Posted by Peter Ceresole on February 11, 2006 at 23:55:06 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Flag at Beckfoot posted by Peter H on February 11, 2006 at 19:23:28:
TARS President Norman Willis has referred to these people as 'the Tarsmudic Scholars', and he says 'I still muse upon my failure to get them discussing whether or not there was a pattern in AR's use of semi-colons'!
But isn't it fun? There's a train spotter in everyone, buried deeper in some than in others.
For me the point is that AR had a 'real' life, found in the biographies and letters, and he created another world which we all enjoy in the books. The two things are both separate and intertwined. The children's books illuminate the biography, and vice versa. Each is enhanced by the other. And his fiction makes the period more vivid. When I read, for instance, Samuel Hynes's 'The Auden Generation', which is about literature and its relationship to politics in Britain between the wars, on the face of it it could hardly be more irrelevant to AR's books and there is absolutely no direct connection, but nonetheless my enjoyment of both is greater. Similarly when I listen to my favourite streaming broadcaster 'The Kingdom of Swing', on live365.com, I know I am listening to some of the stuff the Hullabaloos were casting across the Broads. Me, I love it.
Similarly, when we were seeing friends in Mistley and St Osyth's, reading WDMTGTS and SW meant that I drove to explore Pin Mill and Hanford Water. I loved both places, and the books are more vivid as a result.
Leaving aside Real Life and Work, and shaking hands with Saddam Hussein (and Norman, once, when producing a history of the TUC) which is what people would normally call Important Stuff, this is actually what life is about and makes it such fun.
So a bit of exegesis is good.
But thank heaven that when I met Norman I had no idea he was an AR enthusiast, otherwise the temptation to talk to him about that instead of getting on with my job would have been almost overwhelming.