That Sweet City: Visions of Oxford

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I have been meaning to write about That Sweet City: Visions of Oxford by John Elinger and Katherine Shock for ages – ever since I was kindly given a copy by Signal Books in May – but somehow it hasn’t happened before today, for which I can only apologise.  But it is a timeless book, so a few months here or there shouldn’t make much difference.  It’s a clever mixture of art book, guide book, poetry volume, and a celebration of Oxford.

Full disclosure time: I have known Kathy all my life, as she is my Mum’s best friend from school, and my first trips to Oxford were to the house in North Oxford where Kathy and her family have lived as long as I have known them.  Little did we think, back then, that I would eventually call Oxford home too – for nine years now – and, if I do not have Kathy’s familiarity with the city yet, I certainly share her love of it.

And, as long as I have known Kathy, I have known that she is an artist.  I remember Mum, Kathy, and their respective children (including me) sitting by a river bank and painting the view, with varying levels of success – and I’ve had the privilege of seeing examples of Kathy’s work for many years, and would recognise her work anywhere.

But it is not just partisanship which makes me say that the illustrations are the best part of this book – I’ve included a couple in the post, apologies for wonky camerawork.  I certainly don’t know how to write art criticism, but I will say that Kathy’s watercolours have a wonderful vitality – sprightliness, even – which brings stone walls alive just as much as the river.  Look at this lovely view into Worcester College (which is, in my very subjective ordering of Most Beautiful Colleges, in at no.4, after Magdalen, New, and Corpus Christi):

I want to keep using variations of the word ‘liveliness’, as that is what I think Kathy does best.  There are hundreds and thousands of pictures of Oxford out there, whether postcards or paintings or sketches or photographs, and so any artist turning once more to these much-depicted places must bring something new, and for me, Kathy does that through this liveliness.  Is it the not-quite-straight lines, or the dashes of colour which are graphic rather than precise?  I don’t know, I haven’t the expertise to judge, but I know that it works.
I attended the launch night, back in May, where poems were read brilliantly by Rohan McCullough, and learnt a bit about the process behind the book.  Apparently John Elinger’s poems were written first, and then Kathy painted scenes to go alongside them.  After some success with postcard series in this line, they decided to go a step further and put together a book, published beautifully by Signal Books – and it is, incidentally, exceptionally well produced, a really lovely object.
So, the poems.  Well, you know that I struggle with poetry, and I have to admit that it was a while before I ‘got into’ these.  Apparently the order in the book pretty much reflects the order in which they were written, which didn’t surprise me, as they definitely improve,  A great deal of the poetry is in a form which, though seeming to follow a rhyme scheme on the page, uses enjambment so much that, when read, it becomes much more like prose.  Indeed, the earliest poems in the book are more or less a paean to enjambment. (For those who took their GCSE English a long time ago, definition of enjambment here!)  Of course, it’s a perfectly valid technique, but I felt it was rather overused.  (And, on a personal note, I found the recurrent jabs at the church in Oxford a little unnecessary…)  Having said all this, when Rohan read a few of them, they came to life wonderfully – so perhaps a good orator is what is needed.
But, as I say, they improved.  This was my favourite poem in the collection – I thought it was structured rather cleverly.
I haven’t properly mentioned the clever way in which the poems and paintings are arranged yet – they follow various suggested walks around Oxford, which is where the guidebook bit comes in.  There is a map at the beginning of each section, and then seven places to stop off and see along the way – I think it would be a very fun way to take yourself around Oxford (some of the walks are pretty long, so it’s not just a case of walking down the High Street) with sites to match up to the paintings, and poems to read to oneself or aloud when one gets there.  These walks are cleverly chosen, and far more interesting than the usual tour guide traipse through the biggest colleges and (Heaven preserve us) the places where Harry Potter was filmed.
For instance, how many people see the unprepossessing exit near the railway station, and follow the beautiful canal along to this bridge?  (I took the photo a while ago… I *think* this is relatively near the railway station, apologies if not.)  It’s another of my favourite illustrations.

If you’re visiting Oxford, That Sweet City is available in a few of the bookshops – if you want to imagine you’re visiting Oxford from afar, you won’t be able to follow the walks in person (of course) but it’s the next best thing.  Indeed, what fun it would be to get to know and love these pictures – and then, when you finally come to Oxford, match them up with the real places!

Six Fools and a Fairy – Mary Essex

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I forgot to take a photo…
This one is from here,
where you can buy a copy

You may remember that, back in November 2011, I wrote about Mary Essex’s The Amorous Bicycle, which was very witty and fun and delightfully middlebrow – and I puzzled over the fact that Essex (in fact Ursula Bloom) had managed to write so many novels (over 500) and still put out quality.  Sometime before that, Jodie (known to us as Geranium Cat) kindly sent me her copy of Six Fools and a Fairy (1948), saying that she’d tried it a couple of times and couldn’t get into it… fast forward a couple of years, and my Reading Presently project has propelled me into finally getting it down from my shelves.  How would I find it compared to The Amorous Bicycle and another Essex novel I’d loved, Tea Is So Intoxicating?

Well, I’m afraid it’s not as good… That sounds like a very ungrateful way to start a Reading Presently review, so I shall also say that it was a fun read, and just what I wanted for relaxing in the evenings after working away ferociously on my thesis, but it’s an idea which doesn’t quite get off the ground.

And that idea is a school reunion where each of the six men recounts a story, relating to each course, about… well, I’ll let Charles Delamere explain:

“I should enjoy it immensely if we each told our own story.  About the woman, the one woman who meant something out of the rut to us.  The one each of us remembers most forcefully.”
The courses are Consomme Paysanne, Sole a la bonne femme, Vol-au-vent, Roast Lamb, Gooseberry fool, and Angels on horseback.  Give or take a few accents that I’m too lazy to find.  I’ll confess, I was already unsure about how things would go when this premise was set up.  Surely it would lead to a great deal of disjointedness?

It’s essentially a series of short stories, each of which relate all-too-appropriately to the course in question, and each of which recounts a lost love.  At one point a character makes a caustic reference to the stereotypical heroes and heroines of an Ethel M. Dell novel, but Essex isn’t far behind – her heroes aren’t swarthy silent types, but they do all fall into much the same mould as each other.  I usually hate the criticism that “He can’t write women” or “She can’t write men”, because it is (usually) silly and reductive, suggesting there are only two types of people – but Essex does seem, in Six Fools and a Fairy, to be under the impression that all men fall in love instantly, are proud, and are quite keen to hop into bed as soon as poss.  And throw into that stereotype that they’re all generally a bit hopeless.  She spends a while delineating her characters at the beginning, but it’s pretty impossible to tell the difference between them when they start talking.

