Category Other sorts of reviews

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde at the Noël Coward Theatre in London – a review

Laurel Lindström 2 Comments

Oscar would’ve loved it! And we did too. Having seen or read this play so very many times, I expected to enjoy it, but not to be in absolute hysterics throughout. Max Webster’s direction and the incredible cast delivered a performance that for me is unmatched. Wilde’s tale of entangled double lives, money, desire and connivance was delivered in extravagant and raunchy style. All levels of this story, at once superficial and profound, were explored and the result was a mad and earthy delight.

I loved the boldness of the direction and acting, which have usurped my previous favourite version. This was the 1993 staging at the Aldwych, when Maggie Smith delivered the handbag line with such mild, quizzical disbelief, almost a sympathetic whisper. And her pronunciation of “profile” as “profeel” and her slight hesitation over the line ‘he is an … Oxonian’. Such undertones!

There were very few unexplored undertones in the energetic burlesque at the Noël Coward. The play was explicit in every dimension from Stephen Fry’s Lady Bracknell’s shrieking of the handbag line, through to Kitty Hawthorne’s Gwendoline’s lust filled gestures and delivery.

What made this such an outstanding rendition of an already funny play? Wilde called this, his last of four so-called drawing room plays, ‘A Trivial Comedy for Serious People’. And on the page you can find all sorts of seriousness: being sexually frustrated, broke, poor, unloved. There’s old age and loneliness, guilt, deception, and hypocrisy. On stage such frailties make us laugh, but rarely do we see or laught at explicit sexual frustration and ambivalence. Until now. 

It is the outstanding Kitty Hawthorne playing Gwendolen Fairfax who sets this tone from the start. She almost, but not quite, steals the show. At once bossy and demanding and charming – how she manages this I have no idea – you at once dread what she’ll say and do next and eagerly anticipate it’s impact on her fellow players. Sometimes she’s growling and lascivious and sometimes prim and bossy. Priceless. Coming hot on Kitty Hawthorne’s heels is Hayley Carmichael’s Merriman/Lane performance. This too almost, but not quite, upstaged the rest of the cast. Her Lane was at once aloof, nonchalant and disrespectful, and her confused and slightly demented Merriman has surely never exhibited such enormous personality. Hysterical and transfixing.

Back to Kitty Hawthorne, played loud and determined, her Gwendolen is the perfect harbinger of her older self (yes, like her mother Lady Bracknell). She’s determined to have a man called Earnest, and Jack is the perfect choice: she’s fallen in love on hearsay, with an idea, with a suitable candidate she has decided will meet her needs. That he’s a liar and broke is irrelevant. She wants Algernon Moncrieff even more once she lays eyes on him. Her frantic use of a fan to cool her face and thighs as she nearly snarled the lines that the name Earnest ‘produces vibrations’ and ‘I am fully determined to accept you’ brought the joyous tears streaming.

Wilde and sex have always been equated on his personal level, but not so much in his plays. But in this performance sex is as important as earnestness; maybe it is earnestness. It’s wonderful to see Wilde’s work taken out of the society comedy box and put on as portrayal of how people might actually feel about one another. The only gripe I have with the presentation of sexuality is the few lesbian interactions in the stage direction. There is no need to show us Cecily and Gwendoline licking at one another – it’s already there in the lines: ‘I already like you more than I can say’ et al. The incidences of gratuitous lesbian posturing were a completely unnecessary distraction that went absolutely nowhere. They can be done without.

I have always wondered why it is that the two young women in this play are often played as much the same character, when on the page they are immensely different. Jessica Whitehurst’s Cecily Cardew is spoilt, loud and clear and not just a bit of ballast for the plot. She’s naughty and wayward and Whitehurst brings a wonderful unpredictability to the role. Jessica Whitehurst gives us a Cecily Cardew of a much more distinct character. She’s also sexually ambitious, holding onto Algernon tight and leering at him when other characters are speaking. So funny.

