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I read some news today that made my blood run cold and left me shaking my head in anguish and disbelief. Apparently a film is being made of Brideshead Revisited, and the moviemakers, in their wisdom, have decided to ignore the existence of Aloysius. Why they feel the need to make a film of my favourite book when there is already a sublime TV version puzzles me, and how they imagine they can do it without Aloysius foxes me further. That would be like making a Harry Potter film without Hedwig; can you imagine the outrage that would cause?
In my first year at university I had a gay, doubled-barrelled friend who wore a tweed jacket, drank his tea from china cups, his whisky from crystal glasses and smoked Camel cigarettes. “He thinks he’s Sebastian Flyte,” sniffed another friend, who had known him vaguely at school, when he was single-barrelled and altogether less tweedy.
I discovered Brideshead for myself in the long summer holidays after completing my first year as a student. I would sit reading in the garden on those balmy days that are 10-a-penny when you’re young and carefree, then only caught in fleeting glimpses through the window when the world of work clamps you in irons. The book made me laugh and it made me cry. When I returned to uni, I had a better understanding of my friend’s posturing.
But I don’t think the world will have a better understanding of Brideshead without Aloysius. Everyone needs a teddy bear.
I am feeling rather excited. I am about to become reacquainted with someone for the first time in almost two decades. Her name is Prue Sarn and she appears in the pages of Mary Webb’s Precious Bane. I first read this novel when I was at university. I remember going to the bookshop with my friend; she bought Precious Bane and I bought EM Forster’s Maurice. Once we’d read our own books, we swapped. I hadn’t thought about Precious Bane for years until something put it into my mind last week. I looked on eBay; there it was and it arrived today. A small, navy blue hardback volume dating from 1927, three years after the novel was first published.
I adore books. I read in bed, I read in the bath, I read on journeys when I am not driving. I was banned from reading at the table when I was a child, so as soon as I left home, I started doing that too. I read all sorts – I have shelves full of racing thrillers and I have helped add to JK Rowling’s fortune, as well as reading ‘proper books’. My all time favourite is Brideshead Revisited. It always makes me laugh - and cry.
There will always be so many books and so little time, but I do enjoy re-reading certain volumes. A fleeting thought, the weather, the time of year – any of these can send me to the shelf looking for a particular book. I keep promising myself that I will read 1984 again soon. I read it in 1984 because I thought I ought to; I think I’ll get more out of it this time around.
My brother hates old books that have already been owned by someone. I think that’s part of the charm. My copy of Rebecca had a paper dust jacket (which I have managed to lose) that said ‘Price Held in Spite of War’. On the flyleaf, it says ‘Nora E Holdforth. October holiday 1940’. I hope she had a good holiday and I hope she enjoyed Rebecca as much as I did.
Anyway, I have to dash: I have a book to read.
I read some news today that made my blood run cold and left me shaking my head in anguish and disbelief. Apparently a film is being made of Brideshead Revisited, and the moviemakers, in their wisdom, have decided to ignore the existence of Aloysius. Why they feel the need to make a film of my favourite book when there is already a sublime TV version puzzles me, and how they imagine they can do it without Aloysius foxes me further. That would be like making a Harry Potter film without Hedwig; can you imagine the outrage that would cause?
