The Waveney Clarion

August 2025: After fifty years, a new book - Clarion Calling

"Dear Clarion Crew,

I just received my copy of Clarion Calling at the end of last week and couldn't wait to open it. It took me back to those days of anticipation when noticing a new issue of the paper had been published and wondering what wondrous tales it would tell  this month, and perhaps where I might see a band or find a faire or maybe just make me think a little more about something that up until now I didn't think was important.

The book has not failed to live up to its ancestory. Hardly surprising as it was put together by the same "old" team!  Although so far I have merely scanned the pages – despite the fact that it has proved difficult to put down – it is filled with memories and insights, anecdotes and illustrations that echo those days with humour and affection.  It is nostalgic of course, but in celebration rather than sorrow at their passing.

There are many mentions of the teams that worked so hard to put the paper together each month. You did a fantastic job, and the photo's seem to depict a family rather than a company. I like to think that we, the readers, were part of that extended family and although we didn't know everyone personally we were all in it together.

I will sit down to read it in more detail later today, maybe with a cup of tea rather than a pint and a smoke(!). Coincidentally today is August Bank Holiday Monday, the anniversary of Barsham Faire (Fair, Fayre) which in 1976 concluded with a downpour of biblical proportions after the longest, hottest summer on record.  

Thankyou for the Waveney Clarion back in those long summers, smoke filled cosy winter pubs and vibrant village halls of the 70s and 80s. What you produced was almost a script for the times – mine anyway!   And thanks for this book.  

Best Wishes, Bill H, Lowestoft"

To buy the book – click here.  And there are special deals on original posters, too. 

The Waveney Clarion was a unique publication, born of the Barsham Fairs. A monthly magazine, it hammered away for eleven years at social injustice, music, ecology, beer, art and the best type of potato to grow on your allotment.

“The beginning of the Waveney Clarion resulted from the kind of unexpected, fortuitous coincidences that don't come knocking every day, making a venture feel like it is meant to happen and cultivating a sense of inevitability.” Sandra Bell, first editor and founder of the Clarion.

Published over a tumultuous decade, the Clarion chronicled an extraordinary period from a perfectly particularperspective – the outlands of rural East Anglia, where coypu were hunted and music, fairs and the fate of our earth seemed to be the only concerns.

The Book
Clarion Calling celebrates the Clarion's longevity and uniqueness, and what it stood for. And its humour, epitomised by Mick Sparksman's Coypu. The book features articles and commentary from contributors and creators who lived through it. It weaves multiple themes, stories, and attitudes covered by the paper, from cruise missiles to cycle paths to music and marsh. There are reproductions of significant articles and photographs, of cartoons and columns, and facsimiles of features, advertisements, and front covers.

Like the Clarion of old, it engages the eye and mind with tangents, divergences, and oddities. We hope the overall feel highlights the Waveney Clarion's connections and parallels to our current world and its possibly cataclysmic future. . .

It’s A4 size, 116 pages, colour, with a soft-cover. It costs £15 when bought in advance of publication, with free post and packaging – though Mainland UK only. For anywhere else, contact us.

After publication it will cost £19.95.

We are fortunate indeed to have a great designer, Mickey Gibbons, who has turned a ‘folder of sheets’ into an actual book. Big up to Mickey for his design brilliance and great patience.

The Waveney Clarion Supporters Group is mainly, but not exclusively, Don Mathew, John Ellerby, Mike Hammond, Pat Carter and Nina Magee.
 

To fill our coffers and therefore pay the printer: buy the book – click here.

The interview. Hear John Ellerby interviewed about the Clarion, those heady times and the Clarion Calling book, August 17, 2025.

The website. Documenting and celebrating East Anglia's much-loved community newspaper which was published from 1973 to 1984; The Clarion was started with some of the profits from the first ever Barsham Faire. We have built the site to include a comprehensive guide to all the published issues, selected covers, articles, photographs, illustrations and other content. Because of the close link between the Clarion and the fairs movement, we will wherever appropriate link to the Fairs Archive website; also include information about public access to the physical Waveney Clarion archive. Finding your way around the site: click on the links in the menubar near the top of this web page, or a link within a page; there are often related sections which are listed to the left beneath the Search box. PDF files are used to provide larger versions of images and supplementary documents: please be patient while they download. If you have trouble, please ensure that you have installed an up-to-date version of your preferred PDF reader (Adobe Acrobat Reader is available to download from the Adobe site). Scroll down for News updates.

