MAGAZINE SUMMER 2009 / ISSUE 4
£3.50
mURDER IN THE STACKS Richard Davenport-Hines on the Library’s detective fiction
New WRITING by Ned Beauman, Lawrence Norfolk and Marcel Theroux
LEE HALL in conversation with Erica Wagner
The London Library Magazine / issue 4
12 The Ordeal of Toby Trubshaw, a new short story by Marcel Theroux
C ontent s 5 Editorial Letter 6 Contributors 9 Over My Shoulder Novelist Justin Cartwright on the literary and social pleasures to be found at the Library
16 Roasting the Boar of Kalydon, a new short story by Lawrence Norfolk
11 Reading List Peter Ackroyd selects the books that he’s found essential while researching his next work
12 THE ORDEAL OF TOBY TRUBSHAW Marcel Theroux’s new short story
15 NEW Poetry Work from three up-and-coming poets, along with a piece from the established voice of Clive James
16 ROASTING THE BOAR OF KALYDON
20 Richard Davenport-Hines explores the delights of the detective fiction collection in the Library
A new short story by Lawrence Norfolk
18 DESTRUCTIVE CAPACITY Ned Beauman’s previously unpublished short story
20 HIDDEN CORNERS Richard Davenport-Hines on the Library’s collection of detective fiction
24 LEE HALL Erica Wagner in conversation with the playwright about his work
26 Restaurant Listings
24 Lee Hall, whose play The Pitmen Painters is touring the UK with the National Theatre this autumn, talks to Erica Wagner about his work and inspiration
28 MEMBERS’ NEWS 30 Diary
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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 3
EDITORIAL LETTER
FROM THE LIBRARIAN
With the relaxation of summer no longer such a distant dream, we have given this issue of the magazine a slightly different flavour, prevailing upon some of the many fiction writers among our members to provide an early taste of holiday reading. I say ‘prevailing upon’ rather than ‘inviting’ because it is worth mentioning that all who write for the magazine do so for love rather than money, and we are hugely grateful to them for their generosity and enthusiasm for the task. Similarly, Erica Wagner’s guiding hand was indispensable in bringing together this issue, and we thank her for giving so freely of her time and expertise. Our ‘Hidden Corners’ piece this time continues the fiction theme with Richard Davenport-Hines’s survey of our holdings from the ‘golden age’ of detective fiction, which I am sure will lead to even heavier borrowings of those authors mentioned as well as provoking anguished cries of ‘but why hasn’t he mentioned X!’
Cover Image Dante I by Albert Irvin RA, 2009. © the artist, photo John Bodkin.
Of course, the Library isn’t only about established writers; it has long played a part in nurturing new talent. With this in mind, we hope to make a fiction issue an annual event and to use it to bring unpublished writers with ability and promise to the fore. Emerging writers – both members and nonmembers – who would like to appear in next year’s fiction special should email submissions of no more than 3,000 words to development@londonlibrary.co.uk between now and February next year for consideration by our Editorial Committee. Alongside our new fiction, we feature poetry for the first time, too, including contributions from two of the gifted poets identified by the Faber New Poets programme. As Faber is one of our Book Fund supporters, it seems fitting to bring these examples from the next generation of poetic talent to the attention of our members in this way. Turning to Members’ News (pages 28–9), I am delighted to be able to reveal the brand new Times Room now available to members. It is the first element of the Phase 2 building works currently in progress to be handed over for use, and affords a welcome glimpse of the improvements to come as the year unfolds.
Inez T.P.A. Lynn Librarian
Published on behalf of The London Library by Royal Academy Enterprises Ltd. Colour reproduction by adtec. Printed by Tradewinds London. Published 30 June 2009 © 2009 The London Library. The opinions in this particular publication do not necessarily reflect the views of The London Library. All reasonable attempts have been made to clear copyright before publication.
Editorial Publishers Jane Grylls and Kim Jenner Editor Mary Scott Design and Production Catherine Cartwright Researcher Emma Hughes
Editorial Committee David Breuer Miranda Lewis Harry Mount Peter Parker Christopher Phipps Erica Wagner
Advertising Jane Grylls 020 7300 5661 Kim Jenner 020 7300 5658 Development Office, The London Library Lottie Cole 020 7766 4716 Aimée Heuzenroeder 020 7766 4734
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 5
CONTRIBUTORS
© Charles Hopkinson
Peter Ackroyd
Member since 1981
Ned Beauman
Member since 2006
Heather Phillipson
Peter Ackroyd is a novelist, biographer and poet. His most recent books are The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (2008) and the retelling of The Canterbury Tales (2009). His forthcoming nonfiction work, Venice: Pure City, will be published by Chatto & Windus later this year.
Ned Beauman is twenty-four years old and lives in Peckham Rye, south London. He is Commissioning Editor at Another Man magazine and a regular contributor to Dazed and Confused. His novel Boxer, Beetle will be published by Sceptre in 2010, and he is now working on his second novel, The Teleportation Accident.
Heather Phillipson’s poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies and have been commissioned by the British Film Institute. She was awarded the Michael Donaghy Poetry Prize from Birkbeck College in 2007, and won an Eric Gregory Award in 2008. Heather was one of four poets to win the 2009 Faber New Poets award.
Marcel Theroux
© Sarah Lee
Erica Wagner
Fiona Benson
Member since 1993
Erica Wagner’s latest book is Seizure, a novel, published by Faber and Faber. Her other books are Ariel’s Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Story of Birthday Letters (Faber and Faber) and Gravity, a book of stories (Granta). She is the Literary Editor of The Times, lives in London but doesn’t get to the London Library nearly often enough.
Fiona Benson is an Anglo-Scottish writer currently living in Exeter. She was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, and then St Andrews University, where she completed the M.Litt. in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. on Ophelia as a dramatic type in early modern drama. She received an Eric Gregory award in 2006 and is working on her first book of poems. She was one of four poets to win the 2009 Faber New Poets award.
Justin Cartwright
Member since 1996
Marcel Theroux is an author and broadcaster. His second book, The Paperchase, won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2002. His latest novel, Far North, has just been published by Faber and Faber. He has been a user of the London Library for many years.
Rosamund Williams
Member since 1978
Rosamund Williams currently attends King’s College London as a first-year undergraduate, studying for a BA in Classical Studies. One of her poems was recently published in Pomegranate, a poetry ezine. As well as writing poetry, she has recently started work on her first stage play.
Justin Cartwright’s novels include the Bookershortlisted In Every Face I Meet, the bestseller The Promise of Happiness, White Lightning, and the 1999 Whitbread Novel Award-winner Leading the Cheers. His latest novel is To Heaven By Water, published this month.
Richard Davenport-Hines Member since 1972
© Chris Phipps
Richard Davenport-Hines is a former trustee of the London Library who has written numerous Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entries on con-men and murderers from Jack the Ripper to Dr Shipman. His most recent book is Ettie, the Intimate Life of Lady Desborough (2008).
Lee Hall
Member since 1992
Lee Hall’s work includes Billy Elliot (the film and musical), The Pitmen Painters (National Theatre) and Spoonface Steinberg (Radio 4). He has adapted many plays for the stage, including Brecht’s Mr Puntila and his man Matti (Almeida), The Good Hope (National Theatre) and Goldoni’s A Servant to Two Masters (RSC/Young Vic).
Clive James
Member since 2008
The broadcaster, essayist and poet Clive James has three books coming out this year: The Revolt of the Pendulum, a collection of essays; Opal Sunset, a collection of selected poems; and The Blaze of Obscurity, his fifth volume of autobiography.
Lawrence Norfolk
© Vineeta Rayan
Member since 1997
Lawrence Norfolk is the author of three historical novels, which have been translated into 34 languages. He was the winner of the Somerset Maugham Award in 1992. John Saturnall’s Feast, a novel about a cook in 17th-century England, will be published in 2010.
6 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
27 June – 13 September 2009 Tickets 0844 209 1919 www.royalacademy.org.uk
Supported by
John William Waterhouse, Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses (detail), 1891. Oil on canvas, 149 x 92 cm. Gallery Oldham. Gift of Marjory Lees, 1952
London Library.indd 1
01/06/2009 17:04
OVER MY
SHOULDER Justin Cartwright, whose most recent novel is To Heaven By Water (published by Bloomsbury this month), discusses how he uses the Library for his research What are you working on at the moment? Are you using any books from the London Library in your research, or have you for your earlier work? I am working on a number of things, one of them a docudrama on the life of Adam von Trott, the German Rhodes scholar and diplomat who was hanged for his part in the unsuccessful plot to assassinate Hitler, and the other a new novel. Early days, but I think the novel is about the implosion of the financial system seen through the eyes of a family of old money. Things change, of course, and it may turn into something completely different. For a previous book, The Song Before it is Sung (2007), I researched extensively in the Library. I particularly appreciated the Oxford journals on JSTOR, which is an utterly wonderful advance for the Library, but then I am in true colonial fashion deeply in love with Oxford, about which I wrote a short story recently. How frequently do you use the Library? When I am around, almost every day. I’m still waiting for the promised brass plaque on the desk closest to the door. What is your typical working day, if you have one? How do you organise your breaks? My typical London Library day is arrive about 10.30 a.m., talk to various layabouts, find an excuse to go to Pret a Manger for coffee with more of the same, wander around the stacks, think expansive thoughts, write a few words, go to Pret a Manger for lunch, snooze in large armchair, chat to
e Library is really a ‘ Th sort of cave that can be explored endlessly ’ Roger Katz of Hatchards, go home, play tennis, wonder where the day has gone.
