The Little Bookroom

I have started a new blog, looking at children’s books that I used to read: if you’re interested, my first review, of A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley, can be found here.

Romantics at the Tate

Whilst in London, I went to Tate Britain to see their exhibition on the Romantics. The exhibition blurb claims that it ‘presents Romantic art in Britain, its origins, inspirations and legacies’, and I think it does this well. It’s in the Clore Gallery, where the Turners live, so it’s quite heavy on the Turner. The first room of the exhibition takes six aspects of Romanticism as a broader movement, and illustrates them with appropriate pictures. These aspects are Hopes and Fears, relating to European unrest, for example, and illustrated by some biblical and classical-subject paintings; The Artist’s Life, looking at the myth of the Romantic writer or artist as hero, such as Blake or Constable. The isolation in Turner’s images of ‘Interior of a Prison’, and Blake’s ‘A Vision’ promulgate this vision of the solitary heroic creative genius. The section on Word and Image looks at illustrations, especially Turner’s, though I was disappointed not to see some Blake in this section. Near and Far looks at geographic images, from the Lakes to Italy, while Past, Present, Future sees writers and artists as ‘time-travellers, prophets and moralists’ in which the myth of Albion is central. Finally, Seeing Nature anticipates Pre-Raphaelitism in its interest in the details of the natural world. In this section, Francis Danby’s ‘Romantic Woodland’ seems to sum up a Gothic approach to nature – brooding, remote but slightly threatening; beautiful.

The rest of the exhibition is an ‘imaginary’ Romantics exhibition, featuring paintings which were exhibited and/or popular during the period of Romanticism. It includes a room of early Turner and a room of late Turner; Constable and his contemporaries; Blake (of course); and a collection of more general pictures which give a wonderful feel for Romantic images. Of course this includes Wallis’s Chatterton, which appears on the poster (see above), as well as Etty, Wilkie, Eastlake, Landseer and many more. There are also several paintings by Richard Dadd, including his most famous, ‘The Fairy-Feller’s Master Stroke’.

I was particularly struck by Constable’s ‘Sketch for “Hadleigh Castle”‘ (right), which seems, in its gloomy, desolate landscape with ruins and no glimpse of hope, to depict a very Romantic state of mind, closely linked to the Gothic. In fact Constable did this sketch after the death of his wife, so probably was in a rather gloomy state of mind.

So much is made of Romanticism as a literary phenomenon (and rightly so), but less, as far as I know, is made of it as a wider state of mind which affected art as well. This exhibition provides wonderful context, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s on until July, and it’s free, so do go!

World Book Night – March 5th 2011

 

March 5th is World Book Night!

World Book Night represents the most ambitious and far-reaching celebration of adult books and reading ever attempted in the UK and Ireland. On Saturday, 5 March 2011, two days after World Book Day, one million books will be given away by an army of passionate readers to members of the public across the UK and Ireland. The book give-away will comprise 40,000 copies of each of the 25 carefully selected titles, to be given away by 20,000 ‘givers’, who will each distribute 48 copies of their chosen title to whomever they choose on World Book Night. You can find out more at www.worldbooknight.org

I shall be wandering around giving out copies of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, a book which celebrates the diversity of education, and an eccentric teacher. It’s told in an unusual way, going back and forth in time, and it’s a book I have always enjoyed. The WBN review of it says:

Romantic, heroic, comic and tragic, unconventional schoolmistress Jean Brodie has become an iconic figure in post-war fiction. Her glamour, freethinking ideas and manipulative charm hold dangerous sway over her girls at the Marcia Blaine Academy – the ‘crème de la crème’ – who become the Brodie Set, introduced to a privileged world of adult games that they will never forget.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

On Monday evening we were excited to be at the Royal Opera House for the world premiere of Christopher Wheeldon’s new full-length ballet, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It’s been hugely hyped in the national press, of course, and, especially since it’s such a difficult story to stage, I think everyone was wondering if it would live up to its press. As far as I am concerned, it did. Though some critics have suggested the first act is too long, at 70 minutes, it seemed to me to be sufficiently pacy for the length not to matter.

The ballet opens with a garden party in Oxford in 1862. The events of the garden party are carefully reflected in the narrative structure of the rest of the ballet, and the character of Lewis Carroll, who is a guest at the party, turns into a white rabbit, who takes Alice down the rabbit hole. Many of the effects – Alice falling down the rabbit hole, Alice shrinking and growing – are achieved with the use of projection onto a screen, which works very well. The Cheshire Cat is created from a number of dancers holding pieces which come together to form a whole cat, but can also then dematerialise. Combined with Joby Talbot’s atmospheric score, it’s amazingly effective but also unsentimental and humorous. Lauren Cuthbertson’s Alice is perfectly unself-conscious and childlike in some moments, but, when the story calls for it, more adult and knowing than the usual Alice, which fits the narrative of the ballet perfectly.

