Poetry or Bust: Tony Harrison on the Trail of 'The Bingley Byron'
An oboe buried on a moor; a lichen-encrusted name carved into a rock; a lost grave; an empty plinth in a Bingley park; a chipped Burmantofts ceramic plaque...
This display tells the cautionary tale of ‘The Bingley Byron’, John Nicholson – and playwright and poet Tony Harrison’s efforts to bring his story to the stage.
John Nicholson was a woolsorter who achieved local fame as a poet in West Yorkshire in the 19th century, but was undone by a fatal combination of arrogance, pliability and drink.