What distracts you from your work? All sorts of things. But I have to say that, despite what I have written above, my most productive times are in the Library, even though I have a perfectly good study and library at home. Libraries, and particularly the London Library and Bodleian, arouse in me a desire to write to the best of my ability. One of the – few – problems of the writer’s life is the fear of writing well below one’s best. I am just about to face the critics again with a new book, To Heaven By Water, and I can only bear the ordeal if I believe I have done my best. As Woody Allen said of his films, they rarely come out quite as well as you were hoping. How do you use the Library? Do you study books there or take them home? Mostly I just follow my nose, and get books from the stacks to read in-house, but I also take books home if I need them for some other project. Do you have any favourite parts of the Library that you tend to go to? I use the Reading Room a lot, and have also taken to going up to the temporary reading room in Eliot House, which some wag has
christened the Sherpa Tenzing memorial reading room, for obvious reasons. Do you generally use books on your particular subject from the Library, or do you explore other subject areas? Do you borrow books for pleasure too? Yes, all of the above. Sometimes my reading is directed by the books I am reviewing, and recently I have been reviewing a lot of books related to Germany. But there are also wonderfully unsuspected treats: I was amazed recently to find a very obscure book called The Plains of Camdeboo for a travel piece. The Library is really a sort of cave that can be explored endlessly. I still don’t fully know my way around after years of membership. Is there a Library neighbour you dread? Grunters, coughers? (No names!) I find that they all add to the gaiety of nations. I particularly value people up from the country going through Debrett’s to prove that they are really the bastard child of some duke, by some unfortunate misunderstanding left outside the workhouse in a basket just after the Boer War. Have you made friends or useful contacts through the Library? Way too many. Has the London Library had any particular influence on your work? I think it has in subtle ways, but of course I like to think I retain some cool, novelistic distance. Probably nonsense. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 9
READING LIST
BehinD The
Book
The author. Photograph by Charles Hopkinson.
Bestselling novelist and biographer Peter Ackroyd, whose book, Venice: Pure City, will be published later this year, describes the titles he has found invaluable in researching his next project
I am about to embark on a history of England in six volumes and so, as you would expect, I need all the help I can get. It is of course important to be acquainted with the latest scholarship, in the various areas of enquiry, but like Thomas Malory I still find comfort and wisdom in the old books. Here are ten of them. The Green Roads of England by R. Hippisley Cox (London 1914). T. England, Roads. This is an excellent study of the ancient roads of the country. It has never been superseded, and is still the most authoritative account of earthworks and prehistoric track-ways. Almost every page has an illuminating entry, and it will no doubt prove invaluable to the modern psycho-geographer. The Past in the Present by Arthur Mitchell (Edinburgh 1880). H. Civilization. This is a fascinating account of survival. It describes, and explains, how many features of apparently prehistoric life are retained in the customs and civilisation of the nineteenth century. It argues, therefore, that the past is closer than we think – and this book of the late nineteenth century is as pertinent now as ever. Mediaeval Byways by Louis Francis Salzman (London 1913). H. Middle Ages. This book may not meet the rigorous standards of modern scholarship, but it is still an absorbing account of medieval England. It is filled with enlightening detail that can only come from a full knowledge of the documents of the period, and is written in a fresh and vigorous style that is perhaps now rare among historians. Britain and the British Seas by H.J. Mackinder (London 1902).T. England (Gen.). This remains quite simply one of the few full and detailed accounts of the geography
and geology of England. It deals with the physical history and physical structure of the island in voluminous detail; it deals with British weather; it charts the rivers and seas; it maps the valleys and plains. In short it is testimony to the old phrase that history is in essence geography in action. The Legendary History of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘Historia Regum Britanniae’ and its Early Vernacular Versions by J.S.P. Tatlock (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1950). Mod. This book was written in more recent years. It is an account of the making of a nation in myth and legend, concentrating in large part upon Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. The legendary history of the nation is of as much consequence as the factual history, although in truth both types of narrative are indistinguishably aligned. Tatlock proved as much with this great work of medieval scholarship. Language and History in Early Britain by Kenneth Jackson (Edinburgh 1953). Philology, Celtic. It is a measure of the importance of this work that it is still the major work of reference on the phonology of what were once known as the ‘Celtic’ languages from the first to the twelfth centuries. Like all great books, however, it illustrates more than its ostensible subject and becomes an inspiring example of historical recreation. The Lost Villages of England by
Maurice Beresford (London 1954). T. England (Gen.). This book is still required reading for those who are interested in the buried heritage of England. There are more than three thousand lost or deserted villages in the country, mute testimony of a communal past, but in Beresford they found their tongue of fire. An Essay on the Origins of the House of Commons by D. Pasquet (Cambridge 1925). H. Parliament (English). It may perhaps be a French scholar who best understood the makings of the House of Commons, but there is no doubt that this is a learned and still influential account of the beginnings of that chamber. The Waning of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga (London 1924). H. Middle Ages. Over-generalised and magniloquent though it may be, this book is still one of the most interesting accounts of the birth of early modern civilisation in Europe. It contains some splendid set pieces, and yields still interesting insights. The Life of Queen Elizabeth (vols. 6 and 7 of Lives of the Queens of England by Agnes Strickland, 12 vols., London 1840–8). H. England. This book, part of a mid-nineteenth century series on British queens, is still surprisingly fresh and interesting. It may in parts be a little fanciful, but it still manages to compete with – and even surpass – some of the more academic biographies written in recent times. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 11
The Ordeal of
Toby Trubshaw Marcel Theroux When God enclosed his divine breath in clay to fashion the first man, he spake to him thus: 'Wilt thou suffer the trials of battle or the pain of bringing forth children?' And Adam answered, saying, 'Lord, make me a warrior. ' The 1001 Heresies of Zelimkhan Massud
Bathed in slanting yellow rays, the folded peaks of the Waziristan uplands twinkled in Toby Trubshaw’s shaving glass just as they had on 223 previous mornings. His razor had all but lost its edge; the splayed bristles of his toothbrush were anointed with an infinitesimal dab of toothpaste; the water was cold and his towel rough and cheerless, but still he kept to this routine, which he’d come to regard as the keel of his sanity. Almost unwittingly, Toby had followed the best advice of the otherwise useless Hostile Environments Training Course he had undergone before his departure. For two days in a farmhouse outside Hereford, burly ex-SAS men had reminisced about forgotten and possibly illegal conflicts, and shown Toby and six other journalists how to retreat under fire, and how to apply tourniquets to plastic mannequins. But two pieces of important information had stayed with him: never let your captors forget you are a human being; and the best chances of escape occur when they are changing your location. He’d never had the opportunity to put the second piece of advice into practice, but by sticking to his routine and taking responsibility for the little personal freedom that was left to him, Toby felt he had managed to assert his human dignity. Over the previous eight months, his captors’ attitude to his morning ablutions had mellowed from open mockery to grudging respect. Even Qadim, Toby’s interrogator in the early weeks of his captivity, had grown progressively less hostile; a week earlier he had visited Toby unannounced and gruffly handed him a pellet of soap and this coarse towel. Toby dried himself. He was as trim as he’d been for years. He felt strong from his daily regimen of callisthenics. The muscles on his belly were like knotted leather. The mountain air and months with no alcohol had given his mind a crystal clarity. He’d read 12 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
Silas Marner twenty-three times and, at some risk to himself, filled seven tiny notebooks with an account of his captivity. Recently, however, there had been less to write about. No one who had not experienced Waziri hospitality could understand how strangely akin the ideas of guest and hostage were to the Waziri mind. And the interrogations that had begun with terrifying accusations of being a CIA spy had petered out into lectures on Waziri history and exhortations to embrace Islam as the one true religion. In the side pocket of his sponge bag, Toby hid his most precious keepsake: a photo of Jemima, sunburnt on the last holiday they’d had before his departure, Bella on her knee in a swimming costume with glittery deely-boppers on her head. Qadim opened the door and handed Toby a plate of warm non bread and fresh goat’s cheese. Toby was always careful to maintain a sense of decorum around the food. He never tore at it like an animal, however ravenous he might be. He sensed Qadim’s approving silence as he ate slowly and tidily. The two of them, he felt, had grown to respect one another. Behind the brusqueness, Qadim was a complex and proud man. ‘Toby sahib, ’ said Qadim, when Toby had finished eating, ‘when you are among your own people, how will you speak of us?’ Slowly and with deliberation, Toby stood and crossed the room to hand back the empty plate to his captor. ‘I’ll tell the truth, ’ he said. Qadim looked him and then embraced him. Toby felt his wiry shoulders through the rough woollen cloth of his tunic. He smelt of sheepskins and sunshine and some indefinable manly musk. ‘Come, ’ he said. And he led Toby blinking out into the sunlight. The British High Commissioner in Lahore assigned Toby a press attaché even before his debriefing with Army Intelligence. There had been no word from Jemima since his arrival and the staff at the High Commission seemed strangely tight-lipped when he questioned them about her. ‘Does my wife know that I’m free yet?’ Toby asked the High Commissioner. ‘She knows, ’ said the High Commissioner and glanced mysteriously at the press attaché. Something in the man’s gnomic tone enraged Toby, and, suddenly shrill with anger and exhaustion, he demanded to be told what was going on.
