A series of essays inspired by books that I own, talking about their history, some reviews and also how they came to be on my shelves. With over 6,500 books here and several more arriving each week I doubt I'll ever be short of a topic.
When I decided to review a book about Peter Cook this week I was faced with a dilemma, should it be ‘Something like Fire’ edited by his widow Lin Cook, or ‘Tragically I was an Only Twin’ edited by William Cook who is apparently not related to the great comic. Both books are wonderful tributes to Peter Cook who sadly died thirty years ago (9th January 1995) at the far too young age of just fifty seven. In the end I chose the second not because ‘Something Like Fire’ is the lesser book, it is a compendium of reminiscences and through that you learn a little more about what it was like to be with Peter Cook and it is of course extremely funny. But this book is a collection of his works, many transcribed from recordings as either there aren’t scripts existing anymore or in several cases there weren’t scripts in the first place, Peter’s genius lay in extemporisation. What this book definitely isn’t as a complete Peter Cook, that would be multiple volumes, but what is here is representative and whilst reading it I can hear Peter’s voice, especially in his guises of E L Whisty and Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling or memorably with Dudley Moore as Pete and Dud.
The performances between Cook and Moore worked mainly because they rarely had a script or rather there was the basis of one which Dudley Moore would learn but Peter Cook wouldn’t despite having dictated it into his ever present tape recorder, relying instead on headlines to keep the performance going in the right direction. Cook would invent a lot during the double act which gave spontaneity to the shows and would often lead to Moore struggling to keep a straight face as some new brilliant line would strike Cook as a better alternative to what he should have been saying. That Dudley Moore could continue regardless is a mark of his acting abilities but it also left William Cook with a dilemma whilst compiling this book as there would be several different versions of a lot of the sketches so he had to choose which one should be included. There is a lot more to Peter Cook than his work on stage or on television and his writing for newspapers and the satirical magazine Private Eye, which he ran for many years, is also featured in this collection.
Sadly Cook did most of his best work in the 1960’s and 70’s only occasionally appearing after then and then only when he wanted to but when he did it was invariably superb. The one legged Tarzan sketch seen in the link is a classic and was originally performed in 1964 but this is a version from one of the Secret Policeman’s Balls in the 1980’s to raise money for Amnesty International. The real tragedy of this book is it highlights how much of the early material no longer exists, a lot of the 1960’s performances for the BBC were wiped when the BBC decided to re-use the master tapes so only records and tapes still exist and almost all of those are no longer available to purchase so this book is invaluable in preserving the work one of the great comic geniuses. Sadly I never heard his alter-ego Sven the Norwegian who would call in to a late night local radio show and would be so strange whilst talking about the Norwegian obsession for fish which had driven him from his home country without the radio host, at least at first, having any idea he was actually talking to Peter Cook. I did see the wonderful Clive Anderson interviews from December 1993, also included here, where Clive apparently interviewed four different, and distinctly odd, people in one show all played by Peter including a biscuit quality controller who had been abducted by aliens, a judge who shot a defendant in court, a football manager and an ageing rock star. Peter Cook’s performance in these was entirely unscripted and this was probably his last great appearance.
For those inspired to approach Cook’s work after reading this blog I feel I should warn about the language used in Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s last collaboration, that of Derek and Clive. These sketches are deliberately littered with profanities and the two performers are often inebriated whilst coming out with this stream of consciousness. The coarseness of the language and the, at times, unpleasantness from Cook to Moore, who at the time (late 1970’s) was becoming successful in Hollywood just as Cook’s career was struggling sometimes makes these a difficult read but they are nevertheless very funny.
This book, Rageh Omaar’s first, starts with him being the first BBC journalist allowed into Iraq after five years in September 1997. He had become the BBC Middle East correspondent that summer and had straight away applied for a visa for Iraq not really expecting it to be granted as anyone from the BBC was persona non grata in the country since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. But Omaar is not the white middle class reporter expected by the regime, rather he was born in Mogadishu, Somalia and speaks fluent Arabic so amazingly they let him in. The book would be fascinating enough if it just dealt with the next six years whilst Omaar gets to know Baghdad and develops friendships with not just his team but ordinary Iraqis, finds a regular tea shop and chats to locals providing an insight to daily life in a country few of us have had a chance to visit. Of course during that time Omaar only spent a few weeks or months at a time in Iraq, he had the entire Middle East to cover and in 2001 and 2002 he was in Afghanistan reporting on the fall of the Taliban, I’d love to read a book by him about that time as well. But at the end of 2002 he was back in Iraq as US President George Bush Jr and British Prime Minister Tony Blair falsely accused Saddam Hussain of having weapons of mass destruction that he would be willing to use and decided on regime change in Iraq as part of the Global War on Terror started following the attack on the Twin Towers in New York in September 2001, which Iraq had nothing to do with.
