Posted 28 January 2021

A tale of biographers and a carpet quarrel

I’ve been reading Jonathan Croall’s In Search of Gielgud (recently published by Herbert Adler) with great interest. The main body of the book is the diary that Croall kept during his writing of his life of the actor, his encounters with those he sought to interview, his relationship with his publisher and agent, and, not least, Croall’s on-going tussle with Sheridan Morley, who had already been ‘authorised’ to produce the ‘official’ Gielgud biography. My only dealings with Morley occurred when he wrote to me asking if he might write sleeve notes for my record company, Must Close Saturday Records. Knowing him to be a thoroughly unreliable, unthinking and sloppy writer, I politely declined his offer. How could I be the conduit through which he could write of such works as the Wolf Mankowitz-Monty Norman musical about Dr Crippen, Belle, when Morley had described Crippen in his impercipient book on British musicals, Spread a Little Happiness, as a ‘mass-murderer’? Did the man know nothing? Did his editors at Thames and Hudson know nothing?

Another matter in the Croall book made me sit up even more sharply. Croall recounts how in February 1998 Alec Guinness received a letter from Morley’s researcher asking for an interview about Gielgud; the interview would be done not by Morley, but by his researcher. ‘Understandably,’ writes Croall, ‘Guinness found this extraordinarily offensive.’ Just so. Reading this account started up butterflies of irritation, as I recently had my own experience with a writer’s researcher, and it is one that still rankles. Reading Croall’s almost scientific detailing of Morley’s treatment of him occasionally makes one want to say ‘Wouldn’t it be better for you if you just let these bad feelings go?’, but as a biographer I do sympathise with Croall. What decent biographer would not?

My biography of the writer L P Hartley, Foreign Country, was published by Andre Deutsch in 1996, to generally favourable (even excellent) reviews. For some years, the eminent writer Penelope Fitzgerald had been said to be working on a life of Hartley, but Hartley’s sister Norah eventually agreed that I should write it. Being a polite sort of person, I of course wrote to Fitzgerald, who graciously conceded that she would stop work. Though not fulsome, it was a sort of blessing. Her subsequent review of my book in the London Review of Books was generous and perceptive, although she regretted the fact that I didn’t mention Hartley’s interest in carpets. In the Spectator, Francis King, who had championed the announcement that Fitzgerald would be writing the Hartley biography, wrote that ‘Even Penelope Fitzgerald would not have written a book so penetrating in its insights’. After meeting me, he wrote ‘I am convinced that you are the perfect person to write this book.’

We cut through almost twenty years. Fitzgerald has died, and a biography is to be published, written by an undeniably eminent female biographer. The first I learn of it is to receive a letter, from someone whose name meant nothing to me, asking if I have any photographs of Hartley for inclusion in the forthcoming Fitzgerald biography. Having no other information, I write asking for more details. It turns out that my correspondent is a researcher for the eminent biographer. Perhaps more kindly biographers would simply have obligingly popped the photographs (yes, I have them, and very nice they are too) in the post, but (rather in the manner of Mr Guinness) I felt slighted. Did the eminent female biographer not do her own research? Did she not feel that the affair of the Hartley biography might be enriched by her contacting me? Had she run out of second class stamps? Approached in a proper manner, I might have shared the interesting correspondence I had with Fitzgerald, but I was denied that courtesy that usually exists between professionals.

Months later, I accidentally came across the Fitzgerald biography, and nervously picked it up. I knew that I would be mentioned, and knew that the words would send me from the shop in a bad mood. I was dismissed in a sentence, along with my ‘timid’ attempt at Hartley’s biography. Feeling like someone who had never been called to give evidence involved in a major trial, and had just been faced with someone wearing a black cap, I flung the book down and walked dazed into the street. As a biographer, along with the majority of my colleagues working at the coalface, I would never have treated (or ignored) somebody in such a way, or waved them into the sidings of a subject’s life along with a paid researcher.

Ultimately, I feel that Miss Fitzgerald’s biographer was a Margaret Thatcher figure, visiting the coal-mine rather as Mrs Thatcher once did, but emerging from it pristine and untouched, not having had to get her hands dirty. Needless to say, the reviews of her book were absolutely spiffing.

