 The Birmingham Surrealists would meet in the Kardomah Café in New Street, the Trocadero pub in Temple Street, or in later years in Maddox's house in Balsall Heath, which would also often play host to more eclectic gatherings including figures such as jazz musician George Melly, poets Henry Reed and Walter Allen and writers Stuart Gilbert and Henry Green.The existence of a distinctive Birmingham group of surrealist artists dates from the meeting of Conroy Maddox and John Melville in 1935, after an exchange of letters in the "Birmingham Post" about what they saw as the excessively conventional art scene in the city.Melville had been one of the "harbingers of surrealism" in Britain, producing a "Surrealist Nude" by 1930 and being described as a surrealist by critic R. H. Wilenski in 1932.