keep a record of interesting things I have read

This is an American novel with a slow plod through a sleepy town in the South and a cantering ride through New York and the sleaze-pit media, and very skilfully the writer drives these mismatched horses to pull along one narrative about someone who really doesn’t know who she is, but, through illness mainly, she stops running away and finds out very painfully who she is before it’s too late. So there’s a mystery at the heart of this story and it works very well – you feel for the characters and you want to find out what happened.

there are also themes – one comes as a surprise so I won’t say – and the continuing loss of integrity in the news media is another. I recommend this author, perhaps not for heavy-duty reading but certainly for a good story, well-told.

I got 2 collections of Betjeman’s writing for Christmas and I enjoyed them very much. In fact, I think the Betjeman started me reading for pleasure again. He is keen on Architecture and buildings – the built environment – it is very strange to read him on the prospect of Waterloo bridge being rebuilt when it now seems to have been there forever – but the old one was apparently better – and it is quite marvellous to read him telling what it’s like to go to the Festival of Britain and his impressions of the brand new Festival theatre, for example – just like a time machine. He also raves about his favourite churches and tells you what to look for in a church so that you can share his enthusiasm – and I immediately wanted to draw up a list of must-visit churches – including one in Swindon, for Goodness sake, just to see if that quality he raves about is still there.

He describes his young days in Oxford and other experiences in a very charming and friendly way. He would have been such a pleasure to know, one thinks, but perhaps it’s all in the writing: he puts himself out to be charming in a way that people don’t bother about any more, it’s one of the ways that the between-war generation seems to have had, a sort of ability to fit in anywhere and a willingness to be entertaining, that we miss so much these days.

Alan Bennett is not so good at being charming, he values being dry far more: not wasting words. But he has some things in common with Betjeman; they both write about poets they admire, and about Oxford, and they are both interested in visiting churches.
But some of Bennett’s Untold Stories are dull diary entries, and this put me off for a while. When he writes for an audience he writes to entertain and he’s very very good.

Ok I didn’t read this. I went to see it at the theatre. If you’re like me, all you know about this book is that there is a truly appalling school – Dotheboys Hall – run by a cruel schoolmaster called Wackford Squeers – which the young Nicholas goes to work at for a pittance as a teacher’s assistant, and from there he rescues a boy called Smike.

In fact, Smike is not a boy but a young man with brain damage. In this production he is most movingly played with gestures sympomatic of great emotional distress and fear. He is played by David Dawson, one of the stars of the show (though everyone in it is brilliant).

Nicholas rescues Smike and together they join a troupe of “theatricals”. There is no greater contrast between the joyful showing off of the drama folk and the dingy and sordid lives of the Squeers family, but Mrs Squeers and the dramatic matron are played by the one and same actress – Veronica Roberts – who is just fantastic. This was the funniest act of the play. In Victorian theatre everyone was given to stagy gestures and hamming it up, and the company goes for it with gusto, without parodying. The Victorians were also keen to improve on Shakespeare. Yes, the end of Romeo and Juliet is full of surprises. Oh, how we laughed.

Nicholas fears for his mother and sister in London and returns there.

Meanwhile his sister has found employment in a milliner’s, and has been sacked by the same most unjustly, and attracted the unwanted attentions of a bunch of Hooray Henries who don’t understand the word no. She is in despair. Nicholas returns to defend her. The plot thickens and darkens.

Nicholas finally finds employment (and a lucky break) with the brothers Cheeryble, and from then on the plot begins to turn the corner and you know that all will end well.

This show takes from 2.30 to 10.30 all told, though of course there are breaks in which to ingest beverages, and in our case, pizza and ice cream. It is quite exhausting as you have to concentrate madly on all the twists and turns, and then there is tragedy involved. But the company works so hard! They all have about 4 speaking parts and in the betweentimes they are waiters and milliners and Londoners. They are really never off for longer than it takes to change their headgear. At the end they all came on and I couldn’t believe how few of them there were!! The cast is absolutely amazing. Nicholas (Daniel Weyman)is particularly good because he draws the eye. If you are short-sighted he looks a bit like David Tennant – but his face is much longer.

I urge you all to order tickets for the London run.

Now here is a really interesting book. It’s a history book about the early church, which makes it sound boring, but it is so well written I really didn’t want to finish it. The life of St Patrick – and his personality – made a strong impression on me. His influence is so massive I’m surprised more people don’t know about him.

The Irish had oral sagas before Patrick, but he brought literacy to Ireland, and the effect of that was huge. The early Christians often embraced monastic lives and spent a proportion of their time copying manuscripts. They were interested in all kinds of literature – secular and pagan as well as Christian writings. The Latin writing that has reached us has come down through that route – because in Europe the Visigoths and other tribes that succeeded the Romans in power didn’t save books – they destroyed them. The monks gradually spread to Iona, and Lindisfarne and to Gaul and Italy, taking books with them. Thus did the Irish save civilization – through being on the edge of it.

Irish characteristics have been very consistent over the centuries and I hope they do not change, now that the country is more urban and more wealthy and less religious.

This is a biography of the MacDonald girls. Their father was a Victorian Methodist Minister and church-going featured very large in their childhoods -
but they were quite waspish and distinct personalities. Georgie married Edward Burne Jones, and their marriage, at first, seems to have been a real meeting of minds. What happened later tested Georgie’s character but she was a person who believed in saying little and getting on with life. Really she is the heroine of the book because her own words are often quoted and seem eloquent, honest and sensitive. She was a great friend of William Morris who had a very unhappy marriage.
Louie married an ironmaster called Baldwin and became sickly, though she recovered later on. They became wealthier and wealthier, though Alfred seems to have been a most public-minded and dutiful servant of the public. Her son Stanley was to become Prime Minister.
Alice met a man of modest means called Lockwood Kipling by Lake Rudyard, and they had a son they called … damn now I’ve forgotten. They also had a daughter who had a much less fortunate fate.
Agnes married a man called Edward Poynter who became director of the National Gallery and President of the Royal Academy.

You have to read it all the way to the end when you are reading all about the lives of the grandchildren! So it takes you through a good 70 years of history, and one feels the tenor of life changing along the way and becoming modern…

The book seems to have a trajectory, a sort of rise towards fame and fortune and then a fall. It is a very interesting history book, and it made me decide that I must at last read the McCarthy biography of Morris, and I have got it from Amazon (what a boon and a blessing that you can get used books from Amazon) and will read that really soon.