Backlisted: The Diary of a Nobody

I think I've mentioned my admiration for the podcast Backlisted on here before. I've certainly mentioned my admiration for George and Weedon Grossmith's wonderful The Diary of a Nobody.

A recent episode looked at this comic classic, and very good it is too. Among other things, they mention something that always bothers me, namely that Charles Pooter isn't actually very pooterish, our at least not in the sense that it is usually used in the modern media.

Anyway, have a browse of the other episodes while you're there. I've enjoyed those on Chandler, Tolkien, and JL Carr in the past, but there are a lot of interesting ones. 

Backlisted podcast

The other day, I stumbled across the rather splendid Backlisted podcast – the most recent episode features a look at JL Carr's How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won The FA Cup. As they say on the podcast, it's one of his more straightforward novels in many respects, and as they also rightly point out, it has a fantastic blurb (Carr wrote his own).

The rest of the episode focuses on Jilly Cooper. I've never read anything by her, but I have to admit it actually made me rather intrigued. They also mention that the very first episode looked at JL Carr's A Month In The Country, so I've gone back and downloaded that one too (plus the Raymond Chandler and Tolkien episodes). Very enjoyable listening for the daily commute.

NB You can also buy JL Carr's novels (and his many wonderful pocket books), from his own Quince Tree Press (now run by his son, I think).

Does happiness 'write white'?

The other day, I came across this review of JL Carr's A Month In the Country. It's a novel (well, more like a novella) that I've loved for many years, ever since coming across a copy in Coalville Library, and Ingrid Norton does a wonderful job of capturing what's so special about it.

I like what she has to say about how Carr writes about happiness. Henry De Montherlant's oft-quoted aphorism 'Happiness writes white' (actually 'happiness writes in white ink on a white page') has some truth in it, of course, in novels, poems and song lyrics, but there are ways to avoid it. Carr, as Norton describes here, does just that. Interestingly, his other novels are often much more pessimistic in outlook.

But anyway, I'd like to hear suggestions of other writers, or pieces pf work, that avoid the problem De Montherlant identifies. Over to you...

Cold comfort

I didn't realise quite how cold I'd got in All Saints Church, Aldwincle, until I got up to leave at the end - testament to how riveting a show Riverlands: A Journey On The Nene was.

In fact the atmospheric, cleverly-lit venue, one of two impressive churches in this pretty small Northamptonshire village, added plenty to the occasion, but it was the words of poet Jo Bell and storyteller Jo Blake-Cave that really illuminated the darker corners of the old building, and warmed the heart.

Taking as their starting point the writings of Denys Watkins-Pitchford (better known as 'BB') about the River Nene, they approached their subject through a variety of voices, including birdwatchers, boaters, anglers (they might have a thing or two to say once they've seen the show!), and of course local residents. And although Jo Bell's pieces, for example, seemed to work very differently from her work on the page, it struck me later that one of the things that was most enjoyable about the performance was how much it trusted the audience to sit and listen, and listen hard.

Further performances are planned, across the country, so keep an eye out, and go and see it.

A couple of things more. Aldwincle already has a literary claim to fame, as John Dryden was born in the village rectory. And I found myself wondering if the church was one of those that inspired J L Carr in writing A Month In The Country. He lived locally, in Kettering, and it felt like his sort of building.

Captain Pouch and the Newton Rebellion

Feeling a bit more perky, and with the weather looking up too, I got in the car yesterday and went wandering. First, to Groby Pool, in a vain attempt to track down a Redstart (did see some lovely Spotted Flycatchers, though), but then on into the depths of previously unexplored Northamptonshire.

My target was Brixworth, a village containing what has been called the finest seventh century church north of the Alps.

It's to my great shame that I've never actually been there before, not even back in my university days when I was studying Anglo-Saxon history (the Mercian church was even my specialist subject), but it was worth the wait. More of that tomorrow, though, because on the way back, I couldn't resist a detour to a favourite, and rather less celebrated, historic site.

Newton is a tiny village between Kettering and Corby, situated down a dead-end lane. Its church, St Faith's (pictured above), is in a rather isolated position, down a small track in the middle of horse paddocks, with what's left of Rockingham Forest close by on all sides. Red Kites and Rooks fly overhead, and far away you can hear the traffic dashing past on the dual carriageways, but there's precious little sign of life otherwise.

The church is, in fact, a field studies centre, but the fact it's there at all is down to the efforts of the late JL Carr, novelist and Kettering headmaster, who battled to save it from demolition. That he did was partly because he was aware of Newton's hidden history.

For a few days, in the late spring of 1607, it was the centre of a peasants' rebellion that caused James I considerable concern, and resulted in the deaths of at least 40 villagers. The uprising was led by the mysterious figure of Captain Pouch, and the participants described themselves as levellers and diggers, names that would crop up again later in the turbulent 17th century.

