07:27 pm - Acrid Peter Ackroyd I was asked by a Japanese Shakespeare scholar, who is reviewing the Japanese edition of Peter Ackroyd's new book, what I thought of Peter Ackroyd. Read my response:
I don't like Peter Ackroyd and, as far as I am aware, his work is not highly regarded amongst academic historians in Cambridge - not surprising since he seeks to reach beyond an academic audience (never popular here).
I find Peter Ackroyd's London boring, poorly written, and at times facile. I gather, though, that it is popular with the broadsheet-reading middle classes (I believe he is a regular newspaper columnist and book reviewer). I suppose they like the book because it sits impressively on their coffee tables. Ackroyd's love of, and enthusiasm for, London probably attract readers at first, but I found the book hard to deal with when approaching the thirtieth or fortieth distinct theme (it has 79), each of which is traced independently over the entire history of the city. Presumably it is intended as a book to dip in and out of.
London would have been a more successful historical project had Ackroyd employed a more analytical approach, which would have put themes in the context of periods. This, however, would have required chapters averaging longer than ten pages, and would therefore perhaps have alienated his target readership. As an illustration of how intellectually unsuccessful his approach is, rather than contextualising the issues of age and gender throughout the history of the city, Ackroyd sweeps past them for all but 33 of 780 pages, and then tackles each separately in a section headed "Women and Children", containing chapters patronisingly entitled "The feminine principle" and "Boys and girls come out to play". A further ten pages - in an entirely separate section of the book - are devoted to prostitution, under the title "You Sexy Thing".
Ackroyd has also produced a (dire) biography of Thomas More, which I read while I was looking at Thomas More for my studies. Although it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for literature, it veers strangely between scholarly didacticism and speculative review. Thomas Moreis littered with unhistorical and grammatically awkward disclaimers of responsibility, which make the book unsatisfying to read (per Amazon, "But it might be more fruitful to recognise... "/ "...but it might be worth rehearsing certain of its aspects... "/ "It has in the past been noticed... ").
Ackroyd additionally recycles common platitudes and well-worn clichés about the subject of the biography, apparently careless of whether they are historically grounded, as and when he feels they add colour. I spent fifteen minutes tonight leafing through until I came to the following example. Pages 358-9 of my edition contain a colourful description of the death of five priests, associates of Elizabeth Barton, "written", Ackroyd tells us, "by a Franciscan some years later" - ie perhaps (though we are not equipped to judge from Ackroyd's critical apparatus) under Mary I when Catholic Martyrologies were starting to appear to support the propaganda requirements of the new monarchy.
According to our witness, "[e]ach one was hanged until he lost consciousness, and then was revived so that he could watch as his penis was cut off and stuffed in his mouth; his stomach was then cut open and his intestines tossed in a cauldron of boiling water so that the dying man might smell his own mortality. Then the heart was plucked from his steaming body and held before his face. One of the victims [and here even Ackroyd appears to lose confidence in his source] is supposed to have cried, 'What you are holding is consecrated to God'." The reference is to an obscure 1971 secondary work, Alan Neame's Elizabeth Barton: The Holy Maid of Kent. This work in turn is described by Ethan H. Shagan in "Print, Orality and Communications in the Maid of Kent Affair", The Journal of Ecclesiastical History (Cambridge, 2001), a reputable scholarly journal, as "a hagiography" of Elizabeth Barton. Is Ackroyd's account credible history?
Ackroyd, however, does not write for the academic audience. Among the general public, I believe that his name-dropping, fact-checking, date-listing prose style, his penchant for choosing popular topics (London, More, Shakespeare...), and his relaxed attitude to representing alternate views in historical debates, make him very popular. His books are perhaps the kind that one might suggest for an enquiring sixteen year-old who was thinking of pursuing A-Level history. Wikipedia and the Guardian speak very highly of him: The Guardian believes that "Ackroyd follows in the tradition of the great chroniclers of London, Wiliam Blake and Charles Dickens".
I would not like any of Peter Ackroyd's books for Christmas.
10) Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother - I really enjoyed this. I read it on a train and appalled the other people by laughing out loud and then wincing very obviously. I read it in a crowded room and disturbed all the people there by twitching and shaking in time with the characters. Not as memorable as Curious Incident, but still good.
08:37 pm - Reading On account of J.K. Rowling's latest efforts, I have extended my reading for the year to include: 8) J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
10:07 pm - Reading I spent a lot of last week working in London (boo!). But the up side was that I got a lot of time on the train to read. I have now finished my sixth and seventh books of the year, being:
6) Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White 7) Michael Berry, Greetings in Jesus' Name: The Scambaiter Letters
Both were moderately worth reading, although one of them was a great deal better than the other.
