Episode image is a detail from the cover of Portrait Of A Lady by Henry James, published in 1983 by Penguin Books; cover illustration by Philippe Jullian.
Beginning with an inaccurate prediction, this (half-hour) show focuses on a few classics of modern English literature. Being a September show, Charles Adrian bills it as an overdue back-to-school special but discovered after the fact that he could have been pretending to celebrate International Book Week. Still, it’s all of it just an excuse to open up some beautiful books and to play some brilliant music. Listen! Enjoy! Tell your friends!
Another book by Virginia Woolf, Orlando, is discussed in Page One 47.
The Fellowship Of The Ring by J. R. R. Tolkein is also discussed in Page One 73.
This episode was recorded at the Wilton Way Cafe for London Fields Radio.
This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode released: September, 2012.
Book listing:
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Portrait Of A Lady by Henry James
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Fellowship Of The Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
Links:
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
So. I estimate that this edition will be about forty minutes long. Let's see...
Jingle
London Fields Radio... it's London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
It is indeed London Fields Radio and this is Charles Adrian presenting the 5th edition of Page One from the very comfortable Wilton Way Cafe in Hackney. Where better to sit and read? Nowhere.
Given that it is September today, I've decided to make this edition a back-to-school special, focusing on some second hand classics that I happen to have in my library. Imagine me, if you like, striding to and fro among mahogany shelves to select four books perfectly calculated to stimulate your young minds.
The first is Gulliver's Travels by that doctor of divinity Jonathan Swift. I have a beautiful hardback edition with royal blue cloth covers and yellowing pages speckled with rust. It was, according the title page, published in 1908 by Blackie and Son Ltd - London, Glasgow, Dublin, Bombay - and it cost me £5 from one of the booksellers on the South Bank. The front cover is now sadly marred by my old school crest because I bought the book with Speech Day prize money and, tragically, decided to have it crested in celebration. What an idiot. I have no idea what the prize was for. After four years of almost total obscurity, winning nothing but half an elocution prize, I got myself a place at Oxford and was promptly deluged with spurious awards, part of one of which must have bought this book.
I've written here: “Warning - much punctuation but few full stops”. You'll see what I mean. See if this is how you remember Gulliver's Travels starting.
Part I. - Voyage to Lilliput.
Chapter I.
The Author gives some Account of Himself and his Family - His First Inducements to Travel - He is Shipwrecked, and swims for his Life - Gets safe on Shore in the Country of Lilliput - Is made a Prisoner, and carried up the Country.
MY Father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire: I was the Third of Five Sons. He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge, at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and applied myself close to my studies: but the charge of maintaining me, although I had a very scanty allowance, being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound apprentice to Mr. James Bates, an eminent surgeon in London, with whom I continued four years; and my father now and then sending me small sums of money, I laid them out in learning navigation, and other parts of the mathematics useful to those who intend to travel, as I always believed...
Now, I'm going to play you something that I absolutely love and my only excuse is that it starts with a joke involving someone very big and someone very small. This is Flanders and Swan with The Armadillo from their album The Bestiary.
Michael Flanders
Here's an old story. Said the mouse to the elephant: “Ooo, aren't you big!” Said the elephant: “Aren't you small.” Said the mouse to the elephant: “Yes. I know. I've not been well at all.” And you may remember our meeting with the gnu...
Music
[The Gnu (extract) by Flanders & Swann]
Michael Flanders
Well, I recently met another strange animal: the armadillo.
Music
[The Armadillo by Flanders & Swann]
Chapter 1
UNDER certain circumstances, there are a few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not - some people of course never do, - the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed on the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one's enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o'clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. The persons concerned in it were taking their pleasure quietly, and they were not of the sex which is supposed to furnish the regular voteries of the ceremony I have mentioned. The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of him. The old man had his cup in his hand; it was an unusually large cup, of a different pattern from the rest of the set and painted in brilliant colours. He disposed of its contents with much circumspection, holding it for a long time close to his chin, with his face turned to the house. His companions had either finished their tea or were indifferent to their privilege; they smoked cigarettes as they continued to stroll. One of them, from time to time, as he passed, looked with a certain attention at the elder man, who...
And there ends the first page of Henry James's The Portrait Of A Lady. I have a Penguin paperback from 1963 that has a wonderful illustration on the cover: a somewhat graceless girl in a flouncy dress with a fan, sitting in a loveseat; on her left, a man hunched over and staring behind her into the right-hand distance; on the right, a second man with luxuriant whiskers, leaning in.
I first read this book as a teenager - it was on some list of books we really ought to have read before we could consider ourselves cultured - and, although I enjoyed it, I didn't really understand it. The story seemed to me cold and illogical. I read it again a couple of years ago and it made perfect sense. I think it is a beautiful piece of prose - delicate and cruel but very satisfying. If you haven't yet taken the time to read it, I would urge you to at least consider doing so.
