What You Didn't Miss

by D. J. Taylor

  THE GOOD BOOK: A SECULAR BIBLE

  A. C. GRAYLING

  WISDOM

  CHAPTER I

  1. The wise man has no fear, either of the strong or of the weak, the just or the unjust. He fears neither repetition nor prolixity. Above all, he fears not platitude. Somewhat obvious statements about human endeavour dressed up in quasi-scriptural prose have no terrors for him.

  2. Gloves make a poor present for a man with no hands.

  3. One does not moisten a stamp with Niagara Falls.

  4. He digs deepest who deepest digs.

  5. On the whole, mumps are better than measles [continues].

  6. The wise disdain not the sagacious parable nor the ingenious metaphor, for truly these may shed more light on the doings of humankind than many a mightier work.

  7. Like the lamb which lies down with the wolf in days of prosperity and is then devoured by him in times of hunger.

  8. Or the small beetle which is crushed by the slightly larger beetle, having inadvertently strayed into his path [is this right? Ed.].

  9. The wise do not hasten into speech, nor to reply, unless the request to do so comes from the Today programme.

  10. All things take their origin from earlier kinds. Like man, horned cattle, thundering wildebeest and lesser things that crawl upon the face of the earth. All of which is proof that nature’s bounty has proper origins in all its forms.

  11. This, by the way, is not an argument in favour of intelligent design, which is the resort of credulous half-wits.

  12. And so the wise erect their dwellings from the foundations left by those that preceded them in the development of knowledge.

  13. Like the sapient bee, which constructs its nests from the debris bequeathed it by other bees.

  14. Ceaselessly recycling and refashioning the words of the wise who came before them.

  15. Yet copyrighting these devisings in their forewords, just like any other author.

  16. The wise are tolerant, open-minded and liberally inclined. Their serenity is that of the cow grazing in its summer verdure, or the ox that wallows in its shady byre.

  17. Unless they are asked to comment on the idea of religious belief, in which case none of the foregoing applies.

  18. And their anger is that of the cow long unmilked, or the ox prodded with a sharp stick.

  19. The wise judge everyone with scales weighted in their favour, unless they are members of the Church of England, Roman Catholics, Methodists and other advocates of benighted superstition.

  20. The wise would quite like to be equally contemptuous of Muslims and Hindus, but these persons generally have brown skins and thus criticism of their religious beliefs is better avoided.

  21. Hope is the armour of the wise, kindness their weapon, omnipresence their unavoidable destiny, an overweening consciousness of their own rectitude the pit into which the less assured among them may unthinkingly fall.

  22. Like the mighty whale, which rising from the deeps, is pinioned by the fisherman’s steely harpoon.

  23. The wise say, ‘To burn always with a hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.’

  24. And to write a great many ruminative articles about the nature of happiness for the Independent on Sunday.

  25. The wise know that the right course is whatever a man deems praiseworthy.

  26. Among whatever is deemed praiseworthy by well-judging persons.

  27. Such as myself.

  28. But the destination of all these journeys, whether it be to Broadcasting House, literary festivals, agreeable parties hosted by the Sunday Times Books Section, or lunches with newspaper editors, is understanding.

  29. The question to be asked at the end of each day is: ‘Although one is grievously over-exposed in the public prints, what are the chances of a serialisation deal in the Guardian?’ [Continues for thousands of pages.]

  THE YEAR OF HENRY JAMES: THE STORY OF A NOVEL

  DAVID LODGE

  . . . That afternoon my wife Mary and I drove to Stratford-on-Avon, a town in Warwickshire well known for its Shakespearian associations, where I had agreed to give a talk. In our publicity-conscious age writers often find themselves urged by publishers – who are, understandably, anxious to maximise their returns on the books they produce – to appear at such events: personally I find these gatherings an excellent way of receiving ‘feedback’ from my readers. The evening went well, and yet it contained one ominous moment. I was enjoying a pleasant conversation with a Mrs Enid Grimshaw who, I was pleased to see, had purchased two copies of my last novel at full price, when I overheard my wife at the bar asking in her usual forceful manner, ‘Is there a glass of wine for David Lodge?’

  As it happened, the wine had run out. Instantly I was reminded of the fateful afternoon in which Henry James, the subject of my new novel Awful! Awful!, taking tea with his friend Hugh de Selincourt Heigh, and asked by his host if he would like a rock cake, looked up to find the plate empty. Was this a dreadful harbinger of the fate that awaited me? I could not be sure. However, worse was to come. Next morning, switching on my computer, an electronic communications device which many writers find exceedingly useful, I discovered an email from my agent, Tarquin Crawler. Happily Tarquin had read and enjoyed my new book. ‘Dear Professor Lodge,’ he wrote, ‘I just loved’ – there followed a note to his secretary asking her to fill in the novel’s title – ‘and am pretty sure we can flog it to Secker for fat wads of cash.’ Gratified by these words of approbation, I assured myself that I could not doubt Tarquin’s sincerity, and yet a tiny bell of warning clanged in my ear. Could he not have said ‘adored’ rather than ‘loved’? And what did ‘fat wads of cash’ mean? Plump? Gargantuan? I spent a troubled night.

