BOOKS FROM A NON-EXISTENT BEDSIDE TABLE by Penny Dolan

I should be calling this something like "More Books from my Bedside Table" except for the fact that, right now, I don't have a bedside table. 

This is a little annoying in practice but no sympathy is needed as it is for a delightful reason. Our bedroom is being decorated so we - and all our belongings - are crammed tightly into the spare room. The squidge will be worth it as soon the tasteful beige bedroom will have gone and all will be full of brightness and energy and inspiration and so on.

 So - on to my fictitious bedside table.

Please note these are not book reviews but thoughts about aspects some of the books I've read. There's a difference.

BECOMING by Michelle Obama. 
Now I mentioned this title when I last wrote about books. It was there , big and bulky  (nd a loan for returning soon), but I was uncertain about it, being a crabbit creature agin all highly promoted tomes. However, Pippa Goodhart, a person whose views I value, said it was worth the read, and indeed it is.

The determination to make something of yourself - the be the best you can - the valuing of education, the balancingof two differing personialites, the support of family and friends, the effort of always "being other" in largely white social settings, the sacrifice of private family life, the complexity and remoteness of that life, all well and evenly told.

One feels hopeful after reading this autobiography which matters a lot right now.
Books that offer hope are much needed,imo. Yes, Pippa, it was worth it. Listening to wise words is a good thing to do.

THE COST OF LIVING by Rachel Ward. An Ant and Bea Mystery.
I collected this title on my kindle, mainly because it was by  Rachel Ward whose photography and artwork I've seen on social media.

The novel is a light crime story with a host of characters who could be suspects, an increasing amount of tension and a satisfying ending. What, however is my point about this story is that the plot is set in an urban working class community, and the more of the story I read, the more I realised how rare that seems to be in the book world, at least in my usually reads. The crimes are all linked to an small supermarket that serves a fairly small urban estate. Bea of the false eyelashes and red lipstick is the generous heroine, not only of the till but of the book, while young Ant - a troubled, hot-tempered nineteen-year-old youth - is her likeable accomplice. A second title - DEAD STOCK -  is out now, so I shall have to look for that too.  (Morning correction. Have that on my kindle too, now.)

Movingly, the author's note at the back suggests that this Ant & Bea title was written almost as an amusement for Rachel to share with her father, who was ill in hospital at the time. This bit of information, along with Sophie's ABBA post yesterday, were powerful reminders.
They have certainly dampened my own personal writing-whinge potential , which some people at the imminent Scattered Author's Charney Manor Retreat may be very glad about!

 
THE CARDTURNER by Louis Sachar. I found this third title for 50p at my local Children's Library Book Sale:

I had never heard of this book before. Had you? I really want to crow about this glorious oddity of a novel,- and of the chutzpah of an author who, having written the hit that was Holes, decides to make his next novel  - are you sitting down? - about his own personal passion: the art of playing bridge, and then to persuade the publishers to back it too.

Sachar creates a quirky, slightly gothic atmosphere: an unworldly seventeen year old boy becomes the person who turns cards at bridge games for his blind, taciturn uncle. As with Holes, a lot of complicated family history is woven into the plot as well.

Cleverly, the "boring bits" - ie the information about bridge - are indicated by the symbol of a white whale. This clue is used, the narrator explains, because in Moby Dick, there's a lot of information you have to read while you'd rather be going on with the story. His whale symbol makes it easier to read for plot alone, and it is possible. (I was also reading it see how this sort of information could be handled. Explicitly, in this case.)

But bridge? How ridiculous, I thought, wondering what kind of sales figure a YA novel like The Cardturner might achieve. It is of limited use as a class reader to follow Holes, because the card symbols make the text an essentially private experience. But then I thought: if there really are so many bridge fanatics in America nd elsewhere, and  they all buy a copy for their beloved grandchild/children, there maybe a surer market than I'd imagined? I haven't studied any sales information to discover the truth: I prefer the idea ofthat untapped market for now. 

(nb.The book's bridge game is played in an American version. I don't know if this matters. And I am still not likely to play bridge.)

And finally, above, chosen from the wonderful picture books on display at TateBritain:
Mo Willem's THIS PIGEON NEEDS A BATH. One for use in my Library Storytimes - and, it seems, one of the titles in a her very successful "Pigeon" series.

Right, Off to find my non-existent bedside table and bedside. Night all.
Have a great July, despite all the despites.

Penny Dolan

@pennydolan1

A little bit, word by word ... by Sophia Bennett

I write this in my shed, on the hottest day of the year, to the sounds of next door's barbecue wafting through the open doors. In a minute I'll go and make a salad to feed the children (12, 17 and 18), then dash off to visit my husband in intensive care before the end of visiting hours.

I haven't made much progress on the book this week. OK, any progress.

