For the Time Being (32 page)

This is a real plum-pudding of a book. Stuffed full of delicious fruits, nuts and silver-trinkets; it is pretty rich, and by the finish one does rather long for the soothing of the sorbet. But, taken in moderate slices, it will do you no harm at all.

Daily Telegraph,
12 June 1993

Deconstructing Madonna,
edited by Fran Lloyd (Batsford)
I Dream of Madonna: Women's Dreams of the Goddess of Pop
by Kay Turner (Thames and Hudson)

At the beginning of the sixties I overheard a very young actor cry: ‘God! There is a movement afoot to take Dirk Bogarde seriously!' If you care to substitute the name ‘Madonna' for mine you might, perhaps, experience the same degree of amazement and amusement that I did. Taking seriously this coarse, vulgar, over-hyped exponent of a sub-art seems to me pretty wild, but then, as I write for the
Daily Telegraph,
I would think that, wouldn't I? I have clapped eyes only once on Madonna and recoiled in fastidious shock.

Here are two silly little books about the woman which might, possibly, give you an idea of her importance today – for a very limited period, I would venture — to the Youth Culture with which we are presently burdened and on which, or from which, some are, in different ways, getting very rich indeed.

Vulgarity, ugliness, blatancy, greed and overt sexuality, mostly of the perverted kind, are the present-day norm. So it seems fitting that Batsford, of all respectable people, should attempt a slender book called
Deconstructing Madonna.
The second word is, of course, in larger print on the jacket, to attract the reader who will be shattered by the contents. Far too erudite and, if it was not all so potty, ‘grown up'.

Why in the name of Heaven anyone should remotely want to deconstruct the woman fills me with alarm. From all accounts, she is doing a pretty good job of it by herself. But try this little extract for size. See if it will fit the theory that some people, somewhere, sometimes, are taking this quirky phenomenon seriously. Here we
are, from ‘Madonna as Trickster'; a run-up on Jung and Freud, then:

In simple terms, it can be described as a certain kind of symbol found in the dreams, myths, and beliefs of large numbers of people. It both arises from and stimulates what Jungians call the collective or transpersonal unconscious. It springs from that level of the psyche that derives from shared human nature, somewhat like the body which, notwithstanding its identifiable uniqueness to each individual, possesses generic features in common with enormous numbers of other people.

What they will make of that on Purley Way or in Carshalton Beeches?

I don't really know what it is that troubles me about Madonna, or why I let it. I suppose it is because the sheer ugliness of the whole ‘Madonna concept' seems to be so degrading; I mean, it is a far cry from Jessie Matthews, and that is as it should be, evolution and all that, but
should
it be so vile? So coarse, so cruel, blatant and violent? Is it, as they will try to argue, that Madonna is used as a female symbol of revolt and ‘I Can Do That As Well As A Fella'? A kind of: ‘Move off my runway — I'm in charge'? Maybe.

Her fans certainly seem mostly female, the males are all around the middle years and leer about in plastic macs. The young are far too timid – they gaze in awe – I have seen them; they snigger and clench their hands in their trouser pockets. But the girls go one better, and in the second little volume submitted for my bleary consideration, they actually write it all down in copious detail. The perfect fantasy book. This is called
I Dream of Madonna
and, by golly, they do:

I was in bed, naked perhaps, and mad at Madonna – why, I have no idea. I was pouting when she came into the room. It was her body alright and she was talking excitedly about her performance. Something about how she had to get into a certain position so she could sing her best. Arching back into
the pose, her nipples grew erect. Next thing you know, she and I were rolling around, and I have a very vivid memory of staring into her genitals. (Pamela, aged 29. 26 September 1992.)

And there are plenty more such goodies where that came from.

The little book will fit neatly into your pocket. I don't mind that you may be tempted to carry such crap about with you, but I
do
mind that you don't
know
that it is crap. The book announces that it is printed in Slovenia. Ah, well … But perhaps Madonna has had an amazing effect on female liberation? I do not honestly know. Perhaps women do feel relieved and exultant and equal because of her audacity and overt masculinity? It is quite possible.

