Prescott: a class act...?

I keep reading reviews of Prescott: The Class System and Me (Mondays, 9pm, BBC2) so decided I should watch it. No great surprises - Prescott is what we all know him to be - proud of his working-class roots but equally proud of his large house ("Prescott Castle"), his Jags and his croquet. What a conundrum the man is! - or so the voiceover kept telling us. I don't have any strong feelings for the man - good on him for getting to where he is, though he can be rather annoying. The reviews have all raved about the wonders of Pauline Prescott, who seems like a pleasant well-meaning woman, if rather less hard-edged than her husband, who declares "The upper classes are the enemy!" Two scenes seemd particularly revealing: firstly, when he met some teenage girls, who explained to him what chavs were and that they weren't chavs. Prescott asked what class they thought they were; one of them asserted she was middle-class. Prescott expressed surprise; he thought she was working class. "But I don't work," she explained patiently. I presume her trust fund keeps her going while she looks for a job. He seemed proud of his ability to communicate with these youngsters; however, this was based on swapping tales of people they have punched. Not a great role model, then. The other moment was at Henley, where Prescott, clearly uncomfortable among the blazers and Pimms, points out to some young men that "only 7.5% of the population go to private schools, but they occupy 80% of high-level civil service, legal and political positions". This is wrong, he explains. One of the lads asks if perhaps that's indicative of the standard of education offered by the private schools. Prescott glosses over this. But surely this is exactly the point. The programme stresses over and over that class is not about money. They don't consider exactly what it is about, but the essence of it, as Prescott agonises over his grammar and claims to never have read a book, is that education is what makes you what you are. Surely, rather than trying to destroy privilege, Prescott should want to improve education, not destroy what already works. He comes across as a man deeply jealous of those who have had a good education, who speak well and use good grammar. One wonders why, if it matters that much to him, he didn't try to remedy this years ago. But then, perhaps, he wouldn't be able to go on about his working-class background and the perceived insidious evil of the middle- and upper-classes so much.

Twenty years of the Pre-Raphaelite Society

The Pre-Raphaelite Society is celebrating 20 years since it began in Birmingham. Since it began, the PRS has followed its aims of "the celebration of the mood and style of art which Ruskin recognised and preserved by his writings, and to the observation of its wide-ranging influence. In co-operation with societies of similar aims world-wide, it seeks to commemorate Pre-Raphaelite ideals by means of meetings, conferences, discussions, publications and correspondence, and to draw attention to significant scholastic work in this field. First and foremost, however, it is a society in which individuals can come together to enjoy the images and explore the personalities of the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers through the medium of fine art, the appreciation of good design and the excellence of the traditional arts."

We have celebrated our 20th anniversary with a conference, "Eminent Pre-Raphaelites", in Birmingham this summer, with a cake at the AGM, dinners and teas, and finally with a celebratory issue of the Review, consisting of contributions from well-known names such as Jan Marsh, Paul Barlow, Angela Thirlwell, Anne Anderson, Benedict Read and Paul Goldman, featuring the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Subversive Reading

The excellent Birmingham Book Festival commissioned the philosopher A C Grayling to give a lecture at the festival this year, entitled "The Good Reader and the World". This is in part a tribute to the National Year of Reading, which encourages the promotion of literacy for children and enjoyment of reading for everyone. In line with this, Professor Grayling began his lecture by giving a detailed summary of the history of reading, from the earliest known literate communities in Ancient Egypt through to the reading explosion of the autodidacts of the nineteenth century. Grayling particularly emphasised the impacts of the early printing presses, particularly their significance not only in rising literacy, but in the fact that literacy was therefore no longer largely exclusive to the church and the ruling classes. The subversiveness of access to religious texts, for example, is not something we think much of these days, but it meant that more people were able to challenge the church on the basis of their own reading - literacy is pwer, and as it spreads power is disseminated. During the Renaissance the importance of the classical literature of Ovid, Cicero, Virgil etc allowed "insight into the wider mind of Europe", broadening the views of those who could read them (which was of course still a small minority). By the nineteenth century, however, books were cheaper and more available, and more people could read - especially essays and poetry - and many of the working-class were able to educate themselves through their reading. This is hugely significant for social development of a country as a whole, Grayling pointed out, because those who read are thinking more; for example, revolutionaries in the seventeenth century such as the Levellers and the New Model Army were literate, which is hardly a coincidence.

