Robert Peston's 'The Whistle Blower' 2021

 

Zaffre paperback edition - 2022

I am afraid that when I read the name of the author of the novel (kindly given as a Christmas present by my daughter), the image that came immediately to mind wasn't overly flattering. Peston is in a long line of people who are remembered as much for their strangled vowels or other speech oddities as for their actual thoughts. One of the early faces on television was that of the sainted Malcolm Muggeridge who, rather like Saint Augustine, wanted chastity "but not yet" (Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo). More memorable were the grimaces and contortions which constantly erupted across his gargoyle-like face as he expounded yet one more hypocritical point of view (was there a hornet trying to escape from his mouth?) Lloyd Grossman was another who wrestled with the dictates of 'correct' pronunciation - it was not enough to say that it was mid-Atlantic, even though it should have been drowned. In a different way, Ted Heath is remembered by me as much for his cringeworthy vocal chords as for his appalling tenure of office - did Lord Curzon sound like that?

Well, once I got past the nameplate, I settled down to the book. As with so many first novels, it reeks of autobiography. The very first page wrote itself from Peston's own experiences. He wrote for the Financial Times, his alter ego for the Financial Chronicle. He describes himself as culturally Jewish - so is the novel's main protagonist (he is not a 'hero') Gilbert Peck. The Peston/Peck father seems remarkably similar: Bernard Peck, world-renowned Professor of Sociology and Politics at the London School of Economics, fellow of the British Academy, adviser to successive (and now dead) Labour leaders... compared with Maurice Peston, founder of the economics department at Queen Mary College, London, advisor to various government departments and Labour Secretaries of State from the 1960s through to the 1990s. Maurice Peston died in 2016 - did this give the go-ahead for his son to write books including him? Certainly the uncomfortable fictional father-son Peck relationship feels close to home. Peck is an Oxbridge-educated, know-it-all Jew shunned by other hacks - is that written with some bitterness by Peston?

Peston admits he drank too much at university - Balliol College, Oxford, if you must know and Peck is no stranger to the bottle and more; whether the author  enjoyed a clandestine sex life is another matter. Peck certainly does with Marilyn Krol, with her greying white T-shirt, with a fading Labour red rose on the front and silk culotte knickers, who has one objective (two, if you include her romps with Peck) - to install Johnny Todd in Number 10. Todd (the closest thing to Hollywood that British politics has seen since, well, ever) is a shoe-in for Tony Blair and a variety of other real politicians of the mid-late nineties make their appearance under nom de plumes: Sir Peter Ramsey - John Major; the smoothy Tory Keith Kendall - could be one of several real-life MPs in Major's sleaze-ridden government!

There is also the deeply unpleasant South African-born billionaire Jimmy Breitner, owner of  The Globe - surely an amalgam of the Czech-born Robert Maxwell (The Daily Mirror) and Australian-born Rupert Murdoch (The News of the World and The Sun). Maxwell is actually mentioned as a crook in the novel.

Peck's sister, Clare, gets the plot rolling by being knocked off her bike, dying in St. Thomas's Hospital of her injuries. Whilst  dozing next to Clare's bedside, Peck hears a man's voice with the tones of someone feigning classlessness, like a BBC presenter (that surely was an early giveaway, as well as a shaft at Peston's ex-employers). What originally appears to be bad luck takes on a sinister twist. Yes, skullduggery is afoot in the corridors of power as well as on the streets of the Great Wen. Clare certainly had a good take on her brother's (and Peston's) work: a scavenger on the scrapheap of better men's efforts. The novel is dedicated To my darling sister Juliet - thankfully very much alive but also once hospitalised after a car crash and not expected to live. What she thought of her brother's first effort (particularly what emerges about Clare's sex life and with whom) is probably best kept within the Peston family.

Clare's PA is Jeremy MacDonald (tortoiseshell glasses, North Face anorak and mousey hair), A character to keep an eye on throughout the book.

There are some nice touches - both regarding the characters and snippets of dialogue, but the prose is occasionally 'clunky' and it is obvious that Peston has a journalist's style rather than a novelist's. If half of what he writes is based on his own experiences, then the world of politics is claustrophobic, murky, self-serving and distasteful. But we knew that anyway, didn't we?

To end on a plus - Peston, apparently, likes John Buchan's novels.

John Sutherland's 'Mrs Humphry Ward' 1990

 

Clarendon Press, Oxford first edition - 1990

Having read three of Mrs Humphry Ward's books -  Robert Elsmere (1888), Helbeck of Bannisdale (1898) and The Case of Richard Meynell (1911) - this year, I wanted to find more about her. John Sutherland I knew from his excellent The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (1988), so I plumped for his biography, rather than Ward's granddaughter's (Janet Trevelyan).

Quite apart from Sutherland's detailed chronology and comment on her books, two aspects of Mary Ward's life stood out for me - both deleterious. He gives a whole Chapter (17) to 'Health 1890-1900'.  In fact, Mary appears to have been 'ill' on and off throughout her life; as Sutherland says, one could write her biography as a sixty-nine year medical case report or an anthology of the age's female invalidisms. Over the years she was racked by a baffling array of chronic, acute, subacute, psychosomatic, and organic ailments. Few pages go by without comment on another medical problem. As a baby and girl she appears to have been predisposed to persistent lowering complaints of two types - colds and rheumatism. She was, as her father told her grandmother a very sickly child - with perpetual colds, hacking coughs and dire teething problems.  Infection-prone, Mary suffered throughout her life from 'septic' throats, from inflamed or 'lumpy' tonsils, and earache. On the evidence of her daughter's diaries, her mother regularly caught at least a dozen colds or 'flu infections annually. In the early 1880s Mary began to experience 'writer's cramp'; it continued throughout her life being particularly acute during the most stressful  phase of her novel writing. Bad teeth plagued her throughout her life (5 were pulled out under gas in 1905-6). Insomnia led to use or abuse with sleeping draughts. She regularly used chlorodyne, trional and morphia. The most intractable and puzzling illness was what she termed 'side' or 'the old enemy'. it was eventually thought to be gallstones. In later life she suffered from excruciating eczema - a mass of white blisters would scavenge her arms; styes and boils added to her problems. From 1906 onwards she was never a well woman again.                                                     

