Our resident bard, Gillian Southgate has once again triumphed in The Oldie's poetry competition but rather than relive that triumph on the blog she wishes to spread her stylistic wings with this offering:-  

ANIMALS AT PRAYER

 

 

At the service for pets, a boy brought in a gerbil,

Confused, but trusting, in its tiny cage. A woman led a lurcher,

Slender on its length of lead, the meek eyes lowered in humility.

A tabby cat, unsure, uncomfortable, stared out from a basket

With widened eyes, and only once gave out a tiny mew.

It was as if they knew why they were there, but just like us

Had other matters to distract them. The gerbil stood up suddenly,

Glancing about him with an urgent air, and the small boy

Bent to calm him. The lurcher stretched his paws, 

Smooth limbed, heraldic, motionless; the tabby swung her gaze

When to her line of vision a rabbit was presented, big flat feet

Resting on its owners arm, its head against his shoulder.

And so each one was blessed, and each, uncomprehending,

Was carried out of church. The rector, spotting a beetle

Which unremarked, had crossed the old stone floor,

Looked gravely down, and blessed it on its journey.

And as they left, the spider hanging thirty feet above them

Praised the morning sun that warmed his chamber,

And stepped into a mortar crack above a stained glass window.

 

 

Lucky Dip - Memoir or Autobiography? Richard Thomas C.M.G. 16/6/23

 

Lucky Dip – Memoir or Autobiography?

Richard Thomas C.M.G.

16/6/23  

It was with great pleasure that the Lit. Soc. welcomed back one of its former luminaries with lifelong roots in Winchelsea to discuss his recent book, Lucky Dip, in which his diplomatic career is scrutinised by that most unforgiving instrument, the retrospectoscope. Immediately our speaker drew the audience’s attention to the intrinsic tension in the title, a dynamic etymological equilibrium destined to tilt tantalisingly one way or the other during his talk even sometimes inviting the emphatically rhetorical question – “Does it matter?”. He ruminated on the wide spectrum in the final assessment of diplomatic careers, from the celebrity glitterati of the ambassadorial circuit to the unsung, industrious pit ponies tasked with collecting the material beneath the surface.

  Richard’s first 18 months of life were spent in Petronella’s Plat, offering an inspiring view of the splendid architectural torso which currently constitutes, St. Thomas’s Parish Church only for this quintessentially English idyll to be disrupted by an enforced evacuation to Canada with the outbreak of World War II.  His teenage memory bank yielded the angular shade of Vita Sackville-West in suitably masculine garb, her horticultural enthusiasm signalled by secateurs in the top pocket of her shirt.  The redoubtable grande dame of Sissinghurst shared a belief with Richard’s parents in the revitalising effect of the country air of the High Weald on the deprived urban youth of London’s East End and they co-operated on this project for several years. Next came Oxford, the Civil Service Exam and a first posting to the Commonwealth Relations Office and an ambience of striking informality – afternoon tea with the minister and his secretary sometimes graced with the presence of the latter’s husband, a serving mounted policeman wont to tether his horse to the Office railings.  As Earl Grey receded in his professional rear view mirror, a posting to Accra in Ghana landed Thomas in the tense atmosphere of decolonisation where he succeeded in facilitating the defection of a dissident Hungarian journalist and in deploying his burgeoning diplomatic charm to finesse from a rather hostile Ghanaian government his marriage service, and an enduring partnership with Catherine; a flame initially lit at an ANZAC Day party at the Australian Embassy there.  The roll of the diplomatic dice was to take him to the excitement of N.A.T.O. headquarters in Brussels during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Aid Section in New Delhi and the friendship of the celebrated BBC correspondent, Mark Tully and a career development stint at the Royal United Services Institute before alighting as no. 2 at the Prague Embassy in 1979, only to be given the run of the place as the Ambassador cashed in four and a half months of banked home leave.  This was an intoxicating challenge and the Ambassador’s return left our hero a bit deflated.  By successfully surfing a wave of managerial restructuring within the service, Richard beached in Iceland as head of a “mini mission”.  Although this assignment initially instilled gloomy foreboding in the Thomas family, Iceland’s long winter nights were successfully absorbed in their biorhythms, the lively polyglot president much admired and the anomaly of the huge N.A.T.O. base at Keflavik in a nation with no army duly factored in.  In the dog days of the Soviet Empire, Richard took on the role of Ambassador to Bulgaria as this most loyal of Moscow’s satellites was busily expunging its residual Ottoman legacy by ethnically cleansing its Turkish minority.  Soon, Western diplomats were able to declare Victory Day, in what they considered a Righteous Conflict, with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact although the Communists in Sofia managed another year in power, rebranded as the Socialist Party.  After 1400 years of alternatives Bulgaria finally glimpsed the sunlit uplands of democratic pluralism and 96 new parties were ready to try the experiment.  Unfortunately, the sun revealed a dystopic system of State orphanages to which a host of disabled children had been consigned.  Catherine joined in the challenge of rehabilitating the system’s victims.  After a busy but rewarding 5 years in the Balkans, one final posting in the Caribbean beckoned before compulsory retirement at 60. Retirement was to bring a detached, delectable dilettantism, lecturing on cruise ships and submitting articles to journals and blogs when touched by a suitable Muse. 

