0:00:02 > 0:00:06This programme contains some strong language.
0:00:06 > 0:00:09HE EXCLAIMS
0:00:09 > 0:00:14Language is one of the most amazing things we humans do.
0:00:14 > 0:00:17It separates us from the animals,
0:00:17 > 0:00:20gives us theatre, poetry and song.
0:00:20 > 0:00:23It shapes our identity
0:00:23 > 0:00:26and allows us to express emotion.
0:00:26 > 0:00:28CROWD CHEERS
0:00:28 > 0:00:31It makes us laugh, it makes us cry,
0:00:31 > 0:00:33and it inspires us.
0:00:33 > 0:00:35To be or not to be...
0:00:42 > 0:00:44When language reaches its highest state,
0:00:44 > 0:00:47we give it a name that's terrifying and irritating to some -
0:00:47 > 0:00:50literature.
0:00:50 > 0:00:54In this form, it gives us voice, personality and history.
0:00:54 > 0:00:57All literature does, really, is tell our story
0:00:57 > 0:00:59and how to do it justice in one hour?
0:00:59 > 0:01:02This programme isn't about literary criticism,
0:01:02 > 0:01:05or deciding who makes it or who is left out of the great pantheon,
0:01:05 > 0:01:07nor is it about history.
0:01:07 > 0:01:10So it's just going to be a very personal journey
0:01:10 > 0:01:13and probably you'll disagree with my taste, which is fine,
0:01:13 > 0:01:16because there's really no right or wrong here.
0:01:16 > 0:01:18What I'm going to try and explain to you
0:01:18 > 0:01:21is why certain writing makes me shiver with excitement
0:01:21 > 0:01:24and why some makes me want to bury my head in my hands.
0:01:24 > 0:01:26But more of them later.
0:01:26 > 0:01:29First, let's just step back and see how it all began.
0:01:34 > 0:01:37This is Turkanaland in north-east Kenya,
0:01:37 > 0:01:41not far from where it's believed homo sapiens originated.
0:01:41 > 0:01:45The Turkana are a fiercely independent tribe of pastoral nomads
0:01:45 > 0:01:48whose existence is dependent on their livestock.
0:01:48 > 0:01:52The menfolk spend much of their spare time and energy
0:01:52 > 0:01:54planning and then raiding cattle
0:01:54 > 0:01:57from their neighbouring tribe, the Toposa.
0:01:57 > 0:02:00Understandable, as cattle are the currency to buy a wife
0:02:00 > 0:02:02and then keep her in beads
0:02:02 > 0:02:05that are both decorative
0:02:05 > 0:02:07and a measure of her wealth and status.
0:02:13 > 0:02:15HE SPEAKS IN TURKANA
0:02:26 > 0:02:28This is where it all began.
0:02:28 > 0:02:32Under the shade of trees, around fires the world over,
0:02:32 > 0:02:34people telling stories of derring-do,
0:02:34 > 0:02:37love and disappointment, of being and becoming.
0:02:37 > 0:02:41Here, I'm listening to an extraordinary tale
0:02:41 > 0:02:43of how the people went on a raid
0:02:43 > 0:02:47against their wily, wily opponents, the Toposa,
0:02:47 > 0:02:49and stole off their cattle.
0:03:03 > 0:03:08It may not be the Trojan Wars but it has its elements of heroism.
0:03:08 > 0:03:11Of course, they could just as easily be telling stories like...
0:03:11 > 0:03:15how the stars got their shine, or why camels have bad breath.
0:03:15 > 0:03:20There are many, many stories, but supposedly only seven real plots.
0:03:24 > 0:03:28At a most basic level, a good story needs plot and character.
0:03:28 > 0:03:31So let's deal with plot first.
0:03:31 > 0:03:35According to some, they boil down to just these - the quest,
0:03:35 > 0:03:37rags to riches, comedy,
0:03:37 > 0:03:41tragedy, rebirth, overcoming the monster, voyage and return.