Mary Ward in the early 1990s

The other deleterious aspect was her 'men'. Her father, Tom Arnold (Dr Arnold of Rugby's second son) would these days be accused of cruelty to his eldest daughter Mary. Up until her mid teens she rarely saw him, being shoved off to various schools while her siblings mainly enjoyed the comforts of a home life. He vacillated between Anglicanism and Catholicism (Newman was there to tempt him) and comes across as a thoroughly selfish man. If he was second rate, then Mary's husband Thomas Humphry Ward (1845-1926) was third rate, spending his life working for The Times as their Art critic, whilst dabbling in purchases of Old Masters (more often than not being bamboozled or bamboozling himself). For much of their marriage, and increasingly so, he sponged off his wife's earnings. There was worse to come: Mary's only son, Arnold Sandwith Ward (1876-1950) was a fourth-rater. An inveterate gambler, often worse for drink, every position or job (the Army, the House of Commons) his mother's influence gained for him was to prove disastrous. In the end, her husband's spendthrift ways and her son's gambling, meant Mary Ward had to keep churning out books to pay for them. No wonder, Arnold's cousins, the Huxleys, and his younger sister Janet (who married G.M. Trevelyan) came to dislike him intensely. There are few heroes or heroines. The ones that stick out are Mary's eldest child, Dorothy (1874-1964), who never married and who spent her life supporting her mother and trying to minimise the malodorous effect of her brother; George Smith and his son-in-law Reginald Smith, of the publishing house Smith, Elder were not only to be her publishers but her benefactors and saviours on many occasions. Not only did the benefit from her successes but they kept faith with her during the remorseless decline in standards (and sales) from the 1900s onwards.

The tragedy of Mary Ward's career (and she is not alone as an author in this) is that she fell out of fashion. The American book-buying public made her name (from Robert Elsmere onwards for some dozen years), but they lost interest in her type of novel as the 20th century dawned. From 1900, she wrote some good novels, and some good characters and descriptions in the not-so-good works. But one gets the feeling that they had to be written to keep the creditors at bay - the town house and Stocks, the country mansion, the incessant needs of husband and son, were only dealt with by her churning out book after book. She was briefly a useful propogandist during the Great War (egged on by the ex-USA President Roosevelt and others), but her general work was long past its sell-by date.

Mary Ward's work in supporting or setting up University Hall, Marchmont Hall and then the Passmore Edwards Settlement in Tavistock Square certainly deserved more than a measly CBE. THE PES proved a boon not only for the Working Class and children with the Vacation schools, but also for hundreds of handicapped children, as 'special' schools were developed round London. The debit side is filled with Mary Ward's major involvement in the Anti-Suffrage League. She launched the Anti-Suffrage Review in December 1908, led an anti-suffrage deputation to the Prime Minister Asquith in June 1910, and ensured her son championed the cause once he was elected to Parliament. It is a strange course as her own life and activities (surrounded by second-rate men) surely should have suggested that women were at least men's equal.

Virginia Woolf made a typically shrewish remark in her diary, on hearing of Mary Ward's death: Mrs Ward is dead; poor Mrs Humphrey Ward; and it appears that she was merely a woman of straw after all - shovelled into the grave and already forgotten. Unfeeling, but with more than a grain of truth in it. I like to think it is also true of Virginia Woolf.

I will probably look out for three more of Mary Ward's books - Marcella (1894), Lady Connie (1916), and her memoir A Writer's Recollections (1918). However, I have large pile of books on my Study floor looking at me accusingly. Their needs will be attended to first.

Mary Moorman's 'George Macaulay Trevelyan' 1980

 

Hamish Hamilton first edition - 1980

G.M. Trevelyan had published an un-self-revealing autobiography in 1949 and forbade anyone to write his biography - he had also burnt all his personal papers. His daughter, Mary Moorman, decided to ignore his request for two reasons. Firstly, having studied other letters (such as to his father, brother Charles and herself), she considered them to have literary and historical importance. Secondly, she argued that the world he grew up in has passed away so completely that it is as much a part of 'history' as the age of Napoleon or of the Stuarts. That was in 1980 - so much more so in 2022.

There had already been a short appraisal/tribute of Trevelyan in 1951 by J.H. Plumb, in one of a series of pamphlets published as Supplements to British Book News. Then, in 1992, David Cannadine published a full-length biography, which I read a few years back.

J.H. Plumb 1951                 David Cannadine 1992

Plumb bordered on the hagiographic (Trevelyan was still alive) but his sincerity shines through. On Trevelyan's early work England Under the Stuarts (1904), Plumb wrote of its outstanding quality...it may be generations before the most dramatic century in English history is so finely portrayed between the covers of a single book...surely no text-book has ever before or since been written with such a gusto... In his summary, Plumb stated, if one quality is to be singled out, it should be this, for, of all historians, he is the poet of English history.

I have, tucked inside the back of Cannadine's biography, a TLS review by Christopher Haigh. Historians are, perhaps, renowned for their bitchiness, but I found Haigh's approach overly spiteful. He says he had disliked Trevelyan since being set England under the Stuarts to read at A-level. He didn't like other Trevelyan books and wrote Thank heaven for Christopher Hill. Well, that sums Haigh up for me! He takes Cannadine to task for campaigning yet again against the professionalisation of history; variations on an old theme by Sir John Plumb. Haigh snidely writes of Trevelyan coming from the landed gentry, having friends such as John Buchan and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and drafting George V's silver jubilee speech, and what a monument of ignorant irrelevance it now seems - its confidence in parliamentary government, industrial recovery and affection for the Royal Family a mockery of our own times. Trevelyan himself thought the world was turning sour... Well Tutor Haigh, studying the Britain of the last 60 years, certainly of the last ghastly 30, I can absolutely empathise with Trevelyan and not with your viewpoint. Give me the literary histories of Trevelyan, John Buchan, Jack Plumb. C.V. Wedgwood, A.L. Rowse, Peter Ackroyd, even Arthur Bryant, rather than the plodding, boring 'professionals' of today, with their endless endnotes and bibliographies often taking more pages than their main text. The best History is literary and imaginative, it's about people not economic graphs. I recall a mild criticism of one of my essays for the M.A. course in English Local History being commented upon as rather literary. I took it as a compliment.

As for Mary Moorman's book, she rightly calls it a Memoir rather than a Biography. It is based on GMT's letters and is therefore dependent on which were available to her. It means that the period when he seemingly wrote the most to his Family was when he was in Italy during the Great War, working as the Commandant of a Red Cross Unit. Clearly this was an important aspect of his life, supporting his beloved Italy and Italians, but it is the least interesting part of the book for this reader, as it is crammed with lists of people, places and incidents which become hard to follow. A map of the area would have been invaluable. What his daughter has got across is GMT's love of life, places and people. Nine years before his death in 1962, he published Carlyle: An Anthology, where he showed how Carlyle had taught him that history is not statistics or constitutional documents, though these have a part in it, but a living scene pulsing with life, full of passions and faiths and fears of men.

