Category Archives: books

Book Bag: Frederick Forsyth

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It was sad to read in the news the other day of the passing of journalist and novelist Frederick Forsyth. He was 86 years old and had published more than 25 books. I’ve read quite a few of his novels and I wrote a segment about him some time ago in a blog post about novels that were rejected by publishers. A number of his books were made into films and so many people must be familiar with his work.

Forsyth did his national service in the RAF and was commissioned as an Acting Pilot Officer in 1956. After leaving the RAF he became a journalist working for the news agency Reuters and later he joined the BBC. He was the perfect choice for a foreign correspondent as he spoke numerous languages including French, German and Russian. In 1967 he was reporting on the war between Biafra and Nigeria when the BBC decided they were no longer interested in that particular war. Forsyth resigned from the BBC and continued to report on the war as a freelance. He even admitted later that this was when he was recruited by MI6 as an informant.

His most famous book and actually one that he struggled to get published was The Day of the Jackal. He apparently had no interest in becoming a novelist but turned to fiction as he was out of work and in dire straits financially.  The Day of the Jackal was rejected numerous times but finally one publisher decided to try a limited print run. The book took off first in the UK and then in the USA. It was a mixture of fact and fiction and Forsyth’s description of how to obtain a fake passport was used by John Darwin, the man who faked his own death in a canoe and later tried to make a new life in Panama. This true story was made into a book and TV mini series called The Thief, his Wife and a Canoe.

Forsyth followed up with The Odessa File, a book about the Odessa organisation which helped former nazis escape detection from the authorities after World War II. He wrote numerous other books but when The Day of the Jackal was re-imagined as a TV series recently on Sky TV, he earned nothing as he had already signed away the TV and film rights with the earlier screen version.

The Day of the Jackal

It was a very long time ago when I first read this book. Someone once called it an assassin’s handbook although I’m not sure that’s really fair. The book is set in the early 60s. The OAS was a terrorist organisation made up of ex-army personnel who were angered at De Gaulle’s decision to give independence to Algeria after many of their comrades had died fighting Algerian nationalists. They were trying to assassinate De Gaulle but their organisation had been penetrated by French Intelligence. To prevent any leaks the OAS top leadership decide to hole up in a hotel and arrange for a professional assassin to kill De Gaulle. The book follows the assassin, code named Jackal, as he plans the murder step by step. The French secret service however decide to kidnap a man who functioned as an aide to the leadership. Under torture he revealed the basic plot but how could the French track down the assassin?

The Jackal arranges three fake identities and the author explains meticulously how he does this. He met with a specialist rifle maker and explained how he wanted a rifle that could be dismantled and fitted into a series of metal tubes, the full import of this is only revealed on the planned day of the assassination.

The Jackal also asks for a number to ring for up to date information and the OAS arrange for an informant to seduce a member of the government and pass vital info to the Jackal.

Forsyth apparently wrote the book in 35 days and continued with a similar non stop workflow for all his subsequent books. He didn’t like the writing process and was anxious to get it all over with as quickly as possible. Even so, the result is a tense and gripping read. Forsyth’s books are heavily researched and often including real-life procedures, political contexts, or military operations. He includes authentic settings and terminology that lend a strong sense of realism to his stories. The characters in his books though are usually pretty functional, just there to carry the plot forwards although in The Jackal we find perhaps his most rounded characters, certainly in the few books that I have read.

The Day of the Jackal was made into a film in 1973 directed by Fred Zinneman.

The Odessa File

Again, it’s a long time since I have read this book but it’s really well put together with a real twist at the end. It’s about a German journalist who discovers a diary written by an old Jewish man who has committed suicide. The man was a former concentration camp prisoner and killed himself after seeing a sadistic SS officer known as ‘the butcher of Riga’ walking free in the city.

The journalist decides to try and track the SS man down and finds out that the nazis run an organisation known as the Odessa, which helps former SS men evade justice, assisting them with fake papers and even travel to friendly countries.

The journalist decides to pose as an ex-SS man seeking help from the Odessa and this leads him on a very dangerous path indeed.

The Odessa File was also made into a film starring John Voight as the journalist and the resulting publicity brought about the exposure of the real life ‘Butcher of Riga’, on whom the fictional character was based. Eduard Roschmann was arrested by Argentine police but then skipped bail and escaped to Paraguay.

The Fourth Protocol

I started reading this book a while ago and like all of Forsyth’s other books it is a very exciting read. I was also surprised to find that it was really quite different to the film which starred Michael Caine.

In the book, a professional jewel thief robs the safe of safe of a well to do civil servant. He takes away some pretty expensive jewels but breaks a golden rule by also taking what appears to be an expensive hand crafted leather briefcase.

It turns out that hidden in the briefcase are some top secret documents which the civil servant has been passing to a member of the South African security forces.

This gentleman then organises a group of thugs to find the case but the jewel thief is alerted just in time and is able to round up some tough guys of his own to combat the thugs. After finding out the thugs were after the briefcase, he discovers the secret documents and mails them to the authorities.

Robert Preston, our local MI5 man, then has to find out where the documents came from and who has been leaking them.

Eventually, Preston discovers that the civil service man was passing the documents to a south African diplomat who was also a Russian spy.

This whole episode was glossed over in the film and in fact in the film version it is John Preston played by Michael Caine who robs the safe forcing the traitor to meet with his contact.

The main story though involves a Soviet plot to destabilise NATO by causing an atomic explosion at a US Air Force base in the UK. Components for the bomb are to be smuggled into the country, set up at a safe house just by the air force base and later detonated.

Luckily, our man Preston manages to save the day.

Once again, this is an excellent read peppered with fascinating information about the workings of spies in MI5 and MI6 and also the KGB.

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Thatcher and Give Me 10 Seconds

Posted on by Steve Higgins

On holiday one of my favourite reads was an autobiography by John Sergeant who was once a political reporter for the BBC. It was called Give Me 10 Seconds. It was called this because the BBC usually had John ready to speak to the camera for perhaps two minutes. John needed to get his broadcast together in his head and would usually ask for 10 seconds for a quick mental rehearsal. The book was a particularly warm and enjoyable read and opened my eyes to the way the BBC works.The author seems to think that the BBC was built on rather military styles. Staff didn’t get holidays but instead were allocated ‘leave’. Numerous layers of management operated the BBC empire and it seemed to me to be very similar to how things operated at my old place of work, the Highways Agency.

John’s claim to fame came when he was reporting live from outside the British Embassy in Paris in November 1990. Mrs Thatcher had just heard that Michael Heseltine’s leadership challenge had garnered 152 votes in the first round of voting and while John was presenting live on television, Mrs Thatcher emerged from the embassy with her PR man Bernard Ingham by her side. Despite Mr Ingham trying to push John aside, he stood his ground and firmly held his microphone to the Prime Minister’s face while she advised everyone that her name would be going through to the second round of voting.

John’s book was a great read. He started out working with Alan Bennett as a comedy writer and performer but when he realised that he probably had no future as a tv comedian he got himself a job as a newspaper reporter in Liverpool and later moved over to the BBC as a radio reporter.

It’s actually really fascinating to hear of the rivalry between the radio news and the tv news, as back in the late 60s the radio people really didn’t have much time for their television counterparts. These days of course, television is the senior partner in news reporting and the cameras of the BBC, SKY TV and CNN take the viewer all over the world in search of news.

Even so, in recent years, people and politicians have been highly critical of the BBC not only for the way it reports but also for what it reports. I’ve seen some interviews with politicians by journalists like Jeremy Paxman which were quite frankly just disgracefully rude. Is there bias in the BBC? I personally think that the days of impartial news reporting is over but whenever something happens in the world, and I want some more information, my first thought is to go to the BBC website.

