Profound thanks

Happy New Year to you. I promised myself I wouldn’t write one of those ‘new year, new start’ posts that have been proliferating … and I sort of have and I sort of haven’t. So perhaps I just about get away with it?

As I blunder into 2012, I find the pressure to make resolutions I have no intention of keeping faintly depressing. And I despair of myself. Where, for goodness sake, is my backbone? My gumption, my competitive spirit? Any kind of desire to better myself? You’ll see them lying, kicked and torn, in a corrosive puddle of piteous reality over there …

And yet I still struggle on, the tattered remnants of my self-esteem shoved hastily into a lovely new Cath Kidston bag which I leave by the back door. One must struggle on, musn’t one? Mustn’t one?

Maybe, amongst the gloom of January (another year older but absolutely no wiser) there are tiny but definite green shoots of positivity. This comforts me unutterably. I find a word coming to my lips and mind with significant regularity. The word is ‘profound’. Now, I have never been known to think, let alone write, anything remotely profound (profane, yes …). That is unlikely to change, but I begin to feel that perhaps other things may. And I am profoundly grateful. I am reluctant to put into words exactly what I feel, because to name it might very well quell it. For now, I am content to let it rumble on secretly as it will. Who knows what or where I shall be this time next year. Let’s hope you will not be left echoing Mrs Brimley …*

Well, that’s enough mysterious mithering, woman!

Yesterday, I had some good news: the fledgling blog about Robert Donat that Jenny and I have been lavishing our love and care upon was given a One Lovely Blog award nomination by Lizzie, whose own rather super blog, Spriteby’s Bokhylle, is very well worth a visit and will introduce you to many wonderful books (A Very Good Thing). The Queen of Lukewarm gratefully accepts the award nomination on behalf of her handsome, dashing Prince Robert who is indeed deserving of the moniker ‘Lovely’. I’m delighted his blog is deemed lovely too.

I must, in return, nominate some of my favourite blogs. I can’t manage the required 15, but I can certainly manage a  few …

1. My Robert Donat blog co-author Jenny has the most wonderful film blog, Cinema OCD, where she reviews classic movies with such wit, knowledge and insight that if you enjoy the best of old films, you really shouldn’t miss it.

2. Kat Got The Cream is a truly beautiful, aspirational style blog by the lovely Kathryn Sharman, a freelance writer. She started Kat got the Cream as a place to share her favourite finds, creative projects and personal style. She also blogs for the likes of Laura Ashley and Oxfam. I never fail to be inspired by the beautiful things she shares: Kathryn makes even the most unlikely charity shop finds shine.

3. No list of excellence (and loveliness) in blogging is complete without the force of nature that is Madame Guillotine, created by author Melanie Clegg. Melanie’s books are historical fiction and her blog is filled with all things historical and beautiful, and much more loveliness besides. I believe she is approaching one million hits, so she hardly needs my puny recommendation, but I curtsey to her awesomeness nonetheless! Melanie’s latest novel is newly published and I know it will be another runaway success for her.

4. Twitter, whilst no doubt sending me to an evil, early death, has introduced me to some splendid people who have enriched my life in many ways. To honour them all is impossible, but there is one person I can’t pass on mentioning because she writes like a dream and is a darling to boot. The Words and Pictures blog by published short story author Nettie Thomson is an eclectic mix of humourous, sometimes profound (there it is again ..) and always perfectly phrased musings on life.

5. Musing on life are also the subject of a very beautiful and spiritual blog by my lovely friend, author Vivienne Tuffnell: Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking. Viv writes poetry, fiction and her thoughts about life and living with depression. There’s plenty to be inspired by and ponder about here.

Those are my One Lovely Blog nominations: I hope you enjoy exploring them as much as I do. And who knows, maybe you will discover some profundity of your own.

*Mrs Brimley is a character in the 2008 film ‘Dean Spanley’. Housekeeper to a stubborn curmudgeon, she one day remarks of her employer (a creature of habit) that at least she knows where she is with him: where she was before. Nowhere.

