Arthur & George - ITV review

Arthur & George began on ITV this evening. It's a three-part series, with a lot going for it. The screenplay, by Ed Whitmore, is based on a novel by the estimable Julian Barnes which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize a decade ago. And the book is about a true (and very well known) story, the investigation by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, no less, into a shocking miscarriage of justice.

I was surprised, I must admit, when I found that Martin Clunes was cast as Conan Doyle. Now I've enjoyed Clunes' work over the years, but he didn't seem quite right. Not because he isn't Scottish, but because I've always felt that there was a darkness in Conan Doyle's character (think of some of his macabre stories like "The Case of Lady Sannox") that isn't too evident in Clunes. Over the hour, though, I did warm to his portrayal, which focused on Conan Doyle's vulnerability and instinctive decency (qualities Clunes is very good at conveying) as well as his determination.

I wonder how many viewers realised that "Willie", Conan Doyle's brother-in-law, who appears briefly, was E.W. Hornung, who created a famous crime fiction protagonist of his own , A.J. Raffles? The story proper begins after George Edalji has served a jail sentence for mutilating horses, with Conan Doyle losing his wife, and finding that his grief is complicated by an ongoing affair with Jean Leckie. In his unhappiness, he seizes on the Edalji case, and becomes convinced that the convicted man is innocent, and a victim of racial prejudice.

It's a good story, and I thought the screenplay competent, though not outstanding. I haven't read the book, even though I'm a Barnes fan but I suspect the book is multi-layered in a way the TV show is not. Whitmore is a talented screenwriter whom I have praised on this blog in the past, but at times the action moved rather slowly. It may be that two hours, rather than three, would have been a more suitable time slot. But I shall certainly stick with it.

The Craft of Writing - Short and Simple?

Last week, in discussing Julian Barnes' The Sense of Ending, I expressed my appreciation of the book's concision. He achieves so much in such a short space, and the unstated points and ambiguities contribute to the powerful overall effect of the story. Reflecting on the many heartfelt tributes paid to Hal David, I've also given more thought to the lyricist's flair for saying so much in so few words. Very often, more quality is packed into something short and - at least, superficially - simple than in some vast, sprawling tome. Yet I sense that over the past decade or so, there has been pressure from publishers (nnd one assumes they are responding to consumer demand, though with some publishers, you never know) for books to become chunkier.

One best-selling writer confided in me a few years ago, for instance, that her latest three-book contract had upped the required word limit per novel by 20,000 words. She wasn't impressed, not seeing any good literary reason to write longer books, and neither was I. I've read so many excellent books that would, in my opinion, be even better had they been shorter. Yet quite a few of them have been best-sellers, so perhaps I'm in a minority. And I vividly remember my shock when a colleague once told me that, faced with a choice between two books at an airport, he'd always buy the fatter one. Looking for value, you see.

As a student, I wrote song lyrics, and in fact a couple of songs of mine were recorded (one on a vinyl LP which I still cherish) but I never mastered a very demanding craft. All the same, the experience did teach me the value of brevity, just as it taught me that Hal David's skill was sublime. Paul Gambaccini has spoken of the cleverly conversational nature of the words to 'I Say A Little Prayer', written against the backdrop of a unusual melody. And the universal appeal of the song is shown by that scene in My Best Friend's Wedding, where everyone at the reception joins in - Elvis Costello once pointed out, it works because it's credible that they all know the words.

David Hepworth says in a ,good article in The Independent today that most of the people who could sing Hal David's "songs in the shower don't realise that they already know the best poem about going home a failure. It's called Do You Know The Way To San Jose? and we all know it by heart, which is really the only way." He did the same thing in "Message to Michael". "Paper Mache" is a neat skit on the consumer society, and the marvellous, under-rated lyric for "The Windows of the World" was a comment on the Vietnam War which gained fresh resonance after 9/11.

With novels, the challenge is different - but some of the best crime fiction offers phrases which stick in the mind in much the same way as great lines from lyrics. Think of some of the memorable lines from the Sherlock Holmes stories or the Raymond Chandler novels. Conan Doyle and Chandler didn't pad out their best stories, and we like them all the more because of it.

Is there any likelihood of the trend in favour of chunky blockbusters being reversed? Well, maybe digital publishing will encourage people to look more closely at the quality of writing instead of being so attracted by the sheer size of the book. If so, I'd say it's one more reason to welcome the rapidly growing popularity of ebooks.

The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes is one of my favourite novelists,and has been for many years.It's often overlooked that, as Dan Kavanaugh, he wrote four pseudonymous detective novels, featuring a private eye called Duffy, the first of which was especially good. And his interest in plot and mystery is evident, I think, in his Man Booker Prize winning novel from last year, The Sense of an Ending.

This book has so many merits, it's difficult to know where to begin. First of all, it's short!. And that, almost always is a Good Thing. Barnes shows that a great deal of ground can be covered in a limited space - if you have the requisite skill. There are some very witty lines, and some painfully acute insights into human behaviour. Although the stories are very different, some reviewers have suggested the book has something in common with The Great Gatsby. And I can see there are one or two similarities. Will Barnes' book wear as well? Too early for any of us to say, but I rather hink it deserves to.

This is a book that is subtle in a very pleasing way. Even the title, echoing Kermode, is agreeably ambiguous. Many people have pointed out that it's one of those novels which cries out to be read more than once,and I strongly agree. Tony. the elderly divorced man who tells the story, is told more than once that he "doesn't get it", and on a first reading I too felt there was quite a bit I'd missed. So it proved - Tony is a classic unreliable narrator, and it was good, after finishing the book, to go back to the early pages and look for some of the clues (and there are clues, placed with Christie-like cunning) that help one to understand the story of Adrian Finn, his suicide, and its aftermath. There are also a couple of red herrings, a cryptic equation worthy of J.J.Connington, and an unexpected "solution". One of these days, I bet, someone will write a learned article on the connections between this book and detective fiction (it would be unwise to overstate those connections, but I believe they do exist.).

Because it's a short book, I don't want to include spoilers. Suffice to say that Tony's story begins in his youth, whizzes through most of his life and then really takes off when he receives a mysterious message from the lawyer acting for the estate of a woman he only ever met once. He finds that memories, and his account of his own past, are fallible to say the least. And that is not all....This is a fascinating book, strongly recommended.