courage. when she moved out of her home wellsburn house, she went on a trip up the nile we are sister. she met several of britain's military geniuses and generals who were in the egyptian region at that time and she became fast friends over time with one of them who was lord powell, of course, he created the boy scouts in england and mrs. low decided this could be replicated in america. this is when she finally found her voice. and she ends up coming back to savannah and create an organization, as she said, for the girls in savannah, in georgia, in the united states and everywhere else. and she started the program of girl scouts here in savannah, the carriage house behind the building where we sit now was fitted out as the first national headquarters. and to girl scouts today who own that building, just the carriage

house, it is still their first national headquarters. they're very proud of it. and when they come to savannah to see the birth place of daisy low, they always visit the first national headquarters here in savannah. ..

>> for more information on c-span's local content vehicles and the 2011 lcv cities tour visit c-span.org/localconsent. simon schama presents a range of topics from ice cream and more. it's a little over an hour. >> this is a noted historian and a genius of storytelling. author of several books, including the embarrassment of riches, citizens the chronicle of the french revolution, and national book critics circle award winner, simon schama is a professor of art history at columbia university and also a cultural essayist for the "new

yorker" and written more than 30 documentaries for the bbc and pbs, including "a history of britain," "a powerful art" and his newest book "scribble, scribble, scribble." schama turns his warm prose to a fast array of topics. he approaches every subject with gusto and amusement and always has smart things to say. it's truly a pleasure. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming simon schama. [applause] [applause] >> welcome. i didn't drink any of your water. >> you were thinking what the hell is he doing texting? you know, is he even going to

look at us and say something to me? did they kindly tell you to turn your cell phones our? my favorite play was spamalot. ladies and gentlemen, i would like you to turn all of your cell cell phones on because the show is complete crap. you know? the reason that i'm looking at this, everyone, is it has on it right now the best thing ever written about spring. and you, class, are going to tell me who wrote it or else. and it's not me. but it's someone who is my kind of essay writing. before the shallow, before the daffy, and not much later than the snow drop, the common toad salutes the comes of spring after his other fashion which is to emerge from a hole in the

grown where he as lain, buried since the previous autumn. and crawl as rapidly as possible towards the nearest suitable patch of water. something -- some kind of shutter in the earth. or perhaps merely a rise of few degrees in the temperature has told him it's time to wake up. although a fear toads appear to sleep around and miss out from year to year. i've more than dug them up in the middle of summer at this period after his long fast, the toad has very spiritual look. like a strict angelo wards the end of the lent. his movements are language and purposeful, his body as shrunken, but contrast, his eyes are abnormally large. this allows one to notice what one might not at another time that the toad has about the most beautiful eye of any living

creature that is like gold. or more exactly, it's like the golden colored semiprecious stone that they sometime see which i think is called a criso barrel. who wrote that? who? no. anyone more bids? it's a brit. i have to say. no, but it was a bit matchy, didn't it? and it's the cleverness. it's believe it or not george orwell. absolutely right to go ah. good class on the ball. [laughter] >> because it is -- it is so lyrical. it's so startling lyrical for orwell who one thinks of as the, you know, kind of prince of sort of aparity, of someone who

really seldom moves out from the kind of position taking. but that would be really to misdescribe orwell, wouldn't it? those of you may have to read. when we were kids we got animal farm. great book. but it was precisely because 1984 was seen to be a weapon in the cold war. especially when it was assigned in core curriculum. i think it no longer is in the united states drew in the cold war, precisely because it was an attack on totalitarianism, but a professionalism. he never stopped being a socialist, but, you know, he was a social democrat. although in current atmosphere in the united states today, it will be equivalent to be trotsky or something. [laughter] >> because of that, orwell's modeling were thought to be

fictional positions. which they weren't not that, it's true. but 1984 has an extraordinary moments of memory rapture of an extremely poignant kind. do you remember the wall hanging out, washing and writing a tune that winston barely remembers. amazing moments about the loss of memories. it exists and therefore made an extreme deep bite on the young charmer who must have read when he was 12 years old. because totalitarianism exists to erase history in two respect. to erase the inconvenience and erase the contentiousness. history is nothing at all if it's not an argument. those two things are supposed to be unacceptable in the orwellian stage.