Grayling emphasised the different modes of reading - passive reading, for plot alone, such as one might with a beach novel, and intensive reading, where one puts thought and consideration into the book, permitting a dialogue between reader and author, disagreeing with it, coming to one's own conclusions. This, he suggests, is the way to be fulfilled in one's reading, and it has a transformative effect on the reader. Some books, of course, invite purely passive reading, while others engage the reader sometimes against their will, and it those that are treasures.

Modern British education fosters "literacy" and "numeracy" in the quest to turn citizens into "good foot-soldiers in the economic battle", but as Grayling says, Aristotle said that the point of education was to make "noble use of our leisure". Education isn't about getting a job; it's about one's life and what one does with it, and permits one to be a "responsible contributor to public conversation", and indeed a responsible voter, too. Looking at the future of reading, Grayling is optimistic, suggesting that there will always be readers, and always people who do find necessary stimulation in books, even if the nature of "books" as we know them is overtaken by technology. The content of books "will never be far from the centre of a genuinely civilised society".

Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy is, it seems, fast becoming something of a grande dame of British poetry, and with good reason. I have always enjoyed her poems, but it wasn't until I went to hear her read at the Birmingham Book Festival earlier this week that I realised just how well-written her poems are, and how they stand up to scrutiny. "Something for everyone" is a phrase I use but generally dislike, but it does seem to be kind of true in this case: she opened her reading with extracts from 'The Laughter of Stafford Girls High', a poem which rather reminds me of my own schooldays and the infectious laughter of teenage girls (although usually schools don't need to be closed down because of laughter!) It's a funny poem, unsurprisingly, being about laughter, but it's also an amazingly descriptive poems that captures individuals caught up in a mass movement of laughter. Certainly Duffy's reading raised much laughter from the audience.

Her next few poems were also familiar to me, and no doubt to many in the audience: 'Mrs Midas', 'Mrs Aesop', 'Mrs Faust' - these are also funny poems, and yet as she reads, with a dry humour and a delicious slowness which lingers on the words, her choice of words becomes ever more significant. Everyone should have to listen to poetry read aloud properly (not the mangled syllables of the classroom) - listening, one is forced to become a passive auditor, which allows the imagination that much more action, and imbues the poems with something quite different. I was disappointed that she didn't read one of my favourite poems, though, 'A Dreaming Week' from her book Feminine Gospels, which seems langorously to play with words for the hell of it, and the effect is sensuous, soporific and somehow thrilling. Duffy is also a poet who knows the power of repetition - either of words or of sounds of words, and she uses it not just for humorous effect but also for pathos and drama, which even her most amusing poems contain.

Finally, she read some more serious poems from her most recent book, Rapture. This is rather different from her other work, being a book of love poems, but there's nothing soppy or unneccessary here. The book is based on the "fractured sonnet form", she says, suggesting that the sonnet is a kind of secular prayer: short, memorable, adhering to conventions, and expressing very personal emotions. She told the audience that she had abandoned religion at fifteen, and now feels that "prayer must be a comfort for believers, but atheists have only art". The last poem she read, 'Prayer', reflects this, using secular images to fill the mind in a kind of worship. All her poems seem to have a kind of intertextuality - referring to other poems, other forms, works of art - yet she makes them entirely available to the audience, chatting as she goes about Greek mythology, T S Eliot, Shakespeare, mobile phones, cups of tea...I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

National Student Forum

I'm delighted to say that the National Student Forum has launched our first annual report. This was presented to the Government by our chair last week, and we have been promised a formal response to the points we have raised about improving life for students in the UK.

We now have a website, which means that hopefully people will start to know who we are! The website, with information about who we are and what we do, and also with a link to the report, can be found here.