MARCEL THEROUX Photograph by David Howell
The press attaché rang a number on his mobile phone and passed it to Toby. He heard Jemima saying his name in a frail voice that made his vision blur with tears. ‘Where are you?’ Toby had envisaged this moment so many times that it was a disappointment to hear the note of accusation in his words, but somehow he had always assumed that Jemima would travel out to meet him when he was released. ‘I’m in hospital. ’ ‘Hospital?’ Toby glanced accusingly at the High Commissioner. ‘I’m holding our son. ’ Toby echoed her words in a tone of baffled ecstasy. The High Commissioner and the press attaché were beaming at him. ‘We didn’t want to be the first to tell you, ’ said the High Commissioner. Toby’s decompression was swift and extraordinary. Within thirty-six hours of the initial handover in Kaniguram, he was sitting beside a curtained-off bed in Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, Hammersmith, holding Jemima’s hand and listening to her account of their son’s arrival. Her plan to have a home birth had been defeated by the baby’s awkward posterior presentation. She’d been brought to the hospital in an ambulance and undergone an emergency c-section. ‘We’re so lucky, ’ she said, squeezing his sunburnt hand. ‘Having you back. What you must have gone through. ’ Their parting kiss was long and heartfelt, though its ardour was necessarily dampened by Jemima’s stitches. Toby had travelled straight to the hospital from the airport and now returned to the ground-floor flat near Ladbroke Grove where he and Jemima had lived for the last four years. The heating
was off. The flat felt cold and uninhabited. His return to the UK had been kept low key at his request, but now Toby experienced a mild sense of deflation. There was no mention of his return on the Six O’Clock News, and barely a paragraph on the BBC website. Toby glanced at his phone for messages, and then, on an impulse, rang Nigel Bacon, the Head of Specialist Factual at the channel. Forty-five minutes later, Toby walked into the Frontline Club to a standing ovation. He felt his heart lift at the sight of so many familiar faces: Nigel; Bronwyn, his executive producer; Matt – or was it Ben? – the production accountant; the girl who’d been the AP on his last programme; and even the guy who looked a bit like his old VT editor. Toby explained to a rapt audience that he’d been filming a piece to camera at the moment he was taken. He told them how he’d been marched at night from one safe house to another; of the interrogations; of playing chess with pieces fashioned from chewed-up copies of National Geographic magazine; of his bond with Qadim. They all drank champagne and toasted his survival. During a lull in the chat, Nigel filled Toby’s glass and moved a little closer to him. He fixed him with a serious look that Toby had seen before only once or twice and always in the context of deep cuts to the production budget. ‘I’ve got to ask you, Toby. Was there … torture?’ Expansive with adulation and champagne, Toby was quick to explain that there had been none, and then noting Nigel’s suppressed disappointment, added, ‘at least, nothing physical. ’ ‘Well, ’ Nigel said hastily, ‘they say mental torture is the worst' . In those first days home, Toby felt a hope that recalled the dewy dreams of his young manhood. Friends, acquaintances and THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 13
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THE ORDEAL OF TOBY TRUBSHAW total strangers sent flowers and tributes to celebrate the double blessing of Toby’s liberation and Milo’s birth. Toby prepared the house for Jemima’s return from hospital. He appeared on daytime television and spoke movingly of the importance of forgiveness. His agent secured a book commission about his ordeal. Jemima returned home and Bella was dropped off by Toby’s mother-inlaw. It seemed as though life was recovering its old rhythms. There is an old Pashtun proverb that warns of the bad luck that invariably follows a good harvest. The god of the ancient pastoralists was not the solemn Entity worshipped by the divines in the madrasah, but a trickster who shared the caprices of earlier pre-Islamic deities. When Toby’s misfortunes came, they were as abrupt and relentless as the wise shepherds predicted. Jemima was hospitalised, first with mastitis, and then with a virus that she’d picked up on the ward. Her mother, their only source of additional childcare, had gone to New Zealand to see her other daughter, and the burden of looking after the two children fell on Toby. Whereas Bella had been a happy and contented baby, Milo was a tiny squalling red god of wrath who ate little sips of formula hourly and then fell into brief sleeps from which he woke raging. After three tormented nights, Toby answered the door one morning wearing boxer shorts and a stubbly growth of beard. He noted ruefully that his belly had already recovered its former protuberance, fattened on a diet of pizza, Bella’s leftovers and Thomas the Tank Engine yoghurts, which he had taken to squirting directly into his mouth from the carton as a pick-me-up. It was the community midwife. Alarmed by Toby’s condition – and aware of his recent experiences – she got him an appointment with his GP, who in turn referred him immediately to a psychologist. The consulting room with its framed certificates and muted colours smelt soothingly of peppermint. The psychologist, Dr Sharpless, encouraged Toby to describe his feelings about his return from captivity. For seventy-two hours, Toby had barely slept. For most of that time, he had felt oddly lucid, though prone to fits of rage, but now a wave of tiredness crashed over him. Kaleidoscopic shapes fizzed in his peripheral vision. He heard a voice speaking. It was his. ‘When I saw Bella for the first time, ’ he said, ‘the thing that struck me wasn’t how much she’d grown, but how little. Eight months later, she was only eight months older. And with Milo, I keep thinking that in two years’ time, he’ll only be two. Two! It takes a baby two years to become two. Is it only me who thinks that’s incredible?’ ‘How old should a baby be after two years?’ said Dr Sharpless. When his question was met with silence, he suggested that perhaps Toby’s refusal to acknowledge the change in his daughter was a way of diminishing his own loss, making the eight months away seem more trivial and therefore more manageable. As he elaborated this idea, the room suddenly filled with the low rumbling of Toby’s snore. Jemima was allowed to leave hospital. With more hands to the pump, things improved at home, but not by much. Milo was still inconsolable. The act of feeding seemed to cause him agony. Now Bella regressed, and began to wake in the night, screaming that spiders and clowns were coming to get her. 14 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
Toby was under the cosh to deliver his book before Christmas. He worked at home in the tiny box-room at the end of the corridor, his brain fogged with exhaustion. Nowhere in the house could he escape the baleful threnody of Milo’s constant wailing. One morning, he nodded off at his desk and woke up from a deep sleep, stunned and incapacitated like a stroke victim, to find Jemima standing over him, clutching both the children and screaming at him for his selfishness. Toby’s indignation festered for the rest of the afternoon and then erupted during a family trip to the supermarket. He began criticising Jemima in the vegetable aisle; his harangue fed on itself, growing more vituperative as they reached the bakery counter where a supermarket employee was laying out fresh loaves. The man’s weary eyes met Toby’s as he put the bread on the open racks and, for a split second, it seemed to Toby that he was looking at Qadim’s tanned face under his familiar Chitrali cap. Then, just as quickly, Qadim vanished, replaced by a middleaged man in a woven plastic hat. Emboldened by his vision, Toby rebuked Jemima for her selfishness and her shortcomings as a wife until she fled in tears with the children. The shelf-stacker approached Toby, peeled off his latex gloves, and laid a tattooed hand on his forearm. ‘I’ve been in stir with the worst of the lot, ’ he said. ‘And I reckon men like you are lower than nonces. ’ Milo was diagnosed with reflux. Sachets of thickener added to his formula seemed to mute the symptoms. Shamed by his performance in the supermarket, Toby apologised, grovelled and finally acquiesced to Jemima’s long-cherished dream of moving to Abergavenny, for its good schools, rural tranquillity and proximity to her mother in Cardiff. Toby let the flat, rented a house, and on the day of the move, packed their possessions into a removals van. Their progress down the motorway was slow as they needed to stop to mix Milo’s special feeds. At the Moto outside Hereford, Toby left the service station for a cigarette. He’d begun smoking again, partly because he craved the moments of solitude and partly because he knew it annoyed Jemima. Standing in the rain, he surveyed the road he’d come. His old life was behind him. He thought of all the other lives he might have led, and the one that lay ahead of him: a vast tract of broken nights, long wet Sundays, fights over whose turn it was to change nappies, years of Tikkabilla and Balamory wearing him away to a joyless nub. He stubbed out his cigarette and glanced at the road sign to Hereford. It seemed as though his life had bifurcated there, at that training course, on the eve of his departure to Pakistan, and, without knowing it, he’d chosen the hopeless path. And suddenly the second piece of advice came back to him. Waiting in the play area, juggling the two children, Jemima was slow to realise what had happened. It’s impossible to feel anything but pity for her at that moment, facing the grief, and the explanations and the procedural tangle of losing her husband a second time. But perhaps, on one of those early bewildered evenings in Abergavenny, she glimpsed the promise of a more hopeful future, while 4,000 miles away, bathed in slanting yellow rays, the folded peaks of the Waziristan uplands twinkled in Toby Trubshaw’s shaving glass just as they had on 224 previous mornings.
NEW POETRY The Faber New Poets programme, organised by Faber and Faber and funded by Arts Council England, aims to support and promote new poets. This year, Fiona Benson and Heather Phillipson, whose work appears below, were two of the four awarded poets.
Lares
Fiona Benson
I keep going back to that bird, snagged by a halter or skein of fibre or yarn and strung from the gutter of the opposite house where it quartered the wind, each bead of its spine and the dead-drop of its skull lit up against the breeze-block wall, claws pushed out as if skidding to a halt while its beak transmitted code. I say a prayer to you, small ghost, small noosed spirit of the eaves, dangling from the prow of the house singing all four winds, the spindle and pin and needle and thorn of your hollow bones riding you on air that is redolent with spores after the fact of your scavenged heart, the stolen tissues of your wings.
Cosmo Davenport-Hines, who was the youngest life member of the London Library, died on 9 June 2008, aged twenty-one. The Cosmo Davenport-Hines Prize for Poetry has been set up at King’s College London in his memory. This poem by Rosamund Williams was the winner.
after the war
Rosamund Williams
he said we would swim, after the war, and wash away the shell fire. but he is too cold for sea, his vocabulary boiled down to blood and stone and broken bone and chlorine, chlorine. his hands shake over little things: the gas stove, closing the windows, straightening the mirror. ghosts walk for him in plain sight. he hears cries for help in the wind and is cut by the tides. the creak of the wooden floor says ‘save me brother’ his boots in the vegetable patch groan ‘take me home’ rain is a blessing and a curse. after the war we will bathe in the sea, he promised. there is no after.
German Phenomenology Makes Me Want to Strip and Run Through North London Heather Phillipson Page seven – I’ve had enough of Being and Time and of clothing. Many streakers seek quieter locations and Marlborough Road’s unreasonably quiet tonight. If it were winter I’d be intellectual, but it’s Tuesday and I’d rather be outside, naked, than learned – rather lap the tarmac escarpment of Archway Roundabout wearing only a rucksack. It might come in useful. I can’t take any more of Heidegger’s dasein-diction, I say as I jettison my slippers. When I speak of my ambition it is not to be a Doctor of Letters or to marry Friedrich Nietzsche, it turns out, or to think better. It is to give up this fashion for dressing. It is to drop my robe on the communal stairs and open the front door onto the commuter hour, my neighbour, his Labrador, and say nothing of what I know or do not know, except what my body announces.
Message from the Moon
Clive James
Ming fruit dish, swirling Jackson Pollock tondo From Wedgwood, just because you’re so much bigger Than I am, don’t you lord it over me, The frail outrigger for your fat canoe. My seas are dead but I control your tides And stir your women on a monthly basis To their blood sacrifice. It isn’t you That liquefies them for their absent lovers, Churns their insides, puts highlights in their faces On hot nights where the sun no longer lingers. With my lost air to breathe they lie bereft, Touching themselves for hours beneath thin covers As I lean down to them and pull them open Like little oceans I can close at will. You think them satisfied but I know better. Those men you sent me were too small to feel: A pin-prick when they came, and when they left One tiny splash of fire I hardly noticed While they went home tin heroes. Next time send me Someone who’s known me since she was a girl.
