I have just been re-reading some of the books in the William series by Richmal Crompton about feisty little boys in the years immediately before and after World War II. YouTube has directed me to a TV series based on those books, so I am in seventh heaven. And William has reminded me of the Billy Bunter series by Frank Richards. I must get my hands on some of them soon, if only via Kindle.
What wonderful childhoods they had, these boys (at least in the author's imagination) and how poor the children I deal with are in comparison, for all their material wealth and enhanced security! I couldn't think of writing any entertaining stories about the latter, simply because, beyond parties and shopping sprees and exams, virtually nothing happens in their lives! And if anything, things have only gotten worse over the last quarter century...
Also, how incredibly rich a country England between the 40s and 70s must have been, aesthetically and intellectually speaking, that so many writers of the highest calibre and of the most diverse interests could have lived and worked there simultaneously ... P.G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie and J.R.R. Tolkien, George Orwell, Nevil Shute, C. S. Lewis, Alistair Maclean and John le Carre and Frederick Forsyth and James Herriot and Richmal Crompton and Gerald Durrell and Roald Dahl, not to mention so many highbrow authors catering to the elite (by which I expressly do NOT mean stupid rich businessmen): by God, if one little country of 50 or 60 million can support so many superb talents in reasonable comfort, how far must England have progressed along the road to civilization before backsliding within a few decades into worshipping only footballers and pop singers and moneygrubbing investment bankers and Princess Diana! I really think visiting England today would be a deeply disappointing, not to say upsetting, experience for someone like me. See this 11-year old post. Do decent Englishmen exist any more, the sort of whom none less than Tagore said 'they are the finest people in the world'?
P.S.: Without denigrating J.K. Rowling's talent, I should venture to say that had she been born fifty years earlier, when far more people could be held to high standards, she could not have achieved literary super-stardom with so little competition!
2 comments:
Dear Suvroda
I have to read the William series too. I heard the BBC radio audio version in our library. It is very good.
Excesses always make lives more complicated - that is what happening to our world now.
Regards
Tanmoy
Personally, I like the Just William series a lot more than the Billy Bunter one. Just William, P.G. Wodehouse, and the Yes Minister & Yes Prime Minister series unfailingly bring a smile and are something I look forward to reading/listening to with my child someday. I prefer listening to them to reading. The characters come alive while listening, and allows me to imagine the scene by myself at the same time, something that wouldn't be possible if I watched the videos. Of course, Tolkien and the other writers are wonderful too. However, these writers also lived through an age of violence, racism, tightening of immigration policies, etc. I will refrain from making a list because I am sure you know all of them in great detail already. It was also the time of, for instance, Operation Legacy, which has just a very brief mention on Wikipedia even today. No one wrote about such topics then, and not many young people in the West read these writers now. I wonder why? Was it for the same reason that many refugees choose not to tell their children about their hardships until they grow up? Or, is it because, to put it in Dumbledore's words, "truth is a beautiful and terrible thing..."?
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