Olly Alexander is, for me at least, an unexpected delight as Algernon Moncrieff. He balances campy skittishness with almost drooling desire to perfection. Nathan Stewart-Jarrett’s Jack Worthing brings a bizarre underlying neurosis to the part, alternatively wanting to be in control and stressing at the tension of it all. Stephen Fry is nothing short of monumental as Lady Bracknell. Tightly upholstered she is hugely present, without conquering all before her. Everyone gets to shine and each player really does own it: Shobna Gulati’s Miss Prism and Hugh Dennis as Reverend Canon Chasuble create a subplay all their own. Another rendition the sex theme, this time for older people, is visible in their understated mutual attraction. Their interactions are devoid of anything like carnality or lust. But they are touchingly infused with longing and tenderness and the hint that such feelings are probably a first for both of them. 

Both the play’s opening prologue scene and the closing one were musical performances involving lots of noise, dancing and the whole cast. Drastically different, they provided an introduction the players and then gave the audience an utterly wild and unconventional encore. Everyone was dressed as a giant lily or suchlike, the diameters of which varied with the scope of the actors’ parts. The spectacular costumes for the finale echoed the joyful vibrancy, timeliness and currency of both the performance and Wilde’s play. His words resonate still as do his perceptive insights for his own and our own times. His understanding of our frailties, our vanities, wants and desires is as astute today as when the original production was staged in February 1895. Director Max Webster told The Stage magazine last October that he wants to make work that “speaks to as many people as possible”. At the intimate Noël Coward Theatre, the perfect venue for this most perfect of plays, he has succeeded admirably. 

Too lazy to work out how to email you

Laurel Lindström 1 Comment

It’s beyond my patience threshold to work out how to email subscribers to a WordPress site. But WordPress subscribers get an automatic email when you post a blog which is great. So instead of only subscribers getting this news, everyone will. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

The news is that I have managed to sell, yes sell for actual money (not much), a piece of narrative fiction/travel writing! It’s here: https://theglobalvoyagers.com/destination-insights/hydra-greek-islands/laurellindstrom/hydra-small-island-big-impressions/ I hope you enjoy the article and support the site.

Enjoy!

-Laurel.

Why you should go see ABBA Voyage

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

Actually there is no reason to see it at all if you don’t want to. But as a passionate fan I simply had to and I shall go again. It’s strange because I completely ignored ABBA in the 1970s and 1980s and then embraced them wholeheartedly when our daughter was about 4. She was superkeen on one of the ABBA songs covered by a now forgotten band, A-Teens. Another bunch of Swedes? Can’t remember which song, but we gave her ABBA Gold for Christmas and there was no turning back.

So I came to this show, way out in the middle of London nowhere with high expectations of having a fantastic time. And I did, but there was plenty of unexpected too, like the lack of places to eat and drink, bar one, outside the venue. Superkeen you rush off the DLR at Pudding Mill Lane station wanting wine and a wee in almost equal measure, and there is the stunning ABBA Arena massive, black with ABBA in huge bright multicolour letters. But opposite the arena is only a miserable looking bar, dark and uninviting, squatting sullen and sour behind a low picket fence that would do a vampire residence proud. Who know what happens in the shadows behind it, so of course you don’t go in. 

Instead you head quick fast to clear the highly efficient airporty security controls into the arena’s lobby. This huge expanse of reception space also is airport like, but lacks the usual food and drink outlets. It’s an expanse of vaulted wood with coloured lights on the beams matching the external arena sign. It’s reminiscent of super cool mountain lodge, except it’s clever interior design is shaped to accommodate many, many people, and it was heaving on a Wednesday night. The four colours of the themed lights glow everywhere in the arena, on the outside sign, across the ceilings of the lobby, on the arena’s ceiling and even in the avatars’ costumes. Colour coordination all over the place, but the outside lobby still feels airporty.

