Random Jottings

Mapp and Lucia - the new series

I only discovered the joy of Mapp and Lucia several years ago and for the life of me cannot understand why it took me so long. I posted about it, here, and since then have read and re-read the books multiple times, the Tom Holt series and the excellent trilogy by Guy Fraser-Sampson who appeared at the Felixstowe Book Festival in its first year and gave a wonderful and hilarious talk on the Benson menage.

Once I was hooked then I went in search of the Channel 4 series on DVD starring Prunella Scales as Mapp and Geraldine McEwan as Lucia. Not forgetting of course, the simply marvellous Nigel Hawthorne as Georgie. I saw this series when the newness of the books was in my mind and I had no preconceptions at all about casting and setting.   Well it seemed to me well nigh perfect and cannot imagine it being done any better. However, I was delighted when I heard that the BBC was going to bring a fresh dramatisation for our delectation and delight and, along with other Mapp and Luciaphiles, awaited its arrival with eagerness.It was being filmed in Rye and the BBC had obtained permission to film in the actual Benson/James house so that was a plus. Then came the announcement of the casting and that is when I felt the first stirring of apprehension. I also assumed that Richardson would be Lucia and Chancellor Mapp but no, it was the other way around and I simply could not see it. Hold your horses Elaine and wait and see I told myself.

I have now watched the three episodes and enjoyed them. Sort of. The supporting actors were excellent, particularly Mr Wyse and Irene and Mark Gatiss excellent as Major Benjy, Rye looked simply gorgeous and the whole thing was done in superb style and looked wonderful.  But and there is a but for me.  I remember thinking that Anna Chancellor was not very good in the otherwise perfect Pride and Prejudice some fifteen years ago, the Firth version is all I need to say, and drawled and rather over acted and I can honestly say that I find her still as boring as I did then. By the third episode I was warming up to her a bit but still do not think she is right for the part.

But the worst of it for me is Miranda Richardson as Mapp. I think she is awful and yes I do mean awful. Over acting to the nth degree and pulling the most dreadul faces all the time, she has taken Prunella Scales as her model and has ratcheted it up by one hundred per cent. I know that in trying to uncover Lucia's lack of Italian and that she has feigned an illness to avoid meeting the contessa, Mapp was determined to triumph over her rival, but she was almost manic in these scenes.

However, many of the reviews are at odds with my thoughts so perhaps I have just got it wrong.....

"Richardson and Chancellor were spot on. Chancellor’s sub-zero smile would have repelled a hungry puma. Richardson’s gritted teeth took on a life of their own as she suffered slight after slight at the hands of her crimson-lipped assassin"

There has been much discussion, agreement and disagreement in the Mapp and Lucia group over on Facebook but the concensus seems to be that Miranda Richardson has got it wrong.  If any of you have seen this latest series I would be really pleased to hear what you think of it.

One thing though, it has made me even more determined to get to Rye this year.

Au Reservoir - Guy Fraser-Sampson

"You should be dubbed Sir Guy on the spot for outstanding service to all Mapp and Lucia lovers".

This was a quote from an earlier post on these marvellous books by Guy Fraser-Sampson and it was with great pride and delight I saw that this quote had been used to head up the press release for Au Reservoir. I deem that a honour and am thrilled to bits.

Last year Guy came to the first Felixstowe Book Festival and gave a simply hilarious and entertaining talk on the Benson menage who all sound as barking mad and as eccentric as the characters created in the Mapp and Lucia books.   I had the pleasure of introducing this talk and when I admitted that I had only discovered E F Benson and Tilling a few years ago, there was an audible gasp of horror and disbelief by certain members of the audience. My reply was 'Yes, I know...' as I simply cannot understand how I left it so long to become acquainted with these glorious books.

("I might have gone to my grave without ever knowing about Lucia or Miss Mapp.  It is not a risk anyone should take lightly"     Auberon Waugh said this. Just think it could have happened to me)

Well, I now am and so grateful for Guy Fraser-Sampson extending the genre with his witty, spiky and marvellous stories about Mapp, Lucia, Georgie, The Wyses, Diva etc etc. I love them all and this latest, Au Reservoir, is as enjoyably hilarious as all the others.