orwell was a problem for me until i read the toad and other things like it in this kind of vain of orwell with his shop collar undone and much else, really. because he was held up to us in the 1950s, not just as a politicallist, which he was, but as someone for whom english writing as he himself said should be as transparent as cleanly described window pane. it should be max -- it should privilege the clear, the unfussy, the unage five. it's very hard to make -- it was hard to make the uncharmers, it's hard to make the old charmers unage tie value. it was a large template for us to be commanded to follow as the

model of pure english starts the genius stock of white or something. and it's difficult for me because i had a draconian childhood in every conceivable way. which would be too complicated and lengthy to tell you about. my father was enamored of orwell. he read my sister and i a lot of dickens. and a lot of it was frighten. with the dickens, it's a plenitude of life of the importance of containing within the possibly broken, massively python like in the appetite to engeorge itself or get more

matter and picture and words. dickens who did all of that. and my father who was super abundant figure in many ways rejoiced in that. it maybe believed that english had the extraordinary kind of -- i don't want to -- mix my snake measures here. but the civil serpent, it's often been commented actually that english art, it was a little essay length book now derived at utterly bankrupt. neither which is truth, by nicholas, who was the great description in the 1950s and early '60s, it's the englishness of english art. it was berated for being middle england or about that. there was one point that he made. he got it from looking at grotesque on english and cathedral architecture. and in carvings, the men on the bosses of supporters columns and

have huge cheeks. and from that, he quite radically thought of when -- what might be called some strain of vernacular english art representation emerged which can't be earlier than hogarth, i think, because most was structured from the italian renaissance, or severe want to be class schism of the kind represented by his father, jane thornhill, who he wanted to emulate. it's with hogarth and for the character, and the story, and the narrative, he's an extraordinary story teller, he's too worthy either directly or simply following the story line of all of those modern morality tales. he made the point which i think

was -- or the wonderfully taken, it may have been before him, but i don't know where, the actual formal design of hogarthian prince art, graphic art, some the painting. we would not say pretentiously entropic. in other words, the kind of formation that eats itself. you know, collapsing, things collapse, constantly in hogarth. men, high born men fall off of the chair, drunken mother losing her baby down a cellar. things sort of constantly falling apart. he said if you look at the design, it actually disobeys all of the instructions of classical art education. it is above all certain tine

line. it was simply to design itself to contain the story line and twist in the moment of what is accepted. whether hogarth was responsible or what everyone doesn't know. the irresistible which english art had makes england and by extension britain, but it was english thing overall. but it's certainly an english thing. that the purest of abstract expressionism out of the nature of storytelling is extremely almost biologically alien to english painting, i think. think about that aggressively modern painters. like francis bacon, for example, they are the same.

the serpentine lines forms and dissolves and reforms themselves. that seems not a point made. so it was. excuse me with the digression, schama digressed, heaven forbid. unheard of thing. that was the kind of writing that i liked. we became accustom to the readings. my father had such an unpredictable and usually successful business career. we'd always know this, actually, things had gone wrong. we lived in a kosher home, jewish home. if my father would come home and

start toying with his chicken noodles, my sister and i -- we wouldn't hold them, but whirl them around my head. it was one the few occasions to saw him drunk. he was too frightened to tell my mother, and my sister and i would roll our eyes and get our suitcases and start packing again. my mother would say we're all going to the work house. now for the 9-year-old simon, there was not a literature illusion or figure of speech at all. i thought we really were going to the work house. i remember going to my father and say what's gruel and he said -- the stinker, he said you won't like it sonny. rotten. he was a wonderful man. we did have that sense of that kind of writing he involves