I looked up references to Trevelyan in my copy of The Diaries of A.L. Rowse, edited by Richard Ollard (Penguin, 2003). Rowse visited the old man in Cambridge and at Hallington and recorded that Trevelyan hates the modern world - more completely and consistently than any of us; for he hates modern science and the world it has made...I suddenly thought that G.M.T. is really an eighteenth-century figure (1955) and, in 1959, at Hallington, Rowse gives over nearly nine pages in Ollard's selection to the three days he spent with Trevelyan. G.M.T. has very strict and upright moral principles...evidently not a love-match (with Janet) on his part...he had to stand by and see Wallington go to his eldest brother (Charles), whom he strongly disapproved of ('He never had any morals')... Virginia Woolf - 'a horrid woman' (hear! hear!) ...he detested Bloomsbury and its works (hear! hear!) ...of Belloc, 'he was a liar'. Rowse continued of G.M.T. , he is a man of absolutely firm and simple principles, which he applies consistently to history. Thank you, A.L. Rowse, for adding to my liking for G.M. Trevelyan. It has persuaded me to get down off my Study shelves my copy of the first British edition of English Social History (printed by Novographic process in 1944 by Longmans, Green and Co.) - I see on the front flap of the dust wrapper the TLS has commented: A history which is also literature. Good!

Eamon Duffy's 'A People's Tragedy' 2020

 

Bloomsbury Continuum first edition - 2020

Eamon Duffy describes himself as a cradle Catholic and he is clearly a Catholic apologist, although he can have some sharp words for individual Roman Catholics, including popes. I already had his The Stripping of the Altars (1992), for which he is probably best known, and Marking the Hours (2006). He is an excellent historian, gifted with subtle insight and a deep historical understanding, wearing his undoubted learning with commendable lightness. So, what of this tome, subtitled Studies in Reformation?

It is divided into two Parts: the first using the same subheading and the second entitled Writing the Reformation. I found the latter by far the most interesting and informative. There are five sections, concentrating on Martin Luther, J. A. Froude, A.G. Dickens, Walsingham and Fiction and Faction. I learnt something from each chapter. I hadn't realised how, as long ago as the mid-1960s, many theologians had come to believe that there was fundamental agreement between Catholics and Protestants on the contested issue of Justification. However, others like Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)  and the English historian Richard Rex, argued that in the end Luther was a heretic not a Catholic dissident. The chapter on Froude highlights the fact we should know the Historian and his times before we know his History. My thought was, "yes we must, Eamon Duffy"! Froude could be commended for his untiring use of source material (usually manuscripts no-one else had used), but he distrusted the masses, accepted contemporary racial theories (English over Irish and whites over blacks) and regarded the advent of Protestantism and the repudiation of papal authority as an immense blessing. A.G. Dickens was one of the mainstays of my student and teaching careers. Duffy suggests that G.G. Coulton, a more polemical historian (a fanatic, with a deep loathing and fear of Roman Catholicism in general and monks in particular), influenced Dickens, who weighed the late medieval Church and invariably found it wanting. The more I read the chapter, the more I came down on the side of Dickens and not Duffy! The chapter on Walsingham merely showed to me that some Anglicans could be as superstitious as Roman Catholics. I have never supported Marian idolatry.

The most interesting chapter to me was the last. I liked the way Duffy explored the importance of historical fiction in shaping people's minds - the sectarian propaganda of Fr Robert Hugh Benson; the more measured approach of Ford Madox Ford; the very different treatment of Cromwell and More in Robert Bolt's play, A Man for all Seasons, and Hilary Mantel's trilogy, beginning with Wolf Hall. We all have our prejudices, and I haven't read a word of Mantel's hagiography of Cromwell and her malign disparagement of More. Duffy clearly doesn't agree with her portrayals and David Starkey, typically, is contemptuous of such historical novelists.

As for the first Part, the chapters are what one would expect from a Catholic historian, who calls his book A People's Tragedy. That on cathedral pilgrimages only highlights for me the cupidity of the church as well as the genuine need to provide for the superstitious masses; he (I believe rightly) emphasises the genuine religious conservatism behind the 1569 Rebellion; explains very well the importance of the Catholic colleges set up at Douai and Rheims; provides a well researched account of the origins and influence of the King James Bible; and praises the not-so-well-known reminiscences of Richard Baxter. 

It does a (nominally) Protestant good to read a different slant on the Reformation. Eamon Duffy has produced an excellent (by and large) defence of Sixteenth Century and Late Medieval Catholicism. 

Dan Brown's 'Origin' 2017

 

Corgi paperback edition - 2018

It's been quite a while since I read one of Dan Brown's 'International Best sellers'. I have one or two on my bookshelves:

First published in 2000          First published in 2003

I recall the excitement in 2003 (is it really 20 years ago?) when The Da Vinci Code was published. I hadn't realised he had already written Digital Fortress (1998) and Angels & Demons (2000). The former - about covert intelligence agencies, clandestine organisations and code breaking - was apparently written as a result of the author's interest being sparked by US Secret Service agents visiting his college to interview a student who had joked in an email about killing the President. The second novel introduced Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of symbology, who races to protect the Vatican from the Illuminati, a secret society established during the Renaissance which had opposed the Roman Catholic Church. Another novel followed - Deception Point (2001). It was only when Brown returned to Langdon that he made his breakthrough - with The Da Vinci Code (2003). This centred on Christianity's origins and art history. Commencing with a murder in the Louvre, the fast-paced thriller involving mysterious organisations such as The Priory of Sion and Opus Dei was a huge success, selling more than 80 million copies by 2009. It also sparked interest in the earlier novels. In 2004 all four of his works appeared in The New York Times best-seller lists. These spawned other Code-related books, film adaptations of The Da Vinci Code (2006) and Angels & Demons (2009) with Tom Hanks as Langdon - I have both on DVD.

I also have two large paperbacks purporting to explain the Secrets of two of the books:

2005 paperback edition      2004 paperback edition  

In other words, Dan Brown has raked in a fortune since 2003. Langdon subsequently appeared in The Lost Symbol (2009):

Bantam Press first edition - 2009

and Inferno in 2013. The former concentrated on the Freemasons and the latter dealt with efforts to stop the release of a plague. Inferno was also made into a movie in 2016, with Tom Hanks again cast as Robert Langdon. 

I have just finished the 2018 Corgi paperback edition of Origin, published a year earlier. It had the same elements of the earlier works - codes, a general dislike of religion (especially the Roman Catholic Church) and a key aspect of thrillers, ever since John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) - the Chase. Did I enjoy it? The prose was occasionally clunky, the computer-jargon and symbolism often above my head and much of it preposterous! 

The Prologue sees billionaire American (well, his mother was Spanish) Edmond Kirsch giving three religious leaders - Bishop Antonio Valdespino a conservative Roman Catholic, Rabbi Yehuda Kȍves and the respected allamah, Syed al-Fadl - of an illustrated talk he is to give at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. It is no ordinary lecture, but one which will shake to the core not only the three religious leaders but the world. Kirsch will answer the questions human beings have asked from the beginning - How did it all begin? Where do we come from? and Where are we going? To forgo any spoiler alerts, I will simply say there is an assassin, Admiral Luis Avila, determined to stop Kirsch from giving his earth-shattering news; there is the strikingly beautiful Ambra Vidal, director of the Museum and betrothed to the Prince Juliάn, heir to the Spanish throne; there is Prince Juliάn himself; and, above all, there is Winston, the computerized British docent, who enables both Langdon and the author to get out of impossible situations.