So, at the end, how did the speaker’s etymological equilibrium between memoir and autobiography fare and did it even matter?  The audience was entertained by a series of vignettes of diplomatic life and the equilibrium was judiciously maintained, sparing the listeners a plunge into the narcissism of small differences. 

Ian McEwan in Conversation with Jon Cook 19.5.23

 

Ian McEwan’s latest novel “Lessons”

Explored in conversation with Jon Cook.

19/5/23    

For the second time this Spring the Lit. Soc. had to seek out a larger venue to accommodate those attracted by the prospect of hearing the celebrated and prolific novelist, Ian McEwan, discussing his latest novel “Lessons” with Jon Cook.  They might have mentally echoed Disraeli in the Commons “We come here for fame” although in this case Fame resided in the aura enveloping McEwan. 

In a relaxed exchange with his interlocutor, our guest laid out the lines of his novel’s plot with any risk of “spoilers” likely outweighed by the attraction of his fluent, elegant prose and intriguing ideas. The book incorporated some autobiographical elements as it followed the central character, Roland Baines, through a life whose span neatly mirrored the author’s own with real events intruding at various junctures in the narrative.  McEwan’s inversion of two topical themes commands the reader’s attention.  At boarding school, the teenage Roland is groomed by the attractive, dominating female piano teacher and the pair embark on a two-year long affair.  As a consequence, the boy becomes sexually restless and has difficulty forming stable relationships with women.  Later in life, he tracks his former lover down and confronts her with the grooming and abuse but finds he is suffering from some variant of Stockholm Syndrome and his love for her stops him making a formal accusation. 

His personal sexual odyssey reaches a temporary haven in marriage to a German woman who, in another example of role inversion, abandons him and their baby to pursue a literary career in Germany.  The pair briefly meet in Berlin as the Wall comes down and she presents him with a copy of her first novel which he realises is a work of genius and that she is destined to be Europe’s leading novelist; an achievement that would have been impossible had she remained in South London as Roland’s wife.  Recognising that she is ill and that her death is imminent, he ponders on the realisation that her literary legacy will outlive them both and on the mediocre level of his own attainments. 

As always at literary events, there was intense interest in the technical elements of the writer’s creative process.  Ian told us that he did not approach his writing with a play book but allowed the plot to unfold as he wrote.  He took issue with Virginia Woolf’s assertion that character was dead (contradicted by her own “Mrs. Dalloway”) and observed that Roland’s character in part changed with time but other features remained the same throughout “Lessons”.  Further tips on creative writing were elicited as our speaker patiently fielded a battery of questions from an engaged and enthusiastic audience.  Judging from the queue for book signings at the end, few attendees would have echoed the Gryphon in “Alice in Wonderland”; “…. they’re called lessons …. because they lessen from day to day.”     

Members' Evening Friday 21st April 2023

 Our next gathering will be on Friday the 21st April in the Lower Court Hall, at 7 for 7.30pm.  This will be a Members' Evening with the theme being Women Writing, so feel free to bring your individual contributions; anything from the measured, matronly austerity of Jane Austen to the halcyon days of chick lit and the boisterous, bonhomie of Bridget Jones.  For those aligned with Wordsworth and who wish their powerful feelings to overflow spontaneously, poetry offerings are also encouraged.  Concerns over stage fright might be allayed by a preliminary free glass of wine!  Looking forward to seeing you all there.

