Life must be filled up

Has anyone else noticed that PM with Eddie Mair is turning into Home Truths? And is it just me, or is he really far too pleased with himself these days?

This morning on Radio4 Professor Peter Hennessey was the subject of The house I grew up in, which in his case was a council house in Finchley. What interested me was that he said his interest in history was due to R J Unstead and Rosemary Sutcliff. Me too, Prof! I was given a copy of the four volume Unstead when I was eight. Every picture in the book is printed on my memory. The book shown on the right is a late reprint: my childhood copy was destroyed by our cats. We didn't have these books at school: too modern and expensive for a post-war classroom which still used Piers Plowman Histories. But when I started teaching in the seventies, there was dear old Unstead to help me out with the younger forms.

I read all Rosemary Sutcliff's books from the local library. This one, Simon, I was given as a present and it is still my favourite. It is the story of two childhood friends who find themselves on opposite sides in the English Civil War and I'm sure my later fixation with the seventeenth century can be traced straight back to it.

Has anyone else had their career marked out by childhood reading?

I love The Now Show. Punt, Dennis and Benn are brilliant. I love the running gags: 'I can see, I can see perfectly.' 'Come on, Tim!' For me, it's unmissable. But. Every week they give a slot to Marcus Brigstocke, who is fast going down the Jeremy Hardy slope to boringness. Brigstocke created the Giles Wemmbley-Hogg series, which I found both funny and, at times, affecting: Giles is awful but there is a touching innocence about him which gave the programmes depth. On TNS, though, Brigstocke seems to lose his sense of humour. This evening's little talk, on racism, was so unfunny, so full of soft targets, bad history and political naiveties that I began to wonder if perhaps the poor boy isn't really very bright. Goodness how sad.

I am really looking forward to HIGNFY this evening!

The whole of Radio 4's Front Row programme this evening was devoted to the poet Tony Harrison, who is coming up for seventy and ought to be Poet Laureate. The son of a baker, from a home without books and with parents who were 'inarticulate', he went on to study classics, translate Greek drama for the National Theatre and become a major poet. At his grammar school he was banned from reading Keats aloud in class because of his strong Yorkshire accent. Ironic, considering that Keats was snobbishly looked down on in his own lifetime because he spoke like a Cockney. Harrison has kept his accent and his fondness for his roots; this irritates some people, who think he should have 'got over it' and ceased to be chippy. I've admired his poetry for years and this is a favourite:



In the interview Harrison said that his academic success was due to the 1944 Education Act and six scholarships. How many children today, coming from working class backgrounds, have the opportunity of learning Latin & Greek? The study of classics will soon be as exclusive a privilege as it was before universal education. Where are the Tony Harrisons of the future?