0:03:41 > 0:03:46So Hamlet, or its Disney incarnation The Lion King,
0:03:46 > 0:03:50is an archetypal voyage-and-return plot
0:03:50 > 0:03:52wrapped in a revenge tragedy.
0:03:52 > 0:03:57But does such thinking even help us navigate our way through literature?
0:03:57 > 0:03:58William Goldman,
0:03:58 > 0:04:03regarded by many as the pre-eminent Hollywood screenwriter of his time,
0:04:03 > 0:04:06double Oscar winner, he should know a thing or two.
0:04:06 > 0:04:08Or maybe not, because perhaps his most famous remark
0:04:08 > 0:04:13about the Hollywood story mill was that "Nobody knows anything".
0:04:21 > 0:04:25The story itself, I suppose, depends on something human.
0:04:25 > 0:04:29It depends on caring about one or a group of characters,
0:04:29 > 0:04:32or about some sort of principle like revenge or a quest?
0:04:32 > 0:04:37I mean, is there any truth in this idea that there are basically only seven plots?
0:04:37 > 0:04:41No, I don't think so. I think, basically, some, I mean, I just...
0:04:41 > 0:04:44for my sins, I looked at a movie that I wrote, Marathon Man,
0:04:44 > 0:04:49many, many years ago and that was based on two ideas.
0:04:49 > 0:04:53One of them was, what would happen if someone in your family
0:04:53 > 0:04:55wasn't what you thought they were?
0:04:55 > 0:04:58And the other one was, I was walking on 47th Street,
0:04:58 > 0:05:02- which is still there... - Yes, the Diamond District. - The Diamond District.
0:05:02 > 0:05:04And it was a hot day about 40 years ago
0:05:04 > 0:05:08and all the people that worked in the Diamond District
0:05:08 > 0:05:10were wearing short-sleeved shirts
0:05:10 > 0:05:14and you could see all the terrible marks from the concentration camps.
0:05:14 > 0:05:17- Cos they're all Jewish.- They were all Jewish and they were...
0:05:17 > 0:05:19- Had their tattoos. - Had their tattoos on.
0:05:19 > 0:05:21And I got the notion,
0:05:21 > 0:05:25what if the world's most-wanted Nazi was walking along this street?
0:05:31 > 0:05:36And then I realised I couldn't figure out why he came.
0:05:36 > 0:05:38And then I... cos I'm very good on story,
0:05:38 > 0:05:42I realised he was coming because he needed heart surgery.
0:05:42 > 0:05:43And then I thought,
0:05:43 > 0:05:46asshole, what kind of a villain needs heart surgery?
0:05:46 > 0:05:51- Yes!- So I came up with the notion of the diamonds years later
0:05:51 > 0:05:53and thank God for Laurence Olivier.
0:05:58 > 0:06:00I know that man.
0:06:00 > 0:06:03It can't be...
0:06:03 > 0:06:04Szell?
0:06:04 > 0:06:05Szell?
0:06:05 > 0:06:07Szell!
0:06:07 > 0:06:10Szell! Szell!
0:06:12 > 0:06:16My God, stop him!
0:06:16 > 0:06:19Szell! Stop, Szell!
0:06:19 > 0:06:23It's Szell! Szell! Der Weisse Engel!
0:06:23 > 0:06:28Der Weisse Engel is here. Oh, my God. Stop him.
0:06:28 > 0:06:29Stop him!
0:06:29 > 0:06:31Der Weisse Engel!
0:06:31 > 0:06:33And that scene still works.
0:06:33 > 0:06:36Oh, it does. "Der Weisse Engel. Der Weisse Engel."
0:06:36 > 0:06:39So is the secret, if I can squeeze the secret out,
0:06:39 > 0:06:42is don't try and second guess the genre
0:06:42 > 0:06:45that's most popular at the time, don't try and conform
0:06:45 > 0:06:47to some apparent rule of storytelling,
0:06:47 > 0:06:49go with your gut about...
0:06:49 > 0:06:53Yes. You've got to try and find something that you can make play.