There are some, usually successful, red herrings; some well described architecture - particularly of the famous Barcelonan Gaudí's La Sagrada Família (The Basilica of the Holy Family); some hair-raising scenes; and much Dan Brown 'chatter' using computer-speak etc. I quite enjoyed it all, but had to suspend my disbelief on several occasions.

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It has inspired (if that's the right word) a rewatching of The Da Vinci Code on DVD. I was not impressed - it was not only slow, it 'sagged'. I didn't think much of the acting - by Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Alfred Molina, Paul Bettany and over-the-top Ian McKellen (shades of Peter O'Toole?). I think Angels & Demons probably shaded it.

Ian Pykett's Life and Times of Revd John Reddaway Luxmoore 2022

Spiral Publishing first paperback edition - 2022

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF REVD JOHN REDDAWAY LUXMOORE (1829-1917), with special reference to his renovation of Holy Trinity Church, Ashford-in-the-Water by Ian Pykett (Country Books 2022 284pp ISBN: 978-1-910489-82-6) £15 from http://www.countrybooks.biz/

The author is a little too self-effacing in his Preface. ‘I am no historian…but I have discovered that I share my new-found amateur enthusiasm for such matters with many Victorians’…and, when comparing his efforts with 19thc local chroniclers  - such as Llewellyn Jewitt (1816-1886), Revd John Cox (1843-1910) and the father-and-son duo Thomas Brushfield (1798-1875) and Thomas Nadauld Brushfield (1828-1910) - writes  ‘how shallow is the research I have undertaken myself’.

Ian Pykett is at his best researching narrower fields, as in the Chapters on the renovation of Holy Trinity at Ashford; the building of a new Vicarage (which he himself lived in); and an account of the late 19^th century village. The Renovation is usefully framed within the national changes taking place in Victorian church architecture. ‘One persistent driver within the 19^th century Anglican church…was the high church Oxford Movement’s desire to counter the rise of Nonconformism…medieval architectural styles that were being revived across the western world at the time were appropriated by the Established Church in support of its ambition to reinforce its continuity with its pre-Reformation Catholic past’, viz. the early ‘gothic revival’ style. Pykett explains both the metaphorical and sacramental phases. ‘Against this backdrop of a vigorous, albeit turbulent, architectural revival following three centuries’ worth of neglect of England’s churches and cathedrals, the Victorian restoration movement gathered steam; it is estimated that around 80% of all Church of England churches were affected in some way, from minor repairs to complete demolition and rebuilding.’ Thus, at Ashford only the tower, the tower arch, and the three 16^th century arches and octagonal pillars separating the nave from the north aisle remained untouched.

This meaty and fascinating chapter is followed by a shorter one on the building of a new vicarage in 1853, to initial pen and ink sketches by Joseph Paxton (he of the later Crystal Palace fame). Three storeys high, with large rooms, high ceilings, cast-iron window frames and an exposed site on a hillside ( an indoor water closet was only added later) it was difficult to heat and repair. Perhaps it was the alleged presence of ‘Jennifer the Poltergeist’, that led it to being finally sold in 2002. It was merely the start of a mass exodus of clergy from such vicarages during the 20^th century – hence so many ‘The Old Vicarage’ signs seen in the villages and towns of today.

Ian Pykett is equally good when describing the village of Ashford in Revd Luxmoore’s time. The main industry was the marble trade: villagers were employed in mining and cutting, turning and polishing, and decorating the marble. Ashford was essentially self-sufficient – most of the trades, labour and skills could be found in the village, nearby settlements or the town of Bakewell. There were domestic workers, shopkeepers, gardeners and grooms as well as a carpenter, blacksmith and wheelwright. Of course, there were times of hardship and soup kitchens were one answer.  Sanitary arrangements were basic – exterior dry-earth toilets were commonplace. Visitations of smallpox and typhoid were in addition to pleurisy and tuberculosis.

The Appendix by David Windle, on the history of the Dissenting Chapels in Ashford is also a model of local history research and narration.  The Baptist Chapel on Ashford Lane opened in 1761 but has been ‘swept away long ago’ – a small cemetery, with ivy-coloured graves is all that remains of the cause. A Presbyterian Chapel (Cliff End), opened in 1701, was acquired by the Congregational Church at Bakewell in 1870, but came to a sudden end in 1937 when the roof collapsed – a steady stream of heavy quarry traffic had not helped. Wesleyan Methodism was founded in the village in the late 1820s, using an adapted building in  Court Lane. A new chapel was opened in 1899 but falling numbers led to its closure in 1994.

A major problem for any Historian, amateur or otherwise, is a natural desire – after all the hard work ploughed into their research – to put everything he or she has found into the subsequent book. One entirely empathises with Pykett’s comment, ‘As I began to discover the facts about John Reddaway Luxmoore’s life, it became impossible for me to divorce them from the context of the social transformations of the Victorian and Edwardian eras’. Hence the ‘Life and Times’ of his book. However, his long chapter II – which encompasses half the length of his work – needed to be severely pruned. The Revd John Reddaway Luxmoore is the most important thread in the narrative, but he is too often obscured by extraneous topics, whether of other individuals or only mildly relevant events. The information about Devon and John’s family (‘we’ll call him ‘our’ John to differentiate him from many other John Luxmoores’, says Pykett) are so detailed as to confuse the reader. Many of these passages are intrinsically  of interest, but they impede the more straightforward account of John’s actual life and career – his birth; his education with Rev Feild and St Bees Theological College; his first clerical appointments at Smalley in Derbyshire and Ross-on-Wye; his marriage to Rosalie Stonhouse-Vigor; and his arrival in Ashford. The controversy over the ‘free-thinker’ Richard Nadault Brushfield’s tablet – Luxmoore refused to accommodate it in his church – is a good example of what should be in the Chapter.

The Luxmoores had six children, one boy dying only a few months old. All three girls died unmarried, as did the eldest son ‘Johnny’. Both the latter and the youngest child, William Cyril, followed their father into the Anglican ministry. William did not marry until aged 49. His eldest son Christopher also entered the priesthood, ending as Assistant Bishop in Chichester. Only the younger son, Robin Stonhouse Luxmoore, broke away from the cloth, to work on a ranch in the USA and oil exploration in the Arctic.

Ian Pykett should be congratulated on his book – there is so much in it of interest, and it is a revealing snapshot of a late Victorian/Edwardian country vicar wrestling with the issues of his times. The virtual rebuilding of his church is an apt example of what was going on elsewhere and is a useful aid for the more general historian of the Church of England. This reviewer has nothing but admiration for the enthusiasm and dedication of such amateur historians.  

