The Books of my Life III

This particular instalment of my irregular series of posts on books that bear special memories for me is a bit of a cheat.  A stretching of definitions to breaking point, if you will.  I’m not actually writing about a book, you see.  I’m writing about a play and not even the script or a stage performance.  I’m writing about a film of a play.

To really get a sense of the time and the place of this one, you have to imagine yourself back in the early 1980s.  It was the time of Duran Duran, the Eurythmics and Culture Club, the era of Magnum, Dallas and the A-Team.  If you were around then, you were probably wearing ripped sweatshirts, shoulder pads or even the dreaded stretch pinstripe jeans.  I say “you” were probably wearing these as I was stuck in a small, country boarding school wearing a tweed jacket and a shirt and tie six days of the week.

And in the midst of the light and frothy pop culture that had emerged from the gloom and doom of the recessionary ‘70s, our English teacher, let’s call him Mr Chicken (as he had a twitch reminiscent of a chicken pecking at the ground as well as a faint whiff of fried chicken about him), had just about recovered from introducing our class of 14-year olds to Shakespeare through a reading of Twelfth Night.

To be honest, it hadn’t gone all that well, although even now, having never read it again since that time, I can still recite the first few lines. In any case, it had proved not to be the kind of fare that was going to get our class of teenage boys hooked on Shakespeare.

Mr Chicken was a pretty good teacher and a supportive and kindly man.  He loved literature and obviously wanted us to appreciate Shakespeare at least a little and preferably enough to get us decent grades in our English Literature O-level.

So, one morning we trooped in to our English classroom to see that a TV and video had been set up.  It was not unheard of to get to watch a TV programme of film in class, although it was pretty rare and usually seen as a chance to have a snooze.  As such, it was a happy form of boys that settled into their chairs.

The classroom lights were turned off and the TV turned on.  We saw a beach and witches digging a hole in the sand and burying a man’s arm.  Soon after, we got a scene in which a naked young witch beckons a man into a hovel in which there are a whole host of naked witches.

It was, of course, Polanski’s version of Macbeth.  From this provocative start, we got huges slabs of the macabre, of gore and, yes, THAT scene.  Lady Macbeth’s naked sleepwalking scene.  From the first few minutes, we were hooked.  Let’s face it, nudity, violence and mayhem – exactly what you want to put in a film to grab the attention of the average teenage boy.

It was Mr Chicken’s master-stroke.  Over the next few weeks, we finished watching the film and then read the play in class.  We didn’t just read it, discuss it and enjoy it, we got it.  Shakespeare would never be the same again.

I’ve not come across a performance or film of a Shakespeare play that has had the same lasting impact as Macbeth, although seeing Ian McKellen in Richard III at the National Theatre came close and, after all this time and having read many more of the plays, Macbeth is still my favourite.  I have absolutely no idea whether I would have got into Shakespeare after the failed Twelfth Night experiment if the next attempt had been Othello, Romeo and Juliet or one of the histories.  Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about that, thanks to Mr Chicken’s brainwave.

The Books of my Life II

I wasn’t going to write this, the second of my posts on important books in my life, for a while.  I have a backlog of reviews to write and a rather busy schedule at the moment so getting this one written is a bit of an ask.  Given the date, though, it feels right to do it now.

Back in the mid-1980s, I was a pupil at a small public school in the East of England.  Although the school itself had been founded in the 16^th Century, most of the main school buildings had been built in the Victorian period and were pretty fine examples of Victorian Gothic architecture.  The school library was in one of these buildings and was exactly how you would imagine an old library to be.

In the summer, the sun used to shine in through the leaded windows and it always seemed that there were motes of dust dancing in the beams.  A smell of wood polish pervaded the entire room and, if it was a hot day, sleep came very easily to any boy bored with his work.

When I wasn’t in lessons or out on the sports field, I loved spending hours in there, rummaging around in the shelves.  It was full of slightly odd volumes as well as the expected sets of classic authors and academic texts.  There was an excellent collection of early 20^th Century drama and a wide range of general fiction, largely ignored by most of the school, which was only interested in books relating to their schoolwork.

Once we were past the first year at school, there was a system by which, depending upon the academic options you chose, you would have a certain number of free periods during the week, known as “spares”.  As I was taking an unusual combination of subjects and had  also taken some exams early, I always managed to end up with more spares than anyone else in my year and, although they were intended for use as time for study, I spent mine reading random books from the library (except when I was sneaking in an extra sleep).

Anyway, one warm day in the summer, I was pottering about amongst the fiction shelves when I saw two shelves filled with books by one author, a writer I had never come across before.  I picked one out at random, thinking that if I liked him, there was plenty of reading material for me to get stuck into.

I started reading this book in my next spare and it was the start of a love affair that has lasted to this day.  I have read most of his 96 books, many of them several times.  They never stale although the world that they depict has long since vanished, if indeed it ever really existed.  They are guaranteed to raise a smile, to cheer up a sad soul and to make the world seem a lighter and better place.

The author?  P.G. Wodehouse.  That first book?  The Code of the Woosters.  A classic instalment in the Jeeves and Wooster canon, The Code of the Woosters sees Jeeves somehow extricate Bertie from being thrown into prison, being beaten to a pulp by Roderick Spode and he has preserved two engagements and ensured that Bertie’s Uncle Tom obtains possession of a prized silver cow creamer from the aforesaid Spode.