balsac as well. joyce of the dublin, dylan thomas, the extreme performances and super abundant kind of writing. what then i had to go to school was to try to be like the extremely unabundant really orwell. we would talk about the generation called the new credittic. who learned the criticism on the hands. which was again extremely view of what was actually english writing. which was shakespeare, then you skipped milton, please, out of the question, milton was the horrifying latin mutated form. pope not even worth thinking about. total failure to understand and accepts the parody. then you skip romantics and complete jokes that with the

prose, we allowed dickens book, the most boring thing he wrote. these were all no-nos. they were things we weren't aloud to enter. i later encountered the wild fluffy white hair and sort of fantastic -- you know, basically i realized at point one, was sense which was never wared, white shirt and open neck. but the complexion. it was basically the sort of dh lawrence guide to dressing really actually as sort of the fake poets. and he spent all of his time saying dickens is kind of worthlessly self-indulgent mockery of a writer. kind of extraordinary famous of

a lecturer in the cambridge university senate house when he got up and said, well, i've had a chance to reflect on my severe crews about dickens. then he went on. but especially dickens. at the end of it all, leaving us all a bit unstruck, a woman got up and said, well, doctor, you know, in your entire life you've been telling us really we shouldn't go anyway near charles dickens. one thing is worse than the other. david kopper field can't amount to a literary warm crime. what do you have to say for yourself? are you saying whoops? i have second thoughts? and leave it. he was notoriously badtempered. he said, well, i can't remember being able to say to you, i'm frightfully, frightfully sorry about all of this. i returned next to me and said

who is that woman? >> true. >> a way to get you to repent. discovering the orwell of "the toad" was the lit ration, the relaxed, lyrical, the sensual, and it made me to be want to be an essayist and develop different kind of literary voices if i could. i was a journalist as well as a historian from the time i was a child. school magazine very bad. founded newspaper very worse. i always wanted to have that kind of -- i have sincerely dedicate the book.

to my editors. i've been called that. you ask them a different way of the food column, the new word for the "new yorker" quickly turn around than you would for the guardian political column, for example. it's the mastery of different voices, different moments, different audiences contributing to the financial times. i do all sorts of things from interviews to -- i like those different -- slightly different styles of literary attack. but i guess the essay other than the toad of orwell which i particularly, you know, felt, wow, there was something great about the essay. and this essay you must read.

it's so extraordinarily cunning it made me realize the great essay is a nonfiction short story. it has a drama, it follows the narrative not rules, but seeks -- it's not just simply a set of arguments thrown together in vivid, you know, robust, clear prose. on the contrary. when you going for higher stakes, you really do kind of control the pace of reading in a great essay. that's what, you know, one the very greatest essay writers before orwell probably only might arguably be greater even better. that's william hatlich. if you don't know, i can remember them highly. it was a puppy dog that trotted behind the romantics that despited him for his alliteration. he did everything, first sports

writer amazingingly on boxing and slightly less amazing on horse racing. he was parliamentary, he wrote brilliantly. he wrote just about manners and credible essay my students all love is called on the pressure of hating. which has a certain kind of ferocious candor. another wonderful essay called on actors in boxes, which is absolutely wonderful. they are complaining it's bad enough that you have to see, you know, people like funny, or edmund keaton overacting. you have to tolerate them in standing in special boxes to take the cheers of the audience in plays they were not taking apart themselves. you realize as you go on from hatlich that you are reading him on the birth of celebrity culture. it's really kind of extraordinary piece of sharp, very, very sharp exhilaration.