Each chapter tells a difference character’s story, only occasionally returning to reunion dinner, and since they have only about thirty pages to do, we whip through fairly stereotypical tales of misadventure and the-ones-that-got-away without building the characters up enough for the reader to care.  And then the story is over, and we’re onto the next.  The chapters aren’t even structured as anecdotes, but instead are shown through an omniscient narrator.  It’s all a little bit bewildering and unnecessary.

Mary Essex is certainly an engaging writer, though, and it’s easy enough to whip through the chapters.  She has that ability to write a page-turner, even if (once turned) one has no particular wish to mull over what one has read.  For a novelist renowned chiefly now for romance literature, though, this book – the first of the three I’ve read which prioritises romance – is surprisingly less interesting than Tea Is So Intoxicating and The Amorous Bicycle, which are about gossipy villagers and amusing incidents.  For wit has absented itself from Six Fools and a Fairy, creeping only into the odd line, then slinking out again quickly.

So, diverting enough for a quick read, if one doesn’t want to feel at all challenged or invested.  But while her other novels made me think she was approaching the middlebrow joys of Richmal Crompton or even E.M. Delafield, had I read Six Fools and a Fairy first, I’d never have bothered with another.  Thanks very much for giving me a copy, Jodie, but ultimately I’m not too far from your assessment of it – and I think I’ll be passing it on again.

Great British Bake Off: Series Four: Episode Three

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Apologies for the delay in posting this recap, folks!  I was halfway through it last night when iPlayer stopped working, and then my internet stopped working altogether.  But at least it sets a precedent for me being a bit tardy with these… think of it as delayed gratification, k?

Last week: the bakers baked bread, Paul was in his element, and a lady whose name I have already forgotten seemed to believe that an ordinary loaf qualified as a showstopper, and thought that putting tomatoes on top qualified as ‘a twist’.  Mary did her I’m-not-angry-I’m-just-disappointed face, and Paul did his I’m-not-disappointed-I’m-just-angry face.  Meanwhile, I got the wrong James Bond, apparently – it’s Roger Moore who was fond of the raised eyebrow and the I’m-glad-you-dropped-in punnery, not Sean Connery, so here is Mary again with the right Bond comparison.

That’s Moore like it.  Ahahahaha.  Sorry.

This week: desserts!  Much more exciting than bread.  If I know anything about the Great British Bake Off – and I’ve spent more time watching it than I have in all the world’s art galleries combined – then I’m expecting a number of references to ‘just desserts’.  But I have to say that Mel and Sue start the show off in fine fettle, with mention of ‘stressed’ being the word ‘desserts’ backwards.  That’s cleverer wordplay than “It’s a trifle difficult” or “Creme patisserNO, morelike”.  And Mel looks rightfully pleased with herself.

Sue’s Eric Morecambe tribute act continues apace.

The bakers file in across The Bridge, which is fast becoming my favourite bridge in all of fact and fiction (take THAT bridges of Madison County, battle of Stanford Bridge, Bridge[t] Jones) and share their thoughts about dessert week.  Christine is pretty excited about it all, while Ruby Tearday cheerfully says that, having been Star Baker last week, “it’s only going to go downhill.”  Ali looks ready for a baking breakdown and, in the nicest possible way, I can’t WAIT.

And it would be remiss of me to go any further without mentioning Mary’s luminous yellow jacket.  Is she at the forefront of Fashion for the Older Woman, or has she recently been shimmying up a telegraph pole to have a quick look at the telephone wires?  You decide.

So, the signature bake is trifle – and it turns out that my pun klaxon has taken on prophetic ability, as we instantly get a ‘trifle’ pun.  I’m already a bit nonplussed by this choice of challenge, to be honest, because I wouldn’t have thought you could go far wrong with a trifle (and hadn’t thought they involved all that much baking) but I’m ready and willing to be proved wrong.  Mel solemnly intones that this is the first time the baker have been asked to multi-task, which can’t possibly be true, and Beca already seems to be losing it.

Sue talks about ‘a base of lady fingers’, and I can hear her physically restraining herself from making a pun, possibly because it would wander into the lewd.  Ali claims never to have heard the word ‘trifle’ before, or to recognise any one of the ingredients or utensils in front of him, or to know where he is or how he got there.  However he’s making a raspberry and coconut trifle, which is always a wonderful flavour combination, so good luck to him.

I’m intensely relieved to discover that Glen does have a home to go to after all (although it looks suspiciously like a show home on a housing estate, and he’ll probably be asked to leave in the next ten minutes.)  Here he is, having whipped up a croquembouche…

“You’ll note that this room is dual aspect…
sir, SIR, I MUST ask you to leave the kitchen alone.”

…but more importantly, here is his adorable dog.

But there is strong competition for most adorable thing – OFFICIAL ANDREX PUPPY MOST ADORABLE MARY BERRY MOMENT – in Mary’s face when Glen tells her he’s using her ‘flavour combination but not her recipe’.

Incidentally, this face is every argument you’d ever need against Botox.

Since that flavour combination is ‘raspberry and almond’, I remain unconvinced that anybody is pushing the boat out.  Where is whatshername from two years ago, who insisted on adding hyacinth branches or diced yak to the most innocuous of dishes?  The nearest we get is Una Stubbs, who is apparently disregarding the challenge altogether and making a lemon Swiss roll.

And giving me kitchen envy.

She is also seemingly a closet alcoholic, and has hidden cointreau in a spray bottle.  She swiftly pretends that it is connected to her baking (hiding her bottle of vodka in the oven) and Paul, Mel, and Mary all spray it into their mouths – giving us an honourable mention for OFFICIAL ANDREX PUPPY MOST ADORABLE MARY BERRY MOMENT, when Mary gives a little jump of surprise at the aftertaste.

We leave Una Stubbs to her inevitable intervention (wouldn’t Inevitable Intervention be a great name for a band?  Noting it down…) and head over to a battle of titanic proportions.  Here’s an antagonism waiting to brew.

“I’m not a big fan of jelly. It’s just not my cup of tea.”

“I’m sorry, you can’t have a trifle without jelly.”

It’s about to get REAL in here, folks.

Oh, and I love Beca for saying that, in West Wales, they have Sunday roast “pretty much every day of the week”.

There still isn’t really very much to say about making trifle, since it seems to consist almost entirely of bits they would normally make at the last minute to shove on top of their more ambitious creations (I’m always impressed by how these bakers make jam at the drop of a hat, while it would take me most of a week) so let’s leave them to it.  It gives me a moment to say that, far from being Brend 2, Howard is a complete sweetie and I love him.  He may be from the combined creative vision of Alan Bennett and Woody Allen, but neither of them could have dreamt up the wonderful vision of him jogging.

