The White Ship tragedy of 25th November 1120

Knowing I have amassed a large collection of books - both fiction and non-fiction - about King Stephen and The Anarchy, my son hit a jackpot when he gave me Charles Spencer's The White Ship for my Christmas present. Although I have toyed with buying a couple of Spencer's books previously - Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier (2007) and Blenheim: Battle for Europe (2004) - I didn't take the plunge, as I already had several very good biographies on Rupert (a hero of mine) and Christopher Hibbert's The Marlboroughs (2001). Like Hibbert, Spencer has been called a 'popular historian'. Well, it's better than being an unpopular one!

William Collins first edition - 2020

Any reader who has studied the period will know why the Plantagenets have been called the Devil's Brood  - well promulgated by a range of Historical novelists: including Alfred Duggan (1957) and Sharon Kay Penman (2008). They were sired by the Normans and Angevins, who seem equally to have been spawned by the Devil! 

Spencer's subtitle bookends the period he is writing about: Conquest - the 1066 invasion of England by Henry I's grandfather, William I 'the Bastard'; and Anarchy - the nineteen years of Stephen's reign, 1135-1154, when Christ and his Saints slept. They were rarely awake between 1066 and 1154. Spencer writes fluently and makes the most of the grisly stories from the early medieval chroniclers. William the Conqueror's unfortunate end - struck hard in his stomach by the pommel of his saddle  - led to an even more grisly funeral. The coffin proving too small for his immense body, he had to be squeezed into the tomb, whereupon his guts burst open in a putrid cascade. The stench surged through the abbey, assaulting the nostrils of the congregation, causing widespread nausea... Nice. 

William I (top left); William II (top right)

Henry I (bottom left); Stephen (bottom right)

A period of conflict between his three sons followed. 

The eldest son, Robert Curthose (nicknamed for his short legs) seems to have been the Rab Butler of his time, twice failing to achieve the prize of England. Although proving a brave Crusader, he appears to have made a mess of ruling Normandy and ended up, captured by his youngest brother, imprisoned in Devizes castle for twenty years, before dying in Cardiff Castle in 1134 in his early eighties. William Rufus (red-haired or of ruddy complexion), ruled England from 1187 to 1100 according to Orderic Vitalis as a debaucher-in-chief: he gave himself up insatiably to obscene fornications and repeated adulteries. Stained with sins, he set a culpable example of shameful debauchery to his subjects. And many chose to copy his ways. In the year of Rufus' death, Abbot Fulchred of Shewsbury gave a fiery sermon, referring to the leprosy of villainy, unrestrained lust and the sickness of evil that stalked the land. Rufus' stalking (and hunting) time was over. On the following day, he somewhat mysteriously met his end (unlike King Harold) with an arrow in the New Forest.

Robert de Bellême symbolises the very worst of these times, perhaps only outclassed by his diminutive mother Mabel. After a poisonous, and poisoning, career, justice finally caught up with her. Relaxing on her bed, having just emerged from her bath, a vengeful enemy decapitated her with his sword. Robert continued in her devilish ways, becoming a byword for malevolent cruelty throughout Normandy. He chose not to ransom his prisoners because he preferred to keep victims on hand for torture and mutilation. In early 1105 de Bellême incinerated the church of Tournai-sur-Dive, forty-five people were stuck inside and perished in the flames.

The meat of the book, of course, is concerned with Henry I's reign, in England at first then triumphing over Curthose in Normandy. Spencer is good at keeping the tabs on the large cast of important characters - Louis the 'Fat' of France; Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury (whose arguments with Henry I foreshadowed the problems between Becket and Henry II); Roger of Salisbury, Henry's valuable Justiciar; the Montgomery, Beaumont and d'Avranche  families; William Clito (son of Curthose who, being allowed to leave Henry's control, became the latter's biggest error); not to mention Henry's twenty-two illegitimate offspring. But the apple of his eye was his legitimate heir,  William Ǣtheling who, by his father's indulgence, possessed everything but the name of king (William of Malmesbury). Whilst not subscribing to William of Malmesbury's view that no ship that ever sailed brought England such Disaster, the loss of the White Ship (Blanche-Nef) with all on board (bar one, Berold a butcher from Rouen, only there because he was trying to get payment for his meat!), it was clearly a family tragedy. William Ǣtheling was never found: The head which should have worn a crown of gold, was suddenly dashed against the rocks; instead of wearing embroidered robes, he floated naked in the waves; and instead of ascending a lofty throne, he found his grave in the bellies of fishes at the bottom of the sea (Henry of Huntingdon).