We are now in post-war Tilling and the Mapp-Lucia rivalry is still as lethal as ever.   Lucia is now fabulously rich, let us face it, sounds as if she was a war profiteer and is simply rolling in it. She wishes to become a Dame and starts to put her feelers out amongst high profile friends to see if this can be achieved. Georgie's friendship with Olga Bracely is still going strong and a suggestion that a donation to the upgrading of the opera house might help in this regard, leads to Georgie becoming more and more involved with the world of the arts.

Meanwhile, in Tilling, Lucia is being challenged by Mapp regarding her 'friendship' with Noel Coward and her promise to ask him to open the summer fete.   The reader knows that Elizabeth is right, that Lucia has exaggerated her friendship with The Master (in fact he thinks she is a dreadful woman) and should be exposed as a fibber, but we also know that somehow she will win out and trounce Mapp once again.   I do try to feel sorry for Mapp as she never wins, but she is so eaten up with jealousy and spite that I fail to do so, even though I acknowledge that Lucia can be pretty intolerable at times.   Yet, somehow, I sense a vulnerability in Lucia that I do not find in Mapp and I find I am so fond of her despite her awfulness and her snobbery.

What can I say about Au Reservoir except that I think it is simply wonderful, I loved every word, reduced me to laughter and to tears, and that if Benson could read this author's books on the residents of Tilling, he would shake Guy heartily by the hand and congratulate him. He might even invite him for dinner and 'un po di mu'.

Glorious.

However, and there is a however, this is the last Mapp and Lucia book form this author. He says they are very difficult to write and I am sure they are, but oh I do wish he would continue to produce one a year for ever. I am so disappointed that this is the end of his foray into the maelstrom that is Tilling. In  fact, so disappointed am I that I feel like rescinding my request for his knighthood.

Only joking....

Thank you for all the pleasure and fun Guy. It has been a privilege to read this trilogy.

Au reservoir.

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Links to earlier posts on Mapp and Lucia

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2008/07/mapp-and-lucia.html

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2008/08/lucia-and-mappe.html

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2013/05/major-benjy-guy-fraser-sampson.html

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2012/03/lucia-on-holiday-guy-fraser-sampson.html

Major Benjy - Guy Fraser Sampson

When I finally got round to discovering Mapp and Lucia a few years ago, I read them all through in one mad binge which is my wont and then wished there were more to come. I read the Tom Holt trio which kept me going another month and then that was that. Until Guy Fraser-Sampson came up with another - Major Benjy.

In the introduction the author says "There are in fact only two things wrong with the Mapp and Lucia books.  The first is that there are only six of them....second problem is that because of this there are gaps in the narrative which are never filled in, into which holes some characters fall without explanation to be never seen again"

The particular tome is set just before Lucia arrives in Tilling for the first time and rents Elizabeth's house for the summer.  We have already met the main resident characters in the earlier books and it is a joy to once more meet the Major, Quaint Irene, the Wyses and all the others, but I will freely admit that Lucy, who lives with Irene ("the precise basis upon which the two shared Taormina was something upon which polite Tilling society preferred not to speculate"), was not a character who had impinged upon my consciousness.  However, I understand that she had fallen into one of these 'holes' referred to so in Major Benjy we learn more about her and just how and why she left Tilling.

No need for me to elaborate on the content of this utterly glorious book as all Lucia and Mapppites will fall upon it with cries of rapture and read and, unless you are feeling most contrary, will adore.  I know I did. 

May I please ask the author to seek out other 'holes' in E F Benson's narrative and write more about them?  I would love to hear about the young Lucia and how she met Pepino, like to learn a bit more about Georgie and what happens after the glorious finale of the books when the Duchess of Sheffield comes to stay with Lucia and Elizabeth is utterly routed.  One cannot believe that she would really not bounce back and try something else.   Reference is also made to Lucia meeting Elizabeth when she visited Riseholme and took up her prase of Au Reservoir.  Would love to hear more about that as well.....

Thank you Guy for this labour of love.  You should be dubbed Sir Guy on the spot for outstanding service to all Mapp and Lucia lovers.