If I knew how to make a GIF, I would.  I don’t.

Kimberley update: her hobby is salsa dancing.  NO, Kimberley, NO.  You need a hobby which makes you look less cool.  Take a leaf out of my book – my hobby is watching reality television and writing about it on the internet.

It’s like salsa dancing, only you sit alone in your room and don’t move.

Words of wisdom from Ali: “Nobody likes a soggy macaroon.”  Comment in the comment section if you do!

The intro promised us ‘the first ever baking burglary” – I’d assumed that Christine would swipe Mary’s jacket – but in fact it is Una Stubbs stealing from Howard!  She accidentally takes his custard – and he is FILLED WITH RAGE.

Haunting.

The trifles are judged, and they all look… like trifles.  Although I have to put in a good word for Ruby Tearday’s impressive tropical-themed trifle, complete with palm tree.

Mary and Paul struggle to say very much to everyone – Mary does say to someone “It’s a bit like a cake with cream and fruit on top of it”, which is precisely the definition they’ve given us of trifle – so we get half-hearted comments about bowls being too full, or flavours being overpowering.  And it turns out that Howard’s custard was better than Una Stubbs’s, so her Grand Larceny was either very canny, or… not.

More importantly… is that a rival bridge I spy?  Don’t even think about it, bridge!

I have no idea what he was saying.
I was too distracted by the bridge.

TRIFLE HISTORY!

THANKS TRIFLE HISTORY!

The second challenge is… floating islands, or, umm, whatever that was in French.  Here is the one Mary (probably didn’t) make earlier, and it looks delicious:

I’m also pretty sure Tina Turner had the hairstyle in the ’80s.

I haven’t quite grasped what floating islands are, but it seems to involve poaching meringue in milk.  I’ve made plenty of meringues in my time, but I’ve never done this…  Frances claims that she’s in ‘meringue no-man’s-land’, which is presumably the latest spin-off of Foyle’s War. It has to be conceded that they don’t look very attractive at the moment.  Sue holds up Howard’s custard (see fig.1) and says that it looks like a metaphor for climate change.

Er, fig.1.  Why not?

To me it looks more like a metaphor for cauliflower cheese, but sure.

Then they start making spun sugar…

I’m always relieved when they turn to something that I have done before, because then I can assess how over the top the programme is being about difficulty levels.  Spun sugar is pretty easy, but you wouldn’t guess that from the interviews we have as the cameraman dashes from panicked baker to panicked baker.  “I don’t what temperature it should be!” cries one; “I don’t know how to get the shape!” cries another.  Ali, of course, claims never to have heard of sugar before.

Mary and Paul step up to the table of floating islands, and they certainly differ quite a lot in appearance.

This is rather how I envisage a Waitrose-sponsored zombie drama.

In last place, for this challenge, is a man whose name I still don’t know.  I’d forgotten he was there.  The top three are Ruby Tearday, Rob (who has been rather quiet this week), and in first place is Glen.  Now that he’s been let out of the school store cupboard, he’s going places.

In the who-might-be-going-home bit, we get the inevitable custardy/custody joke – but apparently Mary hasn’t heard it before, as she dissolves into hysterics.  Was I premature in awarding the OFFICIAL ANDREX PUPPY MOST ADORABLE MARY BERRY MOMENT?  We’ll never know.

Finally, we have the showstopper challenge!   I miss what it is they’re making at first, and discover quite how vague everything they say actually is.  Lots of bakers saying how tricky it will be, and Paul mentioning that he requires perfection, while Mary makes sympathetic noises without (so far as I can tell) forming complete sentences at all.  Maybe they film a series’ worth of these segments at the beginning of August, and just intersperse them later?

It turns out that they’re making petits-four.  And it’s at this point that iPlayer starts playing up.  So I’m off to bed, and will come back to this recap tomorrow, if iPlayer is behaving…

Seamless, no?

Well, petits-fours are certainly rather trickier than trifle, and I am completely lost with almost everything they say – mostly because everything is in French.

Christine is thrilled that her petits-fours are going to be ‘sickly’ (hmm) but I am impressed with her husband, who has made her a little wooden implement especially for shaping them.

Una Stubbs, however, is heading for disaster – because she’s using edible flowers and rose.  Has anybody ever used flowers or rose without the judges saying that the end result tastes too much of flowers or rose?  Well, perhaps she’ll prove us all wrong.

But at least almost all those words are in English.

Ruby Tearday confesses that she’ll be winging it, and Paul (much like Shania Twain before him) implies that That Don’t Impress Me Much.  As ever, when at a loss, Mel talks in a voiceover about the perils of getting an even bake.  It’s like an ‘umm’ to her; I’m not even sure she knows she’s doing it.

Frances.  Ah, Frances.  You’ve been oddly quiet this week, and I assumed you might be saving yourself for the Showstopper Challenge – and you’ve not let us down.  “I’m doing my petits-fours inspired by Tchaikovsky’s The Nut Cracker ballet.”  Oh, of course you are, Frances.  I assume each petits-fours will function as a working violin.

Er, spoilers. Here’s what they’ll look like.

And Howard is making savoury petits-fours, based on things you might have at the end of a meal.  One inspired by coffee, and the other “based on cheesy biscuits.  It’s essentially like a cheesy biscuit.”  You know how sometimes the artist’s inspiration is hidden deep within their creation, unknowable to the casual observer?  This isn’t one of those times.  Mary Berry Reaction Shot Time, I do believe.

Una Stubbs has swerved past Ali on the inside track as the one most likely to have a meltdown – she clearly hasn’t recovered from the theft incident, and is getting pretty distraught about her fluting.

“I’ve lost my fluting,” she says.

I’ve never seen Cathy Come Home, but I can’t imagine it matches this for anguish.  Elsewhere in the tent, impressive things are happening with petits-fours – just look at these!

Kimberley’s, btw.

It’s a mistake, I’ve realised, to recap before dinner rather than after it.  As someone who makes nice cakes writ large but is useless with fiddly bits, I am filled with envy of all these bakers.  So, that’s coveting, envy, and (as with every moment of my life) sloth, so 3/7 Deadly Sins.  We’d best fast forward to my favourites…

Christine gets an “Mmm, that’s scrummy” from Mary, while Ruby gets “THAT’S a bit of alright”.  Mary.  Beca – who might be my favourite baker now – does fantastically well in this challenge, and certainly doesn’t hold back from arm-waving, fringe-blowing, and exclamations of joy – while Una Stubbs gurns in misery in the background.

There is a moment in the deliberation section where Sue and Mel riff on the idea of Paul and Mary marrying.  It’s every bit as wonderful as you’d imagine.  You wouldn’t get that on the French version, stuffy pompous lady who wrote this article.

