Koestler

There are certain famous people I have taken a dislike to without knowing much about them. One is C.S.Lewis. I have not read a single work of his but know of him through others' mentioning of him and through references to him on radio and TV. It's quite ridiculous but I can't help it. Another is Arthur Koestler about whom a new biography has just been published. At least a review of this work gives me some justification in my dislike (if not actual hate) of the man. "Scammell's biography is a sympathetic one. But the Koestler he depicts is consistently repugnant - humourless, megalomaniac, violent."
Again, Christopher Caldwell writes in The New York Times review of Scammell's book: "In print as in life, he was driven by ego, not principle. His subject was himself."
And further: "Like many people concerned about 'humanity', he was contemptuous of actual humans."
I have a certain admiration for the man who wrote "Darkness at Noon" though I have never read it; it had the effect of helping to eliminate from Western sentimentality about Stalin and his totalitarian state the ideas that the place was utopian to some degree or, at least, promised utopian solutions. And there are his scientific works such as "The Sleepwalkers" parts of which I have read (being myself interested greatly in the 17th and 18th Century thinkers and scientists this work appeals to me more than most of what he wrote).
So this dislike I have of these people - I dislike if not hate Mel Gibson, I can't bear to hear him speak, believe it or not - is probably more to do with me than with them; something has triggered some kind of mental mechanism that has brought about a totally illogical and possibly meaningless emotional reaction.
And yet.... and yet.... I can't help thinking lof Michael Foot's wife, Jill Craigie, and her assertion after Koestler's death that he had raped her when she was a young woman. Scammell is not sufficiciently critical of these happenings says Caldwell and seems to think that, to put it briefly, times have changed.
Not good enough surely.
Can we excuse him for his apparently abhorrent behaviour because he was so great a man? Caldwell recognises the difficulty when he writes: "And yet, at a moment when the ghastliness of Soviet Communism was still invisible to a lot of thinking people, this apparently conscienceless man awakened the conscience of the West."

Promotion

I am reading an excellent novel by Robert Harris called "Imperium". It is about the great Roman orator and stateman named Cicero. This short passage, when Cicero decides to take on the powers that be and go for broke so to speak, took me back to my first teaching post: "Yesterday has taught me a lesson. Let us say I wait a year or two, hanging on Pompey's every word in the hope of favour, running errands for him. We have all seen men like that in the senate - growing older, waiting for half-promises to be fulfilled. They are hollowed out by it. And before they even know it, their moment has passed and they have nothing left with which to bargain."
Yes, it took me back to a meeting I had, in the corridor of the school I had been at for two years and which I pondered leaving, with the deputy head. He said: "In about 10 years time J.G., head of physics, will be retiring and you can slip into that post." I stood there and to anyone seeing me I probably gave the impression of someone actually considering the "offer"; but underneath that veneer of pleasant approbation of the idea was the real me thinking "d'you think I'm going to stay in this bloody hell hole for another ten bloody awful years and then find that someone else has been appointed instead of me?"
I left soon after and got a much better job, more pay too. A sort of promotion.
I have seen too many who, as Cicero explains, waited and waited hoping against hope that the next job they have been half-promised will give them the promotion they feel they deserve only to find their hopes dashed when they are told something like "Well, of course, I did my best for you but....."

