PHAUDE.com

On the day that sees Jonathan Ross’s return to the nation’s television screens, and when every columnist and cultural commentator seems, yet again, to be tiresomely banging on about the BBC, its function and responsibilities (ugh), here are two sides of a different, though superficially similar, argument from the papers which I read recently:

“Surely we have enough horrors already in the daily papers – outrages and murders of little girls – and the broadcasting of this sort of thing only encourages the morbid tendency which leads to these crimes. I submit that the BBC is making a gross misuse of its powers.”

“Those who do not want this sort of excitement can always switch off and leave the others to their enjoyment. If the BBC is to make progress, it ought to be given a free hand and not be intimidated by minorities. Otherwise it will become a mere purveyor of the lowest common denominator in amusement.”

The first is from an unnamed correspondent in the Morning Post, the second a leader from the Evening Star. Both are from 16th January 1932 and relate to the first radio broadcast of Patrick Hamilton’s play, Rope. The controversy, such as it was, was deliberately fomented by Val Gielgud in order to provide free publicity for the broadcast, and shows that press manipulation and public debate about the rôle of the BBC has been going on since its inception and that, thankfully, wittering from either side of the debate was then ultimately as ineffectual as it is now: millions were entertained when they tuned in to listen.

Patrick Hamilton has been a favourite author of mine since a friend put me on to his 1941 novel Hangover Square when I was at university. Set in the growing shadows of Fascism before the Second World War, it’s a blackly comic if unsettling read, the story of George Harvey Bone, a lonely schizophrenic ill-equipped to deal with his own life, who falls for an archetypal wrong woman in whom he mistakenly sees an escape from his miserable existence. Inevitably, he descends ever further in to alcoholic madness as a result of his growing obsession in the face of her indifference to, and exploitation of, him. As a study in human frailty it serves as an extreme warning to all who find their hearts leading them in the wrong direction of what might happen if they can’t see when to abandon their folly. The power and compassion of Hamilton’s writing is such that, as you watch Bone gradually fall apart, you find yourself on his side even though you can see his mistakes for what they are and are desperately urging him to come to his senses. It is this which makes the ending truly tragic: it could all so easily have been prevented if only he had been more self-aware. Hamilton speaks to the victim in all of us, and Bone suffers vicariously on our behalf. If you haven’t read it then you’re in for a treat.

Most of Hamilton’s books are currently in print, as is Nigel Jones’ biography Through A Glass Darkly (published by the superb Black Spring Press, the small imprint which led the Kyril Bonfiglioli revival in the 1990s, and which also introduced me to the writings of Julian Maclaren-Ross, for which I will be eternally grateful).