I've spent a lot of time in the garden, fulfilling my teaching commitments, buying and making food, and reassuring the family my husband isn't as ill as the last time he was in intensive care. The 'write ABBA blog post' has been at the top of my to do list for days but, like the growing list underneath it, has been put off from day to day. Until now, when the deadline is midnight.

Just as I imagined, it feels good to feel my fingers on the keyboard, to search for words and find them, sometimes, and reach for a rhythm that comes and goes. It is a step towards getting back to the book and I'm looking forward to next week, when I'll find more time to insert myself into the intricacies of its plot, and eek the word count forwards a little bit, word by word ...

I'm inspired by other writers, who write about writing through times far more difficult and complicated than this one. Parents who sit beside their very sick children and crack on with the story; PD James, who wrote for years with a senior Civil Service job to do and a sick and difficult husband to care for, who had been broken by his experiences in the Second World War; writers who've been bereaved or betrayed, and still kept to the deadline somehow, and kept the words coming.

Sometimes you can't, of course. A good friend of mine, one of the most talented children's writers I know, lost her husband suddenly and couldn't write for a year. So she painted, and looked after herself and her children, and eventually the words returned. I've had times when I simply couldn't face the empty page, but this isn't one of them. The story is plotted, my characters are brimming with life and I've left them in suspended animation at a critical moment, which I'm keen to get them out of.  Nothing would cheer my husband up more than for me to waft in with tales of chapters written and plot points resolved.

But I've learned over the years to be kind to myself. Like the nurses in intensive care, I'll take this day to day. If I can make progress, I will, and if I can't, I won't add to the stress by berating myself. I'll try and be inspired, too, though, by the many, many children I've encountered over the years on school visits who've overcome unbelievably tough experiences to be creative, and have used creativity to get through. If the boys and girls of Kensington Aldridge Academy can write a fantastic story, surely so can I?

And we need stories. They get us through the tough times. They're what inspired me to write in the first place, when I was little and freshly transplanted to the other side of the world, with only my favourite books for company. E. Nesbit, Noel Streatfeild and Anthony Buckeridge saved me for a while. One of the things that makes me most happy is to know that Threads, my first novel, is the go-to book for lots of stressed-out teens who read it when they were 10 or 12, and keep it as their under-the-duvet read. I'd love the new book to be that kind of story too.

But first I must write it. A few words at a time. After I've done this blog post (a good writing exercise), and made the salad and been to the hospital, and watered the garden on this blazing hot, glorious, English summer's day.

Sophia Bennett
www.sophiabennett.com

The work! The work! *

The late Andrea Levy said she began a new book by going to her local library and just scribbling down ‘any old rubbish’. It’s a wonderful phrase that describes perfectly how I get started.

I begin with a rough outline. One A4 page. Then I sit down and write ‘any old rubbish’. I can usually sustain this for about 100 pages, at which point I have a slightly better idea of what I’m aiming for, so I go back to the beginning and rewrite. In the process, I throw away 90% of what I’ve produced. I then repeat this for the second half of the book.

Now I have a complete draft, half of which has been written twice. I go back to the beginning and start again. This time around, I throw about 40% away. As with the first draft, I write fast, just anxious to get the words down and the pages filled. This produces a new draft.

Then the really hard part starts. I now usually have the story fixed in my mind. I know where I’m going. So I can no longer just bang out the words. Now I have to stop and really concentrate. Is this the best description? Do actions follow one another logically? Can the dialogue be shortened? On this third draft I’m really working hard to get it right. (And I often print it and go through the pages making corrections by hand. The cat can be relied upon to provide invaluable editorial assistance.)

So it always comes as a surprise to me when I sit down to write the fourth version and discover that what I thought worked, made sense, was short and pithy and vivid – isn’t. I see bad dialogue, repetitious word use, slackly described action. But – and here’s the comfort – at least I have a good idea of what to do to fix it. It’s hard, but not as hard as that third go round. More than anything, I find, it requires perseverance.

Yesterday, I finished just such a fourth draft of a new book, one I’ll send to my agent next week. I don’t consider it a fourth draft though. It’s the first. It just took me four drafts to make it the first. And ready to be read.

* Apologies to Joseph Conrad. 

A Biography of Dreams - Clémentine Beauvais

I dream of a dream autobiography. One that would let us see nothing of a person’s waking life, but everything of their night-time wanderings, and the evolution throughout a lifetime of that dreamscape.

Infant visions, of god knows what - some light blue and very soft, others the worst shadows? Childhood nightmares of monsters, of hunger, of parents transformed into uncanny-valley creatures. Ecstatic dreams of flying, eating and peeing in awkward places, the young camouflage of eros. Adolescent dreams of shame, of triumph, of sex - some seemingly scarily misguided, others terrifyingly bang-on.

