REPORT 52 JANUARY 2007
Tim's more or less monthly blog since May 2003
"But, you don't need to do this . . ."
LEBRECHT LIVE, the BBC 3 radio discussion chaired by Norman
Lebrecht, was devoted to bloggery on Sunday January 28th which was
also my birthday. I was on as “a blogger” together with Professor John
Sutherland as the country’s leading anti-blogger, a Guardian
journalist who also blogs and two American blog-women on the line from
the States. We did 45 minutes from 5.45 till 6.30.
Was it interesting? Well, um, it’s not for me to judge, is it? Luckily
one of our number failed to show but we still had Norman orchestrating
us, a reader-of-e-mails, three guests in the studio and another two
down-the-line in North America. That seemed like an awful lot for
forty-five minutes. It was also interesting that although the producer
in her pre-broadcast briefing said that once we’d been introduced we
should all feel free to interrupt and argue as much as we wanted none
of us did. Fine in theory but in the event we all seemed to hold back
in a rather old-fashioned British manner and wait until Norman asked
us a question. It was all – unlike many blogs – a little too genteel
and polite. Anyway I think we all agreed despite such agreement making
for dull broadcasting. Good blogs good, bad blogs bad, seemed to just
about sum it up. I felt it was a bit like having a debate on
sandwiches. When they’re well-made and imaginative they’re sublime,
when they’re made with spam and curled white bread they’re disgusting.
Anyway, it was national radio and therefore, presumably “a good
thing”. It was also part of a thoroughly enjoyable London birthday
weekend. On Friday evening Penny and I went to “Venus” with Peter
O’Toole and Leslie Phillips which we enjoyed more than many of the
reviewers in the national press. The following day I met up with my
old friend and editor Steve Dobell and though we’re not in quite the
same age bracket I felt we were rather like O’Toole and Phillips in
the film the night before – two funny old blokes banging on about the
past. After a cheap and cheerful Italian in Kew we ambled over to
watch London Welsh play Coventry, joined by the younger son, Tristram,
which brought our age average down satisfactorily. Good game though it
was salutary to remember that the last time I saw these two sides play
the Welsh had half the national side on their strength and Coventry
had Duckham and Spencer in the centre.
Then Penny and I went to a wine and food tasting at the exemplary
Frontline Club at Paddington. Next day we bussed down to Dulwich,
avoided the queues for the Canaletto exhibition at the Art Gallery and
instead went in through the shop (against the rules?!) and took in a
tiny display of Joshua Reynolds’, paintings, including a wonderful
copy of the Mona Lisa painted on Baltic Oak in 1602. We also looked at
the newest acquisition which is a little Constable of Dutch windmills.
Also, in a sense, a copy. Then back to the Army and Navy Club, the
Lebrecht Live broadcast and a birthday dinner at Bentleys. My
mother gave us this as a birthday present.. I had scallops and skate
wing but, pace Lebrecht, won’t turn this into a gastro-blog.
Otherwise it’s been pretty unadulterated Princess Margaret apart from
a brief foray into national print with a piece for the Daily Mail
which was subsequently picked up by the Western Morning News
and which seems to have attracted a lot of favourable attention. It
was prompted by the results of a new survey demonstrating that more
people have been moving into the “South-West” than into any other part
of the British Isles. I tried to explain that this was a mixed
blessing. It’s now on this web-site and available for all to read – a
valuable function of a web-site such as this.
Oh, earlier in the week I had made another flying visit to London,
staying with my son Alexander and his wife Kirsten (and the cat!) at
their flat in Ealing. Work at the Frontline the following morning,
lunch to discuss the letters of the late great Professor Richard Cobb
the following day with the publisher, John Nicoll, and then a session
at White’s with Henry Wrong, former head of the Barbican Centre and
friend of Princess Margaret, followed by Weidenfeld, an excursion
south of the river to an exhibition of paintings by an old publishing
acquaintance, Patrick Wright. Then a long editorial session in the
office with sandwiches from Marks and Spencer and so to bed on board
the trusty sleeper from Paddington. Still wonderful and a bargain
though the price is creeping up inexorably.
