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Anne Robinson, My Life in Books – Disappointing
Anne Robinson hosts My Life in Books. Ten episodes on BBC Two in the run-up to World Book Day.
There is an episode each weekday evening this week at 6.30. I got myself organised for the first of these last evening, with author PD James and (55 years her junior) radio presenter Richard Bacon. This programme was a disappointment.
The visual backdrop of blown-up texts seemed to me fussy and distracting. Anne Robinson wore her stern, detached, journalistic air – despite advance notice that she would adopt a different persona – when this viewer was looking for some spark of enthusiasm for the books discussed.
The programme seemed unsure and jittery in its format. At first I thought it was intended to be an intimate chat about favourite books between Robinson and her two guests. Then we realized there was an audience from whom we heard an occasional muted laugh and got one shot of the back of their heads. And the use of the occasional video and audio clip was clumsy.
There was little obvious rapport between the two guests and their host. For me, the programme only came to life when PD James spoke of her number one book Pride & Prejudice. ‘Jane Austen’, she said, ‘was the strongest influence on my writing.’
I did come away with two reads that I will follow up: Cyril Hare’s Tragedy at Law which, according to James, shows it’s possible to write well and produce a classic detective story; Richard Bacon persuaded me that David Nicholls’ One Day would be a good Book Club selection.
But I won’t be back in front of the telly this evening.
A Literary Canter Around Achill Island
I was back In Achill recently when the wind roared and the Atlantic churned and the mist hid the outlines of Slievemore.
I did a quick car tour of some literary haunts. Between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries writers and visual artists flocked to Achill, helped by the extension of the railway line to the island by the Midland Great Western Railway company in 1895.
First stop The Deserted Village at the foot of Slievemore in the north of the island. A short distance away is the Heinrich Böll Cottage – now an artist’s residence – where the German Nobel prize-winning author came with his family in the 1950s. He stumbled one day on the Deserted Village ruins, spent five hours there and later wrote the piece ‘Skeleton of a Human Habitation’ in his Irish Journal.
In Dugort, just down the hill from the Heinrich Böll cottage, is Gray’s Guest House that was run by the late and legendary Vi McDowell at the place which was once The Colony – the centre of the Achill Mission on the island from the 1830s. Victorian travellers and writers flocked here in the mid-nineteenth century, including Mrs S C Hall and Harriet Martineau. Gray’s Memorial Hall and St Thomas’ Church, a short distance away, are now the venues for the annual Heinrich Böll Memorial Weekend.
The Valley House is in the north-east corner of the island. It was the scene of a vicious crime in October 1894, when the owner Agnes McDonnell was attacked by James Lychehaun who became a notorious fugitive from the law. He was one of the influences on J M Synge in writing The Playboy of the Western World.
On the main spine road through the island are the ruins of Bunnacurry Monastery where a Franciscan monk , Brother Paul Carney, was based for a quarter of a century. His hand-written Lynchehaun Narrative was the basis for James Carney’s book The Playboy & the Yellow Lady, and of the film Love & Rage.
Keel, and the island areas of Pollagh and Gubalennaun, were the places where the painters Paul and Grace Henry spent almost a decade in Achill in the early twentieth-century. Paul had a fascination with writing and much of his autobiography An Irish Portrait (1951) dealt with his time on the island.
Graham Greene and his mistress, Catherine Walston, shared a holiday house in Dooagh in the late 1940s. I understand the 2011 Heinrich Boll Memorial Weekend will focus on Graham Greene’s connections with Achill.
When I drove away across Michael Davitt Bridge on to the mainland it seemed that the mist lifted from the island behind me. I will be back.
(Some great Achill photos on Lucy’s blog here.)
(Trailer for film Love and Rage, which was filmed on location in Achill and is based on the story of James Lynchehaun and the Valley House attack of 1894)
What is Poetry?
Mary O’Donnell’s piece from the recently launched Writing.ie provides an insightful perspective from a practitioner into what poetry is and what poetry is not.
Literary Gems among The Moderns
I made it on the very last day. The Moderns – the major exhibition of the Arts in Ireland in the 20th century at Dublin’s Irish Museum of Modern Arts (IMMA).
It covered modernity in Ireland from the 1900s to the 1970s through the visual arts mainly, but with photographers, film-makers, composers, architects, designers – and writers – all featured in a major interdisciplinary collection.
I was interested in the smattering of exhibits connected to Irish writers and showing the crossover of the literary and the visual arts. These were some of my highlights:
Samuel Beckett’s ‘Film’, written in 1962 and filmed in New York in 1963. It can be viewed here on YouTube.
John Millington Synge’s Photos from Aran, Connemara, Wicklow and Kerry. Synge bought his first camera from a fellow visitor to Aran in 1898 and it became a constant on his travels along with his bicycle.
Jack Yeats’ Book Illustrations. He and Synge spent a month together in 1905 on a tour of the Congested Districts in the west, Synge writing his series of articles for the Manchester Guardian and Yeats providing the illustrations.
Robert Flaherty’s film documentary Man of Aran (1934) The work was inspired by Synge and the wheel has come full circle with Martin McDonagh’s drama The Cripple of Inishmaan – currently on tour with Druid Theatre – set against the backdrop of Flaherty’s film.
Paul and Grace Henry Paintings of the West. The couple stayed in Achill for close to a decade and most of Paul’s autobiography An Irish Portrait (1951) centred on the island.
Elinor Wiltshire’s Photo of Patrick Kavanagh picking potatoes in Inishkeen in 1963.
Pity the exhibition is over. Another visit, I feel, would have revealed many more gems. And I loved this TV commercial for the exhibition:-
Patricia Byrne 
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