Within all that, other circumstantial variances : pregnancy dreams around one’s period, the thirst dreams of hot summer nights, the smothering nightmares of thick duvets. Those strange phases, days, weeks, when dreams seem to vanish, where have they gone, because of what? Stress, business, other things on one’s mind, too much joy. Other phases, the opposite: hyperactive psychedelic nightmares, Technicolor musical dreams.

The old clichés: naked-in-public dreams, lost teeth? I never had those, but apparently it’s common. A hefty dose of those are needed in the dream biography, to give it the appropriate effet de réel.

Adulthood and its lamentable wastes of good dreaming time: sleep squandered in work dreams, admin dreams, train dreams and more toilet dreams. The atrocious dreams at the confines of horror and dark desire: seeing one’s children dead, one’s parents dead, one’s partner dead. Dreams of piles of washing. More erotic dreams (more guilt).

Once in a blue moon, dreams of, well, blue moons, and other fantasy lands. As an adult, dreaming of actual monsters can be considered a privilege. Flying is a rare occurrence.

Old age. I don’t know. What do you dream of in old age? Tell me.

When I was a child, and a huge Harry Potter fan (which I still am), I would dream very often of flying around on brooms and doing magic with wands, but also just with my hands, or any object. My nightmares were terrifying and absolutely uncontrollable, but my dreams were pliable and kind. I wandered around Hogwarts at least a couple of times a week with Harry, Ron and Hermione.

But I remember well the time, around 14 years old, when wizard dreams started to malfunction. I used to be able to murmur ‘Lumos!’ and there would be light. Gradually, there wasn’t. I had weird frustrating dreams where I had a wand, but it didn’t work very well.

In one of them, I said ‘Lumos, Lumos,’ and the light went on, but that was because I’d tapped the light switch with the tip of my wand. I was aware it was cheating, but didn’t want to acknowledge it.

I remember I told my mother this dream and she burst out loud laughing, and said something like, ‘it’s the end of childhood, my darling’. It made me enormously sad at the time, because you can always count on children to romanticise their own childhood and mourn its loss even more than adults do.

Soon, I could no longer fly in dreams, but merely jump very high.

These days I never dream of making magic Evil magical things being done to me, yes. And I hardly ever dream of flying. Falling, yes. 

I don’t think it’s because I’m unhappy, or unimaginative. Maybe my superego’s become too strong for my id. It’s most definitely a Mr Banks kind of superego, not a Mary Poppins.

Graham Greene wrote a wonderful book of his dreams. Many encounters with famous people, politicians, writers. Normally, there’s nothing more boring than someone’s dream narratives. But those ones he manages to make fascinatingly universal. Just like the best (auto)biographies.
Who is the most famous person you’ve ever met in a dream? I nearly only meet minor starlets, for mostly incomprehensible reasons. JK Rowling I met often as a child and a teenager, but I never do now. She must be too busy being on Twitter to drop by.

The dream biography would see dead people and exes and long-forgotten friends come back and drift away again according to mysterious rules and cycles. My cat Opaline died seven years ago but she is with me at least once a month, generally very ill, and I have to protect her. Same with my sister, today a fiercely independent, strong and brave 24-year-old, but who appears in my dreams almost always as a tiny baby under my sole responsibility. My dead grandfather is often there. I always know he’s dead, and feel pleasantly surprised that, in spite of that, he’s bothered to turn up at whichever dream event I meet him.

A biography of dreams worthy of the name would require a strategic approach to data, of course; based on dream diaries, but also day diaries, for information to be triangulated as seriously as the exercise requires. But the day life must only be mentioned extremely allusively, and in small touches, and only insofar as it illuminates the central narrative. As in any writing project, it’s important to have a clear focus.

When the dream autobiography becomes a successful publishing trend, you can trust quantitative researchers will turn to the data for content analysis. We’ll start distinguishing patterns and predicting trends. It’s that time of life again when you’re going to sleep with all of your exes, sorry! Then, in a few months’ time, it will only be dreams of missing buses and your debit card not working. You’ll be utterly incapable of sending any text or email in any dream. It will only be random letters and hieroglyph-like symbols. Oh, and you’ll accidentally send your boss dick picks you didn’t even know you had in your phone. After that, for weeks you’ll eat a lot of cake and be stalked by monsters. At some point, apocalypse nightmare! The land will fold under your feet and volcano eruptions will be spectacular. You’ll hate it while it happens, but then you’ll have something to talk about when you wake up.

I have a friend with whom I discuss dreams almost every morning, like we’d comment on the latest news. It is a kind of intimacy I’d wish on anyone.

Psychoanalysts would hate this dream biography, because writing down a dream is forbidden in that science. You have to speak it, because there’s no such thing as a dream narrative, they say, only what you do with those pictures when you tell them to someone, free-associate, and hesitate and ramble. I agree fundamentally, I think, but still: I want to read that literary effort, that attempt to make sense of it, to chronologise it all. I want it to be aesthetic.