His father was to live for another fifteen years, but he left a dangerous vacuum as an inheritance. The vacuum would spew out the Anarchy. Only in 1154, could his grandson, another named Henry, start to rebind the wounds and usher in strong rule again and The Age of the Plantagenets.

Do not go gentle into that good night

   Do not go gentle into that good night,                                                                                       Old age should burn and rave at close of day;                                                                        Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

As we come to the end of one of the most unpleasant years in living memory - not just because of the vicious pandemic, but also the repercussions of extremist movements - I thought I would look at how the passing of time affected the 'beauties' of my last Blog.

                             Elizabeth Taylor                                       Ingrid Bergman

                                 Audrey Hepburn                         Greer Garson

                                 Katharine Hepburn                            Maureen O'Hara

                           Olivia de Havilland                           Imogen Stubbs

                                           Sissel                                      Empress Elisabeth

General de Gaulle was being rather mean when he is supposed to have said Old Age is a Shipwreck or, rather, La Vieillesse est un naufrage. However, on certain days, it certainly feels like it.

As Virgil once pondered, meanwhile it is flying, irretrievable time is flying or, rather, Sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus.

So, my New Year's Resolution for the sunlit uplands of 2021: MAKE THE MOST OF EVERY HOUR!

Movies "resurrect the beautiful dead"

 I was reading an article in last weeks Spectator about Marlene Dietrich and came across this statement of Susan Sontag: "Movies...resurrect the beautiful dead". As a light-hearted end to this annus horribilis, I thought I would try and list my Top Ten of 'beauties' from the cinema/T.V./artistic world. As Alexander Pope wrote (in 'The Rape of the Lock'), 

                                                    Fair Tresses man's imperial race insnare,                                                    And beauty draws us with a single hair.

Looking at my tentative list, it is clear that I prefer brunette and red-heads to blondes and am not that keen on the "busto provocante" type (once said of Gina Lollobrigida). Anyway, here goes - in no particular order!

                                    Elizabeth Taylor                               Ingrid Bergman

                                  Audrey Hepburn                               Greer Garson

                           Katharine Hepburn                                 Maureen O'Hara

                                   Olivia de Havilland                      Imogen Stubbs

                                    Lilian Hall-Davis                   Sissel Kyrkjebǿ

                                               

The Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Sisi)

So, three English (de Havilland; Hall-Davis; Stubbs); two Irish (Garson and O'Hara); an English-American (Taylor); one English-Dutch (Audrey Hepburn), one Swedish (Bergman); one American (Katharine Hepburn); one Norwegian (Kyrkjebǿ); and, as my Number Eleven special guest, one Bavarian (Empress Elisabeth). Nine actresses, a singer and an Empress. All gone, bar two.

Empress Elisabeth of Austria       24 December 1837-10 September 1898 assass.

Lillian Hall-Davis       23 June 1898 - 25 October 1933

Greer Garson       26 September 1904 - 6 April 1996

Katharine Hepburn       12 May 1907 - 29 June 2003

Ingrid Bergman       29 August 1915 - 29 August 1982

Olivia de Havilland       1 July 1916 - 26 July 2020

Maureen O'Hara       17 August 1920 - 24 October 2015

Audrey Hepburn       4 May 1929 - 20 January 1993

Elizabeth Taylor       27 February 1932 - 23 March 2011

Imogen Stubbs      20 February 1961 -

Sissel Kyrkjebǿ      24 June 1969 -

A few bon mots to end with:

The flowers anew, returning seasons bring!

But beauty faded has no second spring.