Anyway, winners and losers below the jump…
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Star Baker is…

Christine! Hurray!

but going home is…

Two people!  That was rather a surprise, but if it had to be two, those are – sadly – the two.  Mark interviews that, if he hadn’t been told he was going home, he’d have questioned the decision, while Una Stubbs – no, for this last time, Deborah – laughs about her ‘cascade of misery’.  Well, if you don’t laugh, you respond in an appropriate manner.

Next week – pies and tarts!  Hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s recap, and I’ll see y’all then.

A Century of Books: 2014

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Congratulations to Thomas at My Porch who has finished his Century of Books!  I know that he found it tough going at times, and I’m delighted that another person has joined Claire and me at the finish line – is anyone else still going?

For those who don’t know, A Century of Books is a challenge where you read one book for every year of the 20th century, in as much time as (and in whatever order) you choose.  Claire and I set out to do it in a year, and both completed our century in 2012 (you can read our lists here and here).  I also added in the proviso that I’d review them all, which Claire did too.

And this is advance warning that we’ll both be doing A Century of Books again in 2014!  I’m going to aim to complete in a year again, but I hope others will join in on whatever scheme they set out for themselves.  It’s such a fun challenge – in fact, it’s the anti-challenge challenge, because (for the first nine or ten months anyway) I didn’t even notice I was doing a challenge, since I could just fill in books as I went along in my normal reading patterns.  It’s also incredibly satisfying to look back at the completed list, and see a (very subjective and selective) overview of the century.

Hope you’re interested in participating in 2014!

Mr. Skeffington – Elizabeth von Arnim

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A couple of times I have had the pleasure of staying with bloggers, who have kindly put me up (and put up with me) when I’ve needed a bed to crash in while in London.  One of those times I stayed chez Rachel/Book Snob, which was lovely – and even lovelier was that she sent me away with Mr. Skeffington (1940) by Elizabeth von Arnim as a present.  (I did give her a book to say thank you for having me, I should perhaps add, if I ever want bloggers to let me stay with them again.)

Elizabeth von Arnim is one of the most varied writers I’ve read, and there is little to link (say) the fairytale niceness of The Enchanted April with the deliciously biting satire of The Caravaners.  And then there is my current favourite, Christopher and Columbus, which has elements of both.  Where would Mr. Skeffington fit into the von Arnim spectrum?  Well, it turns out I’ve now read one of her more sombre, reflective novels… and, indeed, her last.

The novel is called Mr. Skeffington, but the central character is his ex-wife Lady Skeffington (Fanny to her friends) who divorced him over his affairs when she was still in her twenties, and is now approaching the grand old age of fifty.  In order to get on board with the novel, we have to accept the premise that fifty is terrifyingly old (although, since von Arnim was in her mid-seventies when she wrote the novel, she ought to have known better.)  But for Fanny it is a dreaded landmark, principally because – having been a renowned beauty all her life – a recent illness has taken her beauty from her, and quite a lot of her hair, and a tactless doctor tells her that she may soon be an eyesore.

An eyesore?  Was he suggesting that she was an eyesore?  She, Fanny Skeffington, for years almost the most beautiful person everywhere, and for about five glorious years quite the most beautiful person anywhere?  She?  When the faces of the very strangers she passed in the street lit up when they saw her coming?  She, Noble, lovely little Fanny, as poor Jim Conderley used to say, gazing at her fondly – quoting, she supposed; and nobody quoted things like that to eyesores.
I’ve got to say, reading Mr. Skeffington made me quite grateful that I have never been handsome – it must be very difficult to lose something like that, but especially so for Fanny, who doesn’t have many other character traits to offer – or, at least, hasn’t had to rely on them.

But that isn’t all.  The reason she consults the doctor in the first place is because she keeps having hallucinations of Job Skeffington, her estranged husband.  She can’t think why, since she has barely thought of him for years and years… but he won’t stop appearing before her eyes.

And then the novel takes us back through the men who have courted her since her divorce.  The novel is oh-so-chaste, so none of them have done more than fling themselves adoringly at her feet, and she has done little than laugh politely and ignore them – but she determines to go and find them, to make herself feel young and beautiful again, and reassure herself that she isn’t an eyesore.

So, in succession we see Fanny visit… New College, Oxford, to see an undergraduate who was recently (and somewhat inappropriately) besotted with her – only to see him busy with a much younger woman.  Then off to an older man who once loved her deeply, and still cherishes the letter she writes to him, but is shocked by her appearance after a decade or two (while she, in turn, is shocked by his) – and he, after all, is married to a young woman by now.  And then off to a vicar, living with his sister, who loved her when he was but a promising young curate, and now lives abstemiously on starvation rations.  And possibly more.

It’s an interesting conceit for a novel, but it does end up making everything feel rather disjointed, somehow.  Somehow the different meetings don’t hold together, so Mr. Skeffington is more like a series of similar short stories than a single narrative – and, although there are some interesting or delightful characters (I particularly enjoyed the vicar’s sister, who remained certain that Fanny was a prostitute, but steadfastly determined to look after her charitably, when Fanny is mega-rich) they aren’t given the opportunity to grow or impact the novel much.

And the end… well, I shan’t give it away, but it is so emphatically a tribute to a famous Victorian novel that, if it isn’t deliberate, it’s plagiarism.

This is Elizabeth von Arnim, so of course the novel is good – she is always an excellent writer – but I think it might be a novel I’d be better off reading in about fifty years’ time.  Perhaps then it would feel like a paean to youth and a empathetic mixture of nostalgia and regret… but, though I enjoyed it, and appreciated von Arnim’s writing, I missed the raucous humour of her satires.  I’ve now encountered another facet of von Arnim’s myriad writing talents… and I’m not sure I’m quite ready for it.

The Queen and I – Sue Townsend

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Following on from The Restraint of Beasts, here is another gift book (from my lovely ex-colleagues at OUP), another comic book, another one which seems like it might have a message hiding in there somewhere… but entirely different.  Knowing how much I love, admire, and respect Queen Elizabeth II, my colleagues got me (amongst other Queen-related things) The Queen and I (1992) by Sue Townsend, and I wolfed it down in a day or two.

The premise of The Queen and I is something that makes me Royalist blood run cold – a politician called Jack Barker uses subliminal pictures on television to brainwash the nation into voting his party to power, and his first act is to abolish the monarchy.  (Shudder!)  The Queen and her family are sent off to live on a council estate in Hellebore Close – known locally as Hell Close.  There they must make do with benefits or the pension, with only the possessions they can fit in their tiny houses (most of which end up getting stolen pretty quickly anyway.)  The country rather falls apart with a hopeless leader in charge, but of more interest is seeing how the royals get along without any money and in surroundings which they are far from used to.

