{Transformationalist Essays}

The Turner Document

The ‘Turner document’ turned up in the papers of the (presumably) late Cyril Turner during my research into a film on the twin subjects of Turner’s disappearance in 1986 and Borges’ short story, The Garden of Forking Paths. The hand-written notes on a sheet of computer paper dated 24th September 1982 give a few scant details of the four founder members of the Transformationalists and a brief chronology of the movement. That the document is genuine is beyond question. Whether the information it contains is accurate is a matter of conjecture. Cyril Turner belonged to the Artists Action Group which was active in Stoke-on-Trent during the 1970s and early 1980s. Details about his own origins are sketchy although it is believed that he was not a native of Stoke - his birthplace is usually given as Godalming. His disappearance in 1986 is also a bit of a mystery which I intend to examine in the film, Cyril Turner and the Forking Path. Whether the ‘Turner document’ was the result of his research into the Transformationalist movement, or whether, as some would have us believe, his own invention of completely spurious details, is difficult to say.

His chronology of the Transformationalists seems to follow that of Clive J. Buttle in the first part of The Revenge of the Transformationalists (Burslem: START No. 3, Jan-Mar 1979), starting in 1886 and ending with the death of Bingham in 1904. However he does mention that two of the original Transformationalists (Bingham and Hammersley) had offspring and is the obvious source for the persistent rumour that Hammersley’s son died in the Spanish Civil War. If for nothing else, the discovery of the ‘Turner document’ is important for this fact alone.

So, can we believe the information in the ‘Turner document’ or is it merely the idle scribblings of a member of the Artists Action Group trying to invent a mythology to give their own paltry ‘movement’ some much-needed credibility? Does it add more credence to Buttle’s history of the movement with its impossibly early inception date, or, given that discrepancy should we disregard it entirely? One new piece of information provided by the ‘Turner document’ is the title of a book written by Hammersley’s son, Mark: My Father Knew Andre Breton - And Bugger All Good It Did Him. This book is not listed in the catalogue of the British Library, but for that matter, neither is Robert Buchanan’s second book of poetry. Maybe one day it will turn up somewhere and shed more light on the Transformationalists.

The Turner Document

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