Number Seventy News » books films arts etc

Plot

John — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:30:16 +0000

Madeleine Bunting’s “The Plot” is a most extraordinary work, at once the biography, as the subtitle asserts, of an English acre, but also a biographical memoir of her father. The plot itself is on the southern edge of the North York Moors, above Oldstead, and the author works back from her father’s tenure of it, when he built a chapel as a war memorial for specific people who died in WW2, to when the first prehistoric burial mounds were raised. Here we have a study of how a piece of land was used over the centuries, and of course its place in its surroundings; how the Romans marched through; it was part of a Norman estate; it belonged to the monks of Byland Abbey; it was farmed, and then abandoned, and now is part of the National Park. But all this would be dry history if it wasn’t seen through her father’s obsessive love for his plot, his acre. Lovingly done.

Brushing up on White Teeth

John — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:44:58 +0000

Another re-read. Zadie Smith’s achievement in White Teeth, published when she was only 25, is quite astonishing. I remember the vigour, the humour, the wonderfully eccentric cast from first reading 11 years ago: the Cain and Abel brothers (who are really both variations of Cain), the scheming mothers, the ineffectual fathers, the excruciating pain of dysfunctional family life; but had forgotten the plot almost entirely. The tale is, in fact, quite intricate, and no more dependent upon implausible co-incidence than Dickens. As in Possession, the great storm of October 15 1987 helps the plot along.

The Pianist

John — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:21:12 +0000

Polanski’s film of the true-life story of a Polish Jewish pianist, incarcerated in the Warsaw ghetto and saved by a mixture of luck, arbitrary kindnesses, and heroic actions by local Poles, is almost unremittingly dark in tone (as you would expect). The survival of a very very few, in the end, does not counteract the brutality and atrocities which form the core of the film. There was an exhibition of black and white photographs of the Lodz ghetto at the Side Gallery in Newcastle in 2011 — had I not seen that I would have found some of the things portrayed in the film unbelievable. The film is a black and white movie in colour.

Hattersley’s England, Newby’s Ireland

John — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:50:52 +0000

One might almost be put off a book called “In Search of England” which adds, on the front cover “Gloriously Uplifting: Daily Mail”. However, as the author is Roy Hattersley, it seemed unlikely that there would be much in the way of jingoistic diatribes, and, indeed, there are none. Hattersley, brought up in a hilly suburb of Sheffield, a Labour Minister, and long-time columnist for various newspapers (including the above-mentioned rag) is an unashamed conservative with a small c. His book, which is a collection of his newspaper pieces, organised by theme, is a loving celebration of England, and even more particularly, of Yorkshire. And, like me, he thinks wind-farms are things of beauty, just as the great railway viaducts are, which enhance the countryside, rather than destroy it.

Eric Newby, on the other hand, doesn’t so much celebrate “Round Ireland in Low Gear” as endure it. There are moments when he glories in a view, a sunset, a ruin, an excellent, if eccentric, B & B, but the overall impression is that Ireland in 1986 suffered continuous gales, bearing with them rain, sleet and snow, at almost any time of the year. Why Newby and his wife organised all their bicycling to head westward, given the prevailing winds, is a mystery. Ireland’s many pubs are mentioned, but every time they find one which is both open and serves food, it seems a miracle. They are clearly masochists, the Newbys, since they chose November , January, April and October for the bulk of their adventures, although June seems, if less windy, as wet and more foggy. And for all the descriptions of towers and demesnes and places of pilgrimage along the way, none of it makes me want to take my bike and see them for myself. But I think I’ll go back to “The Great Red Train Ride,” if only to see if Newby’s vision is equally bleak across Siberia.

Repossessing Possession

John — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:19:46 +0000

Radio 4 is doing A.S. Byattt’s “Possession” over 3 weeks in dramatised 15-minute segments. It’s pretty good, and captures the story-line of the original very well. I can see why the adaptor has provided a sort 0f frame of Roland and Maud looking back on the events and how they felt about them, and that works, though there are also some added lines of dialogue for various characters which don’t seem necessary either in moving the plot forward or establishing character. Compared to the book (which I have just re-read) the relationship between Roland and Maud always seems more cordial but the radio version also brings out much more clearly the parallels between the romance of Randolph Ash and Cristabel LaMotte and that of Roland and Maud. For several episodes, until I checked, I thought the director was doing what is often done in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and having the two parallel couples played by the same actors. But no. Of the other parts, I particularly liked Val’s tone of whiny dissatisfaction and Leonora’s brash transatlantic academic feminism.