Posted 26 June 2020

It’s been heartening to hear from some of my readers at this most difficult time for all of us …

Compared with some people’s troubles, it’s as nothing to have had two books come out this year precisely at the time when the bookshops closed and ordinary life (or what passed as ordinary life) shut its doors against us. I’ve been beavering away at two new books: a new Francis and Gordon Jones novel to follow up Forget Me Not, and a second book about British musical films. The shortage of press reviews (mostly, again, because of the disruption caused by the crisis) hasn’t stopped readers from getting in touch. If you haven’t, please do! Here are some comments about Forget Me Not from some of you out there:

‘For the first time in my life I am defacing a book. I turn down corners and pencil margins. Such gems!’

‘Your writing style does indeed reveal you which seems to me essential. All the factors you describe are key parts of your unique plot development. I’m sure Forget Me Not will break through. It was hugely entertaining.’

‘We have just finished reading your wonderful book which we enjoyed so much on so many levels. Your writing is superb.’

… and a comment about Cheer Up!:

‘I wanted to let you know that I am enjoying the book enormously.’

It may be that I will be listening in to a book club discussion about Forget Me Not in July. I’ll let you know the good or the bad!

Posted 29 February 2020

OTHER PEOPLE: an occasional remembrance of people I’ve known

WILLIAM RAYNER

As a singer I worked for several years with the great accompanist William Rayner, although to describe him as such does scant justice to his talents. Together, we recorded two collections of British theatre music, Living with Pleasure and I Wanted to See the World, for Must Close Saturday Records. He also played for the Maddermarket Music Hall, and was then musical director for the Norwich Theatre Royal pantomimes. Bill was born in Yorkshire and studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, was deputy bandmaster on HMS Queen Mary, and a bandleader in London’s West End. He named his band Moscow Young Conservatives. For eight years he played with the BBC orchestras, and had his own radio programmes. Through the 1960s, he was regularly heard on the Light Programme in many series, including Piano Parade with Leslie Hutchinson (‘Hutch’), Startime, Swingalong, Breakfast Special, Morning Music, Roundabout and Saturday Swings, sometimes playing solo and sometimes with either the Bill Rayner Quartet or Bill Rayner Trio. He orchestrated music for Wilson, Keppel and Betty, and for Rawicz and Landauer, and taught Paul Scofield to sing for the British musical Expresso Bongo.

For many years he was Vera Lynn’s pianist, touring with her in South Africa and returning there for his own weekly radio shows. He was pianist and musical director for many stars, including Harry Secombe (he couldn’t praise him high enough), Arthur Askey, Pat Kirkwood, Tommy Cooper, and Les Dawson who, one night in Bridlington, learned the art of atrocious piano playing from Bill. He was musical director at the London Palladium for the Larry Grayson show, and for a Royal Command performance at that theatre.

All who knew Bill recognised his extraordinary qualities, not only as a musician but as a person. His pronounced stammer did not prevent him expressing himself, haltingly as it was. He felt strongly about what was good in music. Fiercely self-criticaI, he did not hold back from criticising others. I remember when we were auditioning performers for something or other. Some had barely opened their mouths before William took his hands off the keys and said ‘That’s rubbish, lad!’. As I squirmed in a corner, the unfortunate recipient of this advice would take it on the chin, and Bill would go on to offer the poor wretch advice and encouragement. At the BBC, he was a much-loved figure, known at Broadcasting House as ‘Semprini’s pianist’. Why? Semprini, although a brilliant pianist (and Bill was the first to sing his praises) didn’t care much for playing, preferring to direct the orchestra. He and Bill sat in the studio at two facing grand pianos. Semprini would open the proceedings, and at a certain point give way to Bill.

Another reason the BBC remembered Bill was his truly debilitating stammer. It was the source of one of his most wonderful stories. One day, walking through the corridors of Broadcasting House, he saw an announcement of a vacancy for a continuity announcer on the Light Programme. He applied. Everyone knew of his speech impediment, but he was invited for an interview. He turned up. He was asked ‘Do you wish to apply for the job of continuity announcer?’ He replied ‘Yes!’. This probably took a minute or two. He was thanked and told that they would be in touch. A few days later, he received a letter telling him ‘We regret to inform you that your application for the post of continuity announcer was unsuccessful. On this occasion, you were too tall.’

Bill delighted in telling this story (and many others, less repeatable), but principally delighted countless people through his love of music, a passion that served him well through his long life. Towards the end of our association, we worked together on a restoration of Hugh Hastings’ all-male musical Scapa!. A big London flop at the Adelphi in 1962, the score had long been lost. His opinion of the music was summed up crisply in a four letter work beginning with ‘s’. In his last years Bill became organist at his local church, where his wit could not be suppressed. After a sermon about Jesus turning water into wine, he struck up with ’Champagne Charlie’. A lovely man, he is much missed.