09:32 pm - Busy I have been on holiday watching Rafael Nadal win the Barcelona masters tennis and at work in sunny St Albans. Now I am back in Cambridge for three days, and then I am in London (staying in a plush central London hotel (not the Savoy, sadly)) next week.
Last week I was at college. And on Thursday we were discharged early because the water supply broke. Thursday night was a horrid piss-up, which ended just after I wasn't thrown out of Fez.
Friday I drove down to visit my mum for easter, and also to buy plants for the garden, and in the evening was a pub crawl with Rupert and Alan, where we lost a lot of money in quiz machines.
Saturday, Sunday and Monday were really just recovering.
Today I have started the first day on a new week in King's Lynn. It's quite a good job, and I enjoy the drive (especially the mileage). While we were getting lunch at Tesco, some silly cow drove into me in the car park. Fortunately, no permanent damage was done, although she did manage to pop out the left rear bumper (it's a strange feature of VW Golfs of the all-the same colour variety that the bumpers pop out when hit quite hard). I got out of the car, but resisted the temptation to shout at her. She was beneath my attention.
On Thursday I went out on a schoolnight for a particularly satisfying spot of pool with Gwyn. He was doing well until the seventh rack, after which I won 23 of the next 26, to attain an overall success of 26-7.
On Saturday I spent a lot of the day taking trains around Cambridgeshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in order to: 1) acquire a new car, which is arriving tomorrow 2) go to Hitchin beer festival. Both goals were achieved with a reasonable degree of success.
Sunday and Monday mostly involved recovering from the excesses of the weekend, but today I have been on the trains again, catching the unearthly 6.45 from Cambridge in order to be in central London well early enough to have breakfast before embarking on my first audit. Tomorrow I shall once again be braving one railways, but at the slightly more human time of 7.15. And when I get home, my car ought to be awaiting me.
08:36 am - Exam Stress So this morning I am nominally at home revising before my first exam this afternoon, but in fact the house has been taken over by builders, who are installing a new kitchen. I think I might head off to the used car dealership at the end of the road and buy a new car with my first paycheque, which came through last week.
This weekend I have been doing a little gentle revision - they sack me if I fail to get 50% today - and drinking heavily. On Friday night E and I went to the Kingston Arms for dinner, which was excellent, especially their very nice HSB (beer).
On Saturday morning I dragged myself out of bed to give my final supervision (possibly ever). I have also composed an exam paper, which I get to mark in April.
On Saturday night, seven winkers gathered for an excellent pub crawl. Ed, Sarah, and despotliz bulked up the usual suspects. Unfortunately, I was the cause of extending the pub crawl somewhat, by having discovered the woeful Sauce bar in the line of work. It is now provisionally classified as a pub, and indeed, we had beer in it so it must be.
Yesterday was a minor struggle, but I was perked up by discovering the funny cricket scores we'd seen during our pub crawl were actually true. Then I found out Bob Woolmer had killed himself through drink (probably) or drugs (maybe) and I still think it's funny that Ireland beat Pakistan. So it must be.
08:46 pm - Cultural Change - Football When was the last time you heard a football manager say "He's really let himself down and let the whole team down" when a player gets sent off and contributes to a team losing a match?
In the old days, managers always used to say that sort of thing. Now they blame the referee and say it was never a sending-off offence. This is a sad reflection on the changing culture of football.
07:03 pm - Spring is in the Air Or at least it must be, because yesterday was the Ely Beer Festival. evil_spice, Nick, and I went, and we met Rupert and Stew at the station. The festival itself wasn't as good as normal, because their beer list was severely curtailed. Apparently 400 people descended on the day-care centre on Friday night and drank all the nice stuff. We came back to Cambridge by five o'clock, and Nick and I spent a pleasant early evening in the Kingston Arms before adjourning to chez Nick for tea and cake and ches us (specially kitted out with the new bathroom) for wine and pizzas.
Earlier this weekend, I was taken to Sauce by my new colleagues, but I didn't stay for long. I was still recovering from Thursday night (scavenger hunt followed by a long evening in B Bar) and anyway I had promised to come home for dinner. I did manage to recover rather a natty jacket from the bar, though. I should think about returning it tomorrow. I wonder whether I'll ever see my one again? Fortunately the pockets had already been emptied of all incriminating material before I left it behind, but maybe Alan S will have been sick over it. He does that to things.
Today, I have been mostly shortening my thesis. It is now less than 5,800 words too long.
08:27 pm - Teething Troubles Some small difficulties with my new life in sell-out land.
1) I haven't been paid or even been given my bridging bank loan, so I won't see any money for my soul until the end of next month. This is a bit of a problem since I am completely broke and I need to buy a car - possibly off eBay - ASAP.
