...and it's goodnight from him

The Authorised Biography of Ronnie Barker
Bob McCabe (2005)

Ronnie Barker was an actor who made the step into 1950s radio, and then 1960s TV performance, specifically mostly comic roles in popular shows like The Navy Lark and The Frost Report. He then became a bit of a legendary character actor across various mostly hugely successful series, including Porridge, Open All Hours, and the at-one-time seemingly-inescapable sketch show The Two Ronnies

He was also a prolific writer, often selling sketches to the shows he was in without the production teams being aware, which is pretty sneakily cool. 

 As to the book, I found this in a charity shop. As a biography, it's not in the slightest bit "warts 'n' all", with a focus on Ronnie Barker's professional life. As McCabe points out in his notes, this was apparently a precondition of Barker's cooperation, perhaps understandably, given Barker's lifelong aversion to personal celebrity, as well as some family laundry he did not wish to air any further than it already had been. 

It's quite vanilla, in many respects, then, and the BBC Books imprint does give it a sort of, "well done, thou good and faithful servant to the Beeb" air. 

However, it has some genuinely interesting insights on theatre, 1950s radio, 1960s-80s TV, ye Ronns, of course, and Barker's writing ideals.

One thing I Did Not Know was that the Ronnies made their long-running shows in advance, dumping any sketches that flopped and "recording their entire series before any of it was broadcast so they could edit and arrange each week's show to make it as strong as it could be". 

In the days of entire seasons of shows being buffed to a high sheen to "drop" in a one-er on Netflix, this is perhaps nothing so amazing, but in 1970s BBC terms, it must have been quite revolutionary. This, with comparable nuggets in the book, reveals a quietly experimental spirit at odds with a cosy reputation, and keen critical eyes behind the famous spectacle frames. 

(The biography was originally published in 1999, then reprinted in 2005 after Barker passed - I read this version in March 2023.)

Beastly

 Beast  - Paul Kingsnorth

Having read a lot about Kingsnorth's writing, getting approving nod from various directions, I was pleased to pick this up in a library sale for a pound or something. 

When it came to it, I was underwhelmed. It seemed a pretty obvious journey of midlife crisis, dressed up with some haunted landscape psychodrama. Completely unsympathetic narrator wandering the flanks of a dark mountain looking for their anima. A "Northern Lights" inversion for ageing fans of Morrissey. 

After the first 20 pages or so I pretty much skim read it, yawning like a big cat. 

Storyland

 Storyland - Amy Jeffs

While on a pile, this was a library book I picked up and whizzed through enthused in a couple of days. Myths and legends of Britain re-told, plus lino cut art - just my jam at this moment. 

The book pieces together a sequence of tales from antiquity for "A New Mythology of Britain". It takes special care to note the political expediency embedded in mythic traditions. 

Jeffs was particularly adept at representing the ways in which each story, complete in itself, was interpolated and adapted by people (rulers) into succeeding myths, self-forming into a coherent sequence creating their own truths. The journey of the artist-author, explored in part in the intro etc,  was also of great interest.

One of those volumes where I immediately start scouring abebooks for the hardback version...