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 15
Heroic Cookery for Beginners, or
Roasting the Boar
OF Kalydon T Lawrence Norfolk
he earliest representation of the hunt for the boar of Kalydon is a frieze on the neck of a large twohandled pot (an Attic black-figure volute krater, to be precise) painted by Kleitias sometime in the sixth century BC. The boar had been sent by the goddess Artemis to ravage the land of Kalydon, whose king had omitted sacrifice to the goddess. In response, the King’s son, Meleager, assembled a hunting party composed of the most illustrious heroes of Greece – and one heroine, Atalanta. They and their dogs tracked the boar for five days, finally running him to ground by the shores of Lake Trichonis. There, they encircled the beast and attacked. The attack itself was a haphazard affair. Atalanta first wounded the beast, which only prompted it to slit the belly of the nearest dog and gore Ancaeus in the crotch. Meanwhile, Peleus speared Eurytion by mistake. Meleager actually killed the boar. A spear-thrust through the animal’s eye. All the foregoing is depicted on Kleitias’s pot. Meleager is prominent, spear in hand. Atalanta too, quiver on her back. Ancaeus lies motionless on the ground, although in reality there was clutching of the privates and considerable thrashing around. Nineteen huntsmen are depicted; all are named. Seven dogs are shown. These also are named. Not depicted, or named, is the twentieth member of the expedition. He would – and should – have been portrayed as bent double under the weight of a bulging sack which was slung over his shoulder. A collection of knives, cleavers and other implements would have been visible dangling from his belt and,
Left Black-figured volute krater, potted by Ergotimos and painted by Kleitias, 6th century BC. Museo Archeologico, Florence. Opposite Sarcophagus depicting the Kalydonian hunt, showing the hero Meleager and the goddess Artemis. Proconnesian marble, Roman artwork. Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons. 16 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
clutched awkwardly under his arm, a clanking bundle of sootblackened ironmongery which later experts in the iconography of Attic black-figure pottery would no doubt have misinterpreted as cultic objects associated with the worship of some recherché local fertility goddess but which was, in fact, the component pieces of a portable spit-roast sufficient to the task of roasting a wild boar the size of a rhinoceros. The twentieth member of the expedition was the cook. Me. I was, I confess, late on the scene. The boar was dead and the argument over the division of the spoils was well advanced. I set to work immediately, recalling to mind the complex assembly instructions for erecting the portable spit-roast while attempting to estimate the weight of the boar, by eye. A little over 1,500 pounds was my best guess. Meleager was already attempting to hack off the head, which he had decided to present to Atalanta. The hide he intended to keep for himself. Neither decision was endearing him to his fellow huntsmen. Tempers were running high. The sons of Thestius were particularly incensed and the sons of Thestius, although not formidable individually, were notoriously numerous. In a striking anticipation of the diegetical commentary to the ninety-sixth aetion of Callimachus which, some centuries later, would tell the story of the boar-hunter who, having killed his boar, cut off the animal’s head and then lodged it for safety in the branches of a tree, had lain down to rest directly underneath, whereupon the boar’s head had fallen down and killed him as he slept – that diegetical commentary – my thoughts turned to the carcass of the beast, the carnal focus of the argument which now raged between Meleager, Atalanta and the rest of them. As Peleus brandished his javelin and Ancaeus rolled in the dust, clutching his groin in agony – he was bleeding to death, it was obvious, but no one moved to help him – I thought to myself then: the boar is dangerous even when he is dead. The events which led from the undignified scene before me as the heroes and singular heroine contended each for his or her share of the dead beast, the feuds, vendettas and future wars which would result in the deaths of all present, myself excepted, these were all the more pitiable for being unnecessary. Had they taken my advice, feasting, not fighting, would have been their lot. A trophy is no less honourable for being carried in a quivering layer about the midriff. Better to be fat than a fatality. I speak
LAWRENCE NORFOLK
from experience. Peleus had just grasped Meleager by the hem of his chiton when I raised my voice above the general hubbub. ‘Gentlemen! Female! Lay down your weapons! Set aside your self-esteem. True heroes need not always be tragic. They may be comic instead. Take instruction from your cook!’ I had their attention. I drew breath and began. ‘Take one boar, namely, this one. Gut. Skin. Rub coarse salt into the cavity. Set aside in a cool, well-ventilated place. Next, fill a deep pit with charcoal prepared from the fallen boughs of olive-wood trees which have lain drying in the sun on the slopes of Mount Dodona for no less than three summers, and preferably five. Ignite. This will supply an even heat. Meanwhile, gather the following … ’ As I began to enumerate the ingredients, I was, I confess, tempted to simplify the dish which I had conceived, there and then, by the shores of Lake Trichonis where the mighty boar lay toppled like the hull of a shipwrecked vessel, for the sons of Thestius had drawn their knives, which were as numerous as their owners, but not for the purpose of gutting or skinning. That was obvious. I resisted the urge. I would not bastardise my dish. I continued. ‘Also required, one each of the following: fig-pecker, songthrush, quail, plover, woodcock, grouse, red-legged partridge and pheasant. Should the song-thrush prove elusive, a young pigeon may make an acceptable substitute. Pluck and gut all but the fig-pecker, and set aside. Next, the meats. ’ There occurred, during the enumeration of the meats, a disagreeable incident, involving Atalanta, Peleus and a stick. I was, however, unstoppable. I knew my course was the right one. ‘One hare, ’ I declaimed to the bellicose company. ‘The larger the better, skinned, gutted and boned; one lamb, fattened on the upper pastures where a diet of thyme and herby grasses will have imparted a delicate flavour to the flesh. Prepare as per the hare. One calf, as above. One stag, gutted, skinned, antlers removed. Lastly, the garnish. Take lengths of golden wire and weave into the form of a cage. Repeat, and fill both with assorted songbirds, the latter to include a high proportion, even majority, of larks. ’ By now, scuffles had broken out among the heroes, but I
soldiered on, describing how the fig-pecker should be inserted into the song-thrush, the thrush into the quail and so on until all seven birds were lodged in the pheasant, which should then be stuffed into the boned carcass of the hare, the hare into the lamb, lamb into calf, calf into stag and all finally into the belly of the boar of Kalydon, the flaps of whose capacious, bird-and-beaststuffed carcass would be sewn shut using a shipwright’s awl and several lengths of catgut. ‘Impale the stuffed boar on a spit, suspend over a medium charcoal fire and turn continuously for three days, ’ I shouted over the din, for the scuffling had now become fighting. ‘Test by inserting a javelin into the thickest part of the beast. When the juices run clear, remove the boar from the heat and place on a large platter. Hang the golden cages filled with songbirds one from each tusk. Slice into thick cutlets and serve immediately!’ At that point a rock, thrown by one of the sons of Thestius, narrowly missed my head. ‘Apple sauce is the traditional accompaniment; the addition of juniper berries, a variation whose tartness will offset the density of the meats. I commend this dish to you all as the feast most appropriate for the hunters of the boar of Kalydon. ’ I concluded by calling for volunteers, ‘men of practical intelligence’ was how I put it. I meant men who could help me assemble the spit-roast. But did anyone step forward? Did even one of those hunters of the boar of Kalydon offer to lend their cook a hand? They did not. They preferred to kill each other and be commemorated on Kleitias’s pot. I chose to live, and be forgotten. The dish which should have borne my name is known today as ‘Wild Boar à la Troyenne’ , in allusion to the wooden horse at Troy and the men who, as it were, stuffed it. But this was years before Troy, and centuries before Kleitias painted his pot. You can see it today, if you like. It’s in Florence. Or you can attempt the recipe above. It is not a dish for the uncommitted cook, but recent advances in rotisserie technology have greatly reduced the drudgery of erecting and turning the spit. It is tempting to omit the garnishing of the boar’s tusks with golden cages of songbirds. The truly heroic cook knows better. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 17
DESTRUCTIVE CAPACITY Ned Beauman They had come to see the weapon. They did not know where they were. They had disembarked at an industrial port in the south, and then they had been driven seven or eight hours in a limousine with blacked-out windows. Three times along the way the car had stopped, and they had emerged to find themselves in a sort of utility tent, with chemical toilets, tables of food and exercise treadmills. The limousine’s final destination was an underground car park at the test site. As they hauled their bags out of the boot of the vehicle, Krasik realised that they had not seen the sky since they got off the ship which had brought them here, and indeed they probably wouldn’t see it until they returned to the ship the following day. On that ship, their bodies had been swept for hidden electronic devices, but of course no such device would have been of any use, since there were no longer any satellites from which they might have been able to triangulate their position. All of them had been shot down within a few days of the beginning of the war. From the underground car park, the American observers were led by their translator, a short woman of about Krasik’s own age, up to a corridor of bedrooms that might have been copied straight from a mid-market business hotel back home. At the end of the corridor Krasik found a vending-machine. ‘Look at this, ’ he said. ‘They’ve got Froot Loops. And Lucky Charms. In those little single-serving boxes. ’ ‘Do you think they got that stuff just for us?’ said Ludlow. Krasik bought a box of Lucky Charms. ‘I guess not, ’ he said, studying the packaging after he had taken it out of the machine. ‘This is three years out of date. ’ ‘I told you they’d try to kill us, ’ said Ludlow. Krasik laughed, although this was not quite a joke. Ludlow had a genuine and intense paranoia about the mission. Krasik recalled their very first conversation about it, in a staff cafeteria, just after the meeting at which they were told they had been selected. ‘When we get there they’ll just fake a car crash or something, ’ Ludlow had said. He was much younger than Krasik. He had joined the Pentagon straight out of college, at the beginning of the war, as an act of patriotism, whereas Krasik had done so several years earlier, before anyone really believed there would even be a war, because of his parents. He had promised them that if music school didn’t work out he would get a job with the government. ‘Why would they go through all this just to scratch off two badly paid weapons experts?’ ‘They’ll interrogate us first. Obviously. ’ ‘They know the Pentagon wouldn’t send anyone who really knew anything about anything. ’ ‘Then they’ll brainwash us and send us back. Like in The Manchurian Candidate. ’ ‘That’s a movie. And I’m sorry, but you’re no Frank Sinatra. As much as you may love hookers. ’ ‘Then, come on, why? Why else would they do this? This is crazy. ’ ‘It’s not crazy, ’ Krasik had said. ‘I read that in 1945, during the Manhattan Project, some of the physicists at Los Alamos wanted 18 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
to invite a party of their chopstick-wielding colleagues over for cocktails. The idea was that if the Japanese saw the very first atom bomb test and reported it back to their generals, they’d surrender right then, because they’d know they were beaten. ’ ‘So what happened?’ ‘They didn’t do it. It wasn’t a sure thing. They thought the Japanese might see it and think they still had a chance. They thought it might even strengthen their resolve. ’ ‘And what’s the difference this time?’ Krasik had shrugged. ‘The pricks over there must think it’s a sure thing. ’ In his room, which had no windows, Krasik found a telephone, which had no buttons. He picked it up, and was surprised to hear a female voice on the other end say ‘Yes?’ almost immediately. ‘Uh – hello?’ ‘Would you like any food or drink to be sent up to your room? Any accessories?’ The voice had a fairly thick accent. ‘Accessories?’ he said. ‘Yes?’ ‘No, thank you. Everything’s fine. ’ He put down the phone, wondering who, among the upper ranks of their enemies, had calculated the obligations of diplomatic hospitality for a situation like this one. Then he had a shower and went to bed. He was glad he’d got over his jet lag while they were still on the ship. The next morning he was awoken by the phone ringing. ‘Yeah?’ ‘It is seven o’clock. Your liaison is waiting for you outside. ’ A lift took the bleary American observers and their unbleary translator down to the lowest level of the facility. They were led into a control room of some sort, which felt more like an office than a laboratory. Already present were six men and women in white coats and two men in military uniform. Krasik felt himself being studied, and it made him wonder if they had been watching him while he slept. ‘Please feel free to take notes or talk between yourselves, ’ said the translator. Most of one wall of the room was taken up by a huge colour screen. The screen showed what looked like an aircraft hangar, and the hangar was crowded with two or three thousand pigs, as pink as in a children’s cartoon. The camera must have been mounted on a wall fifteen or twenty feet above the pigs’ heads. ‘Are you ready?’ said the translator. Krasik nodded. The translator said something to the scientists. One of the scientists started tapping on a computer keyboard. ‘Why are they looking at us?’ whispered Ludlow to Krasik. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘They should be looking at the hogs or the charts or something. But they’re all looking at us. ’ ‘This isn’t like Los Alamos. This isn’t the first test. They already know it works. They don’t need to watch it. ’ ‘Yeah, but still … ’ Ludlow was right. The scientists were looking at the Americans.
