So, I'm re-reading Howards End. I was fairly sure I had even done an essay on it at Lampeter, but could remember nothing about it at all. (This is not unusual. Many thousands of books have slipped right through me leaving no trace. If only food and drink did).
I didn't even remember that the title was of a house and not a bloke's bum lacking an apostrophe. I guessed it was just another overrated classic about posh chattering fucktards written by some over-privileged twat down from Oxford. (That remains about 90% true).
Possibly I had only read Brodie's Notes. Or, in this case, Brodies Notes. Maybe I was just too young to appreciate it and, should that be true, I have a nice retirement laid out for me re-appraising stuff I once so gleefully denigrated.
Because, I have to say, it's flipping good. That stuff written in the years before the Great War resonates hugely right now. HG Wells, Somerset Maugham et al, seemed to be holding their breath in anticipation/fear of a new world order. Forster, for his part, hates the motor car. I'm with him. It'll never catch on.
I can certainly see why the BBC thought to commission it right now. The German girls represent a Bloomsbury Group type of bohemian plurality and the Wilcoxes are bastions of blue blooded English plundering colonialism. You keep waiting for them to argue about Brexit.
Shame then that the BBC lacked the courage to actually include any of the polemic of the book. Still, nice house.
I didn't even remember that the title was of a house and not a bloke's bum lacking an apostrophe. I guessed it was just another overrated classic about posh chattering fucktards written by some over-privileged twat down from Oxford. (That remains about 90% true).
Possibly I had only read Brodie's Notes. Or, in this case, Brodies Notes. Maybe I was just too young to appreciate it and, should that be true, I have a nice retirement laid out for me re-appraising stuff I once so gleefully denigrated.
Because, I have to say, it's flipping good. That stuff written in the years before the Great War resonates hugely right now. HG Wells, Somerset Maugham et al, seemed to be holding their breath in anticipation/fear of a new world order. Forster, for his part, hates the motor car. I'm with him. It'll never catch on.
I can certainly see why the BBC thought to commission it right now. The German girls represent a Bloomsbury Group type of bohemian plurality and the Wilcoxes are bastions of blue blooded English plundering colonialism. You keep waiting for them to argue about Brexit.
Shame then that the BBC lacked the courage to actually include any of the polemic of the book. Still, nice house.
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