Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson

I have no doubt that Mossack Fonsaca, the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, is a highly reputable and litigious organisation, so shall restrain myself from commenting on their management of offshore investment portfolios. That some of their clients are dodgy oligarchs, corrupt politicians, arms dealers, crooks, spivs and chancres all bent on avoiding tax does not in any way taint the good name of the company.

Watch Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, at the time soon-to-be-former Prime Minister of Iceland, fielding questions about his financial arrangements, following the emergence of the so-called 'Panama Papers', more than 11 million leaked documents from the database of the aforementioned Mossack Fonseca,. The Panama Papers indicated that Gunnlaugsson's wife, Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdóttir, had bought a British Virgin Islands company called Wintris in 2007, in order to invest her family's money. She bought Wintris from a Panamanian company using a Luxembourgian bank. Her husband did not disclose his fifty percent share of Wintris when he entered parliament in 2009 and, eight months later, he sold his share to his wife for one US dollar.

In 2015, he entered into an agreement with the creditors of failed Icelandic banks which resulted in a very large financial gain for his wife. Earlier this week some television reporters cornered him. Watch him again. He has now resigned. Our man Cameron is caught up in all this. His dad avoided tax for many years and Dave (and his family) stand to benefit from a tidy tax-free sum, which is of course a private matter and none of our business.

A threadbare phrase currently much in circulation is: 'There's one rule for the rich and one rule for the poor'. That needs updating - there are no rules for the rich, and too many for the rest of us. I'd like to know what the legal options are - sequestration? Sounds like a plan, but I expect it would take decades and enrich lawyers without changing much. Worth a try though, surely? Sequestrated offshore loot could bail out future banking crises . . .

Now here's Auden, bang on the money as ever, from The Dog Beneath the Skin, a play written in 1936 in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood. This is a song for two journalists and a chorus:

2nd Journalist [singing]

The General Public has no notion

    Of what's behind the scenes.

They vote at times with some emotion

    But don't know what it means.

    Doctored information

    Is all they have to judge things by;

The hidden situation

    Develops secretly.

CHORUS

If the Queen of Poland swears,

    If the Pope kicks his cardinals down the stairs,

If the Brazilian Consul

    Misses his train at Crewe,

    If Irish clergy

    Lose their energy

    And dons have too much to do:

The reason is just simply this:

    They're in the racket too.

1st Journalist

To grasp the morning dailies you must

    Read between the lines.

The evening specials make just nonsense

    Unless you've shares in mines.

national estrangements

Are not what they seem to be;

    Underground arrangements

Are the master-key.

CHORUS

If Chanel gowns have a train this year,

    If Morris cars fit a self-changing gear,

If lord Peter Whimsey

    Misses an obvious clue,

If Wallace Beery

Should act a fairy

    And Chaplin the Wandering Jew;

The reason is

Just simply this:

    They're in the racket too!

2nd Journalist

There's lots of little things that happen

    Almost every day

That show the way the wind is blowing

    So keep awake, we say.

We have got the lowdown

    On all European affairs;

To History we'll go down

    As the men with the longest ears.

CHORUS

If the postman is three minutes late,

    If the grocer's boy scratches your gate,

If you get the wrong number,

    If Cook has burnt the stew,

If all your rock-plants

Come up as dock-plats,

    And your tennis-court turns blue;

The reason is just simply this:

    You're in the racket, too!

The Dog Beneath the Skin would run for five hours or more if performed in full (although it's more or less unperformable), a wildly uneven 1930s forebear of The Goon Show, Monty Python, Reeves and Mortimer - that sort of thing. It's noisy, anarchic, satirical, rude and very funny - more a cabaret revue than a play, and woudl need a director such as the late Ken Campbell to bring it back to roaring life. Said director would need a supply of blue pencils, shears (not scissors) and a lot of rage. While it confirms that Auden was no Cole Porter or Irving Berlin, it does contain some of his best poetry ('The Summer holds: upon its glittering lake / Lie Europe and the islands . . .'). 