Who will write that autobiography for us? Someone hopefully very normal, with dreams like ours. But someone diligent and with a sense of humour. They’d need to write down their dreams from the earliest ages. Illustrate them, that’d be nice too. Then select (necessary stage) with a razor-sharp sensitivity for pertinence. And then tell us that story.

I don’t read much in the manner of biographies and only slightly more when it comes to autobiographies. But that one I’d read from cover to cover. An existence’s flipside.

-------------------------------

Clémentine Beauvais is a writer and literary translator. Her YA novels in English are Piglettes (Pushkin, 2017) and In Paris with You (trans. Sam Taylor, Faber, 2018).

A Room Of One's Own? Dream On.

Another article came out this week about writers having no money and being unable to live off being-a-writer. Loads of writers shared the post and all the writers agreed: it was true. I don't know if people who aren't writers care about those articles or it's just writers passing them around to articulate the shared misery. In any case I find them difficult to read because they take me away from writing and my reasons for writing. I don't believe that 'vocation' should be a substitute for getting paid, but I've also never been under the illusion that I could ever live off writing on its own. I do several other jobs for money and I'm struggling for cash, but lots of people are, and at least the jobs I do are things that feel meaningful to me. When I dream about having plenty of money one of the first things I'd do would be to sort out Virginia Woolf's maxim about women needing 'a room of one's own in order to write fiction'. I'd really like that. I'd like an attic-type room with sloping ceilings, a really comfortable sofa to read on, a nice big desk in front of a large window overlooking the sea. Please and thank you. But right now it's fantasy, and I expect that's the case for lots of writers.

I wanted to write this post to detail how I manage to write books without having my own room, then. I don't want anyone to think that I'm having a dreadful time- I'm not. I love writing and I can find spaces when I need to in our house or in nearby cafes. Finding the time is a separate problem, but I don't want to write about that now (mainly because I haven't really figured it out). Here is how I fake having my own space so that I can be alone with the story.

The non-negotiable for me is having uninterrupted time. Therefore, I can't write when my youngest is at home and I'm the only one taking care of him. The others in the house are better at not interrupting and I can at least take a chance on it. It's hard for me to think of a worse irritation when it comes to writing than being interrupted. I know that other writers can write with their kids playing around them and constantly interrupting them, and I know that when I publish this there will be those who say 'Well I have to, I just don't have the choice.' But I physically can't do it. There's something about how my brain works (or doesn't work) when I'm writing that requires the security of knowing that I can start a thought and probably get to the end of it without someone asking for juice or a biscuit or making me go and look for their green PJ Masks vehicle. I'm sure Will Self is probably clever enough to write novels and entertain children and cook dinners and do laundry all at the same time (and I'm sure he does all those things) but I can't do that.

Once I have a guarantee of some minutes I can start thinking about faking the silence. I suppose I am pretty high maintenance really, and not very suited to the writing life. Ideally I'd like complete silence. Maybe a bit of birdsong. And cafe noises are OK as long as they are distant and don't include babies crying or people having loud business conversations. Clearly, I don't have that much control over my environment, so the next best thing, the thing that I've been using since children graced my life, and probably the thing I am most grateful for (and yet have never mentioned in the acknowledgements of any of my books), is headphones. Headphones are the room that you don't have. They are the audio-control you don't have. The good ones are expensive but not as expensive as renting an office or building an extension or moving to a bigger house.

I have several pairs of headphones.

I have cheap in-ear ones which go everywhere with me in case I forget the good ones. They were a fiver out of Tesco and they'll do in an emergency.

I have my excellent Sennheiser HD 202 headphones (about £35) which for some reason have a lead so long you could  probably nip downstairs and make a cup of tea without removing them. They're not noise-cancelling ones but they are the next best thing as they cover your whole ear and the sound is very good and they do block out most external noise.

I have my Jabra Move bluetooth headphones (around £70) which are also very good. Not quite as noise-blocking as the Sennheiser ones (the cans are slightly smaller) and you have to keep them charged up which can be a pain if you're out, but they are pretty great and they're normally the ones I take to cafes because they don't have a lead at all so they're less faffy. Also great for walks or doing the housework.

You can get super duper noise cancelling headphones which are brilliant and expensive, but I find that the above works well for me. I've been using them for a few years.

Obviously by using headphones you don't get complete silence because you have to put something through them in order to block out the other noise. Everyone has their own music that they find good to write-to. I can't have anything with lyrics or I find myself trying to listen to the words. I sometimes play Schubert or Sibelius- classical music that I like but don't know well enough for it to be distracting. Or, more often, ambient or electronic music (The Unknowns was mostly written to the soundtrack of Daniel Avery's Drone Logic). You can get online tracks which play background noises that sound like the ocean, or a coffee shop, or even the TARDIS, but depending on what kind of scene I'm writing I find that music can help energise me a bit.