And, oh, it is funny!  But more than that, it is believable – not the premise (even if we ever lose our monarchy – Heaven forbid! – it’s unlikely they’d get aggressively shipped off to council houses) but the way in which various members of the Royal family would respond.  Sue Townsend writes very affectionately of the royals; although it’s tricky to work out whether or not she thinks the institution is a good one, she certainly has a lot of respect for certain members of it.  Chief among these is, of course, the Queen.  She behaves exactly as I would expect – that is, she just gets on with it.  Since she spends her life seeing every imaginable culture, habits, and traditions, it’s unlikely that there is anything that could wrong foot her socially.  The one thing she cannot quite get used to (and this is where Townsend’s social critique of Britain comes into play, one suspects) is how little money people are expected to live on, and how inefficient and difficult the system is.  Here she is, chatting with a social worker…

“And what is the current situation regarding your personal finances?” 

“We are penniless.  I have been forced to borrow from my mother; but now my mother is also penniless.  As is my entire family.  I have been forced to rely on the charity of neighbours.  But I cannot continue to do so.  My neighbours are…” The Queen paused. 

“Socially disadvantaged?” supplied Dorkin. 

“No, they are poor,” said the Queen.  “They, like me, lack money.  I would like you, Mr. Dorkin, to give me some money – today, please.  I have no food, no heat and when the electrician goes, I will have no light.” 
But not everybody is so resilient.  Other royals do cope well with the move – Prince Charles is thrilled about getting to some quiet gardening, Princess Anne loves getting out of the limelight, and the Queen Mother (bless her!) finds the whole thing hilarious, so long as she’s got a drink or two next to her.  But Prince Philip takes to his bed and won’t engage at all, Princess Margaret similarly refuses to acknowledge that her situation in life has changed – while Princess Diana is saddened chiefly by the lack of wardrobe space.  It’s quite odd to read a book about the royals set before Diana died – because it is impossible to think of her without that context now.  In 1992, she could still be affectionately mocked as a clothes horse and a flibbertigibbet.  Indeed, remembering how old all the royals were in 1992 and reformulating my view of them is quite tricky, since I was only 7 then, and don’t remember (for instance) Princess Anne’s days as a relative beauty.

As far as social commentary goes, Townsend obviously wants to draw attention to the plight of the poor, in the battle against bureaucracy and out-of-touch officials, but perhaps it doesn’t help her cause that every working-class character is essentially kind and decent.  A few rough diamonds, but they’re all there to help each other at the drop of a hat, issuing generous platitudes when needed and handy at knocking together a makeshift hearse.  Of course, that’s better than making them all selfish, violent thugs or benefits cheats, but it might have been a more effective portrait of a working-class community had the characters and their traits been more varied, as they would be in any other community.

Which is a small quibble with a very clever, very amusing page-turner.  The idea was brilliant, but in other hands it wouldn’t have worked.  I can only agree with the Times review quoted on the back cover: “No other author could imagine this so graphically, demolish the institution so wittily and yet leave the family with its human dignity intact.”

The Restraint of Beasts – Magnus Mills

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Magnus Mills has been hovering around the edges of my reading consciousness for some time, including having read two of his novels – The Maintenance of Headway (good, but didn’t quite work for me) and All Quiet on the Orient Express (much better) – but I’ve always felt that I could really love a Mills novel, given the right novel and the right timing.  Well, about three years ago my then-housemate Mel gave me The Restraint of Beasts (1998) – where better to re-start with Mills than with his first novel?  (N.B. Mel, now that I’ve finally read the book you got me for my birthday in 2010, will you buy me books again?)

Our narrator is anonymous (which I confess I hadn’t noticed until I read the Wikipedia page for the novel) and has just become the foreman of a Scottish fencing company, led by the domineering Donald and contentedly useless Robert.  He is a foreman of a small team – Gang no.3 – which consists of just three people, including himself.  The others are Tam and Rich – inseparable but taciturn, fairly lazy, and undemonstrative.  Having been introduced to his team (and discovering that he is replacing Tam in the foreman position), the narrator and his colleagues are sent off to fix the fence of a local farmer, which has been erected poorly.

If this is all sounding rather dull, then I should let you know – the activities of the heroes (or lack thereof) are determinedly boring.  They put up fences.  They travel to England to do so, and vary the monotony of hammering in posts only with trips to the local pubs, which provide almost no incident, and are generally almost empty.

One of the things studying English for so long has enabled me to do, I hope, is identify how a writer creates certain effects or atmosphere.  I hope Stuck-in-a-Book generally shows that sort of insight into a novel, or at least tries to.  But with Mills and The Restraint of Beasts (which is my favourite of the three I’ve read so far), I am almost entirely unable to say why it works.  Here is a sample paragraph for you…

Their pick-up truck was parked at the other side of the yard.  They’d been sitting in the cab earlier when I went past on my way to Donald’s office.  Now, however, there was no sign of them.  I walked over and glanced at the jumble of tools and equipment lying in the back of the vehicle.  Everything looked as though it had been thrown in there in a great hurry.  Clearly it would all need sorting out before we could do anything, so I got in the truck and reversed round to the store room.  Then I sat and waited for them to appear.  Looking around the inside of the cab I noticed the words ‘Tam’ and ‘Rich’ scratched on the dashboard.  A plastic lunch box and a bottle of Irn-Bru lay on the shelf.
And, believe me, things get technical.  I’ve learnt more about putting up fences than I’d ever imagined I’d know.   (Fyi, they’re usually being built to pen in animals – the restraint of beasts, y’see.  Excellent title.)  Mills worked as a fencer himself for some years, so you could be forgiven for thinking this was turning into an odd autobiography.

But, in amongst this, occasionally bizarre or momentous things DO happen, and they are treated with as casually and matter-of-factly as the tedium of standing in the rain with a fence hammer.  That is one of the reasons I loved this novel – I love surreal and black humour, but I hate anything disgusting, unduly frightening, macabre, or viciously unkind (so psychological thrillers almost always off the menu.)  Mills lets the moments of darkness become instantly surreal simply by giving us a narrator who does not see the difference between life-changing, terrible incidents and the everyday minutiae of the construction industry.  (Note that I’m deliberately avoiding telling you what these dark moments are, because I don’t want to spoil the surprise!)

Somehow, throughout plain and ‘deceptively simple’ (sorry, had to be done) prose, Mills expertly implies growing menace and claustrophobia.  The humour is still there – never laugh-out-loud funny, but always a dry, bleak humour – but the darkness seems to be spreading.  And from the opening pages, the reader is pulled from page to page, without almost nothing happening… how?  I don’t know what is in the writing that makes it work so well, as tautly engaging as a detective novel.  It’s obvious that All Quiet on the Orient Express was written after The Restraint of Beasts, because it follows a similar premise and style, but with a firmer structure.  And yet I refer The Restraint of Beasts, perhaps because it is more daring in its lack of structure.