Sarah Hawkswood's 'A Taste for Killing' 2022

Allison & Busby first paperback edition - 2022

 This is now my tenth reading of the Bradcote and Catchpoll series by Sarah Hawkswood. I see that the eleventh is due out in hardback in mid May next year. I will be pre-ordering it with my next Scott Mariani and Susanna Gregory (The Thomas Chaloner series) - the three writers I am presently loyal to. Others - Sam Bourne, Raymond Khoury and Chris Kuzneski, I have given up on, whilst Michael Arnold seems to have stopped at No. 6 in his Stryker series and C.J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake takes several years to reappear.

Although the novel can quite easily be read as a 'standalone', one of its charms is that the main characters have developed as the stories have unfolded. This is particularly true with the flame-headed young Wakelin, Serjeant Catchpoll's under serjeant.  His ongoing romance with Eluned, the Welsh kitchen girl in Worcester Castle, and his loving relationship with his mother is well done by the author. The homely sparring between Catchpoll and his wife (coming into her own more and more as a character in her own right) and the successful birth of the daughter to Lord Bradecote (his second wife not succumbing to childbirth as his first wife did) weaves genuine back stories into the main tale of yet another murder in the city. Above them all is the irascible Sheriff of Worcester, William de Beauchamp, on this occasioned wracked with a head cold and even more than usually irascible. The laguid castle Castellan, Simon Furnaux, disliked by Bradecote, Catchpoll and Wakelin, is also more 'onstage' in this tale.

What of the murder and the suspects? Godfrey Bowyer, poisoned  in his own hall, was immensely unpopular with his fellow craftsmen for his argumentative ways. He may have been the best bow maker in Worcester but nobody was surprised by, or sorry about, his death. His wife was also struck down but survived a more limited poison intake.

Could it be Oderic the Bailiff, whose wife was subject to Godfrey's sleazy ways; or the widow, Blanche Bowyer; or the dead man's brother Herluin the Strengere, previous ejected from the house for fancying Blanche; were the maidservant Runild, or Alwin, Godfrey's journeyman bowyer, or Gode the cook bribed to poison their master? The list appears endless. The plot is skilfully constructed and, eventually unravelled. The author has a way with words and has immersed herself in the sights and sounds (and smells!) of the mid 12th century England, the period of The Anarchy.

Scott Mariani's 'Graveyard of Empires' 2022

 

Harper North first paperback edition - 2022

My 26th Ben Hope thriller by Scott Mariani; the first - The Alchemist's Secret - I bought as long ago as 2007. Fifteen years as a faithful reader! Scott is running out of places to send Hope, who must be feeling his age by now. Although not showing the tiredness that affected the last few Matthew Bartholomew books by Susanna Gregory, this tale did not quite match up to Mariani's best.

From an initial lack of interest in Afghanistan and its miserable history, Ben Hope is forced to contemplate going there to search for, and probably rescue, his friend, Madison Cahill, former American bounty-hunter and daughter of a late archaeologist, who had obsessively searched in the 1970s and 1980s, for the physical remains of Alexander the Great's far-flung empire in that god-forsaken area. Chapter 2 is a brief 'history' lesson about the Taliban in Afghanistan and the US speedy withdrawal.

Hope, returning from a shopping trip to Valognes, is 'picked up' by three UK agents and forced to travel to London, to meet Colonel Carstairs, senior SAS brass, with connections to military intelligence and rumoured to be involved with a shadowy cadre called Group 13 linked to blacker-than-black ops... Carstairs is well past retirement age, but still involved in this murky underworld. He explains why Ben has been 'sent for. 

As you're aware, the sudden withdrawal of US troops from the region and the ensuing Taliban takeover of the country have resulted in the most godawful chaos. Trust the Yanks to bugger it up so badly, of course. The present administration are bloody incompetent, run by a gang of wet blankets under a president who frankly ought to be in a - but I won't go on about that...

Ben agrees to go, even though he will be under Captain Jack Buchanan of the UKSF and Carstairs refuses to tell him much about Operation Hydra apart from the mission is to extract an asset of prime importance, codenamed "Spartan". Ben goes to rescue Madison, intending to break away from the group at the right moment - his commitment to his friend came first.

The novel has all the marks of a Scott Mariani thriller, with detailed information about military hardware, actual fighting and the nature of the countryside. It also has some pretty political and extreme remarks, which need not necessarily reflect the author's own beliefs. He is very strong (and, to my mind, accurate) about the sheer evil of the Taliban and their repulsive brand of extreme Islamic beliefs.

Hank Schulz, formerly of US Marine Corps Force Recon, regards the USA government (Biden's) as an administration of worthless yellow-bellied rat-ass sleazebags in the White House, its left up to deplorables like us to take care of business. This mirrors Carstairs earlier condemnation. "Spartan" is, in fact, the fourth in line to the UK throne, but for some strange reason is called Prince Richard (when, clearly, it is Prince Harry). He is a not particularly likeable individual, with a chip on his shoulder - he gripes - even my twat of an elder brother was allowed to piss about in jets in Afghanistan with 16 Air Assault Brigade, even if he didn't actually do much. So why not me? Wat was wrong with me? He was getting agitated now, thumping his chest with his fist. One of the retired top-level operatives, Mike Nielson, on a quite different mission to escort a group of children out of the country, has this to say about the Royal Family - I have no problem with the old dame...I mean, respect to her and all. She's been through a lot of shit and handled herself with style. But they have a serious problem keeping their younger generation in line, man. What a bunch of misfits. Again is this the author speaking, or just the character? John Buchan has always been viewed by some as an anti-Semite, yet it was one of his characters, the American Scudder in The Thirty-Nine Steps, who refers unpleasantly to a Jew, whilst the author was a strong supporter of a Jewish homeland.

I found the book more retrospective and introspective than the usual Ben Hope offering - the latter questioning his inner demons at the start of the tale. The reference to his 'lost sister'; his knowledge of Biblical extracts; the reappearance not only of Madison but of Wolf; the fleeting asides about previous escapades. He still has the problem of commitment to women - Abbie Logan, who we recall from The Silver Serpent, the last adventure, and who appeared to be a perfect 'fit' for Ben, returns to Australia and there is no feeling that Madison will prove to be the permanent answer. 90% of Amazon reviews gave the novel a 5* or 4* and it's fair to say that Mariani has kept up the high standard he has achieved  since 2007. 

A very minor irritation - I hope he cuts out the phrase back in the day; it popped up far too often.

