Martin Gayford

There is a great deal to be said for living in a tip

A celebration of British mess and muddle

In 1864 a Talmudist named Jacob Saphir arrived at Cairo. He made his way to the district confusingly named ‘Babylon’ after a Roman fort. There he visited the ancient Synagogue of Ben Ezra, and after complex negotiations he gained access to the Geniza, or treasury. The keepers provided him with a ladder and he climbed up to the roof of a room, two and a half storeys high. Wriggling through a hole, he landed on an enormous mound of parchment, papyrus and leather bindings.

He was sitting, as it later turned out, on the greatest archive surviving from any mediaeval society — letters, petitions, contracts, accounts. The Jews of Old Cairo had thrown nothing away because by tradition any document written in Hebrew letters or which might contain the name of God should be saved. Consequently, for centuries, all their documents piled up in this big room. And there they stayed. The effect — to compare great things with small — must have resembled the current condition of my desk and study floor. I too throw little away, and seldom file it either.

Tidiness is, by many people and in many cultures, regarded as a virtue in itself. Untidiness, conversely, is a vice which we who tend towards it try to hide, frantically attempting to order our normal domestic chaos when visitors threaten to call. But, if one considers the matter for a moment, it becomes obvious that there is a great deal — artistically, historically, and environmentally — to be said for living in a tip.

As any neat person will tell you, tidying means destruction. It involves ruthlessly discarding everything that it is not absolutely essential to keep. On occasion, that may mean destroying a valuable item, such as a work of art.

Tower Hamlets Council has decided to paint over graffiti paintings by the artist Banksy.

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