2) The accounting body seem to have a problem with my trying to claim money for the supervisions I've been given after I've started work. They are afraid that this will lead to a conflict of interests. I may therefore have to devote my supervisions to college for free. If this is the case, it's not too disastrous, since I only get paid peanuts for my highly skilled time as a supervisor by comparison with the coconuts I will eventually get for totally unskilled auditing.
3) Because I have to be sent to college in order to acquire some marketable skills, there are some weeks in the future when I simply won't be able to take holidays. One of these, unfortunately, coincides with the Monaco tennis tournament this year. Shame. Perhaps we will be able to arrange to go to Barcelona instead...
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On the upside, the bathroom is now nearing completion, inasmuch as there is a shower and a washbasin (although neither of these work yet), a bath and a toilet, and some tiles (but still no door).
07:57 pm - Flamenco Festival So on Saturday, my mother took E and me to the Flamenco Festival at Sadler's Wells. We saw "Ballet Flamenco" by Eva Yerbabuena, which was jolly good. At least, there was some jolly good flamenco dancing. Frustratingly, however, the band was concealed for the most part behind a curtain, which made it more difficult for the uninitiated such as me to enjoy their playing fully. I don't really enjoy the waily singing that accompanies so much flamenco, either.
The performance, perhaps unsurprisingly, was rather a modern, ballet-style flamenco, which was quite challenging. I suppose I was more ready for extremely traditional, old-fashioned style dancing. While not wishing to suggest that it was boring, I did almost fall asleep once. Afterwards, we went for dinner in Islington, but only at a Caffe Uno. Everywhere has the same chain restaurants nowadays.
Also at the weekend, I finished my fifth book of the year, George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman in the Great Game. This was just like most of the other Flashman books, which is to say excellent, but it was especially good because it had a super twist at the end. Also, I enjoy the ones set in India and Afghanistan most.
Thesis now 86,501 words. Still no conclusion. But now I have to do it in the evenings, after my day's work. Hmm, this may take some time.
I have received continue by a coil of the ramming thread in my motor vehicle. It has said comes out, and spead your legs and then it tried to catch one to feel. This thread coil was equipped it everything in the blue. Was it beautiful? Young ones I am tellin' you! It stuck my end with its large black staff; I said "what upward is? Suck my thick now!", as RAM, which is ready, in order to block the lamb. It whimpered just, if they are called my hand on their so much much fork felt. I could feel its damp emergence by its uniform. Proppin ' it upward on the black and space bar openly and slipped. "Oo, that one is close". I struck it as no can of the team of turned blow a pie in cherry just in the jam.
04:43 pm - This ain't a city, it's a God-damn arse-face YouTube has gone shit, so you can no longer embed videos in your blog unless you have a blog with YouTube. Well, there goes much of my interest in them. However, if you clicky here then you will see an excellent video.
EDIT: It's all working now. Go for it. EDIT EDIT: This gives me great pain, but I must admit there was never anything wrong with YouTube. I just couldn't get the internets to work properly.
02:15 pm - Boring Boring Arsenal I have just spent the last couple of hours watching the most boring sporting event I can remember: the FA Cup match between Blackburn Rovers and Arsenal. Critics have been saying for some time that there wasn't much atmosphere at the Emirates Stadium, but this was unbelievable. The football, too was abysmal. I'm glad I didn't waste the more than fifty pounds it would have cost me to go and fill up one of the many many empty seats (not that I support either of the teams).
10:21 am - Fives and Reading Yesterday I did two things, neither involving my thesis or tiddlywinks.
In the afternoon, I played fives for Cambridge against St. Paul's School. We lost by twelve points, but I played much better than I would have expected after my long lay-off.
Won 15-10 vs 8th seed Lost 2-11 vs Pair 4 Lost 5-11 vs Pair 4 Lost 7-11 vs Pair 3 Lost 4-11 vs Pair 3
The doubles losses, I must admit, were partly the responsibility of my partner, who had never played on the small, fast courts at St Paul's before. But then we mainly play this fixture in order to prepare for the varsity match which is held at St Paul's. I have been invited to play for the Sparrows against Oxford Beavers (second team) in a couple of weeks, but I may have a prior engagement.
And the other thing I did was to read my fourth book of the year:
Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown This was not one of Rushdie's very best books. Although inventive and wonderful in patches, it was blighted by a very un-Rushdie-like desire to be topical and relevant, which he didn't carry off all that well, and which already (only two years after publication) looks rather dated. It is a very sad book indeed, which is intentional. Also, Shalimar once again shows Rushdie's total inability to write an ending. Mind you, one reads Rushdie books for the set-up (which takes nearly 300 pages), not the denouement (which takes about ten).
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