Note: this was my original review when Major Benjy was published several years ago.   I am delighted that it has now been reprinted and by the publisher who recently issued Lucia on Holiday, also by Guy, which I reviewed here.    Obviously they are publishers of discernment and I hope they will encourage Guy to write some more.

Guy is appearing at the forthcoming Felixstowe Book Festival and it will be my pleasure and privilege to introduce his talk on Mapp and Lucia details of which can be found on the Festival's website.   Please do come along and hear what I am sure is going to be an entertaining and joyful occasion.

Au reservoir everyone.

Lucia on Holiday - Guy Fraser-Sampson

Oh bliss O rapture, O rapture O bliss - another Mapp and Lucia. Calloo Callay oh Frabjous Day she chortled in her joy...

After my rather late discovery of the Divine Duo, about which I posted here, I laid waste to every Mapp and Lucia book I could find but of course there are only six. SIX! I ask you what was Fred (EF Benson) thinking?  He could have trebled that amount and we would still have been gasping for more, but luckily one author, by the name of Tom Holt, came along with Lucia Triumphant and Lucia in Wartime to keep us going. Brilliantly written, hard to tell if I was presented with an untitled manuscript that I would be able to spot that it was not the original author, and I chased these down and bought them.

But that was that, no more thought I. WRONG.  Along comes Guy Fraser-Sampson, who I think should be knighted for service to literature (Sir Guy of Tilling?) and he wrote a book all about Major Benjy, which has kept me going for a year or two.   Flushed with success he has now written Lucia on Holiday which has had so many pre-orders that its publisher has brought forward publication date.  So many fans out there and delighted to hear it.

I was fortunate enough to receive a copy a week or so ago and fell upon it with shrieks of joy (these are the times when I think it just as well I live on my own) and sat down and read it through in one sitting.  Brilliant, quite quite brilliantly wonderful.

Lucia has made rather a lot of money on the stock market so she and Georgie decide to splash out and take a holiday abroad. Off they go to Bellagio, near Milan, a location cunningly decided upon by Georgie and Olga Bracely, the world renowned opera singer. At first Lucia is dubious:

"I hardly think that Milan is our sort of place.....one must be very careful when visiting unknown locations on the Continent...Why it might be positively full of Italians"

Georgie was taken aback. " Well, it is in Italy you know" he said with some asperity "I understand most Italian towns have a quite high proportion of Italian inhabitants"

Lucia looked at him severely.  "Don't be silly Georgie" she admonished him "I mean the wrong sort of Italians, naturally"....

Priceless.

Well off they go but to their total astonishment and dismay Major Benjy and Elisabeth Mapp turn up.  They are being treated to an all expenses paid holiday by a Maharajah who the Major knew in India, in return for looking after his son Ramesh. The Wyses are also there with the Contessa ("cholera in Capri") so by the time the Mapp-Flints arrive we have Tilling in microcosm settled in at the Bellagio and we can sit back and wait for the fun, the gossip, the infighting, the vying for centre stage to begin. And it does.

This is a simply delicious book and I loved every single word.  Georgie has the most wonderful suave, rather glamorous valet to take care of all his personal needs (Lucia disapproves), the Major flirts outrageously with a young lady who is under the mistaken impression that he is rich and wealthy and worth cultivating (mainly because the Major has driven the Maharajah's Bugatti to Bellagio), Poppy the Duchess of Sheffield in love with Georgie and his beard turns up much to his dismay - the Bellagio is populated with all these characters that are so dear and familiar and wonderful and it was a joy to see them again.

There are many instances of continuations of books by other authors - Jane Austen is probably the one who has suffered because of this. I say suffered because with only a few exceptions, the sequels are pretty poor. The there are the Lord Peter Wimsey stories by Jill Paton Walsh who has taken up the DL Sayers baton with excellent results. The Dick Francis genre continues with his son now writing the books and they are marketed still as the 'latest Dick Francis' which I think is fraudulent to say the least, but as there has always been doubt that Dick actually wrote the books anyway, I suppose he gets away with it - just.