A jingle:
Jingle
You're listening... you're listening to London Fields Radio.
Charles Adrian
Lest you forget.
I want to keep reading. I want to go straight on. My next book is another of my favourites - I have many, many favourite books - and another that I read as a teenager. I haven't actually read it since but I remember being completely carried along by it and cannot wait to read it again quite soon.
Can you believe that, until two weeks ago, I didn't have a copy of To The Lighthouse in my library. I can hardly believe it. This copy, I found outside a secondhand bookshop in Kanda, Tokyo. Luckily, it was cheap, because I think I would have paid anything for it. It is a 1951 Hogarth Press hardback edition with a lemon yellow dust jacket and green cloth covers. It was originally priced eight shillings six pence net. Who read it first and who took it with them to Japan and why was it left there? There is no information to be had.
Of course, this is yet another author who prefers her full stops to be as rare as fine summer days. The first chapter is called The Window.
“YES, of course, if it's fine tomorrow,” said Mrs. Ramsay. “But you'll have to be up with the lark,” she added.
To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it was settled the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night's darkness and a day's sail, within touch. Since he belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystallise and transfix the moment on which its gloom or radiance rests, James Ramsey, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army & Navy Stores, endowed the picture of a refrigerator as his mother spoke with heavenly bliss. It was fringed with joy. The...
[gasps] There is more. There's so much more.
Now, to music again. I have manfully resisted the temptation to play you anything b... by The Lighthouse Family. Instead, here's something from Japan. This is Kahimi Karie with Candyman.
Charles Adrian
[Candyman by Kahimi Karie]
Charles Adrian
From Virginia Woolf, now, to Vita Sackville-West, to the meddlesome Sackville-Bagginses. There's my link.
Yes, my last book this month is that bastion of boyish fantasy The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien. I was twelve when I first read this and I have read it several times since then. I'm even a fan of Tom Bombadil. And I was lucky: I inherited from an uncle a set of three fine, hardback editions from the 1950s, priced twenty-one shillings net, that had fold-out maps stuck in the back. I still get a little bit excited when I fold out the maps.
Chapter I
A LONG-EXPECTED PARTY
When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.
Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar, and had been the wonder of the Shire for sixty years, ever since his remarkable disappearance and unexpected return. The riches he had brought back from his travels had now become a local legend, and it was popularly believed, whatever the old folk might say, that the Hill at Bag End was full of tunnels stuffed with treasure. And if that was not enough for fame, there was also his prolonged vigour to marvel at. Time wore on, but it seemed to have little effect on Mr. Baggins. At ninety, he was much the same as at fifty. At ninety-nine, they began to call him well-preserved; but unchanged would have been nearer the mark. There were some that shook their heads and thought this was too much of a good thing; it seemed unfair that anyone should possess (apparently) perpetual youth as well as (reputedly) inexhaustible wealth.
‘It will have to be paid for,’ they said. ‘It isn't natural, and trouble will come of it!’
But so far trouble had not come; and as Mr. Baggins was generous with his money, most people were willing to forgive him his oddities and his good fortune. He remained on visiting terms with his relatives (except, of course, the Sackville-Bagginses), and he had many devoted admirers among the hobbits of poor and unimportant families. But he had no close friends, until some of his younger cousins began to grow up.
The eldest of these, and Bilbo's favourite was young Frodo Baggins. When Bilbo was ninety-nine he adopted Frodo as his heir, and brought him to live at Bag End; and the hopes of the Sackville-Bagginses were finally dashed. Bilbo and Frodo happened to have the same birthday, September the 22nd. ‘You had better come and live here, Frodo my lad,’ said Bilbo one day; ‘and then we can celebrate our birthday-parties comfortably together.’ At that time Frodo was still in his tweens, as the hobbits called the irresponsible 20s between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three.
Twelve more years passed. Each year the Bagginses had given...
So. Happy birthday Bilbo and Frodo for last Saturday. And Happy birthday to you all, whenever your birthdays are.
Music
[Happy Days Are Here Again by Barbra Streisand]
Charles Adrian
That was Barbra Streisand, of course, ending a concert with Happy Days Are Here Again.
This has been the 5th edition of Page One. I've been Charles Adrian, as ever. And I've been broadcasting for London Fields Radio from the Wilton Way Cafe, mostly bathed in sunshine through the windows this afternoon.
Now, before I completely disappear, I want to play you another track from Japan. This is... this is something I discovered thanks to a friend of mine. It's a terrifying piece of J Pop from the extraordinary AKB48. Wiki them if you know nothing about them. I couldn't possibly do them justice.
So, I'm going to play us out with this September edition... with their hit Every Day. I warn you, though, it goes on for more than five minutes. Nobody will blame you for switching off early. Oh, and a second warning: If you listen to it more than once, you will start to like it.
Music
[Every Day by AKB48]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]