And what is it all about?  I haven’t the foggiest.  The ending (which, again, I shan’t spoil) isn’t conclusive at all, but dumps a whole load of clues about the meaning of the novel.  I wondered whether it might be a metaphor for fascism, or perhaps communism, or… well, I don’t know.  It doesn’t much matter, and I’d have been rather cross if it turned out to be a heavy-handed metaphor for anything (only George Orwell can get away with that), so I’m happy to let it be simply an excellent, bewildering, disturbing placid novel.  If you’ve yet to try Mills, start here.

It’s been a while since I did a ‘Others who got Stuck into…’ section, because I have a terrible memory, so…

Others who got Stuck into The Restraint of Beasts…


“He is able to turn the ordinary into something sinister in a way that defies description, so that you’re never quite sure whether a terrible event is going to happen or whether the author is just playing with your sense of the dramatic.” – Kim, Reading Matters


“There are a number of things said that seem to be evasions or euphemisms that are not explained. Everything is sinister and suspect.” – Kate, Nose in a Book


“It has an undercurrent of mystery and black farce that I felt it could have done without, as it remains an unresolved and unlikely subplot.” – Read More Fiction

Great British Bake Off: Series 4: Episode 2

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Last week: hundreds of bakers swarmed around the tent, and kept appearing until the last minute of the show.  They claim there were 13 (yes, ‘baker’s dozen’ makes an appearance in the episode 2 what-happened-last-week) but I stopped counting at forty.  And you were all very welcoming of my recap and said lovely things, which was very encouraging!  Thank you so much.

This week it’s Bread Week, which of course means that the intro is filled with various people telling us that it’s Paul Hollywood’s speciality, and nary a Mary in sight.  Maybe she doesn’t care about bread.  Maybe she’s busy shrieking at someone in make-up for having the wrong eyelash curler.  It is not for us to know.

As for the bakers in the intro – my eye is on Teary Ruby (note to self: make this a better pun on Ruby Tuesday… Ruby Tearday?) Ruby Tearday seems to be just as angry and sullen as last week, if the ‘coming up next’ clips are to be trusted.

If this were America’s Next Top Model (note to self: try not to alienate 90% of the audience immediately) she’d be the one who’d snap at week eight and have a showdown with Tyra, who would pretend to be motherly and tell her to “own her best self” or something.  Since this is the bake off, I presume she’ll just quietly leave in week three, and maybe write a passive aggressive column for Marks & Spencer’s Your Home magazine.

PUN KLAXON.  Remember how the Bake Off got all self-aware about puns last week?  Well, this week they don’t even introduce the topic, they just start riffing on ‘Bohemiam Bapsody’ and the like.  I’m a bit worried that my klaxon will self-combust in a fit of ironic self-contradiction.  But I also enjoy that blazers appear to be contagious.  And that Mel seems to be coming up with a ploy to strangle a short person.

“If I close my eyes, I’m not an accessory to the crime.”
“AccessoRYE to the THYME, more like.”

Our first challenge is signature bake breadsticks.  Mel solemnly entones “Breadsticks are made all over the world” – which smacks of a BBC researcher hoping to find an interesting fact about breadsticks on Wikipedia, and giving up almost immediately.  Which is quite apt, because it’s a monumentally uninteresting topic.  Bread week always is.  I love bread as much as the next man – indeed, unless the next man is Paul Hollywood, I love it rather more.  Man cannot live by bread alone, Scripture tells us, but let’s not forget that the next words are ‘but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’  Amen to that, say I, but we don’t need to diversify the food bit much.  I’d happily eat nothing but bread and cheese all day, everyday.  But… that doesn’t make it aesthetically interesting in the way that cakes are.  So, instead, let’s turn to the judges…

Is it a coincidence that Paul and Sue both have their hands in their pockets (although only Paul looks like he’s in the middle of a line dance) while Mary and Mel have their hands folded in front of them?

Yes.

Mary has wrapped up warm for the day, which suggests that it’s not quite as balmy as the incidental shots of lambs intend us to believe.  I tried to get a shot of Mary looking smiley and cheerful, but instead she’s come out looking a little like Sean Connery…

We wander through all the recipes and suchlike, but you don’t come here for those sorts of summaries, do you?  Breadsticks, I repeat, are not scintillating things (though very pleasant to eat) so it’s difficult to get animated over the fact that some people are putting in cardamom and some people orange etc.  (Those are made up, by the way.  I don’t remember what they put in.  Well, except for Frances.  Just wait for her…)

So, instead, let’s look at the VTs this week.  Second week is, apparently, Hobbies Week, where the bakers scrabble around to find anything, anything at all, to offer.  A question once only required for dating videos and French GCSE coursework, listing your hobbies is apparently a reality show must nowadays.  Poor Glenn apparently has no home life, as we see him yet again in his school.  Awkward.

“I sleep in the store cupboard.”

Stranger still is Rob, who claims to be a scientist, but apparently just looms over scientists all day.  If staring through a window counts as employment nowadays, then the people at Boswell’s owe me rather a lot of money.

And then he claims to be a ‘mushroom forager’.  This is so clearly not a thing that I can only presume he works for MI5.

My favourite, though, is Ali.  I forget what he does (besides panic, of course) but this is apparently a mock-up of something he’s creating at work:

I’ve never claimed to be an expert at graphic design, but I have a feeling that typing EMPOWER YOUTH over the rest of your document – while emphatic – perhaps isn’t the way to go.  He is similarly held back when it comes to bread, apparently, as he admits that it’s not his forte.  I just had to capture the looks on Paul and Mary’s faces when he said this…

There are a few other highlights during this section… Sue asks somebody whether they’re worried that they’ll ‘retard the yeast’, and Mary is very impressed with her.  I had my fingers crossed that she’d whip out a housepoint chart or something, but I can wait.  FOR NOW.
And I always like to illustrate what a lovely programme this is compared to other reality competitions – and this week’s illustration is this this lovely moment between Mel and Beca.  Beca was almost entirely absent from last week’s episode, but I have high hopes of her becoming this year’s Cathryn – she’s funny, she’s a bit silly, and (bonus!) she’s Welsh.   This shot comes after they have joked that Mary Berry is Beca’s body double…
Can you imagine Alan Sugar doing this?

And I promised you an update on Frances’s breadsticks – which are ginger and chocolate, but more than that, they are in the shape of matches.  And she’s made a novelty-sized matchbox.  Of course she has.