In his pioneering book ‘Waterlog’ Roger Deakin wrote as follows:

‘The Clarion was one of the most successful community newspapers of the 1970s, and circulated amongst the growing colony of romantic, liberal-minded people who lived, or had settled, in the general vicinity of the Waveney and shared the Whole Earth Catalogue ideals of the Woodstock era. Many had come from London, like me, and were working hard at the country life.

'Coypu was the star of the paper. Dressed in plaid trousers and a knotted scarf, he was a hippie Rupert Bear, getting up to all the tricks the chums had hardly dared to dream about. He was forever having near squeaks with the Coypu Control officers. He had a weakness for Adnams Ale, carrots, sugar beet, fresh-water mussels and jugs of home-made sugar beet wine.’

(Quote taken, with all due acknowledgements, from the 1999 publication by Chatto and Windus.)

February 2023: new book COYPU COMPENDIUM – scroll down to 'News'.

Clarion cover Dec. 1973: illustration and design by Mick Sparksman

©2012 throughout The Waveney Clarion website. No reproduction of text or images without express permission (email us). We do everything we can to credit or provide attribution to images and text used on this website; please contact us if you have information about sources or copyright issues.

News

23 August, 2025: Clarion calling: A brief history of The Waveney Clarion is published! Click here for full information about the book.

February 2023: THE COYPU COMPENDIUM. The fondly remembered Mick Sparksman coypu creation is now celebrated in a new, limited edition publication. Its release has been timed to coincide with The Waveney Clarion's first publication in February 1973. The Compendium has mined The Clarion, Coypu Comix, Tales from the Marshes and Swamp Comix for cartoons, illustrations and strips. Along with classic posters, articles, reviews, advertisements and cover artwork from '73 to '84, it's pretty comprehensive and unique.With more than 90 illustrations lovingly compiled into 46 beautiful. glossy and colourful A4 pages including an introduction from Borin Van Loon. The compiler has decided to sell online through The Fairs Archive shop, with any profits after printing and postage to go to supporting The Archive. (They will also be available at any of the events the Archive Yurt Exhibition is attending this year).

Summer 2022: publication of a special 'Barsham Faire 50th Anniversary Edition' of The Waveney Clarion, which includes a full colour reproduction poster for the Last Barsham Faire (1976); price: one pound.

Sept. 2020: VIrtually here, the work of John Ellerby, added to the site.

15 May 2014: Congratulations to Martin and Mike and the gang at the Fairs Archive website for a completely rebuilt website with hundreds of great images.

5 May 2014: Mike Weaver of the East Anglian fairs website (see Links) has kindly sent lots of Clarion-related material including lots more Coypu; we are adding these at appropriate places around the site.

1 March to 27 July 2014: Escape to the country - searching for self-sufficiency in the 70s, free exhibition in Abbot's Hall at the Museum of East Anglian Life, Stowmarket, Suffolk. “This new exhibition follows the people who left the city rat race to start new lives in rural East Anglia in the 1970s. Explore the magic of 70s fairs, join the hunt for the ‘Good Life' and listen to totally groovy tunes. Discover how flower power and the three day week influenced how we live our lives today. Drawing on the experiences of ex-city slickers, hippies and the locals who remember their arrival in Suffolk, the exhibition will feature 70s costume, culture and creativity. Highlights include Laura Ashley dresses, vintage records and Barsham Faire posters.”

27 March 2014: Here is the whole of the first ever issue of the Waveney Clarion (February 1973).

15 July 2013: Don Mathew writes: 'Just to report that the one missing issue of the Clarion, April 1984 has been unearthed at his home by Ivan Bunn. He has donated this to the Suffolk Record Office in Lowestoft - where he conveniently works - so the collection is now complete. Rejoice!' [This last word used with extreme irony.]

16 March 2013: Don Mathew talks to the Eastern Daily Press: Weekend section, page 8, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Clarion in the previous month.

Nov. 2012: Our interview about the Clarion, the fairs movement and this website on Norwich's Future Radio is no longer available on the web, but click the link for a PDF file of the transcript.