Muliebrity and other pertinent words

Some oppugnant people at Collins Dictionaries have decided to remove some little-known words from the dictionary - presumably to make more room for text speak, celebrity names and other passing fads. Now, I know that some of these words aren't exactly in common parlance - but why not? I can think of many uses for muliebrity - the condition of being a woman (in fact, that's going into my PhD thesis), and fubsy, griseous and olid are words that nicely describe how I feel about some people. I'm all for the development of the language - English has amazing flexibility and its ability to encompass other languages and change with the times is one of many things that makes English literature such a joy, but if we lose words, they'll be consigned to footnotes, as obscure as some of Chaucer's words, and that's a pity. Perhaps I should start a campaign to revive Chaucerian English. Failing that - have a look at these words and see if you can use them! You can read more about this here.
Abstergent Cleansing or scouring
Agrestic Rural; rustic; unpolished; uncouth
Apodeictic Unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration
Caducity Perishableness; senility
Caliginosity Dimness; darkness
Compossible Possible in coexistence with something else
Embrangle To confuse or entangle
Exuviate To shed (a skin or similar outer covering)
Fatidical Prophetic
Fubsy Short and stout; squat
Griseous Streaked or mixed with grey; somewhat grey
Malison A curse
Mansuetude Gentleness or mildness
Muliebrity The condition of being a woman
Niddering Cowardly
Nitid Bright; glistening
Olid Foul-smelling
Oppugnant Combative, antagonistic or contrary
Periapt A charm or amulet
Recrement Waste matter; refuse; dross
Roborant Tending to fortify or increase strength
Skirr A whirring or grating sound, as of the wings of birds in flight
Vaticinate To foretell; prophesy
Vilipend To treat or regard with contempt

Ancient Landscapes, Pastoral Visions

This exhibition, at Falmouth Art Gallery, was curated by Anne Anderson, whose work on the Brotherhood of Ruralists has recently caught my attention. This exhibition features Samuel Palmer, who in the 1820s turned his back on London and the urban scene to consider the countryside instead, surrounded by ‘The Ancients’, likeminded painters with a "back to nature" ethic. As the exhibition blurb points out, in the 1920s the painter Graham Sutherland did something similar, and in 1975 the Brotherhood of Ruralists (a name with a self-conscious echo of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) did something similar, retiring to Bodmin to paint, as did the PRB, "truth to nature".
This exhibition combines the work of all of these painters, together with some wonderful Blake etchings. Indeed, Sutherland’s "Pastoral" (1930) is an etching which is remarkably resonant of Blake, in which the trees appear as if they could at any moment reincarnate themselves as monsters – the Gothic menace of nature is all around in this exhibition, whether more obviously, such as in Sutherland’s "Green Tree Form" (1940), left, where the tree seems to have an animal life, or hidden in the pastel fantasy of Graham Ovenden’s "Spring Morning, Wiltshire" (1984).
I was particularly taken with Robin Tanner’s "Christmas 1929", a wintry village scene which manages to be both homely, familiar and comforting, and sinister, as though menace lurks in the rural hamlet. Indeed, there is a fairytale aspect to many of these paintings and drawings – perhaps when people concentrate on nature to such an extent, it becomes something quite other than what we first think it is. And the idea that nature is pastoral, calm, and even our right to appreciate, is one of town-dwellers, I suspect – "Nature red in tooth and claw" is much more the real thing.
Sir Peter Blake, acolyte of the Ruralists, only features once, with a print entitled "Faery", which is simply a long-haired, naked girl in a field, but again there is something unsettling about this child apparently at one with nature – something in her eyes or stance, perhaps.
The common thread here is the engagement with the rural landscape, but it is a very mixed collection: many of the exhibits are very much of their time, displaying contemporary influences, and while some have a photographic precision (such as most of Graham Ovenden’s works), others seem largely representative (Paul Nash’s "Druid Landscape", for example), and others more impressionistic. But there is much here to admire, and much to think about.