Sadly this is the best angle we see it at, so I can’t read the text on top, but I think (and hope and pray) that it says Berry’s Matches on top.  Frances reminds me a bit of Our Vicar’s Wife… in terms of being a bundle of creativity that tips that merry balance into delightfully bonkers (did I ever tell you that Mum built a gypsy caravan out of wood in our back garden?  Twice?)  (Love you Mum!)   Frances is tightrope walking along that line between sweetly ambitious and Holly-obnoxious.  (Remember Holly?  She was the one who hid a miniature gingerbread house under her croquembouche.)  At the moment she is just the right side of awful, because she is so endearingly like a Sunday School teacher gone mad, and just self-aware enough to keep the audience on side.

Sadly, it turns out to be Baker’s Matches. Apt, but not Mary enough.

And I’m inaugurating the Official Mary Barry Adorable Moment of the Week Award.  Sponsorship deal yet to be confirmed, but I’ve got high hopes that the Andrex puppy will get on board.  Well, this week it’s Mary playing spillikins with Rob’s breadsticks.

If you print those out, they’ll make the world’s shortest flipbook.

One and a half episodes is a bit early to say how I feel about the bakers, but now that I’ve started to at least recognise each of them, I’m going to go ahead and judge them as people and moral individuals, the way that reality television wants me to.  Ahem.  You know that I love Beca, Christine, and Una Stubbs, but let’s talk about a couple of others.

Well, Rob may not be a euphoric individual, but I feel a great deal of empathy with him – as will many of you – when I saw this moment:

And what about Kimberley?  I have a feeling that she might be a bit too cool for this show.  She’s very beautiful, calm, collected, and – yes – cool.  If she gets flour smeared across her face, or trips over an open oven door and flings a tray of buns on the floor, then I think I’ll find her easier to like.  Not that she’s dislikeable, it’s just that every moment she is on the screen, I realise how inept and hopeless my life is.  That’s all.

Judging.  Nothing of interest to report – how could there be? – except that apparently I no longer notice when parts of speech are misused.  ‘Good bake’ sounds like perfect English to me now.  But there is some hope for me passing my English DPhil, since I’m still not quite on board with “Welcome to yeast!” and “I think the raisin does bring something to the party.”

Ruby Tearday does very well and SMILES!

In other news, a pig has started manning flights to a blue moon.

And we’re onto the technical challenge, which is English muffins. Yummmm.  I love them, but I would question whether or not they’re worth going to all that effort for… but they’re not as absurd as when they made those chocolate marshmallow cake things that cost £1.50 for eight.

And Brend 2.0, whose name I have sadly forgotten – last week I suggested he could be The Brend reimagined by Woody Allen; this week I think he might be The Brend as reimagined by Alan Bennett.  It’s not just the Northern accent, it’s that everything he says sounds like a half-comic, half-mournful segment from Talking Heads.  (Ten points, by the way, if you are the only other person in the world who likes both America’s Next Top Model and Talking Heads.  Never let it be said that my cultural references are limited, or coherent.)  Witness, for instance, his way of testing the temperature of his griddle : “I’ve been putting my face over it, to test the heat coming up.”  Alan wishes he’d written that line.

Incidentally, while I’m making spurious televisual references, Sue’s ‘BAKE!’ is getting steadily more like Stephen Fry playing General Melchett in Blackadder Goes Forth.

Uncanny, no?

Muffins give Sue and Mel a chance to reel off the ‘Do you know the muffin man?’ rhyme, and this out-of-work actor to get his Equity card.

Available for panto.

Back to muffins.  Alan Bennett’s Brend (I really ought to research their actual names – like, y’know, reading my own recap from last week) suffers from Sue’s carelessness, and she leaves an elbow imprint in one of his muffins… Since everyone seems to have stopped hacking at themselves with knives, this is given a fair bit of fanfare.  (Could this outbreak of self-stabbing last week have been canny contestants trying to make sure they got some notice from the camera, among the dozens of competitors?)

Bezza and Paul step forward to do the judging, and I’m impressed by pretty much all of the muffins, which do look pretty uniform across the board.  Oddly Mary doesn’t seem to eat any of them – at least we don’t see her doing so on screen; I know, I was waiting for a Pirate Shot – and a woman I only vaguely recognise comes last.  Frances is second, and Kimberley comes top.  No tripping over in sight.  Hmm.

I’ve not addressed the difference between English muffins and American muffins, have I?  Well, always leave the audience wanting more.

Showstopper challenge!  In the lead-up chat-around-the-tea-table, Mel says “Every baker goes into the final needing to do well” – Paul looks suspicious, and my pun klaxon is being judiciously oiled, but… turns out the needing/kneading pun was inadvertent.  Klaxon back away.  FOR NOW.

There isn’t really anything very ‘showstopper’ about bread, is there?  Some bakers are bravely going to decorate their loaves, which I can’t imagine working, but while it exists only in the form of the garish faux-notebook of the BBC graphics department, Ruby Tearday’s peacock bread is looking quite fancy.  “We’ve never had a peacock!” notes Mary, adroitly.

Even better, though, is Rob’s creation.  He’s going to be making a loaf honouring (for honouring is the word) Paul the Psychic Octopus.  Remember him?  He may be eternally dour during the judging, but he’s clearly got an adorable, geeky side.  (By ‘he’ I mean Rob, by the way, not Paul the Psychic Octopus.  He, sadly, is dead.  I bet he didn’t see that coming.  Ba-doom-tish.  Sorry.)  The graphics department lose their head completely, and draw a nauseous hippo at a street carnival:

To do Mary justice, she is entirely unflappable, and simply enquires whether the tentacles will be attached before or after baking.  She’s not quite so sanguine in the next chat.  The inspiration for Ali’s yin/yang bread came to him in a dream, apparently.  Let’s pause a moment to enjoy the face Mary makes in response to this information:

As far as “I have a dream” speeches go, I can’t imagine it’ll have quite the same legacy as some.

Let’s fast forward to a few of the most memorable results – which aren’t quite in the same league as the cakes, when it comes to appearance.  You can almost feel the cameraman’s anxiety at finding an angle which makes them look like something other than bread rolls after a particularly glittery afternoon at a children’s nursery.

If you see any peacocks that in any way resemble this,
contact the RSPB.  Do not approach.

Paul H comes over all Simon Cowell, telling Alan Bennett’s Brend, about his orange/oregano bread, that “You’re great with your flavours normally… and you’ve done it again!”  Next week he’ll start saying “You’re not not not… not not not in. Not.”

And the octopus looks awful.  Coloured decorations on bread = unpleasant.  A nice idea, but children with colouring pencils couldn’t have made this look less edible.