Ambrose Philips (1675?-1749)

But beauty vanishes; beauty passes; 

However rare - rare it be...

(Walter de la Mare 1873-1956)

...thou who hast

The fatal gift of beauty.

Lord Byron 1788-1824

Above all

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder !

Ǣthelstan - The First King of England

Partly inspired by Bernard Cornwell's novel, Sword of Kings, set in 924 A.D. (see my 21st December Blog), I am reading Sarah Foot's Ǣthelstan: The First King of England, in the Yale English Monarchs Series. Ǣthelstan reigned from 17 July 924 A.D. to 27 October 939 A.D., a period I knew virtually next to nothing about. 

Yale University Press first edition - 2011

In her Epilogue, Foot included me, when she wrote, if one asked a group of educated Britons to name three Anglo-Saxon kings, few would now number Ǣthelstan among those they could recall. Alfred who burnt the cakes would top any list, followed swiftly by Harold (he who died with an arrow in the eye at the battle of Hastings) and then perhaps Ǣthelred the Unready, or Edward the Confessor. The Penguin Monarchs series, appear to agree, including Athelstan and Ethelred with Edward the Confessor (but, strangely, adding Cnut but not Alfred the Great, arguably because he was only ruler of Wessex). Sarah Foot clearly feels the magnitude of Ǣthelstan's achievements deserves greater respect, with the validity of his claim to be reckoned England's first monarch and ruler of the whole of Britain.

Coming from reading biographies of monarchs and statesmen, politicians and literary figures, where there is almost too much source material, I found it interesting to find out how a historian tackled the paucity of records. Sarah Foot, whose photograph on the back dust-wrapper flap shows an alarmingly youthful but keen-as-mustard face, has certainly done wonders. Her Prologue is a 'must read' for any pre-Medieval Historian, as she sets out the limitations of her task - Athelstan the man remains elusive - stating that structuring a coherent biography of a medieval subject...involves from the outset a greater degree of self-conscious construction and manipulation of material to fit artificial categories than might prove necessary for a better-attested person from a modern age. Thus, the tale is constructed around charters, grants of land, other administrative records, minting of coins and diplomatic exchanges with foreign kings and princes.

Foot begins by charting what is known about the end of Alfred's reign and the period under Ǣthelstan's father, Edward the Elder and the Conquest of the Danelaw. She then sketches in Ǣthelstan's conquest of Northumbria (had Bernard Cornwell's hero died then?!) and the acknowledgement of the Welsh princes and King Constantin of the Scots of his overlordship. A chapter on Family follows. Ǣthelstan was unusual in that he never married or had offspring. He surrounded himself at first with his younger (half) brothers and sisters and other nobles and thegns. Foot gives short shrift as to whether Ǣthelstan may have been homosexual. The chapter on the Court describes how peripatetic that was - the king needed to show himself to his subjects - a need still felt today. She gives credence to Cornwell's fiction, in that it is clear Athelstan did not have the same support in East Anglia and Wessex (especially Winchester) as he did in Mercia. His eldest half-brother, Ǣlfweard died, somewhat mysteriously, very soon after their father Edward's death - probably not as in the Cornwell novel, by a sword thrust into his vitals by Ǣthelred, but still mildly suspicious! It meant that Ǣthelred had conveniently lost the obstacle to winning over the Wessex contingent. 

Other chapters on the Church which, unsurprisingly, showed the vital part played by the upper clergy in both home and diplomatic affairs. As Foot writes: These senior prelates collaborated with the king's ambitious plans to achieve the administrative and legal unification of his enlarged kingdom, ensuring that...he governed his united realm as a truly Christian monarch; and War portray as full a rounded picture as possible, given the constraints of source material. For the latter, there is a very useful Appendix on William of Malmesbury's Gesta regum Anglorum (Deed of the English Kings), showing how his writings played a major role in the assessment of Ǣthelstan and his reign.

Inevitably, there are plenty of  sentences with possible, probable, might have, seems to have, we may imagine, may reasonably assume, and the ubiquitous perhaps. However, Foot has made a brave and, certainly, worthwhile and valuable stab at a rounded picture of the man in the context of his times. I concur in her final two sentences:

Brought out of the shadows that have too long obscured his memory, Ǣthelstan now stands revealed in more than one dimension. His is a life not merely to commemorate but also to celebrate.    