The year after Dogskin was published, Auden collaborated with Louis Macneice on the travel book Letters from Iceland. Which brings us back to the doltish and now deposed Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson,, who reportedly stashed millions away in offshore accounts as his country's economy crumbles. He's in the racket too, it seems.

Extract from The Dog Beneath the Skin (c)  The Estate of W. H. Auden

Alun Lewis on my home town

Southend-on-Sea, my home town on the Thames estuary has very little in the way of cultural and literary associations. Julian Maclaren-Ross was stationed to the east in the garrison at Shoeburyness during the Second World War; the actress Peggy Mount (who played the battleeaxe Ma Hornet in Sailor Beware) lived in nearby Westcliffe; the artists Gilbert and George make occasional forays down the line from Fenchurch Street.

The town features briefly in the Ealing comedy The Lavender Hill Mob, in the scene where Stanley Holloway shows Alec Guinness the kind of trashy souvenirs he manufactures at GewGaws Limited: "Southend Pier  . .  for keeping string in". That's about it, unless you count Lee Rourke's novel Vulgar Things (recommended). 

So my recent discovery of this very fine poem by Alun Lewis, who died in Burma in 1944 at the age of 28, was quite a find. Lewis is, along with Keith Douglas, the best poet of the Second World War (and there are few others). In August 1942 Lewis's regiment, the Sixth Battalion of the South Wales Borderers, moved to Southend before being posted to India at the end of October. He must have written the folioing poem ten, which appears in a section of uncollected poems in the uniform edition of the Collected Poems, edited by Cary Archard and published by Seren, the book imprint of Poetry Wales, in 1994. The memorable 'fat hydrogenous angels' are barrage balloons moored along the Thames estuary; the Kentish Knock is a shallow area, or shoal, to the east of the mouth of the Thames. Southend is famously home to the world's longest pleasure pier and has an esplanade packed (then) with beery pubs and stinking 'fisshops'.

Southend at Dusk  by Alun Lewis

The unobtrusive trampships gather
Dull-leaden, loaded, spaced across the bay
- Each with a fat hydrogenous angel -
And let the night's vague kindness come their way.

'Say! What's it like beyond the Kentish Knock?'
- The barmaid dreams from a window on the Pier.
'I'd know your step in a million on my stair.
Do you still dream of me? Or don't you care, my dear?'

Alongside the esplanade the fishshops stink.
Stumbling from cut-glass lounges, cursing all
The bleeding universe that drowns the taste
For beer within the stronger taste for drink,
The men in khaki lift inflated heads
And wink and drift ballooning to their beds.

'Oh won't you answer from the Kentish Knock?
Is it another world than this one here?
Or do your thoughts still foul me, even there?
Has the salt water changed your ways, my dear?'

The soiled and broken windows lost their glint.
The four-point-fives are growling on the cape.
Enraged by the reckless tourists of the Night
The metal is alive. Who shall escape?

A murmur came from all the tangled streams:
'We cannot change our ways. Though we can tame
The sea, we cannot curb our plunging dreams.
Man has no master: no one takes the blame.
Each drinks the other to a lucky end.
More than the sea we fear our pride and shame.'
And who shall count the bony fragile heads
Of every mother's son who knew despair
For one fierce drowning moment, till he sank
Beneath the shifting tides, and did not come?
'Oh why does my heart no longer leap
When men come creaking up my stair?
Oh why do I feel so mean, so mean?'

'Oh, snip the flowers, Molly. Go to sleep.
I tell you, by the Christ, there's no one there'.


© The Estate of Alun Lewis / Seren / Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets

Alun Lewis was, along with Keith Douglas, finest poet of the Second World War. He died in Burma at the age of 28 in rather mysterious circumstances, possibly at his own hand. I'll blog about a particular poem of his tomorrow (just discovered, and a real find).

His second collection of poems, with a forward by Robert Graves, was published posthumously and entitled Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets, a reference to the Book of Job (Ch. 39 v. 5). The King James Bible renders the lines thus:

He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.


Which seems straightforward enough, if offering little by way of spiritual enlightenment or consolation. Here, culled from the internet, are twenty alternatives:. Let's do some theological close reading.

