Christmas book presents

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A Glass of Blessings, Barbara Pym, Boris Johnson, British Library Crime Classics, Calamity in Kent, Death in Fancy Dress, Death Makes a Prophet, Excellent Women, How Novels Work, John Mullan, Marital harmony, Mystery in White, National Coal Board, Rumpole of the Bailey, The 12.30 from Croydon, The Division Bell Mystery, The Sussex Downs Murder, Whisky, William Hague, William Pitt the Younger

How do you make sure you get the books you want for Christmas?  Asking for a friend.

The friend in question has a birthday in December, so this is something that looms large for him at this time of year.  He is known to like detective novels, especially from the Golden Age, so if things are just left to chance there is the risk that he will get any number of the excellent British Library Crime Classics series that he already has.  How many copies of Death in Fancy Dress and The Sussex Downs Murder can his bookshelf stock, when what he’d actually like is The Division Bell Mystery or The 12.30 from Croydon?

One answer is to drop hints.  But not everyone has a good ear for hints, or takes the further hint to pass these hints on to other potential donors.  This form of chain letter can easily get broken, or turn into a game of Chinese Whispers, in which what started life as William Hague’s biography of Pitt the Younger materialises under the Christmas tree as the National Coal Board’s Yearbook for 1975.

So my friend has adopted the practice of making no bones about it but distributing to his nearest and dearest a list of the presents he would like to see in December.  This list is mostly books, but the words ‘good whisky’ do appear there, as does a box set of the Rumpole of the Bailey TV series.  It is then left to the nearest and dearest to liaise, so that the aforesaid NCB Yearbook doesn’t jostle under the tree on Christmas morning with three copies of How Novels Work by John Mullan.

The list has to be specific.  For example, my friend has recently been introduced to Barbara Pym by a ninevoice, so the list reads, “Any novel by Barbara Pym except A Glass of Blessings or Excellent Women.”  This gets rather strange-looking (and off-putting to anyone getting the list who isn’t in the ‘nearest and dearest’ category) when we get to the aforesaid British Library books: “Any in the series of The British Library Crime Classics: I already have Mystery in White, Calamity in Kent, Death Makes a Prophet … [etc etc]”.

You may say, this prescriptive approach eliminates surprise, and the chance of being given something quite new.  In fact it doesn’t quite work like that.  Present-givers still do make their own decisions, which can prompt the “Why did they think I’d like this?” question.  And this way my friend’s library can get unexpected additions, like a biography of our present Prime Minister last year …

There is a related problem.  Asking for books mean that you get, well, more books.  You may run out of bookshelf space.  I find My friend finds that books he has recently been given have to share floor space with box files, unhung pictures, shoeboxes of what were once thought to be essential photos, and the like.  This can lead to friction in the marital home. 

How do you do it?  What advice should I, er, pass on to my friend?

‘A Perfect Book’ – John Betjeman and Excellent Women

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Barbara Pym, Barbara Pym Society, Carolyn Pickles, Excellent Women, Frances Grey, Georgia Powell, Jane Slavin, John Betjeman, Malcolm Sinclair, Martin Hutson, Penelope Wilton, St Alban's Centre, Tristram Powell

For John Betjeman, Barbara Pym’s novel Excellent Women was ‘a perfect book’. Nobody listening to a splendid adaptation of it at the Barbara Pym Society Spring meeting in London would disagree. Probably some of the audience had read it so many times they practically knew every delicious line.

But what came across forcibly was that the novel, as adapted here by Georgia Powell and directed by Tristram Powell, worked so brilliantly in the format of a radio play. Large chunks and several characters were cut out but it was still perfect. This must be because the book is really written as a series of delightfully observed scenes; we are not waiting impatiently to see what happens next but savouring the fullness of every moment.

Each character in a Barbara Pym novel has a distinctive way of speaking; what they say could not possibly be spoken by anyone else. Another writing lesson here, I found myself thinking. I happily shut my eyes and listened to the actors playing the characters who are always living in the heads of Barbara Pym devotees, some of them taking on multiple parts – Frances Grey, Malcolm Sinclair, Martin Hutson, Jane Slavin, Carolyn Pickles – and Penelope Wilton as the narrator capturing the sly comedy of Barbara Pym’s voice.

Excellent Women was published in 1952, twenty years after John Betjeman’s first radio programme. If he’d been sitting with us in the St Alban’s Centre on Sunday he too would have revelled in this adaptation of the book he described as perfect. As he wrote, ‘Excellent Women is England, and, thank goodness, it is full of them.’

P D James

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crime fiction, Excellent Women, P D James

P D James – one of the greats. RIP

Thank goodness for Barbara Pym

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Alexander McCall Smith, Barbara Pym, Excellent Women, Jane Austen, Jilly Cooper, Mavis Cheek, Reading, Waterstones

‘The Jane Austen of our day’ wrote A L Rowse. ‘I could go on reading her for ever.’ Yes, I know the feeling.

2013 is a brilliant year for fans of Barbara Pym; her centenary is being celebrated, and there are some splendid new editions of her novels being promoted, with introductions by popular authors such as Alexander McCall Smith, Mavis Cheek and Jilly Cooper. I found a table full of them in our local Waterstones, with a tempting offer for June…as Mavis Cheek writes, ‘Re-reading the entire canon, ten novels in all, has been pure bliss.’

It’s surprising (and reassuring) that Barbara Pym is so much admired by men, for much of the subtle comedy in her novels revolves around their not always endearing weaknesses and foibles. Do they recognise themselves and feel grateful that alongside the sharpness of wit there is tenderness and forgiveness to be found among the excellent women who pepper the novels?

Barbara Pym’s world is full of people like ourselves. Such a relief. No dungeons, designer living, desperate villains. But anyone who dismisses her as niminy-piminy has made a mistake. She’s never going to be up for the bad sex scene award, but passion of all kinds is there and not only among the young: self-deception, infidelity, unrequited devotion, romantic yearnings, cruel disappointment, misguided infatuation and homosexual love.

So as with Jane Austen, the novels may appear to be about the small doings of ordinary people, but they are lifted up into great and lasting literature by Barbara Pym’s extraordinary ear for the hidden tragedies as well as the small poignancies and comedies of our common experience. Such riches!

There’s a Barbara Pym Society centenary conference ‘Remembering Barbara’ at Oxford on August 30-September 1. It sounds wonderful. More details at http://www.barbara-pym.org