The fact that she deliberately, and to splendid effect, downgrades the males in her ‘act' may have a tremendously liberating effect on a thousand-thousand crushed women. It is possible. Heaven knows, we have come a long way from Louisa M. Alcott and her tedious
Little Women,
but this all seems to be a desperately powerful swing in the wrong direction. There danger lies.

I do not think it is too extreme to suggest that the ugliness, cruelty, brutality and absolute viciousness which performers of this kind offer a young and gullible public can, and often do, lead to subliminal degradation of the human spirit, so that one will discover repercussions in hideous acts of wanton violence, such as that which we have been forced now to witness in the untidy death of a small child on a railway line.

Unleash brutality and, like the dogs of war, we will pay most dreadfully and brutally. Think about it carefully.

Daily Telegraph,
20 November 1993

About a year later a most surprising letter reached me from America. Signed by a secretary. Purporting to come from Madonna and her photographer, Steven Meisel, who wanted me to cooperate with them on a forthcoming book called simply
Sex.
I had a vision of myself stark naked, with a belt, boots, bikers cap, plus rhinestone collar at my throat, and lashed to a tree
in some public street. I declined. Perhaps that is not what they had in mind? I might have made a fortune: the book sold extremely well. I can't think how Madonna got the idea, if she did, because at the time I was already over seventy. Maybe she'd seen a rerun of
The Night Porter?

Alan Clark's
Diaries
(Weidenfeld) were my most joyous reading experience of the year – rich, ruthless, audacious, gloriously self-regarding. I read them with a caught breath of admiration. Clark is a writer of simple, beautiful prose who calls the spade the spade and the bloody fool exactly and precisely that. Hell, I would think, to live with; a glory to be led by. He is a brisk, bracing wind blowing clear, instead of the sneaky little draughts for which we seem to have settled. My second choice would be the first half of Richard Eyre's autobiography,
Utopia and Other Places
(Blooms-bury). If he ever decides to rewrite the second, stuck-together part, he will have a magical book on offer.

Daily Telegraph,
27 November 1993

The Faber Book of London,
edited by A. N. Wilson (Faber)

A thousand years ago, when I was a child, two phrases became stuck in my mind. Probably because both were burned into plywood calendars which hung in the nursery.

One was ‘A Garden Is A Lovesome Thing: God Wot', which confused me and took me years to understand; the other was ‘When A Man Is Tired Of London He Is Tired Of Life', which did not at all confuse me because I refuted it absolutely. I loathed London, and lived very happily in Sussex. In no possible way could I be thought to be tired of life. Utter nonsense! I still cannot admit to adoring London, even after all these years, and, now that I am forced to live in it, I find it quite hard to come to terms with the place. But here on my lap is a perfectly splendid anthology, edited by the indefatigable A. N. Wilson, which points out, most plausibly, why I might be persuaded to revel in this ugly city.

First of all, define for me, please, London. Is it the hideous sprawl which cancers from Cockfosters down to Chessington? From Mill Hill to Orpington? It must be, for they — sad, lost little villages — are all part of Greater London. Some even have London postcodes.

When Dr Johnson made that epic remark in 1777, London consisted of a titchy compound; you could walk it in an hour or two. The City was its centre, then there were the seat of government, the King's house, the languid, if busy, loop of the River Thames under Whitehall … St James's, Piccadilly, Pall Mall … But it was a close-knit place, fringed with unspeakable slums and squalor. Knightsbridge was a crossroads, Chelsea a busy riverside village. They grew vegetables around Kensington, there were potters up in the wilds of Notting Hill, and St Paul's towered above the pencil-slim spires of the City churches.

However, the London in this excellent, and diverse, anthology, must be addressed as the London we know today. As a giant, if unlovable, city, it fairly teems with little splendours (as well as important ones) which Mr Wilson has Hoovered up for our delight. As he points out in his brisk introduction, there is no logic to it. It is a sprawling collection of villages, many of which have harboured some of the most exciting people, and events, of all time. In these carefully culled pieces we can again read what those people wrote, hear what they said, be privy, albeit by proxy, to those astonishing events.

Savour the story of George II, ‘mugged' as he walked in Kensington Gardens. No harm done, great good manners abounded; the King handed over his valuables, including a seal which he cherished, eliciting a promise from the ‘mugger' to return it next day, on condition he remained silent for twenty-four hours. He got his seal. Which, alas, is not what would have happened today. A comforting story, very English; there are many more like it.

