The Joy of Six 1319

"In recent years, the United Kingdom has seen a troubling increase in Holocaust denialism, fuelled by disinformation, a lack of historical education, and the actions of influential public figures." Jack Wilkin on a growing assault on truth.

Patrick McGuinness remembers the hounding of Christopher Jefferies: "The day after his arrest, one of my former classmates spoke to the Telegraph. The article was headlined 'Joanna Yeates Murder: Suspect Christopher Jefferies was eccentric with love of poetry' and my classmate was quoted as saying: 'He was particularly keen on French films.' If innocence can look this bad, who needs guilt? Jefferies became the nation’s High-Culture Hermit-Ogre.

Phil Edwards asks why the New Statesman keeps hyping up the threat posed by Nigel Farage.

No, the HS2 'bat tunnel' has not cost £300,000 per bat, and it will protect a lot of other mammals, birds and insects. Holy heritage, Jeff Ollerton.

"That's what made him such an ideal partner for Kenneth Williams: always unselfish and understated, he complemented rather than competed. While Williams concentrated on the broad brushstrokes, he was content to add the fine details. It was why Williams, who so often came to clash with his fellow performers, never had a bad word to say about Hugh Paddick." Graham McCann pays tribute to a skilled and understated performer.

John McEwen celebrates the books of Denys Watkins Pitchford ('BB'): "His most famous was The Little Grey Men, a children’s adventure story about some gnomes who went in search of their long-lost brother. It was inspired by his own incontrovertible sighting of a gnome at the age of four. He was a down-to-earth man and never budged on this issue; though latterly he felt that gnomes, like so much of the countryside, might have become extinct during his lifetime."

The Joy of Six 1287

"Kemi maintained her attack on the machine. Everything was their fault. The previous Conservative government was entirely blameless. Especially her. In her own mind she was the saviour of the post office operatives. Though judging by the laughs from the back of the room, they don’t see it in quite the same way." John Crace says Kemi Badenoch was seen at her brittle, narcissistic worst while giving evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry today.

Alwyn Turner tells a story that has dropped out of remembrance of the first world war: "On 19 July 1919 - declared by the government to be Peace Day - parades were staged all over the country to mark the signing of the Versailles Treaty, and at many of those parades there were demonstrations and protests. A banner in Glasgow sarcastically announced: '400,000 unemployed ex-servicemen. A grateful country will never forget you'."

Patrick Howse asks if Labour will restore the BBC to the national broadcaster we need it to be or believe it can benefit from a subservient corporation afraid to hold power to account.

"Many of the jokes, besides being hilarious, are jaw-dropping in their audacity. And there is sex, too: masses of it, sometimes erotic, sometimes shocking, but always - like the rest of the book – profoundly truthful. Fundamentally is certainly a wild ride, but besides being one of the most entertaining novels I’ve read in a long while, it will also leave you deeply moved and (incidentally) much better informed than you were before about one of the key political crises of our time." Jonathan Coe chooses five favourite recent political novels.

Hannah Long believes that Night of the Hunter is a Christmas film. Hear her: "This promise - that evil is powerful, but ultimately ridiculous and defeatable - carries us into the final hope of the last scene, set at Christmastime. It says, in the least sentimental way possible, that it’s possible to move beyond abuse."

"‘The Whiting’ is an absent-minded vicar so passionate about entomology that he forgets everything in pursuit of an elusive Wood White or a Purple Emperor. Then there’s old Smokoe Joe, a gruff charcoal-burner with a gargantuan nose who lives in the Chase; and the boys’ nemesis, the ponderous local bobby, Sergeant Bunting." Helena Drysdale celebrates Brendon Chase by BB (Denys Watkins-Pitchford).

Children's literature: Holiday adventure stories vs school stories

The latest The Rest is History podcast deals with the school story. I could have done with a little less about the presenters' own private schools, but they are right to say these stories were immensely important culturally and appealed across the classes.

And just as I was thinking they ought to bring the Trinidadian Marxist historian and cricket writer C.L.R. James into the discussion, they did just that. You'll find James's views on the importance of Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby, of Thomas Hughes, the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays, and of W.G. Grace in his Beyond a Boundary.

Incidentally I blogged about Rugby, Tennessee, back in 2009 - see the interesting comment from David Heath.

The programme got me thinking about an alternative school of children's school of children's literature that I prefer: the holiday adventure story.

The ur-text for this is school is Bevis: The Story of a Boy by Richard Jefferies, though it was first published as a three-volume novel for adults and only later tricked out with the apparatus (a map on the endpapers; illustrations by E.H. Shepard) of a children's classic.

Then come Arthur Ransome, Malcolm Saville and Denys Watkins-Pitchfod ('BB'). I suppose we'll have to let Enid Blyton in too.

This is already a pretty disparate group, but I think you can claim that if school stories are in part about winning battles against adult authority, then both that authority and adults tend to disappear altogether in adventure stories.

And I'd also suggest that, while school stories are generally of necessity about children of one class, adventure stories are more likely to see a mixing of the classes.

As to the material base of adventure stories, I shall quote again the observation of Victor Watson, in his Reading Series Fiction. They grew out of the agricultural depression at the end of the 19th century, which made the countryside a playground for middle-class children, and were killed off by EEC farming subsidies and Dr Beeching's cuts.

Now read my post on the 1971 BBC adaptation of Tom Brown's Schooldays.

A 1932 exhibition of E.H. Shepard's illustrations for Bevis

Bevis: The Story of a Boy by Richard Jefferies was published in 1882 as a three-volume for adults.

Over the years it came to be seen as a book for children and was the inspiration of for the holiday adventure school of books that I grew up with.

