Alan Coren: The Gollies Karamazov

If you're of a certain age, you may remember the satirical magazine Punch (1841-2002), even if you only read it in the dentist's waiting room. For me, the highlight was always Alan Coren's column, which invariably had me in stitches.

To commemorate Alan Coren's death a year ago, his son and daughter have just published an anthology of his work, Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks. It was chosen as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week last week and if you're quick you can listen to the five broadcast extracts here, read by the brilliant John Sessions who does all the voices wonderfully well. So far, I've only managed to hear "Let Us Now Phone Famous Men", and yes, it had me in stitches all over again.

In The Times, there's an example of what Coren did best, in my opinion - the literary parody. This one's called "The Pooh Also Rises". There's also an article about Alan Coren by his son Giles here.

Both Giles and Victoria Coren have, happily, inherited their father's gift of humour. Victoria Coren, a journalist since the age of 14, is probably best known for the TV series Balderdash & Piffle which tested new words or definitions sent in by the public for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary. OK, that doesn't sound funny but it often was. She also writes columns in The Guardian and The Observer. Besides being The Times's restaurant critic, Giles Coren was recently co-presenter (or victim) with comedian Sue Perkins of The Supersizers Go..., a series of programmes in which the pair lived for a week on the dishes of various periods and tested the effects of historical diets with hilarious and sometimes revolting results. He also wrote this (expletives undeleted) in which he vents his anger with some Times sub-editor who went too far with one of his articles.

Melvyn Bragg's Travels in Written Britain

A new series by Melvyn Bragg is always a TV treat here at Cuthbertson Acres. On Sunday night on ITV1 we watched the first episode of Travels in Written Britain in which Melvyn guided us around God's Own Country (the North of England, of course) to the acompaniment of readings from writers inspired by the landscapes, from the Venerable Bede to Catherine Cookson in the Northeast by way of Wordsworth and Coleridge in the Lake District and W. H. Auden in the North Pennines. Oh and Daniel Defoe, who disliked the countryside, as did most people of his time, apparently.

But it wasn't all Eng. Lit. Lord Bragg, himself a native of Cumbria, showed us that Britain also belongs to the ordinary people who have shaped our landscape - farmers, miners, fishermen, workers in factories, shipyards and quarries, mothers, wives and children: people who rarely wrote anything down but whose voices can still be heard in ballads and folk songs as well as in books written by reformers who wanted to improve the often appalling working conditions of the poor.

The programme features the earliest known writing by a woman in Latin: the closing salutation and signature in the famous birthday invitation found at the Roman fort of Vindolanda near Hadrian's Wall. The writer was Claudia Severa, the wife of a Roman army officer and you can tell her untidy hand at the bottom of the second leaf below from the more elegant scribal hand above it.

There are reiver ballads from the lawless Debatable Lands on the English-Scottish border (including the rousing Lock the Door, Larriston which is featured in the programme), the extravagant Cursing Stone of Carlisle, and an exquisite poem about dry-stone walls by the Cumbrian poet Norman Nicholson.

There are 3 more episodes: on London, Scotland and the Midlands. I wish there were more (what about Wessex, the West Country, Wales, East Anglia and the South East?), but it seems that ITV doesn't have a great deal of money to make documentaries on this scale, alas. There doesn't appear to be a book of the series, either. I wish the BBC would poach Lord Bragg - they would give him an 8-part series and a book. I know they would. It may be a question of loyalty, or televisual politics, who knows?

Oh, and I see that Melvyn Bragg's latest novel, Remember Me, the fourth in a loosely autobiographical sequence, has just come out. This is a must-read for me - I enjoyed the first three which chronicled the life of a boy growing up in working-class postwar Cumbria and making it to Oxford. And as if all this wasn't enough, he continues to present the arts programme The South Bank Show on ITV and the ever-excellent history-of-ideas series In Our Time on BBC Radio 4.

Sunday Stuff

Recently I found some nifty little gadgets on draft blogger that you can add to your layout if you use Blogger (apparently you can tell you're on draft blogger if the little red B logo on your dashboard is blue). Actually there seem to be thousands of gadgets but I've chosen one or two to add to my sidebar just for fun. One of them is the daily Shakespeare quote, which of course makes me look frightfully clever (an illusion). Another is the Video Bar, which I've just put up. It plays your favourite You Tube snippets so you can share them with blog-chums. It seems to work OK but let me know if it doesn't.

Victoria Wood winning Baftas

I've chosen some snippets from Victoria Wood TV shows, including the fab Freda and Barry song which never fails to double me up in stitches (in a good way). Also a spoof of a scene from an early episode of that venerable TV soap opera Coronation Street with Ena Sharples, Martha Longhurst and Minnie Caldwell sitting in the snug of the Rover's Return enjoying their milk stouts and gossip. You'd probably need to be as ancient as me to appreciate this (Corrie began in the 1960s), and hail from Northern England, preferably Manchester or Salford: "By 'eck, Ena Sharples, you weren't behind t'mangle when they 'anded out t'stair rods."

The Weird Sisters of Weatherfield

I bought a sonic screwdriver* to celebrate the new series of Doctor Who which started last night and wasn't it fabulous? I'm not a big fan of Catherine Tate but she's shaping up to be a sparky partner (name of Donna) for the Doctor and promises to add a new dimension and depth to the relationship. And what about those cuddly (if repulsive when you knew what they were "made" of) monster-ettes? Genius. And next week the Doctor and Donna are in Pompeii! My cup runneth over.

*Only kidding: I bought it to dismantle my oven door.

On the other hand, as far as spring in England goes, our weather cup currently runneth over with rain, wind and snow. Here's a photo of our back garden this very morning. Six inches of snow and we call it April.

And here's a small tree elf we found on a recent and very wet walk in the woods:

And - well, I'll go t' foot of our stairs, as they say in The Street - here's a whole family of them, and the dog!

Daddy Elf, Mummy Elf, Little Girl Elf, Grandpa Elf and Labradoodle Elf

The Greatest Knight by Elizabeth Chadwick

On Saturday, 19 January the BBC2 historical documentary series Timewatch will be showing a programme about William Marshal, the greatest knight of the Middle Ages. Elizabeth Chadwick has written two acclaimed novels about him, The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion. Carla Nayland posted a perceptive review of The Greatest Knight on her blog here.

Elizabeth Chadwick's latest novel, A Place Beyond Courage, is about William Marshal's father, John.

These are thoroughly absorbing novels, rich in character and atmosphere, from an author who, having found her true metier, has grown in stature and maturity. It seems that her novels are at last beginning to reach the wide readership they deserve.

If you're interested in how a historical novelist goes about her research, visit Elizabeth Chadwick's blog Living The History. It doesn't all come from books, you know.