Maybe it's an obvious solution to the modern problem with Virginia Woolf's idea, but it's one which I don't think gets promoted enough. I'm sure that loads of other people use headphones though, and I'd love to hear what you're all listening to.

Finding the horse - by Chris Vick

I was inspired to write this blog by Tracy Darnton’s excellent ABBA blog on the mid point crisis, (or, to use her word: ‘horror.’) It resonated and reassured in a; ‘not just me then?’ kind of way.

I’m going to talk about a similar but different kind of crisis; the one you get when you’ve finished a book, when you’ve done the edits and you’re free of those characters, that setting, that story, that has lived in your head and which your head has lived in, for months, possibly years.

Now you are free to write something new, and it can be whatever you want. Wonderful, right?  All those ‘other’ ideas that have been knocking at the door, those characters who demand to be listened to, that image you can’t stop seeing. It’s their turn to dance and sing. Even better, you get to be Simon Cowell /Darcy Bussell/ Caesar; deciding which ideas get through the to the next round, which ones get killed off and which live. A filtering of possibilities, till you get to the ‘one,’ the New Book I’m Going to Write. Ta-dah!

Only it’s a strange kind of freedom, one that can lead to paralysis, not from a dearth of ideas but from too many.  And even if you take one up, are you sure it’s the right one? How many different directions can it go in? Which characters might be important?  What, really, is the damn book even about?

I wrote my first book, Kook, on the Bath Spa MA in Writing for Young People, nurtured and supported, first by wonderful mentors and fellow writers, then an agent and then a publisher. It did okay, better in other countries than this one.  So the subject of the second was an easy decision: more of the same. Not a sequel, but same setting, similar themes, same voice.  It was expected of me and it’s what I delivered.

            In hindsight, I’m not at all sure that was the right thing to do. To be frank, there were times I had to drag myself to the desk, to make sure I produced words; to be sure I met the deadline. And that was a new and uncomfortable situation for me to be in.

Like Kook, Storms, was published in a few countries, but it didn’t do so well.

So when I got to write my next, (Girl.Boy.Sea, published 8^th August), I really, really had to go back to the drawing board. I had no contract for it. I didn’t want to write in the same vein. The market was changing its tastes daily, and in any case, it’s a fool who chases the market, right?

So I discussed the matter with my agent over various emails and phone calls. She didn’t push me in any one direction, but mysteriously advised: ‘I think the mythic is where your writing is headed.’ We talked through various ideas and options, and eventually I said; ‘Well, I have an idea I really like, but here’s the thing… it’s not MG or YA, it’s not fantasy but it does have magic in it, it’s not magic realism. It’s contemporary but it contains tales from 1001, Arabian Nights, It’s kind of… odd.’

            ‘But you want to write it?’

            ‘Yes. It’s the least-likely in all my ideas, but it’s the one I like the most.’

‘Then do it.’

So I tried it out; I had a go. And (I really should have known this in advance), found out what sort of book it was only by writing it; by getting lost in it and seeing what happened. And I loved writing it, and I wrote the story I wanted, even though I believed it had little chance of publication, even though it didn’t ‘fit’ any easy definition, genre or market niche. 

Not for the first time I was inspired by my fellow writers, especially those from the MA, who simply followed their passions and heart. Tracey, who wrote a thriller, with a focus on memory and the workings of mind and brain, Mel Darbon who wrote a love story about characters with Down’s Syndrome, Lucy Van Smit, who wrote a dark Nordic thriller about obsessive love. Did these books sell themselves on these premises?  As the old adage goes, a book needs to be good and original.  And the gate-keepers see plenty of manuscripts that are good but not original, or original but not every good.  But the books these writers wrote are both. I suspect because the writers followed their true passions, regardless of trend or fashion.

So that’s what I did, I followed my heart and in the process of getting lost, found the book. Cheesy, but true.

Rainer Maria Rilke said, in Letters to a Young Poet,  over a century ago; ‘Nobody can advise you and help you, nobody…There is only one way. Go into yourself.’ The first half of that isn’t quite true in my view.  I need the help of editors, writing groups and agents. But the central point is true.

But what’s this got to do with horses?

I’ll finish with a tale told, to me and others, by writer and tutor Steve Voake on the MA. I think it illustrates how we find the true subject and heart of our books in second and third drafts. It echoes, in a way, Tracey’s point about simply putting one word in front of another.  We find out by doing, not prevaricating.

There’s an artist making a statue out of clay. The artist spends quite some time scraping and shaping, adding more here, taking some away there, then adding more bits till he’s left with a mountainous lump of lumps, ten foot high and just as wide. He stands back and looks at it a long time. 