Mrs Thatcher was the first female British Prime Minister. She was born in 1925, studied chemistry at Oxford and married Denis Thatcher in 1951. She stood unsuccessfully for parliament and then settled down to have her children. Later she was finally elected in 1959 as the MP for Finchley.

Image courtesy creative commons

Mrs Thatcher was given various posts on the front bench and when the Conservatives under Edward Heath won the election in 1964, she was promoted to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science.

The Government had to deal with numerous issues such as union demands for higher wages and the three day week and they lost the election in February 1974 but Labour could only form a minority government. They then won a later election in October that same year. Mrs Thatcher then challenged Edward Heath for the party leadership and won, taking over as leader of the opposition in 1975. She finally became Prime Minister in 1979 famously quoting the prayer of St Francis on the steps of Downing St;

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony;
Where there is error, may we bring truth;
Where there is doubt, may we bring faith;
And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

Mrs Thatcher promoted the idea of people owning their homes and even introduced policies aimed at tenants buying their own council houses. She faced up to union demands most notably with Arthur Scargill and the mining unions but became hugely popular when she stood up to the Argentinians who invaded the Falkland Islands.

She led the Conservative Party to victory in three consecutive general elections, twice in a landslide, and she ranks among the most popular party leaders in British history regarding votes cast for the winning party; over 40 million ballots were cast in total for the party under her leadership. Her electoral successes were dubbed an “historic hat trick” by the British press in 1987 and her tenure as Prime Minister was the longest continuous period in office since the 19th century.

Her downfall came in 1990 which brings us back to John Sergeant’s famous moment. Michael Heseltine decided to go ahead with his leadership challenge and Mrs Thatcher burst forth from the British Embassy in Paris to make her statement that she had passed her name forward to the next round of the contest. She had been 4 votes short of victory in the first ballot and therefore a second round was required.

Thatcher seemed certain of going forward into that second ballot but after consulting with her ministers she decided to withdraw and it was John Major and not Michael Heseltine who emerged as the new Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party.

Mrs Thatcher has been portrayed by numerous actresses in film and television most notably by Gillian Anderson and Meryl Streep. Streep starred as Thatcher in the film Iron Lady. She was played frequently on TV sketches and in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only by comedian and impressionist Janet Brown.  Perhaps the most famous comedy sketch about Mrs Thatcher came on the TV show Spitting Image in which she takes the cabinet for dinner. She orders steak and the waitress asks ‘what about the vegetables?’

Thatcher looks at her cabinet and replies ‘they’ll have the same as me!’

Mrs Thatcher retired from the House of Commons at the 1992 general election. She was a Prime Minister who was loved by some and hated by others and even when she died in 2013 at the age of 87 social media memes were declaring the wicked witch is dead!

Which side of the fence are you on?

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Three Reads from My Holiday Book Bag

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It’s always good to slip out of the pool, dry yourself off and then relax in the sun with a really good book. Here are three of my latest holiday reads. (try the video version by clicking here!)

The Thief, His Wife And The Canoe

I first heard about this story on the TV news many years ago. I’d mostly forgotten about it until recently when there was an ITV drama based on the story. This was the book version and even though the story is fascinating, the book, written by a newspaper journalist wasn’t that gripping.

Essentially, John Darwin was facing bankruptcy after getting hugely overreached on a series of buy to let mortgages. He decided that the only way out was to fake his own death and cash in on some life insurance policies. His wife apparently tried to talk him out of the idea but John, a dominating and overpowering personality, went ahead and faked his own death. Amazingly he even went back to live with his wife, sometimes having to retreat to the bedsits next door when any friends or family came to visit. He arranged a false passport using a method explained in the book ‘Day of the Jackal’ by Frederick Forsyth and then the two, Darwin and his wife, planned to buy property in Panama and live a new life. Later, Darwin decided he wanted to return to the UK under his own name by posing as someone who had suffered with amnesia and in fact one day he disposed of his fake passport, walked into a police station and told them ‘I’ve lost my memory!’

Journalist David Leigh tracked down Darwin’s wife in Panama and managed to extract the entire story from her before she returned to the UK to face imprisonment along with John.

The result is interesting but not really a great read as perhaps the author is more used to newspaper stories rather than an entire book. Either way, it kept me interested for quite a few days.

Death of a President

I’ve read this book before many years ago but even so I thought I’d throw it in the motorhome and give it another read. The President’s widow, Mrs Jackie Kennedy asked the author, William Manchester to write the book so there would be one authorised record of what happened in Dallas when President Kennedy was assassinated. The result is a record, in fact a micro record of what happened to Kennedy and those around him, beginning a few days before the assassination and ending with his funeral and the shooting of his assassin by another assassin.

For me, who has been interested in the JFK assassination since at least 1968 when his brother, Robert Kennedy was also murdered and I was 12 years old, it’s a fascinating record. Others might think perhaps that the author has spread his research too far, that we are not interested in what the President’s pilot thought or did or how the honour guard prepared for the President’s funeral and how the President’s sister or brother-in-law reacted.

Anyway as a passionate JFK researcher, a couple of things stood out. One was a time chart that showed that JFK was shot at 12:30 and that at 12:31 and a half, motorcycle cop Marion Baker intercepted Lee Oswald, the supposed assassin, on the second floor lunchroom of the Texas School Book Depository calmly drinking a coke. That meant that Lee had, in 90 seconds, hidden his Mannlicher Carcano rifle on the 6th floor and got himself down to the second floor to meet Baker. Did he shoot the President or was he in the lunchroom all the time?

Here’s another thing. In one of my favourite JFK assassination books, Best Evidence, author David Lifton reckons that sometime between leaving Dallas and arriving at Andrews Airforce base in Washington, JFK’s body was somehow removed from his coffin and transferred to a body bag and then helicoptered to Bethesda naval base where work was done on the body prior to it being seen by the official autopsy staff. In Death of a President, William Manchester says that Mrs Kennedy spent all her time sitting near to the casket on Airforce One with many of JFK’s team of assistants and secret service personnel. So how was Kennedy’s body removed without anyone knowing?

OK, I’ve gone off into the realm of JFK assassination folklore there but to get back to normality, this was a very well researched book and gives a massively detailed look at the events surrounding a tragic day. If anything, the detail is perhaps a little too much and I could sort of imagine it as a feature film using that split screen effect that you often saw in the 1970s; Kennedy getting into the limo side by side with a shot of the assassin getting ready and so on.

Verdict; an absorbing read, very detailed.

Blue Angel: The Life of Marlene Dietrich by Donald Spoto

This was a very compelling read, a biography of Marlene Deitrich who to be fair, I didn’t know much about until this book.

Marlene was one of those people perhaps born at the wrong time. Today might be a better time for her when lifestyles of gay and lesbian people are not so much of an issue.

Marlene rose to prominence in the film world of Germany between the world wars. She was married to assistant director Rudolf Sieber and together they had a child, Maria. The couple had what we might call an open marriage and Marlene had various partners, both male and female and her husband too found himself another love. A big hit for Marlene was her performance as Lola Lola in The Blue Lamp, directed by Josef Von Sternberg in 1930. Shortly afterwards Marlene and Von Sternberg moved to Hollywood and the two made a series of films for Paramount. While she was away from Germany the Nazis rose to power. Goebbels himself asked her to come back and work in German films but when she declined, the Nazi party rejected her. Marlene became a naturalised American and even entertained the troops -the allied troops during World War II.

She had affairs with both men and women and at one point even began to wear male oriented clothes and once she was denied entry into a Paris night club for wearing trousers.

She was extremely concerned with how she looked in films and always arranged with the lighting crew for a key light to illuminate her face in a particular way, many times even bypassing the director. Alfred Hitchcock for one was not amused.

