50 Years Glamorous

The James Bond film franchise is fifty.

Our Housemistress took all the boarders in my girls’ school to the cinema to see Diamonds Are Forever on Saturday 29th August 1972. I still wonder if she knew what she was taking us to – a spinster of uncertain age, she taught my mother Chemistry in ancient times. I enjoyed the unusual outing as much as the film, but it wasn’t the breakthrough for Bond in my life.

That happened the following summer. Father was based in Germany. In those days there was no BFPS telly so the military cinemas were a vital source of entertainment. That memorable summer we had a week of James Bond, a different movie every night, and I started working my way through my father’s collection of the novels by Ian Fleming. Movies are always better on a big screen, and Bond’s action packed, larger than life offerings more so. And I devoured the novels. I was fourteen. I did not consider whether the male/female roles were appropriate or fair, I just enjoyed the thrill.

I’ve seen most of the films at the cinema (I missed a couple of Pierce Brosnan’s outings when Eldest was tiny and Husband away on tour), and all of them many times on the TV. I’ve read 10 of Fleming’s 14 novels and short story collections. I’ve even read a biography!

Having been a fan, I was excited to read the Charlie Higson books about a teenage schoolboy James. Youngest hasn’t tried them, Eldest didn’t like the deaths of characters close to James and only read the first couple. I thought them just like a mini version of the films and guess I’d recommend them as a way into the Fleming stories - which are of their period (the first one came out in 1953).

I’m looking forward to a trip to the pictures to look at Daniel Craig. The girls may have watched Quantum of Solace with their hands over their eyes, but they want to come too.

May I recommend?

I took the girls to The Artist at the weekend. The cinema was almost empty for a Saturday afternoon showing. We loved it! It is a black and white ‘silent’ movie set in the late 1920s and early 1930s at the point when films are becoming talkies. There is music and there are occasional speech frames.
The subject has been done before, memorably in the pairing of Judy Garland and James Mason in A Star Is Born – but please, not Barbra Streisand and Chris Christopherson! - the rise of  new young stars and fall of older ones. It also has shades of Singing in the Rain where a silent film is made over for the new talking era but not all the actors are up to the job. My girls and I have all been brought up on old movies – though sadly they’ve not seen a  A Star Is Born – and we were completely spellbound. It is difficult to judge whether you’d love it if you’d never seen an old movie, but I don’t see why you wouldn’t: it was laugh out loud funny but also poignant, beautifully dressed, perfect entertainment. Go see it!

I have just finished reading One Day by David Nicholls. It was a requested gift as I had heard so many good reports. I feel mean saying it was OK, but for me it didn’t live up to the hype. I liked the idea of it, but got annoyed with both characters. I could see the plot coming, though I shall refrain from giving it away. I neither laughed nor cried. Sorry!
But I’m loving P.D.James take on Jane Austen: Death Comes to Pemberley. A fan of both authors I thought I’d better try it. There is a perfect summary of the plot of Pride and Prejudice before she gets down to her own story, and I haven’t finished it so I can’t tell you if it works out in a believable way, but so far I am enjoying the pace, the gentle humour, the characters and the plot.

(The heron was on next door's roof on Christmas Day.)

Remembering

I love to read, and what I love to read is fairly eclectic. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy reminded me that I used to read a lot of what might loosely be called ‘boy’s’ fiction. I started with Ian Fleming falling in love with everything Bond. I moved on through Alistair MacLean, Geoffrey Jenkins, Clive Cussler and Leslie Thomas to John Le Carré, Len Deighton, Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum. When I find a ‘new’ author I look out for them at the library and work my way through their oeuvre. But tastes and interests sometimes move on before this has happened. So, while I think I’ve read every James Bond book, as well as the Charlie Higson Young Bond stories, for instance, I find on looking back that my Le Carré reading has been patchy. I have started again at the beginning! His first book, Call for the Dead, introduces us to George Smiley. I plan to work my way through the Smiley stories.



Another knock on my door came in the form of the schedule for BBC Radio 4 Extra. They are rebroadcasting Len Deighton’s Bomber on Friday. This was a heart wrenching but fictional account of a bombing raid on Germany on 31st June 1943, a day that has never happened in that or any other year, and told from every angle and in minute detail. So we hear the aircrew being briefed about their task, meet the civilian population in a small town in Germany, follow the flight, watch the bombs fall, are bombed on the ground, shot at in the sky and hope to get out of the book alive. It is a standout novel. But so is the BBC production: it is striped over the day’s drama slots in ‘real’ time. It will be a poignant listen for Remembrance Day.

May I recommend?