'What is it?’  his assistant asks.

'It's not what it is, it's what it's going be. Everything I did so far was about working that out.'

'And what will it be?' says the assistant. 

'A horse.'

'But it doesn't look like a horse, how will you make it look like a horse?'

'That’s simple now. I just take away everything that isn't the horse.'

 Chris Vick is the author of Kook and Storms (HarperCollins) and Girl.Boy.Sea published in hardback by Zephyr/Head of Zeus on 8^th August.

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Every Picture Tells a Story, by Saviour Pirotta

These last few months, I've been involved with after-school clubs in six Scarborough schools. Other artists are teaching children scriptwriting, performance poetry, interpretive dance and street art but my brief is 'storymaking'. That's creating stories to tell, whether it be in book form or performing to an audience.

Like most of us professional writers, the children found it difficult to come up with ideas from nothing, so I used one of my favourite techniques with them, one that I used myself as a child. My parents had a set of four framed prints in the hallway. They were given them, I think, by my Uncle Edward who travelled extensively around Italy. They showed the Italian lakes. My favourite one was a vista of Lake Como. It was devoid of people, showing only houses, the entrance to what I fervently believed was a palazzo and a church steeple. I would spend hours gazing at the scene, making up characters who lived in these sunlit abodes and connecting them with stories.

I would keep the project going for years, often revisiting the narrative months later, until every detail in the picture was part of the story. 

I still do this for my own books.  Every story I write has a central location, usually a building that acts as a backdrop to many of the scenes. In The Secret of the Oracle, it's the Oracle at Delphi. In The Pirates of Poseidon, the inspiration came from the temple of Athena Aphea on the island of Aegina. I couldn't visit Baghdad for The Golden Horsemen of Baghdad, so I found old artists' images of the city and visualised the rest from research.

For my after-school club project, I wanted to give the kids a sense of pride in their hometown. Scarborough is often dismissed as a faded seaside resort but it's full of hidden gems, from Italianate cliff-top gardens to reputedly haunted churches.  I took pictures of the locales and the children rose to the occasion. The stories we have created feature interesting characters inspired by our own landmarks. My favourite two are a girl who gets turned into a dragon while riding the ghost train on the seafront and a dead WW2 pilot who appears to warn Scarborians of the peril of plastic pollution. It's nice to share my solitary childhood game with so many eager participants. Long live imagination.

Saviour's latest book, The Golden Horsemen of Baghdad is published by Bloomsbury. His picture book The Unicorn Prince is illustrated by Jane Ray. Follow him on twitter @spirotta.

One Ring To Rule Them All by Steve Gladwin

Rather than make comparisons between the radio version and the 2001 film franchise, in the spirit of the fellowship of nine, I'm going to give you nine reasons to listen to or buy the BBC radio version of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, especially - for god's sake, if you haven't heard it. So here goes.

Sir Ian in signing mode.

A Tale of Two Sir Ians


Long before his moving film portrayal of a confused Bilbo, Sir Ian Holm really was Frodo in the BBC radio adaptation and I mean was. I could enthuse about his performance forever but I'd better not. But he's the lynch pin of the radio adaptation and does everything that's required not only with consummate ease but with subtlety, pacing and intelligence to spare. His relationship with Sam with all its ups and downs is just wonderful, and almost unbearably moving in the Shelob and Dark Tower scenes. Sam sounds the right age to Bilbo as well, which is not of course so in the film where Sean Astin's Sam often seems more like an uncle, (or maybe Tolkien's batman!)

Bilbo muses.

Two more Great Theatrical Knights

Gandalf played by Sir Michael Hordern

Long before twinkling, absent-minded Ian McKellen came the arch harrumpher and friend of Paddington Bear, Sir Michael Hordern, now perhaps forgotten as he never, ever should be. For those who only remember him as befuddled dons, stuff upper-lipped admirals and  grumpy old men, listen when his Gandalf gets loses his patience, when its a wonder Pippin doesn't jump straight down the well. He can also do absent minded as convincingly as if Paddington has suddenly taken on a rather odd adventure. And of course he has real gravitas, the voice thrills and tugs at the heart. Above all Gandalf must be a great storyteller and Michael Hordern certainly is, (see Paddington!)

Sir Michael troubled by a haunted bed sheet in M.R. James 'Whistle and I'll come to you.' for the Beeb

Aragorn played by Sir Robert Stephens

Private life with violin.

In the light of the 'best in show' turn by Viggo Mortensen in the film franchise, it's maybe less easy to appreciate the wonderful oak preserved, tanned leather voice of Sir Robert Stephens as Aragorn and I have friends who think he is completely miscast and works far better as Abner Brown in The Box of Delights. For me he'll always be a much under-rated Sherlock Holmes' in Billy Wilder's odd, quirky, at times frankly barking, but deeply moving The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, but as the never seen version of Aragorn he's got everything. It's that same seasoned voice that makes him both perfect ageless king elect and a convincing ranger. You can imagine him pulling off his boots after a days's trudge and lighting up his pipe, and because the king is incognito for a lot of the time, it gives him all the more eventual gravitas. Plus we have none of that pesky added on romance stuff with Awen to guarantee box office.

