Before There Were Blogs…

…people wrote diaries – and Liz has just alerted me to the fact that BBC4 is showing “Diary Of A Nobody” for 4 nights this week. I’ve just taken a break from school preparation to catch up with Episode 1 on i-player. It was brilliantly done! [click here]

Hugh Bonneville was a wonderful Charles Pooter.

If you do not know this story, CP is the archetypal 'little man' =- endearing, yet obsessed with his own importance, happily married to Caroline, his long-suffering wife.

First serialised in Punch in 1888/9, and then published in book form in 1892, the diary was written by two brothers, George and Weedon Grossmith. This is a repeat of the TV series first made in 2007.

Today is also the birthday of the author Antoine de St-Exupery, author of The Little Prince [Google has modified its logo in celebration] A teaching colleague noticed this and went off to the school library to find a copy, to show it to the child she was working with. She returned somewhat miffed, having been told “Oh we don’t have that, it is not modern enough” [published 1943]

There ensued much muttering about it being a children’s classic, the biggest selling French-language book and one of the best selling books around. When I left school, people were busy debating the possibility of buying two copies – one in English and the other in French!

There is so much utter garbage being printed at the minute, whilst many of the classics of previous years collect dust on the shelf. On Sunday night I read a bit of Cold Comfort Farm as part a sermon illustration – and afterwards discovered that many of the congregation didn’t know the book. But they loved the passage [Yes, Liz, it was Amos Starkadder’s sermon – I know you enjoy that passage!]

Bob didn’t come to church on Sunday night – he had already done two services, and the hay fever had left him exhausted. We’d already agreed I’d do the evening at KMFC. He did sound a little concerned though, when I said afterwards that the congregation seemed to  like the “No Butter In Hell” extract.

“Whatever were you reading that for?” he asked. “Preaching about Hell” I said cheerfully. [Not sure he will let me out into the pulpit again…]

But in defence of modern writers, I have just finished Wolf Hall, and loved it. A ‘best seller’, I had to get through it at breakneck speed because the library only let it out on restricted loan. I shall have to get it out again and read it at a more leisurely pace. It was full of fabulous Tudor detail and extremely well written. It richly deserved all the awards! [there’s an excellent review here]