Instead of the branded food outlets you get in an airport, at the ABBA Arena you get a repeated array of food and drink stations. They’re all branded yellow and black and serve limited selections, all part of the venue’s lowest common denomoninator principles: macaroni cheese, chilli, burgers and so on with cheesy chips an additional veg choice. The alcohol is wine and beer and canned cocktails. Yum.

It’s all very futuristic and brings to mind what bomb shelters would probably look like, if we end up at war and need fully resourced safe spaces. Also branded yellow and black is the tackiest merch place conceivable. The tat shop had on sale the most hideous Christmas jumpers ever, proudly declaring ABBA allegience. As if. There is also a hotel-like VIP lounge, entry £99 each, but once inside everything is free. Of course it is. 

You’re recommended to get to the venue some 90 minutes before the show so that you can enjoy the delights of the not very nice wine and sort of ok food that you have to eat standing up. The loos are spotless and abundant so the queues are barely there, much appreciated after two plus hours on trains. The lobby atmosphere on the night we went was unexpectedly tame and almost subdued. Too many people dressed in their ABBA finest were reconsidering their decisions over warm white wine and macaroni cheese served in a little paper bowl. The fizz and shimmer of anticipation got lost in the shuffle.

But once inside and on your seat the spirit leaps and flames with renewed excitement. The arena’s big but not so big as to leave people on another planet instead of at a performance. The stage is massive and while you wait you’re treated to Scandinavian forest scenes that appear to have magical spirits floating through the trees.

Technology is the real star of this show. It is nothing short of spectacular. The lighting system is literally dazzling, an amazing level of creativity tightly integrated with the constantly changing soundscape. The varied costumes, the slick integration of the live band, analogue recordings and digital enhancements stunned the senses and yet felt cosy. The ABBA avatars are fluid and graceful although Agnetha’s face was definitely a bit immobile, in the way that women who’ve been under the knife too often tend to be. Perhaps that’s on purpose but I prefer to think it a coding shortfall.

The selection of songs was both what you’d want from the many old hits and want you’d want as a surprise: two tracks from the Visitors album. In homage to the old hits many people were dressed per the songs as seen on television and in the films and stage show. But there were plenty of ancient people having a blast, even if they weren’t dressed up. There were also plenty of people who were definitely not ancient also having a blast. Seriously impressive that these newbies even knew all the words to most of the songs. And although the place was packed the temperature was perfect with an atmoshere at once intense yet polite. It reflected the people there who were mostly older and singing along to happy and sad echoes of their own lives. A sprinkling of greying male partners were looking mildly embarrassed and probably wishing they’d stayed in the pub at London Bridge station. But I’d prefer to think they enjoyed being part of so many peoples’ joyfully happy space. That feeling was marvellous, a perfect escape from outside woes and internal turmoils that didn’t get erased, but got put into a different, more positive context. Most of us seemed to know most of the words even to songs that weren’t big hits, old and new.

The performances of ABBA’s latest singles Do I have it in Me and Don’t Shut Me Down were perfect links, past and present. They didn’t so much close the ABBA circle as to invite new hopes for more, somehow we still want more. Mind you we probably don’t want more of the weird Manga like cartoons that popped up a couple of times during the show, presumably during digital switchovers of some sort. Or perhaps to give the avators a binary breather. A Manga cartoon was weirdly the backdrop for Voulez Vous and might have been a questing story involving ancient runes and towers. There may have been pigeons. I struggled valiantly to make the connection but still haven’t managed it. At various points each member of ABBA gives a little welcome via their avatar and a thank you of their own. Björn’s avatar touchingly thanks the audience, “the fifth member of ABBA”, for being there. And then it’s suddenly over and we’re all shuffling back to the DLR with our senses overloaded and a sensation of mild confusion at what we’d just experienced. Recovery was slow and sweet and as we head for another Eurovision where it all began for ABBA, remembering that and ABBA Voyage brings fond reminiscences of 1974 when we were all oh so young and pretty. 

