Recent books on tape
Peter Levi
If the reader has been missing these reviews of tapes, let them not be sad; I have not been entirely idle, only confused. I found in the first place that all tapes, whether of classics or of anything else, tend to be blotted out. The process is astonish- ing, rather like what happens to a thriller after you have read it. Very few are memo- rable, and those often' for obscure reasons.
Why do I remember James Joyce's Dubliners read by T. P. McKenna? (CSA Telltapes, two volumes, three hours, unabridged, £8.99 each). Is it that the actor slides himself insidiously into a reality which does not exist? Is it, which I am reluctant to credit, that the awful Dublin of the 1910s was really so preoccupying a sub- ject? But the fact is I remember at least the atmosphere and some of the detail of Dubliners, which luckily I do not think I had read before, just as I remember Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills read by Martin Jarvis (CSA Telltapes, two double cassettes, around three hours each, £8.99) which I had read and then forgotten for a tune. I used to buy Kipling's prose on nights when I slept at the Beefsteak in Lon- don, and I do not know now where those volumes, which at the most cost 10 shillings, have disappeared to. What was memorable about Dubliners was what I can only describe as an atmosphere. The terri- ble gloom that hung over everything, and in the same way it was an atmosphere that hung over Plain Tales from the Hills. What Confused me worse was not just the atmo- sphere but many other aspects of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. (Hodder Headline, 12 volumes, approxi- mately three hours each, abridged, £8.99 each). Powell is certainly a champion of some kind, if only at regurgitating his peri- od like a cow. But he is also the best writer We have had for a long time at catching the Weather, and ruins. I have discovered a Flue to his novels in the work of his wife, because, as it was read aloud to me, I delighted in her latest book. It has been reviewed, but I think it was undervalued. I thought it a comic masterpiece of some 'I egree of genius and very like her husband in style. What I have to discuss is the subject of diaries and letters of which the four vol- umes of tapes (three hours, £8.99 each) that make up Mr Punch Productions' The Chronicle are a remarkable example. This is a rich field in English, and they have gathered some remarkable pieces. Who knew that when the bodies of the dead at Waterloo were flung naked into common graves, the Highlanders were buried with their socks on because the tartan socks were of no use to the peasants? Our infor- mant is Croker Wilson, a man infamous for his treatment of Keats. It is sad that he does not tell us how the peasants wrenched out so many of the teeth of the dead that a whole industry was set up in what were called 'Waterloo teeth', which were recy- cled, as it were, by dentists as much as half a century later. I had not known that the Bastille was so vigorously attacked because of a party of 40 or so being first let in, then the drawbridge pulled up and the 40 mas- sacred by some silly marquis. When that happened and the infuriated people broke into the castle, they discovered only four prisoners, one of whom was a more or less dotty English military captain, with a beard three foot long. He must have contributed to the doctor in A Tale of Two Cities, but he more resembles some terrible figure out of Pasternak, whom A Tale of Two Cities so much influenced.
The secret of these selections, some of which are very short, is that about half of them are what you would find in an aver- age upper-middle-class library, but the rest are not. It would be quite common to find the death of Charles I and something about the French Revolution, but not so common to find Croker Wilson, or nowadays to find Scott's last expedition. In fact the death scene is essential to the genre. It is good to hear the general groan that arose around the scaffold of Charles I, and to have some of the worry of the King of France, and some of the hauteur of the aristocracy, though a curious tedium hangs over the tragedy of Scott, so many times rehearsed in our childhood that nothing can obliter- ate the book one read 50 or more years ago.
The best keeper of journals seems to have been Kilvert, a parson around Hay- on-Wye in the last century, but there are others as near us who have not been cho- sen, and I think that is a pity. Not only Hopkins, but Edward Thomas is lacking. We do get some excellent bits of Harold Nicolson, who looks as if he will outlive this century. I find this surprising, because I had forgotten what a difference his clarity makes. Virginia Woolf is good but I think less good than her husband.
Here I must remark on the quality of the readers of all these pieces, some of whom are brilliant. A very few make curious mis- takes of pronunciation, though they are not as bad as an evening with the BBC often is, and some actors do not fall into them. Tim- othy West as John Evelyn is excellent. So also are Joss Ackland as William Ailing- ham, the friend of Tennyson, and James Bolam as Rider Haggard, all of whose contributions are surprising and riveting. Keats, who is well known to have spoken with a cockney voice, is given a queer, somewhat northern accent and John Clare, quoted too little, is too cultured.
As for the voice of Parson Woodford, it is so spicy and beefy, as if his face were made of black pudding, that one is too pre- occupied with the accent to listen to what he says. The actor's name is not listed and that is a pity because he performs with such gusto. There are other country parsons who might have figured as well, and I would like to see all of them included in another such enterprise. There is an infinite supply of people like George Her- bert, Sydney Smith, Gilbert White and the botanisers and zoologists who began those professions in their spare time. Altogether it will be seen that the task of untangling these tapes has been extremely satisfying and I recommend the reader to hunt down and buy this series wherever it may be found.
CSA Telltapes, 101 Chamberlayne Road, London NW10 3ND, Tel: 0181 960 8466.
Mr Punch Productions, 139 Kensington High Street, London W8 6SU, Tel: 0171 368 0088.
`There's evidence of an unknown tribe in this area, but somehow they always know we're coming!'
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