ground, so no blood poured out. He put his hand up to his face, bracing himself for the stench. But then he took his hand away again. Looking out over the carcasses of the thousands of dead pigs, he realised that, somehow, there seemed to be no odour whatsoever. ‘You are satisfied with the demonstration?’ said the translator. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to drive them off a cliff into the sea?’ murmured Ludlow to Krasik. Krasik didn’t reply. Afterwards, they were led back to their rooms to collect their belongings, which had presumably been searched in their absence. By the end of the day they would be off the ship and on a plane back to Washington. ‘When we get back they’re going to want to know how it works, ’ said Ludlow as they stood in the corridor by the vending-machine. The expired box of Lucky Charms still stood on top of the machine where Krasik had left it the night before. ‘And I don’t have the first fucking clue. What are we going to put in the report? Apart from that we just lost the war. ’ ‘What do you mean, we just lost the war?’ ‘Do you think we could defect? I mean, right now?’ ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying. ’ ‘That was a joke. Or I think it was. ’ ‘I mean, what you were saying before that. About the war. Because as far as I’m concerned, there’s no way that was conclusive. ’ ‘What?’ ‘A test on some livestock in a hangar isn’t the same as fighting a battle. ’ ‘Are you serious? It does what it does. The guys over here were right. Like you said, they knew it was a sure thing. And, you know what else? Honestly? As much as I hate these bastards, we should be grateful that they gave us a chance like this. They didn’t have to. It’s going to save a lot of lives when we go home and tell the brass we’re beaten. It’s more than we had the decency to do when it was us and the Japanese. ’ ‘Tell them we’re beaten? We’re not going to tell them anything of the sort. We’re going to tell them it’s well below the standards expected by the institution. We’re going to tell them we hoped for a lot better. ’ ‘Well below the what?’ ‘We used to really believe in them. But now it’s best if we don’t see each other for a while. ’ ‘You’re not making sense. You’re fucking with me somehow. Aren’t you?’ ‘I’m your superior on this mission. ’ ‘Huh? Are we in the Marines all of a sudden? Look, Krasik, do you realise what the consequences will be if we underplay this in the report even a little?’ ‘That’s final. ’ Back in the car park, their bags were loaded once again into the limousine. In what was surely a breach of protocol, two of the scientists from the demonstration had come to see them off. They did not wave, but stood in silence and watched the American observers. Everyone looked sick under the fluorescent lights. Just as he was getting into the car, Krasik made eye contact with one of the scientists. He frowned, and gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head. He waited for a look of disappointment to flash across the scientist’s face. And then, satisfied, he shut the door. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 19
NED BEAUMAN
And as Krasik studied the faces of the scientists, he observed an expression that reminded him of an afternoon thirteen years ago, back in Brooklyn, towards the end of his sixth semester studying composition at music school. He was in his apartment, sitting at the piano. The apartment was so small that, with the instrument, there was not even room for a table to eat off. Behind him, on the sofa, was Esme, who at that time was still his girlfriend. ‘Hurry the fuck up, ’ she said playfully. ‘If you can’t play it to me, how are you going to play it to the examiners?’ ‘Droste says it might not be enough to keep me on the course for next year. ’ ‘They’re not going to kick you out – nobody ever gets kicked out. ’ Impatiently she reached up to push her fringe out of her eyes, revealing for a moment the sigmoid vein of baldness where her thick black hair parted along the left side of her skull. ‘They might. Droste says it’s “well below the standards expected, blah blah blah … ” . ’ ‘Just because it’s too experimental for them – ’ Krasik turned. ‘Esme, that’s sweet, but you don’t understand. It’s not that it’s too experimental. It’s not that I’ve blown their little minds. It’s not that they’re jealous. I wish I could believe any of that. It’s just not very good. Droste’s right. And I don’t think you’re going to like it either. Which is even worse. ’ ‘You’re an idiot, sometimes. Classic impostor syndrome. ’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘All geniuses secretly think they’re no good. It’s part of what proves you’re a genius. ’ She got up, took hold of his shoulders, turned him back to the keyboard, and kissed him on the back of his neck. ‘I love you. Now play. ’ So he began to play, while Esme turned the pages of the manuscript for him. On top of the piano, in a cheap frame, there was a photo of Esme smiling that he had taken once on the subway. But at that hour of the afternoon, the bright April sun was coming through the windows of the apartment at such an angle that he could not see the photo, but only his own face, reflected in the glare on the glass of the frame. And the expression on his face that day was the same expression he now saw on the faces of the scientists in the control room. That was what he was thinking about when he heard Ludlow let out a little muffled cry. Quickly, Krasik turned back to the screen. ‘Did you see it?’ said Ludlow hoarsely. His face was white. ‘Yes, ’ lied Krasik. Something had happened. Every single pig was now slumped over on its side, and the entire hangar was awash with blood, up to a depth of two or three inches. Krasik tried to compose his features. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that the scientists were still watching him, not the screen. ‘You will wish to see first hand, ’ said the translator. ‘What?’ said Ludlow. ‘No, you know, I don’t know if we need to, uh … ’ ‘That could have been a computer simulation or something, ’ whispered Krasik. ‘I think they want to prove it was real. ’ They were led down a long corridor. At the end of the corridor was a huge metal door, like in a bank vault. One of the scientists tapped in a code to unlock the door, and as it swung slowly open Krasik saw that it was at least three feet thick. Behind it was the hangar. The bottom edge of the doorway was raised a little off the
HIDDEN corNErs
MURDER
IN THE STACKS Richard Davenport-Hines on the escapist pleasures to be found in the Library’s detective fiction collection
T
Above Nicholas Blake’s A Question of Proof (1935). Opposite, left to right Ellery Queen’s The Siamese Twin Mystery (1933); G.K. Chesterton’s The Incredulity of Father Brown (1923); Michael Innes’s Death at the President’s Lodging (1936), 1962 edition.