The Magic of a Line

The Magic of a Line: Drawings and prints from the Newlyn School artists, Penlee Gallery, Penzance
After visiting the Laura Knight exhibition in Nottingham earlier this year, I’ve been looking forward to this – and it didn’t disappoint. The title of the exhibition is taken from the title of Laura Knight’s autobiography, and nicely suits the works included. Incidentally, this exhibition is part of the Campaign for Drawing’s annual "Big Draw", to encourage everyone to pick up a pencil, and there was paper and pencils all around the exhibition for anyone who felt so inclined.
Many of the drawings in the early part of the exhibition were by the Birmingham-born Walter Langley, whose Newlyn School drawings display wonderful local flavour and attention to character. "Study for a Daydream" (1884), a portrait of a distracted young girl, had perfect, dreamy eyes, ignoring the viewer. The grainy effects of his lines are put to good use in images of local scenes, and characters such as elderly, weatherbeaten fishermen, whose relationship with the sea is etched in every line of their faces. Langley was clearly particularly interested in the local habitat, exploring the domestic side-effects of the local fishing trade such as wives left at home as their husbands were on the sea, widows and children portrayed inside the bare cottages. The tragedy of life in the area is particularly well-depicted in "Among the Missing", where a woman, supported by an older woman, reads her husband’s name on the list of the dead. Other pictures such as "Alone" show the desolation after the death of a husband, while "Widowed" shows the young widow cared for by her mother.
The sea provides metaphors for other aspects of life, particularly death. In William Holt Yates Titcomb’s "Piloting her Home", 1893, an old woman lies in bed, awaiting death with a radiance of divine love and peace on her face, while those around her raise their hands to God. Similarly, Langley’s Study for "The Seas are Quiet" shows an elderly lady lying on pillows, smiling, with the turbulence of her life past.
One of my favourite pictures here was Stanhope Alexander Forbes’s "The Cello Player" – one can almost hear the sonorous music in this dark and thoughtful study. I found this drawing to be more like his wife’s than many of his are: Elizabeth Adela Forbes’s drawings of "The Bakehouse" and "The Cornish Pasty" depict dark interiors, with only the figure in action lit for the viewer, suggested a theatricality in the ‘staging’ of the drawing. I’d not seen her illustrations for King Arthur’s Wood (1904) before, but was struck by their delightful medievalism – the wonderful texture of her other drawings is here used to evoke myth and enchantment. I was also interested in Thomas Cooper Gotch’s Pre-Raphaelite-esque cartoons for "A Mother Enthroned", in which a mother of many daughters is clearly paralleled to the Virgin Mary. (see painting, left)
Harold Knight didn’t get much of a look-in here, with just a few portraits of almost photographic detail; but beside those of his wife Dame Laura they seem to lack conviction, while her portraits of young women – "Seated Girl Reading", 1892, "Self Portrait", etc, have so much life, feeling and movement even in repose. Knight seems to have a gift, in her portraits, for convincing the viewer of the character of the sitter with just a few lines. I was caught by "Madonna", 1923 – very much of its time, this seems to be an early echo of the later theatrical works by Knight, despite the beatific expression on the Madonna’s face. Few of the works here are theatrical, though there is a wonderful sketch of "George Bernard Shaw Posing for his Bust", but there are some amazing leaves from her sketchbook, which give an excellent insight into the clean lines she uses for movement and grace in the dancers she later painted – especially the ballerinas’ arms, so hard to capture correctly. I also rather liked "Country Girls" (1926) – especially appealing, I think: three girls seated together, side on; one looks anxiously – or is it slyly? – at the viewer, while the other two gaze unconcernedly into the distance. It’s stylised and of the period, yet still seems so natural.
Somehow I find going to an exhibition of drawings a very different experience to one with paintings – less colour, less large, dramatic paintings, more shadows and darkly intense, small pictures. And there are some perfect gems here.