King Ǣthelstan's tomb in Malmesbury Abbey

Bernard Cornwell's Uhtred of Bebbanburg

 I have just finished Bernard Cornwell's Sword of Kings (published in the hardback edition in 2019).

HarperCollins Publishers - paperback edition, 2020

Now, I do have, and have  read, some Bernard Cornwell novels - the three in the Grail Quest series: Harlequin (2000), Vagabond (2002) and Heretic (2003); Azincourt (2008) and 1356 (2012). All set in my beloved fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. I enjoyed them all. However, I have not been drawn to the Sharpe series, for which Cornwell is probably best-known. I think it's because Sean Bean, an actor who grates on me, played him in the TV series - a daft reason, I know! Neither had I tried any of the dozen Last Kingdom series. 

Cornwell is one of those natural storytellers, who can carry the reader along with an easy narrative style, punctuated by usually believable incidents and dialogue. The novel's hero is a man with his best years behind him - the list of the series at the back of the books shows this is Uhtred's twelfth outing. Variously known as Uhtred the Pagan, Uhtred the Godless, Uhtred the Treacherous, Uhtred Ealdordeofol ('Chief of the Devils'), he had clearly made his mark during the reigns of Alfred the Great (871-899) and his son Edward the Elder (899-924), and that of Aethelflǣd, Lady of the Mercians (911-918). There were frequent references to his previous exploits, so I looked at the reviews on Amazon. The majority were highly favourable from patent fans of Cornwell. However, there were some pertinent comments about Uhtred's age by the time of this story. One reviewer argued that the hero must now be in his mid-eighties but "still fighting like a spring chicken." Another commented: "despite his advanced age, he is still destroying much younger and stronger opponents. This plot line is getting a bit jaded now." This being my first book, it didn't matter so much, but I must admit that the episode where he defeats the huge and fitter Waormund ("He was skilled too, as skilled as any man with a sword, a spear, or an axe. He was younger, taller, he outreached me, and he was probably faster") stretches the reader's credulity too far, especially since Uhtred had not recovered from being dragged naked behind a horse after being nearly punched silly by Waormund only days before.

The story is a simple one. Uhtred of Bebbanburg (Bamburgh in Northumberland) sets out - once again, apparently -  to get involved in the fighting between Wessex, East Anglia and Mercia which will break out on the likely - then actual - death of Edward the Elder. His adventures take in the Isle of Sheppey (Sceapig) and Kent ((Cent); Werlameceaster (St. Alban's) and London (Lundene), and include skirmishes, river and sea travel, and much hand-to-hand (or rather spear-to-spear, axe-to-axe and short sword-to short-sword) fighting. There is mild love interest and plenty of hatred.

Cornwell portrays a believable  character - ruthless enemy, loyal friend, not immune to loss and suffering, capable of major errors, recipient of luck, and, above all, a leader. There is a glossary of Place Names used in the book, which is invaluable if it matters to the reader. Most were obvious, but a few I struggled with (Elentone - Maidenhead; Eoferwic - York). One can get bogged down in the Ǣthels - Ǣthelhelm, Ǣthelstan, Aethelflǣd - as well as Ǣlfweard, but that is a minor quibble and it's not Cornwell's fault!

For some readers of all twelve novels, it appears they have the same story-fatigue which I am experiencing with Susanna Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew books (but not yet with Scott Mariani's Ben Hope exploits).  One even writes: "Come on Bernard, let Uhtred die". Whether Cornwell will try his hand at just one final book for Uhtred, to kill him off, will, of course, be up to him. What the author has done is kindled for me an interest in reading a book that has been on my shelves, unread (or should that be unrǣd?) for far too long:  Sarah Foot's Ǣthelstan: The First King of England (Yale University Press, 2011), one of the Yale's English Monarchs series.