Book review: Robert Donat by John C Trewin

Robert Donat by John C. Trewin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Inevitably, there are spoilers. If you don’t know about the life of Robert Donat and don’t wish to, don’t read on …

Robert Donat was one of England’s finest stage and screen actors, and was loved and admired greatly during his lifetime. He was regarded, then, as Olivier’s superior, and was highly sought after by Hollywood. Donat possessed one of the most beautiful voices ever heard on film, and was very versatile, taking on romantic lead and character roles with equal ease. Yet he was a very sensitive man (the double edged sword: what made him such a fine actor also made his life very difficult) and was given to doubting his abilities, and taking to heart criticism from others (though he was always his own worst critic).

As an adult, he developed asthma, which seemed to be worsened by stress. He worried about his health affecting his work, and the worry made his health decline. As time went on, Donat became more reluctant to take on work, and then worried about his lack of income and the damage to his reputation. We are left with just 20 films (though he also left sublime recordings of poetry), and he didn’t manage to undertake all the stage roles he coveted.

His film work stands the test of time marvellously well, and he is probably best remembered today for his wonderful Oscar-winning performance in ‘Goodbye Mr Chips’ (1939).

Tragically, he never managed to find a successful solution to his worsening asthma, and he died at the age of just 53 from a stroke.

His widow, actress Renee Asherson, contributed a very touching piece to the book where she described how ‘the crust of worldliness’ never grew on Donat, and that it was his personality, as well as his skill, that drew people to love his performances. J.C. Trewin wrote this biography with the co-operation of the Donat family, and it is both respectful and insightful about its subject, fleshing out Donat’s strengths and weaknesses with affection, never prurience.

The style of Trewin’s writing is a little old-fashioned, and yet it is appropriately so, and allows the reader to consider Donat in context, and not through a modern lens. It is, as I commented whilst reading it, like stepping back in time. If Trewin glosses over Donat’s film roles and gives more weight to his work on stage, it can be forgiven since Donat himself would perhaps have wished it that way (the films paid the bills, the theatre was his real work), and it allows the reader to discover a little of what is now lost forever.

Inevitably, I’m left with immense sadness: having got to ‘know’ the book’s subject so well, a kind of necessary bereavement must take place on ending Donat’s story. And yet, I feel privileged to have had this insight into the life and personality of this wonderfully talented, charismatic, complex man. It never felt an intrusive process, nor was it overly reverential.

The Donat family, Trewin and Renee Asherson were keen to point out Robert Donat’s wonderful sense of humour, which sustained him through many difficult times (it’s in their humourous reported stories you ‘hear’ Donat’s voice most clearly). I’m left wondering what he would have said about this book!

N.B. The book is, rather disgracefully, out of print, as is the only other biography of Robert Donat. Copies are available via Amazon, most at some considerable cost. I’d love to see it back in print, to honour this wonderful actor. We must not forget people like this who have added so much to the arts in this country and worldwide.

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Stylish Blogger Award, who’d have thunk?

No-one was more surprised than me when the lovely Nettie Thomson (whose own blog is haute couture to my charity shop leavings) nominated me for the Stylish Blogger Award. Of course, she probably intended me to post this at my Jeremy Northam blog, which actually is quite stylish thanks entirely to its subject, but I am being cheeky and posting at this poor, neglected blog. In fact, as I survey the tumbleweed and feel unnerved by the silence, it’s clear this really isn’t even quite a blog (to be so, I would actually have to post here occasionally … ). Well, this is a start, isn’t it?

I’m told I must tell you ten things about myself you don’t already know. Although the rules don’t specify, I think that possibly I should restrain myself from telling you things you’d rather you didn’t know. Which doesn’t leave a lot … don’t say I didn’t warn you.

1. I have never, in my life, done a forward roll. Not once. When I went to school way back in the *cough*-ties, PE consisted of forward rolls, backward rolls and jumping over a vaulting horse whilst wearing nylon (or was it crimplene?) navy knickers and a vest. Oh, and daps (pumps, plimsolls, what you will). So when I determined (and I was VERY determined) not to contort myself in order to roll in a manoeuvre that would clearly snap my neck, it forever marked me out as the kid who was always picked last for PE.

