The British class system is very easy to make fun of, but here are two great videos from the Catherine Tate show that I really like.
The first example is from the Aga Saga Woman series, in which Catherine Tate appears as an over-the-top aspiring upper middle class lady who is painfully and hilariously anxious about the smallest things in life. The worst thing that can happen to her is to have a lowly mechanic or, horror of horrors, an agency nanny from the North come to her house.
Another incarnation of Catherine Tate – perhaps her most famous one – is Lauren Cooper, the chavvish teenager with a working-class background, a attitude and the standard phrase: “Am I bovvered?”
“Band of brothers” might be true, but happiness is probably not an emotion shared by many soldiers, as shown with chilling clarity in John Keegan’s book The Face of Battle, an account of three of the most famous battles in British history from the point of the view of the men who actually fought in them. Keegan, a well-known military historian, does a masterful job of gathering archaeological and historical evidence to find out what it was actually like to fight at Agincourt (1415), Waterloo (1815) and the Somme (1916). As you might have guessed, battles have always been absolutely terrifying affairs, but why exactly they were terrifying is told in clear, cold and extraordinarily interesting detail here (or have you ever thought about what soldiers do when they need to go to the toilet? Or how they spent the night before the battle? Or how much intoxication is advisable to be able to make it through a day of fighting?)
I remember the chapter on Agincourt as one of the most bracing and illuminating reading experiences I have ever had. Of the three battles, it is the least complicated one, but perhaps also the one with the biggest myths attached to it – the tired Englishmen, hopelessly outnumbered against heavily armoured French, winning only because of the prowess of their longbowmen* and because of the mud the French knights got stuck in, all spurred on by a great speech Shakespeare wrote:
Keegan, who knows his sources, tells us that things were actually quite different, and his account of the battle is so vivid that you will almost, but thankfully not quite, smell it. Whatever your opinion on the sense of armed combat may be, you will never be in doubt about the savage butchery of war again.
While the chapter about Waterloo is equally interesting, I will confess that I gave up on the Somme after some pages – mostly because it was too monumentally depressing – and wasn’t too convinced by his final conclusions. But for Agincourt and Waterloo and a general idea of what battle means for the common man – read this book! It’ll open your eyes.
The Guardian (also known as The Grauniad) has a wonderful piece by Stuart Jeffries on the unexpected and apparently utterly delightful snow that shut down London and transformed its inhabitants yesterday.
My soul was swooning (there, I admit it) yesterday as I stood and saw the snow falling, not on Joyce’s Ireland, but on dirty old London, reborn as a thing of beauty. It was snowing from Epping Forest to Heathrow, Upminster to Uxbridge, on duke and dustman in a way that it hasn’t for ages and probably won’t for a good while. Savour it, I told myself.
I recently bumped into an old poem acquaintance of mine, the bouncy, wistful and sexy “A Subaltern’s Love Song” by John Betjeman. When I first heard it many years ago in a lecture about poetry, I have to admit I didn’t get it – all that skipping, light-footed rhyming made me suspect that there must be something hidden behind the poem. Now, I don’t think there is – it is just a very good poem about a very every-day love story, told with effervescence, sensuality and a bubbling sense of fun.
I highly, highly recommend listening to John Betjeman’s own reading of the poem before a live audience. It gives you a sense of the tongue-in-cheek urgency the poem conveys – and the punch-line is just excellent.
So, you ask, what does any of this have to do with On Chesil Beach? I don’t thing there’s a hidden link (although Ian McEwan was born in Aldershot), but there are several similarities – the young man’s adoration of the physicality of the girl and her mastery of the sport she likes, the games of tennis, the upper-middle-class lifestyle that the young man is impressed enough with to describe its luxury in great detail. It’s a bit like chapter 4 of On Chesil Beach, minus the depressing bits. A bit of the dream Edward was living.
copyright: John Morrison
To demonstrate that five years of studying literature were worth at least something, I was going to say a few clever things about the name “Joan Hunter Dunn” (Joan of Arc, Artemis and all that, you know), but luckily I googled her before I did and it turns out she was a real person (more here) and only died this year. The picture on the left shows her as a schoolgirl – a former friend sent pictures to the BBC after her death. Stories like these really make me happy.
Below are some vocabulary notes to the poem. I’m not reproducing it here, as I’m not sure about the copyright; besides, you really need to listen to it.
Chesil Beach from the Subtropical Gardens of Abbotsbury, by Steve Naylor
Chesil Beach is a rare shingle beach on the South coast of England, near Weymouth. The pebbles on the beach really are graded in size from south to north, but you are not allowed to take any home as a souvenir or as inspiration.
I’ve compiled a map for you that’s meant to give you an idea where it all takes place. Don’t forget to check out the great aerial view of the Cerne Abbas Giant (you have to switch to the satellite view to see it)!
More pictures of Chesil Beach can be seen here (some are very garishly photoshopped). I particularly liked this picture of flotsam and jetsam, because I love the words flotsam and jetsam.
For a look at the lush subtropical gardens at Abbotsbury go here. I drove past them and really regret it now.
And finally, a video that someone was cool enough to make of the waves on Chesil Beach. Listen! you hear the grating roar of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling at the return up the high strand …
Over the last year, I have become a great fan of podcasts – I love the portable radio idea, the serendipitous selections provided by NPR , but my favourite podcast has got to be
in which British broadcaster Melvyn Bragg invites three academics to talk about a single topic from the history of ideas. In a time of chatter, ephemeral wisdom and entertaining news (which I all enjoy), a 45-minute programme simply about ideas with contributors who are experts in the field is a bit of an oddity. If you’re a bit of a bluestocking yourself, however, it is sheer heaven. Out of 10 programmes, I am guaranteed to find 8 interesting.
The story challenge I am posting today doubles up as the final essay for this term – so this time, not only can you fulfil your course requirements, you can also win a fabulous (well…) prize doing so.
Here’s your inspiration:
I strongly recommend having a look at the original version by Trois Têtes on Flickr, as ir is much more detailed. The artwork was created by Banksy, the famous guerrilla street artist, who’s known for smuggling his artwork into famous museums to see how long they can hang next to the other masterpieces before someone notices, as well as for his clever and mildly subversive graffiti art*.
Write whatever comes to your mind, only do it well. The deadline is Wednesday, February 13th. Sorry, only my students may enter. (more…)
That it’s possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us.
Said the Queen in 1957 when she delivered her first televised broadcast. TV was the hottest new thing back then! And yet another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us is the new Royal Channel on, can you believe it, Youtube. To be honest, most of the videos there don’t look very interesting (although the 1923 footage of the Queen Mother’s wedding is fascinating), I feel very indebted to Queen Elizabeth for inspiring some of the best entertainment I had allyear.
So a very heppy Christmas to everyone, but especially the Queen. I just hope she does come across that travelling library behind Buckingham Palace to pick up some books.
Some of my students wanted to know what Glaswegian sounded like and why I had such a hard time understanding it. The example linked here is not exactly hard to understand, but if you go to the excellent Sounds Familiar Collection put together by the British Library and click on the other Ayrshire speech examples, you’ll know just what I mean.
This page is pretty addictive, I’ve got to say. I could spend hours listening to all the examples, reading up on the latest developments in Received Pronunciation or Caribbean English…