To the Life - A Reminiscence with Charles Moore 24/3/23

 

A larger, more secular congregation than usual was shepherded into St. Thomas’s Church to hear the distinguished journalist, editor and author Charles Moore discuss his experiences in the writing of his acclaimed, prize-winning, 3-volume authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher.  A religious setting may have been particularly apposite for a subject who had been styled “The Blessed Margaret Thatcher, the Leaderene”, by the playfully camp, intellectually adroit, if arguably tactless Norman St. John – Stevas.  Given the political alignment of the publications with which our speaker has been associated, audience members attuned to the season’s Scriptural offerings might have speculated on whether they would be hearing “a disciple’s tongue”.  In 1997, while editing the “Daily Telegraph”, Moore was invited to write the authorised biography of the former Prime Minister, an unsought, if attractive, offer for which he had to set aside his verdict on political biographies as being generally “stodgy”.   He did express an admiration for Boswell’s “Life of Johnson”, particularly from the point where the Great Lexicographer first encounters his amanuensis.

The plethora of source material was an early problem.  Mrs. T. herself was still alive and Charles felt that knowing and being able to meet with his subject was on balance an advantage.  In 1990 she had “written her own memoirs” in conversation with a series of ghost writers which were unhelpful and were worryingly indicative of a disorganised mind.  The subject’s personal and Government papers were also available for study and the most useful insights into the workings of the former Premier’s mind came from her own notes and under- linings on the official documents.  Lady Thatcher did not seem to understand the fact gathering nature of the historical interview, seeing it more in terms of a continuation of political combat.  In addition, she was latterly in evident cognitive decline and could not be considered an altogether reliable witness.  There were numerous media interviews, newspaper articles and a host of living oral sources to be scrutinised.  Civil servants proved most useful among this group in that they had minds trained to remember detail while politicians, notably Michael Heseltine, were rather cavalier in handling facts.  An exception was John Major whom this biographer felt demonstrated a “natural” civil servant’s mind-set.  So numerous were the oral sources that the interviews with over 500 of them in North America had to be contracted out to an assistant.

This wealth of material created a challenge when it came to building a narrative “architecture” but our speaker laid down some useful ground rules; hold a firm chronological line and avoid the distraction of “flashbacks”, eschew partisanship and antagonism, try to understand the subject’s motivation and to move as close as you can to the well springs of their thought and action.  Baron Moore detected a discernible difference between the public and private Margaret Thatchers.  While the relative contributions of Marxism and Methodism to the genealogy of the Labour Party remain a steady staple of political debate, our visitor felt that Margaret Roberts’ father’s auxiliary vocation as a Methodist lay preacher was crucial in engendering a “work hard, make money and donate some of it” mentality in his offspring.  Margaret emerged from the local grammar school with a place at Oxford studying Science, both unusual destinations for a woman at that time.  The only instance when the interviewee’s veracity came into question was on the topic of boyfriends: - the party line was that the far from handsome Denis was the only one but our intrepid representative of what Denis, in his “Private Eye” incarnation as the author of the “dear Bill” letters, would have termed “the reptiles of the press” unearthed the detail that his subject was managing to entertain 3 swains concurrently before Denis swam into her ken. 

 The congregation filed out, uplifted by an inspiring sermon and fortified by the Final Blessing, but possibly divided into true votaries with heads bowed in silent prayer for the canonisation of Blessed Margaret and perennial sceptics wondering whatever happened to that famous Downing St. Mission Statement from the prayer of St. Francis: -

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.

Where there is despair, may we bring hope.      

Tristan and Me; 9 December 2022 talk by Martin Handley

 

The assembled Lit. Soc. who gathered for the Wagner-themed evening in the reassuringly warm space of the Court Hall were gratified to hear our speaker, Martin Handley, approvingly liken it to the Gibechung’s Hall which received Siegfried’s corpse in the Ring Cycle. He was to regale us with the account of the role played by the eponymous hero of the opera Tristan und Isolde in his own life.   Something of a musical Renaissance man, Handley has merged his violin and piano playing, conducting and acting skills into a love of that marriage of music and theatre which is opera.  An Oxford-born, Cambridge graduate Martin started his professional musical career as a répétiteur in Germany for 6 years, following that with 3 years as Chorus Master and conductor at Australian Opera before a 6-year stint as Chorus Master with English National Opera.  This laid the foundation for a national and international career as a freelance conductor and he took his first steps on his road to broadcasting on the BBC’s World Service.  1997 saw him begin a 2-year spell as Conductor of Music for Royal Danish Opera. 