New International Version
At the blast of the trumpet it snorts, 'Aha!' It catches the scent of battle from afar, the shout of commanders and the battle cry.

New Living Translation
It snorts at the sound of the horn. It senses the battle in the distance. It quivers at the captain's commands and the noise of battle.

English Standard Version
When the trumpet sounds, he says ‘Aha!’ He smells the battle from afar, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

New American Standard Bible 
"As often as the trumpet sounds he says, 'Aha!' And he scents the battle from afar, And the thunder of the captains and the war cry.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
When the trumpet blasts, he snorts defiantly. He smells the battle from a distance; he hears the officers' shouts and the battle cry. 

International Standard Version
When the trumpet blasts he'll neigh, 'Aha! Aha!' From a distance he can sense war, the war cry of generals, and their shouting."

NET Bible
At the sound of the trumpet, it says, 'Aha!' And from a distance it catches the scent of battle, the thunderous shouting of commanders, and the battle cries. 


GOD'S WORD® Translation

As often as the horn sounds, the horse says, 'Aha!' and it smells the battle far away- the thundering [orders] of the captains and the battle cries.


JPS Tanakh 1917

As oft as he heareth the horn he saith: 'Ha, ha!' And he smelleth the battle afar off, The thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

New American Standard 1977 
“As often as the trumpet sounds he says, ‘Aha!’ 
            And he scents the battle from afar, 
            And thunder of the captains, and the war cry.


Jubilee Bible 2000
for the blasts of the shofar fill him with courage; he smells the battle afar off, the thunder of the princes and the sound of the battle-cry.


King James 2000 Bible
He says among the trumpets, Aha; and he smells the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.


American King James Version
He said among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smells the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.


American Standard Version
As oft as the trumpet'soundeth he saith, Aha! And he smelleth the battle afar off, The thunder of the captains, and the shouting.


Douay-Rheims Bible
When he heareth the trumpet he saith : Ha, ha : he smelleth the battle afar off, the encouraging of the captains, and the shouting of the army. 


Darby Bible Translation
At the noise of the trumpets he saith, Aha! and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.


English Revised Version
As oft as the trumpet soundeth he saith, Aha! and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.


Webster's Bible Translation
He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

World English Bible
As often as the trumpet sounds he snorts, 'Aha!' He smells the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

Young's Literal Translation
Among the trumpets he saith, Aha, And from afar he doth smell battle, Roaring of princes and shouting.

How about that?  The very useful Pulpit Commentary offers the following gloss on the verses:

He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha! literally, at the trumpet; i.e. at the sound of the trumpet. The utterance, "Ha, ha!" (heakh)' is an imitation of the horse's snort or neigh. And he smelleth the battle afar off. Not merely presages it, as Pliny Bye ("Equi praesagiunt pugnam, 'Hist. Nat,' 8:42), or perceives it. but seems to scent it. The open and quivering nostrils raise this idea. The thunder of the captains, and the shouting. On the great noise made by advancing armies in ancient times, see 2 Kings 7:6; Isaiah 5:28-30: Jeremiah 8:16, etc. 

('Aha', as used by many translators, no longer cuts the mustard thanks to its permanent association with Steve Coogan's monstrous creation Alan Partridge.)

The point of all this? I suppose it's to show how many versions of the Bible there are and the instability of the texts that make up those Bibles. The presence of these verses from the Book of Job in modern culture is either through the King James Version or (more likely) some wonky evangelical re-boot, shorn of poetry, subtlety and history. These particular verses seem especially odd torn from context - reminding me of Alan Bennett's comedy vicar quoting Genesis 27:11 in Beyond the Fringe: "But my brother Esau is an hairy man, and I am a smooth man." What are we supposed to learn from that?

Mr Toomey takes on the Nazis

In Anthony Burgess's clobbering masterpiece Earthly Powers (1980) the narrator Kenneth Toomey (a gay author who, Zelig-like, happens to be present at most of the significant events of the 20th century) has at one point  in the Second World War, to win his freedom by agreeing, for propaganda purposes, to appear on a radio programme in Nazi Germany. The interview concludes thus, Toomey speaking first:

________________________________________________________________________________

'Marcus Aurelius put it rather well, I think. He said: "For us creatures, knowledge that He exists beatifies life".