As 2003 began it became clear that despite the lack of a UN resolution supporting such action America was going to lead a coalition force including Britain in invading Iraq and journalists and their teams were given the opportunity to get out of the country. Despite it clearly being highly dangerous, especially for news teams from countries involved in the invasion, Omaar and a much reduced team decided to stay. The picture above is of them filming on top of the Palestine hotel in central Baghdad with the 14th of Ramadan mosque behind him during the invasion, just three days later they would be in the same place when the Americans bombed the hotel, the impact knocking them flat and killing at least one member of another news team. This is despite the much vaunted precision guided weaponry in use in the conflict and the location of the hotel and the use it was being made of by a lot of journalists still in the country being clearly flagged to the invading forces.
The descriptions of just how the news reports were made and transmitted from the middle of a conflict zone are really interesting and Omaar’s continuing ‘normal’ life in Baghdad interacting with ordinary people, still going to his favourite tea room etc. adds greatly to the story he is telling. I remember hearing him being interviewed from London on a satellite phone as bombs and missiles rained down around him but it is the calls made on the same phone to his wife and family afterwards to assure them he was OK that bring home the fragility of his and his crews existence at the time.
The book has an epilogue where he goes back to Iraq a few months after the invasion and speaks to Iraqi’s about how they are surviving after the conflict and the mismanagement of the country by the victors, who didn’t seem to have a plan for what to do afterwards, is well worth reading, as of course the whole book is.
It was a long time between the first collection of one-act plays published by Penguin and this second selection, the first volume was published in November 1937 whilst this one came out in November 1953. Part of the sixteen year gap can of course be explained by the onset of WWII but Penguin wouldn’t publish any more collections of one-act plays until 1965 and the establishment of Penguin Plays as a series of its own. Which is odd if the blurb on the rear of the book is true as this suggests that one-act plays are particularly popular with amateur dramatic associations. Popular or not I’ve largely enjoyed this collection even if, just over seventy years after it came out, I recognise the names of just two of the playwrights of the seven ‘famous’ plays and there are three I would really like to see performed. Taking them in the order they appear in the book, rather than the front cover:
Villa For Sale – Sacha Guitry
A noted French actor, playwright and film maker, Guitry was prolific in both his production of plays and films, often acting, producing and directing in the same film where he also wrote the script and in 1936 he performed all four roles in four separate films. Villa for Sale is translated from the original French, although no translator is given in the book, and it was quite enjoyable as an entree to the collection. However it isn’t really satisfying as a story as the characters are quite lightly painted possibly due to the restrictions of the length of the play but as my favourite of this set is only a little longer I’m less inclined to give Guitry the benefit of the doubt with this. The story concerns a French lady who is trying to sell her villa for 250,000 Francs but would take 200,000 at a pinch, the villa is in an up and coming neighbourhood for the French film industry so should be in demand but has been on the market for a while, however she has a viewer this afternoon. A couple arrive and are welcomed but the husband is clearly bored of looking at villas and doesn’t really want to buy anything. Whilst his wife is upstairs being shown around it becomes clear that this couple are not the expected buyers but have turned up on spec when the real potential purchaser arrives, mistaking the man as the seller of the property she offers 300,000 Francs and provides a cheque straight away as she wants the place immediately ready to start working on a film. She leaves just before the real owners comes back downstairs and the husband writes a cheque for 200,000 Francs to buy the villa. All in all a rather tawdry story and not one I would rush to see performed.
We Were Dancing – Noel Coward
The play that for me has aged least well in the book, this comedy of manners based around a woman who feels that she has suddenly fallen in love with the man she was dancing with despite being married for many years to another man she loved once but over time it has become more habit to be together rather than love. I had high hopes for this as I had never read a play by Noel Coward, and at times the interactions between her husband and her new infatuation did work but frankly for the most part it left me bored and the clip I found of Coward performing the song included in the play does little to improve my opinion of the play.
