Holiday bubble

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that a proper four-week Swedish holiday would give one more time to blog, instead of less? Not so – the days are just dreamily flowing away, while I attempt to do as little as possible. A long-planned journey to the south of England (I’ll be avoiding London and Heathrow because of the Olympics crowds) suddenly seems a major project. Fortunately, watching The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel put it all in perspective somewhat.

While on the subject of the Olympics – wasn’t the Opening Ceremony great? Ooh, how I loved those Victorian factory-owners/engineers in their smart suits and top hats, headed by a Kenneth Branagh who was obviously having the time of his life. And those chimneys plunging out of the ground! And the molten iron Olympis Rings! “Pandemonium”? Looked more like heaven to me.

Of course, it was a misrepresentation of history to show pre-industrial Britain as an idyllic place where sheep gambolled about and the sweet rustics had all the time in the world for a game of cricket. The population worked from dusk until dawn and starved in pre-industrial times. With friends like me, though, serious champions of the Industrial Revolution hardly need any enemies, because I can’t help being fascinated by the mythical, sinister way – call it “villain chic” – in which the industrial age is depicted by its detractors. It may not be fair to all those 19^th-century men and women (tons of them) concerned with making life easier for the Noble Working Man. But it’s a lot more fun than some balanced, complex view. Shut up, Noble Working Man, and put up another chimney.

My reading has hardly been ambitious since the holidays, or even before then. A Weekend with Mr Darcy by Victoria Connelly fulfilled my need of an uncomplicated happy ending after Through a Glass Darkly. I wasn’t sure about Matt Rees’s Mozart’s Last Aria at first – I couldn’t quite warm to the novel’s narrator, Mozart’s sister Nannerl, who’s looking into her brother’s apparently suspicious death. However, things picked up when a love interest and a suitably formidable minister of police made their entrance. The ending was satisfyingly twisty, there was a terrific character-shows-his-true-villainous-colours-scene, and you’ll be glad to know that poor maligned Antonio Salieri did not do it. In fact he wasn’t even in the frame. The most page-turning holiday read so far, though, was Revenger by Toby Clements, a thriller set in Tudor times and featuring decent spy John Shakespeare (brother of William). The baddies (an increasingly alarming hoodlum and a magnificently foul-mouthed arch-enemy) were rougher than I’m used to but contributed to making the book a cracking good read.

Right now I’m half-way through Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James, and I must say I’m a bit disappointed this far. I confidently expected the crime plot to be a whodunnit with Pride and Prejudice characters as the suspects; sadly, though, the novel is more of a police procedural. The victim is not, as we are first led to think, George Wickham but his comrade-in-arms Captain Denny, and Wickham is the chief suspect. But apart from him and possibly Colonel Fitzwilliam (whom James plainly does not like), the Pride and Prejudice characters all have comfortable alibis: the coppers won’t be asking Lady Catherine to help with their inquiries any time soon. Thumbnail sketches of the harsh-but-fair magistrate and the medical expert prove more vivid than the Austen characters. A family of servants is introduced and will probably have some bearing on the case, but though I like Upstairs Downstairs-dramas, I must confess to having zilch interest in this plot-line. If Wickham and/or Denny has caused some domestic upset in the servant household and this proves to be the explanation of the murder, then why drag Pemberley into it at all? The book could in that case just as well have been about another regency estate altogether.

As I enjoy James’s usual prose style, I also thought it unnecessary of her to use a vaguely Austenesque style for this novel. It’s elegant but not as pithy as Austen, and I think it sould have been wiser to use the tried-and-true Jamesian psychological-crime-story-style. The crime story seems to take precedent over the sequel element anyway.   

The pleasures of objectifying

A worrying change has come over me lately: I'm suddenly more sensitive to male beauty than I used to. When I caught myself spending the best part of an old Midsomer Murders episode thinking "Wow, look at that mad scientist's cheekbones" it started to bother me a bit. What's happening to me? One of the pluses with being a villain-lover is surely that it opens your mind and makes you appreciate other things than mere shallow good looks: after all, few villains are conventionally handsome, and the exceptions are often worthless, lazy skirt-chasers. It's not that I've degenerated completely. Brainy is still the new sexy: brains are about the only thing all my villain crushes have in common, besides being up to no good (so far: with my luck, my next crush will be a real dolt). Also, I'm still into the classical villain look as well: leanness, pallor, cold grey eyes, thin lips and generally fox-like demeanour. Only, when it comes to men, classical beauty has become a bonus for me in a way it wasn't before.

