PHAUDE.com

It has been said that conversation amongst dull, middlebrow, middle class folk will eventually and inevitably turn to the subjects of schools and property at some given point at any dinner party. These subjects having been exhausted, someone will then think themselves interesting to mention Desert Island Discs. “What will -” (the presumptuous ‘will’ rather than the all-too-realistic ‘would’ belies the arrogance of the questioner) “- what will your chosen records be?”

Being dull, middlebrow, and middle class myself I have of course thought about my answer. I don’t for a moment imagine that the occasion will ever occur when I will be invited to appear on the programme – and if I were to be asked to be banished to Plomley’s island I’d get horribly bogged down in technicalities as I decided on my choices. Should I opt for my actual favourites or those that would make me look cultured and interesting? Should I use the opportunity to choose neglected records that deserve airplay? I know I’d just get flustered and opt for some stupid mixture of Vivian Stanshall, angsty 90s ‘music for bedwetters’, 20s jazz, 70s lounge music and thumping, brassy, classical stuff before instantly regretting my choices. (Practically of course all this is rendered spectacularly irrelevant if one asks for an ipod as a luxury item. I’m surprised no one’s tried that yet.)

However, something that causes me more thought in idle moments (of which, embarrassingly, I have many) is this: what would my Desert Island Books be? If I had to chose eight books, and eight only, to last me the rest of my days what would they be?

There are dull technicalities relating to this too. My rules:

Series shall count as individual books. Thus, for example, Powell’s Dance To The Music Of Time, Raven’s Alms For Oblivion, Proust’s (God help us) A La Recherche de Temps Perdu will all count as one book each, even if spread over several volumes.

The current list (in no particular order) is:

1. Kyril Bonfiglioli’s Mortdecai Trilogy
2. Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities
3. PG Wodehouse’s Psmith books
4. Brewer’s Dictionary of Rogues, Villains & Eccentrics (William Donaldson)
5. Philip Larkin’s Complete Poems
6. The Compleet Molesworth by Willans & Searle
7. Anthony Powell’s Dance To The Music Of Time sequence
8. The OED

(Close contenders: Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual, Simon Raven’s Alms For Oblivion, Kingsley Amis’ Collected Letters, Julian Maclaren-Ross’s Collected Memoirs, Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose tetralogy, G.K.Chesterton’s Collected Essays, Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Dream Songs by John Berryman and many, as the old ads had it, many more…)

I reserve the right to change my mind in the morning though. Please give me suggestions. I need new stuff to read.

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).