I am always rushing here to tell you excitedly about some book I am only halfway through reading because my enthusiasm for it will not allow me to wait until the end. Today, I am going one better, or worse, depending on your point of view, I am going to become over-excited about a book which I haven't even read at all!
I learned of it from a review in The Telegraph written by Tom Holland, the author of a history of the Roman Republic called Rubicon, about which I raved a few posts back. (A confession will follow!) The book is called Lustrum and it is written by Robert Harris. He, apparently, is enormously good friends with Peter Mandelson - but we mustn't hold that against him. His book is, I learn, the second in a trilogy (so be advised to find out the name of the first and begin there) and it is set in the first century BC, that tumultuous period leading to the destruction of the Republic. Apparently, this trilogy centres on the great Roman orator and politician, Cicero, who, judging from Holland's history, is exactly the right 'hero' upon which to hang the story. I cannot quite find the words to express my fascination and enthusiasm for this period which is simply stupendous in its excitement, its danger, its drama - and its importance - and filled as it is with a cast of not just larger than life, but almost larger than imagination, characters. Anyone wishing to gain an insight into politics need look no further.
Now my confession. I have bemoaned, many a time and oft', the pile of waiting-to-be-read books which threatens life and limb in my study. Now there is a 'real and present danger' of a second pile growing on my other side to be called the 'half-read-waiting-to-be-finished' pile. In my school days I grew quite tired of my perceptive teachers who filled report after report with the dread words "Duff lacks concentration". How right they were, blast it, but enthralled as I was by Holland's history of Rome, a friend loaned me the latest Arden edition of King Lear. Whenever I direct a Shakepeare I try to read as much of the scholorship on the subject as I can to make up for the fact that I never went to university to study it and in fact I didn't really get going with Shakespeare until my 40s. The Arden is always in the mix although I have often found its use to a director limited. In the introduction essays there are often pages of stuff about, say, 'Compositor A' and 'Compositor B', and the way in which they buggered about with Shakespeare's texts as they squeezed them onto small pages for the Quarto editions - all very interesting, I suppose, but somewhat arcane. However, the 1997 edition by Prof. R. A. Noakes, whilst being steeped in his impeccable scholasticism, is written with a view to putting this impossible play on a stage. Terrific!
Anyway, I thought I would just sample a few paragraphs before returning to Holland's book, but alas, like a smoker who has sworn to stop, I took a few quick, surreptitious drags and was hooked. All else was put to one side for finishing later whilst I discovered, under Prof. Noakes's tutelage, the hideously embarrassing fact that I really knew very little about Lear and had understood even less! Oh dear!
I'm pretty sure it was Robert Harris I heard on Radio Five the other day deploring what his friend and collaborator Roman Polanski had done, but ... it was a long time ago, the victim didn't want to press charges, he was a family man who'd never done anything like it again (forgetting Natassia Kinski) etc etc.
From now on I'll either steal his books or get them from the library.
Posted by: Laban | Sunday, 18 October 2009 at 14:15
Oh dear! With friends like Peter Mandelson and Roman Polanski ... what can one say? I think you're right, it's the library for me, too, and at least my 'waiting-to-be-read' pile will not grow taller!
Posted by: David Duff | Sunday, 18 October 2009 at 14:42