The Uncommon Reader
Nov. 5th, 2007 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blamebramptonA writer I like a great deal wrote a piece saying that he had stayed up far too late reading the new Alan Bennett novella in one fell swoop. This was good to hear; since the writer and I have similar tastes and Alan Bennett is a godlike wonder (The HIstory Boys, The Madness of George III and Talking Heads are among his most famous scripts), and, most importantly for me, I have run out of Simon Armitage and new YA fiction to read and everything else requires more time and mental energy than I currently possess.
So I popped into a bookshop and picked up a copy of the book on the way home. The Uncommon Reader, in which QEII finds herself in a mobile lending library at the back of Windsor and develops a passion for literature. It then proceeds through 124 small and beautifully typeset pages to a conclusion that was wholly startling and yet completely right. Like my writer friend, I sat down and consumed it. And, with a short break to consume dinner, 150 minutes later I have a very large smile on my face.
Bennett's writing is filled with delicious one-liners. Imagine Her Majesty pronouncing any of the following (I found it very easy to):
She read Ackerley's account of himself, unsurprised to find that, being a homosexual, he had worked for the BBC.
There were many who hoped for a similar meeting of minds by saying they were reading Harry Potter, but to this the Queen (who had no time for fantasy) invariably said briskly, 'Yes, One is saving that for a rainy day,' and passed swiftly on. [Pure Bennett editorialising there!]
It was Henry James she was reading one teatime when she said out loud, 'Oh, do get on.'
Men (and this included Mrs Thatcher) wanted show. [I think this was my favourite.]
So I popped into a bookshop and picked up a copy of the book on the way home. The Uncommon Reader, in which QEII finds herself in a mobile lending library at the back of Windsor and develops a passion for literature. It then proceeds through 124 small and beautifully typeset pages to a conclusion that was wholly startling and yet completely right. Like my writer friend, I sat down and consumed it. And, with a short break to consume dinner, 150 minutes later I have a very large smile on my face.
Bennett's writing is filled with delicious one-liners. Imagine Her Majesty pronouncing any of the following (I found it very easy to):
She read Ackerley's account of himself, unsurprised to find that, being a homosexual, he had worked for the BBC.
There were many who hoped for a similar meeting of minds by saying they were reading Harry Potter, but to this the Queen (who had no time for fantasy) invariably said briskly, 'Yes, One is saving that for a rainy day,' and passed swiftly on. [Pure Bennett editorialising there!]
It was Henry James she was reading one teatime when she said out loud, 'Oh, do get on.'
Men (and this included Mrs Thatcher) wanted show. [I think this was my favourite.]
'Don't you want to look at the St Lawrence Seaway?' said her husband.
'I opened it fifty years ago. I don't suppose it's changed'
'I have gone through, I do not say seen off, ten prime ministers, six archbishops of Canterbury, eight speakers and, though you may not consider this a comparable statistic, fifty-three corgis ..."
I was particularly happy reading this book because I have spent a lot of time thinking about the Queen of late. I seem to have spent a disproportionate chunk of my childhood waving at her, and performing at gymkhanas, fetes and galas she would attend. God Save the Queen still makes me smell starch and polish decades on. She once gave me an award for civic mindedness or some such imaginary scholastic virtue, my usually hippie father plaited my hair so tightly my scalp hurt.
Yet for my generation, at the same time as seeing her as a monarch, we have also always seen her as a prisoner. Because our parents and grandparents whispered stories to us of how it was different during the war, before The Sun and sundry scandals made her world a fishbowl, when she could pull her ATS cap low and be almost one of the girls.
And it is this sense of captivity that has always made me think of her with ready sympathy. She seems so strong in her duty, yet imagine the fun she could have had in her life were she, say, the Duchess of Devonshire (would that mean that Nancy Mitford would have been Queen? Hmmm ...) Or even a horse trainer of note, or the mistress of a girls' school. Having said that, though, she is so thoroughly the Queen that it's not possible to step too far away from her persona. Roald Dahl's BFG sums up the difficulties. Alan Bennett even references the same anecdote of Her Maj that I did in a recent story, where she spent VE day dancing with the hoi polloi and loving it. It's the only time we know of that she did so. I think that he, like me, hopes there were more.
If nothing else, I hope that she decides one morning that she will channel her mother just a little bit, and roll her eyes in public and consume gin in her tea. Because after that many dreary fetes with well-bred schoolgirls dancing at her, surely she deserves a bit of fun.
'I opened it fifty years ago. I don't suppose it's changed'
'I have gone through, I do not say seen off, ten prime ministers, six archbishops of Canterbury, eight speakers and, though you may not consider this a comparable statistic, fifty-three corgis ..."
I was particularly happy reading this book because I have spent a lot of time thinking about the Queen of late. I seem to have spent a disproportionate chunk of my childhood waving at her, and performing at gymkhanas, fetes and galas she would attend. God Save the Queen still makes me smell starch and polish decades on. She once gave me an award for civic mindedness or some such imaginary scholastic virtue, my usually hippie father plaited my hair so tightly my scalp hurt.
Yet for my generation, at the same time as seeing her as a monarch, we have also always seen her as a prisoner. Because our parents and grandparents whispered stories to us of how it was different during the war, before The Sun and sundry scandals made her world a fishbowl, when she could pull her ATS cap low and be almost one of the girls.
And it is this sense of captivity that has always made me think of her with ready sympathy. She seems so strong in her duty, yet imagine the fun she could have had in her life were she, say, the Duchess of Devonshire (would that mean that Nancy Mitford would have been Queen? Hmmm ...) Or even a horse trainer of note, or the mistress of a girls' school. Having said that, though, she is so thoroughly the Queen that it's not possible to step too far away from her persona. Roald Dahl's BFG sums up the difficulties. Alan Bennett even references the same anecdote of Her Maj that I did in a recent story, where she spent VE day dancing with the hoi polloi and loving it. It's the only time we know of that she did so. I think that he, like me, hopes there were more.
If nothing else, I hope that she decides one morning that she will channel her mother just a little bit, and roll her eyes in public and consume gin in her tea. Because after that many dreary fetes with well-bred schoolgirls dancing at her, surely she deserves a bit of fun.
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-06 02:50 pm (UTC)I wish I could write political satire. My fics are all about feelings, nothing more than feelings...
no subject
Date: 2007-11-06 03:02 pm (UTC)We are doomed to duet. I'm good with that.
Yeah. I have this problem re politics. I love em. Love love lovedy love!! But at least they set the scene for all sorts of drama and shagging along the way! (At least, so my reading of The Alan Clark Diaries and hanging out with various MPs has led me to believe!)
There is also lots of romance and personal stuff, too. Just so I don't bore people to actual death. Let us never discuss the coming-of-age short story I once wrote set in the London anti-apartheid movement (the one I gave up on in despair in the end and, with 15 minutes' rewriting, rejigged to be a very satisfying topical essay. Sigh.)
no subject
Date: 2007-11-06 03:09 pm (UTC)And there's no danger anyone will be bored to death by your lively fics. :)
Perhaps we could meet up in Florence or Paris next year if you have time off from your assignments. It's very easy to get to Europe from where I am.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-06 03:14 pm (UTC)I COMPLETELY have to read this fic. In my head I am now running a little miniseries in which Harry and Draco are starring in a bent version of House of Cards and it is making me very happy indeed. Did you have House of Cards over there? It is brilliant! Although Harry would never throw Draco off the Commons. Thank you for the rec!!
Must shower and sleep now, talk soon when saner.