Mrs Humphry Ward's 'Robert Elsmere' 1888 II

Smith, Elder & Co. first edition - 1888

Robert Elsmere is about a young clergyman, trained in Oxford, who begins to doubt the doctrines of the Anglican Church after reading the writings of 19th century German rationalists and imbibing the ideas of English thinkers such as Thomas Hill Green (Mr Grey in the novel) and Mark Pattison (the Squire Wendover in the story). Instead of turning to Roman Catholicism, as did clergy such as Newman earlier in the century, or to atheism, Elsmere takes up constructive liberalism, stressing social work amongst the poverty-stricken and uneducated. The three volumes are split into seven unequal length Books:

Volume I pp. 1-292 Westmorland - where Elsmere successfully woos Catherine Leyburn, a pious young lady, deeply attached to her late clergyman father's straightforward Anglicanism; pp. 295-371 Surrey - where the newly-weds settle down to a seemingly successful ministry in the deepest southern county. Volume II pp. 3-120 Surrey - where the first strains start to emerge pp. 123-274 The Squire; - here the squire's Library and convictions lead on to the next section; pp.277-374 Crisis - where Elsmere finds he cannot square his conscience with the teachings (particularly with regards to miracles) of the Established Church. Volume III pp. 3-137 Rose, where the focus is more on Catherine's younger, more flighty sister, but also highlights the deepening division between Robert and Catherine; pp. 141-306 New Openings - where Elsmere, supported by his sister-in-law Rose's hopeful partner Hugh Flaxman, is able to open a New Brotherhood Club for the working class; and, finally, pp. 309-411 Gain and Loss - the gains are the success of the Institute and Flaxman gaining Rose's hand, but the loss is the major one of Elsmere's premature death, through overwork and a frail constitution (perhaps J.R. Green's early death supplied the idea for Elsmere's end from tuberculosis. Green was another East End pioneer in real life.)

Mary Augusta Ward

Mary Ward took infinite pains over her novel, the composition dragging out from March 1885 to February 1888. Stages included 'thinking about the novel' (March-November 1885); 'writing the novel' (November 1885-March 1887); and 'revising the novel' (March 1887 to January 1888). This first draft was simply too long. The publisher informed Mary that the work came to 1,358 pages, around three-quarters of a million words. 250,000 comprised a long three-decker. There had to be a savage reduction. Up to half the novel had to be excised. Two criticisms later levelled at the novel appear to be a direct result of this wholesale pruning. Robert Elsmere's character is insufficiently built up - his childhood is blank; his years at Oxford hurried over; his crucial relationship with his dominating mother sketchy. Secondly, the supporting arguments on behalf of the Established doctrines are woefully thin when matched against Squire Wendover - his Library and his rational scepticism. Catherine, who represents the Thirty-Nine Articles, is pushed into the background, whilst Wendover reigns supreme. The excisions in the middle of the novel were mainly from Elsmere's defence of his Anglicanism. As Gladstone was later to object, this rendered the hero intellectually spineless.

Although the initial sales were mediocre, thanks in part to Gladstone's long (and difficult to read for this 'modern' mind) critique, a buying tsunami took hold, particularly in America. Between July 1888 and September 1889, the publisher issued 17 editions of the one-volume 6s. form of the novel, amounting to 38,000 copies in all. The sale of 3,500 three-volume copies yielded the author £950. Some 20,000 of the half crown edition were sold between January and December 1890, yielding £500. The author had done very well financially.

Some interesting extracts:

The early Elsmere at Oxford:

The sacramental, ceremonial view of the Church never took hold upon him. But to the English Church as a great national institution for the promotion of God's work on earth no one could have been more deeply loyal, and none coming close to him could mistake the fervour and passion of his Christian feeling.

Catherine Leyburn knew of no supreme right but the right of God to the obedience of man.

From the High Churchman, the Vicar of Mottringham, Mr Newcombe:

'Tolerance! he said with irritable vehemence - 'tolerance! Simply another name for betrayal, cowardice, desertion - nothing else. God, Heaven, Salvation on the one side, the Devil and Hell on the other - and one miserable life, one wretched sin-stained will, to win the battle with'...

The only constant defence which the poor have against such physical conditions as those which prevailed at Mile End (the downtrodden hamlet in Elsmere's Surrey parish) is apathy. 

Elsmere's 'Confession' to his wife:

'For six or seven months, Catherine - really for much longer, though I never knew it - I have been fighting with doubt - doubt of orthodox Christianity - doubt of what the Church teaches - of what I have to say and preach every Sunday...I could not hold my faith by a mere tenure of tyranny and fear. Faith that is not free - that is not the faith of the whole creature, body, soul, and intellect - seemed to me a faith worthless both to God and man!' and later, Christianity seems to me something small and local...it is not that Christianity is false, but that it is only an imperfect human reflexion of a part of truth. Truth has never been, can never be, contained in any one creed or system!'

Truth holds a special place in the hearts of men who can neither accept fairy tales, nor reconcile themselves to a world without faith.

On Elsmere: It was the penalty of a highly strung nature set with exclusive intensity towards certain spiritual ends.

********************************************************************************

I learned a new word from the novel:  Comtist.    

Based on the ideas of Isidore Marie Auguste Francois Xavier Comte (1798-1857), who formulated the doctrine of positivism. He developed the idea of a religion of humanity and his injunction to "vivre pour autrui" ("live for others"), is the origin of the word 'altruism'.

Political phenomena are as capable of being grouped under laws as other phenomena; the true destination of philosophy must be social, and the true object of the thinker must be the reorganisation of the moral, religious and political systems.

Mrs Humphry Ward's 'Robert Elsmere' I888 I

 

Smith, Elder & Co. first edition - 1888

In The Spectator for 12th November 2022, Roger Lewis had this to say about the recently deceased Hilary Mantel: I'm sorry she died and everything, but I did think Hilary Mantel frightfully overpraised. Her novels will be placed next to Mrs Humphry Ward's - stock impossible to shift in antiquarian bookshops. Whilst I might agree about Mantel and have read only three of Ward's novels, I wonder how many of the latter Lewis has read. Who is Roger Lewis anyway? *

Mary Ward (née Arnold) - who published under her married name of Mrs Humphry Ward - I have written about previously: on 1st July 2022 on her The Case of Richard Meynell, 1911 and on 15th January 2022 on her Helbeck of Bannisdale, 1898. Both single volumes, I thoroughly enjoyed. Robert Elsmere runs to three volumes and is her most well-known book.

Mary Ward dedicated her three-decker novel to two people who had not long since died: Thomas Hill Green, Late Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford (d. 26 March 1882); Laura Octavia Mary Lyttelton (d. Easter Eve, 1886). Both are worth concentrating on, so this Blog will be in two parts, the second dealing with the novel itself.