Hopefully it's just a phase, triggered by the fact that significant minor baddies - and some of the major ones - in my book and TV diet the last year or so have been decidedly cute, and not just from a villain-loving perspective. But it may - and this is why I worry about it - be a sign that I'm getting older. When you're in your twenties, you tend not to care about appearances that much when contemplating men, and certainly not about youth. Why, you've got it yourself, haven't you? Memories of the unlovely teenagers who harassed you at school are still vivid enough for the term "pretty boy" to sound like an oxymoron. That's at least how it was for me. Now I've acquired the "maturity" I hankered after as a young thing, other characteristics start to gain in importance and attractiveness. Like cheekbones. Not to put too fine a point on it, I'm in danger of becoming a dirty old woman (with time - it's not as if I'm old yet).

"Dirty old woman" is not a phrase you encounter that often, but I have the uneasy feeling it will become more and more common. It started with campaigns against "objectifying" led by angry women who'd had enough of being ogled by drips. There was much talk of such things as "the male gaze". Now, I understand these women's predicament, but really only all-out babes are ogled to such a degree that it becomes oppressive. Because these stunners object so strongly against being "objectified", however, men are intimidated and women like myself, who could do with a bit of objectification now and then, get even less of it than we used to. But the unkindest cut of all is that now men have caught on to the notion. I remember how shocked I was when I first came across the complaint from men (in a newspaper article) that they do not want to be eyed up by women as they feel demeaned by it, poor dears. So, to sum up: not only do I have to forgo any scrap of "male gaze" that might have come my way because better-looking women are incensed by it; I should also please refrain from comfort fantasies that may be demeaning to men? More and more, I feel a serious grievance towards the babes who started all this. If men are not allowed to gaze, and women are not allowed to gaze, how will the human species survive?

Of course, I may be blaming the wrong people. Maybe men are being disingenuous when they claim that they cannot for the life of them determine when a flirtatious glance may be welcome, so therefore they will not flirt at all and expect us to behave with likewise propriety. Is it really that hard to crack the behaviour code? Exchanging smiles at the water-cooler: OK. Pinching your secretary's bottom: should be avoided (if she's your personal secretary, chances are she's not overly fond of you as it is). Concentrating on a woman's legs when she's telling you things of vital importance for the company you work for: downright daft.

Once again, fictional villains come up trumps - not only are they not able to complain against being "objectified", they would never entertaining the notion for a second if they could complain. So I can keep objectifying away. I'll have to watch my new-found interest in good-looking men, however. Slim prettiness is all right and eminently villain-compatible (though an admiration for that kind of looks can lead to difficulties in real life - men have a tendency to snaffle the prettiest of their own sex themselves). But when I start admiring muscles and the tall, sturdy ape-man type, then I'll know that I've gone too far.  

Warning: Book contains deaths

My so-called bodice-ripper read Through A Glass Darkly has proved a shock to me - by not being a bodice-ripper at all. I doubt that it even qualifies as "historical romance". Not only is the ending in the  "tomorrow is another day" line rather than "they lived happily ever after" - Gone With The Wind survived that and is still considered a romance - but there are simply too many deaths in it. And not just any old periferal deaths; deaths which hit the poor heroine where it hurts the most. Scarlett O'Hara was lucky in comparison. What with one darned thing after another, it is surprising Lady Devane isn't nicknamed Calamity Barbara.

To be fair, Through A Glass Darkly never claimed to be a bodice-ripper, though apparently it did win a prize for "Best Historical Romance" when it came out. I just assumed it was one because Dark Angels was. I should have heeded the warning signs: the blurb of Through A Glass Darkly mentions that Barbara and prize prat Roger are "star-crossed", and the first time someone used that word to describe a couple it wasn't good news. The novel is best seen as historical fiction, pure and simple, with plenty of relationship drama and gossip. Heady romance, however, proves difficult with a male protagonist as insensitive as Roger, who ends up behaving impossibly both as a husband and as an object of villain affection. And then the deaths rain down, accompanied at times by financial ruin.