Reynard - possibly my joint favourite Wild Animal

 Back in early September, when we were allowed to break out from Purgatory for a few weeks, we had a marvellous, sunny weekend in Salisbury. But it was in Winchester that I was able to visit an enticing little bookshop in the lee of its cathedral (not a patch on Salisbury's!) and snap up five books, including the Gide paperbacks I blogged about awhile back. Also included was an American hardback about a fox - Redcoat by Clarence Hawkes. 

Milton Bradley Company first edition - 1929

I have just finished it and, as with other previous novels about foxes (see below), it catapults me off the fence - I am against Fox Hunting. All stories about individual wild animals run the danger of being anthropomorphic; apparently, it is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. This is particularly the case when the writer gives the animal[s] power of speech. I felt Clarence Hawkes trod the fine line successfully. Moreover, in a Note to the Reader at the beginning of the book, he sensibly writes: Nearly all animal biographies are composite - that is, the life of the particular animal represented, is made up from facts drawn from many sources. The author gets stories from his friends among hunters, trappers and woodsmen, in this way he is enabled to give the reader a complete picture of the life of the animal under all conditions. Redcoat is some fox, who gains the name The Phantom because of his amazing, but feasible, escapades. Whether the enemy is the hunter with his 'thunder stick'; or a vicious trap; or the hounds from hell; or the bobcat; Redcoat defeats them all, even managing a daring escape with his new lady friend from the wire fences of the Sheerfield Fox Farm. It is clear which side the author is on: both the local farmer's teenage son, Bud Holcome, and his girl friend from a neighbouring farm, Kitty Mason, on separate occasions save Redcoat from certain death.

The story reminded me very much of another, this time not set in New England but in Scotland. It was one of the first paperbacks I bought with my own pocket money - during the Winter Term at Prep School when I was twelve years old. Not that long ago, I tracked down a first edition in hardback

          Fontana Books first edition - 1957       Lutterworth Press first edition - 1950

The author, David Stephen, a native of Lanarkshire, spent as much time as possible in the fields watching the habits of birds and animals, by day and night, in all weathers... Apparently, around 2,000 hours of watching foxes helped to create the story of String Lug. Again, it is made clear that he is a 'composite animal'. Like Redcoat, String Lug loses his parents and siblings to local farmers, like Redcoat his life consists of narrow escapes and meaty triumphs and, like Redcoat, he lives to fight for a future beyond the novel's covers. 

Another favourite foxy story of mine is Red Ruff: The Life Story of a Fox by the famous naturalist Mortimer Batten (1888-1958). Batten lived in the North West Territory, Canada and, for many years, in Argyll; he became a well-known lecturer and broadcaster for the B.B.C. and published numerous collections about wild animals and birds. He was also a well-known racing motorist!

Puffin Book first edition - December 1947

Chambers published Red Ruff in April 1937. It tells the story of a fox, born among Scottish hills. Batten said that he had, himself, watched all the incidents he described in the life history of Red Ruff. The play of the cubs, his behaviour in moments of danger, the gradual learning by hard experience how to use all his capacities for sheer survival, his speed of movement, his keen scent, his clever brain. Like Redcoat, Red Ruff uses a river, swimming to escape in the final moments of the story. He, too, meets up with a vixen and they go off into the wild: 'Come away, Red Ruff! Come away to the cairn and the hill, where you and I were meant to hunt together...Man was born a hunter. So were we, and this day we have triumphed - their wits and skill to ours, and we have won! Are we not fit to lead them many a lively chase, and yet live on to breed our kind? Come away, Red Ruff!' And Red Ruff followed her.

Inspired by such novels, I also bought this year two non-fiction books:

             Reaktion Books paperback - 2016                Elliott and Thompson - 2016

The first book is in a series of over 80, encompassing a wide variety of wild animals and birds (I also have Badger and Wild Boar). The chapters include The Fox in Nature, Vulpine Myths, Folk Tales and Allegory, and Fox-hunting. It is a book for dipping and skipping into, with some superb colour illustrations. Lucy Jones's  book suggests that no other animal attracts such controversy, has provoked more column inches or been so ambiguously woven into our culture over centuries. It's a fascinating and thought-provoking account, mixing fact, fiction, folklore and Lucy's own family history. As she writes in her very first sentence: Of all the mammals in Britain, it is the fox that has cast its spell on me.