Humbug

Is it my imagination or is it the case that this near-Christmas time newspapers and magazines are filled wih stuff about how to enjoy the festival more than ever before? There are "ways to enjoy Christmas", "drinks to buy", "the best food to eat" and, of course, "the ten things to make the festival a success".
Here are my ten thing to make Christmas bearable.
1. Get yourself invited to someone's home so that they do the cooking etc.
2. Buy loads of booze and hide the good stuff.
3. If you feel like going for a walk, perhaps suggested by a family member who is younger than you and wishes to "breathe the fresh air of Winter", sit down until the feeling goes away.
4. Don't buy presents because they cost too much and often are not wanted; buy vouchers so that they can buy what they want - if you have lots of money buy from Next and M&S and W.H.Smith; if not buy vouchers from What!
5. Don't kiss anyone - they may have swine flu. Don't even kiss your wife/girl friend/partner - they may have kissed someone with swine flu.
6. Do something you don't usually do, for fun, like have a bath.
7. If invited to a party you don't want to go to, tell them you have swine flu.
8. If you go to the pub for a pint, take enough money for the pint and no more: "Dammit, I've left my wallet at home."
9. Before turning in on Christmas night, say your prayers (as a back-up) and drink a bottle of your favourite wine - one of those you'd hidden away.
10. If you don't want to follow any of the above pieces of advice, book a holiday in some country that doesn't celebrate Christmas - like Pakistan or Iran.

Edward G. Robinson

His real name was Goldenberg and the G in his stage name was just a G - it stood for nothing, just filled a gap. Yet it became part of him: you could never call him anything else but Edward G. Robinson because Edward Robinson could be anybody, and he wasn't just anybody.
He could do pretty well everything from psychopathic villain ("Key Largo") to comic uncle ("A Hole in the Head"), from gun-carrying gangster ("Little Caesar") to tough-talking and inftelligent insurance inspector (Double Indemnity"), from cruel sea captain ("The Sea Wolf") to respectable professor ("The Woman in the Window").
I have just seen "The Woman in the Window" again; it's just as good as it was when I saw it many moons ago; then there was an announcement at the beginning of the film that asked members of the audience not to divulge the twist at the end of the film - naturally, people did and so, you'd have thought, have spoilt it for those who hadn't yet seen it. The odd thing is that it doesn't spoil it: I knew the twist ending when I saw it a few days ago and waited for it with glee - it works even when you know it because Robinson, or I should say Edward G. Robinson brings off the humour of the situation he finds himself suddenly in.
Fritz Lang directed this film together with another one similar film with Joan Bennett, "Scarlet Street", "in which he is a gentle bourgeois sucked into sordid murders" according to David Thomson. Thomson thought Lang brought the best out of Edward G. Robinson; he brought the best out of a lot of actors including Glenn Ford in "The Big Heat", Arthur Kennedy in "Rancho Notorious" and Peter Lorre in "M" (in German).

Child actors

The child film actor I recall best is Freddie Bartholomew chiefly because he could play English roles, usually toff English roles. Though when I was young I didn't like him at all, not in "David Copperfield" or in "Captains Courageous"; but when I got older and saw some of his films on TCM and other TV stations I have to admit I thought him rather good. Certainly, in "Captains Courageous", from the Kipling novel, he was superb; maybe he was playing himself or playing someone he had known - a toffy-nosed prig of a boy from an upper class family who bossed his servants and was simply a perfect prat (twerp, twit and maybe twat too). While it had an oscar-winning performance from Spencer Tracey as a yeeoldee Nowegianee sailor (oscar winning! it was one of the most ridioculous pieces of acting I've ever seen), Bartholomew was the brilliant: he showed how the character of the twit, prig, twerp (and maybe twat too) changed when being forced to suffer the perils of ocean life on a fishing boat; he turned into a decent, caring guy "with a heart".
Roddy McDowell I didn't like either. I am talking about his performance in "How Green was my Valley" in which he played the youngest son in a South Wales mining family. Again, on re-seeing it I think he's rather good: "hugely appealing" is how David Thomson, the American film critic, describes him in that film.
Sometime directors do strange things to get from a young actor a performance they wish to have. Carol Reed in "The Fallen Idol" told the young actor in that film stories that had no bearing on the plot he was involved in in the picture - stories that induced the emotional responses he required.
Vincent Minelli did a very cruel thing in making "Meet me in St Louis". Mark Steyn in his "Songbook" tells of speaking to Hugh Martin, one of the songwriters of the film; he remarked that the scene in which Margaret O'Brien smashes the snowmen to pieces "was an incredibly powerful scene". "It was child abuse," Martin replied. "Just before shooting that day Minelli told the girl that her dog had been run over. He hadn't. But Margaret O'Brien burst into tears and he just kept the cameras rolling."