Master Dudley – Philip Johnson
In third place of the plays I would like to see performed is this one, although the chance of any company even hearing of the play never mind putting it on are very low. Over fifty of Philip Johnson’s one-act plays appeared in the Samuel French catalogue of published plays of 1951 – more than any other author. In the comparable catalogue of 2005, his plays had disappeared without trace. At the start of the play Dudley’s aunt Stella had just arrived from America to provide support to her sister’s family as Dudley was on trial for murder, however as she arrives he is sensationally acquitted, It becomes clear as the play progresses that there has been a grave miscarriage of justice…
Interlude – Paul Vincent Carroll
Irish playwright Paul Carroll was well known in Ireland and wrote many works including for the National Theatre and this almost makes it into my list of plays I would like to see performed as I suspect that done well it would make great entertainment. The play is set in the office of a money lender in a small market town in Northern Ireland, Judy Tippin and her husband have come to Farrelly’s office to try to get an extension on their loan which was actually due to be settled the day before. Judy and Farrelly have history and she is hoping to use this to soften the heart of the famously stern money lender. The use of ‘defective’ electrics in the office which cause the lights to flicker occasionally and then ultimately go out leaving the performance by candlelight for a short-while has Judy almost convincing Farrelly to forget the debt in lieu of happy memories but then the lights come back on and in the harsh light the hard-hearted Farrelly takes her money leaving her and her husband with nothing.
Although Carroll was lauded in both Dublin and New York as a major new theatrical voice, virtually none of his work has been in print since his death in 1968 until Colin Smythe published a significant collection in 2014 as the sixteenth volume in his series of Irish dramatists, with six complete plays (although not including this one) and overviews of many of his other works.
A Husband for Breakfast – Ronald Elwy Mitchell
Top of my list for plays I would like to see performed from this collection is this one, yet annoyingly Mitchell is the author I can find least about on the internet, other than born in Camberwell, Surrey in 1905 and died in Dane County, Wisconsin, USA in 1986. Nothing he wrote appears to still be in print yet from this short play he was clearly an excellent writer. The play, set in a small Welsh village, is full of humour. It starts early morning as Aholibah is starting to prepare breakfast for her and her husband Isiah, who is still asleep, but is surprised by the arrival of a neighbour who is clearly expecting some sort of show. It becomes clear that Isiah had been in the pub the previous night and when it came to his turn to pay for the drinks he hadn’t any money. Trying to think of anything he could sell or barter for his round he was constantly thwarted by people pointing out the items he came up with belonged to Aholibah. Eventually he struck a deal with Moses Roberts to sell Aholibah herself to him for the price of the drinks. Various villagers were therefore descending on Aholibah’s cottage to see how she reacts. Eventually Moses Roberts himself arrives seeking the return of the half a crown he had paid Isiah but Aholibah sensing a way to profit from this instead sets him to work around the house as her new ‘husband’ much to the amusement of the other villagers there. Moses Roberts is then desperate to get out of the bargain as can be seen below and a trade is proposed for Roberts to buy himself out of the ‘contract’ which starts with two bushels of wheat but quickly escalates:
The Rose in the Cloister – Margaret Luce
Later Lady Margaret Luce as her husband was knighted when he became Governor of Aden in 1956 she is also one of the grandmothers of English actress Miranda Hart and wrote a book about her experiences in the Middle East ‘From Aden to Gulf: personal diaries’, which covers 1956 to 1966 and is a book I will definitely be looking out for. The play is well written and is also by far the shortest work in this collection being just nine pages long yet it manages to tell a complete story and even deliver a moral. It starts with a monk just concluding his sermon in the cloister of the monastery during which he points out a rose bush with a single flower and warns that “Only he whose heart is true as steel and without sin may pluck that rose from its stem: if any other dare to make the attempt his hands as they touch the stem will be burned”. This greatly excites his listeners but one resolves to take the rose and give it to his true love in place of the rose he has already brought for her.
The Will – J M Barrie
Second in my list of plays I want to see is this one. Barrie is probably most famous as the creator of Peter Pan and this is beautifully written as we see the effect of the years passing with the simple expedient of altering the set dressing, and presumably some quick changes on behalf of the cast. It is set in a solicitors office and a young couple arrive to set out his will in favour of his new wife. Once this is done the curtain falls ut rises again just ten seconds later to reveal subtle changes such as the portrait of the monarch going from Queen Victoria to King Edward VIII. The couple return, a little older, and revise the will, he is obviously doing much better than anticipated yet the beneficiaries other than his wife are getting less. The curtain falls and rises ten seconds later again, the portrait of the monarch has altered to King George V along with other small changes. The couple return and again revise the will, he is now wealthy but again the changes show even less regard for others. The curtain comes down and back up for a third time and this time just the man arrives as his wife has died, this time he wants to revise to will to pay back those people he had taken advantage of on his way up in society. The play is really well done as not only are the changes in the couple elegantly drawn but the father and son pair of solicitors also evolve over time.