The second act – shorter, at 45 minutes – contains some brilliant moments, particularly the Queen of Hearts (Zenaida Yanowsky) in a pastiche of the Rose Adagio played to great comic effect with reluctant minions and a waiting executioner; and the game of croquet with the Duchess (Simon Russell Beale) in which the hedgehogs are danced by members of the Royal Ballet School, and the flamingoes have wonderful costumes and perfectly flamingo-like movements. The Queen and the tap-dancing Mad Hatter (Steven McRae) certainly got the biggest cheers from the audience at the end. The sets are numerous and complex, but they work extremely well.

This is the kind of ballet that is likely to become a classic – like favourites such as The Nutcracker, it contains many character parts (even a bit of Bollywood ballet!) and a wide range of animals too. In its themes, in the music, the characters and the choreography, it ranges from the lyrical to the humorous, the semi-tragic to the child-like. It also moves from the nineteenth century at the beginning into the present day right at the end. In many ways it seemed to me to be a very traditional ballet, though in its special effects it is quite modern; but it is bound to have a wide appeal, which is no doubt the intention.

You can watch a trailer for Alice here.

The Poetry of Drawing

Last week I was fortunate to attend the opening of ‘The Poetry of Drawing: Pre-Raphaelite Designs, Studies and Watercolours’ at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, curated by Colin Cruise. The exhibition was opened with a short speech from Martin Mullaney, Cabinet Member for Leisure, Sport and Culture, reminding us of the significance of the arts in these straitened times. As usual at such events, I only managed a brief look at the exhibition and will be returning for more, but I was impressed. I really like drawings anyway – whether they are detailed drawings intended to be the finished piece, or whether they are sketches for future paintings, they give a different insight into the skill of the artist. BMAG’s website gives a taster:

“The Poetry of Drawing includes works by all the leading figures of the movement, including the original Brotherhood, their mentor John Ruskin, Elizabeth Siddal, and the ‘second generation’ of Pre-Raphaelites including Edward Burne-Jones, Frederick Sandys and Simeon Solomon. It also displays work by later artists influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, such as Aubrey Beardsley. There will be a rare chance to compare textiles, stained glass and ceramics by designers such as William Morris, William de Morgan and Florence Camm with their original working drawings, and the opportunity to see watercolours and drawings never exhibited before, including examples by Rossetti, Arthur Hughes and Burne-Jones.” 

The Rivals

Last weekend I went to see The Rivals, at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket (I think it has now closed, though). Sheridan’s play, first performed in 1775, is one of the delights I had completely forgotten since my undergraduate days, but it is the most remarkable play: it’s a lot of fuss about nothing, really, but such an elegant fuss, touching on serious issues but immediately skimming over them, as if to remind the audience not to take fashionable life in Bath too seriously. The language is rich and entertaining, and one can practically hear the audience’s brains whirring as Mrs Malaprop misuses another word and the audience attempts to recall the correct one. My favourite, like most people’s, is the “very pineapple of politeness”.

Penelope Keith was marvellous as Mrs Malaprop – her timing is perfect and the supercilious and arrogant manner in which she delivers her malapropisms is so innocent and confident that it becomes all the funnier. A woman of fashion, keen to be seen to be in the know, I suppose there is something of Margot Leadbetter in Mrs Malaprop… And Peter Bowles as Sir Anthony Absolute – scheming and playing for laughs, shouting at his son and making eyes at Mrs Malaprop - was equally well-timed and convincing. In fact, the complicated plot, the intricacies of language and the faithful representation of eighteenth-century comedy show the play to be a timely reminder of what a delight such period pieces can be.

Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum

Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Century

A one-day conference on Friday 13^th May 2011 hosted by Birmingham City University

I always had a desire to know asylum life more thoroughly – a desire to be convinced that the most helpless of God’s creatures, the insane, were cared for kindly and properly. Nellie Bly

“And Something’s odd – within -
That person that I was -
And this One – do not feel the same -
Could it be Madness – this?”  Emily Dickinson

The place where optimism flourishes most is the lunatic asylum. (Havelock Ellis)

This interdisciplinary conference will address a range of issues concerning the perception of insanity and madness in the nineteenth century, its manifestations and treatments, and the patients themselves. The conference will take place on Friday 13^th May, 2011, in the chapel of the Birmingham Lunatic Asylum, an impressive building used to restrain and treat patients from 1862 until 1964.

We invite papers on a range of subjects related to this theme. Please submit an abstract of 350 words to serena.trowbridge@bcu.ac.uk by 25^th March, 2011. Subjects covered might include:

•  The life of patients in lunatic asylums
• The literary treatment of madness and lunatic asylums
• Early psychiatry in the asylum
• The architecture and physical space of the lunatic asylum
• Artists and writers and insanity
• Poetry and madness
• Insanity and/or the asylum in the nineteenth-century novel

The King’s Speech

This afternoon I made a rare trip to the cinema to see The King’s Speech. The reviews I’ve read have all been glowing, tipping Colin Firth for an Oscar, and it’s been talked up to the extent that in a recent interview Helena Bonham Carter expressed a concern that the film itself might not live up to the building anticipation. Well, it does live up to it; it’s one of the best films I’ve seen in a while. It tells the story of ‘Bertie’, later King George VI, and his struggle with his speech impediment, which is more or less cured with the help of an unconventional Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue.