T. H. Green (7 April 1836 - 26 March 1882)

T.H. Green was one of several powerful Oxford ideologues - others were J.R. Green, Benjamin Jowettt and Walter Pater - who cast a spell over the young Mary Ward from the early 1870s. Mary's husband, Humphry, had been coached by Green and the teacher had become his idol; not surprisingly, as he was seen as the most brilliant philosopher in Oxford. Mary and Humphry became good friends with Green and his wife Charlotte. Green's intellectual positions - especially his rational theism - became hers (as can be clearly seen in her subsequent novel). Green distrusted all ecclesiastical and religious structures. He developed a personal Christian humanist stance, conceiving God as the possible self which is gradually attaining reality in the experience of mankind. This was heresy! Green and Mary affirmed God while denying the truth of his revelation - the miraculous Christian story was untenable. Green was one of the thinkers behind the philosophy of social liberalism. Mary was to copy Green in throwing herself into a spiritually therapeutic 'useful life'. The story of Robert Elsmere's journey was to be the same. However, it was in the character of Mr. Grey (a colour link?!) that T.H. Green appeared in the novel. 

Laura Lyttelton (1862-1886)

Mary had first met Laura Lyttelton ( née Tennant) in 1884 at a London party. She became aware of a figure opposite to me, the figure of a young girl who seemed to me one of the most ravishing creatures I had ever seen. She was very small and exquisitely made. Her beautiful head, with its mass of light-brown hair; the small features and delicate neck; the clear, pale skin, the lovely eyes with rather heavy lids, which gave a slight look of melancholy to the face; the grace and fire of every movement when she talked; the dreamy silence into which she sometimes fell, without a trace of awkwardness or shyness. Laura was 22 years-old, one of eight children born to Sir Charles Tennant, the illegitimate son of a Glasgow merchant; her sister was Margot Tennant, later the wife of H.H. Asquith. The Wards were at Laura's wedding when she married Alfred Lyttelton on 21st May 1885 at St. George's Church, Hanover Square. Gladstone gave a speech at the breakfast. Eleven months later, on 24th April 1886, Laura died from complications following the birth of her first child a week earlier. Mary was devastated: I think I was simply in love with her from the first time I ever saw her. Mary was profoundly influenced, not only by Laura, but by the social milieu she moved in. The Cecils, Lytteltons, Tennants and, later, the Asquiths, entranced her. Their power and lifestyle (country parties, balls) linked to the high politics of England was captivating. Laura was to be long mourned by her friends, their closed circle becoming known as the Souls. 

I have the biography of Alfred Lyttelton (Longmans, Green and Co., 1917) by Edith Lyttelton. My copy had  inserted in the pages a few original letters written by Alfred. One is dated May. 2. 1886 (just a week after Laura's death): My dear Mrs Dawnay, I must tell you of my gratitude for the sympathy you shew me in such tender words. I can hardly face the future but far better men than I have never known any joy in the past. And my memory of the past can never be blotted out...

Mary wrote to Laura's widowed husband, Alfred, asking him for permission to dedicate her novel to her deceased friend. He readily agreed and, after the book was published, he wrote to the author: I must write to offer you my deepest thanks for the perfect dedication, beautiful in its pathos, its tenderness, and just and delicate expression of that which is so hard to convey in words. I read it this morning with blinding tears and yet with truest gratitude... Gladstone stated that Laura remained to the end unshaken in faith. The author told Benjamin Jowett that Catherine Leyburn was meant for Laura - the first section in the novel centres on the psychic strain of a highly-strung girl giving herself in marriage. Mary had seen this dilemma in Laura Lyttelton.

The two dedicatees symbolised the tension throughout Robert Elsmere. More of which in the next Blog.

   **************************************************************************

* I have looked up Roger Lewis (b. 1960), who is described as a Welsh academic (are there any?!), biographer and journalist. He has written biographies of Peter Sellers and Charles Hawtrey and is a lover of good art (whatever that means) and bullfighting - the latter casts him out straightaway. He has called the Welsh language an appalling and moribund monkey language and been rude about lesbians (you can always spot a lesbian by her big thrusting chin. Celebrity Eskimo Sandi Toksvig, Ellen DeGeneres, Jodie Foster, Clare Balding, Vita Sackville-West. God love them: there's a touch of Desperate Dan in the jaw-bone area, no doubt the better to go bobbing for apple.) Not worth spending any time on then.

John le Carré's 'Agent Running in the Field' 2019

 

Penguin Books first paperback edition - 2020

A very classy entertainment about political ideals and deception...laced with fury at the senseless vandalism of Brexit and of Trump - The Guardian.

The master espionage novelist takes on Brexit and Trump in this tense and chilling portrait of today - Evening Standard.

A book about loyalty and betrayal...serves to emphasize the consequence of the greatest wilful mistake in British history = New Statesman.

There are 21 other extracts from reviews at the front of this paperback edition, all praising the superb/impeccable, classy writing and the astute state-of the-nation commentary. One reviewer suggests it is the author's best effort this century. 83% of Amazon reviews give it a  5* or 4* billing. It was the 26th novel from le Carré; this is only the second I have read and I still have to be convinced that he is something special.

 I thought the coincidence of the ageing spy, in effect put out to grass, meeting up with a young, so-called idealist through a badminton challenge very unlikely. It was not a set-up, just by chance. Very early on, I had worked out the youngster Ed was working in another Secret Service Department and that Florence, Nat's wilful assistant, would link up with him. The vehement anti-Brexit/Trump sections appeared to be bolted on, for the sake of the author's own prejudices or an attempt to be 'with' the elite, metropolitan thinking. The badminton matches, very sketchily commentated on, quickly gave way to these aggressive diatribes.

All the characters teetered dangerously on being caricatures and I didn't feel sympathy for any of them. The paranoia and treachery, the overall seediness may be true to life, but it is not a life that I find particularly attractive or interesting. One reviewer called the writing tired. After 25 novels, it is not surprising. The revelations about the author's own life suggests a personal attachment to treachery and seediness as well. The book was a decent enough companion for two train journeys and a wait at St Pancras International.

T.D. Asch's 'The Century of Calamity' 2021

 

Amberley Publishing first edition - 2021

A slightly odd book to Blog about. The author studied Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford and has taught History in secondary schools for 15 years, so he has a pedigree. But I can best describe the effort as a series of musings, interlaced with a chronological narrative. All history books dealing with the Middle Ages and before - particularly the so-called Dark Ages - must inevitable lead to, hopefully inspired, guesswork, but Asch posits so many questions that one is left often more confused than not. After his frequent 'Why?' he regularly as not comes out with no answer. One gets used to 'probably', 'possibly', 'appears to have' in medieval history books, but Asch excels at this. There were eight 'maybes' in one paragraph. Perhaps his favourite word is 'perhaps': there are three in four lines on page 57. The final page boasted twelve! But, as Asch says, It's all speculation; nobody knows for sure.