Not quite the easy read I imagined, then - but still a good read. And yet, I have to face facts. For years I have tried to be mature about books and endings, telling myself that from my point of view - the villain-lover's - 90% of all books end unhappily anyway. I have seriously considered different theories as to what makes a good ending. There was one I read about in an article on Great Expectations which sounded quite persuasive, about "static" and "dynamic" endings. As I understood it, "dynamic" endings made you imagine a continued life for the characters full of ups and downs, just like the novel you'd been reading, while "static" endings froze the picture instead, leaving the characters in a state of happiness or misery for the rest of their lives. The best endings were, of course, the "dynamic" ones.

I have come to realise, though, that I simply prefer happy endings. I really do. I would much rather have a static happy ending than a dynamic one where the main protagonist is knee-deep in corpses. And is that so strange? We are invited to feel for the characters in a book, aren't we? Is it so surprising that we would like them to do well, rather than the opposite? I have grumbled before about sophisticates who like to wallow in endings where everything goes to the dogs, but only now have I fully confessed to myself why they annoy me so much. My name is Georgiana (no, not really), and I'm a happy-ending addict.

Having said all that, I have already ordered the sequel to Through A Glass Darkly, Now Face To Face, though I've understood from Amazon reviews (I've done my homework this time) that the ending isn't completely satisfactory here either. I still hope that the death rate will sink to an acceptable Dark Angels level, and after all, the villain is still alive.

The uses and hazards of corrective historical fiction

I still remember when I realised that the picture of the French Revolution painted in the Scarlet Pimpernel books may not be the whole truth (in fact not true at all, as it later turned out). It was when, as a young girl, I read a novel called Jacobin's Daughter by Joanne Williamson. It told the story of the Duplay family, with whom Maximilien Robespierre lodged in Paris, and the protagonist is the youngest Duplay daughter Babette. It appealed very much to my girlish romantic mind - Babette's own love story ending with her marriage to Robespierre-chum Philippe Lebas is made much of, naturally, and the author has chosen to depict Babette's sister Eléonore's love for Robespierre as being requited - and made a lasting impression. Where were the blood-thirsty, brutal monsters of the Scarlet Pimpernel books? Suddenly, the revolution's leaders were seen in a new light, as pleasant and well-meaning young men.

Of course the view on Robespierre and the rest is rose-tinted, as you'd expect when the story is told by an idealistic young girl full of sisterly fondness for her family's nice lodger. But for its (mainly young) readers, the book acts as a counterweight to tales of stricken noblemen hounded by dirty revolutionaries. On its own, it is as one-sided as the Scarlet Pimpernel books, but in the context of putting the other guy's case it made my (and I'm guessing many other readers') overall view of the French Revolution more rounded. I've read more balanced accounts of the French Revolution since which counteract the Pimpernel's perfidious influence, but Williamson was first.

What prompted this memory was an unusually sour review of Hilary Mantel's second novel about Thomas Cromwell, Bring Up The Bodies. The reviewer's main quarrel with the novel seems to be that it depicts Cromwell in such a favourable light, and by doing so risks giving readers the wrong idea about Tudor history. In one way, I have sympathy for the reviewer's plight: she is obviously a great admirer of Thomas More, so reading a book told from Cromwell's point of view must be utterly distasteful to her. It's as if I had been forced to read (oh horrid thought) a novel painting a rosy picture of Talleyrand. But surely she is missing the point of Mantel's enterprise, which is to give a historical personage otherwise largely vilified his day in court.

Where else will you find a defence of Thomas Cromwell? In popular fiction and TV dramas like The Tudors and Henry VIII he is depicted, at best as a wily and weaselly courtier, at worst as a queen-murdering monastery-burning bully. Mantel's novels (I haven't read Bring Up The Bodies yet, I'm waiting for the paperback, but I have read Wolf Hall) simply tell the other side of the story. And isn't it about time someone tried to? In my view, the Sainted More has had things his own way for far too long. This humourless, Richard-III-slandering, collective-property-extolling prig certainly can't complain of usually getting a bad press, quite the contrary. Mantel's novels are examples - like Jacobin's Daughter and Gone With The Wind - of "corrective" historical fiction, shining a light on a point in history from an unexpected angle. These accounts, biased as they are, are the answer to other biased accounts which have long held sway over the popular imagination.