The film opens with Bertie’s attempt to give a speech to thousands at Wembley, broadcast on the radio. This, and other speeches in the film, offers a tension rarely felt in the most tense thriller; Colin Firth portrays the anguish of Bertie’s terrible struggle to get out any words at all arouses a great deal of sympathy as we wait for his voice to return. Firth absolutely carries the film, though Geoffrey Rush as Logue and Helena Bonham Carter as the Queen Mother are also excellent. The relationships which sustain the future King are shown with enormous sympathy, particularly his developing relationship with Logue, who is, as Bertie says, the first commoner he has ever really spoken to.

The period detail in the film is great, too (though one does wonder about the deep fogs constantly in London – perhaps a metaphor for the troubled times), and the film offers humour, drama and pathos. The relation of a speech impediment to psychological issues, combined with the depiction of the characters (including the currently omnipresent Wallis Simpson, deeply unlikeable as usual) make it a fascinating film, but it is in the moving representation of George VI as a man committed to his family and his country, but suffering from the stigma of the second son, in the shadow of his more flamboyant (and also unlikeable) brother, that the film excels. I enjoyed it enormously.

A Rage for the Lakes

Today we went to see “A Rage for the Lakes” at the Barber Institute, an exhibition of drawings and watercolours of the Lake District, from Abbott Hall Art Gallery. The exhibition closes tomorrow, so we were cutting it fine, but after our lovely trip to the Lakes last year I was determined to get to see it! It’s only a small exhibition, but is filled with 40 works by painters drawn to the Lakes when its popularity increased in the late eighteenth century through to the mid-nineteenth.

Interestingly, the first thing that struck me when I went into the exhibition was how many of the pictures were rather monochromatic – not just sketches, but misty, muted colours in the watercolours, too. Consequently, those which did use true colour stood out – for example, John Harden, whose wife apparently said that he was unusual for doing his “colours on the spot” rather than waiting until he got home – which perhaps accounts for his vivid and realist use of colour. Joseph Arthur Severn’s painting “Coniston from Brantwood” (Severn was the wife of Ruskin’s cousin Joan, and thus lived at Brantwood for a while) shows some amazing Autumnal colours across Coniston. But the rest, even Ruskin’s own, are muted, somehow very English-style images of what is actually not a very English subject – the mountains, lakes and clouds in, for example, those by Joseph Wright of Derby, are not unlike his paintings of Italian lakes and mountains.

The three Ruskin pictures – one sketch and two watercolours – are of Coniston from his turret at Brantwood, where he could see the sun rise, and one watercolour shows just that, the changing effects of the sky and the water. I was also very taken with Edward Lear’s paintings – associating him, as everyone does, I suppose, with something rather more frivolous, it was fascinating to see his lively but serious depictions of the Lakes scenery with their louring clouds and unruffled water. Other artists included are Thomas Hearne, Turner, Constable and WJ Blacklock (the last of these had quite the bluest sky of any painting there). One day I shall have to go to Kendal to see the paintings in their home with the Lakeland Arts Trust.

Just William

From the ages of about eight to eleven, I was obsessed with Richmal Crompton’s Just William books – and I mean obsessed; I could practically recite them, and every birthday book token was spent in the local bookshop on another William book. In retrospect, this was probably both good and bad. The books are so well-written, and I remember having to look words up in the dictionary, which no doubt helped my vocabulary no end. On the other hand, it did lead me into some emulatory mischief which probably made my parents wonder why they ever taught me to read at all. I was also a member of the Outlaws club (which, as I recall, meant sending off a postal order for 45 pence and getting a badge in return, which I refused to take off).

Consequently, I was really quite excited to hear that the BBC were doing a new televised version, with Daniel Roche from Outnumbered as William Brown, and even more pleased when I read that Roche had read the books and was very pleased to be playing William. But I was also somewhat trepidatious, as we’ve all seen childhood favourites massacred by newer versions. This one, however, didn’t disappoint. The writer Simon Nye (Men Behaving Badly) did a good job, as did Roche; the four episodes seemed absolutely faithful to the spirit of the original. I did find it slightly odd that they have been updated to the 1950s, but I suppose the rather grand 1920s house, with staff whom William loved to bait, would have seemed very remote to children now. And the updating was done carefully – Robert, William’s brother, no longer apes Rudolph Valentino, but Marlon Brando; his sister Ethel is glamorous and somewhat less langorous as a Fifties bombshell rather than Clara Bow. Violet Elizabeth Bott is a bit less annoying in the BBC version than in the book, and consequently slightly less funny, but still she does look the part perfectly.

And Daniel Roche as William is a star – he’s got it spot-on. The books talk a lot about the expressiveness of William’s face, and Roche has got that down to a tee. He also has the general crossness and air of indignation with the world which William seems to constantly feel. The well-meaning bad behaviour of William is both hilarious and kind of touching; William lives by his own code of chivalry and fairness, and sees no obstacle as insurmountable. I really hope that these four episodes will have whetted the appetites of a few children – not just boys – to read the books.

Also, I’ve just discovered there is still a Just William Society – see here!

NB Has anyone out there read the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge, or any of BB’s books? – other favourites of mine, which I have recently revisited and still really enjoy!