Asch is clear in his mind that Ǣthelrǽd was indeed a bad man and a bad king; that Edward the Confessor was not perfectly suited to kingship, and perhaps he was lucky that his reign coincided with the least turbulent period of the eleventh century but he should be given credit for he did not harry his own kingdom...he did not raise vast sums in taxation...he did not have his own subjects executed or mutilated...when he made mistakes, he put them right. Tostig is also more positively assessed than by some historians: he respected the demands of Christianity. He was faithful to his wife. And he was generous to religious houses...in a way, he was a model earl...History has not been kind to Tostig, and history ought to be ashamed of itself. Cnut, for all his serious errors, is given some praise for leadership. On the other hand, the two half-brothers and sons of Cnut, Harold Harefoot (d.1040) and Harthacnut (d.1042) are given short shrift.

I found Asch's style too ruminative and found my attention wandering after yet another 'on the one hand, but on the other' approach. Too often he descends into the colloquial, but, to be fair, does manage to sustain a sense of genuine time passing. He gives ample space to an assessment of the character and machinations of Harold II and is judicial about Duke William the Bastard, crowned on Christmas Day 1066 as William I. After all the bloodshed and slippery dealings of the decades before, William's death somehow puts a seal on everything, if not on the too-small coffin. After dying in a priory just outside Rouen, his body was retrieved, and taken to St. Stephen's Abbey in Caen...for the funeral...it turned out that the stone sarcophagus which had been prepared for William's corpulent frame was too small. The body had to be forced into the coffin, but that burst the diseased intestines, which unleashed a foul odour throughout the building.

One feels a certain sympathy (and admiration) for Edgar Ǣtheling (c.1052-c.1125) who survived under William I, William II and Henry I - no mean feat. If he had been born a decade earlier, perhaps (!) he could have succeeded Edward the Confessor and we might never have had a Norman line foist upon us. 

"Went the Day Well?" 1942 DVD

 

Film Poster - 1942

This is the third time I have watched this British war film - adapted from a Graham Greene story in a 1940 magazine. It's told in flashback (very briefly at the start and at the end) by one of the villagers, who recounts the day a group of apparently bona fide British Royal Engineer soldiers arrive in Bramley End. They are welcomed at first, but suspicions are soon aroused (the use of the continental 7 and German chocolate) - rightly, as they are vanguard paratroopers preparing for a German invasion of Britain. The villagers are mainly rounded up and kept in the village church under guard.

Trapped in the Village Church

Attempts to alert the outside world prove at first to be failures: a message in a carton of eggs is destroyed by an incoming car; another note, put in the lady driver's pocket is used by her to stop the car window from rattling - it blows into the back seat where her dog chews it to bits! The postmistress, Mrs Collins (Muriel George) kills her German guard with an axe, tries to telephone for help, but gets shot by another German. Gruesome! The Home Guard, out on patrol is also gunned down, having failed to be warned? Why? The local squire is a long-time collaborator with the Germans and has managed to thwart much of the villagers' attempts to get help. However, a young boy does manage to escape, although shot in the leg, to raise the alarm.   British soldiers arrive and defeat the Germans. The treacherous squire is shot dead by the vicar's daughter (her father had been killed trying to ring the church bell for help). The gallant Mrs Fraser saves the children in her care by grabbing a grenade, thrown into the house, at the cost of her own life.

In some ways, a rather mundane event in a single day. By the time the film was premiered, the threat of a German invasion had passed, so it may have lost its main impact (Greene's story in 1940 would have been much more true to those grim days). The acting was pretty standard British fare of the time, with some well-known 'character' actors popping up. I did not think much of Leslie Banks' portrayal of the village squire; it was almost as if he didn't want to be in the film, or wasn't keen on playing a traitor. Then I read that, whilst serving the Great War with the Essex Regiment, he had sustained injuries that left his face partially scarred and paralysed. In his acting career, he would use his injury to good effect - showing the unblemished side when playing comedy or romance and the scarred, paralysed side of his face when playing drama or tragedy. That explains much of his 'passive', unemotional behaviour. He died in 1952, a decade later, from a stroke he suffered whilst out walking.

The film is good, straightforward and rather 'homely' propaganda. Moreover, one is taught not to mess with a gun-toting Thora Hurd!

Went the day well? We died and never knew. But, well or ill, freedom, we died for you.

Whisky Galore 1949 DVD

 

Ealing Studios 1949

I found this film - naturally, with a glass of whisky (not whiskey) in my hand - good fun. There were some excellent cameos from some well honed actors. As an aside, I was surprised at the early deaths (certainly for these times) of the main thespians. Basil Radford (1897-1952 - just three years after the film) died of cirrhosis of the liver, aged only 55. I hope it wasn't due to whisky; Joan Greenwood (1921-1987), whose husky voice enthralled audiences - to good effect in Moonfleet - died aged 65 of acute bronchitis and asthma; James Robertson Justice (1907-1990) passed away penniless, aged 68; John Gregson (1919-1975) of a heart attack aged only 55; Duncan Macrae (1905-1967), that rather hatchet-faced Scottish actor, aged 61; and Gordon Jackson (1923-1990), who I thought performed poorly in the film, of bone cancer at the age of 66. Not one reached 70. Compton Mackenzie (1883-1972), the author of the original book, partial screen writer of the film, and bit-part actor in it, made the grander age of 89.

The doctor calls (James Robertson Justice)

The scene above was one which occasioned a genuine titter - James Robertson Justice was born to be a doctor; rather Sir Laurence Spratt than this avuncular islander, though.

Down the hatch

Filmed on the island of Barra, the weather was so bad that the original 10-week schedule was overrun by five weeks and its projected budget by £20,000. Due to the main production staff being otherwise engaged at the main Ealing Studios, many of the island team were inexperienced. The director - a debut by Alexander Mackendrick - was not happy with the film. He told Gordon Jackson that it would probably turn out to be a dull documentary on island life...it looks like a home movie. It doesn't look like it was done by a professional at all. And it wasn't.

There was tension between Mackendrick and one of the scriptwriters. The former sympathised with the attempts by the pompous but high-minded Waggett (Basil Radford) to foil the looting of the cases of whisky from the shipwreck;   Danischewsky's sympathy lay with the looters. Due to the lack of accommodation on Barra, the cast were based with the islanders - at least it allowed the former to immerse themselves in the local accent. Although Joan Greenwood was a talented ballet dancer, she could not master the steps of the Highland reel - a local stood in as a body (or legs) double.

Much of the film's humour was directed at Waggett - the English intruder. One film historian sees Whisky Galore as one of several films that show an outsider coming to Scotland and being either humiliated or rejuvenated (or both). Jonny Murray was rather more disparaging, likening the film's portrayal of the islanders to those of the Kailyard school of literature - really a false image. The sense of community, however, was stressed by all contemporary critics.

The film was a financial success. Critics were mainly full of praise: a film with the French genius in the British manner...put together with tact and subtlety...one of the best post-war British films...with the sort of fancy that is half child-like and half agelessly wise. One praised the actors for portraying real people doing real things under real conditions...a talented cast sees to it that no island character study shall go unnoticed. Perhaps that was a major reason for my enjoyment.