The ABBA Voyage concept or model is where so much performative art is heading. And it’s a wonderful thing as long as live, real body experiences kept happening as well. Without the source there would be no quest or voyage. So maybe in fifty years time we’ll be watching Kaj perform their wonderful sauna song Bara Bada Bastu, favourites to win this year’s Eurovision. Enjoy! 

Oscar Wilde’s 170th birthday dinner

Laurel Lindström 1 Comment

Guests at Oscar’s 170 th birthday bash shimmered and shone. They were stars in Oscar’s very own firmament, mingling together for delicious pre-dinner snacks and generous quantities of fizz. And it was real champagne, not the dreaded Prosecco! Robert Whelan (Deputy Chairman, Editor of ‘The Wildean’) welcomed us and James Liu performed “Serenade (for music)” a piece with Oscar’s lyrics and FH Cowen’s music. This wonderful song is a early plea from Paris to Helen to flee with him across the Aegean to Troy. She declines, preferring instead to let Paris abduct her sometime later. Much more fun. After the song, there followed more champagne, more snacks and glamorous hobnobbing. We were a small riot of sparkling colours, feathers and sequins, offset by just the right amount of two tone penguin formals.

Midmingle our Hon. President Gyles Brandreth made a very special welcome and presentation to Joan Winchell, thanking her for supporting the newly published collection of selected articles from The Woman’s World. He pointed out that “if it wasn’t for her this wouldn’t be happening …” adding that “without her we would not have had this book”. He reminded the happy crowd that it had been an ”exciting Oscar Wilde week for many of us, culminating in this evening”. As he handed over the gift to Joan, Gyles explained that, “we are all about to bow or curtesy to you … it’s a British tradition …[you have] been a true friend to us and to the memory and to the genius of Oscar Wilde”. Joan responded with gracious acceptance of the lovely photo and an invitation for Gyles to blow a kiss from her to the crowd. The crowd happily accepted and returned kisses of their own in number.

From the grandeur of the National Liberal Club’s (non)Smoking Room, some 100 + guests moved to the equally auspicious David Lloyd George Room for dinner. Properly warmed up with predinner drinks and canapés people took their seats in keen anticipation of what came next, having no real idea of what that might be. Anticipation is everything, bringing to mind Oscar’s observation that ‘the suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.’

We didn’t have to wait too long for Vanessa Heron (Chairman and Editor of ‘Intentions’) to extend her own warm welcome to everyone, especially those who  had travelled long distances to this dinner. And Vanessa tipped an appreciative nod to her predecessor, Don Mead (Hon. Vice President), “who has almost certainly attended more of these dinners than anyone else”.

Merlin Holland, Oscar’s grandson and archivist, then proposed the toast to to his grandfather. Merlin describes himself as the “keeper of [his] family flame”, and shared family memories touching on what his grandmother Constance had gone through after Oscar’s fall. She faced “an appalling social problem” so horrible that she had to distance herself and her children from all things Wilde, and she did so by changing her name. The change of name was wise, because Oscar never did listen to advice or try to avoid notoriety. He particularly ignored the many requests to keep away from Bosie. Sadly or maybe not, he welcomed Bosie back into his life to sow yet more sorrow and disharmony. Merlin explained that “only this time it happens in slow motion which is worse”. Oscar’s view was that he needed “an atmosphere of love … I need to love and be loved … I still love him, how could I not love him, he wrecked my life?”

In De Profundis Oscar explains that he “was no longer the master of my fate, the captain of my soul” (the reference is to William Ernest Henley’s 1875 poem Invictus). Merlin reminds us that with these lines in De Profundis Oscar had recognised the depths of his collapse and could begin to “come up out of the depths”. He ended his toast preliminaries with a quote from Frank Harris’ 1916 biography of Oscar Wilde where he relays a conversation Frank once had with Oscar. With considerable prescience Oscar had predicted that “a hundred years hence, no one will know anything about Curzon …  whether [he] lived or died will be a matter of indifference to everyone; but my comedies and my stories and ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ will be known and read by millions, and even my unhappy fate will call forth worldwide sympathy.” How right he was about this and so much more. We shared Merlin’s toast: “my grandfather at this, his 170th birthday”. Happy birthday Oscar.