Having said that, there is a risk of going too far in this kind of fiction. You can be as biased as you like, but there is a limit to how much you can allow yourself to twist the truth. I did think Gone With The Wind crossed the line at times, quite blatantly - sorry, Ashley and his pals are the members of what? As for Mantel, if she really does try to fudge the issue of how the confessions of Anne Boleyn's supposed lovers were extricated, as the reviewer claims, then she is cheating. Given the fact that they were innocent, and facing charges of high treason which meant death by barbaric means, somehow I don't think they spilled the beans during a friendly chat.

After all, part of the interest of "corrective" fiction is to see how certain compromising events are, as it were, explained away. Its subjects are seldom all-out heroic. Cromwell did make sure, among other things, that a woman and a handful of men were executed on trumped-up charges just because the king felt like getting himself a new wife. The Reign of Terror during the French Revolution was ghastly and led to innocent people (most of them non-aristocratic) having their head chopped off, or worse. And don't get me started on the Old South. But this doesn't mean that history isn't much more complex than various moralists have claimed. Bring up the apologia for Cromwell, and let's hear what he (through Mantel) has to say for himself.        

A novel without a hero

Finally done with Strindberg, I'm now at liberty to wallow in a superior bodice-ripper, Through A Glass Darkly by Karleen Koen. Yep, the one with Dark Angels and the ace poisoner. I admit I purchased Through a Glass Darkly mainly in the hope that it would contain at least one more attractive villain. When an author has proved a flair for villain-creating, there is often more to be had.

And yes, the villain in Through A Glass Darkly isn't bad at all - when he finally shows up. It's a huge door-stopper of a novel, and there's nothing wrong with that. But door-stopper novels must have pace: the format shouldn't be an excuse for long-windedness. We know that the novel's heroine Barbara Alderley will marry Roger Montgeoffrey, Earl of Devane from early on, and it's with this marriage that the plot thickens and Barbara's troubles really begin. There is no excuse to spin out the preliminaries to the match for 280 pages or so. The endless descriptions of rooms, gardens, London streets etc. also tried my patience. I can understand, if you have had to read up a lot on a period (the novel is set in early 18th-century England and France), that you want your readers to share some of the knowledge which you've laboriously acquired. And reading up on a subject is a labour - never trust an author who insists that it's the most fun part of a writing project. Nevertheless, in my view, historical novels should put the "novel" part first and the "historical" second. The historical background should mainly make itself felt when it is instrumental to the plot. The interior of someone's house is only interesting if it sheds light on the character in question. It's impressive that the author knows just which coffee house you went to in 18th-century London to hear political or financial or legal gossip - but I don't necessarily have to know.

I'm aware that other readers have another opinion, though: which is why, when I read enthusiastic reviews of novels when this-and-that period "is brought throbbingly to life", my heart sinks a bit. It usually means lots and lots of period detail, from elegant velvet hangings to smelling sewers. However, there's plenty of intrigue and gossip in Through A Glass Darkly to help the period-perfect medicine go down. And when the villain finally strides in on page 390, the scene is set for an original plot-twist. The plot where the hero and villain both love  (the concept being very loosely defined in the villain's case) the same girl is well-known. This time around, it's the heroine and villain who are both smitten with the hero!

Though I'm not sure it's correct to call Roger a hero. I don't think I overstate the case when I say that it is hard to retain sympathy for a supposed hero who angrily admonishes his wife's brother for having attacked his (the hero's) male lover. We are told time and again about Roger's "fatal charm", but he seems better at seeming urbane and at ease himself than at putting others at their ease. What remains is his good looks, for what they're worth. But is it really worth trying to capture the heart of someone with such eclectic taste as to prefer a big, hulking, scarred ex-soldier in his forties one minute and a slim, golden-haired, fifteen-year-old girl the next? At this point in the novel, I have no idea whether Barbara and Roger will manage to make a go of it in the end or whether I even want them to. But the big surprise is why Philippe the villain feels he has to bother with an indecisive rosbif. He may not be up to Henri Ange standards, but surely he can do better.              