Carr mentioned what happened in passing in one of his novels (The Battle Of Pollock's Crossing - superb, and usually overshadowed by his best-known work, A Month In The Country), and for years I'd assumed that he'd invented it. Only fairly recently did I find out that it was all true, and begin to research what happened.

I've also been writing a pamphlet-length sequence of poems, to accompany photographs by Tom Bailey, on the story of Captain Pouch, the Newton Rebellion, and the final, tragic slaughter at Goosepastures. Both Tom and I still have work to do, and I've been working fairly hard at revising some of the poems this week, but we're hoping that we'll be able to find a publisher at some stage.

But regardless of that, it's a fascinating and very tragic episode in English history. It's impossible not to feel for Pouch and his brave followers, latest in a long line of peasants willing to assert their rights in the face of arbitary rule by monarchs and aristocrats (their story reminds me of that of the villagers of Peatling Magna, not 20 miles away, who in 1265 arrested the king's marshal for "going against the commonwealth of the realm", just days after Simon DeMontfort and his forces had been bloodily scattered at Evesham). You even feel a little for Sir Edward Montagu, forced to suppress the rebels even though he had considerable sympathy for their cause. His family did take the Parliamentary side in the Civil Wars, but rather too late to avert the catastrophe that engulfed Newton and other similar communities.

Poetry and biography

I finished Byron Rogers’ excellent The Man Who Went Into The West last night, and thoroughly entertaining as it is, I’m not sure I’m any nearer forming a proper opinion on RS Thomas (pictured).

I often have a bit of a problem with literary biographies, especially where poets are concerned. Even if the poet has co-operated, they too often seem to encourage the tendency to see everything the writer produced as directly autobiographical, and there’s also the danger that the details of the writer’s private life become more important than the work they produced. The most extreme example is probably Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, but there are others.

I thought I’d give Rogers the benefit of the doubt, though, partly because I loved his biography of one of my literary heroes, J L Carr (he must like writers who insist on only using their initials). I’m glad I did, too, because it’s a fine book, being unafraid to criticise Thomas where necessary, and to point out all the contradictions in this deeply complex man. And, importantly, it makes the effort to keep the writer and the man separate.

That’s probably more important than ever with someone like Thomas, because as I say, the phrase “a mass of contradictions” might have been coined with him in mind. His vehement support of the Welsh language was balanced by the fact that he wrote all his poetry in English, and spoke with such a cut-glass English accent that lots of Welsh neighbours and parishioners were unaware that he was actually Welsh born and bred. He even seems to have preferred the company of middle-class English incomers a lot of the time. He was a committed Christian pacifist, yet at times came dangerously close to espousing unconditional support for violent protest against the eradication of Welsh culture. And I couldn’t help feeling a bit uneasy at times about just how far Thomas took this ‘Wales for the Welsh’ mentality – a keen birdwatcher, he played a role in conservation of the Red Kite (it’s difficult now, when I sometimes see half a dozen on my way to work each day, to remember just how close it was to becoming extinct in the UK), but resigned his RSPB membership when it was decided to introduce foreign Red Kites to bolster the Welsh population and encourage its spread. There are genuine ecological reasons to want to keep a separate British population, but I'm not sure he had those in mind.

Then there’s the religion. He spent his life as a vicar for The Church In Wales (in a country which is predominantly nonconformist), and yet seems to have had what can best be described as a very troubled relationship with God. But that’s the most absorbing and moving aspect of the book, I think. Thomas took on the one hand a very pragmatic approach (he felt that he was employed by the Church, and so had no business in challenging any of its beliefs from the pulpit), while at the same time channelling his spiritual search and his struggles with his faith into some wonderful poetry. A lot of the time, in the poetry at least, the search became more important than easy answers.

And there’s the question of humour. The popular image of him, fuelled by newspaper profiles which were usually accompanied by photos of him in a windswept, wild-haired pose, was of a painfully serious, taciturn and often downright rude man. Rogers makes no attempt to gloss over any of this, but he does bring out the nervousness and shyness that contributed to it, as well as showing that Thomas could be very funny, in a dry, offbeat way.

I suppose, more than anything, the biography will encourage me to go out there and buy more of Thomas’s poetry, because it never loses sight of the fact that it was, in itself, always more important to Thomas than the purely personal, religious and political spheres. I’ve got a couple of anthologies, with largely the same well-known pieces, but he wrote such a mass of poems that it’s time I checked them out. Bloodaxe, I think, do several volumes of Collecteds, so I’ll have to have a look for them, probably when I’m in Hay on Wye in a few weeks.

Now I’m about to start reading J A Baker’s classic The Peregrine. I’m ashamed never to have read it before, but it comes very highly recommended from all quarters, and is one of those books that genuinely completely changed the face of an entire genre.