Guests then tucked into three courses of lovely food and more wines. Conversation flowed in a glittering, joyful, sometimes unexpected and definitely noisy torrent. We clearly all shared the unmatched joy that is love of Oscar Wilde, the man, his life and his amazing achievements. Oscar would’ve loved it.

Eleanor Fitzsimons (Hon. Patron) rounded off the evening with a few profiles of the contributors to The Woman’s World. The likes of Elisabeth of Wied, first Queen of Romania, Marie Corelli the English novelist, and Dr Mary Marshall, who along with six other women was forced to campaign to be allowed to graduate as a medical doctor. Wilde championed many women of ambition, ability and courage, using The Woman’s World to give them a platform and visibility. Copies of the book were available for sale at the dinner, but did not last long. The moment for purchasing a copy passed too fast, and like the evening the moment was over much too soon. Drifting home sleepy on the train, I am certain that over us all Oscar’s bemused spirit was surely smiling.

© Laurel Lindström 2024

Welcome to the Oscar Wilde Society

The Picture of Dorian Gray at the Theatre Royal Haymarket – a review

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The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s only novel. When its initial version came out as a story in Lippincott’s Magazine in 1890, the critics were not kind. It was declared an immoral book to which Wilde responded in the preface to the book version of The Picture of Dorian Gray that, “there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.”

In its presentation at the Theatre Royal Haymarket The Picture of Dorian Gray has a curious morality, an honesty resonant for our times. Sarah Snook stars in a one woman presentation of a novel that has never previously transferred well to the stage. There’s not much of a plot or structure and the brilliance of The Picture of Dorian Gray is in its intermingling of the witty dialogue for which Wilde is so justly famous, and the inner contortions we all suffer as we try to live the lives expected of us, while dealing with inner secrets and our quotidien moral dilemmas.

The basic story of Dorian Gray is not lost in this stage version: artist Basil Hallward paints the portrait of an exceptionally beautiful 20 year old man. His friend, the hedonistic Lord Henry Wotton, admires the painting and is keen to meet the sitter. Gorgeous Dorian arrives at the studio dripping innocence and very soon is fascinated by Henry Wotton’s talk of youth and beauty and the tragedy that is aging, amongst much else. Dorian’s first sin, vanity, comes on quickly and enthralled by Lord Henry’s quips and chat Dorian promises his soul, if he could remain ever youthful. In return for Dorian’s soul his aging will only be evident in the portrait which no one will ever see. Basil doesn’t ever want to exhibit the picture because “I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.” The portrait ends up in Dorian’s attic where its beauty soon starts to deteriorate.

Wilde put much of himself and his philosophy for life into The Picture of Dorian Gray. It’s his personal manifesto of sorts and this added layer of intimacy makes it even harder to present the story on stage. But at the Theatre Royal director Kip Williams, artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company, has managed it in spades. He does so by using unconventional methods: videography and what I suppose are film or television cameras and a single actor, Sarah Snook. Five cameras buzz about the stage throughout the two hour performance. The picture of Dorian Gray is a giant screen in portrait orientation hanging centre stage with constantly changing images of the book’s characters, according to who’s doing what. We never see the deteriorating painting. Snook plays all 26 characters, with the less central ones prerecorded. The main characters are filmed live on stage as Snook changes wigs, facial hair and clothes with the assistance of the people doing the filming, to shift from one character to another and talking all the while. It’s an extraordinarily powerful and demanding performance.