Tristan und Isolde began as light relief for Wagner from the rigours of penning both the libretto and the music for the Ring Cycle but became hugely influential; inspiring Mahler, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg and Britten and according to our speaker exerting a wider cultural influence on a par with the contemporaneous Das Kapital of Marx and Darwin’s Origin of Species. We were told the work is an inscape, a drama of the soul. The libretto was based on a 12th century account by Gottfried von Strassburg although oral versions were thought to have been around for centuries before that. The tale is set in a triangular, Celtic twilight of Ireland, Brittany and Cornwall and is a commitment to love and sexual passion with the eponymous protagonists experiencing the Liebestod or erotic death and then eternal union in death in a Valhalla of the lovestruck. The cast comprises kings, warrior knights, noble women and dynastic marriage arrangements which are strained by an emotional cocktail of revenge, atonement, duty and love all further complicated by the substitution of a potent and highly efficacious love potion for a lethal draught. These plot lines may have echoed Wagner’s own love life at the time when, in Swiss exile, his growing disenchantment with his first wife, Minna, was further fuelled by his infatuation with Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a Zurich silk trader, and the presence of his future mistress and wife, Cosima von Bülow, in the wings. Martin interspersed music from the opera to add colour to the narrative.

We then learnt of Martin’s more personal involvement with this opera.  As an adolescent at his co-educational boarding school, his first love, Sally, and he were wont to retreat to the school’s “listening room" on Sunday afternoons to listen to a box set of Tristan und Isolde and we were treated to the pair’s favourite track from Act II:

Isolde: Herz an Herz dir, Mund an Mund      (Heart on your heart, mouth on mouth)

Tristan: eines Atems ein'ger Bund  (The single bond of a single breath)

Together: Niewiedererwachens wahnlos hold bewusster Wunsch (The sweetly conscious undeluded wish never again to waken)

At the end of this duet, Tristan and Isolde collapse onto a flowery bank but Martin did not reveal how he and Sally closed the scene.  The school clearly had an enlightened attitude to developing higher culture among the more cerebral pupils, but you have to admit the German Department must have been outstanding.   

Tristan und Isolde has a reputation in the world of opera similar to the Scottish play in the world of drama and it duly brought our speaker bad luck when he was called on at no notice at all to substitute for an indisposed Tristan on the production’s first night in Copenhagen.  He told us he managed to soldier through the ordeal and thinks he actually enjoyed about 2 minutes of the unsought assignment.  The Swedish dramatic soprano, Birgit Nilsson, has appeared in 33 productions as Isolde and admits the role made her famous, so Martin recounted how he managed to cajole her into granting him an interview when she retired to her native Skane district, north of Malmö.  Birgit had emulated another Swedish diva, Greta Garbo, in her dedication to post-retirement solitude and Handley had to follow a complex set of instructions, more like a demonstration of “tradecraft” for a le Carré novel, before finally coming face to face with his quarry.  He did learn that she felt Wagner required thoughtful, patient and methodical people and that the secret to singing Isolde was “comfortable shoes”.

As befits a Radio 3 presenter Martin wove the thoughtfully selected musical excerpts expertly into his very personal narrative leaving the audience suitably educated and entertained.

William Doherty       

Literary Agents; an author's and an agent's perspective

 In her November talk to the Literary Society, on Crime Writing, Aline Templeton touched on the role of a Literary Agent, which gave rise to some discussion. As I thought it might be of wider interest I asked Aline to write a piece on the role of an agent, from the writer's perspective, and a Literary Agent, Holly Faulks,  to write one from the agent's perspective. LY

The Literary Agent, by Aline Templeton

Being able to drop the words ‘my agent’ into a conversation for the first time – very casually, of course – is a great day for an author.  This is a rite of passage: up to that point you may in your heart believe you’re a good or even a great writer, and your mother and perhaps even some indulgent friends may go along with that, but when an agent offers you her – or his - time, advice and expertise for nothing because she considers that it will pay her to do it, you have the most convincing form of professional approval.