Conrad

My father loved Joseph Conrad novels; I have always found them difficult. In my mind always is the idea that Conrad wasn't English but Polish, a Pole who had learned English, so I had the idea that here was a man who thought in Polish and translated it into English in his head before writing it down. Probably not true but this idea satisfied me that that was the reason I found him difficult - not my fault but his.
Then I read a short novel called, if I remember right, "Typhoon" and my feeling towards him changed: here was a great writer whose powers of description were matched and enhanced by great literary style.
Yet "Heart of Darkness" I still find difficult. The "framed narrative" makes it seem contrivedly difficult; Marlowe is not an easy character to like; Kurtz is too mythical a character to be believed when later he is met by Marlowe; a lot of the writing is so beautiful stylistically that I sometimes feel myself distracted from the story by my admiration of it.
I have just seen "Apocalypse Now", Francis Ford Coppolla's film which is, of course, a modernish version of "Heart of Darkness" and I feel impelled to re-read the novel. But I found the film too quite difficult to understand and, at times, to bear. It is very very slow; I felt that violent occurances were there sometimes to give the slow up-river journey some dramatic qualities; I thought the end quite unbelieveable and the philosophising of Kurtz a bit on the cracker-barrel side.
Yet it left me with an overall feeling of admiration, a feeling that there was in this film and the book more than met the eye; that there was in it a depth that I had not penetrated; and it makes me wish to discover some of the truths underlying this strange, fascinating work.
I shall re-read the book.

Coffee

"Big street chains such as Costa, Starbucks and Caffe Nero are doing well...." So wrote someone in The Times in an article about how coffee is becoming the British favourite drink - not tea any more. Well my experience of coffee at these and other cafes and restaurants is not good. The coffee at Costa might be good quality but THEY SERVE IT IN CARDBOARD CUPS. Now I don't know why cardboard cups or plastic tumblers make a difference to the taste of drinks but they do. To me anyway. If the 'elf 'n safety crew make pubs use plastic containers for drinking beer from, then I won't be visiting their premises. And wherever coffee is served in cardboard containers, you won't see me there either.
A friend of mine used to object to having his nightly large whisky served him a in half pint glass or a wine gklass. He wanted it served in a proper, stocky whisky glass, he said. The barman would shake his head in disbelief that the type of glass made any difference. It probably doesn't affect the taste - it shouldn't scientifically - but it affects.... I don't know what it affects but it's wrong, that's what it is - wrong!
Wine in a wine glass, not a half pint mug; whisky in a whisky glass not a wine glass or pint mug; brandy in a brandy glass not in any other kind; beer in a pint glass; sherry in a tall sherry glass. And coffee in a cup please. O yes, at Cafee Nero a few weeks ago I ordered a double espresso and had it served me in a large cup. Didn't complain. Never do. Just won't go there again.

Browning

My father was fond of Robert Browning's work. He had a soft leather bound book containing most of his works (which I have lost, damn it). He also had a copy of "The Yellow Book" and Browning's poem based on the case (mislaid those too when we moved house). I know little about that poem or the original book from which it came; but I do know that my father is the only person I have met who read them both.
There was a radio programme on 4 a couple of days ago about a favourite Browning poem of mine - no, the favourite - "My Last Duchess". And a very good programme it was. First the poem, or as they called it, the "dramatic monologue" was read superbly by Timothy West, then came some detective work, meeting various fans of the work, trying to find out who the characters in the poem were in real life (the narrator was none other than Lucretia Borgia's grandson), wondering if the poem's admirers thought him to be the central character of the work - one thought the lady in the portrait was.
The last time I heard the poem read on radio was some years back; it was read beautifully and dramatrically by Marius Goring.
In many ways it's a nasty poem: here is this Duke showing an emmisary (I take it) of someone whose daughter he wishes to marry, showing him a portrait of his former wife whom he had had killed. Rather unlikely I think. But while that may be a flaw in the story, the poem itself is scintillatingly dramatic and bristling with tension.
Browning (like Dickens) seemed attracted to murder, grotesque tragic happenings - even The Pied Piper, written for children, is quite a horrid tale. Having read the opening of a study of Browning some time ago I was drawn to a passage about how he read so much "lierature" about torture in his youth.
I read "My Last Duchess" many times before I discovered that it rhymed throughout; it reads like prose yet you can feel the rhythm beneath the prose; then when you realise it rhymes, it works new wonders on you.

