Half a century ago, an audience of about 7,000 people turned up at London’s Royal Albert Hall to experience a poetry reading like no other, and on that summer evening in June 1965, the Sixties began. Or at least, the underground, counter-cultural 1960s found its anarchic voice and identity. And guess what, we were there.
Clothes In Literature — Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers
A women’s college in Oxford University in 1935 seems an unlikely source for sartorial delights, but Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers is filled with acute observations on the way they wore.
Who would have thought that references to academic dress would do anything other than add some descriptive colour? Yet here we have a series of descriptions of how women present themselves at a reunion of their college, and every comment reveals something about the wearer and the observer.
How intriguing to find a familiar level of cattiness among the elite intelligentsia of 80 years ago, when celebrity gossip and bashing our sisters were joys yet to come.
Female Fictional Detectives: Harriet Vane v Miss Pym
On the enticing side, both Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers and Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey feature strong female characters and are set in the closed academic worlds of an women’s Oxford college and a girls’ physical training college.
Equally enticing for some is the comparatively bloodless nature of the crimes under investigation.
In both books, crime novel conventions are used as hooks to explore ideas such as personal and academic responsibility, moral complexities, gender issues, psychology, character, relationships and social class, and they both offer fascinating insights into the lives of women in the period just before and immediately after World War II.
TV Female Legals: Alicia Florrick v Ally McBeal
Just seven years separate the day that young Boston lawyer Ally McBeal departed from our screens and the day that Alicia Florrick arrived as a junior associate at a Chicago law firm.
The latter was a great moment for television, and a great disappointment for anyone who hoped for an Ally-style incarnation of adorable quirkiness and perky smartness. These two legal eagles are separated by more than just the passage of time and their different life stages.
Hats Off To To Kill A Mockingbird — and its sequel
Five heart-stopping moments from Harper Lee’s classic novel
Unlike most wines, Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill A Mockingbird is best tasted young.
The news that a newly discovered Mockingbird ‘sequel’ — Go Set A Watchman — is going to be published means it could be a good time to refresh your memory of the original or perhaps read it for the first time.
But when you come to read To Kill A Mockingbird as an adolescent or teenager, its heady mix of domestic drama, small town life, growing up, racial prejudice, social injustice, humour and pathos knocks you off your feet.
Jane Austen The Money Expert — What I Learnt from Writing a Study Guide to Pride and Prejudice
When I wrote a Study Guide to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (under my non-fiction author name of Mary Hartley) for 16-year old exam students, I re-read one of my favourite books and it reinforced my view that Austen should be classed as a major social satirist and economic analyst rather than a romantic novelist.
The Black Polo-Neck Sweater
The black polo-neck sweater is more than a fashion perennial. It has been a signifier of cultural attitudes, a visual statement of the wearer’s likely musical, literary and political leanings.
Its associations are rich, crossing the boundaries between the American beats and the French avant-garde and the cool cats of the British scene in the 1950s and 1960s.
Favoured by many of the more interesting university and art school types, the unassuming polo-neck brought a whiff of left-bank intellectualism and existential cafe life in Soho and Fitzrovia to the streets of the suburbs.
However, the polo-neck had to be handled with care, and its messages could be confusing.
Hats Off To 1960s’ Icons — Dame Mary Quant
The woman who said ‘I love vulgarity. Good taste is death, vulgarity is life’ has been made a Dame in the UK New Year’s Honours list.
Yes, Mary Quant, who transformed the face of British fashion and helped to turn Swinging England into a worldwide brand, has been awarded a top honour for her significant and lasting contribution to British life.
Nearly 60 years or so ago, she opened her first shop, Bazaar, in Chelsea at 138a, Kings Road, and launched her innovative designs on a the newly emerging market of young people who were tired of wearing what were essentially the same clothes as their mothers.
Face to Face — When the spotlight turned to Pop Star Philosophers (Retro TV)
John Freeman (left) and Adam Faith, preparing for the Face to Face interview
For one heady moment in 1960, the young, cocky, emergent post-war generation found an answer to to our square (as we used to say) elders and betters who rubbished the new pop culture as uncouth and uncivilised.
The answer came in the unlikely juxtaposition of John Freeman, the distinguished broadcaster and politician who has recently died, two months short of his 100th birthday, and singer Adam Faith, who died in 2003.
John Freeman entered UK living rooms in 1959 with his BBC programme Face to Face, a series of 35 interviews with prominent public people from a range of backgrounds.
Hats Off To Public Libraries
Remember the girl in the Beach Boys’ song Fun Fun Fun? She’s the one who tells her daddy she needs to borrow his car to go to the library, but gives the library a swerve and instead has a ball cruising as fast as she can through town in the T-Bird with the radio blasting, shaking off all the guys who try to catch her. Finally, her daddy gets wise to her tricks and takes back the keys. Fun over.
Every girl deserves her day in the sun, but you know, this one might have got more lasting benefit and pleasure from a visit to the library.
Dickens’ Christmas Classics: A Christmas Carol v Great Expectations
A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, is responsible for many of our festive season images and references.
The name of the story’s hero, Ebeneezer Scrooge, has become a byword for tight-fisted refusal to enter into the Christmas spirit. It’s probably the book we have in mind when we refer to a ‘Dickensian’ scene, meaning picturesque snow, carol singers with lamps in hands at garlanded front doors, blazing fires, piles of presents under an imposing tree, a table groaning with festive fare.
While it’s true that Dickens’ work helped to shape our ‘traditional’ celebrations, the novel itself is actually nothing like the dramatised version of a Christmas card scene which it has become in our collective imagination.
[Read more…]
How Amy stole a Christmas March on the Little Women
Hats Off to Festive Seasons in Books
We all remember the opening of Little Women. The draw-you-in first line sets the scene — ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,’ grumbled Jo, lying on the rug — and the first two chapters describe how the March family spends Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
‘No presents’ is a policy decision made by Marmee the Matriarch, who wants her daughters to sacrifice their Christmas goodies to show acknowledgement of the hard winter everyone is having, and solidarity with the army engaged in the war.
