Book 13 - Peter Tinniswood, Tales From A Long Room

Bill Bryson is an amusing writer who occasionally makes you laugh but I don’t think of him as primarily a humorist. Instead he is someone who can make droll observations. So for this weeks book I turned to someone I consider a great comic stylist, someone who could mix absurdity, exaggeration, puns, particularly on names, with beautiful descriptive phrases. Just as much a stylist as Wodehouse - and you can’t raise the bar much higher than that. Unlike Wodehouse, most of his output was for television or radio; scripts rather than novels but he did write some books. Although they all seem to be out of print at the moment they are quite widely available second hand.

Tales from a Long Room was first published in 1981 and most of the jokes and references are based on the golden eras of pre and post war cricket, mixed with cultural and entertainment figures. I am not sure it matters much if you know who the people were as their names are used as absurdist colour rather than being comments on the real person. The tone can be gauged from the introduction

I was born in winter
I love summer
My friend the Brigadier was born in Arlott St Johns.
He loves fine wine, Vimto, quails in season, barrage balloons, blotting paper, E.W. Swanton and his sister Gloria.
He recounted these tales to me during the course of a long convivial summer spent in his favourite corner of a long room ‘somewhere in England’.

Sometimes though it does help to have, at least, a passing knowledge of the people being referred to:

There is a regrettable tendency these days for what I call ‘public nosey parkering.
Fed by the unceasing efforts of journalists, broadcasters and similar scum, the British public have developed an insatiable appetite for tittle-tattle of the most trivial nature concerning people, who for one reason or another, happen to be in the ‘limelight’
What possible interest can it be to know that E. W. Swanton wears maroon corduroy underpants and has in his study a complete collection of the records of Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas?
Is the world a better place for knowing that despite all the evidence to the contrary Mr Robin Marlar is a thoroughly nice man?
Are we uplifted in soul and spirit by the knowledge, that despite his constant protestations, Mr Ned Sherrin did indeed once play rugby league football for Rochdale Hornets? - the match in which Miss Caryl Brahms was sent for an early bath for butting an opponent.

To anybody who has heard the plummy, pompous tones of E. W. Swanton dispensing his lofty judgement of the days play, the idea of a secret passion for one of the Merseybeat groups is wonderfully nonsensical. As is the thought of the wit, bon viveur, impresario and lover of musicals, Ned Sherrin, playing rugby league. Perhaps as knowledge of these people fades the humour dates. But I hope not. I hope people will still appreciate the glory of prose such as this:

Why on earth did I ever marry her?
Certainly there was a physical attraction. That I cannot deny
I remember to this day the surge of emotion that coursed through my veins when I first caught sight of her.
The rose garden of dear old Castle Arlott slumbering with honey-laden bees.
The summer breeze lisping through the timid tracery of the delicate Frindall tree.
The Benaud bush aflame in scarlet bloom. The phlox Lakerensis flowering hazily, lazily, benignly blue.
And into my sight she glided; a tall, slim, sylph like figure dressed in purest white.
My heart missed a beat.
Sap rose in my loins.
Dear God, she was the spitting image of Herbert Sutcliffe.

Link to Last Book
Humour

Date first published 
1981

P.S.
Apologies for the photo but the cover of my copy has faded somewhat, over time.