Eaton Place bested by World War II

I've finally had the opportunity to watch the second - and, as it turns out, last - series of the new Upstairs Downstairs. It was curiously like the the last one: after a wobbly start, I started to enjoy myself and become at least mildly interested in the characters and their fates. But I'm not inconsolable about the fact that they axed the series. The final episode ends just when World War Two is about to begin, and frankly, I don't care if I ever see another WWII-themed show again.


Admittedly, the last English TV series set during WWII - Foyle's War - I did enjoy very much. It managed to find fresh and interesting angles to life at the English home front, and it very seldom preached (except when the script-writers were having a bad day). Instead, the quiet dignity of Foyle as played by Michael Kitchen won you over, and I found myself caring desperately about his son remaining unscathed - that would be his son, the bomber. However, I don't think Upstairs Downstairs would have managed to bring anything new to a territory already explored by series such as We'll Meet Again and A Family at War. Last time around, the macho but not evil chauffeur Spargo's misguided flirtation with Fascism lent some interest, but this time everyone (always excepting unbelievably wicked Lady Persie) acted with perfect political decorum. Sir Hallam, the master of the house and a diplomat, is against any sort of appeasement from the word go. His eccentric aunt and the Indian servant Mr Amanjit - yes, and Lady Agnes too, on occasion - are busy organising the Kindertransport almost single-handedly. When Chamberlain steps out of that aircraft waving the Munich agreement and promising "peace in our time", only two of the servants are allowed to briefly show relief, before taking their cue from them upstairs, who remain stony-faced. They know, see, that this is Just The Beginning.


One interesting thing about historical dramas tends to be that the characters don't know what we know and view events with which we are familiar in a different way, without - as the political phrase goes - the benefit of hindsight. We know that appeasement turned out to be the wrong call, but it wasn't as easy to be sure about that back in the Thirties, with the horrors of World War One still fresh in most people's minds. I'd like to see at least one character in a WWII show fighting poor old Chamberlain's corner. That show was obviously not going to be Upstairs Downstairs, however, and it would have been pretty dull to have to follow this poster family of Churchillian rectitude through the entire war.


It's a pity, because there was much to enjoy in the series. Granted, we knew long before Sir Hallam and Lady Agnes did that their marriage was in trouble - their chemistry is non-existent - and though Ed Stoppard and Keeley Hawes, both fine actors, do their best, it's not easy to care about this over-polished couple. But other characters, such as the caustic cook Mrs Thackeray and the sweet butler Pritchard, livened things up; the eccentric aunt worked too, though she couldn't quite replace Eileen Atkins's eccentric mother. I was also amused by the way they kept shoe-horning the Duke of Kent into the plot. My theory is that Blake Ritson's melancholy-eyed Duke proved such a scene-stealer the first time round the script-writers crammed as much Kent-time they possibly could into the second series. A good idea, as it turns out - though generally benign, the Duke is puckish and not entirely predictable. In view of the unoriginal spin on pre-WWII events, a bit of unpredictability was sorely needed.               

Oestrogen shock

Strindberg, at one time, praises his young alter ego for his view on women in a play. They are idealised in their “proper” role as mothers – in all other things women are, according to the crotchety author, inferior to men. How he would have loved Call The Midwife.

This TV series, apparently a smash hit in the UK, has now reached Sweden. It may be a little too soon to pour sarcasm over it: after all, only the first episode has been aired so far. But that episode is an irresistibly easy target, and it raises the question of how such a harmless confection can be so annoying.

