My friend Dave Crook, who has died aged 71, was a bookseller, poet and songwriter. His home in Stirchley, Birmingham, was a salon for local writers and musicians. For several years in the 1990s he edited the cultural magazine Out of the Circle, the title of which came from the city’s Number 11 Outer Circle bus route that ran past Dave’s terrace house in Handsworth. Produced by the technology of its day – photocopying and stapling – the monthly magazine featured book, film and music reviews, alongside reportage, opinion pieces, original fiction, poetry and comic strips. The cover-line for the March 1997 travel issue was: “Around the World: Hebron, Morocco, Edgbaston”.
Dave was the middle of three brothers, raised by their mother, Hilda (nee Webster), on a meagre British Rail widow’s pension. His father, Bertram Crook, was a ticket inspector who died from a heart attack when Dave was 13. After passing the 11-plus exam, Dave attended King Edward VI grammar school, where he excelled in literature, history and mathematics. Although he could have become a classics scholar, he balked at the arcane rituals of a Cambridge University interview in 1970; he later began a degree at the University of Swansea, but dropped out almost immediately.
Dave spent some time in Ireland and Manchester, before returning to Birmingham, where he worked as a labourer, helping to build Hockley Port. During this time, he became a Nichiren Buddhist (although he later renounced it as he became increasingly drawn to scientific rationalism and humanism) and decided to get a “proper” job in bookselling. In the early 80s, he joined Webster’s, an independent booksellers in Worcester, where he organised a Worcester autumn festival of literature. He later moved to Waterstones’ flagship store in Birmingham.
Dave’s colleagues – mainly graduates in their 20s – were initially suspicious of this working-class Brummie, with his vaguely hippie appearance. However, they quickly came to appreciate his kindness, thoughtfulness and distinctive humour, naming him “Crooky the oracle” in deference to his outstanding talent for bookselling. For every section of the store that Dave managed, revenues rose.
This congenial world perished in the commercial takeovers that followed the financial crash of 2008. Dave took early retirement in his late 50s. He returned to the family home to care for his elderly and terminally ill mother, aided by allotment gardening, jazz on BBC Radio 3, mugs of strong tea, roll-ups and his beloved cat, Misty.
The home he shared with his brother, Martin, after their mother’s death, was to blossom into a cultural hub. Songwriters, poets and local clinical and community psychologists gathered to debate ideas and sometimes share early drafts of their work, which benefited from Dave’s incisive editorial advice. Crooky himself wrote hundreds of poems and dozens of songs; his poems were featured in the 2021 anthology Herding Cats, edited by Anne Peck.
Martin died from cancer in 2023. Dave is survived by his brother, John, and his nieces, Mary and Katie.
