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Tag: David Kynaston
What I've Been Reading: The Elizabeth Edition
Well, I've mostly been reading 1960s non-fiction (currently David Kynaston's Modernity Britain, which is excellent), but I've also read some other interesting books, all Elizabeth-related. The first of them was The Virgin in the Garden by A. S. Byatt, recommended to me by Sarah during my search for 1950s schoolgirl literature. The review quotes on the back of the paperback edition I acquired were fairly ominous and included the following from the Financial Times:
"One to be reckoned with. It cannot be glibly praised or readily dismissed; it is, massively, there …"
Which I can't disagree with – it is certainly both "massive" and "there", "there" being a small town in Yorkshire in the early 1950s, as the community gathers to perform an elaborate verse drama about Queen Elizabeth the First, in order to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second. Frederica Potter is the seventeen-year-old schoolgirl chosen to play young Elizabeth, and she's an apt choice. Frederica is clever, fierce, self-obsessed and hilariously obnoxious, convinced that she is superior to her peers in every way yet secretly hurt that they don't appreciate her specialness. The other Potters – her bullying father, beaten-down mother, odd and fragile little brother, and a sweet older sister who throws away her Cambridge degree to marry an unintellectual clergyman – are also fascinatingly portrayed. The problem I had with this novel was that I had to wade through a lot of tedious, overwritten prose to get to the good bits. At one stage, a character says, "If we were in a novel, they'd cut this dialogue because of artifice" and I found myself wishing they HAD cut that dialogue, as well as most of the adjectives and all of the page-length sentences. The long sections in which Frederica's brother and his creepy teacher discuss their peculiar pseudo-scientific theories about the universe were particularly difficult to get through. I wondered if even the author had lost track of where she was going with her story, because the final sentence was: "That was not an end, but since it went on for a considerable time, it is as good a place to stop as any." And yet, I kept turning the pages, because the author had so many thoughtful observations to make about family relationships, class conflict, women's roles in society, religion, education, Elizabethan history, art and literature. This is the first in a quartet of novels about Frederica and I'm not sure yet if I'll continue with it (I saw a very spoilery review of the next book, which indicated that the sole sympathetic character dies in a very stupid manner, which was not an encouraging sign).
My second Elizabethan read was The Little Princesses by Marion Crawford, a sentimental account of the childhood of Princess (now Queen) Elizabeth and her little sister, Princess Margaret, as told by their former governess, Marion Crawford. Apparently it caused a sensation when it was first published in 1950, because it was the first 'insider' account of a family treated as minor deities by most of their subjects and all of the press. Nowadays, of course, we're used to the British royals exposing themselves (in various unflattering ways) in newspapers and on television, but at the time, the Queen Mother was furious at 'Crawfie', as the governess was known, for breaking the code of silence that surrounded the royals and as a result, poor old Crawfie was ostracised1. But actually, Crawfie seems to have gone out of her way to flatter the family in this book. She appears very fond of Elizabeth, a serious, anxious child with a "very high IQ" (not that anyone actually administered an IQ test), while Margaret is described as bright, fun-loving and charming. Mind you, even Crawfie admits Margaret could be "wilful and headstrong" (which seems to be code for "a spoilt and uncontrollable brat" – for one thing, Margaret enjoyed tormenting the servants with unpleasant practical jokes, knowing they could never complain about her behaviour). I was interested (and horrified) to see how limited the education of the princesses actually was. Even though it was known that Elizabeth would eventually become ruler of the entire British Commonwealth, she never attended school and the lessons she had with Crawfie were limited to English literature and (family) history. Teenage Elizabeth did attend some individual history tutoring sessions at Eton, but mathematics, science and economics were deemed unnecessary. It was more important that she learn to sing, dance, make polite conversation in French, and ride a horse. This book covers Elizabeth's life from the age of six, when Crawfie first arrived, to Elizabeth's marriage to Prince Philip and the subsequent birth of their first child, Charles. The anniversary edition I read had an introduction by Jennie Bond and contained some great photographs, including one of a young Princess Elizabeth in Girl Guide uniform, learning how to tie knots (with Henry FitzOsborne just out of shot, peering over Elizabeth's shoulder and shouting, "You're doing it ALL WRONG! Here, let ME do it!").