I freely admit that my approval or not of this practice is purely personal and relies on my preferences.  I love the Wimsey books by Paton Walsh, and I love anything that will allow me to wallow in the lives of the inhabitants of Tilling for a little longer.  Guy Fraser-Sampson seems to me to be a Renaissance Man with his wide ranging interests and I understand that his Mapp and Lucia books are a planned trilogy which means we have one more to go.  I wonder if he can be persuaded to make this a quadrology or a quintology....yes I know those words don't exist, but I hope I make my point.

I might also add that Guy is the author of a book called Cricket at the Crossroads which I have also read and reviewed here and I think it is highly unlikely that you will come across somebody with such an eclectic range of interests - I am hoping that he will combine the two and let Lucia form the Tilling Cricket Team in her next book.  I think she would make a demon bowler...

Loved loved loved this book and all fans of Mapp and Lucia and Tilling will be glad to add this to their bookshelves.  Lucia is as infuriating and as wonderful as ever, Mapp as awful as ever (there are times however, when I do feel sorry for her as she never ever gets the better of Lucia), Georgie a delight and I take great delight in the hugely laid back opera singer, Olga Bracely.   I hope this sells in millions and trillions as it deserves to do so.

I leave you with one more quote. Georgie is being taken on a tour of Italian gardens and hating it:

"He took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead.  At this stage Lucia, who if truth be told was beginning to feel a trifle warm herself even though she had taken certain liberties with her undergarments, became a model of solicitude"

I do wonder what the 'certain liberties' were I really do.

Au reservoir.

Sky Monday

At long last our block of flats has Sky.  Two blokes on ladders came round on Saturday and installed the whole shebang and I kept them going with cups of tea as it was so chilly.  One of them told me that I was the first person who had offered them a cuppa all week which always amazes me. Whenever I have workmen outside wherever I have lived, or inside working for me, I always provide refreshment.   When I had my kitchen gutted and replaced a few years ago I had a box put together for them to use while doing all the hard graft (I cleverly managed to be on holiday for the first three days) with tea bags, coffee, custard creams and Kit Kats - had found out their preferences before I left - and kept it topped up when I came back.  One young kitchen fitter didn't drink either tea or coffee but lived entirely off Diet Coke so I made sure there was plenty of that as well. Result, a happy and cheery bunch of guys who also painted my kitchen for me (was not in the remit) and laid the flooring (also not in the remit).  You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar...

I digress. As ever.

Man came back this morning to link the individual flats up of those who had decided to subscribe and it was all quite painless.  Noted with approval that Steve, for that was his name, took his shoes off before coming in. When I thanked him he said he always did it after once tramping dirt and mud in to one house and really getting an earful.   Fifteen minutes later all set up and I now have a remote control to add to those for the DVD, Television, Digital box and stereo.  I decided to label them all to avoid confusion and also took one look at the Spaghetti Junction at the back of the TV and decided to sort that out as well.   On hands and knees and unplugged everything one by one, traced it back to its origins, labelled those as well and then tied them all together off the floor.   As I had nothing to tie them up with but a length of pink ribbon, used this and all my wires now boast a jaunty pink bow.  Flicking over the channels and looking at what I could now watch gave me quite a thrill, but after checking the Radio Times Monday realised there was nothing I wanted to watch today.  Found myself gawping at Hawaii  5-0 for ten minutes before I came to my senses and switched it off.  Still, nice to know if I want to watch total rubbish I now have so many more channels to choose from.

Over the weekend I swapped an old sofa with a friend for an armchair she was getting rid of and, having slung a throw over it and a few cushions, all is now comfort and it supports the back beautifully.  I now have a small side table next to me whence reposes all the remotes listed above, the paper, my glasses and a cup of tea and all is comfort and cosy and gemutlich.

I, therefore, spent the afternoon snuggled up in said chair NOT watching Sky or anything else, but reading Lucia on Holiday by Guy Fraser-Sampson.  Utterly utterly joyous and wonderful and I adore Mapp and Lucia and hope My F-S continues with these gorgeous books.  Will be reviewing very shortly.

Oooh I see there is some tennis on later.  Jolly good.......