When the film work fizzled out she reinvented herself as a performer with a one woman show in Las Vegas. The clothes and lighting she organised herself, in fact at home she even had a special key light, just as she specified for her films, that she would stand under when she met journalists and even her friends.

She was always there to help her friends and still stayed close to her husband and his partner. If friends were sick or even just down, Marlene would come round and clean up and make food. She was not only a famous and beautiful star but also a proud hausfrau.

The book opens with her appearing in a short sequence in her very last film, which incidentally starred pop star David Bowie. She performed for the camera perfectly, only one take was required, then she returned to her Paris apartment and except for hospital and doctors’ appointments, she never left again until her death in 1992.

Not the best film book I’ve ever read but still an informative and intriguing read.

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4 Showbiz Stories

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I started this post off with three ‘showbiz’ autobiographies of actresses/comediennes of the stage and screen. Despite trawling through my book collection I couldn’t see a fourth so I added one which is the odd one out; a biography, rather than an autobiography and a male actor/comedian rather than a female. Either way, all four are stars who made their respective names in the 1950s and 1960s era of radio, TV and film and together make up a quartet of much loved British comedians.

Fenella Fielding: Do You Mind If I Smoke?

This is an autobiography by Fenella Fielding, co-written with Simon McKay, and the title comes from her part in Carry On Screaming when she played a seductive character, possibly derived from the Adams Family, Valeria. In one scene Valeria tries to seduce Harry H Corbett standing in for the absent Sid James as a detective. Valeria asks ‘do you mind if I smoke?’ and then rather than smoking a cigarette, a cloud of smoke seems to arise from her body and envelop her. Harry H Corbett adds ‘just when I was trying to give it up’ before embracing her in the smoke.

Simon met Fenella at a London Pilates class in 2011. The two became friends and began meeting regularly for coffee. McKay realised that Fenella was a wonderful raconteur and asked if he could record her stories. Fenella agreed and later they used the transcriptions as the basis for a themed evening, An Evening with Fenella Fielding. Later the conversations became an audio book and finally this printed version. It was hugely enjoyable and rather than being a standard story of her life, the book talks about various things in no particular order.

Fenella describes her early life in Clapton and her first forays into the acting world. She won a scholarship to RADA but her parents, who were keen at first, don’t seem to have realised what RADA was, that their daughter was becoming an actress which they seem to have seen as just one step away from prostitution.

Anyway despite only completing one year at RADA, Fenella did manage to become an actress. After one particular success on the stage she began to pick up various small parts on television and on film and as I mentioned above, her most famous part was in Carry On Screaming. She devotes a whole chapter to Kenneth Williams who of course could be a very difficult man to work with. She also played a part in Doctor in Clover and was heard as the village announcer in the TV series The Prisoner. In fact a great deal of her work was voiceovers for various things especially TV adverts.

This was a lovely read and came over as very chatty and talkative, based as it was on recorded conversations.

Liz Fraser …. and other characters

In Fenella’s book above, she mentions that she hoped her book would not go the way of a lot of other showbiz autobiographies, interesting at first but then dissolving into lists of plays and films and other celebrities. Sadly, that seems to be the way this book does go, even so I enjoyed it.

Liz was brought up in Southwark, in London. Her mother ran a small shop, one of those shops that used to sell everything that Tesco might sell these days from bags of coal, wood bundles to fresh food. Her father was a travelling salesman but died in 1942 aged only 40.

Like Fenella, Liz attended RADA and afterwards won her breakthrough part in I’m All Right Jack which starred Peter Sellers as a union official. She tells the story of playing minor parts in small plays and eventually got some walk on parts on TV. One day her mother said to her “Was that you last week, walking past Peter Cushing?” It was!

Liz worked on TV shows that were live back in the day. On an episode of Dixon of Dock Green she forgot her line but the crew had a ‘cut key’ which cut out the broadcast sound while they called out the line to the hapless Liz.

To get the part in I’m All Right Jack Liz had to lie about her age as the producers wanted someone younger which led to a career long confusion about her age.

She appeared with Peter Sellers in various films and she reveals that although she liked Sellers she had to fight off his amorous advances several times. Liz shares lots of anecdotes about various people she worked with including Tony Hancock, Benny Hill and Sid James.

She tells about appearing in a few of the Carry On films but like many others is critical of the producers. There was only a one off payment for each film and despite the enduring popularity of the Carry On films, the actors earned nothing from their later success on TV. In later life Joan Sims had a lot of financial difficulty but was helped by actors’ charity organisations. Liz herself was very thoughtful, investing in property and stocks and shares which sustained her during the times when acting work was thin on the ground.

She doesn’t share much about her personal life although her first husband features in a chapter called I Married a Thief. Peter Yonwin was something of a fantasist and their marriage soon broke down.

One shocking disclosure was an incident one night after appearing in a pantomime. Liz took an acquaintance home thinking she could deal with any problem man only to be raped. She doesn’t expand on the incident but seems to just mention it quickly and then move on as if perhaps by talking about it however briefly she could perhaps exorcize this dreadful ordeal.

Liz’s second husband, a TV producer, died of cancer and Liz suffered with cancer herself. She enjoyed fast cars and finishes by talking about her old age.

Liz Fraser died in 2018 aged 88.

According to Dora

I do love my showbiz biographies and autobiographies and one I picked up a while back was an autobiography by Dora Bryan. I love Dora from her many appearances in British films but my favourite film is probably A Taste of Honey. The screenplay was by Shelagh Delaney and director Tony Richardson, adapted from Delaney’s own play which she famously wrote when she was only 18.

Dora Bryan gives an outstanding performance; at times comic but always supremely natural. Dora grew up on an Oldham housing estate. She was a great performer as a child and so her mother took her to dancing school and further encouraged by her mother, she joined Oldham Repertory before moving to London to develop her stage career. She had a great career on the stage as well as on film and TV and appeared in many successful West End productions. The first part of the book is very interesting but then as I mentioned earlier, this becomes one of those books in which the latter part seems to wander off into lists of productions and theatre and TV personalities. Even so, it was a lovely read.

When the Wind Changed (The Life and Death of Tony Hancock) by Cliff Goodwin

This final book is the odd one out in this quartet of British comedy stars. It’s a biography rather than an autobiography. I don’t think Tony Hancock ever wrote one.

Back in his day Tony Hancock was a giant among television performers. Pub landlords complained that their establishments used to empty because people would drink up and rush home to watch Hancock’s Half Hour. I can’t even imagine that happening today to any contemporary comedian not withstanding the emergence of TV recording devices.

Hancock’s half hour was first broadcast on the radio in 1954 and then transferred to television in 1956.

Hancock’s co star on television was Sid James and Hancock decided to part with Sid believing that the public had begun to think of the two of them as a sort of double act. His final comedy series for the BBC was called Hancock but even without Sid James, it was a great success.

An interesting TV interview at this time saw Hancock as a guest on Face to Face, an intensive interview which revealed Tony Hancock to be a different man to the bumbling buffoon of his radio and TV shows, in fact the entire transcript of the interview is repeated in the book. Many felt that this interview made him more and more self-critical which led to him dispensing with many who were important to his professional life such as Sid James and his scriptwriters Galton and Simpson.

After a minor car crash Hancock had to use an autocue for perhaps his most famous TV episode, The Blood Donor. After that, he used the autocue more and more finding it too hard apparently to continue to learn scripts.

His drinking increased. He left his wife for his mistress Freddie Ross who worked as his publicist. Freddie and Hancock eventually married but their relationship later broke down also.

Hancock committed suicide in 1968. He took an overdose of pills and left behind a note which said ‘things seemed to go wrong too many times.’