20 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
he London Library is a treasure trove of works from the golden age of detective fiction. The whodunits are heavily borrowed from the Fiction shelves – carried home with stealthy pleasure by members of the Library who feel a heavy cold coming on or are facing a Bank Holiday weekend with dull or abrasive relations. They are an escapist consolation for all of us who want to step away from the harsh din, angular edges and importunate needs of the present. ‘To resist living in one’s own time, to attempt to live in an imaginary past, is human in the same way that being neurotic is human, ’ the American scholar Edward Mendelson has written. Detective novels are a retreat into an imaginary past in which a small number of protagonists circle one another in an enclosed dream world. A cordon sanitaire of fantasy protects the characters from the clumsy, grubby reality of life around them; although there are plots, betrayals and killings, these seem far removed from the paranoia of one’s own time, and readers have the satisfying certainty that the sleuth will resolve the puzzle and rout the murderer. The Library’s collection of detective fiction is rich, idiosyncratic and uneven – like much of the best of this unique
institution. This is a brief survey of the more significant or suggestive holdings. I promise not to spoil any surprise endings. In England, Agatha Christie published her first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920, Freeman Wills Crofts made his debut with The Cask in 1920, Dorothy L. Sayers published Whose Body? in 1923, Nicholas Blake A Question of Proof in 1935, Edmund Crispin The Case of the Gilded Fly in 1944. We have them all. These English whodunits, in which the pleasure lies in deducing the guilty party from baffling clues, had American imitators, notably the drug-besotted art critic writing under the pseudonym of S.S. Van Dine, who launched his camp sleuth Philo Vance in 1926 (we have nine of his twelve novels); Ellery Queen, who published his first whodunit, The Roman Hat Mystery, in 1929 (one of the nineteen Queen books at the London Library); and John Dickson Carr, who published the first of his locked-room mysteries in 1930. Raymond Chandler declared in his essay ‘The Simple Art of Murder’ (1950) that ‘a writer who is afraid to over-reach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong’ . I wish, though, that Dickson Carr had been more fearful in the stretch of his plots. The contrivances of The Waxworks Murder (1936) or The Problem of the Wired Cage (1939) are just
about tolerable, but the solutions to The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941) or the murder by an invisible killer of a man standing alone at the centre of a labyrinth of low box-hedges seem ludicrously overreached. They are among the seventeen Carr novels to be found in Fiction. W.H. Auden in his essay on whodunits entitled ‘The Guilty Vicarage’ (1949) identified five elements in the classic detective story – ‘the milieu, the victim, the murderer, the suspects, the detectives’ . I approve of this ordering, for the milieu of the crime is decisive for my pleasure, and I relish whodunits that are set in distorted versions of milieux I know. My favourite of the twenty detective novels written by C. Day Lewis under his pseudonym Nicholas Blake is End of Chapter (1957), set in a publisher’s office, in which a bestselling but deeply
‘
annoying novelist is found with her throat cut. Michael Innes’s debut detective novel, Death at the President’s Lodging (1936), in which the head of an Oxford college is shot by one of his dons, and The Weight of the Evidence (1944), in which a biochemist called Pluckrose is crushed by a meteor dropped on him while he lazes in a deckchair in a university quadrangle, are similarly among my favourites. (Other Innes novels, such as The Journeying Boy of 1949 and Hare Sitting Up of 1959, are far removed from my reality, but equally joyful to read.) Twenty-eight Innes books are shelved in Fiction. The Library has, alas, never bought Robert Robinson’s Landscape with Dead Dons (1956), an Oxford novel to compare with Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson (1911). Robinson’s novel contains the fairest clue of any whodunit – a clue that is more
The whodunits are carried home with stealthy pleasure by Library members who feel a heavy cold coming on or are facing a Bank Holiday weekend with dull or abrasive relatives
’
wittily conceived and finely turned than a comparable jeu d’esprit in Dorothy Sayers’ novel about a Russian gigolo murdered in a Devon resort, Have His Carcase (1932). Auden in his essay declared that only three ‘completely satisfactory detectives’ had been devised: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown and Freeman Wills Crofts’ Inspector French. ‘His class and culture are the natural ones for a Scotland Yard Inspector, ’ Auden wrote of French. ‘His motive is love of duty. Holmes detects for his own sake and shows the maximum indifference to all feelings except a negative fear of his own. French detects for the sake of the innocent members of society, and is indifferent only to his own feelings and those of the murderer … He is exceptional only in his exceptional love of duty which makes him take exceptional pains ... He outwits the murderer ... partly because the murderer must act alone, while he has the help of all the innocent people in the world who are doing their duty (the postmen, railway clerks, milkmen, etc., who become, accidentally, witnesses to the truth). ’ Crofts excels at devising intricate hidden worlds behind conventional stolid façades – a combination that haunts Western imagination, as Michael Frayn wrote in Constructions (1974): ‘Of these
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 21
five apparently normal, respectable citizens, one is a ruthless murderer who disembowelled Sir Toby with the ornamental Javanese paper-knife! At once they all five become interesting in their very uninterestingness. ’ I favour those Crofts novels that delve into the depths of business life and make the humdrum mystifying: The Pit-Prop Syndicate (1922) and Mystery on Southampton Water (1934), for example, succeed in making the timber trade and cement manufacturing seem intriguing. Similarly, Dorothy Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise (1933), set in an advertising agency during a consumer boom, and Cyril Hare’s With a Bare Bodkin (1946), a wonderful evocation of terminal boredom and incarnadine mayhem amid the red tape and circulating files of the wartime Department of Pin Control, score high for their documentary power. The Library holds twenty-two books by Crofts, with such titles as The Box Office Murders (1929) and The Hog’s Back Mystery (1933). His first novel, The Cask, was perhaps his best. In one year alone, 1934, he produced three books: one set on a commuter train, and two at sea: The 12:30 from Croydon, Mystery on Southampton Water and Sir John Magill’s Last Journey. I love novels with a strong feel of
time and place. Dorothy Sayers’ novel set in Mayfair on Armistice Day, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928); the pervading Fens melancholy of her The Nine Tailors (1934); and A.E.W. Mason’s detective mystery The House of the Arrow (1924), set in Dijon, all satisfy on this score. The London Library has fourteen of Anthony Berkeley’s whodunits, with titles as evocative of the time as Michael Arlen’s The Green Hat (1924) or Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies (1930): The Silk Stocking Murders (1928), The Piccadilly Murder (1929) and The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929). It also holds the two murder novels that Berkeley wrote under the name of Francis Iles: Malice Aforethought (1931) and Before the Fact (1932) are pioneering novels of psychological suspense rather than whodunits. The pivot of Malice Aforethought turns on the same device as James M. Cain’s more famous The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934). Both books are on the Library’s shelves: one set in the Devon backwoods, the other in a cheap California roadside diner. They make an enjoyable contrast. It is little known that C.P. Snow wrote a passable detective novel, Death Under Sail (1932), and there are other writers whose whodunits are undeservedly neglected. For over twenty Left: James M.Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934). Above, left to right: Anthony Berkeley’s The Silk Stocking Murders (1928); Freeman Wills Crofts’ Inspector French’s Greatest Case (1924). Opposite: A shelf of detective fiction (with thanks to Nigel Williams Rare Books).
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years admirable detective novels were written during their summer holidays by the political economist G.D.H. Cole and his wife Margaret. Many of these show their socialist sympathies and capitalist antipathies. The Death of a Millionaire (1925) begins in St James’s Square, features a monstrously pompous, money-grubbing cabinet minister Lord Ealing (Lord Curzon crossed with Silvio Berlusconi) and portrays a touching love affair, which the Coles discreetly liken to ‘David and Jonathan’ . The Murder at Crome House (1927), Big Business Murder (1935), Disgrace to the College (1937) and other Cole novels target crude capitalism or obtuse authority. Cyril Alington, Eton headmaster and cathedral canon, agonised whether a clergyman could fitly write a novel in which anyone was murdered, and decided not. His homicide-free whodunits, which the DNB described as ‘clever, witty, but quickly perishable’ , included Mr Evans: a cricketo-detective story (1922) and Crime on the Kennet (1939). No such scruples affected Father Ronald Knox: there are corpses galore in The Viaduct Murder (1925), The Three Taps (1927), Footsteps at the Lock (1928), The Body in the Silo (1933) and his other whodunits. My selection precludes, of course, Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868), and Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), as preceding the golden age. It is hard to omit such wonderful novels of suspense as Eric Ambler’s
‘
HIDDEN corners
I have a susceptibility to whodunits like the Coles’ “Poison in the Garden Suburb” (1929) in which violence erupts in gentle localities
The Mask of Dimitrios (1939), with its murder, espionage and drug trafficking, or Caroline Blackwood’s The Fate of Mary Rose (1981), describing the effect on a Kent village of the rape, torture and murder of a child, and its repercussions on the domestic life of a self-obsessed historian who lives in the village. These two books are both thrillers and deadly studies of selfishness, neurosis and cruelty. I have a susceptibility to whodunits like the Coles’ Poison in the Garden Suburb (1929) or Crofts’ Fear Comes to Chalfont (1942) in which, as in Blackwood’s novel, violence erupts in gentle localities. The Library has all of the detective novels of our fellow member Agatha Christie, but only a handful by Patricia Wentworth, whose heroine Miss Maud Silver, a retired governess turned private investigator, is one of the most attractive detectives of all: Miss Silver is Miss Marple in three dimensions. The Amazing Chance (1926), Beggar’s Choice (1930), The Coldstone (1930), The Case is Closed (1937), Down Under (1937) and
’
The Silent Pool (1953) are all we have. There are other regrettable omissions. The Fiction shelves have three of the ten wise, elegant novels by the county judge who wrote under the pseudonym of Cyril Hare: Tenant for Death (1937), Death is No Sportsman (1938) and Tragedy at Law (1942). It is a pity that the Library does not own An English Murder (1951), which has a brilliantly convincing motive for homicide that no novelist has used before or since. In reaction to the effeteness of S.S. Van Dine’s Philo Vance, Dashiell Hammett in 1929, Raymond Chandler in 1939 and Mickey Spillane (the most famous Jehovah’s Witness convert) in 1947 devised their hard-bitten private eyes Sam Spade, Philip Marlow and Mike Hammer. The London Library was generally out of touch with trends in American literature from the 1940s until the 1960s, and is only gradually filling the lacunae in all types of fiction. Perhaps there seemed little to admire in Sam Spade or Mike Hammer in the
days when Lord Ilchester was President – although he was sprightly enough to defeat moves to grass over part of the chalk Cerne Abbas Giant by threatening to found a Society for the Preservation of Ancient Erections. Nowadays, the London Library’s subscription to the incomparable Library of America series means that we have complete sets of the novels of both Chandler and Hammett. From the start, though, the Library has collected the works of Paul Auster, whose New York Trilogy (1985–6) is an incomparably exciting combination of Hammett-pastiche and Franz Kafka. The Library has also bought – fifty years late – Nelson Algren’s The Man with the Golden Arm (1949) and W.R. Burnett’s The Asphalt Jungle (1949). Neither of them are whodunits, but both are classics of criminal fiction set in Chicago. Algren’s anti-hero Frankie Machine is like a Saul Bellow existential anti-hero, but with a morphine habit; Burnett’s account of a jewellery heist that goes awry makes Tarantino seem puerile. I prefer escapism to realism, and haven’t chosen to sample much of our holdings of twenty-five Ruth Rendell titles, the eight novels under her alias Barbara Vine, or the eleven Sara Paretsky titles. As to the inevitable gaps, if anyone offers the Librarian a good copy of An English Murder or Landscape with Dead Dons, or a hardback set of Patricia Wentworth, I am sure she will accept. But no dog-eared airport paperbacks of Ed McBain or Robert Ludlum, please.