I was hooked from page one.  The characters, the stories, the ridiculous scrapes that the younger characters are continually getting into are all captivating but, above all, Wodehouse’s use of language is simply other-worldly.  His turns of phrase are justly legendary.  Just a couple of examples to whet your appetite:

“I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.”

“Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty.”

“A certain critic -- for such men, I regret to say, do exist -- made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.' He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have out-generalled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.”

“As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps and Uncle James's letter about Cousin Mabel's peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle ('Please read this carefully and send it on Jane') the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It's one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor - and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that.”

I could – and, given a little encouragement, would – go on all day like this.  Having started with Jeeves and Wooster, I rapidly worked my way through Lord Emsworth, Psmith, Ukridge, Ickenham, the Golf stories, the school stories, Mr Mulliner and his many other works.  It is difficult to pick a favourite but I think now that the Blandings stories have overtaken Jeeves and Wooster in my heart.

Wodehouse self-confessedly was not interested in serious issues or writing deep and meaningful books.  He wanted to entertain and delight and still does so today.  I hope that I am preaching to the choir about him but, if you have not already tried him, please do so I implore you. 

I mentioned above that I felt I had to write this post today.  You see, thirty-six years ago today, roughly a decade before I found him, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse died, aged 93, six weeks after being knighted for his services to literature. Thank you, Sir Pelham, for all the joy you have given me.

Memories Are Made of This

Last night, Mrs Falaise and I settled down in front of the TV to watch the first episode of the CBS remake of Hawaii Five-O which is now being shown in the UK.  We are both old enough to remember the original version from our childhoods and so were curious to see how we would feel about the new version.  As the familiar drum roll sounded, we both relaxed before joining in with the theme tune which, sensibly, has not been mucked about with.

The tune brings back a very vivid memory from my childhood.  When I was six, we were living in Yorkshire.  My father had just got a new job which required us to move down to the Home Counties and he had started the job before finding a house for us to move into.  This meant that he had to stay down south during the week, making the long drive back up the M1 on a Friday evening to spend the weekend with us.  As I hadn’t seen him all week, I would be allowed to stay up late to wait for him to arrive and when he did finally get home, there would always be a box of Airfix plastic soldiers for me as a present.  Before he arrived, however, I had to have my bath and be ready for bed and, each week, as I was soaking away, the strident tones of the Hawaii Five-O theme tune would drift up the stairs from the TV downstairs where my mother would be waiting for Dad to arrive.

For some reason, that image has stuck with me for thirty-five years and still comes back clearly whenever I hear that music.  It’s the same with certain foods, pictures and songs.  Some of them, and not necessarily the ones I like best, have become inextricably bound up with personal memories and experiences.  And, it’s also the same with books.  There are some which conjure up times of my life whenever I read them or even references to them. They aren’t necessarily good books or books I would want to re-read but they are important to me and will probably become even more so as I continue to age and begin to lose my marbles.  I’d like to share these with you in a series of occasional posts.

The first of these special books is Animal Farm by George Orwell.  I suppose I must have been about nine or ten, maybe eleven but no older than that.  I was certainly still at an age where Christmas Eve was a trial specifically created to torment me.  A good sleeper as a rule, it was the one night where I was guaranteed to have insomnia, where the light on the landing outside my bedroom would shine more brightly and where my bedclothes would be less comfortable than usual.  Finally I drifted off to sleep.  Only a few hours later, I woke again.  I can still feel the odd sensation of the hot radiator next to my bed and the contrasting cold draught from the window.  I know I shouldn’t have but I couldn’t help looking at my stocking which lay at the foot of my bed and which had filled up with presents during the short time I had been asleep.  The house was dark and silent.

I couldn’t wait and started to open the presents inside.  Fortunately, one of the first things to come out of the stocking was a torch, followed by a couple of now-forgotten items before my hand fell on the unmistakeable shape of a book.  I ripped the wrapping paper off it.  On the black front cover was a photograph of a large, pink pig and the title – Animal Farm.

Putting the rest of the stocking to one side, I opened the book and started to read, thinking I would just “do a few pages”.  Several hours later, totally enthralled, I had finished the whole thing in one clandestine, under the covers reading.

Now, I don’t claim to have been some kind of politically aware prodigy.  I didn’t understand that it was a detailed allegory of the Russian Revolution and the Stalinist state.  I didn’t realise that Old Major, Snowball and Napoleon were modelled on Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin respectively or that Boxer represented the proletariat.  I had no idea of Orwell's disillusionment with Stalin and Soviet Russia.  My father would explain all that to me later.  To me, it was simply a gripping story.  But I was aware of the hypocrisy of the pigs and how they had manipulated and exploited the rest of the animals through lies and propaganda.  I was upset at the treatment of Boxer and felt a chill of horror at the final scenes in the farm house (please note – desperately trying to avoid spoilers here).

I kept that paperback with me all the way through boarding school and university, increasingly tatty and covered in ink stains.  It’s gone now, lost at some point.  I still love Animal Farm and will read it again, at which point I will review it fully here but I will never forget the first time I read it……….or the strange looks I got the next day from my parents and grandparents when I spent most of Christmas Day yawning and being distinctly uninterested in proceedings.