This is such a fascinating and well written book and if you are interested in actors and performers as I am, it is well worth seeking out.

There are a couple of postcripts to the book but one was so intriguing I have to mention it here. George Fairweather was a great friend of Tony Hancock. When Hancock was delighted to find he had been chosen for the royal command performance he told George that he wished his late father could have been there to see it. George commented that perhaps his father would see it and Hancock replied dismissively that ‘only spirits come out of bottles’.

22 days after Hancock’s death, George received a typed letter with no name or address. It said simply that the writer had received a message from Hancock in the afterlife and wished to pass it on. The message is reproduced below.

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Book Bag: John Grisham

Posted on by Steve Higgins

In my last few posts about books, rather than publish my usual Book Bag posts, I’ve incorporated book reviews into other types of posts; holiday memories and posts about books made into films and so on. During my last few holidays, I always seem to either have a couple of John Grisham books with me or found some in the places, usually rented villas, where we have stayed. I thought it might be an idea to write a John Grisham themed book bag post. Who actually is John Grisham then?

Let’s go over to Wikipedia and see what they have to say:

Born February 8, 1955 John Grisham is an American novelist, lawyer, and former member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, known for his best-selling legal thrillers. According to the American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 37 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers, and his books have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Along with Tom Clancy and J. K. Rowling, Grisham is one of only three anglophone authors to have sold two million copies on the first printing.

Pretty impressive credentials, aren’t they? Most of the inside back covers of my copies of his books say pretty much the same thing and in the back of the last Grisham book I read, The Racketeer, there are extracts from an interview with Grisham in which he mentions his favourite book is A Time to Kill, his first book and apparently the most personal of his legal thrillers.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the books that I have read.

A Time to Kill by John Grisham

As I said earlier, this book turns out to be Grisham’s first novel and he says in the introduction how proud he was of finishing it, as back then he hardly ever finished anything. It also contains some autobiographical elements; Grisham used to be a street lawyer, similar to the character in the book.

The book is set in America’s deep south where there is or was a great deal of racial prejudice. Two white guys decide to kidnap a young black girl, tie her to a tree and repeatedly rape her. They drive her away and dump her like garbage but she survives and the police arrest the two scumbags responsible. Next, the young girl’s father Carl Lee Hailey decides to take a rifle and shoot the two guys. He is arrested and put on trial for murder and street lawyer Jake Brigance takes on the case.

The case ignites the small town of Clanton Mississippi. The Klu Klux Klan become involved as do various other groups and the stage is set for a tense murder trial which goes on while the police and the National Guard try to keep order.

It’s a very exciting read although the ending was a little underwhelming and if you find the N word offensive then this is a book which is not for you as that particular word appears numerous times on almost every page.

The Client

This book was a great holiday read. It’s about an eleven year old boy who witnesses a suicide but before the man kills himself (he is a lawyer defending a known murderer) he tells the boys, Mark and his little brother Ricky, where his client has hidden the  dead body of a murdered US senator. The senator was the victim of a mob ‘hit’ and Mark won’t tell the police or the FBI about the body as he is concerned for the safety of his mother and brother. When he and his mother are in hospital staying with his brother Ricky, as he has gone into shock, Mark contacts a lawyer and a big legal stand off begins with the FBI. Things eventually get settled but I can’t help wondering why the boy wouldn’t trust the FBI or even why he wouldn’t tell them about the body in the first place. Of course, if he had then there wouldn’t be a story. Either way this was a great holiday read and the narrative kept me interested all the way to the end. I didn’t realise it was also made into a film starring Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon which I must remember to look out for.

The Pelican Brief by John Grisham

This book might be the best book by Grisham I have read so far. The book opens with the murder of two US Supreme Court judges and this in a way plays into the hands of the President as he can now nominate new judges who share his political views. At the same time, law student Darby Shaw is having an affair with her law professor. She decides to look closely at the murders and develops a thesis, an idea about who may have done the murders and why. The thesis becomes known as the Pelican Brief and she passes it to the professor who in turn sends it to his friend, an FBI lawyer. It then gets passed up the chain to the head of the FBI and on to the White House where the President instructs the FBI not to investigate further.

Not long afterwards the professor is blown up in a car bomb which Darby narrowly avoids and from then on, she is on the run trying to evade death herself.

This for me was one of those unputdownable novels which was exciting and kept me interested all the way to the end.

The Firm by John Grisham

There is a process by which I choose books to take with me on holiday. I like to think it’s a thoughtful process combining different genres of books, some novels, maybe the odd classic, and some biographies and autobiographies. What actually happens is that the day before our trip I’ll just grab something near to hand that I know I haven’t read yet and shove it in my suitcase. Anyway, that’s how I ended up with The Firm. Last year I read The Rainmaker by John Grisham and I thought it was a pretty good read. I must have mentioned that to Liz so she filed that away and got me a stack of Grisham novels for my last birthday. The Firm isn’t a bad read and in my case it was a nice change of pace after reading some non-fiction books.

It’s a good story but like a lot of Grisham’s works, it’s more plot driven than character driven. The characters are sort of bland templates that I’ve recognised in a lot of his novels. Anyway, characters aside, this is a really original story about a young guy who graduates from law school and gets head hunted into a firm he has never heard of but which offers tremendous financial benefits, a brand new BMW, and an ultra cheap mortgage as well as other financial bonuses. The downside, as he comes to learn later, is that the firm is just a cover operation to launder money for a big mafia crime family and the FBI wants our hero James McDeere, to help them.

Verdict: Highly enjoyable and a great holiday read but nothing more, although that didn’t stop the book from becoming a best seller as well as a hit film in the 1990’s.

The Racketeer

This is another legal thriller about a man convicted of money laundering, which he denies by the way, sentenced to ten years in a federal institution. Naturally he is not happy but he hoped to get out by using rule 35 of the Federal Rules for Criminal Procedure which means that if the inmate can solve a crime which the federal authorities are unable to solve, then his sentence can be reduced.

The man, Malcolm Bannister, helps other inmates of the prison with their legal issues and in doing so has come across some information about the murder of a judge, in which the Police and the FBI have no clues about the culprit. He plans to barter this information for his freedom but it turns out that Bannister is actually double bluffing the FBI and has a scheme in mind in which he can gain his freedom and walk away with a considerable amount of money as well as a new identity.

Like most of Grisham’s books, this was an excellent holiday read but towards the end it almost feels as though the writer has become a little fed up with this increasingly complicated story and is rushing to get it finished. This was mostly a good read but the end was a little disappointing.

The Boys From Biloxi

This is a very oddball book indeed. It’s not a courtroom drama although courtroom battles do feature in the book. It’s actually a very long-winded story of two families, one on the wrong side of the law and one on the other. One family is part of a rough and ready area of town and owns saloons that have illegal gambling and prostitution on tap and the other family who hope to clean the town up.

A lot of the story is just reeled off like a sort of narration you might listen to in a museum (which is how one review I read described the text). The author just seems to recount a lot of the story in this same long distance way. Eventually the story becomes more fleshed out and detailed when a tornado hits the town and a lawyer with ambitions to become the district attorney helps the residents fight for compensation from insurance companies that do not want to pay out. His success with compensation claims help him to become the DA but he is murdered before he can bring the criminal family to justice. His son however goes on to clean up the town.

Again this was another great holiday read but if I had been reading it at home for twenty minutes or so before going to sleep at night, I reckon that after a few nights I would have perhaps picked up something else to read.