incredibly piece of sharp. he has what people had, which is the energy of the nonfiction short story. and it sets out to ask one great question. this particular essay of orwell. and the question is why did he despise shakespeare? we couldn't understand. particularly the greater claims made for the shakespeare plays for the great tragedies of athello and hamlet and he could see a worthless history expended on nothing in particular. and they had an intelligent sign of the planet. it was very extraordinary, weird

misperception. very odd. but it could have weird bees in his bonnet. this is not orwell. i will just say -- i'll come on to the story that occurs to me. that what -- and it really worked. because some of you, at least two of you are going to go and read this essay, and i hope say philadelphia. you must. and it will spoil it to deliver. because the essay really doesn't have a punch line. what orwell does is drop clues as the essay runs along, like a great crime story as to why, in fact, tolstoy might have the view of shakespeare and king leer. when it's delivered, it's a bro smacking which is a same thing when you discover it was the gardener's 9-year-old who actually gut off the granny with a pair of garden sheers. you should have seen it coming all along.

it has that moment. it's amazing. after the kind of twist hits you, the profanity of what's being said sinks in. he was indeed -- i dial in who i write about in "scribble, scribble, scribble" told me that story. it was true, nonevent that i've been through. you know at the end of his life -- any of you seen "the last station"? you have in wonderful film. christopher plumber. very improbable. fantastic and spot on. he's given to delivering powerful, moral advise to the young and make it is known he would always be available to young people who wanted to put the deep questions. two students marched from the miserable, you know, pig hole really somewhere. and they go all the way and they knock on the door and servant answers and they, well, excuse

me us, could we see nikolai? because we have a question to put him. he says he will be responsive to anybody that has the -- and the servant says just wait here walking back and forth and making his pride. you know, these two young men, they have marched all the way. and he said, i'm not in. i'm too tired. and so the servant gets to the door and says i'm tremendously story. but at that moment, you finish the suspense and his beard is flowing like mad white flame. he says young man, i'm here. i have sinned. but i'm here. tell me what the question you want to put to me is? and the young man understands what he has said. he said you preach that it is wrong to resist evil with violence. but what if a tiger sprang from the jungle at you? he tooked at him and said young

man, such things very seldom happen. good-bye. [laughter] >> such are the mighty literary minds. so i -- you know, develop this notion that in journalism, journalism, you could actually make a craft out of it. and i have to say that i teach course on how am i doing -- time keeper? i've really gone over? i'm fine. fine. all right. you will all rue that. [laughter] >> i teach a course on the essay. there's very good students. but i do realize -- i did realize realize -- i don't know why i didn't see this coming. i'm not good at autoabout the web.

but i do think there is some sort of veer or some game -- no, it's not quite fair. there was some issue with the blog. and think about the blog is that essentially a staggering order form for utterly unmonitored self-indulgence. it presupposes that anything that you might have to say in any order that might cur to you about anything is going to be of interest to some sorry soul out there somewhere, actually. and it all of the kind of wonderful, spiny harshness of the essays form that makes it a glory in humane culture is for the most part -- not true of all blogs. there are blogs that do think of themselves as crafted in the essayish way? the way it described in the orwell and tolstoy essay. you know, there's a lot more

that has to kind of, you know, raw self-confidence of the entirely formless of the -- the word says it, blog. not really completely liquid. you know? [laughter] >> so that is a problem. essays are still crafted. i discovered actuallylyly -- i discovered, you know, as i try to write them myself that there were -- as i say different voices in a different genera. all of which are slightly different. i love love -- i had rather thir at his best. he wasn't always at his best. depended on how much elicit substances he's been taken. he was really just stupendous. i talked about that earlier, i think in his sort of music

chameleons wonderful, wonderful essayist. we all have all favorites that i love, lester bangs is rock and roll journalism. sort of had an extraordinary direct voice. all of the kids want to be like davey foster wallace. you have to be davey foster wallace to be like davey foster wallace actually. and there are many -- food writing which i do a lot of. i have a monty column with essays in the british magazine. food writing is a genere which is incredible and respectful. it shares with a problem of translation. by which i mean -- again, i was talking this at dinner, the host were kind enough to let me sit out of this earlier. there's some way in which wordiness is comprehensible with looking. when you actually take in the complexity and the power of a really great work of art. it's combination of head and