Mr Wilson offers us his personal choice of elegant pieces which give a graphic overall picture of a throbbing, ever-changing, metropolis. Items from, and about, everyone you ever heard of and many, I wager, that slipped your mind, if you ever knew them.

Evelyn Waugh takes his son for a big treat to London: the Hyde Park Hotel, the dome of St Paul's, Harrods and a whole pound note, but the boy still finds it ‘a bit dull'. An elderly (unknown) gentleman searches Trafalgar Square for the purse he lost in Dover Street because the light in the square is so much better. To my mind, in a dotty way, this is as moving as the agonizing description of Lady Jane Grey on her way to the scaffold, or Thomas More's head stuck on a spike on London bridge.

The book is a splendid hodge-podge. History is scattered about with the present. Queen Caroline blunders sadly around, locked outside the Abbey; Joe Orton defaces books in his local library; Mrs Pankhurst chucks bricks at windows in the Haymarket and Piccadilly; Samuel Pepys has his first sight of the Great Plague in Drury Lane. At one time, you might have seen the Dukes of Northumberland and Gloucester, the Duchess of Devonshire,
Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds and many others dancing to ‘a band of two hundred and forty instruments' under the stairs in the Ranelagh Gardens.

All London, even the bits not quite fit to be seen, are contained in this delightful collection. If you are tired of London, this book could easily help you to change your mind.

Daily Telegraph,
8 January 1994

Roald Dahl: A Biography
by Jeremy Treglown (Faber)

I find it incomprehensible that a respected writer like Jeremy Treglown should attempt to write the ‘unauthorized' biography of a man he never met but so clearly dislikes. Why bother for Heaven's sake? This is an unsatisfactory book about a gloriously complex man.

Writing about the recently dead brings the most fearful problems. So many people alive knew the subject and are still around to holler ‘Whoa! It wasn't
quite
like that!' I have already undergone this irritation with David Caute's excellent biography of Joseph Losey, but Caute (who also disliked his subject) flayed him, dissected him and laid him on the slab. This is right and correct for a good,
authorized
biography. No suppositions, no holds barred, everyone questioned, friends and enemies.

Here we have an unauthorized effort stuffed with opinions from enemies, disgruntled publishers and sulking American editors (an unlikeable breed anyway), plus a surprising amount of people who slipped along for a little ungenerous chat. Dahl is not dissected here, not examined, has no dimensions. Surface facts for a surface book. It will probably please the ‘average reader' who may demand no more.

The Dahl I knew, both as neighbour and, years later, when I was an actor playing him in a film about a particularly distressing period of his life, ain't the man in this book. He was more complex, infuriating, gentle, charming and funny. I recall with satisfaction Hilary Spurling's terrific biography of just such a difficult man — Paul Scott. A detailed, compassionate understanding of the subject. So too with Miranda Seymour and her life of Ottoline Morrell; a besmirched reputation restored to its proper position in the Bloomsbury world. But Treglown only disparages his subject: there
is an almost visible sneer beneath his perfect, correct prose; less an in-depth biography of a brilliant, difficult genius than an elegant bit of reportage.

Dahl was born to a middle-class Norwegian couple in Cardiff. He grew up in a tightly knit family until the death of his father when he was four, which left his mother alone with two stepchildren and four children of her own. Roald was her only son, adored and cosseted. Hardly a healthy situation, and it obviously had immense bearing on his character. Mama was the dominant force in his life: Nordic, tough, brave, brilliant, a walking
Larousse,
a fiery matriarch. Her effect on her son was ineradicable.

‘I am right, you are wrong!'
was his leitmotif. Bloody irritating it could be. Sometimes it
was
advisable to approach him with a tiger-whip plus a sense of humour. Not always easy, but it could be done. The humour was essential. Dahl knew exactly who he was, without the slightest shadow of a doubt. His authority about himself was absolute and served him throughout his life. This authority was easy to cope with unless one was married to him. But, remember, he did marry and stayed married for two long periods: ladies of all kinds loved him deeply.