DIARY REBECCA FRASER I hope the current Austen-mania will do two
things: revive the fashion for knee- breeches and cutaways and make publish- ers reissue the not-so-poor man's Jane Austen, that pillar of Regency England fic- tion, Georgette Heyer. Libraries no longer stock her the way they used to in the Seven- ties and the great Regency novels seem to be out of print; the canon is now only avail- able in Oxfam shops. Having recently watched Carol Reed's biopic, Young Mr Pitt, I was reminded, by even the bit-parts, that any man could improve his appearance by wearing breeches and a cutaway coat. This was particularly true of Robert Donat (as Pitt), who had really marvellous legs. A thin leg, as devotees of Heyer, not perhaps Austen, will know, can always be stuffed; fuller figures may slim their calves by fol- lowing millions of sensible British women and wearing black Lycra.
Iam currently writing a history of Eng- land for young people, to be published by Heinemann, called The Story of England. It is intended to be a traditional narrative his- tory — with less on abstract historical forces, more on those crucial men and women who were the 'movers and shakers' of the past, to use the language of the pre- sent. In earlier centuries, particularly round the time of the Crusades and Richard the Lionheart, as I persist in calling him, there was a lot of derring-do and men in tights, which fortunately picked up again with the Napoleonic wars. When I first began, my inspiration was one of my favourite books as a child, a mysterious work called Our Island Story. When I did a straw poll, I found that it seems to have been the pap of a swathe of the reading population (it first came out in 1905), a sort of sacred text peo- ple mentioned with tears in their eyes. For whatever reasons — not up to date enough, not politically correct enough, not accurate enough — 30 years ago it vanished from publishers' catalogues. It and similar books were replaced by today's Filofax-style, page-at-a-glance, reigns-in-two-pages histo- ries of England which are particularly pop- ular in Sainsbury's.
Having finally managed to get hold of a copy of Our Island Story, I was faintly dis- appointed: the book frequently suffers from the simplistic style satirised in 1066 and All That — 'George IV was an utterly selfish man and a bad King' — as well tak- ing the triumphalist Top Nation view of British history of its time. But for all its flaws, the author, a New Zealand lady named H.E. Marshall, had an enviable gift for dramatising the once-famous scenes of English history in vivid tableaux. Without such an approach it is harder to remember historical events; much of the time the most exciting moments in history are also turn- ing-points, whether it is the murder of Thomas a Becket, the Princes in the Tower, or Wolfe taking Quebec. But the new Filo- fax outline versions of history — doubtless reflecting the busy schedule of the Sains- bury's shopper — have no room for the flavour and fat on history's old bones, which may account for today's children finding facts about EastEnders more inter- esting than their country's past.
Ifind I am having to watch against my tendency to put what can become too much fat on the bones. On the other hand, every generation until this one has been allowed to thrill to the miserable death of Arthur of Brittany, and his heartrending pleas to the man who had come to put out his eyes. Strictly speaking, it is not necessary to deal with the episode at length, but it is such a good story that I feel it would be a shame to leave it out. I have also noticed that a common theme amongst eminent histori- ans is how the detail of its more horrible episodes first interested them in history. Reading about the bloody death of Charles I sparked the enthusiasm of a Regius Pro- fessor; for another it was the specially sharp sword Henry VIII sent for from France to cut Anne Boleyn's head off less painfully than with a blunt axe. Another potential problem which H.E. Marshall would not have faced is that in the intervening 91 years a good many cherished British leg- ends have been exposed for the cherished British legends they are. I have been warned that any academic worth his salt would not be seen dead repeating what is now considered to be an old yarn about Canute and the waves, On the other hand, won't that be another missing cultural ref- erence for `yoof, however false, if it is allowed to disappear?
While writing The Story of England I have become unfashionably obsessed with the brilliant Pitts, Elder and Younger: the one who carved out the first British empire, the other 'the Pilot who weathered the storm' of the French Revolutionary wars. In Robert Donat, Pitt the Younger (and indeed Pitt the Elder for a couple of min- utes) may have found his finest latter-day expression. Though the younger Pitt had a turned-up nose and was not so romantic- looking as Donat, I am sure that Pitt's voice, which we know was very melodious in contrast to his father's thunderings, would have been much as Donat made it: noble, calm and pained, weighed down even in extreme youth by his strong con- sciousness of destiny beckoning. As my day is either child-centred or vicarious and lim- ited to my study, I generally prefer the his- torical characters I am describing for the generation who aren't sure who said 'Kiss me Hardy' (or why) to have dramatic pri- vate lives. At first glance Pitt the Younger falls short in this respect. Either his debts, or being wedded to his country, or the thought of his future father-in-law, meant that he never married or had time for any- thing other than work. But at least he is mysterious and heroic in a way that no one is allowed to be nowadays. Since we live in a confessional era when we know every- thing about everybody — a spirit which has even swept up the former Archbishop of Canterbury — the Duke of Wellington and Pitt the Younger have become exotic in their reticence. In fact, my new, rather fick- le enthusiasm for the Iron Duke I recognise may be the beginning of a Baroness Orczy- like (not to say Georgette Heyer-like) mania for the famous English virtues of the stiff upper lip and sangfroid.
Iwatched Young Mr Pitt on a Friday morning as 'deep background' to the book. The children, mercifully, were in their classrooms. Television is theoretically frowned on in this house and strictly forbid- den except from six p.m. onwards. Were the children older, though, I felt I could justify their watching Mr Pitt as a history lesson. In striking contrast to the historical epics of the Nineties like Braveheart, the credits proudly announced the parliamen- tary speeches were all authentic, which they were. And what speeches! One of the prob- lems of being immersed in the Napoleonic wars is that for all my rationalisation about the false glamour of the past, it is impossi- ble when reading the newspapers not to make what can only be odious comparisons with what was an unassailably golden age of heroic Brits. For a while, however, as Nel- son sallies out, I have vowed not to turn on the news. Presumably, if push came to shove, today's Tory ministers would always find very good reasons why England should not expect every man to do his duty.
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