One thing I would have liked included in the book is a brief biography of the various writers, I assume it is missing as they would have been well known at the time, but only Coward and Barrie have lasted the decades as names I recognised so I’ve had to do a little research to identify the authors.
The start of the trial of Hadi Matar on the 10th February 2025 for the attempted murder of Salman Rushdie in August 2022 prompted me to go back to the shelf of Penguin Drop Caps volumes far earlier than I planned, as I knew that there I would find Haroun and the Sea of Stories. This novel for children was Rushdie’s first published work after ‘The Satanic Verses’, which had led to the fatwa declared against him by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran for blasphemy and which almost certainly inspired Matar, a twenty seven year old American of Lebanese descent, to attack Rushdie almost killing him, stabbing him fifteen times, leaving him blind in his right eye, with a severely damaged hand and multiple other injuries. That the novel was published ten years before Matar was born and that Iran had said the fatwa would not be enforced also before he was born seems not to have affected Matar who admitted he had only read a few pages; and Rushdie had said that he was at last leading a relatively normal life without protection in an interview just two weeks before the attack. Still enough of the context as to why I picked the book up, let’s look at this wonderful fantastical story which I hadn’t read before.
Rushdie had me hooked from the opening lines of this novel:
There was once in the country of Alifbey, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name. It stood by a mournful sea full of glumfish which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy even though the skies were blue. In the north of the city stood mighty factories in which (so I’m told) sadness was actually manufactured, packaged and sent all over the world, which never seemed to get enough of it. Black smoke poured out of the chimneys of the sadness factories and hung over the city like bad news.
It goes on to say that most places in Alifbey had just one letter as their name so there is the town of G and the nearby valley of K nestled in the mountains of M, this means that lots of places had the same name and therefore post was often delivered to the wrong place. In a helpful couple of pages at the back of the book Rushdie explains that the name Alifbey is based on the Hindustani for alphabet and that another destination on the journey of our heroes, for what sort of children’s book doesn’t have heroes even unlikely ones, is The Dull Lake “which doesn’t exist, gets its name from The Dal Lake in Kashmir, which does”. Rushdie was born in India and lived there until he was seventeen and takes a lot of inspiration in his writing from his youth. I have mentioned our heroes and they are Rashid Khalifa and his son Haroun, these are named after Haroun al-Rashid the legendary Caliph of Baghdad who appears in the Arabian Nights stories. Rashid is the happiest man in the very sad city and is renowned as a storyteller gaining the titles of The Ocean of Notions or the Shah of Blah because he could keep telling tales without repeating himself, weaving stories together without ever losing the intricate plots and therefore whenever he spoke he would draw huge crowds. This made his especially popular with politicians trying to get people to listen to them as elections approach as he could start the rally and pull people together from the surrounding area.
But one day disaster struck, the flow of stories just stopped, Rashid couldn’t string two words together and this was at the start of a tour arranged by politicians so it was vital that the reason was discovered. The second night of the trip saw Rashid and Haroun on a boat on The Dull Lake where Haroun encounters Iff the Water Genie who had come to disconnect the invisible tap that linked Rashid to the Sea of Stories, the source of all his tales. In vain Haroun argued that it was a mistake but finally he convinced Iff to take him to the Earth’s invisible second moon, Kahani, so that he could meet the leader of the Eggheads and appeal for Rashid’s tap to be reconnected. Travelling on a giant mechanical Hoopoe called Butt they arrive on Kahani and find the Ocean of Stories is heavily polluted with the stories dying off so Haroun then has to find out what is causing the pollution and stop it. Along the way he finds Rashid has also made his way to Kahani and has his own quest to undertake.
The book is a wonderful adventure story full of linguistic jokes, like the talking fish with lots of mouths which are called the Plentymaw fish in the Sea and the Pages, or soldiers, arranged into chapters and volumes instead of companies and battalions. It is split into twelve chapters, each no longer than fifteen pages so ideal to be read as to a child as a bedtime story over a couple of weeks. I loved the book and it was so different to the other book by Salman Rushdie I reviewed on this blog back in 2019, The Jaguar Smile. I also have his second novel, Midnight’s Children, which was his first best seller, hopefully I won’t wait another five and half years before reading that.
You can find more about the Penguin Drop Caps series in my overview here, which also includes links to the various books I have reviewed from this set of twenty six books.
Ramblings on my bookshelves 