Dazzling Dozen: My Favourite Books
Norfolk author, broadcaster and entertainer Keith Skipper has been renewing acquaintance with cherished old friends since March – in what he calls his “Lockdown Library”.
Author of 45 volumes of his own about his native county, he reveals his Dazzling Dozen from thousands of fiction books on his shelves. How many of these have you read?
I begin with a contrite apology to hundreds of splendid authors and their wonderful books for not including them in this list of favourites. I have forced myself to be brutal and confine myself to just a dozen volumes that have played significant roles in my life so far.
My dazzling dozen line up in no particular order of merit but simply in order of discovery and influence from childhood to the present day. I could have produced such a list many times over – and still have hundreds to spare. I have deliberately steered clear of specifically local books and writers because I intend to put them in the spotlight on a future roll of honour.
First on my literary list is Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1883 (when I was a lad). He was only 44 when news came of his death on the remote island where he lived in the South Pacific.
My introduction to Treasure Island came at a very emotional time in my young life. I had been busy during the day with my mate Tubby Rye getting all the brambles, boxes, tyres and any other old rubbish we could find to build a bonfire for the glories of Guy Fawkes Night.
Unfortunately, in my sheer enthusiasm for the task I had put the tine of a pitchfork clean through one of my brand new wellington boots. It gaped up at me, an open mouth screaming to be heard as I went home for tea.
To cut a tragic story short, I was confined to barracks while the others headed for firework fun. Grossly unfair, but rough justice administered quickly was very much the system in our family of ten. It was useless to argue or try to escape. I choked back my disappointment and tears and turned to the book by my bed for comfort.
I was soon lost in a wonderful world of pirates and buried treasure. “Fifteen men on the dead men’s chest, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!” The Black Spot. Long John Silver. The creaking sign at the Admiral Benbow. Ben Gunn marooned on the island and jumping out to ask for some cheese. What a book to feed the young imagination! What an adventure to put all those Little Demons, Jumping Jacks and Sparklers in the shade! .
Number 2 on the list... If I say “Ours was the marsh country” you’ll know it is Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, first published in 1861. Yes, I could have chosen one of many novels by the master – and you may be surprised that I put Great Expectations slightly ahead of David Copperfield with all its Yarmouth connections.
Well, just look at the cast list in my choice – Abel Magwitch, the tragic Miss Havisham, the haughty Estella, Herbert Pocket, Joe Gargery, and good Old Biddy – and not to forget Aged P sitting in his chair and nodding. I should never have introduced our sons to him... because it didn’t take long for them to address me thus; Aged P. And that was well before I really deserved the label.
Great Expectations is about class as Pip tries to turn himself into a gentleman and, to some extent, turn his back on those who have helped him along the way. We squirm a bit as dear old blacksmith Joe pays him a visit in his London quarters and doesn’t know what to do with his hat. Of course, it is a rattling good yarn, the mood set by Pip’s meeting with the convict in the churchyard.
Next, one of the books I so enjoyed early in my time at grammar school – a book to make you smile. The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells, published in 1910, stands as one of the great popular entertainments of the early 20th century. An ordinary man snared in a world of mediocrity and frustration, a little man who finally and magnificently rebels. Yes, Alfred Polly became a drop-out!
He’s not much cop as a salesman. Then he makes an injudicious marriage and sets up as a small shopkeeper. Facing bankruptcy, he sets fire to his shop and runs away. He finds trouble, adventure and happiness. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been searching for something like The Potwell Inn for years - but such a place is probably as elusive as the spirit and atmosphere of the Edwardian age so wonderfully captured by Wells in what he called his happiest book.
You may notice a bit of a theme developing here ... yes, my first three choices all translated into jolly good films. Robert Newton as Long John Silver, John Mills as Pip and Finlay Currie as Magwitch, and the same pair taking starring roles in the cinema version of The History of Mr Polly.