I can't end this Blog, without paying tribute to another nature writer; one of whom many of us (in my age group, at least) will have read and loved - Beatrix Potter. One of my favourite Potter stories was about a fox, and the bonus was the same story included a badger. Unfortunately, Potter wrote, I am going to make a story about two disagreeable people, called Tommy Brock and Mr. Tod. Nobody could call Mr. Tod  "nice". Well, that's possibly why I rather liked and admired them!

Frederick Warne modern edition (first published in 1912)

N.B. Of course, my other joint favourite is the Badger (see my Blog of 8th April). 

The LAPD - a book I wouldn't normally read

 My daughter kindly gave me two paperbacks for my birthday and I have just got round to reading, and finishing, one of them - Michael Connelly's The Night Fire.

Orion Fiction paperback - 2020

I'd never heard of Connelly - not surprising really as I rarely read Detective Fiction, particularly any set in America. I remember watching Raymond Burr as Perry Mason, many years ago, but got increasingly annoyed when he never lost a case (he did, actually, lose three - but I never saw them!); similarly, Peter Falk's Columbo irritated me almost from the start. He fastened on to suspects within minutes and was always correct. Nonsense!

Before I started Connelly's novel, I read the snappy comments of other respected sources on the inside cover: The pre-eminent detective novelist of his generation - Ian Rankin; A superb natural storyteller - Lee Child; A master - Stephen King; Crime thriller writing of the highest order - Guardian. Not bad write-ups. This is Connelly's thirty-third novel; his books have sold more than 74 million copies worldwide. Pretty good going. The inside of the back cover shows the previous 32 books' covers with two further reviews: Genuine Modern Classics - Independent on Sunday; and Novels of exceptional quality - The Times. I couldn't wait to get reading!

Actually, the praise was not overblown.  Two seemingly disparate murders are eventually 'joined' by dogged detective work and the third - a 'cold case' - is also wrapped up. I think the linking of the retired 'old hand', Harry Bosch, with the young Renée Ballard (working on the LAPD's notorious graveyard shift) does work. Micky Haller, who fronts Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer series, has not much more than an early walk-on part. Bosch, the 'hero' of over a score of Connell's previous books, had worked with Ballard before in Dark Sacred Night. The gelling works for them and for the reader.

I learned one word - intoed! It's another name for pigeon-toed. I looked it up, to check Connelly wasn't making it up. Sure enough: Some children’s feet turn in when they walk. This is called intoeing or ‘pigeon toe’ and is very common in young children. It is one of the most common normal variants in children and is usually seen in both feet but may be just one. It was, perhaps, the most important clue in tracking the (female) assassin down - she who drew the two cases together - only one of whose feet intoed. I won't give away any more of the story, except to say that Connelly is good at sketching in a character and he clearly knows the ins and outs of the LAPD and its procedures. Yes, I enjoyed a book I wouldn't normally have chosen. Thank you daughter!

I will be starting the second book soon - Bernard Cornwell's Sword of Kings - and will write another Blog.

Margaret Drabble's 1974 Biography of Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett 1867-1931

I must admit I had never read any of Arnold Bennett's books before this year - or Margaret Drabble's for that matter. Then, I bought Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale and thoroughly enjoyed reading it (see my 8th May Blog). I have just finished Drabble's biography of Bennett and find I entirely concurred with her final paragraph on page 356:

He was a great writer from a stony land, and he was also one of the kindest and most unselfish of men. Many a time, rereading a novel, reading a letter or a piece of his journal, I have wanted to shake his hand, or to thank him, to say well done...