And finally, a novel written by an Elizabeth – Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor (the English novelist, not the Hollywood star, although the novelist frequently had to deal with people who'd confused her with the actress). This is a brilliant, but bleak, look at ageing and death in genteel English society in late 1960s London. Elderly Mrs Palfrey is not rich enough to stay in her own home with servants to look after her, not poor enough to move into a state-assisted home for the elderly, and not ill enough for a private hospital or nursing home, but is too polite and independent to impose herself on her middle-aged daughter in Scotland, so she decides to set herself up in a respectable London hotel to wait out her final years. There she meets the other permanent residents, including bitter, arthritic Mrs Arthbuthnot; dim, timid Mrs Post; Mr Osmond, who keeps himself busy writing outraged letters to the newspapers and telling disgusting jokes to the waiters; and mauve-haired, drunken Mrs Burton (named, according to one review I read, after the actress). When she has a fall in the street, Mrs Palfrey is rescued by a young, impoverished writer called Ludo, which leads to a strange sort of friendship between them. Each is using the other – Mrs Palfrey now has a handsome, charming 'grandson' to show off to the hotel residents and someone to make her feel needed, while Ludo gains a more satisfactory 'mother' than his real mother, and also accumulates a lot of useful material for the novel he's writing (about old people living at a hotel, entitled They Weren't Allowed To Die There). Elizabeth Taylor's observations of character are astute and very funny but also very sad. The residents are all bored, lonely and frightened, but feel unable to admit to this, let alone try to help themselves, so they spend their days obsessing over the hotel menus, spreading spiteful gossip, and complaining about modern life. The author has been called a twentieth-century Jane Austen and for once, that's not an exaggeration. Mrs Post, for example, is described as "too vague, too bird-brained to achieve real kindness. She had always meant well – and it was the thing people most often said about her – but had managed very seldom to help anyone", while snobby Lady Swayne manages to irritate even mild-mannered Mrs Palfrey, with "all of [Lady Swayne's] most bigoted or self-congratulatory statements prefaced with 'I'm afraid'. I'm afraid I don't smoke. I'm afraid I'm just common-or-garden Church of England. (Someone had just mentioned Brompton Oratory.) I'm afraid I'd like to see the Prime Minister hanged, drawn and quartered. I'm afraid I think the fox revels in it. I'm afraid I don't think that's awfully funny." I won't provide any plot spoilers, but I will say that if you're hoping for a sweet, sentimental look at old age, this is not the book for you. I loved it, but it was rather depressing. And now I'm off to find some more Elizabeth Taylor novels to read.
Although this article suggests that the initial idea of writing magazine articles about the little princesses came from the Queen Mother herself. ↩
Posted on March 30, 2015 December 16, 2016 Categories 1930s, 1950s and 1960s, books, my favourite books, The Montmaray JournalsTags A. S. Byatt, David Kynaston, Elizabeth Taylor, Marion Crawford4 Comments on What I've Been Reading: The Elizabeth Edition
Adventures in Research: Some Books about the 1950s and 1960s
I've been plodding on through the 1950s and 1960s, which has included reading books written about the period in more recent times. (This, by the way, did not involve much adventure. I just borrowed all these books from my local library.) First was Family Britain: 1951-1957 by David Kynaston, which was a thoroughly researched sociological history, examining issues such as housing, entertainment and food, as well as taking a close look at a few significant political events, including the Suez crisis. There's lots of detail about the experiences of working class and lower middle class people, told in their own words (often thanks to the interviewers from Mass Observation) so the book was often very interesting – but it was slightly disorganised and repetitious, so this is possibly not a book for the general reader.