Well, that theme continues with my fourth choice – Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, first published in 1938, set in the criminal underworld and pushing forward Pinkie, a 17-year-old gang leader played with chilling effectiveness in the film by Richard Attenborough.
When I first read this at school aged about 13 I treated it as a rattling good yarn. Greene himself called it an entertainment but was profoundly influenced by his Catholicism. Tensions between the main protagonists create an ambiguous moral drama foreshadowing Green’s later novels.
It was impossible to ignore the next selection, not least because it played such a big part in our schedules as we studied A Level English at Hamond’s Grammar School at Swaffham at the start of the 1960s.
Mention DH Lawrence to schoolboys at that time and most would point to the really saucy bits in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. We had Sons and Lovers, first published in 1913, on our A Level programme – and that provided the perfect excuse to read as much as wanted by this prolific writer.
Lawrence, like Robert Louis Stevenson, was only 44 when he died, but produced a remarkable quantity of work – novels, stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, translations and letters. He spent much of his short life in search of a more fulfilling mode of life than industrial Western civilisation could offer. The crushing of the human spirit by the forces of mass industrialisation is at the heart of much of his work.
Sons and Lovers saw Lawrence draw heavily on his own experiences. The Morel family, the counterpart of his own, live on the Nottingham coalfield. Mrs Morel is disillusioned with her husband, a coarse-grained and hard-drinking miner, and centres all her expectations on her sons, especially Paul. His passion for two other women become in a fatal conflict of love and possessiveness.
While I admired Lawrence’s work, I couldn’t help noticing he didn’t have much of a sense of humour. And that is why I remain eternally grateful for being pointed towards my next choice – one of the funniest books ever written and a perfect antidote to all that heavy, earthy communing with nature and early-morning ping of milk in pail as a russet sun dawns on man’s eternal battle to nourish his soul and find his inner self.
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons was first published in 1932 – and continues to enchant and amuse every time a new crop of sukebind swells into bud. It tells how recently-orphaned, expensively educated Flora Poste descends on her relatives, the Starkadders, in darkest Sussex, and tries to bring order to utter rural chaos.
Think of The Archers crossed with The Goons and you have some idea of the cast... Judith, shrouded in guilt-ridden grief; Amos, called by God; Seth, smouldering with sex; Reuben, eager to step into dead men’s shoes; the waiflike, wispy, ethereal Elfine. And over them all looms batty Aunt Ada Doom, who saw something nasty in the woodshed...
I have a DVD of the BBC television production of 1994 with screenplay by Malcolm Bradbury and directed by John Schlesinger. It is a marvellous companion for the book. I just wish Cold Comfort Farm had been set in darkest Norfolk or Suffolk to complete the perfect classic of rural life.
Number 7 on my list is best revisited on a hot, still afternoon when you are unlikely to be disturbed for a few hours. That is how I first encountered The Go-Between by LP Hartley, first published in 1953 and destined to be made into a highly successful film starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates...
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Is the memorable opening line to a poignant and disturbing story of a young lad, on holiday in Norfolk, who acts as a messenger between Ted, a local farmer, and Marion, the beautiful young woman up at the hall. Leo is drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire until his role brings him to s shocking and premature revelation. The lesson is clear... don’t step outside the boundaries of Edwardian society.
This is another book about class as well as a young boy’s awakening into the secrets of the adult world. The Norfolk background and that wonderful village cricket match, give it extra appeal for me. Good quiz question – what do the initials LP stand for in LP Hartley? The answer is Leslie Poles, just in case you are asked as you wander around Norfolk’s more cultural parts.
I am spoilt for choice again as I reach Number 8 on my hit parade. George Orwell has to be included – but I may surprise some by selecting Coming Up For Air as my favourite. First published in 1939, it carries the seeds of two classics, Animal Farm and 1984, but stands in its own right as a richly readable book full of ironic humour.