Weidenfeld and Nicolson first edition - 1974

Drabble's is a positive biography; thank goodness it wasn't written by the sneering Lytton Strachey type. When Drabble mentions that Clive Bell and Strachey despised Bennett, then it made me warm to him even more. Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, I think I have mentioned previously, was the only 'A' Level set book I didn't get on with. I just wished she'd get them to the bloody lighthouse. Stream of consciousness? Boring stagnant water! Woolf mocked Bennett's stammer and his Potteries accent, his concentration on dull materialism, especially in Hilda Lessways. As for Strachey, he mocked Bennett's establishment - the rooms were peculiarly disgusting - but he also dismissed T. S. Eliot's reading as sad and seedy. Strangely, that is exactly what I think of Lytton Strachey. To be fair to Woolf, she did write in her Diary, Arnold Bennett died last night, which leaves me sadder than I should have supposed. A lovable genuine man: impeded, somehow a little awkward in life; well meaning; ponderous; kindly; coarse; knowing he was coarse; glutted with success...Drabble is good on explaining Hugh Walpole (who had been much helped by Bennett) and Rebecca West when they criticised Bennett's seeming championship of materialism. There speaks another critic of materialism who had never known poverty, and who could not discern Bennett's passionate yearning for fraternity and joy and opportunity for all.

In no particular order, some thoughts occasioned by the book. As an (ex?) Wesleyan Methodist myself, I knew the hold the movement had in the cities of the UK (the Midlands, the North, Wales) but also the more rural, but mining, areas such as North Somerset and Cornwall. Drabble's book, its first chapter on The Five Towns in particular, brings home both the positives and negatives of its pervasive influence in the lives of the lower-middle class (the working class tended to drift to the Primitive Methodists). Of Bennett, she writes, he completely lacked the censorious side of Methodism, its judging, its sniffing and sneering, its righteous scorn for others... if potting was the industry of the district, Methodism was its religion, and the two together formed the Bennett inheritance. At its beginning, Wesleyanism was a genuine working-class movement, which offered spiritual hope and material improvement to its followers... It preached thrift, discipline and frugality. But over the years, the 'improved' Methodist became just as repressive and worldly as the churchmen he had despised. Worse, education of the workforce did not necessarily work to employers' advantage and many actively inveighed against the teaching of writing in the Sunday Schools. There was a strange mixture of emotionalism, enthusiasm, even fervour, and extreme dourness and repression...[Methodism] was masochistic, submissive, debasing...wallowing in their abasement. I remember, at the January Covenant Service in the 1960s, being asked to recite such phrases as being a miserable worm and put me to suffering. As a teenager, no way was I going to agree to such diktats! Drabble's chapter absolutely nails the background under which Bennett grew up.

At each stage of his life, I found I was admiring him. The stifling, narrow-mindedness of Burslem and the Potteries; the loneliness and drudgery of London; the sheer hard work and application as he churned out thousands of words in his journalism; his brave move to France and Paris; his early novels - Anna of the Five Towns (1902), Tales of the Five Towns (1905) etc.; his unsatisfactory and increasingly arid marriage; his real breakthrough with The Old Wives' Tale (1908) and Clayhanger (1910); his entry into London's literary, social and political society, in it but never quite of it. Wealthy enough to run yachts and country houses, but with entirely self-made money. He was at his best writing about the Potteries, although Riceyman Steps (1923) was regarded as one of his finest creations. Yes, he could be coarse - but he was not fake, like so many others; he could be boastful - but he had much to boast about; he craved genuine friendship (he was a great, and often generous, friend to others) as much as love. He was so enthusiastic about travel, about architecture, about modernity. He deserved to have such an empathetic book such as Drabble has served up.

I've decided, that next year, (rather like I have done with Camus, Gide, Housman and several other authors I knew little about), I am going to purchase some of his novels. I will hunt down Penguins - in first edition printings, of course. I see the following are likely candidates: 

Penguin

1936    No. 33         Anna of the Five Towns

1946    No. 519       The Grim Smile of the Five Towns 

1954    No. 996       Riceyman Steps

1954    No. 997       Clayhanger

1954    No. 998       The Old Wives' Tale

1954    No. 999       The Journals of Arnold Bennett

1975                        Hilda Lessways

Update (23 December): I have bought all the above, bar Hilda Lessways and am now also looking for The Grand Babylon Hotel.