Arthur Ransome's debt to Jefferies is clear, while Malcolm Saville and Denys Watkins-Pitchford even had their own child characters reading Bevis. It had become a touchstone for children's writers.

In 1932 it was republished with the full apparatus of a children's classic: a map on the endpapers and illustrations by E.H. Shepard.

Some critics believe Shepard's drawings for this book are his finest work. You can read a post about them - and see some examples - on The Heroic Age.

When I treated myself to a copy of this book I found this flyer inside it.

Incidentally, if you want a copy of Bevis with Shepard's illustrations then the 1932 edition is the one to go for. In the later editions the printing of them is noticeably less sharp.

Denys Watkins-Pitchford ("BB") remembered

There is a pleasant programme about the Northamptonshire writer and illustrator Denys Watkins-Pitchford on the BBC iPlayer at the moment.

The photo above shows his birthplace, Lamport Rectory, and I seem to remember seeing him about Market Harborough in the 1980s.

Deny Watkins-Pitchord also got a mention in my Masters dissertation on Richard Jefferies as one of the many later writers for children who used Bevis as a touchstone.

All Hallow's Church, Lamport

On our last visit to Lamport for a while, let's look at the church.

All Hallow's (as the guidebook calls it - the apostrophe looks to be in the wrong place and Pevsner calls it All Saints) is dominated by Lamport Hall and was clearly heavily made over in the 18th century to serve as the estate church. There is a Georgian porch, a Venetian window at the East end and numerous family monuments. (One of these was retrieved from the lost church of St Denys at Faxton.)

But it has a friendly atmosphere and you can buy a few modest souvenirs of BB (Denys Watkins-Pitchford) there. There was also a copy of a magazine article that claimed a bullet fired by the young Denys can still be found embedded in one of the East windows, but it eluded me.

The guidebook they sell is written by Sir Gyles Isham and billed as the fifth edition, abbreviated from a long work on the church he published in 1950.

It discusses lists the past rectors, including BB's father. The Revd W.M. Watkins-Pitchford, who held the living between 1903 and 1944), we are told, "was a keen musician and revived folk-dancing in the district. He was a friend of Sir Cecil Slarp (sic)."

But just as this Tory vision of England is beginning to appeal, you come across the fact that Robert Isham, who held the living, between 1845 and 1890, was chairman of the Brixworth Board of Guardians.

And we read all about Brixworth workhouse last June.

Other recent posts on Lamport

• Shortwood Lodge, near Lamport
• The MasterChefisation of British cooking
• Lamport Rectory: Birthplace of Denys Watkins-Pitchford ("BB")
• The first garden gnome in England

Lamport Rectory: Birthplace of Denys Watkins-Pitchford ("BB")

My trip to Lamport on Saturday - which led me to Shortwood House - was chiefly to see this building. Lamport Rectory was the birthplace of the writes and illustrator Denys Watkins-Pitchford.

He was born there in 1905 when his father was the rector. As Wikipedia records:

Denys was himself considered to be delicate as a child, and because of this was educated at home, while his younger twin, Roger, was sent away to school. He spent a great deal of time on his own, wandering through the fields, and developed a love of the outdoors, which was to influence his writing.

Pevsner tells us that the Rectory was built in 1727-30 for the then rector, Dr Euseby Isham. The Ishams were the owners of the neighbouring Lamport Hall.

Shortwood Lodge, near Lamport

I was planning a trip to Lamport for this afternoon, chiefly for its connections with the writer and illustrator Denys Watkins-Pitchford (or "BB" as he signed his books, reserving his full name for his illustrations - BB was a grade of shot used by wildfowlers).

BB wrote natural history books and also wrote stories for children. He got a mention in my Masters dissertation because when his heroes run away to live in the woods in Brendon Chase they are careful to take a copy of Richard Jefferies' Bevis with them. And Watkins-Pitchford's illustrations, often using scraperboard, are very much to my taste.

His books now change hands for a lot of money. I remember thinking back in the early 1980s that he was a writer whose books would soon become more sought after; unfortunately, I did not have the money to stock up with them in those days. I also seem to recall that he came to Market Harborough quite regularly in those days. (He died in 1990 at the age of 85.)

Planning today's trip to Lamport, I picked up Pevsner's Buildings of England for Northamptonshire (as one does) and looked at the entry for Lamport. There was plenty of interest there, but my attraction was drawn by a note at its end referring the reader to another page for details of Shortwood Lodge.

Turn to that page and you find the following:

Hawking Tower: A three-storeyed tower of c. 1720 with two-storeyed wings, their two storeys being as high as the ground storey of the tower...

That sounded agreeably eccentric and there is a connection with BB there too. The BB Society website tells us that:

Shortwood, the home of Lady Susan Farr with its medieval hawking tower featured in Wild Lone BB's classic tale of Rufus the Pytchley Fox.

Pevsner makes it clear that the tower is not medieval, but this reference made me still keener to see it.

And writing this post tonight I have realised that Lady Susan Farr must the the widow of Sir John Farr, who was for many years the Conservative MP for Harborough. (Shortwood Lodge is more than five miles into Northamptonshire and was thus not in his constituency.)

As you can see from the photograph above, the tower now forms part of a larger house, though the modern extensions (the work of Sir John?) do nothing for it.

To the south, the boundary of the grounds is formed by a ha-ha so as not to interrupt the views of the Northamptonshire Uplands. That view includes the site of Faxton, a village that was abandoned as recently as 1960. Seeing the destruction of its church was one of the things that made J.L. Carr determined to save St Faith's at Newton in the Willows.

And if I had followed the bridleway from Lamport to Shortwood for another mile, I would have arrived at the site of Harrington airfield, home of the Carpetbaggers and the Thor nuclear missiles.

The more you discover around here, the more there remains to find out.