heart of the immediate visceral impact on the senses of what you are seeing. and then the sort of distribution of that immediate impact into thought processes, memories, pleasure receptors and so on. it's very difficult without embarrassment to actually find forms of work. i preface my book on rem brant. i talk about it a lot actually. i didn't get all of the words in there. i did preface it by one should always apologize. there's an altercation. the case with food writing, i think. food writing has more ambitiouses to be simply what you can buy at the green market and how to cook it. which is a good kind actually. if it has more ambitiouses than

actually to do the things -- to do the issue with memory, food writing because of, you know, the other factory sense being an incredible organ of preserved memory. great food writing. trying to get the sensory of taste of what happened on the palette on what happened to the speech or writing. it's called -- it's really about -- which i haven't published -- about those two things that we do with our mouth. speech and taste. and the two don't fit together really without, you know, particular scent of calculations coming in to play. very often it's some of the most poetic writers and the dangers are of over reach. what must -- not all, but most wine writing. there's a writer in england. i think genuinely is the poet of wine writing.

most writing takes refuge in the kind of fake lexicography. you have the phrases that are said to match with certain things. you know, faint hints of cigar stub or, you know, a memory of wet burgundy. i don't know what they are talking about. it's really annoying. but it's just really kind of bizarre and completely artificial sector into which it falls. great food writing is bad poetry. sort of dull, mechanical formula, fake poetry. but there are some writers who are real poets. pose poets, the greatest of all, although i do have a lot of time, greatest of all, lots of you have read, i hope, m.s.k. fisher. she's not -- in a way i hate to

call her a food writer. because that's why she never became famous really. it's like saying, you know, why haven't we heard of the writing scott fitzgerald? you know, some must have heard of him. she's that good. she's one the greatest not just women, she's one the great 20th century american writers, period. she's truly extraordinary writer. she wrote entirely in essay form. and one of the essays that i realize -- and the recipes are actually not great. but the rather particular period there's a wonderful book called how to cover a wolf, which is actually about surviving the depression and about surviving hard times, the wolf coming in through the door. essay that i loved and i started to rethink orwell was an essay which begins was the first thing i cooked is pure poison. it's smog that she cooks as a

child and she's just had a baby. and she's jealous. she tries to make it and the mother bursts out in a terrible allergic reaction. she's made the obscenely palette, extraordinarily breast milk like pudding. to improve it, she ran out and indeed got blackberries and scattered it around the middle of the kind of breast pudding really. it's very funny. it's very knowing. and it's extraordinary. that's what m.s.k. fisher, she writes about life, desire, disappointment, tragedy. it's nice to read. i hope you will read my stuff as well. i will read -- can i finish my two short readings. here's -- here's here's -- here. with sort of mary francis kay fisher. she's one the writers i wish i

had known. she was a really tarter as an old lady. i would loved to be on the whip end of her tongue. she died in the 90s and she was in her 80s. here's me trying. i guess -- with her very much in mind, not trying to be like her, but trying to find the kind of child's voice. this is the beginning of my essay on ice cream, which is one the nicer pieces in the book, i hope. i read you a little bit from that. because it is about milk. and then i'll read to you a little bit from one of her -- which i have in one of my own essays at the end which is amazing. here's the ice cream. summer, 1956. anthony edin is treatmenting dangerous egyptian dreams. which in the following autumn will send the empire up the creek. we don't know about that. if we did, we weren't care. it's the last day of school.

we've seen all of the 11 plus, that's elementary school exam. out there in london beyond the gritty little playground, beyond the black spike railings, hung with bind weed, there's a siren chiming. bing, bong, bing, bong, mr. whippy is calling. and we short trousers grimy needs snot nose wants what he has got. we want a 99 toxic home. guards how we want it. the hagy bar, chocolate stick plunged into a mound of air plumped chalk which would be called vanilla were it not to say in the dark being. but then we weren't too organic. not in 1956. so we charge out through the rusty green gates and break into our version of mobile. my name's antonio.