How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World

This book was top of my pile of holiday reading (well, after a biography so appallingly written I gave up after two chapters). It’s not the book I’d thought it might be, and is all the better for it. Don’t be fooled by the cheery yellow cover and Jeremy Paxman’s comment of "Hilarious" – it’s not a cheery book, and the laughs it provokes are tinged with irony. But make no mistake – it’s well worth reading. I’m not a Guardian reader so am not particularly familiar with Wheen’s writing, but will look out for him in the future. In this book, which is a kind of extended essay on what’s wrong with the world, he is concise, convincing, entertaining. He opens with Enlightenment thinking – how it changed the world for the better, and why it’s still relevant today. Further, he adds that now, "Even intellectuals who respect Enlightenment values often seem reluctant to defend them publicly, fearful of being identified as ‘liberal imperialists’." The book then races through the kind of "mumbo-jumbo" which has swamped us, from the "voodoo economics" of the 1980s, with Reagan and Thatcher bearing the brunt of his venom, through the greed which precipitated the Wall Street crash in the 1980s, to the fascinatingly repellent antidotes to the world this created. (For example, the self-help style books which grew out of and alongside management-speak: from Deepak Chopra’s nauseating Ageless Body Timeless Mind, Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People to the incredibly-titled God wants you to be Rich and Elizabeth I: CEO.) As you can imagine, Wheen is merciless in his assessment of such matters.
Another area in which Wheen excels is demolishing the jargon of post-modernism: he lampoons the impenetrable prose of many deconstructionists, and points out that the newly-subjective nature of reality permits people to question the notion of "facts" – as in, the Holocaust is no longer a "fact", and can be dismissed much more easily than before by social historians. He also – rightly – takes issue with Luce Irigary’s statement that E=MC2 is a "sexed equation" – something I have wondered about myself…That the deconstructionists are quick to take on sciences about which they know little is not only foolhardy but dangerous, he argues, and hardly advances the world’s knowledge and understanding.
Wheen proceeds to consider the amazing number of alien abductions (suggesting that perhaps it suits the powers-that-be for people to be so gullible, since it distracts them from questioning other, even more, sinister machinations that go on in the world), pours scorn on the Mayan re-birthing ritual enjoyed by the Blairs, and various other random types of spirituality adopted by people clearly searching for something, however unlikely it may be. (I was surprised to find no mention of Scientology here).
This leads into sentimentality, which is increasing in public life, particularly in America but was manifested in Britain when Princess Diana died: I thought Wheen was quite restrained here. American foreign policy, British politics, irrational public panics, dotcom mania – it’s all here, and demolished. I suspect that the kind of people who will read this book are the kind of people who weren’t terribly susceptible to mumbo-jumbo anyway, more’s the pity – but I hope it opens a few people’s eyes. As Wheen said at the start of the book, "the sleep of reason brings forth monsters, and the past two decades have produced monsters galore". At least this book has brought some of the monsters out of the depths where they lurked and into the public arena.

Any Questions?

I've just returned from attending the live broadcast of Any Questions? from the Birmingham Conservatoire, as part of Birmingham Book Festival. Politics can be so much fun! The panellists were Liam Byrne (newly promoted Minister for the Cabinet Office), Alan Duncan (Shadow secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, David Edgar (playwright and President of the Writers' Guild) and Julia Goldsworthy (Lib Dem speaker on Communities and local government). The opening questions were, unsurprisingly, about banking reforms and regulations, in which as might be expected Liam Byrne supported the Labour line ("we will do whatever it takes to ensure people don't lose out", to which Dimbleby replied, "What does that mean?" Byrne: "Well, we will do whatever it takes". Dimbleby: "What is it likely to take?" And so on. Amusing.) A nicely phrased question asked if the Prince of Darkness is the light at the end of the tunnel for the Labour party, referring to the apophrades (sorry, too much lit crit - return from the dead) of Mandelson - the audience was asked to vote on this, and it doesn't seem a popular move! David Edgar had some excellent answers, and also provided a nice literary touch, referencing Milton and Shakespeare among others - appropriate for the book festival. And the final question of the evening asked the panellists if a book has ever changed their lives. Alan Duncan suggested his own book changed his life by nearly getting him the sack, but went on to say that writers who concentrate on freedoms, moral liberty etc, such as John Stuart Mill, have greatly influenced his thinking. David Edgar went for Shakespeare's history plays, Liam Byrne for Graham Greene's Travels with my Aunt, and Julia Goldsworthy - rather worthily - went for the biography of Penhaligon, a Truro MP, which persuaded her to begin her own political career.
You can listen to Any Questions? online here. Everyone should listen to it - it's not just informative, it's also hilarious!