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Watching (and reading) the Detectives

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Liz and I are over here in sunny Lanzarote having exchanged the cold of the UK for the warmth of Lanzarote. Of course, it is still February and things aren’t perfect over here. It’s warm but there are plenty of days when gusty winds blow across the island as well as days when the sun has been obscured by clouds. Even so there are still plenty of bars to drink at, plenty of tapas to be eaten and of course we have plenty of books to read, two of which have inspired this week’s post.

The Thin Man is a book I picked up somewhere in a second hand bookshop. It was written by Dashiell Hammett and features his famous detective, Nick Charles.

Dashiell Hammett was born in May, 1924 and became a writer of detective stories after working for the famous Pinkerton National Detective Agency. In his obituary in the New York Times, they described him as ‘the dean of the hard boiled school of detective fiction.’

Time magazine included his novel Red Harvest, published in 1929, on their list of the 100 best English language novels. The Thin Man was made into a film in 1934 starring William Powell as Nick Charles and Myrna Loy as his wife Nora. I’ve only just started reading the Thin Man and it’s been pretty good so far. One interesting element of it though was finding out that in New York in the mid 1930’s it was possible to find an all-night delicatessen that would deliver coffee and sandwiches at 5 in the morning.

A further 5 sequels in the Thin Man film series were made finishing in 1947 with Songs of the Thin Man.

Another book by the same author is one that Liz got me for Christmas, The Maltese Falcon. I’ve only just scanned through it so far but it looks like being a good read. The book was made into a classic film in 1941 with Humphrey Bogart playing the part of detective Sam Spade. Mary Astor plays Ruth Wanderley who contacts the firm of Spade and Archer to help her track down her missing sister who she thinks might be held against her will by a man called Thursby.  Miles Archer, Spade’s partner decides to take on the case but is found dead by the police later that night.

Spade begins to try and find out what has happened and meets various other characters like Joel Cairo and Kasper Gutman played wonderfully by Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. One of my favourite scenes is where Spade and Gutman meet and Gutman asks ‘are you a close mouthed man?’ Spade replies that no, he likes to talk and Gutman responds famously with ‘I’m a man who likes to talk to a man who likes to talk’.

Hammet died in 1961 of lung cancer and Raymond Chandler said this of him: ‘He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.’

That brings me nicely to another of my favourite detectives, Philip Marlowe and he first appeared in the novel The Big Sleep. The book was written by Raymond Chandler and Chandler had this really fabulous talkative way of writing. You can almost imagine hearing Humphrey Bogart’s voice as you read the book. Bogart of course played Marlowe in the 1946 film version directed by Howard Hawks. Here’s a quote from the book, an example of Chandler’s descriptive style:

I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble. She was stretched out on a modernistic chaise-longue with her slippers off so I stared at her legs in the sheerest silk stocking. They seemed to be arranged to stare at. They were visible to the knee and one of them well beyond. The knees were dimpled, not bony or sharp. The calves were beautiful, the ankles long and slim with enough melodic line for a tone poem. She was tall and rangy and strong looking. Her head was against an ivory satin cushion. Her hair was black and wiry and parted in the middle and she had the hot black eyes of the portrait in the hall. She had a good mouth and a good chin. There was a sulky droop to her lips and the lower lip was full.

Not bad eh? Dilys Powell called his writing ‘a peculiar mixture of harshness, sensuality, high polish and backstreet poetry’ and it’s easy to see why. Mrs Regan was played by Lauren Bacall in the film version and up until now I had always thought this was the film where Bogart and Bacall met. Wrong! A quick check on Wikipedia and I see the couple met on the set of To Have and Have Not in 1944. Bacall was 19 and Bogart was 45 and married to his third wife Mayo Methot at the time. Sparks apparently flew between the couple and Bogart divorced Mayo and married Bacall the next year, 1945. Despite the great on screen chemistry together the couple only made four films together.

The film version of The Big Sleep was a brilliant adaptation of the book and some of the differences are interesting. For instance, early in the book, detective Philip Marlowe played by Bogart meets General Sternwood’s daughter Carmen. She looks at Marlowe and remarks how tall he is. In the film, Bogart of course wasn’t that tall so the dialogue is reversed ‘You’re not very tall, are you?’ comments Carmen.

The plot of the book and film are pretty complicated, although having read the book recently I think that the book is easier to follow. During the filming the director and his stars wondered who killed the character of Owen Taylor, the Sternwood’s chauffeur. They sent a cable to Raymond Chandler asking him. Chandler told a friend later ‘Dammit, I don’t know either!’

One strange element in the film, certainly for me, is a scene where Philip Marlowe (Bogart) is watching blackmailer Geiger. Geiger has a shop that sells rare books in Hollywood and Marlowe asks for information in another bookshop opposite. There he chats to a bookseller played by Dorothy Malone who, if you are old enough, you will remember her from the Peyton Place TV series. Malone and Bogart seem to hit it off well in the film but he never returns to the bookshop and Dorothy is never seen again in the film.

Every time I watch the film, I always expect Malone to reappear but that’s one of the many dead ends the film leads us down. I think it was Hitchcock who said that every scene in a film should lead the audience somewhere and Quentin Tarantino of course said the reverse. Perhaps director Howard Hawks favoured Tarantino’s view.

Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson (image via creative commons)

Perhaps the most famous literary detective is Sherlock Holmes, created by the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, first appearing in the story A Study in Scarlet. The stories are narrated by Holmes’ friend and companion, Doctor Watson. The Guinness Book of Records reports Holmes as the most portrayed character in film and television history.

My personal favourite Sherlock Holmes in the cinema was the version created by Basil Rathbone in a series of films beginning in 1939. 14 films were made with Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce playing the part of Dr Watson. The first two films were set in the Victorian era and were produced by Twentieth Century Fox. The later films were produced by Universal who set the films in, what was then, the present time period, that of the second world war.

Time now to move onto my favourite TV detective, the bumbling Lieutenant Columbo.

Columbo first appeared in the early 1970s as part of the Mystery Movie TV series. Each week followed a different detective trying to track down a murder case, sometimes it was MacMillan and Wife and other weeks McCloud, Banacek or various others. The most popular one by far though was Columbo.

Columbo was a homicide detective for the LAPD and he was played by Peter Falk, although the role was originally written for Bing Crosby. Crosby however thought a regular TV slot would interfere too much with his golf so he turned down the role, went back to the fairway and the part went to Peter Falk who made it his own.

If you ever see the original pilot, shot in 1968, you can see how Crosby might have fitted into the part, as Falk plays Columbo in a very Crosby like laid back way. The very first guest murderer was Gene Barry who was familiar to TV audiences after playing Amos Burke in Burke’s Law for many years. He also starred in a 1953 film version of War of the Worlds.

The pilot episode also introduced audiences to a particular feature of Columbo, in that we see who the murderer is and how he commits the crime first. Then we see Lieutenant Columbo gradually solve the clues and get his man, or woman. The essence then of a great episode comes in the clever way Columbo nails the murderer. Sometimes that moment is a bit of a non starter, other times it’s nothing short of brilliant. Sometimes, even if that final moment is not so great, it’s still been a great episode.

The Columbo of the early series is an absent-minded quirky fellow although in later episodes, Peter Falk who plays the detective, seems to downplay that quirky element.

Favourite episode? I’m not certain but it might be ‘Murder by the Book‘, starring my favourite murderer, Jack Cassidy. In this 1971 episode, Jack plays a writer, actually part of a writing double act, who together produce a series of novels about ‘Mrs Melville’ who is an amateur detective. The thing is, Jack’s partner wants to ditch the partnership but Jack is not happy about it. He is so unhappy he decides to, yes you guessed it, bump off his co-writer. He does it in a rather ingenious way which foxes Columbo but not for long and to cap it all, the episode is directed by none other than Steven Spielberg!

So who was your favourite fictional detective?

