sure what that was going to mean for him
and for us together but one thing for sure-- when he drew me into his
magical orbit, rather sparked me into it, I was thrilled and honored and that
thrill lasted his entire lifetime and I carry my awe, my love, my respect and
ftunng
deep gratitude for all he was ---to this day. Maurice was-amazing, an
original. He was brilliant, loving, tewes lion-hearted.
I'd like to close this with a poem I found in his collection.


The Blue.
In the silence round you,
The high dark blue round the earth,
You cant find a theme if you like, or none;
If none, then that's the nessage
Your eyes will carry, their light the pale light,
Your touch that of hards
Left in space, like darkness on darkness,
With nothing to refleot them.
But 1f the neseage you bear
is continuous and long, and glows
And staye in the sky like someone
Always there but never known, the breeze
That touches the leaves at night and then
Is done, the bird that alone in the tree
Dwells on his theme, the hak that
Wheels in the silence above, then the
Light, like the blue of the aky
Always there behind the storms and
Turns of fate, will be in your ey yes,
Though it may not be seen.
Fishing Boats at Fiumicino.
Below the oobbled pier, asl eep


BENCH DEDICATION TO MAURICE ROWDON 5th June 2014 KENSINGTON GARDENS
Introduction-greeting by Neil Norman
Soldier by Rupert Brooke read by Shura Shivarg
Music - Begin The Beguine played by Bob Sydor
Lou Gardy To read local Newspaper article about Maurice during the war
Music - Someday I'll Find You by Noel Coward played by Bob Sydor
Susannah Macmillan I went to a marvellous party by Noel Coward
Tribute by Dash Rowdon
Music - Parole Parole Parole played by Bob Sydor
Camilla Shivarg Extract from Maurice's novel The Talking Dogs
IF by Rudyard Kipling read by Neil Norman
Music- STAND BY ME played by Bob Sydor
Crack open Champagne -Toast to Maurice Rowdon.
Medley to be played at Picnic by Bob Sydor


ryeuyu ofeliase and conprusionyon yous-BIRTHI


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studiotheater
GUNNAR HOLM PETERSEN
IM FUCHSBAU
FROM APR. 3-29
MUNCHEN-SCHWABING
DAILY AT 8 p.m.
UNGERERSTRASSE 19
TICKETS FROM
Englid!
MAHLER
A PLAY BY MAURICE ROWDON
WITH BRENDAN DONNISON + RUTH CAMERON
AS GUSTAV
AS ALMA
DIRECTED
SET
THE AUTHOR
EGON STRASSER


studiotheater
GUNNAR HOLM PETERSEN
IM FUCHSBAU
FROM APR. 3-29
MONCHEN-SCHWABING
DAILY AT 8 p.m.
UNGERERSTRASSE 19
TICKETS FROM
Enghia!
MAHLER
A PLAY BY MAURICE ROWDON
WITH BRENDAN DONNISON + RUTH CAMERON
AS GUSTAV
AS ALMA
DIRECTED
SET
THE AUTHOR
EGON STRASSER


studiotheater
GUNNAR HOLM PETERSEN
IM FUCHSBAU
FROM APR. 3-29
MUNCHEN-SCHWABING
DAILY AT 8 p.m.
UNGERERSTRASSE 19
TICKETS FROM
Enghia!
MAHLER
A PLAY BY MAURICE ROWDON
WITH BRENDAN DONNISON + RUTH CAMERON
AS GUSTAV
AS ALMA
DIRECTED
SET
THE AUTHOR
EGON STRASSER