Toffs

Why is that if I were to say "when I came down from Cardiff" somone might possibly ask "by bus or train?" but when someone says "when I came down from Oxford (or Cambridge)" people assume he meant the university? It's because, I suppose, that Oxford has a long history of being a university but Cardiff has a long history of being a docks.
I'm afraid that, though many people say the contrary, there is a class barrier in this country, we are not now all like each other with no working class, middle class and upper class but one large homogeneous lump of wriggling human beings..... etc etc.
A lot of mention of toffs is going on these days, especially by the Labour Party members who see an opportunity to make some headway politically by pointing to the front bench of the Shadow Cabinet and saying "Eton toffs, who'd want to vote for them? They don't know anything about what ORDINARY people want or feel."
While this smacks of bad manners at the very least there is some truth in it. And now that Zac Goldsmith has thrown his hat into the political arena, on the face of it, at least, there is more than a modicum of truth in it. For if the Tory Party decide to adopt him as a candidate in the next election they will lose more votes than if they asked the Speaker's wife to stand (or lie, which she seems to find more pleasure in) as a Tory. Zac Goldsmith is a posh toff. No he is a Green posh toff. He's a danger not just to the Tories but to politics itself. Why? Because he is smooth as you know what and as calculatingly devious as.... as his father was before him.
I see that Taki admires him tremendously. Game, set and match to Labour then.

Escargots

A long time ago I wrote a short story called "Escargots". It was about a retired Welsh miner hesitating to phone his daughter because the last time they met he had committed a faux pas for which he felt he would not yet, if ever, be forgiven. His daughter had married posh and she too was now posh. So when she and her husband took her father to a posh restaurant and ordered escargots he was sick - over the waiter. These are snails, he announced. I hate them, he said.
Since I was unable to sell the story I turned it into a short play and sold it to a company that was not well known and so it wasn't performed many times (though it was done by an Irish amateur company and they, in a competition in Dublin, won an award for acting (the waiter who cooks the snails) and for choice of play, which I was pleased with.
I have used the story at some writers' groups as an exercise in "turning a story into a play" and it always produces an eager reaction, not to do with the quality of the story so much as for the memories it brings to mind by the writers most of whom are middle-aged ior old. Without fail they always say that a similar thing has happened to them: their daughter went off to university and lost touch with them or their son brought some friends home and "I was treated like some kind of slave". It seems to bring out a feature of family life that has been unconciously buried in the pressures of everyday life.
I did this exercise at one of those writers' weekends which was attended by some well klnown writers and literary agents. One of the Pollinger agents insisted on coming to my talk and took a back seat. I read the story, then got some of them to act the play. I proceeded to say that in writing a short story you focussed usually on one person and looked at what goes on from his point of view; with a play there are more than one points of view. I then asked them to start a story from the point of view of one of the characters in the same story apart from the old man. After about 20 minutes I asked them to read out what they'd written. I tried to ignore Mr Pollinger waving his arms about in the back indicating his desire to read but eventually I couldn't ignore him any more and asked for his effort. He had written, a superbly dramatic and immensely amusing story.... wait for it.... from the point of view of the snail.