I find, as I write this, that I am constantly harking back to the
Lebrecht broadcast and wondering why I am “blogging”. Norman, in an
introductory spiel, expressed some incredulity and said “but you don’t
need to do this” rather as if blogging was the preserve of those who
had failed in some way and who certainly didn’t get published in the
“main stream media”. My reply was that I enjoyed the exercise and
thought it fun and also that there was a commercial consideration,
however hazy and muddled. The better I blog the more chance there is
of selling more books and articles. That’s the theory although I find
the mind-set of many of those who have worked for years in the
pre-internet publishing world slightly dispiriting and Luddite.
One example of what makes the exercise fun and which I gave on air is
that of Elliot Nayler who sent me a message the other day. Elliot is
seven and a child actor. He wrote using his mother’s e-address because
she says he’s too young to have one of his own. Apparently he is
playing the child, Kits Browning, son of Daphne du Maurier, in a new
TV drama to celebrate the author’s centenary. He had deduced from
“Google” that I was a friend of Kits and wondered if I could put him
in touch so that he could research his role at first hand. This I’ve
done. I hope it will lead to a magnificently informed characterisation
of the child Kits. This, although serendipitous and unpredictable,
seems an example of what, to me, makes blogging worthwhile.
I’ve just been talking to Paul Cox, the illustrator, who has got the
full text of “A Death on the Ocean wave” from the publishers, Hale, so
that he can do the jacket. This will make a handsome Cox-designed
trilogy. Alas, very few copies, I fear, will be printed. The first in
the series “Death and the Visiting Fellow” sold out within days of
publication and was never reprinted. I found a copy on the net the
other day and it was on offer at £44 – more than twice the original
price. So someone somewhere should be making a handsome profit out of
it but not, I’m afraid, the author. Discuss.
I must go and finish Margaret but I thought I might mention my
National Health experience last week. After an eye-examination in the
summer I was booked in to the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro for
routine surgery to correct the opthalmological equivalent of an
ingrowing toenail. I turned up on the dot at 8.30, was eventually
interviewed by a nice nurse and kitted out with a dressing-gown style
top, given a wristband and agreed that I should be called “Tim”.
Around 11.30 the surgeon finally got round to me and had a good look
at the offending eye. He was charming and seemed thoroughly efficient
but he disagreed with the consultant who had made the original
diagnosis and said he didn’t think an operation was a good idea and
how about trying some ointments and some things called “Lid wipes”,
which sound like something to do with tea-pots. Well, fine, I agreed.
Much better than invasive surgery. So away I went clutching a couple
of prescribed miniatures. Everyone was tremendously nice but it did
all feel like rather a waste of time and, although I could see that
the system was stretched I wasn’t convinced that it was as efficient
as it should be.
Oh well. I don’t think it’s life threatening. Which reminds me that
I’ve been asked to do an address at the memorial service of my old
friend, Jeffrey Rayner, at St. Bride’s, the Fleet Street Church in
London on the morning of February 28th. Poor Jeffrey. He died after a
short illness. Leukemia apparently. Sad, very and a daunting prospect
though not perhaps as bad as the address I had to give at the funeral
of my old history master, Derek Jarrett, when the priest at the
crematorium asked me not to press any buttons. Buttons? It had never
occurred to me. Had I done so I would have sent Derek’s remains
trundling into the furnace before time. It made the address even more
scary.
So. Back to the Princess. Notes, footnotes, literals, bibliographies,
permissions – all the fun of the penultimate stages . Fingers crossed.
I am about to send a complete draft of the Princess Margaret off to
Ion Trewin and Weidenfeld so that it can move to the copy-editor for
the next stage in the process. There are still i’s to be dotted and
t’s to be crossed but we now have almost 110,000 words on disk (sic)
and I think, and Ion seems to think, that we have a book. I’ll believe
it when I see it, as it were, but when I read it through on the train
to and from London the other day I began to think, with endless
caveats, that it was really rather good. Ion used the word ‘splendid’
but I tell myself that that is simply good man-management.
Tim Heald