i sell ice creamo. down your back alleyo. top and licko. the delirious from ice cream is inseparable to get your tongue around the doll line up line up- dollop that delicious that marries opposite, fruit and baring, tart and view lupeose. it makes us whisper out memory lane. even on occasion drool and slobber. but it is more complicated than milky regression. and here's -- here's m.s.k. fisher. young m.s.k. fisher with her first husband, al fisher, who

has been assigned to a teaching job just before the war in strasburg. and she's alone and grumpy about being there. and here's what she does to -- about it. in the morning in the soft sultry chambers over radiated room, sit in the window peeling tanager leans. peel them gently. do not bruise them. towards the watched rhine. separate each plump little pregnant crest isn't, if you kind the kiss, the secret section, save it for al. her husband. listen to the chamber mate murmuring her encouragement while she mutters the seduction of the bicyclist that rides more than wheels, tear from the pile

of sections each velvet spring. young, there's white pulpy springs that hold to their skins. tear them off. be careful. the tangerines are gone. i cannot tell you why they are so magical. perhaps it's the shell, one layer on a chinese bowl. the crackle, so ultimately under your teeth or perhaps it is the rush of cold pulp just after it. or the perfume. i cannot tell. there must be someone though who knows what i mean. probably everyone does. because of his own secret eatings. don't do that kind of thing in blogs. thank you. [applause] [applause]

>> thanks. >> so the way if works if you raise your hand, we'll get a microphone to you. given at the topics in "scribble, scribble, scribble." i think we can ask about anything. >> i don't do automotive repair, actually. i never will actually. [laughter] >> we were talking about cars. but -- i couldn't expect for he hit me. >> all right. no car discussions. [laughter] >> and all the way in back, michelle, your hand up. the microphone will come back. >> hi, i'd like to know with the royal wedding coming up, the role of the monarchy in the 21st century? >> the rule? >> the role and the relevance?

>> it's sort of god for which we deflect to take our minds off of issues of power. which isn't to say the monarchy isn't as powerful in the defense and pursues money really in particular. but the reason why -- did you read the piece in the "new york times" yesterday called the tarnish crowd. that was one the worst pieces from a really great journalist. actually it was nonsensical. it used very revealingly and the writer who definitely will be nameless, used the word many as in many britains feel that, you know, the mob monarchy because of the collapsed diners, marriage, and, you know, the various kinds of mishaps or, you know, crimes and misdemeanors, it's worthless not to be gone. some would have been a more accurate word. the opinion polls and what everyone feels about it, it's about 75% of britain.

britain is not just the english really once it hits the stay. and been there some -- they are probably be a lot more people than the mere 20% or something who are actively hostile to the monarchy just not interested on friday. what he does is a certain kind of -- you know, it's a logical event essentially. an event in cultural which doesn't make it worthless. the royal family is essentially a kind of emblem really which tries to do two things at once. it's not. the writer crazy about it, what about it no longer really a reliable source. think about the monarchy. because it all -- resuppose that the monarchy was effective inas far -- insofar as it was distant. she created the bow somewhat

family. that sort of is the strength and the problem for the royal family. if you are going to have the oo, they are just like us, but in some deep, peculiar strange way, they are not like us. it's tricky not to do. and, you know, we'll see how well -- you know, the -- the beneficial of the actually do that really. and there's more and more writing to notice that kate middleton, catherine who never has had down a job. diana did, but kate middleton hasn't done that. it's essentially -- you can if you are marxist or republican that the monarchy exists to enslave britain. it may not be entirely wrong. it's a voluntary to the state.