The edit has already prepared us for Lucy’s loaf being heavily criticised for being uncreative, but I should mention that darling Christine (who pops into the programme for about five seconds this week, perhaps on the way to the post office) seemed to provide an equally non-showstopper sort of bread.  That’s not to say that Lucy shouldn’t be penalised for essentially sticking a bog-standard loaf on the table, but she’s not alone.

Incidentally, it is only during this critique that I learn Lucy’s name.  And I have a feeling that I won’t need to know it in a few minutes’ time…

So, let’s see who came top and bottom of bread week, shall we?  Results after the jump….
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Star Baker is… the delightfully shocked Ruby Tearday, who’ll need a name change:

And going home, as every moment of the programme augured, is Lucy:

To add insult to injury, she didn’t even get a hair ruffle from Mary.

Next week: dessert!  Back to baking that actually looks attractive as well as tasting great, and lots of potential for things to fall over.  Hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s recap – see you next week!

The Crafty Art of Playmaking – Alan Ayckbourn

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I loved hearing about your favourite theatrical experiences on the previous post!  Lots of us seem to cherish special moments of seeing our acting heroes.  I restricted myself to one – otherwise I’d have had to include Judi Dench in Peter and Alice, Judi Dench again in All’s Well That Ends Well, Tamsin Greig in Much Ado About Nothing, Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles in The Rivals… etc. etc.

Well, all is revealed – the book, which I’ve realised I actually mentioned the other day, is The Crafty Art of Playmaking (2002) by Alan Ayckbourn.  I actually bought it earlier in the year, and when I started I hadn’t even remembered that the play I was about to see, Relatively Speaking, was by Ayckbourn.  It wasn’t until I turned to p.3 and saw the play mention (and, er, spoiled a bit) that I realised I should put the book to one side until I’d seen the play.

When I went back to it, I found The Crafty Art of Playmaking an invaluable companion to seeing Relatively Speaking, but it is a fascinating book for anybody interested in the theatre whether or not that have recently watched one of Ayckbourn’s plays.  I’ve written before about my interest in the theatre, but usually (when I read theatrical books) is acting memoir from the twentieth century, or similar.  Other than when actors take a step into the director’s chair (that metaphor fell apart) have I read much from that side of the fence, and I don’t think I’ve read anything particularly thorough about writing plays, although A.A. Milne’s autobiography has a brilliant section where he traces a few of his plays back to their roots.

That is where discussion of Relatively Speaking starts, but I don’t really want to say what he writes, in case it spoils it for you… well, look away now if you don’t want to know, ok?

Initial inspiration – that essential starting point – comes in all shapes and sizes.  Years ago I had the tiniest idea for a situation wherein a young man would ask an older man whether he could marry his daughter.  The twist was that the older man didn’t have a daughter.
And there you go!  From there, Ayckbourn takes us through the various considerations which led to the play being set in two locations, and certain key plot points, and the like.  He also talks about many of his other plays, of course, but (having just seen this one) it was the dissection of Relatively Speaking which I found fascinating.

Throughout the book, Ayckbourn highlights ‘Obvious Rules’, which number from 1 to 100.  Some are not obvious, but it’s a nice conceit to structure the book, and tends to summarise what he has discussed, with examples, in the previous section.  So, we have things like ‘Use the minimum number of characters that you need’ or ‘Don’t let them go off without reason’ – and thins which aren’t really quite rules, like ‘You can never know too much about your characters before you start’.  It works well to keep the playwriting process grounded and achievable, while also showing that you can’t (or shouldn’t) sit down one afternoon thinking that, with a pithy epigram or two, a play will more or less form itself.

The second half of The Crafty Art of Playmaking (and the reason why it’s Playmaking rather than Playwriting) concerns directing.  This was slightly less conceptual, because, instead of make-up characters and potentially infinite plots and dialogue, Ayckbourn is writing about lighting designers and wardrobe mistresses and the like.  He does seem to lump entire professions into single characteristics (wardrobe mistresses – or was it costume designers? – are apparently prone to hysterics; assistant stage managers are universally level-headed; sound engineers are over-ambitious, etc. etc.) but is perhaps being a bit tongue-in-cheek.  Hard to say.

Obviously there is a significant difference between a playwright and a director.  Well, there are many.  But a chief difference is that anybody can try being a playwright from the comfort of their own desk.  They might be appalling, but all they need are pen and paper (or electronic equivalent).  The director must have actually persuaded someone to let them have a job – and, while Ayckbourn does describe the various ways that might happen, it is with a tone of incredulity that it possibly could.  And once it has, I suppose one is no longer an amateur.

Ayckbourn’s model of the director is very power-hungry and micromanaging, but perhaps that is a necessity.  Almost every section seems to end with ‘but don’t let them make any decision without consulting you’, or something similar.  A director in this mould, who trusts nobody to do their jobs properly, would be a nightmare.  But for the first-time director, I suppose it is wise not to be ridden over roughshod.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this two-angle way of looking at playmaking is the contrast.  Ayckbourn often wrote and directed (writes and directs?) his own plays, but it is intriguing to see how he treats the potential director in the first half of the book, and the hypothetical writer in the second half.  All I can say is, he must be sometimes rather conflicted when he is doing one or the other! Incidentally, his plays are almost exclusively called the sort of unmemorable things one expects plays to be called.  Six of One, As You Were, After A Fashion, A Matter of Fact… those are all made up by me (as far as I know!) but you understand the sort of thing.  Bits of expressions, or everyday sayings, and entirely forgettable titles – curious for someone so inventive!

I found the director half of the book a bit harder to get my head around, as it is further from anything I have ever done or would ever want to do, and he is very coy about actual experiences in this area (very few names and dates, and lots of ‘an actress once said…’) but anybody thinking about going into directing would, I think, find it invaluable.

I don’t intend to be either a playwright or a director, but I found Ayckbourn’s book a fascinating glimpse behind these processes – and I think anybody interested in the theatre generally, let alone Ayckbourn specifically, would find a lot to like here.

The Play’s The Thing

StuckinaBook All 24 Comments

The review I intended to write today hasn’t happened, as editing a chapter of my thesis has taken over my life, but in preparation I shall ask you… what is the best performance you have ever seen on stage?

It has to be a combination of great play and great cast, of course.  And to a large extent it’s a subjective assessment.  But I’m going to pick All My Sons, which I saw with David Suchet, Jemima Rooper, Zoe Wanamaker, and Stephen Campbell Moore.  Suchet, especially, was astonishing.  My thoughts are all here…

I’m recycling my theatre cartoon…

So, I’ll be talking about plays tomorrow (or, ahem, soon)… and if you follow me on Twitter – @stuck_inabook, thanks for asking – you might be able to guess which book it’ll be!  But… over to you!  Tell me about your experiences at the theatre!