2. Despite my refusal to risk life and limb by rolling forward in a silly ball shape for no reason, and my resultant status as ‘rubbish at all PE’, I was picked for the county sports competition (200 metres) and I came third! I have a medal and certificate. Actually, there were only four of us in the race and one of them fell over. But still …

3. The reason I was good at running was because I had very long legs, much longer than the other children in my year. Fascinating fact number three (I know you’re not fascinated, but humour me, please …) is that I was the height I am now (5’6″) aged eleven. When I had a brief dalliance with Friends Reunited, people I’d known from school and have never seen since remembered me as ‘very, very tall’. Not actually true, they were just very, very small.

4. When I was nine, I sold a piece of art to a private collector. It was a sticky paper owl I’d made, and someone bought it, after seeing it at a school parent’s evening, to put up in their kitchen. I was paid £1.50 in book tokens. (Nettie, you’re regretting this now, I can tell … never mind, only six more to go …).

5. This paved the way for adult success in my brief foray into photography. I was commissioned by a local printer to take photographs of rural Norfolk and Suffolk for their Christmas calendar. Two years running. But I never took to digital photography (I miss all the sloshing around in a dark room) so I gave it up when I could no longer use my lovely Nikon SLR and now I can’t take a decent photo to save my life.

6. I once drank absinthe and was so drunk that I … No. Perhaps not. I once got very, very, very, very drunk when I had some absinthe. Ahem.

7. I’m not very good with heights. I got stuck up a tree as a child, and had to stay up it for an hour until my Dad got home from work to get me down. The tree was only eight feet high, which probably actually makes it a shrub. Nowadays, I often have to ask shops for access to emergency exits so I can go up or down stairs rather than use the escalator or (and I shudder at the thought) glass elevators. My idea of hell would be a trip on the London Eye. I’ve never been able to go up the Eiffel Tower, and I recently had a major ‘do’ in the Natural History Museum’s new wing which involves far too much glass for my liking. I stepped into the glass lift thinking we were going up one floor. Ten or more later, and I’m crouched on the floor by the door with my eyes closed, chanting nonsense in a most unseemly manner, and panting like a large dog on a sweltering day. When I realised the only way to get out was by the same route, and a kind NHM staff member tried to encourage me by saying she was scared too, let’s just say I got assertive …

8. I often get called Liz. And Sue. I don’t really know why. Something to do with them all being short names, and abbreviations, perhaps? I’d actually quite like to be called Liz or Sue, because I don’t like my own name one bit. I used to cringe when it was read out during registration at school. I did feel a little better when Gillian Anderson appeared in the X Files and made my name much more cool than it’s ever been. And then Gillian McKeith became (in)famous and that was that …

9. I have mild dyscalculia (numeracy form of dyslexia). It impacts, interestingly, on all sorts of things. For example, I sing in a choir, and although I can sight-read after a fashion, I can’t, technically speaking, read music and most of what I am doing is learning very quickly by ear and memorising, using the music to help me see when the notes are vaguely going up or down. I can’t tell you what each note is called, which is a crotchet or a quaver, or what key we are in. I’ve had it all explained to me enough times for it, surely, to have sunk in by now, but my brain muddles the information and I just can’t make sense of it. And so, unhappily, I’ve never been able to learn to play a musical instrument, which is a source of great sadness to me.

10. And finally … I studied philosophy for a year at university, but was so terrible at it that the very first sentence of my very first essay was read out to the entire lecture hall as an example of a fallacy … and I later managed to prove that I didn’t exist. I gave it up.

If any of you still exist after reading all that twaddle, thank you, you’ve done very well!

I’d like to nominate the following, far more deserving, bloggers for the Stylish Blogger Award:

• Janelle Dvorak, a dear friend and one of the most intelligent people I know, whose insightful musings on life, family and politics can be found at Flyover
• Amy Cockram, lovely lady, a fellow admirer of my actor, and an erudite bookworm who has introduced me to many new gems, blogs about her reading here: Stuff and Nonsense
• Beverley Adams, a dear friend with whom I’ve shared many an escapade in theatreland, student of literature and history, blogs delightfully about her travels here: Lady Byron’s Musings
• Sue Vorenberg, another wonderful lady I’ve come to know through our mutual admiration for my actor. Sue is a journalist for the The Columbian, is possessed of a rare and wonderful sense of humour, and loves The Kinks. Read her fantastic blog here: The Exploding Egg