and i think sort of especially in hard times, really the britains are better or worse or apt to really want something which represents a realism of the uncontroversial power free zone of kind of em breammatic charisma. i was lucky enough to get the fellow country call it a gong. and in thing. which made me absorbly commander of the british empire. i don't really have a lot to command. and but this brought me into very close contact with queen. i mean really close, you know, almost kind of clench close. because we have to bend our head as we put it around you. and then you raise it to this sort of -- and you are confused, remember, because what you are seeing is the strange emblematic work. which appears to be saying things to you.

i just finished. this is why i got the gong, for the history of the britain series. the gong said i gather you have a video. truth be told, i said, yes, mom. then there was a long pause. yes, about the history of britain. yes, i gather. and i never saw a dim lightbulb. would you have seen it? not yet. i realized that i think panhandled in buckingham palace. should i sent one around? that would be nice. >> i did. you know? funny royals. >> yeah. just a little further back. >> my question maybe oxymoron, but as an american, do you have a favorite american author,

either living or dead, and could you give the reason? >> why is that an oxymoron, man? favor america. wow. there are just so, you know, again i'm going to -- i'm goinged into the weany thing. there are different reasons to be passionate about different writers. i am a big mel vivian. i was talking about him as dinner. both in -- maybe in the form and also especially really in the bartleby kind of reform. throw yourself out of the window and see how the sentence lands style of actually melville attempts almost catastrophic failure in terms of the public eye that i find extraordinary. i think he does really change the language a bit in that way. we were just talking about prose are we? we were talking about poetry as

well? really weirdly, because he says damn flinty. i do have a sort of deep feeling for robert bell actually. he was very historically rich. you know, it seems to go against everything that i've said about it's worth me being dickens light. i do rather love robert lowe. and i do like robert frost as well very, very much. i was glad to see there was an amazing. that was the best thing written about robert frost. he's not just a nature poet, but bruting on the issues of life and death and everything in between. it's a great essay to get from the "new yorker" online archive that he wrote not long before he died himself about robert frost. i did love that i knew him quite well when we became friends. i loved joseph very much.

maybe his one book. although i think there are -- there's at least one other book of helens which is wonderful. but i thought catch 22 was an extraordinary kind of burlesque black masterpiece. why i'm slightly hesitant, i think books rather than, you know, complete -- i'm not in different fitzgerald at all. i loved fitzgerald deeply, actually, not just fitzgerald of cassidy but tender of the night as well. it was a helpless mess and masterpiece in others. particular books, a book i was stunned to realize how extraordinary it was is the naked dead. mainly when it was 22, i think it was absolutely extraordinary.

i'm not sure anything like helen will ever be written about again. now since the form of the book, it's a buddy book, back stories behind the members of the chronic platoon. it has the kind of epic, extraordinary kind of epic tragic, greek tragic quality to it. i think the sharpness, the visualization of the young is amazing and it's sort of been forgetten, i think, really. because of the comfortness of the books, i think. that's an example, i guess. i do love -- i mean we had this -- i guess -- i hope it's not -- it's not a brush off. but we would -- this is a subject that we came up at supper. what i said, we were given a lot of american writing to read in england. in the 1950s. which is wonderful. we were given -- i'm always grateful that we were given the

kind of least accessible. not the difficult. but the books that sounded least like charlotte and jane austen and anthony dickens. when you got -- when you read "scarlet letter" it was what is this? you read bartleby, you think what is this? it was also -- it was a sort of pungent ability of raw american prose, magnificently wrote american prose with the weird and exhausted voice. whitman, i loved whitman for his madness. i think at electric. i were too. we would say to each other. and to that effect. beating our chest in the whitman way. so we -- we love -- i loved all