'Very beautiful, Mr Toomey.'

'" - Or opens doors, yielding noble actions. Zeal inspires sanctity."'

'Have you a message for the German and the British peoples?'

'Yes. May all your hearts in the long eras rolling relentlessly on teach innosence, not hate. Everyone - everyone - '

'Yes, Mr Toomey?'

'Learn love.'

© The Estate of Anthony Burgess

____________________________________________________________________________

Its seems straightforward, but Burgess via Toomey, has concealed an acronymic insult. Marcus Aurelius never wrote anything like the passage beginning 'For us creatures, knowledge . . .' so go back and carefully pick out the insult to der Führer and his vermin..

I wonder - has any Joyce scholar ever picked through Finnegans Wake to find such hidden formulations?  I find it hard to believe that there aren't many such - formulations I mean. And scholars, come to that. Get weaving, chaps.

There's a useful term linked to the sudden recognition of hidden messages in a text. In the satirical and cultish Illunminatus trilogy (1975) the authors Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson coined - or rather borrowed - the word fnord. Here's Wikipedia:

In these novels, the interjection 'fnord' is given hypnotic power over the unenlightened. Under the Illuminati program, children in grade school are taught to be unable to consciously see the word 'fnord'. For the rest of their lives, every appearance of the word subconsciously generates a feeling of uneasiness and confusion, and prevents rational consideration of the subject. This results in a perpetual low-grade state of fear in the populace. The government acts on the premise that a fearful populace keeps them in power.

In the Shea/Wilson construct, fnords are scattered liberally in the text of newspapers and magazines, causing fear and anxiety in those following current events. However, there are no fnords in the advertisements, encouraging a consumerist society. It is implied in the books that fnord is not the actual word used for this task, but merely a substitute, since most readers would be unable to see the actual word.

The triumphant phrase 'I see the fnords!' comes at the moment of enlightenment, or illumination, when the hypnotic spell is broken and authority rejected. I admired the Illuminatus books as a teenager and even saw the legendary Ken Campbell production at the National Theatre - eight hours (was it?) of ramshackle anarchy. I doubt whether they have stood up after all these years, although the skewering of consumer society values and the commodification of everything was then the subject of dysptopian speculation - now it's here for real. The idea of fnords comes to mind whenever I visit the Daily Mail website - but that's another subject for another blog, and soon. 

Fnords, then, are the lexical equivalent of those 'invisible' subliminal cuts in cinema advertising (now apparently outlawed) that influence the spectator at an umconscious level. To be sure there are other words, real words, that have a certain trigger value exploited by journalists and politicians - think of the various weights given to refugee, asylum seeker, migrant and immigrant.

W. H. Smith's Fresh talent 2016

I had a tweet from the high street booksellers W. H. Smith the other day. They wanted to tell me about their 'Fresh Talent' campaign, featuring some young authors, all of them new to me.

I have mixed feelings about advice from this retailer when it comes to the books I should read: perhaps this will explain why. But everyone makes embarrassing mistakes so, keen to know the writers  to look out for in what's left of 2016 I clicked on the link to find out more. Below are the twelve titles, with an extract from the accompanying blurb (cut to save space, but each will give you an idea of what to expect). Publishers were not specified, but you can get fuller details via links here. It's a snapshot of a certain kind of English writing and publishing.

Here we go:

_______________________________________________________________________________

Fresh Talent is back and we have a brand new batch of new and emerging authors just waiting for you to discover them. Providing a place across our travel stores for fresh authors to be seen and for readers to find interesting reads, Fresh Talent has been tremendously successful in getting people talking about new authors.

[Does W. H. Smith employ any copy editors and proof-readers, I wonder? I suspect they do, more's the pity. How about "a brand new batch of new and emerging authors' for tautness and punch? The second sentence is like a motorway pile-up in slow motion.]

