Bliss on Toast

Giles Wood, The Oldie’s Country Mouse, with his wife, Mary Killen. Go to www.theoldie.co.uk/podcasts

has had his detractors in the last 200 years. Turgenev called him ‘a new pimple on the nose of literature’. In a letter to writer and critic Edward Garnett in 1912, Joseph Conrad said that The Brothers Karamazov was ‘an impossible lump of valuable matter. It’s terrifically bad and impressive and exasperating. It sounds like some fierce mouthings from prehistoric ages. I understand the Russians have just “discovered” him. I wish them joy.’

DH Lawrence wasn’t keen on his work. In a letter to society hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell in 1915, he said, ‘I have been reading Dostoevsky’s Idiot. I don’t like Dostoevsky. He is like the rat, slithering along in hate, in the shadows. He is not nice.’ More recently, Vladimir Nabokov called him ‘much overrated’ and ‘a third-rate writer’.

As so often, the people wisely disagreed with the superior disapproval of envious writers. When Dostoevsky died on 9th February 1881, aged 59, 30,000 people watched his coffin being carried to the cemetery in St Petersburg – the largest funeral procession in Russian history. Not bad for a third-rate writer…

Biggest funeral in Russian history: Fyodor Dostoevsky

prue leith Bliss on Toast

Quick, easy, comforting and delicious suppers

Soy-glazed, fried aubergines with sesame, rocket and garlic mayonnaise on jalapeño bread

‘Everyone loves a good Oscar Wilde quote,’ says Oldie columnist Gyles Brandreth, whose new book Odd Boy Out discusses how Wilde inspired him. ‘He had an unparalleled ability to make us laugh and think with just a few words.’

Gyles is also the honorary president of the Oscar Wilde Society, which invites Oldie readers to enter the third Wilde Wit Competition. The goal is simple: write an original quip, aphorism or profound statement that sounds like something Oscar Wilde could have said.

Last year, the competition drew more than 500 entries – there are a lot of clever people out there. The cleverest turned out to be Darcy Alexander Corstorphine, who won with the line ‘Wit is the ability to say entirely the wrong thing in precisely the right way.’

Submit your best lines at oscarwildesociety.co.uk/ wilde-wit by 31st December 2021. You can enter up to 10 witticisms – all must be your own, original work.

Three winners will receive signed copies of Oscar Wilde: A Man for Our Times, a fine catalogue of Jeremy Mason’s collection of Wilde books and ephemera.

Meanwhile, here’s a thought from Oscar on behaviour at Christmas parties:

‘Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.’

Of course, Oldie readers fall into the first category. A merry Christmas to one and all!

The 2022 Oldie Cartoon Calendar has a gift subscription offer of 12 issues for £36, plus a free cartoon book. Please use the code CAL21 when you go to subscribe.theoldie.co.uk to take advantage of this offer