Robert Stephen's Falstaff with Joanne Pearce as Doll.

A chilling Hades in Jim Henson's Greek Myths

As Abner Brown in The Box of Delights

Max from Inspector Morse

Peter Woodthorpe, who offered to make it three times in a row with Gollum.

With Peter Woodthorpe as Gollum. Those five words alone are a reason to listen . And yes, Peter Woodthorpe did play Max, the hunchbacked police surgeon and Morse's only real mate in the eponymous TV series, but he also appeared as Estragon in the very first production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and there's an awful lot of Beckett still to be found in his Gollum.

Towards the end of his life Peter Woodthorpe related how he wrote to Peter Jackson to offer his services as Gollum for the third time, (having first played it in the Ralph Bakshi animated half ring version!. As we all know, Peter Jackson already had intriguing plans involving actor - and soon to be groundbreaking motion capture artist Andy Serkis, but as Jackson is a huge fan of the BBC adaptation and of Peter Woodthorpes's Gollum, he was glad of the chance to let him down gently.

Gollum is of course a complex character - not to say a schizophrenic one- and Peter Woodthorpe captures every nuance of the tormented hobbit's complex personality morals and loyalties. During his many scenes with Frodo and Sam, Peter Woodthorpe shows the full heart-breaking depth of the character's deception, his calumny, the loyalties of Smeagol driven friendship struggling against his evil Gollum soured opportunism. Listen to the scene where the two parts are first vying for control after Frodo releases the suppressed Smeagol half in the Dead Marshes. Peter Woodthorpe does every part of it through voice alone - and it's the moves from one to the other which really display his unique vocal skills.

Bill long after he was Sam Gamgee as washed out rocker Ray in Still Crazy

One Sam To Rule Them All

Believe it or not, but long before Bill Nighy displayed the power of his pipes as Ray the washed up prog rocker in Brian Gibson's Clement and Le Frenais scripted Still Crazy he had given us his voice in unaccompanied and far more plaintive mood. The moment before the attack on Weathertop when he sings 'Gil galad was an Elven King' is a true pin-drop moment.

His Sam is simply wonderful and has all the youth that Sean Astin, (by far the oldest of the film hobbit company) lacks. This Sam will lay down his life for his master without thinking and there is real loyalty and love between the two, (as to be fair there is between Sean Astin and Elijah Wood's Sam and Frodo). But something special happens when Sir Ian and Bill get together. And then when you add Peter Woodthorpe to the mix?. At best Bill Nighy's Sam can be wrenching and heart-breaking. But like his master he is always 100% believable.


Stephen Oliver

The multi-talented Stephen Oliver

Stephen Oliver was a multi talented musician and composer of 40 operas and early music specialist who died far too young of an AIDS related illness in 1992. He was commissioned to write the music for the radio series of The Lord of the Rings. He was no stranger to huge undertakings but this truly was a huge canvas to control and master.

A couple of years ago an elderly neighbour of ours described going to see the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring., He had to leave the cinema because very quickly he found the constant sweeping soundtrack too intrusive and more to the point, it hurt his ears.

I do love Howard Shore's extensive film score, with its epic grandeur and use of leit motifs and have a great many favourite moment, like the all too short section of the halls of the Dwarrowdelf in Moria. Shore evokes that cathedral like mixture of grandeur and regret in a way which is truly heart tugging and there is some absolutely wonderful stuff which captures everything necessary and more.

But the book is full of songs and poems Apart from Frodo's disastrous party piece in Bree, nobody really sings in the film and if they do it is apologetically, so people end up saying, 'Ooh, look, Viggo Mortensen can sing, after all.' Others are just drowned by the constant music.

But Bill Nighy can sing. And the chorus of assembled Ents can. And long before he became a wine critic, so could Oz Clarke as the voice of The Bard. And then there's acclaimed counter tenor David James and Baritone Matthew Vine as Lothlorien and the Eagle and the Dream Voice. Later John le Mesurier was recorded singing Bilbo's last song and how suitably weary and earth-trodden it sounds. You can hear it as part of the hour long soundtrack on youtube. But what Stephen Oliver does in contrast to Howard Shore's approach is give us a soundtrack for an epic story, rather than a soundtrack for a film, something more suitable for a Saxon feasting hall - which would of course been much far more up Tolkien's street.

