James Metcalf on the fictionality of the latest archaeological page-turners
Stephen Puddicombe looks at the unusual appeal of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
Ciaran Rafferty investigates the science of book classification
We’ve got medieval manuscripts, strange hoaxes, and war poetry for all you lucky culture vultures this week.
A new exhibition entitled ‘Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination’ has been put on display at the British Library, home of millions of books. The hoard of gorgeously illustrated manuscripts tells a story about our medieval past; a story with a royal twist. Having fallen into the hands of countless kings and queens, these wonderful relics tell us, beautifully, something about the medieval monarchs’ own lives and world. Illustrated and painstakingly written out by scribes, each is a work of art. Featuring 154 books, the diverse exhibition moves from the ninth into the sixteenth century, covering Christian works, mythological heroes, and even horoscopes. This is the largest body of evidence on the relationship between the monarchy and art in the Middle Ages. Glimmering with colour, and full of character, the vivid manuscripts continue to awe us visually even today.
Meet Nat Tate. He’s a fictional artist; a character dreamt up by William Boyd. That didn’t stop him living life to the full - befriending Picasso, burning the majority of his paintings, and throwing himself to his death from a ferry. (The body was never found.) 3 television documentaries have been made about him. And, 13 years after his death, the abstract expressionist is selling a painting at Sotheby’s itself. So how did this happen? The story begins on April Fools’ Day 1998 in Manhattan. At a party hosted by David Bowie, New York’s social butterflies met for the launch of Tate’s biography, written, unbeknownst to them, by Boyd himself. The character’s name is a combination of the National and Tate Galleries. Boyd had wanted to investigate how credible a fiction could be. Not everyone was fooled. But Nat Tate has now taken on a life of his own. The profits from the artwork in question, entitled Bridge no. 114, will go to charity.
Continuing with the theme of cultural forgeries, one author left the book world shaken, but not stirred this week. Q R Markham’s spy novel Assassin of Secrets had, in fact, lifted its material from a bushel of other, already published books. Crafty. The author, real name Quentin Rowan, had successfully sneaked his elaborate deception under the noses of his American publishers. Set to be published by Hodder & Stoughton in the UK, the discovery of the feat of plagiarism meant that it had to be immediately recalled. Authors that ‘‘inspired’’ Rowan include Robert Ludlum, Charles McCarry, and James Bamforth, as well as John Gardner, Ian Fleming’s predecessor. One eagle-eyed sleuth concluded that ‘it looks to me like pretty much every sentence in it was taken from elsewhere.’ 007 would not be impressed.
Siegfried Sassoon’s poetry, aching with horror and despair, is brilliant and fierce. But when Dr Jean Wilson, the war poet’s biographer, read his 1916 trench diaries, she came across unpublished poems which reveal another side to Sassoon’s story. Like many of the war poets, Sassoon had found himself facing something that was at once horrific and huge, and yet noble and heroic. What intrigued Wilson was that the transition between his idealism and anger was not as immediate as she had expected. These poems, ‘full of the glory of war and the idea that war is a heroic venture,’ may help readers to re-evaluate Sassoon as a writer, and to understand more fully the often conflicting responses to the First World War.
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