The Picture of Dorian Gray connects ideas about influence and individualism to Dorian’s vulnerable innocence, with pretty sorry results. On stage the drawing of this link is all a little chaotic and unsettling. This is precisely the point: identity and sense of self is fluid, a little chaotic and unsettling. Numerous screens convey the characters as Snook narrates the story, sometimes in competition with herself, as more than one character overlaps to tell the tale. Oscar’s gorgeous words dominate throughout; so much of the presentation is him that Oscar’s almost there, an unseen adjunct to the cast. It’s wonderful.

As Snook narrates the story she works with the cameramen and works with her own image on a mobile phone. As she describes what’s going on, she uses image filters to share different versions of her face as Dorian, projected onto the larger screens. It’s a brilliant mimicry of the ridiculous online clichés of beauty, with the huge pouty lips, the superhigh cheekbones and the perfectly arched brows drawn on skin as taut as a drum. And there are the hideous distortions when things go very wrong. Very funny, but also very disturbing.

Wilde’s awareness of the nature of influence, obsession with youth, constant reinvention of oneself and the need to be seen, is just so current, so contemporary. For Wilde all influence is immoral. He says in the novel (and Snook as Lord Henry says on stage) that to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul, instead of letting a person be themselves. Influencing is immoral because the aim of life is self-development, not allowing others to tell you who to be. In an age where influencers are recognised as a sort of profession, Wilde’s reminder is profoundly reassuring. Only about 1% of influencers are self-supporting, so maybe enough people understand that they should be their own person and that the whole influencer thing is an invention to drive advertising and product sales.

Dorian soon falls in love with actress Sybil Vane, but Sybil is too distracted by her love for Dorian to perform well when Lord Henry and Basil are in the audience. In the Theatre Royal production, Sybil’s performance takes place on a tiny model of a stage filled by some filmic wizardry, with Snook’s head and a mass of golden curls covering the tiny stage. Sybil gurns and squints, alternatively mumbling or rattling off her lines whilst constantly glancing at Dorian, almost blowing kisses. Dorian is horrified at her poor performance and, declaring that he is no longer in love with her, ends the relationship. Days later Dorian’s feeling lonely and plans a reconciliation with Sybil, but Lord Henry arrives to tell Dorian that Sybil is dead. She has taken her own life. In taking solace in his own image Dorian notices the first changes in the portrait: “cruel lines around the mouth”. It all goes downhill from there with Dorian committing murder and living a life of inimitable corruption and yet never aging a day. His face belies no sign of the dreadful life he leads. Read the book if you want to know the rest of the story.

Oscar Wilde’s life, philosophy, his defiance of convention, his platforming, it’s all there in the book and miraculously on the Theatre Royal’s stage. Sometimes it’s a bit lost in a surfeit of production cleverness, which can leave the audience slightly numb and disengaged. But maybe that excess is deliberate: just like Dorian as he progresses to ever deeper depths of depravity and all around nastiness we the audience start to feel slightly deadened, alienated.

What happens in this amazing stage version is an extraordinary exposition of modern individualised egocentricity. Murderous stabbing with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons loud in the background. Donna Summer’s I Feel Love booming out in an opium den with Dorian and his gross friends. In every screen on the stage we see different aspects of Dorian’s corruption, his selfishness, vanity, greed, envy, all of it relentlessly engorged in vicious dissolution. Individual expression is taken to horrible extremes in this production, and there are reminders that much of what is in The Picture of Dorian Gray foretells the life and tragic downfall of Oscar Wilde himself. In Dorian’s ultimate demise we have an early whisper for The Ballad of Reading Gaol: each man kills the thing he loves. And Basil reminds us that we “shall suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly”. Somewhere in the book and somewhere in the chaos of screens and rapid fire narration on stage Wilde tells us that genius lasts longer than beauty. This astonishing production and Snook’s fantastic performance are proof that whatever beauty Oscar crammed into his life, his genius is what endures.

Opportunities for authors and their ilk

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

The Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) recently published details of research into authors’ earnings. The study was conducted by the CREATe Centre at the University of Glasgow which found that the future of writing as a profession is under threat. But authoring isn’t under threat any more today than it ever was. People will always want to read and writers, whose imagination is their trade, are very good at reinvention. The ALCS figures, particularly the reduction in fulltime authors’ median earnings from £12,330 in 2006 to £7,000 in 2022, are alarming. But they do not tell a complete story.

