World Enough and Time

Anything by:
Jane Austen;
D H Lawrence (impossible to take seriously before, never mind after, Cold Comfort Farm);
Charlotte Brontë - the least talented of the family, but sadly the longest lived.

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I have mixed feelings about Jane Austen because I liked Persuasion; but I never understand her popularity. Agree absolutely about D.H. Lawrence, largely because he wrote about women as if he thought he was an expert in the subject, but writes as if he never actually met one. Which is weird, because we know biographically, he did. He must have never actually listened to one.

Charlotte Bronte, I like; Jane Eyre is one of my favourite books, and I loved Shirley too. The others... I've mostly forgotten.

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Oh, I adore Cold Comfort Farm. That it makes it impossible to take DH Lawrence seriously is just the cherry on the cake of its wonderfulness.

I like some of his poetry though.

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Have you seen the wonderful 1968 BBC adaptation? Alasdair Sim as Amos, Rosalie Crutchley as Judith, Sarah Badel as Flora, and Peter Egan as Seth. Brilliant! It's not out on DVD, alas: I had to get a secondhand VHS set from the US.

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I haven't, unfortunately. I saw the one from the 1990s with Ian McKellen as Amos, Kate Beckinsale as Flora, Rufus Sewell as Seth and Eileen Atkins as Judith, and I liked it but not as much as I liked the book. I wouldn't mind seeing a different version as I wasn't too convinced by Kate Beckinsale for some reason; I will add it to my list of "things to track down at some point".

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That was one of the things that got me hooked on Rufus Sewell. Except I was crazy over him already; that's why I watched the movie. I had not at that time read Cold Comfort Farm and had little idea ahead of time what it was.

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Rufus was wearing far too many clothes, though, as Seth! He even fastened his shirt and wore a waistcoat! Seth in the book is permanently unbuttoning his shirt. (Peter, despite being fair-haired, was (un)dressed far more appropriately: quite an eye-opener for one of my friends, who was far more used to seeing him in middle-age in comedies!)

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LOL - Seth is fun.

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I love the way he starts off as this absurd Lawrentian stereotype and turns out to be just a movie-struck kid!

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I sent

fajrdrako a copy on disc. It's got a much longer running time (the 1990 one was only about 90-100 minutes; the 1968 one is more like 140 minutes), so there's more of the book in it, including the narrator, who highlights the purple-prose bits with asterisks that appear on screen!

I thought the 1990s version threw away the wonderful scene when Seth does all his Lawrentian spiel while Flora is sewing. The 1968 version is hilarious.

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the narrator, who highlights the purple-prose bits with asterisks that appear on screen!

How brilliant! I did miss the asterisks in the other adaptation, and I don't think they had all the references to The Higher Common Sense either and that was a shame too. It is always better when they can get as much of the book in as possible.

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The narrator is Joan Bakewell in voice-over. And you get the on-screen montages of nature burgeoning, flowers blooming, wildlife shagging, & c, whenever she's reading. Considering how long ago it was made, it's far more risqué in places than the 1990s version, but I suspect that's because the 1990s TV movie version was made with an eye to US cinema release. US cinema seems happier with violence than it is with sexual references.

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There are so many shows I really, really want, which aren't on DVD.

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I liked The Snake. What poetry are you thinking of?

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I like the The Snake too. Also Green:

The dawn was apple-green,
The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a gold petal between.

She opened her eyes, and green
They shone, clear like flowers undone
For the first time, now for the first time seen.

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