I packed A.L. Rowse with me for our regular weekend trip to London. Highlights were the usual stay at the Caledonian Club in Belgravia; the mind-boggling exhibition on The World of Stonehenge at the British Museum; and (to a lesser extent) DΓΌrer's Journeys, Travels of a Renaissance Artist at the National Gallery. Rowse helped to palliate an awful journey down to the Great Wen. Our train from Derby was first delayed, then cancelled; the next train was 30 minutes late and consisted of just five coaches - to carry two normal trains' passengers and Friday's (all were cancelled that day due to Storm Eunice). The carriages had standing passengers throughout - for the entire journey; some could not even get on the train at Long Eaton. We got to St Pancras at 1.00 p.m. - taking three hours for a journey scheduled for half that time. This is not usually the subject of my Blog, BUT I am still angry at the sheer incompetence of East Midlands Rail. To cap it all, Derby was gridlocked, due to flooding, on our return home. Bah!
Macmillan & Co. - 1945
I bought the above book a fortnight ago and it was an interesting companion over the weekend. I am not sure why I have a sneaking partiality for Rowse. Regularly dismissed by so-called academics (whose prose often sends the reader to sleep), his Journal/Diaries show him in an unflattering light as an over-opinionated, rude, 'catty' man. He was wedded to Shakespeare's version of Richard III, which should not endear him to this member of the Richard III Society. Nevertheless, (or, perhaps because of this), I find his loneliness, his chip-on-the-shoulder and social inferiority complex, quite endearing!
A. L. Rowse
West-Country Stories rarely moves out of his beloved Cornwall. After the first few short stories - The Wicked Vicar of Lansillian, The Stone that liked Company, All Soul's Night, I thought there was a tinge of M.R. James about things, However, the book soon settled down to a, rather uneven in quality, series of stories and articles, usually around the author's travels and meetings with other Cornishmen and women. The sense of place was well brought to life in Rialton: A Cornish Monastic Manor (written in 1941) and The Story of Polruddan; the tributes to the Cornish character was fruitful in How Dick Stephens fought the Bear, Cornwall in the Civil War (1933), and John Opie and Harmony Cot (1938). One of the best pieces was Kilvert in Cornwall (1938), which quoted extensively from that clerical writer. I thought Pageant of Plymouth, (broadcast in November 1939) however, was poor. In his Preface, Rowse writes: perhaps some of the descriptions may serve to bring back things of beauty in the West Country as they were, now gone for ever. I think he achieved this.
Although I have moved around several times in my life (West Indies, London, Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire and, now, Derbyshire), I still have a particular fondness for Somerset and Wiltshire, where I spent my formative years. I absolutely concur with Rowse's feeling for his 'homeland' and sense of place. I agree, too, with the belief that the so-called citizens of everywhere are really citizens of nowhere. And he loved cats!
My Rowse Collection includes:
1950 1955
1972
These contain some of his best work. I used the first two at school preparing for 'A' Levels..
Also:
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