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Tag Archives: Excellent Women

‘A Perfect Book’ – John Betjeman and Excellent Women

14 Tuesday May 2019

Posted by ninevoices in Characters, radio, Tanya

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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

27 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by ninevoices in Crime, Ed, Fiction, News

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crime fiction, Excellent Women, P D James

P D James – one of the greats. RIP

Thank goodness for Barbara Pym

18 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by ninevoices in Books, Fiction, Tanya

≈ 6 Comments

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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

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