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Holiday Book Bag 2024 Part 4

Posted on by Steve Higgins

As usual I always take a number of books with me to read when I’m on holiday. There is nothing better than having a long pleasant read in the sun interrupted only by visits to the pool. This year we only had a swimming pool for just over a week and even then there wasn’t much sun but I still managed to get in some reading. Anyway, time to open up my book bag and see what’s in there.

The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh

This was a book which I read a long time ago and thought it was ready for a re-read. It is essentially a book which tries to shatter the image of the long dead President Kennedy. It’s an exercise in character assassination and talks exclusively about JFK’s numerous faults without any balancing stories about what he actually did well.

The Bay of Pigs was a great disaster for Kennedy. He inherited the invasion plans from the Eisenhower administration in which Vice President Nixon was a prime mover. Nixon felt that an invasion would boost his chances in the election contest against Kennedy but the CIA seemed to be relying on the assassination of Castro to kick off the invasion but that planned murder, for whatever reason, never happened.

JFK told the CIA that US forces would not be assisting in the operation but it turned out that the CIA was relying on exactly that, intervention by US forces. The invasion was a disaster and Kennedy privately blamed the CIA who he felt were trying to force his hand in committing American forces. Hersh of course, blames Kennedy.

The most shocking element of the book probably comes from interviews with four former secret servicemen who tell numerous stories of JFK’s aides, Dave Powers and Kenny O’Donnell, bringing in call girls and prostitutes to service the President whenever his wife Jackie wasn’t around. The White House pool seems to have been a particular favourite of Kennedy’s, not for a relaxing swim but for naked skinny dipping and sex with various women, some of whom were White House secretaries.

Throw into the mix father Joe Kennedy’s booze smuggling activities and relentless spending to get his son elected and the author paints a pretty dark picture of the Kennedy White House. Still, as I said earlier, this book is a one sided view. It’s worth reading more about JFK before you make your mind up.

Ten Days to Destiny by John Costello

I’ve always been interested in the Rudolf Hess mystery. Why did Hess fly to England? Why are the Hess files sealed for so long? What was the real story? This was a book about the mystery or so I thought. Actually it’s about the various peace initiatives that were made even while Churchill, the new prime minister, had vowed to fight on and which eventually culminate in Hess arriving in the UK in the latter part of the book.

After the declaration of war in 1939 the government had to bring in Churchill who had long warned about the Nazi menace. Later, when the government realised that a national government was needed, comprising all the main parties, the opposition, the labour party led by Clement Attlee, refused to serve under Neville Chamberlain who they believed had actually caused the crisis by his policy of appeasement. Chamberlain wanted Lord Halifax to take over as prime minister and even put the question to Churchill, asking him would the country be willing to accept a leader in the Lords rather than the Commons. Churchill declined to answer and of course it was later that Chamberlain recommended Churchill to the King.

The author seems to think that part of the deal with Churchill was that Chamberlain should stay in the government and also still retain the leadership of the Conservative party. He even seems to think that Chamberlain had plans to return to number 10 Downing street at a later date. However, Chamberlain died of cancer not long afterwards.

Various others though, in particular Lord Halifax, seemed to be putting out peace feelers to representatives of Hitler who wanted to turn his attention to the Soviet Union rather than fight with the UK. Various people seemed to be trying to negotiate including Mussolini and the Pope. The flight of Hess seems to have come about because of letters intercepted by MI5 from Hess to the Duke of Devonshire. MI5 sent fake replies to Hess which encouraged him to come to the UK for unofficial talks.

Overall this was an interesting book but not not an easy one to read.

Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency by Nigel Hamilton

This book was the sequel to another book about Bill Clinton. The first one dealt with Clinton’s early life and his election to the presidency; this one takes us through his first four years as president. The author takes us through the years of the Clinton White House and documents the issues like Troopergate; when the former Governor Clinton’s State Troopers revealed the comings and goings of Bill’s various mistresses, as well as the disaster of his healthcare reform work which he entrusted to his wife Hillary. The public clearly weren’t keen on Clinton’s ‘co-president’ – his wife, and their healthcare proposals were rejected by Congress. The mid term elections were another disaster for Clinton and the Democrats and the book goes on to show how Clinton turned the final two years of his first term presidency around and was able to win a second term.

Unlike the book above, this one was a very easy read and each chapter comes in easily digestible bite size sections.

Encore Provence by Peter Mayle

This is the second follow up to the wonderful A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle. The first follow up was Toujours Provence and neither seem to me to have captured the essential warmth of the first book. This one, just like Toujours is a series of unconnected essays about life in France. It’s a pleasant enough read but not a patch on the original.

Seems Like a Nice Boy by Mike Maylon.

This is a short biography of Larry Grayson the comedian and one time host of the BBCs Generation Game. I’ve always kind of liked Larry and his camp performances. He was an old style entertainer who found fame in later life after years of summer seasons and working men’s clubs. In a lot of ways his act was similar to the stand up comedy of today; it was a chatty, observational style of comedy that concerned his many creations such as Everard and Slack Alice.

Many have speculated about his true sexuality but it’s clear that Larry enjoyed being labelled as camp rather than gay. The main relationship in his life was with his sister who became a mother figure to him when his adoptive mother died. The two lived next door to each other for many years in later life.

Larry’s career seemed to end when he stepped down from The Generation Game, assuming the BBC would find him some other TV vehicle. They never did. Larry died in 1994.

All in all, an enjoyable read with some interesting insights into the world of entertainment.

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Holiday Book Bag 2024 Part 3

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Parts one and two of my Book Bag were books I had taken to Lanzarote earlier in the year. This time Liz and I are tootling through France in our small motorhome. The weather has not been kind to us and rather than reading in the usual lovely sun, I’ve been reading indoors away from the rain. This year quite a few of my books are ones I have read before but I thought were due for a re-read. Anyway, here we go . . .

Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle

I wrote about this book a few weeks ago and you might be thinking ‘bet he’s included it here to pad out his post a bit’. Moi? As if I’d do such a thing. It’s the follow up to A Year in Provence, one of my favourite books about France by Peter Mayle. It’s a pleasant enough read but not a patch on the original.

Random Harvest by James Hilton

Wait a minute. Didn’t this guy write about this book a few weeks ago as well? Actually I did but as it was part of my book bag I thought I’d include it here anyway. A nice read, slightly different to the film starring Ronald Colman and Greer Garson. It was written before World War II and reflects the feelings of the time that perhaps more could have been done to either prevent the war or at least prepare more. A great read but I actually think I preferred the film to the book. Click here to read the full film and book review.

A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke

I read this book a few years ago and thought I’d throw it in my book bag for another read. As I remember, the first time round I absolutely loved this book. I saw it on a stall at a market once and mentioned to the seller what a great read it was. ‘Nah.’ replied the man. ‘It’s full of stereotypes!’ I wouldn’t say that at all. It’s a look at the life of a young man working in France as he tries to understand the French way of life and of course the language. The main character is engaged on a project to open an English tea room in Paris but feels that his boss and his colleagues are not that interested at all and when he eventually gets dropped by the company, he goes on to open the tea room himself. A nice read, humourous rather than laugh out loud funny and a little more biting than the Peter Mayle books. It’s a fun holiday read which goes a long way towards deciphering the French psyche.

The Kennedy Half Century by Larry J Sabato

This was billed as the ultimate Kennedy book but sadly it isn’t. It tells the story of John Kennedy and his run for the vice presidency, his years as a senator and then his presidential run. It goes on to look at his presidential years and then his murder and the last half of the book looks at how subsequent presidents have fared compared to JFK and the impact of Kennedy’s own presidency on the latter ones, all the way up to Obama.