  On the following day I attended a party at The Ivy, a well-known restaurant in London’s West End frequented by persons distinguished in the media, given for the novelist and son of Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis. Here I was handed a cutting from the Guardian newspaper conveying the disquieting news that the Irish writer Dermot O’Hermit was also poised to publish a novel about James’s last year. What was I to do? Friends counselled caution. Ian McEwan, over the course of an agreeable sandwich luncheon – he had pastrami, I a bacon, lettuce and tomato – helpfully reassured me that ‘No one’s interested in Henry James anyway, David.’ These stout words convinced me. I would weather the storm, I decided . . . [continues paranoically for hundreds of pages].

  NOT A GAMES PERSON

  JULIE MYERSON

  This is me. Six years old and standing in a sack in the middle of a field somewhere in England a long time ago.

  A sad little girl, who is always afraid. Of the hoppy bunnies who might nibble her toes with their eager mouths if she crawls down their burrows, and the cutlery that might leap up from the dishwasher and stab her if she takes her eye from its savage snarl.

  Up in the sky there is a bee – could be any bizzy, little twisty bumbly bee with a blacky-brown waistcoat – but you can tell it’s going somewhere far away, to some lovely flowers near the fairy ring where the pixies are gathering. And oh I wish I was going there too.

  Far away from Sports Day, and sack races, and Miss Grimsditch, who is a big fat lady with bosoms down to her knees who smiles a lot but is sad too.

  Like me.

  [Will this do? – J. M.]

  CROWN & COUNTRY: A HISTORY OF ENGLAND THROUGH THE MONARCHY

  DAVID STARKEY

  FROM THE INTRODUCTION

  Sometimes, even when you are a case-hardened professional, you see history differently. I had one such moment when I last visited the office of my editor, Mr Jolyon Flunky, at messrs HarperCollins. At first I was faintly shocked by the way in which Mr Flunky had chosen to display only a half-dozen copies of my numerous best-selling books on his capacious shelf. But what really struck me was the presence of a very large cheque, made out to a person not unknown to me, upon the editorial desk. It was placed there, I have little doubt, out of the conviction that only I
could do justice to the tantalising project that Mr Flunky now set before me.

  And its presence set me thinking. Was it possible to reawaken the interest of an audience already bored beyond distraction by my recent Channel Four television series? And would it be possible to bamboozle them further by bringing together two books from the back catalogue, putting in some stuff about the Middle Ages and passing the result off as more or less new? This book attempts to answer these questions. It uses the medium of words, which I think is the only proper means of historical explanation. And the words are conveniently placed on paper, which is the only right material for a book . . . [continues].

  ANGLO-SAXON PLATITUDES

  . . . Brave Godwin! Noble Alfred! Stout Athelstan! (Jeremy – can you check spelling of this lot? Thanks D. S.) Little is known of these stalwart defenders of Albion’s first sceptred throne, and what remains is either passingly obscure or, to be frank, not a little tedious. Nevertheless, the chronicler of this dark and inspissated epoch ignores them at his peril.

  But there are occasions when, eschewing the lapidary constructions for which I am renowned, I write in short sentences.

  For effect.

  A MONARCHICAL PREROGATIVE MAKES A POOR CHAPTER-TITLE!

  The learned commentator frequently assumes that an historian occupies some remote and occluded promontory over which the tides of popular culture, and indeed popular expression, have long ceased to sweep. Take it from me, baby, they’re wrong about that. I can mix it with the best of them. Oh yes! Look at the South Sea Bubble, when the fat was in the fire, everyone got their fingers burned and, even worse, seemed to have them in the pie. On the other hand, some of the best chapters end with a stark, no-nonsense question. I have written 300 pages of this kind of thing thus far. Can I extend to a further 200? It is precision of this kind that separates the top-level performer from the tribe of inept, and alas untelevised, amateurs who bumble along in his wake.

  SEX

  Of course, Victoria and Albert were at it like rabbits, you know . . . [continues].

  A LOYAL CITIZEN WRITES

  . . . Prince Charles, in my humble opinion, is sadly underestimated, a leader in his chosen field, for which a good description might be ‘charitable entrepreneurship’, an altogether titanic figure whose succession to his thousand-year throne can surely not long be delayed and whose imaginative vision politicians would do well to emulate. If one may suggest a fresh orbit into which this new kingdom of the mind, spirit, culture and values might profitably stray, it would be the question of knighthoods for distinguished television historians whose Herculean labours have, alas, thus only been marked by the reward of a trumpery CBE. Naturally, these remarks are wholly disinterested. I cannot stress often enough that my only desire, as in every aspect of my historical research, is to see justice done and merit given its due