of that. i still do like sort of extreme american writing, i would say. i love extreme, raw, uncompromising. there is a writer who's really been scotless. many of you have heard him. once you hear the name, you won't forget it. it is very, very dark and murderous. which i think most genuinely tragic. his name is bruce d.j. pancake. have any of you heard him or read him? he maybe out of print. he is remarkable, remarkable american writer. particularly terrible tragic demeanor. they all seem to kill themselves. it is competitively advances and it is again one of the great out of control extreme american comic novels. the book he wrote on the neon

bible when he was just 18 again and at almost as remarkable. so i like extreme american prose. >> shall we continue? >> i read anything that you or tony used to write. and in terms of tony, he stayed in one area of politics. now are you -- is this -- >> politics you are saying? you mean one set of views? >> well, political discourse, basically. and you have peaks and troughs, is that because you hone your writing skills and go the extremes. >> different styles? yeah. >> yeah. i'm just curious. >> you know, i get interested in things. and i'm interested in something else. you know, which leads me -- i sort of run around in this way i suppose. it's -- i'm not -- i don't think

i'd do it -- it is a test. it is a test, you know, because you do -- do you think of readership or you write for the "new yorker" and i don't think i try to classify a demographic about that. but the remarks that i was making i hope not entirely facetiously about the food experience of taste into prose or of painting. i do actually write about pop music a bit. but -- and there would have been some of these pieces in here. but the music publishers challenge outrageous self into the spilled lyric. that's the same sort of issue as well. i just -- i think it's sort of a sense of life is short, you want to try your hand actually a different idioms. i suppose the way an actor might not want to be stuck with a comic or tragic role or something that you want to kind of push the language really in different directions rather than

have a single consistent voice. it may make you literature a the bit. it may make you in the end, i don't know, compromise. i do have -- if you want to look at, there is a particular voice where i'm trying to present as clearly and as access blue as possible a quite complicated argument. there are at least two pieces in which are -- which were of lectures which i have to be slightly less. i've won on victorians and carlisle. they have a similar voice, just not a standard, conventional, academic voice, but certainly the voices one designed for bundling together a set of analytical arguments on top of the kind of narrative about those who are -- who are making them, i think. i will say about -- it's very interesting you mention. tony and i knew each other far long time. it was students together at cambridge in the '60s. we had lots of differences,

political and other. but they were always kind of above board differences. we did have sort of quiet -- i mean fierce arguments but some differences. and -- but i think we admired each other. i certainly admired him. i thought the book called first war was a masterpiece since the war. if any of you can, i guess you have read the memory, have you? you haven't. wow, you've got to treat. the memory is sort of the collection of pieces that he wrote as he was dying. he died of the lou gherigs disease. one the most terrible ways he can die. just last year. because, you know, your brain never goes. that's the last thing to go. we see you observe your increasingly incapacity day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. he was the most -- he was the bravest, most uncomplaining, and he wrote this -- he was writing these essays about memory. as he was dying. and it's a very short book.

and it's arguably the greatst thing he did actually. i sort of -- i'm rather distressed -- distressed, it doesn't matter. i mean he's dead. i wish i could have told him how extraordinary the little book is. it's about childhood, it's about bearing arms, it's about everything really in the space of the about 150 pages. it's called the "memory shalay" a book of heart edge unsentiment intelligence. those of you who don't know what we are talking about jutt, tony jutt. read it. it will change your life. >> if you want to hear him speak, we have him on our web site. >> good. good. >> one more question, gentleman in the white about six rows into the middle there. on your right. >> yeah. >> thank you.

please share your thoughts on putting together the power of art both the book and the outstanding videos and how that -- the compliment each other and how that thought process worked. >> oh. thank you very much. that's very kind. those of you that don't know, it was a television series. it was conceived of a television series. i knew as i do with the books that are -- i hate the word companion books. i never wanted to deposit scripts for each film and make that the book. the book chapter are much more elaborate. there's only so much to do in an hour of television. hour period that is. i'll tell you why that book happened actually. thank you for asking it. there are some art historians among you here tonight. you will know very well that -- that the textualism is really --