A lot of it is interesting but there is nothing that I haven’t not only read about before but read in much more detail. The life and death of John Kennedy is one of my great interests. His murder happened on November the 22nd, 1963 when I was just seven years old and since then I’ve watched documentary after documentary and read numerous books.

The author tries to show an open mind about the assassination, looking briefly at the many theories that have been put forward over the years. Was the CIA or the mafia involved? Were the culprits the Cubans or the anti-Cubans? Was the military industrial complex behind the murder as Oliver Stone suggests in the film JFK? Perhaps it really was Oswald after all.

Looking back I think that one of the drawbacks to the book is that the author hasn’t really made his mind up what he actually thinks has happened. If he had a viewpoint himself, the narrative might have had more focus. The only real investigative effort in the book was to review the acoustical evidence, a recording made by a police officer with a microphone jammed open during the shooting and which led the House Select Committee on Assassinations to declare there was a shooter on the famous grassy knoll.

Well, maybe not says the author. Their research pinpoints a different officer with the jammed microphone and not the one selected by the HSCA which means there wasn’t another shooter after all. OK but there were clear shots of gunfire on the tape. Where did they come from? The author seems to think that they may have been noises from the officer’s motorcycle. Really?

An interesting read but the final chapters on the subsequent presidents and their relationships to JFK was actually a pretty pointless exercise that could have been summed up in just one chapter. If you would like to find out more, the book has its own website where you can read, among other things, the review of the acoustical evidence. Click here to access.

A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow

This is another book that has been made into a successful film and also a great TV series. It’s a kitchen sink drama set in the early 1960s about a young Yorkshire lad who gets a girl pregnant and then realises he really wasn’t as in love with her as he thought he was. I’ve actually read this book quite a few times and it’s one of those that I mention when people ask me to describe Floating in Space. As much as I’m fond of Floating, this book is infinitely better. It’s a very simple story and probably one that has happened hundreds of times to hundreds of couples.

If you ever watch the TV series Long Lost Family, it shows that many people were in the same position as the couple in the book only instead of getting married, some young mothers in the 1950s and 60s were forced to give up illegitimate children for adoption.

Vic and Ingrid, the fictional couple, do get married even though Vic hopes for a last minute escape before the wedding day arrives. Not only is the main story authentic but so is the background to the book. Vic is a draughtsman in Yorkshire and his father is a miner.

The description of family life back then rings a bell with my own background in Manchester. Vic’s mother is a lot like my mother and there is a very lovely chapter when Vic goes to give blood with his father and then the two pop into the local pub for a pint. It was just like moments out with my own father, down to the banter with my mother when we both returned home. A wonderful read and so glad I brought it along to France.

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Random Harvest: The Film of the Book or the Book of the Film

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Once again Liz and I are on holiday in France and as usual I’ve filled up my book bag with books to read. My selection this year was a mix of new books and some books from my collection which I haven’t read for years. The one I’d like to focus on this week is Random Harvest by one of my favourite writers, James Hilton.

Hilton hailed from Leigh in Lancashire, now Greater Manchester. He wrote several books and made his way to Hollywood, California where he worked as a screenwriter. He died in 1954. Searching through a box of my old books I came across Random Harvest, a book I don’t think I have ever read before. I bought it from a second hand book shop along with Goodbye Mr Chips, possibly Hilton’s most famous novel and one I have read before. I can imagine intending to read it but moving on to something else and the book was boxed up in one of numerous house moves before I had a chance to get to it.

The Film

The film version starred Ronald Colman and Greer Garson in the leading roles. The film opens with a man called Smith wandering out of an asylum on a day when there is much excitement. It is Armistice Day, 1918 and ‘Smithy’ is a man who has lost his memory during the fighting in the First World War. He wanders down to the town of Melbury and in a tobacco shop the shopkeeper realises Smithy is from the asylum. When she disappears into the back of the shop a woman played by Greer Garson explains that the shopkeeper has gone to call the asylum so that he if wants to avoid going back he must get away. The woman, Paula, befriends Smithy and hides him away and soon she finds she is falling for him. The two elope together, find a quiet village in which to settle down and get married.

Smithy, who has no memory of his former life begins to write and soon has a story accepted by a newspaper in Liverpool. He takes the train there for an interview with the editor but on a wet afternoon, slips in the road and is hit by a taxi. He is knocked unconscious and when he awakes his memory has returned but he has no memory of his time as Smithy. How did he get to Liverpool? What door to what house fits the key found in his pocket? A policeman asks his name and he replies ‘Charles Rainier’. Gathering his things he sets off to take the train home to his country estate but arrives just as his father has passed away. The family has gathered and they are all surprised but glad to see Charles who later goes on to take charge and rescue the failing family business.

The final part of the film sees Charles happy as a new Conservative MP and successful businessman but also sad that a part of his life has been lost to him. He makes various attempts to find his former life but all end in failure until one night when a strike breaks out at the Melbury factory and he has to go there to sort things out. As he walks into Melbury he comes to the tobacco shop he once entered as ‘Smithy’ and things begin to come back to him.

Colman and Greer Garson play their parts wonderfully well. The film is perhaps a little sentimental for modern viewers but it is one of those films I saw as a child and have always remembered. Reviewers at the time were not impressed but even so, the film was nominated for 7 Oscars and it was MGM’s biggest hit of 1942.

The Book

The book tells the story in an entirely different way. It begins with a chance encounter on a train with Rainier and a young man who is looking for work. The two strike up a sort of friendship and Rainier invites the young man to work for him, He explains that he was in the war, was injured and woke up in a German hospital with loss of memory. He was repatriated through Switzerland but got his memory back after a fall and a collision with a taxi in Liverpool. The time between his earlier life and waking up in Liverpool is a blank. The young man becomes Rainier’s assistant and the two sometimes talk late into the night discussing what might have happened. Later in the book, Rainier is called to intervene at a dispute at the Melbury factory and his memory begins to return. He asks a local taxi driver about the hospital. The man asks does he mean the new or the old one? Rainier thinks the old one and goes on to describe it. ‘That doesn’t sound like either of them,’ answers the man but adds, ‘would you be meaning the asylum sir?’

The book is a really interesting read and being written in the years before the second world war, gives the reader a little insight into the feelings of that time, a dissatisfaction with the League of Nations, a feeling that perhaps the First World War could have been settled sooner or even that the allies might have gone on to Berlin and perhaps parcelled up Germany into a smaller nation.

The climax of the book is Charles’ reunion with Paula who turns out to be his wife and former secretary so we find that Charles and Smithy married the same girl which worked well in the book but of course had to be told differently in the film.

Which did I enjoy more? Well I loved both works but to be fair I’ve always loved the film version and as much as I love James Hilton, I think I prefer the film. It isn’t often seen on TV and not long ago I managed to copy my VHS version to DVD but I did notice that a restored DVD version was released in 2005 which I must look out for.

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Celebrating Charles Dickens

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Charles Dickens is one of my writing heroes. He is a giant in the world of literature and the author of one of my favourite books of all time, David Copperfield. He was a man with an incredible imagination and was a prodigious producer of numerous books and stories. Many of his works are still loved and appreciated today and the magic of his story telling is also reflected in film and television adaptations of his work.

Dickens was born on February 7th, 1812. His father was John Dickens, a clerk in the Naval Pay Office. His mother was Elizabeth Dickens and she and her husband raised eight children including Charles, their second child. Charles and his family had a pretty idyllic life until John Dickens, who clearly lived beyond his means, was arrested for debts and incarcerated in the Marshallsea debtors’ prison in Southwark, London.

As was the custom then the younger members of the family were able to live in the prison with their mother and father but Charles, then aged 12, took lodgings nearby and was forced to leave school and work in Warren’s Blacking Warehouse where he earned six shillings a week for pasting labels on bottles of boot blacking.