Rapidly evolving digital technology has provided an environment for new commercial models within publishing. Technology has spawned a world of new opportunities throughout authors’ supply chains, primarily in online services and tools to support writers. Unfortunately this has helped to drive down average earnings.

The online publishing eco-system is a dynamic adjunct to the traditional publishing industry. It is one that publishers readily exploit without much investment. Hordes of online service providers from authors and copy writers to reviewers, filter and sift new talent at their own risk and to the benefit of publishers. These new players offer fee-based publishing opportunities and fee-based prizes in every imaginable category. New writers can today self-publish without much difficulty, because the technology and the people are there to grease the wheels. These business models did not exist in the same abundance in 2006.

There is a mutual dependency between the digital environment and those who inhabit it. And this is where publishers feed, either directly or via the agent community. That they can exploit the vanity of potential authors is a given. We are all keen for the attention of a commercial publishing contract that might take our careers in a new direction. And today there are so many more of us offering raw material: supply outstrips demand.

The online eco-system hosts all manner of writerly services from software and online courses, to review sites, editorial services, printing and publishing services, marketing, blog tours and publicity. The enormity of this opportunistic system, enhanced and amplified with a host of social media channels, means that anyone who fancies their chances as an author can present themselves as such. Authors are the raw material, rather than their work. Those who are good at the online gig (and patient enough to get good at it) are rewarded by traditional publishing in the end. Top selling titles based on blogging and websites with huge followings are massive successes. Publishers put money into these writers, knowing that their risk is mitigated.

The fall in authors’ average earnings between 2006 and 2022 reflects the brutal facts of supply and demand. Today’s economic landscape is much less favourable, as the ALCS data shows. There are so many more active authors and agents in our industry now and most will work for much less money than was likely in 2006. Back then there were far fewer writers actively pursuing success, and publishers were far hungrier.

Mainstream publishers today can and do focus on what are likely to be successful products, usually from credentialled writers. Mostly publishers are very good at doing this, as the astonishing turnover and profit figures confirm. The writer’s profession is about opportunity and yes luck. But luck has nothing to do with the inclination of mainstream publishers to turn away from reduced risk investments. That is never going to happen. Luck plays a part at all points in the publishing supply chain, from the writing and commercial attractions of a work, through to whether or not the paper costs for printing it on is within budget. The reliability or not of ‘luck’ is precisely what makes it luck. And there is nothing lucky in the success of top selling titles. They succeed because publishers put the money behind them to make sure that they succeed. As with celebrity tomes, the publishers of work that started life as a high profile blog already have a defined market.

Earning a living as an author has never been easy. Oscar Wilde wrote in a letter to one Mr Morgan that ‘the best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend upon it for their daily bread’. That was in 1885 and today’s publishing economics keep it that way.

The relationship between authors and publishers is changed. Publishers no longer want to recognise that support for authors is their responsibility. And why should it be when raw materials for new products are so readily available, the risk so much less and the profits so much more? The traditional contract between authors and publishers is broken. Authors need a new more compelling and sustainable model, one that authors themselves should dictate. This ought to mean opportunities for ambitious publishers keen to disrupt and reinvent their industry. Let’s hope it does.

Hilary Mantel at the Royal Festival Hall

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On the 6th March, 2020 Alex Clark, a journalist and broadcaster, interviewed Hilary Mantel live on stage at the Royal Festival Hall. The two discussed Mantel’s the Mirror & the Light, the final part of her Cromwell trilogy that began with Wolf Hall. The conversation held an audience of some 1500 people absolutely spellbound.