I choose a book to read for all sorts of reasons. Usually a title or an author catches my eye on the library shelves. Sometimes I listen to a recommendation. The one I’m reading presently was in a box I sorted left over from the Church Fête – A Shield of Coolest Air by Marion Molteno. It is unusual, a first novel from 1992, by an unknown (to me) author so I’ve no idea what to expect, but it gripped me from the first sentence so I shall continue – I rarely fail to finish something I start, if only because I record the books I’ve read in an exercise book and hate to feel I’ve wasted my time*. And sometimes I enjoy a TV or radio version so much I am inspired to get hold of the original book.
Such was the case with Lionel Shriver whose novel We Need to Talk About Kevin I first heard on Woman’s Hour. I found this black comedy unputdownable. However uncomfortable the story, I had to know what happened next and was genuinely surprised on several occasions (yes, despite having heard the serialisation). Last week I read So Much For That (also heard on the radio) and it too was brilliant. Very black, and only occasionally laugh out loud funny, but humorous just the same. It doesn’t sound amusing I grant you. It is about the American health system and, to illustrate her point, several of the main characters have medical problems: terminal cancer, a terminal degenerative disease and some elective surgery. Well I said it didn’t sound fun! It was not only funny, but true. If someone you know has had any sort of illness you will find scenarios that have the ring of truth. For instance, how many times do you need to remind yourself to ring a sick friend before you actually do it? And when you’re not comfortable about what you might say, or how they might react, how much more likely are you to put it off? But because it’s always on your mind, and on your to do list, you don’t realise how long it is since you called… I loved the commentary on modern life, the arc of the story, and (should I mention?) the happy ending (you probably need to know!). Even for the characters for whom life ended there was a satisfactory conclusion. I loved this!
If nothing else, if you’re a Brit reader, you will thank God for the NHS!


*I recently stopped reading Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty; I really wasn’t enjoying the sex or the self harm. I am also struggling to get through A Dance to the Music of Time. I loved the TV series and was leant the novels by a neighbour… I have reached book five of twelve but am losing the will to live… Should I strive to complete either task?

May I recommend?

Thank-you Countrymummy over at projectforty (and on my sidebar) for kindly giving me this award. I googled it to see what I could find. It seems all I have to do is pass on the award and though I haven’t managed to find the origins of the Liebster Award, I’ve found a number of posts about it. They vary regarding numbers, and it does seem it is about those following numbers (and mine are small but, of course, perfectly lovely). So I may be supposed to tag 3 or 3-5 bloggers who have fewer than 100 followers, or fewer than 300, or a ‘small’ blog…
So I propose that you should check out I'm Crayon who is scribbling 'a completely pointless, nubby little blog' that always makes me smile; Fran at being me who has lots of followers and may not need an award but is one of my favourite ports of call (but has recently suggested she may give up blogging!) and has a wonderful take on the meaning of English; and thirdly why not visit wylye girl whose tales are marvelous.
I would add that they should none of them feel obliged to accept or pass on this award as I'm usually the break in the chain of chain e-mail that demands I pass it on to my friends, but I was far too chuffed (I'm trying not to think 'pathetic') at being given an award to fail in this instance!

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Were you gripped a few weeks ago by the serial that was South Riding but perhaps a little puzzled by character motivation? The girls and I loved it, but we did wonder why some things happened. Well, having just read Winifred Holtby’s eponymous book I’m staggered at just how much Andrew Davies managed to get into only three hour long episodes, and I’d thoroughly recommend getting in touch with the characters’ inner thoughts!
Written and set in the 1930s it is surprisingly modern. A fascinating study of character, it is also a good yarn: believable, with loose ends, rather than neatly tied in a happy ending format. There are further strands to those in the TV series, but even those you think you know are further explored and embroidered with a cast of characters that cover the spectrum of people you’d expect to find in a (fictional) rural area in Yorkshire. The machinations of the local council, the wheels within wheels of social life and the hardship of simply living through the 1930s are intricately observed. Themes like women’s place in society, health, housing, the welfare state and schooling are all touched upon, but always as part of the story and how they affect the people.
Short chapters with titles made it a page turner too: an all round good read.

May I recommend?

I love to read. I have an eclectic taste, though I will admit to rarely reading non-fiction. So, may I recommend?

I have just finished Every Last One by Anna Quindlen, an American author of whom I had not heard. I googled her here. The apparently straightforward telling of the story, by mother Mary Beth, reminded me of Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin but it all feels much more ordinary.
It begins with a description of family life, and Mary Beth remarks “-every day is like this. Average. Ordinary. More or less.” The prose style is direct and insightful and I loved it!
Of her circle of friends: “Even when we’re honest with one another, we tread carefully; the quickest way to lose a friend is to suggest that she is a bad mother, or to suggest her children have problems, which amounts to the same thing.”
Of her teenage daughter: “she has outside manners and inside manners, company manners and home manners. Or lack of manners. –Only with her father is she always the polite and thoughtful Ruby she presents to the world.”
A lesson to us all: “Here is what I know about dressing like your teenage daughter: She will always look better than you.”
And a warning: “Sometimes I feel as though the entire point of a woman’s life is to fall in love with people who will leave her. The only variation I can see is the ones who fight the love, and the ones who fight the leaving.”


I raced through the book, but with dread! The blurb mentions an ‘unimaginable fate’ and ‘finding the bravery to live as we never dreamed we would have to’. I will not spoil the plot by commenting further; but I am bound to say that we should remember to live in the now and not be too surprised if things don’t work out as we planned: there are so many possible futures.


Anna Quindlen is a columnist but she has written other novels. I shall be looking for them in the library.