Those looking for a more entertaining read about the period may prefer Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles, 1956-63, by Dominic Sandbrook. This is also very detailed and carefully researched, and it was particularly good at summarising important political events (for example, the resignations of Prime Ministers Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan and subsequent political manoeuvrings). There are also interesting discussions of popular culture (film, television, music and books), although the author's personal biases become apparent here. For example, he devotes more than an entire chapter to Kingsley Amis, who Sandbrook believes is "brilliantly funny", with Lucky Jim considered to be "a work of tremendous influence", "emblematic of a post-war literary trend", with an immense number of imitators (Really? Did Amis have more imitators than, say, J. R. R. Tolkien?). Meanwhile, William Golding, Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, John Fowles, Anthony Burgess, Mervyn Peake, C. S. Lewis and Tolkien are collectively dealt with in three sentences. Similarly, women are nearly absent from this book. There are a couple of pages about Christine Keeler (the young woman at the centre of the Profumo scandal), a few references to a young Tory politician named Margaret Thatcher, some anonymous housewives buying washing machines and a horde of anonymous teenage girls screaming at the Beatles, but that's it (and don't expect much about topics such as fashion, either). Otherwise, this is an entertaining, informative read about the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Eager to find out more about women's experiences, I turned to Sheila Rowbotham's Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties. Goodness, it was dull. There are a few interesting anecdotes about her personal experiences as a young academic and political activist, but mostly it was pages and pages of tedious squabbling between various Left factions – trade unionists versus Marxist academics, Leninists versus Trotskyists versus Maoists, and so on – with every single participant named and none of them actually seeming to achieve anything useful. Most of the men are appallingly sexist and the book becomes more interesting when the women start to object to this behaviour and begin 'consciousness-raising' groups to share their experiences. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen until the final chapter, and the book ends with the author and others planning the first Women's Liberation conference in Britain, which was held in 1970. The author does make an interesting point, linking the 1960s hippies to Margaret Thatcher's economic policies:
"The 'do your own thing' sense of individual liberation was turned into a justification of living completely for yourself. Elements of this self-absorption were also to persist, transmuting into the ruthless selfishness which would come into ascendancy in the late eighties."
Jenny Diski, author of The Sixties, agrees and takes this idea further:
"There are two accusations: that we caused the greed and self-interest of the Eighties by invoking the self, the individual, as the unit of society and setting up individualism for the Right to pick up and run with; or that we caused it by being so permissive, so soppy about matters that needed hard, firm handling, that a reaction was inevitable if the West wasn't to sink into a morass of self-indulgent chaos."
Otherwise, this is a very different sort of book, a collection of entertaining personal essays on the topics of consumerism, drug-taking, sex, revolutionary politics, education and mental health in 'the Sixties' (which is defined as circa 1965-1974). It wasn't particularly useful for my research purposes, as Jenny Diski's experiences were so outside the 'norm' (for example, she was expelled from school at fifteen for sniffing ether, was incarcerated in various mental institutions, then lived in a commune with drug addicts and then, while still a young trainee teacher, set up her own school for disadvantaged children, run on 'alternative education' principles). However, I found it fascinating and often very funny. (Jenny Diski is a novelist, and Sheila Rowbotham an academic and historian, and it shows.) (Oh, I just found Jenny Diski's review of Sheila Rowbotham's Promise of a Dream in London Review of Books. Ha!)
To give myself a break from politics and drugs and mental asylums and so on, I then read 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, a charming and very funny collection of correspondence between Miss Hanff, an irreverent New York writer, and Mr Doel, a stuffy London bookseller. The letters began in 1949 when she wrote to order a book from the antiquarian shop where he worked, but soon the correspondents included the bookseller's colleagues, wife and neighbour, as well as the writer's friends, with books, recipes and gifts being exchanged across the Atlantic for the next twenty years. If you love books, you will adore this.
Posted on December 15, 2014 December 16, 2016 Categories 1950s and 1960s, books, this writing lifeTags David Kynaston, Dominic Sandbrook, Helene Hanff, Jenny Diski, Sheila Rowbotham4 Comments on Adventures in Research: Some Books about the 1950s and 1960s