This Spring our selection of titles are [sic] as varied, unique and thought-provoking as you’d expect, dipping into poisonous friendships, second chances at love, family truths, dark crimes and the observations of a falling goldfish, amongst other things. Take a look at the titles featured in this season’s Fresh Talent below to find out more...

Tenacity – J. S. Law

A sailor hangs himself on board a naval submarine. Although ruled a suicide Lieutenant Danielle Lewis, the Navy’s finest Special Branch investigator, knows the sailor’s wife was found brutally murdered only days before. Now Dan must enter the cramped confines of HMS Tenacity to interrogate the tight-knit, male crew and determine if there’s a link. 

The Sunshine Away – M. O. Walsh

One day Lindy Simpson cycles home from school and straight into a trap: someone is lying in wait for her, a wire strung between lampposts across the path. She is raped just yards from her front door. No one sees a thing and the perpetrator is not caught. 

The Second Love of my Life – Victoria Walters

In the Cornish town of Talting, everyone is famous for something. Until recently Rose was known for many things: her infectious positivity; her unique artistic talent; and her devotion to childhood sweetheart Lucas. But two years ago that changed in one unthinkable moment. 

Quicksand – Steve Toltz

Wildly funny and unceasingly surprising, Quicksand is both a satirical masterpiece and an unforgettable story of fate, family and friendship. Aldo Benjamin may be the unluckiest soul in human history, but that isn’t going to stop his friend Liam writing about him. For what more could an aspiring novelist want from his muse than a thousand get-rich-quick schemes, a life-long love affair, an eloquently named brothel, the most sexually confusing evening imaginable and a brief conversation with God?

Not Working – Lisa Owens

Claire Flannery has quit her job in order to discover her true vocation – only to realize she has no idea how to go about finding it. Whilst everyone around her seems to have their lives entirely under control, Claire finds herself sinking under pressure and wondering where her own fell apart

The House at the Edge of the World – Julia Rochester

John Venton’s drunken fall from a Devon cliff leaves his family with an embarrassing ghost. His twin children, Morwenna and Corwin, flee in separate directions to take up their adult lives. Their mother, enraged by years of unhappy marriage, embraces merry widowhood. 

Fishbowl – Bradley Somer

From his enviable view from a balcony on the 27th floor of an apartment block, Ian the Goldfish has frequent – if fleeting – desires for a more exciting life. Until one day, a series of unfortunate events give him an opportunity to escape

The Exclusives – Rebecca Thornton

A heartbreaking story of friendship and betrayal – can we ever forgive the ones we love the most? Freya Seymour and Josephine Grey are invincible – beautiful and brilliant, the two best friends are on the cusp of Oxbridge, and the success they always dreamed they’d share. 

The Daughter’s Secret – Eva Holland

When Rosalind’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Stephanie, ran away with her teacher, this ordinary family became something it had never asked to be. Their lives held up to scrutiny in the centre of a major police investigation, 

The Dark Inside – Rod Reynolds

1946, Texarkana: a town on the border of Texas and Arkansas. Disgraced New York reporter Charlie Yates has been sent to cover the story of a spate of brutal murders – young couples who’ve been slaughtered at a local date spot. 

The Butcher Bird – S. D. Sykes

Oswald de Lacy is growing up fast in his new position as Lord of Somershill Manor. The Black Death changed many things, and just as it took away his father and elder brothers, leaving Oswald to be recalled from the monastery where he expected to spend his life, so it has taken many of his villagers and servants. 

The Blue Between Sky and Water – Susan Abulhawa

It is 1947, and Beit Daras, a rural Palestinian village, is home to the Baraka family – oldest daughter Nazmiyeh, brother Mamdouh, beautiful, dreamy Mariam and their widowed mother. When Israeli forces descend, sending the village up in flames, the family must take the long road to Gaza, in a walk that will test them to their limits.