It was a shocking and humiliating experience for the young Dickens. He never mentioned the experience to any of his children and only spoke about it in later life to his great friend John Forster, who later wrote the first biography of Dickens. Dickens also wrote about the experience in his novel David Copperfield in which the young Copperfield suffers the same fate.

My well thumbed copy of David Copperfield

Mr Micawber, a character in the same book, was based on his own father and eventually John Dickens was able to pay off his debts when his mother died and left him £450. He and his family were released from prison but Charles was not immediately released from his work at the boot blacking warehouse, indeed his mother wanted him to continue there but it was his father who decided that Charles should return to school. Charles was forever indebted to his father for this and forever hurt by his mother’s wish that he should continue pasting labels onto bottles of boot blacking. The experience scarred him and his later desire to work harder and earn more and more money may have been a need to make himself safe from ever being forced into such a situation again.

After two years at school, Dickens obtained employment as a lawyer’s clerk and later, he taught himself shorthand and began work as a parliamentary reporter. He became infatuated at this time with a lady called Maria Beadnall who later became the inspiration for the character of Dora in David Copperfield. Charles pursued Maria over a period of three years but the romance, if indeed there ever was one, finally fizzled out in the spring of 1833.

Dickens first foray into the world of creative fiction was a short story titled A Dinner at Poplar Walk. He had sent the story to a monthly magazine simply called, The Monthly Magazine and upon finding his story printed within its pages, reported that ‘his eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride’ that he could barely see.

In 1835 the editor of the Morning Chronicle, George Hogarth, invited Dickens to contribute to his newspaper and during various visits to the Hogarth home he became acquainted with his editor’s daughter Catherine, whom he later married in 1836.

Dickens wrote his newspaper stories under the pseudonym Boz, and he was delighted when a publisher offered to publish a collection of his works entitled Sketches by Boz. This led to another publisher asking Dickens to supply the text to go with a series of illustrations by a popular illustrator of the day, Robert Stephens. Dickens somehow managed to turn the arrangement on its head, writing a story and having Stephens illustrate Dicken’s text. The story was The Pickwick Papers and it soon became something of a publishing phenomenon.

Robert Stephens passed away soon after the first publication and Dickens recruited another artist, Hablot Knight Browne, to provide the illustrations. Readers could buy a monthly instalment priced at a shilling and Dickens worked hard to produce each edition. Other stories had been published in a similar way but they were usually well known classics. This was the first time new fiction had been produced in this way.

That then was the start of Dicken’s career. He was a busy man, editing various publications as well as writing his novels. Great Expectations was published with the author shown as Boz but in later editions this was changed to Charles Dickens.

Dickens_by_Watkins_1858

Dickens seems to have rented various houses, moving around often but he eventually bought a house in 1851, Tavistock House in Tavistock Square, London. Dickens wrote various books here starting with Bleak House. He also fancied himself as something of an actor and he had a large room made into an improvised theatre where he, along with his friends and family, produced various amateur theatricals. In 1858, Charles separated from his wife Catherine and she moved out into a property in Camden Town.

The separation was said to have been sparked by Dickens’ obsession with a young actress called Ellen Ternan and his gift of either a brooch or a bracelet to her which somehow made its way to his wife. Dickens has this image of being the perfect Victorian family man but he didn’t always live up to it. According to Wikipedia he even tried to get his wife falsely diagnosed as mentally ill in order to have her committed to an asylum. Various accusations were bandied about at the time and rumours were so bad that Dickens himself was forced to publish a statement in the press about his marital situation.

Did Dickens have an affair with Ellen Ternan? So many years later it is hard to know the truth. One night when he was living at his new home Gad’s Hill Place, Dickens made a bonfire of all his personal letters and papers, some of which may have had the answers.

Certainly, Charles was fond of Ellen Ternan. He spent a lot of time with her and even took her abroad to France and Belgium but neither admitted to having an affair but he did have something of a history of obsessions. Years earlier he had been distraught when his sister-in-law Mary Hogarth had died suddenly at the age of 17. Mary was living with the Dickens family at the time and died in Charles’ arms. He was so upset that he kept his dead sister in law’s clothes for years afterwards, occasionally taking them out to look at them. Mary became the template for many women in his books, all of whom were ‘young, beautiful and good’.

Dickens had an incredible imagination and although many of his characters were based on real people, many others sprang directly from his own mind. He was a restless man and regularly took daily and nightly walks of twenty miles and more. Presumably on those walks he brought his imagination into check and channelled his thoughts into the development of his stories.

In his later life, Charles embarked on a series of readings from his books. The readings were highly charged emotional events and the author used all his powers as an actor to delight his audiences, frequently reducing them to tears. Tickets for the reading were highly sought after and Dickens was one of the most notable and famous men of his day. Imagine George Clooney or Brad Pitt doing a series of book readings today and we can get just a faint hint of what things were like for Dickens and his public back then.

Dickens bought his final home, Gad’s Hill Place in March of 1856. He had seen the house as a child when his father had pointed the house out to him as something that he might one day own if he worked hard enough. He lived at the house with his children although one, Charles junior, elected to live with his mother in Camden Town. Strangely, his estranged wife’s sister, Georgina, stayed with Charles as housekeeper.

On June 8th 1870, Dickens had a stroke after working on his final book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He died the next day without regaining consciousness. Some have speculated that he died at Ellen Ternan’s house and she had him taken back to Gad’s Hill to prevent a scandal. He was laid to rest in Poets Corner at Westminster Abbey.

Charles Dickens is one of the most loved and celebrated writers of all time but I’ve got to say that some of his books I’ve found a little hard to read. I’ve tried and tried to read Pickwick Papers but I just couldn’t get through it. Not long ago I picked up Bleak House and once again I couldn’t really get started on the book. I have read A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and my absolute favourite, David Copperfield.

My favourite character in the book, apart from Copperfield himself, is Steerforth, a friend of David Copperfield but one who ultimately betrays him. The best part in the book probably, for me at any rate, is the storm when David returns to Yarmouth. Dickens builds the storm slowly and each word and phrase adds a new layer to the sense of danger and foreboding and when Copperfield is finally reunited with his old friend Steerforth at the height of the storm’s ferocity, death comes between them and Steerforth is sadly drowned.

Dickens reveals this in a very unique way; he does not tell the reader Steerforth is dead. He leaves the reader to realise this themselves and, in the process, makes the reader almost at one with the narrative. Throughout the book, Dickens mentions in passing about Steerforth’s habit of sleeping with his head on his arm. It’s referred to many times in the narrative almost as a matter of non interest, something unimportant that the reader doesn’t really need to know, but when David Copperfield spies someone aboard a stricken ship trapped in the fierce storm who evokes some faint remembrance for him, a tiny warning bell is set off.

Finally, when the body of a drowned man is brought ashore and lies mutely on the sand, his head upon his arm, we know just from that simple bit of information, without the author telling us anything more, that Steerforth is dead. The prompts and clues that Dickens has hinted at have paid off for the reader in the most satisfying of ways.

Dickens’ books are still popular today and a recent cinema version of David Copperfield was released in 2019. It was good although I do have a fondness for the 1935 version in which WC Fields plays the part of Mr Micawber. In 1946 David Lean directed one of the best ever films of a Dickens’ story, Great Expectations. In the 1960’s Oliver Twist was made into a stage musical by Lionel Bart and the film version was released in 1968.

Dickens’ most filmed story though is probably A Christmas Carol, the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and the three ghostly visits that transform his life.

What is your favourite Dickens’ story?

Sources:

Wikipedia

Dickens by Peter Ackroyd

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