I love a bargain. Who doesn’t? But to be able to pick up five brilliant books for a £1 in the Library’s secondhand book sale – there are plenty of titles still available at 20p, why not come in and have a look – was especially gratifying.

Two of the five related to long-standing ‘heroes’ of mine, viz.* George Orwell and Spike Milligan.

I have however long been conscious of the warning – which I learn, to my slight surprise, comes from the Bible and is a Christian doctrine – that, sadly, all our heroes turn out to have ‘feet of clay.’

I suppose I have heard a few bad things about both Milligan, who could clearly sometimes be ‘difficult’ and, to a lesser extent, about Orwell. At least one recent biography of  Eric, as we could think of him,  has been less reverential than most. But if, as seems likely, they did have their failings – and again ‘who doesn’t?’– I am prepared to forgive them because of the huge benefits that they provided – in their very different ways – to me  – (of paramount importance)  – and to the rest of humanity (who I suppose also deserve at least a modicum of consideration.)

If you are looking to dip into one of Orwell’s works, you can browse our catalogue here.

One doesn’t generally turn to Orwell for light relief. I shall be interested to see, as I plough through the biography, if he appears to have had much of a sense of humour.

You could certainly argue that in many ways he had little cause to be happy. Superficially, at least, the first half of the 20th Century doesn’t seem to have been as good a time to be alive as the second half. Perhaps the allegations that the Boomers have had it easy have some merit.

Orwell had two World Wars and the Great Depression to contend with. Most British Boomers had the swinging sixties to enjoy, and – whatever your views of the problems caused by stagflation  – one of the better neologisms?  – in the 70s, and Thatcherism in the 80s and 90s – the threats of human and planetary annihilation and economic collapse seemed to be more remote then than they are now. But perhaps I have inadvertently put on my rose-tinted spectacles.

Terence Milligan was born only 15 years later than Orwell. He lived to 83, Orwell to only 46. What totally different lives they led and what totally different worlds they seem to have  inhabited.

(As an amateur Daoist (sic), I am very sympathetic to  John Donne’s famous assertion that no man is an island–  but one could cogently argue that it would be equally ‘true’ to say that we all live largely in a world of our own.  The complexity  and paradoxical nature of ‘the truth’ and the inability of language to capture it –not to mention the abuse of this by the legal profession, the media and others  – is a topic to which I hope to return.  But I am perhaps straying somewhat from my brief.)

So putting all that  blah (!) to one side – (pro tem!) – my point is that, superficially at least, Milligan certainly seems to have had a lot more fun.

His novel Puckoon is one of my favourite books. He said he found it very difficult to write: His foreword – (?how do we distinguish a foreword from a preface?) – opens as follows.:

” This damn book nearly drove me mad. I started it in 1958 and doodled with it for 4 years. I don’t think I could go through it all again, therefore this will be my first and last novel.  I would like to thank those who helped me get it finished. First, I want to thank me, …”. He concludes by “thanking the human race for being the butt of all my jokes”

It will not be everyone’s cup of tea. My friend John, who loaned me the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, which the Library consequently now stocks, was underwhelmed by it.  Personally I concur with the Daily Mail’s  1963 review :  “It pops with the erratic brilliance of a careless match dropped in a box of matches” .

(The Mail was better then. I wonder if many of you have fond memories of Fred Basset?)

Puckoon opens with a lengthy descriptive passage. My impatient nature means that I have never been a great lover of descriptive writing and am therefore probably a poor judge of it.  But, to me, Milligan seems to have had a great gift for it, as he had for so many things – music, comedy, acting, writing,  to name only the most obvious.  He might be the first to exclude ‘soldiering’ from the list. Adolf_Hitler:My Part in His Downfall the first volume of his memoirs, is also well-worth a read imho.

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Milligan once, a long time ago. He was attending an event in Newcastle and I bumped into him on Gosforth High Street. I chatted with him briefly. I knew little about him then and with hindsight I was lucky to escape from the encounter unscathed.  I recall that I was quick to point out to him that one of his pet theories, that I had read about in the press – could it have related to street-lighting or car headlights?  – was fundamentally all wrong. The folly of youth and Fools rush in are two maxims that spring to mind.

The event is so distant and my memory is so poor that I am wondering if the event ever actually took place. I feel almost 100% certain  that it did. But a scintilla of doubt remains.

Should  a scintilla of doubt be enough to spare someone from a criminal conviction? ‘Beyond reasonable doubt’ as a legal test used to enrage me. Surely, I would argue, some doubt in almost any conceivable circumstance is reasonable?

There are no doubt some ‘interesting’ – in what my Canadian friend might describe as a peculiarly British use of the word – judicial pronouncements on that, as there are on memory  and  its fallibility. I  shall hope to return to these also idc, but as usual my allotted time is up long before I have got round to making even a 10th of the points that I was hoping to regale you with. So – I must stop.

(Milligan was fond of punning on this line from Hamlet which springs to mind here. You may award yourself 10 JL cryptopoints if you can identify it before opening the link!)

Possibly I should worry less about the lack of time since apparently, according to Mr Eliot  – time is not really at a premium. Or am I perhaps misconstruing him 🙃🙃 ?

We must get on to poetry b42 long.

Auf widersehen!

 

 

* viz seems to me to be a very handy abbreviation.I would enjoy seeing it revived. Should we start a campaign?