________________________________________________________________________________

Nothing on this list immediately snags my interest and that, I'm sure, is my loss. I expect I'm not within their target demographic, not in the market for middlebrow fiction, for books to pick up at the airport. What sttrikes me in the choice of books and authors for the Fresh Talent campaign is their lack of diversity - Susan Abulhawa aside, they all appear to be white and anglophone. The range of settings is narrow - Devon, Cornwall, London, England in the Middle Ages, 'the cusp of Oxbridge' (wherever that is). There are excursions to Palestine and Texakarna, but little interest otherwise in a world beyond a cosy middle-class setting. There's nothing in translation, of course.

In the middle of the last century, the English novel was in the doldrums, prompting Cyril Connolly to complain in 1955 of three “colossal, almost irremediable” defects: thinness of material, poverty of style and lack of power. All three failings, he argued, arose from the fact that most published authors came from what he called the mandarin class (the class to which Connolly himself belonged), a narrow social stratum with little experience of life beyond public school, Oxbridge and a few years’ professional dalliance in London or the provinces. Looking at the list above, with a couple of exceptions, nothing much seems to have changed. But the 1950s saw the arrival of red-blooded working class writers such as John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, David Storey, Keith Waterhouse and Stan Barstow (who was arguably the best of them). That generation has now gone, and there's not much evidence today of working class writers taking the citadels of publishing by storm. Not one of the books listed above seems to have a working class setting (which is no bad thing in itself, but certainly a thing).

The novel today is not in the doldrums, but you have to look elsewhere to discover the astonishing range of original writers currently at work, most of them published by small independent presses: Coffee House Press and Dalkey Archive Press  the States; Galley Beggar Press, Fitzcarraldo Editions and CB editions over here; Tramp Press in Ireland - and there are many others. That's where the action is, and the energy, and these are the books that will last - if books last at all. These are not books you're likely to find in your local branch of Smith's, or Waterstones come to that. Buy direct from the publishers - always the best way. The success of the tiny independent presses is (forgive a sentimental moment) like the rise of small record labels in the punk era, or the production of fanzines. There's a lot of love and commitment in it. And there's to be a new prize to recognise the role of small presses in the UK and Ireland, which I'm blogging about for the Times Literary Supplement this week.

Good luck to the Fresh Talent - I hope they sell lots of books and have rewarding careers, but I'll be amazed if any of the twelve novels listed above are still in print five years from now. Say three.

I note that several of the writers elect to appear under their (de-gendering) initials, a long-standing tradition but revived commercially in recent years by the staggering popularity of books by J. K. Rowling and E. L. James. I'm all for it, W. H. Smith. But when did you stop being W. H. Smith & Son?

Blurbs © W. H. Smith

Country matters

I once met the composer Donald Swann, of Flanders and Swann fame. It was at a dinner party. He wore a dark blue Nehru suit, had the air of a prankish clergyman, was somewhat deaf and wonderful company. At one point our host bellowed gently across the table: 'Donald! What do you think of the countryside?' Taking his cue, Swann put down his glass, dabbed his lips with a napkin and began to croon (to the tune of Beethoven's 6th Symphony):

The country, the country,

It always gets me down;

The country, the country -

I'd rather stay in town.

I'm a city-dweller by choice and inclination. In our garden each morning I see and hear all manner of birds - swallows, blackbirds, wood pigeons, a robin, chaffinches. I saw a heron at dawn the other day, stretching its wings, which scared me half to death. There are other birds I cannot identify by sight or song, and the sound of the wind in the trees. I like all this but side with Auden who insisted that 'Tramlines and slag heaps, pieces of machinery / That was, and still is, my ideal scenery;. (But didn't he borrow or steal the machinery/scenery rhyme from Byron? I'm not sure where I read that - can anyone confirm this?)

Continuing my rural theme: do you remember Phil Drabble (1914-2007)? He was the affable Staffordshire-born naturalist who presented one of the most charming and delightful television programmes of all time: One Man and his Dog. Here's a description of the show by  Joe Moran in Armchair Nation: An intimate history of Britain in front of the TV:

Consisting largely of shepherds whistling and calling out commands ('Come by Meg', 'Steady lass') to a dog trying to get a bleating flock of sheep into a pen somewhere on a British hillside, it introduced viewers to this traditional British skill and turned the border collie into a cult hero. By the mid 1980s it had a primetime audience of 8 million on Tuesday nights on BBC2,  most of them town- and sofa-dwelling vicarious shepherds,  the majority of them women.