Posted: 19 February 2020

Cheer Up!, the first book to deal exclusively with the British musical film from the beginning of sound to the end of WWII, is out from Boydell in May. At some stages of its writing I was also working on my latest novel Forget Me Not, newly published by Matador. It only recently occurred to me that both books probably came about via my enduring passion for British music-hall. A lost art! The genre was embedded in me from my youth. For many years I was a member of the Players Theatre in Villiers Street, a wonderful institution that staunchly attempted to keep some sort of facsimile version of music-hall alive long after its purpose (to entertain the masses) had faded. I also had a long association with the Maddermarket Music Hall in Norwich, where directors Ian Emmerson and Jonathan Meddings took me into the company. It was a glorious opportunity to sing some wonderful Victorian and Edwardian music-hall numbers. The first was Dan Leno’s ‘Young Men Taken In And Done For’, and almost immediately I followed up with ‘Seaweed’, for many years my signature song, its popularity no doubt helped along by my Edwardian bathing costume and some remarkably athletic leaping into the air. My repertoire also included Wilkie Bard’s ‘I Want To Sing In Opera’ that I did as a sort of Wagnerian soprano, the gloriously mawkish ‘A Boy’s Best Friend Is His Mother’, ‘Pansy Faces’ and ‘Where The Bee Sucks’, for which I was dressed to buzz. Ian and Jonathan also put me on to more serious numbers, and it was a rare opportunity to revive some gorgeous Albert Chevalier songs, among them ‘Mrs ‘enery Hawkins’, ‘The Coster’s Serenade’ and, one of my favourites, ‘Alice - An East End Ecstasy’. Happy days!

Certainly, Forget Me Not is in the manner of a tribute to the British music-hall. It’s a book I felt passionately about. Specifically, it owes a great debt to the remarkable male impersonator Hetty King, transmogrified in its pages as Hattie Prince. Meanwhile, back in Cheer Up!, many music-hall greats are celebrated, including the outrageously brilliant Frank Randle, George Formby, Florrie Forde and Marie Kendall.

Published May 2020: the first book to deal exclusively with the British musical film

from the beginning of sound to the end of World War II

FORGET-ME-NOT

August 23, 2018

Ahead of my new novel FORGET-ME-NOT (nearing completion) is the second collection in my Francis and Gordon Jones Mysteries series, THE COMING DAY, to be published by Matador in November 2018.

It has been a delight to return to Francis and Gordon with the five cases they investigate in the Norfolk of 1957. They made their first appearance in THE VOICE OF DOOM, published by Matador in 2016, according to The Book Hound 'Brilliantly funny ... Deliciously wicked and thoroughly enjoyable'. Readers seem to have much enjoyed THE VOICE OF DOOM. I loved writing it. THE COMING DAY revisits the many characters in THE VOICE OF DOOM while, I think, extending the scope and atmosphere of the first volume, and dealing with 'serious' issues alongside the comedy that is always an integral ingredient of my writing.

THE COMING DAY has five contrasting adventures, the title story; 'Continuous Performance' (the discovery of a dead body in a fleapit cinema); 'Seeing Is Believing'; 'The Kiss of Venus' about the unravelling of an old murder trial, and 'Happy Bunny', with the intrepid Francis and Gordon in search of a missing girl in Cornwall. I like to think that my writing was accurately considered by the Independent as 'a kind of untranslated directness about minute experience, a diarists's quick pinning of an instant to a page'. The famous critic A L Rowse described my biography of L P Hartley as 'a real contribution to English literature'. Reviewing FOREIGN COUNTRY, Francis King wrote of me in the Spectator 'he writes with arresting vividness ... elegantly written and penetrating in his insights', the Daily Telegraph that the book was 'Gripping ... he paints a compelling picture'.

In November 2018 my book about British musical flops, MUST CLOSE SATURDAY, had the lead two-page review by Jeremy Lewis in the Spectator. 'Hugely entertaining'. My earlier books on British musical theatre, A TANNER'S WORTH OF TUNE and WEST END BROADWAY had excellent reviews, including the Times Literary Supplement and the Spectator.

But, of course, it is in the writing of fiction that the spirit soars!