The Questing Volt
Thepublication this autumn of Fathers and Sons — Alexander Waugh's hugely entertaining book about his family — revives in fresh detail the story of one of the great literary revenges of all time: the case of Waugh vs Cruttwell. As an Oxford undergraduate, Evelyn Waugh took so violently against his history tutor C.R.M.F. Cruttwell, later Dean of Hertford, that he was moved to include foolish and embarrassing characters named Cruttwell in several of his novels. The chief charge against Cruttwell, in Waugh's view, was the suspicion that he took carnal advantage of dogs. Alexander reports that Evelyn danced by night under Cruttwell's window with a stuffed whippet, singing, `Cruttwell dog, Cruttwell dog, where have you been?/I've been to Hertford to lie with the Dean', and another couplet too rude to reproduce. Waugh's campaign may be deemed to have been successful: `Cruttwell died in ignominy and despair at a lunatic asylum in Bristol in 1941.' At the Waugh centenary celebrations in 2003, Alexander was asked to Hertford to address a convocation of 200 Waugh scholars from all over the world. He found himself giving his talk from beneath a huge portrait of Cruttwell. 'Great waves of family pride engulfed me,' he recalls. 'That ancient wound needed once more to be reopened. "Let us now raise our glasses and drink to C.R.M.F. Cruttwell, that he may for ever be remembered as a dog sodomist and a total shit." With V signs to the portrait, our glasses clinked and the 200 clever professors drank deep.'
Not for Tibor Fischer, a member of this year's Man Booker judging panel, the austere dignity of silent contemplation. Nor for him the technique, perfected by generations of judges before, of leaking interesting details from meetings to the newspapers and then pretending to be disgusted and outraged that some sneak has betrayed his sacred duty of confidentiality. Rather, Mr Fischer decided that a bit of publicity for his latest book, Voyage to the End of the Room, would be nice, and so emailed the Daily Telegraph to volunteer a candid article about the top-secret judging process. Very jolly it was, too. 'Some entries were so execrable I reckoned they must have been submitted as a joke,' he reported, before, presumably, giving bookies a fright by listing a good dozen
or so of the books he likes so far. He finished up with an appeal for bribes. Mr Fischer is no fool. It's too late to turf him off the committee, and it's a welcome injection of publicity for a so far dullish year, so the prize's organisers are grinning and bearing it.
Umboldened, perhaps, by his example,
i 1 ' his fellow judge Rowan Pelling wrote a similar article a few days later. Judging by the longlist subsequently published, Miss Pelling is influential on the panel. Thirteen of the 17 writers she mentions with favour have been longlisted. Mr Fischer, too, made favourable mention of 17 writers; but only seven of his made the cut. They agreed on David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Nicola Barker's Clear: A Transparent Novel, Colm Toibin's The Master, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, James Hamilton-Paterson's Cooking with Fernet Branca and Louise Dean's first novel, Becoming Strangers.
summertime toilet catastrophes of publishing London, Part One. The following internal memo was circulated through the offices of one of our largest publishing houses the other day, by way of explaining what may have been taken, at the time, by staff to have been a major terrorist alert: 'The building had to be evacuated last Tuesday morning because an over-enthusiastic amount of deodorant spray was used in the ladies on one of our floors and the chemicals activated the smoke alarms!' explained the sender. 'I shall refrain from all other comment other than to urge restraint in future!' The culprit has yet to come forward, and the type of deodorant has yet to be ascertained.
Hail to thee, Blithe Spirit! Novel thou never wert. But all that changes with
the publication this month of a novelisation, by Charles Osborne, of Noel Coward's classic play. It seems rather an odd thing to do, but perhaps there's a market; we turn enough novels into plays, after all. According to a spokesman for Methuen, Mr Osborne — who has previously turned plays by Agatha Christie and Oscar Wilde into novels — approached the company with the idea and the Coward estate gave the go-ahead. Coward's literary executor, Sheridan Morley, was on a cruise this week and couldn't be reached to discuss the matter. So, in place of his quote, a taster from the novel in the form of the scene-setting opening sentence: 'Southgate Manor, the elegant 18thcentury home of Charles and Ruth Condomine, set in gently undulating hilly country in the county of Kent, looked especially attractive in the sunlight illuminating its façade at around 11 o'clock on a glorious morning in the summer of 1960; It's a free adaptation. Blithe Spirit was written in 1941.
Summertime toilet catastrophes of publishing London, Part Two. A further memo; a different company: 'I'm sorry that there was some difficulty finding accessible toilets late yesterday afternoon. This has been resolved and the toilets on the first, second and fourth floors are now available. We have asked **** to ensure that toilets on at least three floors are open each day and we will keep you informed as availability on each floor changes. However, **** will need to close the second-floor corridor leading to the toilets for approximately two hours this afternoon, and so the available toilets during this time will be on first and fourth floors.' Miracle any books come out at all, isn't it?
Ass the long and literary-festival-stuffed ummer draws to an end, a final note for the gazetteer of the tireless seeker after signed copies. The Cheltenham Festival of Literature runs from 8 to 17 October, and looks this year to be a very big and glossy affair indeed. Doris Lessing, Irvine Welsh, Carol Ann Duffy, John Mortimer, Terry Jones and David Baddiel will all be there, among many others. A special treat for aficionados of Graham Greene will be a series of events celebrating his centenary on a themed 'Greene Day' on 9 October. Details at www.cheltenhamfestivals.co.uk. or 01242 227979.
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