It was mesmerising television, and usually took place in a torrential downpour. You can see a post-Drabble clip of the programme here (although it's disfigured by awful music and a witless commentary by some telly sports hack - the original simple format buried in bolted-on novelty).

I remember vividly a Radio 4 broadcast in which Drabble was joined by the actor Kenneth Williams, for a trudge around some muddy rural backwater. Drabble was nonplussed by his strikingly camp companion, who complained bitterly and constantly about their working conditions. Drabble, if I recall correctly, was wearing stout wellingtons and a thornproof jacket while Williams had fetched up in a lounge suit and suede shoes. It was absolutely hilarious, and I'd love to hear it again. Many years later the late art critic Brian Sewell, the man with the poshest voice in the land, was regularly paired with the laddish radio presenter Robert Elms and a similar chemistry emerged.

More odd pairings like that, radio producers, if you please. But keep Piers Morgan out of it. Why mention Morgan? Because the word 'countryside' was once defined (by Stephen Fry, I think) as 'an overwhelming urge to kill Piers Morgan'. 

March index

• Your shoelace is undone. (Pause) APRIL FOOL!!!!!!
• Glad to get that out of the way. Here's an index to the previous month's blogs in a handy cut out 'n' keep guide:
• 
  
• Click on each title to read.
• 
  
• 1  Manuela and Sam - an unpublished play script © Dav… 
• 2 No blog today for technical reasons (so a double blog tomorrow)
• 3  Manuela and Sam - acts 2 and 3 © David Collard
• 4  Manuela and Sam act 4 © David Collard
• 5  Manuela and Sam act 5 © David Collard
• 6  Philip Maltman and About a Girl - tha artist behind the painting on the cover of my new book
• 7  Henningham Family Press: Maximum Wage - a subversive Orwellian art event
• 8  On Claudio Magris - a big European writer
• 9  On Norman Manea- a Romanian writer in the United States
• 10 Last memories - hommage à Georges Perec
• 11 Ezra Pound's Waste Land- the annotated manuscript
• 12 On redundancy - some thoughts from abroad
• 13 Will Eaves and The New Serious - thoughts on the current generations of writers
• 14 Nabokov on Finnegans Wake - saucer of milk for Mr Nabokov!
• 15 Alex Pheby's Playthings - shortlisted for The 2016 Wellcome Priie (and the front-runner)
• 16 A close reading of D. H. Lawrence -  Ford Madox Ford, an editor of genius
• 17 About a Girl published - an extract from my new book
• 18 All over the place - this week's print appearances
• 19 Alan Turing pranks Wittgenstein - on philosophical paradoxes

• 20 The Year of the Sex Olympics - Nigel Kneale's astonishingly prophetic telly drama
• 21 Knock, knock! - a brief history of the joke
• 22 On Albert Mehrabian - the most misunderstood academic on the planet
• 23 Writers writing - how to represent the act?
• 24 On Boaty McBoatface - footnotes to the big story of the year
• 25 New directions in atheism - some Good Friday reflections on how we can be better atheists
• 26 From Our Own Correspondent - the BBC's long-running programme compared to The Goon Show
• 27 Trolling in the 18th century - Jonathan Swift as Isaac Bickerstaff
• 28 Auden and SATs - what are we doing to our children (and our best poet)?
• 29 Fame - a brief reflection
• 30 Moderate violemce my arse- on Batman versus Superman and the moral dullards at the BBFC

• 31 Happy birthday Roy Andersson - the great Swedish film-maker

  
     April's blogs will include, probably:

     
     'Falling into Nastiness ' . . . On virtuosity . . . Odilon Redon . . .  James Patterson . . . 

      The Republic of Consciousness Prize  . . . The Bony King of Nowhere . . .  On country matters , , ,

     

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