Brian Sibley

Brian Sibley has written, adapted and collaborated on so many things it shouldn't be any surprise that his later role as Mr Movie Tie in, (Rings, Hobbit, Potter just for starters), not to mention as Peter Jackson's official biographer. comes in an impressive direct line from adapting the subject of this blog and before that the BBC Narnia chronicles and latterly Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast. He also wrote the wonderful book Shadowlands, about the elderly CS Lewis's relationship with Joy Davidman.

Of course Brian Sibley adapted the series with Michael Bakewell, who must of course share the credit for so powerful, moving and above all beautifully structured a dramatisation.

Sometimes Eccentric Casting

There are a great many other actors in this version apart from the leads and several of the the established BBC radio drama stalwarts appear not only in name parts but in the 'also starring' list at the end of each episode. It would be nice to give them all a credit here, but the list, as you'd imagine, is extensive.

The two younger hobbits can be a little middle class and too wide eyed with wonder, but are fine nonetheless. David Collings has the right voice for Legolas, as has Michael Graham Cox the suitably gruff tones for the disappointed Boromir and Douglas Livingstone is the best Gimli you'll ever hear. Then there's the late great actor Peter Vaughan, with a career spanning all the way through to his final role as Maester Aemon in Game of Thrones, as the bitter and Palantir maddened Denethor, but who we all remembered at the time as Genial Harry Grout, Fletch's nemesis in Porridge, and Andrew Sear as his son Faramir. We also have Simon Cadell sounding every inch the stiff upper lip elf in his cameo as Celeborn, (to Marian Diamond's gentle Galadriel).

Jack May and John Le Mesurier as Theoden and Bilbo respectively may be more of an acquired taste. Jack May, famous for his old ham role of Nelson Gabriel in the early days of The Archers, starts with a very thick slice of it, before settling down into more of a neatly sliced version. Its speeches that seem to bring out the worst of the old tendency, so he's far better in his dialogues with Gandalf or when Peter Howell's marvellously voiced Saruman, (here is a wizard whose gentle tones could surely lull us for long enough to lure us).

I like John Le Mesurier as the old Bilbo, but I can understand how others might not. Part of the problem is his type-casting in our memories as Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army. Every time he comes in you expect him to say 'Do you think that's wise, Frodo?' But after you get over the initial shock, his portrayal becomes as heartfelt at Ian Holm's once we get to Rivendell. 

I also shouldn't forget Stephen Thorne's wonderful Treebeard, Paul Brooke's wheedling Wormtongue or Philip Voss as the Voice of Sauron. And then there's Inspector Morse's future boss James Grout as a wonderfully befuddled Barliaman Butterbur.

Two hobbits and a wizard rather eccentric advert from the Radio Times in 1981.

Audio Narration

In 1991 I took a group of Performing Arts students to Grimsby Leisure Centre to see the RSC's touring company's production of Shakespeare's . A Winter's Tale. Before the performance, two hundred or so school and college students were given the chance to hear the actor Gerard Murphy talk about playing the role of Leontes. At the end we addressed questions to him. To fairly amazed looks from my students I asked him what it had been like working with all those wonderful actors as the narrator in the BBC Radio Lord of the Rings. His clearly rather dazed reply was that he had been very young then and didn't remember much.

Recently I've realised that it was a rather stupid question, (neither the first or last!). Of course he didn't see them because a narration track would be done separately and likely added later.

But it isn't Gerard Murphy's creditable narration that for me provides the final emerald in the crown of this 1981 jewel.
Instead it is what I have chosen to call the audio narration - for which I should probably say direction. Generally the words of an author rarely survive without the surrounding superstructure of plot and character, which are a big part of what radio as a medium does so well. A director like Jane Morgan or Penny Leicester would have had to rely on the surrounding part , what screen writing tutors often call 'theme', that which is essentially narration done by actors, music and effects. There are too many instances of this but try the fellowships's impossible attempt to master Caradhras and reach the Redhorn Gate, and then follow it with the closed in echoing ambience of the Mines of Moria. Then there's the music and combined atmospherics which tell you that on entering Lothlorien you're in a whole different world, one different even from the earlier, far more human influenced and welcoming Last Homely House of Elrond. Take in the eerie strings of Frodo, Sam and Gollum's passage through the dead marshes, or the early horror that surrounds Frodo with the black breath at Weathertop moments after Bill Nighy's Sam has almost inadvertently welcomed in the Black Riders through his singing of the words 'in Mordor where the shadows are.'  in the Lay of Gil-galad.

Whether you listen to it all in a thirteen hour stint, or take it a book at a time, or like I am currently, on one of Audible's one hour plus stretches, you cannot help but be fully immersed and variously chilled, awed or simply blissed out by the full experience of the BBC's magnificent aural experience. And of course, it hardly needs saying that you get to paint the landscape of the perilous journey yourself from green, safe and settled Hobbiton to the wastelands of Mordor and the slopes of Mount Doom.