The event began with two actors each reading from Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies to get the audience in the mood and to set the scene for the new book and the conversation’s context. As Mantel explained, for most of history Cromwell has been labelled a “bad man” and been viewed as such. Yet, as her books try to show and as she offered on stage, he was a man constantly climbing, looking always for the next opportunity for advancement, for ways to influence circumstances, and not always serving his own ambitions or those of his King. When Cromwell reaches the top of his ladder he’s reaching closer to God, drawn away into realms that his faith determines and of which he is unafraid. His tempting of fate is almost deliberate, logical.

Mantel said that after the success of the Wolf Hall trilogy she hoped that history would judge Thomas Cromwell differently. Perhaps opinions will move away from the “bad man” conclusions and towards more balanced thinking reflecting the man’s many achievements. She reminded her audience Thomas Cromwell was “a European … [engaged in] outreach to Europe” to strengthen trade, reduce risks of conflict, and religious fracturing. And he managed to do all three during the course of his life, despite the considerable personal risks involved. For instance, he was responsible for major reforms to how England was governed, reformed Parliament and drove improvements to the Poor Laws of the time.

The amazing Hilary Mantell (backstage?) © George Miles

It was a magical couple of hours at the Royal Festival Hall. We learnt that Mantel’s working day starts at 09:00 and ends “when my husband collects me from my writing place at seven o’clock”. We learned that the title of the final part of the trilogy refers to its mirroring of what went on in Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, and the illumination of how Cromwell’s inevitable downfall came about.

And there was much more besides, particularly insights into Mantel’s process and approach to writing and the origins of the Cromwell trilogy. The idea came to her quite some time before she started working on Wolf Hall because “sometimes you have an idea, [but] that’s not the time to carry it through”. She also said that “there’s always a prospect that a project goes stale on you”. Fortunately that didn’t happen with Thomas Cromwell, a character with whom Hilary Mantel has spent over fifteen years. She advised writers to “make sure you have a robust character on your side, if you’re going to have to hang out with them this long.”

Somewhat self-deprecating, Mantel also said that historical fiction is her preferred genre because “I have no idea how to make a plot, but history will do it for me”. Mantel works by creating the fiction equivalent of a collage, creating multiple parts and pieces that she brings together into a cohesive narrative. If she gets stuck, she just ploughs on with something else, anything because it is all part of the writing process: “it’s a question of doing it… because that’s the job, it’s showing up at the desk … even you just pass this process, if you don’t write you enter a downward process of self-disgust.” Mantel reminded her audience that “your wastepaper basket is your friend, you can always write something”.

And best of all, following the conversation, Mantel read a passage from the Mirror & the Light that took many peoples’ breath away, including mine. It’s towards the end of the novel and Cromwell is contemplating his life and its impending ending. Thinking of the dead, Cromwell sees that “They are distilled into a spark, into an instant. There is air between their ribs, their flesh is honeycombed with light, and the marrow of their bones is molten with God’s grace.” If you’re planning to read this book but aren’t sure you’ll have the stamina to make it all the way through to page 904 go straight to page 866, where you will find this lovely passage. It and the following paragraphs might even inspire you to go back and plough through the preceding 865 pages, just to get the full force of these beautiful sentences. As Thomas Cromwell says somewhere, “endings, they’re all beginnings”.

Make no mistake this book is a challenge, because of its huge scope and the complexities involved in herding us along with Cromwell and the army of other characters as Cromwell’s end draws nigh. During the conversation at the Royal Festival Hall Mantel urged readers to take their time reading the Mirror and the Light because “you’re not reviewers, you don’t have to rush; you will not be paid to read it in 48 hours”. 48 days will be more like it.

However long it takes, many of us will feel bereft when they finally reach that last page and have to face the end of our intimate time with Thomas Cromwell sharing his world. It will be an awful moment, reading the final few sentences. But we can console ourselves with the thought that there will most certainly be another play and another television miniseries. As part of Cromwell’s growing body of admirers we can also console ourselves with the knowledge that Hilary Mantel has changed how he will be judged, and indeed how we judge history from now on.