First, there is the “womanly woman” aspect. All the women in Call the Midwife are either (of course) midwives or mothers battling bravely in the slums of East End. You’d expect at least one of them to chafe a bit at her lot in life, but no. They are all overwhelmed by the wonder of child-bearing. Even the syphilis-ridden slag does not question for a moment that raising kids (badly) is what she’s for. In one scene, the pretty-as-paint heroine has a conversation with another young midwife who is even neater – her chocolate-boxey good looks made me hope that here we would have the Fish Out of Water, or even better the Posh Bird Who Despite Appearances Does A Good Job In An Unconventional Way (remember that fun upper-class nurse Georgina had her training with in the original Upstairs Downstairs?). No such luck, however: the chocolate box midwife is disappointingly mainstream. She earnestly relates that she has come to realise that it is the East End mothers, not she, who are “heroines”. The main character later feeds the heroine line to the syphilis-ridden slag, who feels no end better. Oh yes, as the song has it, she’s a woman – W-O-M-A-N.

Now, of course there’s nothing wrong with maternal or caring impulses – quite the opposite. We’d be in a fine mess if these qualities didn’t exist. I should also be able to take that they are considered “womanly”, even if I am neither caring nor maternal myself (even the thought of doing as much as emptying someone else’s chamber-pot makes me shudder). After all, I would use the adjective “manly” to describe decisive and daring behaviour, without meditating on how frequent these qualities actually are in the male sex. Similarly, if someone speaks of “womanly” concern, it does not follow that he/she sees every woman as either a ministering angel or as a freaky person who has missed her calling. But I admit that the concentration of ministering angels and uncomplainingly child-popping mothers in Call the Midwife put my back up somewhat. Yes, this is a poor area in Fifties England – I shouldn’t be surprised that there aren’t girls dreaming of a college education around every corner. But is there really a need to be so gushing about it? When the voice-over starts philosophising on love as the fountain of life – or words to that effect  – the womb-centred view of womanhood which connects Strindberg (at one phase of his life, anyway) with “biologist” feminism is not far away.

Second, this is feel-good  television at its most lazy. I like feel-good books/films/TV programmes, I really do, but just because I do I don’t want to be treated as if I were stupid. Call the Midwife is slap-bang in the middle of From Lark Rise to Candleford territory. That series did sometimes try to raise its ambitions a little, but often enough, especially towards the end, it slid back to cosy-quirky plot lines that you would have found embarrassing at the age of twelve. Call the Midwife is based on an autobiography by a real East End midwife, so maybe it’s just bad luck that she encountered so many living clichés on her way. But clichés they are. It’s a pity to see character actresses of such calibre as Judy Parfitt, Pam Ferris and Jenny Agutter wasting their talent in parts like the Dotty Nun, the Battleaxe Nun and the Wise Mother Superior (the midwifery is based in a convent, though laywomen such as the heroine and her chocolate box chum are also employed). As you would expect, the Dotty Nun and the Battleaxe Nun are locked in a Comic Feud. As for the patients, however rose-tinted my glasses are, I couldn’t quite go “aaah” at the story of the beautiful Spanish woman who saved the life of her prematurely born twenty-fifth child – I’m not exaggerating here, twenty-fifth. She was brought over at the age of fourteen. Her husband still doesn’t speak Spanish, and she still doesn’t speak English (no wonder they concentrate on child-producing – what else would they do of an evening?). She lives in a slum and has, I’ll say it again, twenty-five children. But what does it matter, eh? Her hubby still looks her lovingly in the eyes, and after all, love is the fountain of all life.

Which brings me to the final annoying characteristic of Call the Midwife - the mixture of slumming and sugariness. If the series hadn’t been such a success, I’d say it was in great danger of falling between two chairs. Feel-good fans like myself are much more comfortable in, say, Downton Abbey than in the East End of the Fifties, whereas those who are seriously interested in the living conditions of the slums sixty years ago will be disgusted by the treacliness of the story-lines. One of my colleagues, who was hoping for something grittier, called the first episode “namby-pamby”. Somehow, slums don’t go well with a spoonful (or, in this case, bucketfuls) of sugar. If you want to draw more than a select crowd of misery tourists, you have to serve up a strong plot and characters one truly cares about as individuals rather than as Victims of Society. This, judging by the first episode, Call the Midwife fails to do. I will give it another try, but if it doesn’t improve I won’t stick with it and give it second chances out of pure laziness as I did with From Lark Rise to Candleford. There are better things you can do with your time.