Bibliography, December 2020

BOTM: N. Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Awopbamboom (1969)

J. Aiken, The wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962)

B. DeVoto, The Hour: a cocktail manifesto (1951)
R. Graves, I, Claudius (1934)*
S. Platt, Imperial twilight (2018)
H. Ranfurly, To war with Whitaker (1994)
A. Ransome, Old Peter's Russian Tales (1916)

I really liked all of these and I'd urge you to read them all. I loved The Countess of Ranfurly's wartime diaries, which are both fascinating, moving (the scene when she and her husband are reunited is genuinely tear inducing), slightly mad, and a splendid example of the formidable British woman, without whom we could not have run a small borough, still less an Empire. I would love to see a cross country comparative analysis of social roles played by women of a certain type before, say, 1950. Even better was Nik Cohn's pioneering, near contemporary, account of the emergence of modern pop. It's cited in every book on the genre, and I can see why. It's brilliantly funny, rooted in deep knowledge, spikeily written, endlessly judgemental, and acute in so many ways. It gets the country roots of Rock and Pop right too. It's a period piece obviously, but it does bring home how what he calls 'superpop' in the 1960s was new, and how unforeseen the next fifty years were.

The Original Tudor

I've been listening - on repeat - to Horrible Histories' magisterial Glam Rock pastiche for Henry VII, the original Tudor. Here it is. 

Obviously, you like best the HH songs that match your preferred genre. This certainly matches mine. Visually and musically, it echoes the early 1970s Glam Top of the Pops performances perfectly. It is therefore amazing. Here are all the things I love about it:

Sound...

• The semi-spoken intro makes the same point about Shakespeare's plays that Thomas Penn did in his outstanding Winter King (2011),  
• It sounds primarily like The Sweet and Jean Genie era Bowie (the title is of course another Bowie nod). 
• Specifically, it voicechecks Steve Priest's falsetto from The Sweet  to give emphasis to the following rhyming couplet: 'The only way to end war and avert further disaster, there's got to be a way to unite York and Lancaster.' I have failed to explain successfully to the children why this is so amusing.
• The Sparks reference (at 1m56s. This town ain't big enough for both of us = this crown ain't big enough... for The Perkin Warbeck / Lambet Simnel)
• The Slade reference (at 2mins exactly, for slayed)
• The Mud reference ('That's right, that's right' is straight out of Tiger Feet - it's at 0m57s)

...and Vision 

• The whole blurred lit up 'graphics' can be pretty specifically dated to the early 70s and look like a) the stone age and b) The Sweet's 1973 Blockbuster Top of the Pops performance 
• The cutaway shots to the drummer and the driving guitars are both staples of performance shots from the same era, I just can't find them. 
• In fact the commitment to the 70s aesthetics is absurdly detailed. Even the audience of girls dancing is much shot for shot of era Top of the Pops.

And, most importantly, it's right. Henry VII is vastly underrated in popular history. Henry VIII, who in my view is a fat, sexually incontinent buffoon, captures much of the real estate of the popular imagination, and much of the rest is taken by the contrarian revisionist faction that supports Richard III (who doesn't deserve condemnation for his political murders, but does deserve it for failing to hold the realm together). Henry VII, with far less of a claim than Richard, succeeds. His political murders work. He's 'the man who closes the Wars of the Roses.' 

Far more of a risk taker than his glamorous son; far more ruthless than even that other master of political murder, Henry I; just as decisive on the battlefield as William I (if less epochally significant); one of a handful of English kings to really grasp royal administration. He's absolutely the best Tudor, and probably my favourite English King, not least because he - and I love this line above, is the one 'returning power to the State.' He is not the one you would want to drink with, but he is definitely the one you would put in charge of, well, anything.

Bibliography, November 2020

BOTM: C. Stevens, Born Brilliant: The Life of Kenneth Williams (2010)

M Lynas, Six degrees (2009)
D. Goulson, A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees (2013)
S. Mukherjee, The Emperor of maladies (2010)
J. Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland (2014)
F.W. Crofts, The Cask (1920)

I enjoyed almost all of these. Meadowland was a moving evocation of the life and rhythms of a tiny scrap of the world; Goulson's memoir-cum-bumblebee guide was also and unexpectedly charming, as well as fascinating. All were books I'd recommend, though Six degrees was deeply depressing. My favourite though, even if I'm not actually sure it was the best, was Kenneth Williams' biography. 

Having finished it, and checked the reviews, it is clearly flawed. It's a meticulous and well written book, but It does suffer slightly from an author who is clearly a huge fan: part of the narrative suffers from a desire to explain away some of the fairly awful behaviour, and it is also quite long, corresponding to the figure that the author believes he could have been, not necessarily that he was. But, but, but ... Kenneth Williams is iconic, and he's iconic for a reason. He occupies a huge place in popular culture (probably now receding among the under 30s, er 50s?), and I've always loved his work, much of the best of which absolutely stands up. It was thus a great pleasure to read, though not without without sadness. It's hard not to read it wistfully now, wondering if his life could have been different, or would have been different at a different context. Part of me wishes he could have gone to grammar school (he didn't go to as his parents couldn't pay for the uniform) and we could have seen one of the great eccentric dons of our age which the author thinks he could have been. But then we'd have missed the rest; and I wouldn't have wanted that.