Her judgement may, of course, be wrong.  Her high opinion may not be shared by publishers, but even so many agents persist because they still believe in the book and work tirelessly with their author to get it into print.

It’s an enormously important relationship and there are as many different ways of conducting it as there are authors and agents, and there are bad ones as well as good.    I have had several agents in my time; the first one who approached me on the basis of some short stories I had written gave me such bad advice that I only got my first book published after I left her, and she was later thrown out of the Association of Authors’ Agents.

My next one was wonderful.  I approached her and she would only take me on after very hard work and accepting a lot of criticism on the next book, but the pain was worth it. More books followed, but she made everything enormous fun too.  When one of my books was coming unstuck, she said, ‘Come and stay. We’ll work hard all day to get it into shape, and then we’ll drink and gossip all evening.’  We did,  the book was sorted out and then the other books followed.

All her clients adored her and we were devastated when she decided to retire.  I’ve been grateful to agents since, but I’ve never had that sort of closeness with anyone else.

I’m not good at talking about what I’m planning to write. I have author friends who talk over their plans with their agents before they write them and look to them for plot suggestions but after outlining in some detail the book I was planning on one occasion, I found the drive had dissipated when I sat down to write it and the book never got itself written.  I’ve never done that again.

It's once it’s safely in manuscript form that I look to my agent to be cruel enough to tell me what’s wrong with it and how to put it right.  I hate this stage, but I know I need it; I have also learned to ignore the first paragraph says that she absolutely loves it and it’s brilliant,  and go straight to the ‘But..’ in the second one.  I had one agent who was neither cosy or supportive but I was grateful for the talent she had for spotting exactly what was going wrong and spelling it out despite my squirming. 

Not being meticulous by nature, I need an agent when it comes to checking contracts with publishers and dealing with the intricacies of foreign rights.  Then after publication, the  agent acts as a buffer between you and your publisher; when you’re quite sure that your assigned editor is completely wrong, and the changes being demanded will ruin your book, it is your agent’s job to convince the publisher that he’s wrong, or alternatively to convince you that you are – possibly using the phrase, ‘The person who has the chequebook is one who’s right.’

That brings us to one of agent’s most important duties -  getting the publisher to pull out that metaphorical chequebook, and haggling about what should be written on it. A fair bit of that involves explaining that the book is so brilliant that he can’t afford to miss it and with luck managing to lure other publishers into a bidding war; that’s the highest degree of agenting skill – and then the sky’s  the limit.

It hasn’t happened to me so far, but a girl can dream.  I have no doubt about their value to an author and have no doubt that the percentage taken off my earnings in agents’ fees has been more than covered by the rewards their skills have brought me.

The Literary Agent, by Holly Faulks

A literary agent is involved in every step of an author’s career. When we first take on a client they may only be at the very early stages of an idea. We work together with the author to prepare their work for submission to publishers. This might be a proposal for a non-fiction book or the complete manuscript of a novel. We will then draw up a list of editors at the various publishing houses that we think might be interested in the work. A big part of our job is staying up to date with all the editors and knowing what exactly they’re looking for. We send the author’s work to the editors along with a submission letter and with luck we receive an offer of publication (or more than one offer!) for the author. We then negotiate with the editor(s) to ensure the author is given the best possible offer and guide the author through the process of selecting their new publishing house. We will then go on to negotiate the full contract between author and publisher. At this point, the author will begin to work directly with the publisher’s editorial, marketing, publicity and sales teams to prepare the book for publication, but we will continue to support them through this process, especially if there are difficulties or disagreements between the author and the publisher. We will also ensure that the author is paid correctly and promptly by the publisher, chasing advance payments and checking royalty statements. This support continues beyond the publication of the first book as the author’s career grows. We try to help authors achieve their long-term career goals whether that means negotiating new contracts with an existing publisher, seeking out a new editor when necessary or changing writing direction entirely. Literary agents will also aim to sell translation rights in the work throughout the world as well as TV and film rights. Some agencies will do this directly and others will work with co-agents and sub-agents. Literary agents may also act as speaking or broadcast agents and can handle all sorts of non-book work for their clients.