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 23
LEE HALL
in discussion with erica wagner
Erica Wagner talked to playwright Lee Hall, who has just won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Billy Elliot, at an informal evening in the Library’s Reading Room recently about his life and work Erica Wagner: Lee Hall hails from Newcastle and went to the University of Cambridge, which is where we met when we were students. His acclaimed play Spoonface Steinberg was first broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 1997, and was later adapted for television and the stage. His screenplay for the film of Billy Elliot (1999), directed by Stephen Daldry, was nominated for an Oscar; the musical has also just won ten Tony Awards. He co-wrote the screenplay for the film Pride and Prejudice in 2005 and adapted The Wind in the Willows for television in 2006. Most recently, his new play, The Pitmen Painters (2008), about a Northumberland group of miners – the Ashington Group – whose attendance at art appreciation classes propelled them into becoming artists in their own right, has been on at London’s National Theatre. He has also translated works by Brecht and Goldoni. Lee has told me that while, of course, he takes inspiration from life, much of his work has really arisen from his sheer love of books, so what better place to talk about that than here in the London Library. So can I start, Lee, by asking you to tell us about your earliest reading and indeed library experiences, and how you came to love libraries and particularly this Library. Lee Hall: Well, we didn’t have many books in our house. There was a library van that came to the end of our street when I was tiny, and my mum used to take me. By the age of five I’d read so many of the kids’ books in the library van that they gave me an adult ticket – I was the youngest person in Newcastle to have one – because you can get more books out on that, and ever since then I’ve been obsessed by books. And then in the paper one Sunday my Dad read about the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle, which is a bit like a tiny London Library, started in about 1825, and incidentally is the only library I’ve heard about where you could actually smoke. I was eleven and I just thought this was the best thing that I’d ever heard, so I went and got a junior ticket, and then when I moved to London after university it became very obvious
National Theatre production of The Pitmen Painters, 2009. 24 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
that I must join the London Library, so I’ve been a member off and on since then. I think what’s great about libraries is about bumping into things – it’s about what you don’t know – what’s that Donald Rumsfeld thing? EW: Oh, ‘There are known knowns … But there are also unknown unknowns.’ LH: It’s the unknown unknowns that I like about libraries; that you can go and bump into all sorts of connections and weird things and learnings that you don’t know that you don’t know. My favourite was when I discovered Samuel Foote. I was in the Oxford University English Faculty Library, and there was this book that I got off the shelf about Foote that said ‘Plays for a One-Legged Actor’ . It turned out that he’d written two plays for one-legged actors. He had been a playwright and satirist and actor during the age of Garrick and was friends with the rich and famous, and he’d been taken by the Duke of Marlborough or somebody on a riding trip, and they were all drunk and he fell off his horse and broke his leg. As a joke they had the house surgeon cut off his leg, and he woke up and realised he only had one leg. As an actor this was terrible, but he decided that he would write a load of works for one-legged actors that he would star in. So I’ve been obsessed by Foote, who is somebody I write bits about and then put it away. EW: But you wouldn’t have found that … LH: I wouldn’t have found that without walking round libraries looking at shelves. EW: And, thinking about books, how does the process work of turning one book into another, or one play into another? LH: David Hare said something about not being very good at languages, but being quite good at English, and in a sense I feel as if I’m an envoy in a foreign land with a playwright’s intentions, because a play script is really just a series of instructions to make another event. I’m not sure it has much integrity as a literary text in the same way as poetry. EW: It’s a framework … LH: Yes – it’s kind of a blueprint, and of course in every culture it’s going to take a different form. I think it’s why plays are translated or adaptations are made, because every five years or so the culture’s changed in a way that makes the previous versions undoable, unreadable. I was asked whether I could do A Servant to Two Masters, which is this play by Carlo Goldoni [1763]. The previous English version was made for Tommy Steele in 1968, and it was like a pantomime; there was no relation at all to Goldoni’s original, which is actually a play about hunger underneath, and this had got lost in the later versions. So the process that I go through is to try to find out what the playwright really meant. Now that’s obviously partial and is probably more about me than it is about Goldoni. EW: It’s an interpretation … LH: But I don’t set out to interpret it, because I think that I should write my own play if I’m doing that – I’m sort of trying to protect
the playwright from the abuses of culture, if you like, but I learn an awful lot by messing around with other people’s work. Sometimes I try to reconstruct it I suppose – like archaeology. EW: So how does that messing about then inform your own, your original, work? LH: I think that what you see is that there is a continuum of dramatic literature informed obviously by dramatic practice. Basically there are tricks that people use, and doing this work and really getting inside of a play you see the conventions very clearly. Through doing all these adaptations the most clear thing that comes across is the long tradition of commedia dell’arte and how that informed the Western canon – everything from Othello to Alan Ayckbourn to an awful lot of Brecht – you think Brecht is a very cerebral playwright, but once you start analysing how the thing is structured – it’s almost as if he was subconsciously nicking stuff from commedia dell’arte. Then when you have this bag of tricks it’s really useful to employ them. EW: And how, then, do your original ideas for plays arise, Pitmen Painters, for instance? How do you find these things? LH: I was in the Shipley art bookshop in the Charing Cross Road, and I found a book that said The Pitmen Painters, and it seemed to be in neon, and I grabbed it, and by the time I got home in the cab I had read the first chapter and knew it was a play … I feel that the subject of a play or a film finds me because I’m just waiting for that catalyst which consolidates a lot of the things I’m worrying about – worrying to try and find a vessel to put them in. But the nice thing about doing adaptations which I really love is that you’re on an equal footing with everybody else who makes the piece of work so you’re much more like an actor – you’re on the actor’s side and the director’s side as an interpretative artist and not the originating one – whereas I think when you’re a playwright you’re on the other side of the fence because you’re trying to defend an a priori thing. The collaborative nature of working on a production is why I am a dramatist rather than a poet or a novelist, because although I totally enjoy being by myself and being in a library and doing work at my desk, I equally enjoy working with other people and the real pleasure when you’re surprised by somebody saying something different about something you’ve written, and because you kind of get loads for free. And of course you discover that everything is open to interpretation and that what’s obvious to one person is not necessarily obvious to another at all. It’s rather chastening as a writer, because you’re trying to make something very specific, and you realise that’s a rather impossible task really. EW: Tell us about your next project, if you will? LH: I’ve always got loads of things bubbling in various states of disarray. I’ve just been editing a radio programme I’ve been making about Northumbrian poetry. In Newcastle in the 60s there was this little explosion of a renaissance in a similar way to the Pitman Painters – there was this young bloke who’d left school at fourteen with no qualifications called Tom Pickard, and he set up this little tower in the city walls – there are six walls of Newcastle, a bit like York, but they’re all hidden behind Chinese restaurants – and put on poetry readings, and there was this guy called Basil Bunting who had been the secretary to Ezra Pound and who’d known Yeats and Eliot, and he was about sixty-five. They had a fantastic relationship and Bunting wrote a long, modernist poem called Briggflatts to teach Tom how to write poetry, and it was this fantastic flowering of an alternate history of poetry. So I’ve been
tracing that from Caedmon to the present day. I’ve also been working on a musical with Roger Waters from Pink Floyd of their album The Wall. And I’m working on a film about the composer Olivier Messiaen, who wrote Quartet for the End of Time in a prisoner-of war-camp in Silesia. He was commissioned to write it for a Christmas concert by the commandant of his section when he found out that Messiaen was the great hope of French music. So, again, it’s about people making up art in times of duress, I suppose, as the common theme. EW: Well I think enough from me and maybe some of the audience have questions … Member of Audience: How do you feel about David Hare’s concerns recently about the BBC deciding to go all out for news as a news organisation … EW: … rather than stressing fiction or plays or … LH: Well, one of the things about drama is that it’s really expensive because you have to employ actors, and the BBC is one of the very few places that you can do that – not just in this country but the world. It seems a proper loss and I would feel panicked, and as somebody who grew up in the 70s, my education has really come from going to libraries and finding things by accident and watching the telly: I think almost everything I know came from watching BBC2 in the late 70s and the early 80s. That tradition of dramatists exploring the world of now was fantastic, and I think what was interesting to me was that the same dramatists who were writing for the stage were also writing significant work for TV – the medium didn’t matter. I think that possibility is less open to dramatists now – they tend to be a film writer or a theatre writer – whereas then you could be Trevor Griffiths or Alan Bennett and work across lots of mediums equally strongly. However, what the current commissioning editors are actually allowed to commission by the powers that be seems risible to me. All they do is remake things that were remade ten years ago: ‘Oh, it’s Thursday, it must be Pride and Prejudice.’ It’s a lamentable practice, and the fewer new versions of Jane Austen the better as far as I’m concerned. Get them on DVD. But the rather unexpected up-side of the impoverishment of serious TV drama is that the ‘live’ experience has become more valuable and the theatres that I am involved with are thriving. Which is great if you are in a metropolitan centre, but horrendous if you are in the Outer Hebrides where the choice of good theatre might be rather limited. M of A: I just wanted to ask you at what point did reading become writing? LH: I was very interested in the theatre and thought I would do something in the theatre but didn’t know what, and it wasn’t until I stumbled across adapting a play when I was at college that I thought, ‘Oh my God, this sort of fits’ . And then I didn’t write anything for six or seven years because I didn’t know what to do; I thought, I’m a writer but I don’t know how to write. And I would try and write these Edward Bond-type plays which were absolutely terrible. It wasn’t until I realised I should just write about things that were very obvious to me, about me and my childhood and the world I knew well rather than this intellectual construct, that then other people were interested in what I had to write. This is an extract. The National Theatre production of The Pitmen Painters is touring the UK this autumn (nationaltheatre.org.uk). THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 25
MEMBERS’ News DEVELOPMENT PROJECT PHASE 2 THE NEW TIMES ROOM APPEARS! While much of Phase 2 of the Library’s redevelopment remains hidden by scaffolding and hoardings, and many of its rewards are still some months away, we are delighted to have been able to open the new Times Room to members in early May. Our collection of bound volumes of The Times has long been a key resource for historians, biographers, novelists and many other readers besides. The set runs continuously from 1813 to 2000, with just a few years missing between 1821 and 1825. Now accommodated in purpose-built shelving, the large, heavy volumes are much easier to lift down and consult on the special lecterns and desks provided. The space is not yet completely finished: we are awaiting delivery of a large cabinet to house microfilms and the Baddeley Prints, and a corner of the room is still occupied by a temporary builders’ partition (behind which work continues on a new lift). Nevertheless we hope members can see what a vast improvement it is on the old, rather cramped and unfriendly Times Room. This latest piece of the basement jigsaw to be revealed helps give a sense of how the integrated basements will look at the end of the year, with rolling racking fitted throughout and the entire Periodicals and Societies sequences accommodated there. The lightwell at the heart of the basement will provide a new reading room with 10 top-lit reader spaces, and there will be several more additional desks among the stacks themselves. Meanwhile, work also continues on the transformation of the Art Room, the formation of the extended staircase and lift, and connections to T.S. Eliot House on five levels. New basement toilets are also under construction.