A Poetic Late Flowering

John — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:04:56 +0000

Michael Hildred’s poetry book “Late Flowering”, illustrated by the author, ranges more or less chronologically through his life experiences, from childhood in Selby during the war to living, still in Yorkshire, in the 21st century. I’m familiar with Michael’s dramatic style of reading aloud, often long poems from memory, and I do wonder how some of these appear on the page to someone not familiar with his readings. In a way, I can answer my own question, because I was particularly struck, and moved, by four poems which I have never heard him perform: “I Didn’t twig,” “Blackbird”, “Deep Scan” and “Another Place”. The first two of these are very personal, about devastating loss, but approached so obliquely that only at the end of the poem is the true force of emotion revealed.

www.stairwellbooks.co.uk

Back to Naipaul

John — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:48:52 +0000

V.S. Naipaul’s “A Bend in the River” was first published in 1979 and I must have first read it soon after it came out in Penguin in 1980. It’s a tale of post-colonial Africa, set somewhere deep in the interior of the continent, in a town which acquired a veneer of western civilisation during the colonial era (French, probably). Re-reading it now, having observed, at a distance and through the pages of the press, a further 30 years of African history, I am impressed by how comprehensively Naipaul dramatised the stages, the stresses, the ethnic tensions of emergent countries whose peoples often have nothing in common but the fact that they exist within lines drawn on a map by the colonial powers. The narrator is an ethnic asian, a minority amongst non-African minorities. As a trader he serves a purpose for the African community within which he works, but he is not part of the new Africa, for all his family’s history. He requires a new identity, at the same time as Africa is in turmoil around him, and for him, as, it seems, for all non-natives, it has to be found outside Africa.

Vermeer in Cambridge

John — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:48:55 +0000

It’s a cosy little exhibition at the Fitzwilliam, and free !! What it does, rather than show off lots of Vermeer’s paintings of women (there are a few) is set Vermeer in context, his portraits in context, the detail and the meaning in context. Really exciting to see so many Dutch interiors (mostly) of the 1600s, and appreciate the number and variety of artists working at the time. And who knew peeling apples was going to be such a popular subject ?

Aside from that, an amble round some of Cambridge’s cloistered colleges and narrow lanes, and an atmospheric late afternoon visit to King’s College Chapel.

Two Theatres

John — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 17:05:01 +0000

Way back in the 60s we used to watch a TV psudo-Victorian music hall programme from the Leeds City Varieties theatre — compered, if I remember right, by Leonard Sachs. 50 years on, first visit. It’s a long and narrow shoe-box of a theatre but it presented June Tabor and the Oyster Band very nicely. Good to hear new material they have done together, as well as some from their collaboration 21 years ago. On the whole, I prefer Tabor with her usual accompanist, Huw Williams, but this was an enjoyable folk rock evening, and the Oyster Band were great — “The Bells of Rhymney” stands out.

Beforehand, we visited The Swan, central Leeds’ little gem of a tucked away pub, also long and narrow, but with a good range of real ale, including a tasty little Leeds Brewery blonde.

By contrast, York Theatre Royal is expansive, hosting Northern Broadsides in Blake Morrison’s “We Are Three Sisters”, the Brontes, their living room an oasis amidst the constantly storm-wracked moorland and wretched living conditions of Haworth. Mor than a nod to Chekov, obviously, but this stands on its own. There’s isolation and sadness at the heart of it, for sure, and lurking there too is the theory that great artists need to suffer in some way, to produce their art. Yet for all their dark imaginations, the sisters tell themselves that they are often happy, and Branwell, their brother, shows that talent can be extinguished by misery as well as fostered by it. Most sad is the doctor, lonely, drunk, with no great ability as a doctor or anything else, who just suffers. A good, but not great play, but excellently acted, though it’s a pity Barrie Rutter seems to play the same character in every production these days, only the clothes are different.

Walk !

John — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:30:09 +0000

Walk ! is the title of a new book by Colin Speakman whose poetry book I mentioned in a post on 17 September this year. Colin is an occasional poet but spends much more time promoting walking and the enjoyment of the countryside on foot, preferably by using public transport to get there.

Rather lazily, I suppose, I had assumed that our heritage of footpaths and bridleways had somehow survived through the ages with any disputes being resolved locally. I knew about big events like the Kinder Scout trespass but hadn’t realised in any detail the long struggle through the 19th and 20th centuries to maintain the historic network. So Colin’s book was an eyeopener in many ways, not least the chapters on the Romantics and their heirs. Distant though he may be in time, his poetic prose in this, and of course the poems in his book, “Dune Fox” make him one of their descendants too. The book deserves to be widely read by the non-converted.