George Bowling, a bit like Alfred Polly and several others before him, is desperate to escape his dreary life. War is imminent and he foresees food queues, soldiers, secret police and tyranny. So he decides to escape to the world of his childhood, to the village he remembers as a rural haven of peace and tranquillity. But guess what? It’s not really like that anymore.
Many of us have a Lower Binfield in our lives, a place where we can retreat and hopefully revive our faith in the world. Sadly, these places are not immune to change – and I suppose we have to accept, albeit most reluctantly, that you can’t go back. One of life’s harshest lessons... But at least you can acknowledge it with a smile as you read Coming Up for Air.
Talking of the past, I suppose the book about childhood most of us would have liked to have written is Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee. First published in 1959, it is a wonderfully lyrical account of his early years in the Gloucestershire village of Slad in the period after the First World War. It chronicles traditional village life which went with the advent of new developments, like the motor car.
It’s the first book in a trilogy, followed by As I walked Out One midsummer Morning and A Moment of War. Cider With Rosie has been adapted for radio and television several times and adapted for the stage at the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds. It has sold over six million copies worldwide.
We have enjoyed family holidays in the Cotswolds, where some of my wife’s relatives live, and stayed once in Slad very close to Laurie Lee’s home. I bought a copy of Cider With Rosie and inquired if the author would be amenable to signing it. We were told he signed everything put in front of him at the local pub – and an unsigned copy would finish up being worth much more!
My next choice is a comparatively recent discovery although it was first published in 1952 – Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. She made an early mark as a novelist but went very much out of fashion during the 1960s and early 1970s. Then her fortunes revived as Philip Larkin stepped up as her champion –and she remains a power in the land of books over 30 years after her death.
There’s not that much action in Excellent Women starring Mildred Lathbury and her motley cluster of small concerns that make up our day-to-day lives. It is a world of shortages and genteel drabness just after the last war. The plot itself is not without interest but it is he narrator’s comments on her world and the scraps of pleasure it allows her that are so engaging.
Mildred confides at the beginning of the book; “I have to share a bathroom.” – there’s the cry of frustrated ambition, of a desire to be something that fate will clearly never allow one to be. The small things in life become immensely important to all of us. A novel to make you smile and think deeply at the same time. I shall read more of Barbara Pym.
England is a Village by C. Henry Warren was first published in 1940, the story of a village the author called Larkfield – it could be in Norfolk, Suffolk or somewhere else – in the bitter wartime winter as England held her breath. It wasn’t long before many of the old rural ways would vanish forever.
Warren issued a mighty clarion call in his foreword to the book... “Already the Larkfield I have tried to picture in these pages wears the aspect of a dream... but it is a dream that must be kept before our waking eyes when the horrors that sought to blind us are past. For it is from the ashes (if such must be) of the Larkfields of England that our phoenix strength shall rise.
“England’s might is still in her fields and villages, and though the whole might of mechanised armies rolls over them, to crush them, in the end they will triumph.” “The best of England is a village.”
My final choice is a much-needed beacon of reassurance. We need bits of permanence in our lives, especially when change for its own sake takes serious hold at all levels. For me, cricket has provided that little sunlit corner of hope – even though the game itself has been forced to embrace the devils of commercialism behind the old pavilion of golden memories.
I was weaned on village cricket, acting as scorer while brothers and uncles played, father umpired and mother and sisters helped with the teas. I did John Arlott impressions while riding my bike to and from local derby fixtures against that cheating lot from Longham. I stayed true to the game despite all the changes and still find the best Test Match pictures on the wireless.
To keep that flame burning, I mark the start of every cricket season with a fresh innings of Hugh de Selincourt’s The Cricket Match, first taking guard at the crease in 1924 as Tillingfold and Raveley prepare for annual combat.
It is hailed by many as the best story about cricket ever written as the day unfolds with all its little dramas, young and old drawn together in getting the best out of each other, club loyalties underlined in a local cultural celebration. For the players it was an opportunity to imbibe in “the great refreshment that comes to mortals who forget themselves and join in a common purpose.”