Access around the building during Phase 2 We are most grateful for members’ patience while managing without the lift in the main building. The collections remain accessible throughout the works, but in some areas via circuitous routes, and indicating the ‘diversions’ has been a challenging task for the Reader Services staff. When this phase of work is complete, we hope that wayfinding around the Library will be much easier, despite its increased size: the upgraded lift will make two extra stops (Times Room and Art Room) and the extended secondary staircase will go from Basement to 6th Floor. We are working hard to devise signage to clarify the layout, so members should have little difficulty making their way about the Library once the new spaces have been opened up. In the meantime, we encourage members to check the Phase 2 tab 28 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
Custom-built lecterns make it easier for readers to consult The Times volumes.
Some of The Times collection in its new rolling racks.
on the website for detailed and up-to-date guidance on how to navigate through the Library while construction work is underway, and to ask Reader Services staff for help whenever needed.
Mobile phones: a change of policy Members who use the Library regularly will know that we have recently changed our policy on mobile phone use. Many members were being seriously inconvenienced by their fellows holding phone conversations in areas where they were trying to work quietly – primarily within the stacks and on staircases near reading spaces. We have therefore identified a few areas, away from reading desks, where members may use their phones, rather than specify simply where they may not. Full details are available from reception and are also posted on the website.
Sir Nicholas (Nicko) Henderson GCMG, KCVO
AUTHORS’ CLUB ‘Home of the well bred pen’
1919–2009 by Sir Max Hastings Sir Nicholas Henderson was a London Library committee member for a total of twelve years (1979–80, 1982–6 and 1989–96), and was made a Vice-President in 1998. Besides being a committee member he was of great help to the Library in many ways, not least in championing the Library’s cause in the UK and US during the 150th anniversary appeal in 1991. It was with great sadness that we heard of his death on 16 March this year. When Nicko Henderson asked friends to make a donation to the Library rather than send flowers to his funeral, he transformed a duty into a pleasure. Likewise, the wake at his west Berkshire home, on a brilliantly sunny March day, proved one of the happiest parties of the year. It was of a piece with a life in which he and his wife Mary broadcast fun wherever they went. Droll, laconic, effortlessly witty, Nicko’s anecdotage extended from the 1945 Potsdam Conference to Reagan’s Washington almost forty years on. His foes accused him of snobbery, but in truth he simply preferred clever people to stupid ones, and saw no virtue in drinking Châteauneuf-du-Pape if Haut-Brion might be pressed out of an embassy hospitality budget. He recounts in his memoir Mandarin (1994) how during his Paris stint in the 1970s an investigating team arrived from the dreaded Whitehall ‘think-tank’. Their suggestion that humbler fare should be served at the taxpayer’s expense in the Rue Saint-Honoré was dismissed by Nicko with as much contempt as he displayed towards the Argentine government’s claims on the Falklands during his legendary Washington tour in 1982. A dandy of a studied elegance only slightly impaired by his towering height, he read widely and passionately. His intellectual curiosity, like his passion for social life, remained undimmed until his death. The spectacle of Nicko stooping above a glass, white hair slipping over his face, eyes roving beneath his radar dome of a head in search of sharp conversation, was a landmark at every kind of social gathering. He was beloved and respected by almost all those who knew him, except for some reason his Times obituarist, who seemed to have had an ear bent by some jealous Foreign Office contemporary. Most British diplomats are today cautious and diffident folk, as well as demoralised ones. Nicko Henderson forged a brilliant career upon brains, courage and a determination not only to enjoy himself, but to make sure everybody else did, too. His commitment to the Library was as much in character as his taste for Dom Perignon.
Diary Date 2009 AGM
The 168th Annual General Meeting of The London Library will take place on Thursday 5 November 2009 in the Reading Room at 6 p.m. Drinks will be served in the Issue Hall from 5.30 p.m. Do come along to meet the trustees, including the new Chairman of Trustees, Bill Emmott, who will take the chair.
The Authors’ Club are delighted to support The London Library For further information about the Authors’ Club, please contact Brian Clivaz on 020 7290 3550 or email bc@theartsclub.co.uk 40 DOVER STREET MAYFAIR LONDON W1S 4NP Telephone 020 7290 3550 www.theartsclub.co.uk
The Royal Literary Fund
Financial Assistance for Writers Grants and Pensions are available to published authors of several works who are in financial difficulties due to personal or professional setbacks. For further details and application form please contact Eileen Gunn, General Secretary, The Royal Literary Fund, 3 Johnson’s Court, London EC4A 3EA Tel: 020 7353 7159 Email: egunnrlf@globalnet.co.uk Website: www.rlf.org.uk Registered Charity No 219952
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 29
DIARY
This Season’s LITERARY EVENTS Emma Hughes JULY From July to September 2009, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust will be hosting a series of Shakespeare-related events at their 5 Shakespeare houses in and around Stratford-upon-Avon, including readings by Michael Maloney and Janet Suzman of his erotic poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece on 12 July; family friendly outdoor performances of Richard III (1 August) and The Merchant of Venice (22–23 August); and a study day on 5–6 September on Reviewing Shakespearean Theatre: The State of the Art, at the Shakespeare Centre, which includes talks by theatre critic Michael Billington* and actor and director Janet Suzman (shakespeare.org.uk).
The Peak District will be hosting a friendly crowd of opera, music and literature lovers from all over the country during July’s Buxton Festival (10–28 July, buxtonfestival.co.uk). With literary mornings of readings and talks, afternoon concerts and opera in the evening, the festival has a history of attracting big names – this year’s speakers include Kate Atkinson, Julian Fellowes and Marina Lewycka.
will include Philip Pullman* on the myth of Orpheus and Ian McMillan in conversation with John Mullan about the legacy of Don Quixote, while actor Andrew Sachs brings to life the words of Cervantes’s hero. The Port Eliot Lit Fest (24–26 July, porteliotlitfest.com) is both bookish and bohemian – a winning combination. Pitch your tent in the grounds of the ancient Port Eliot Estate in Cornwall and listen to the likes of Hugo Williams, Alain de Botton,* Hanif Kureishi and Monica Ali. There’ll also be fishing, a séance, yoga and designer tepees. August Human Smoke, Nicholson Baker’s provocative account of the run-up to Pearl Harbour, set tongues wagging all over the world. Now he’s coming to the London Review Bookshop (26 August, lrbshop.co.uk) to read from his latest novel, The Anthologist, a whimsical love story that will strike a chord with anyone who’s ever been tasked with writing the introduction for a book.
To celebrate Dr Johnson’s 300th birthday, from 18 July–13 December the National Portrait Gallery will be examining the role he played in the development of life-writing, with an exhibition of printed materials, The Life and Lives of Dr Johnson (npg.org.uk/ whatson/event-root/the-life-and-livesof-dr-johnson.php). Stephanie Pickford, the curator of Dr Johnson’s house, will be giving a free lecture at the gallery on 30 July at 1.15 pm.
The Edinburgh International Book Festival (15–31 August, edbookfest.co.uk) is back with a bang. Almost 700 authors from more than 40 different countries will be descending on Charlotte Square Gardens in the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature. Programme highlights include George Dawes Green and Garrison Keillor reading from their latest novels, and hotly tipped Ghanaian writer Nii Ayikwei Parkes’ prose fiction debut. James Lovelock, Tracy Chevalier, David Peace and Graham Swift will also be making an appearance.
Last year’s groundbreaking Proms Literary Festival brought together a galaxy of literary stars to explore the themes of the season and offer further insight into the relationship between writers and composers, music and literature. The 2009 festival performances will be taking place at the Royal College of Music (21 July– 11 September, bbc.co.uk/proms/2009/ whatson/literary.shtml to view the full programme). The 16 free pre-concert talks
September The first ever Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival (18–20 September, budlitfest.org. uk) is a must for fans of all things Victorian. Pamela Neville-Sington* will be lecturing on the Trollope family (Anthony’s brother Thomas Adolphus was a resident of the town), and you’ll also have a chance to catch the work of Hilaire Belloc being performed and discussed by Sue Lawley, Hugh Williams and Hugo Swire.
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As far as UK literary festivals are concerned, size matters – Small Wonder at Charleston, Lewes, East Sussex (24–27 September, charleston.org.uk/smallwonder) is the only one dedicated entirely to short stories. The 2008 weekender was headlined by Ali Smith, Lionel Shriver, Penelope Lively and Anne Enright, so you can expect lots of famous names to be queuing up for the microphone this time round. * Current Library member
Recent Literary Awards Congratulations to the Library members who were nominated for or have won literary awards since February 2009 Laura Beatty, Pollard, winner of the 2009 Authors’ Club First Novel Award; shortlisted for 2009 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize Andrew Brown, Fishing in Utopia, winner of the 2009 Orwell Book Prize Mark Bostridge, Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend, winner of the 2009 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography Sebastian Faulks, Devil May Care, winner of the 2009 Sainsbury’s Popular Fiction Award Lee Hall, winner of the Tony Award 2009 for Best Book of a Musical for Billy Elliot Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2009 Michael Palin, winner of Outstanding Achievement in 2009 Galaxy British Book Awards Kate Summerscale, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, winner of the Book of the Year and winner of Non-Fiction in 2009 Galaxy British Book Awards; winner of 2009 Play.com Popular Non-Fiction Award; shortlisted for Richard and Judy’s Best Read of the Year 2009 The magazine would welcome any information from members who have won or been nominated for prizes, to be included in future issues. Please send details to: development@londonlibrary.co.uk
