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William Martin was certainly not the great philosopher he claimed to be. He was no great inventor, no great poet, but he was a great human being, an individual at a time when survival itself was a clear triumph. He deserved better than the teasing and taunting he received from his narrower-minded contemporaries. He was, in fact, a crank of genius.
“My own recollections of him are as a stalwart good-looking but garrulous eccentric, who in 1832 might have been frequently met with in the streets of Newcastle, stick in hand, and carrying sheets of manuscript and printed matter, and maybe a drawing of some invention, all or any of which he was ready to expound or discuss with the ardour of an enthusiast. Martin also professed to be a poet as well as a philosopher, but his extravagant claims and pretensions made the public incredulous, and no doubt prevented his crude, though original, inventions from receiving the attention which the ingenuity displayed in many of them deserved.”
(John Latimer, the Northumbrian)
Keith Armstrong - Recitation
Mick Tyas - Mandolin
Richard Doran - Dulcimer