0:06:53 > 0:06:57For example, in all the years I've been doing this,
0:06:57 > 0:07:00I've never done a special effects movie, you know?
0:07:00 > 0:07:03People say, "They're on a spaceship and..."
0:07:03 > 0:07:04I can't write that shit.
0:07:04 > 0:07:07- Mmm.- Other people can but I can't and what you have to try and do
0:07:07 > 0:07:11is you have to try and figure out some way
0:07:11 > 0:07:16to make something work that you have confidence in when you're writing it.
0:07:16 > 0:07:19I was reading about the man who wrote The King's Speech.
0:07:19 > 0:07:21He had a stammer when he was a kid.
0:07:21 > 0:07:22I mean, who in the name of God
0:07:22 > 0:07:25thinks there's going to be a successful worldwide movie,
0:07:25 > 0:07:27that wins every honour,
0:07:27 > 0:07:30about a king who has a stammer?!
0:07:30 > 0:07:35- It's the worst idea I've ever heard, but guess what? - Yeah.- It was a fascinating story.
0:07:35 > 0:07:38- Yeah.- It really was and it works.
0:07:38 > 0:07:41I suppose you can trace storytelling, in our culture,
0:07:41 > 0:07:45all the way back to that blind hero, supposedly blind, Homer.
0:07:45 > 0:07:47One wonders from what you've said about Hollywood,
0:07:47 > 0:07:51if you went with the story of the Odyssey, or the siege of Troy,
0:07:51 > 0:07:54having said which, they made a movie about Troy,
0:07:54 > 0:07:56so maybe Homer still plays.
0:07:56 > 0:07:59Well, I remember I was young when I read those two...
0:07:59 > 0:08:04- Mmm.- And they just destroyed me and I remember,
0:08:04 > 0:08:08I had no idea what I was getting into and I just couldn't stop reading it.
0:08:08 > 0:08:11I think those fabulous people...
0:08:11 > 0:08:13are fabulous for a reason.
0:08:13 > 0:08:16- Yeah.- There's something, I'm going to say something stupid.
0:08:16 > 0:08:18They were great at story.
0:08:18 > 0:08:21- Yeah.- I mean, Homer really had fabulous stories to tell.
0:08:25 > 0:08:29Do you see, you gods of sea and sky?
0:08:29 > 0:08:30I conquered Troy!
0:08:30 > 0:08:35Me, Odysseus, a mortal man of flesh and blood
0:08:35 > 0:08:36and bone and mind!
0:08:45 > 0:08:49The Mediterranean is the landscape of Western literature's first,
0:08:49 > 0:08:52and some would say most influential works -
0:08:52 > 0:08:55Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
0:08:55 > 0:08:58They have a magnificent plot.
0:08:58 > 0:09:01It features sexual obsession, kidnapping, loyalty, man love,
0:09:01 > 0:09:05jealousy, war, heroism and deception,
0:09:05 > 0:09:09all wrapped up in the greatest road movie of all time.
0:09:09 > 0:09:10Well, a road movie on the sea.
0:09:14 > 0:09:17The Odyssey recounts the exploits and adventures
0:09:17 > 0:09:19of the Greek general Odysseus -
0:09:19 > 0:09:21Ulysses in the Roman version of the story -
0:09:21 > 0:09:24as he tries to get home after the Trojan Wars.
0:09:24 > 0:09:27It is filled with fabulous encounters -
0:09:27 > 0:09:31whether with the Cyclops, Circe the archetypal femme fatale,
0:09:31 > 0:09:36or adrift on drug-induced happiness with the Lotus Eaters.
0:09:36 > 0:09:39Homer's genius was to create vivid, archetypal scenes
0:09:39 > 0:09:41that transcended time and place.
0:09:42 > 0:09:46The Sirens' episode is only a few paragraphs long,
0:09:46 > 0:09:50yet it has become embedded in our collective memory.
0:09:50 > 0:09:55On his way home, Odysseus must pass the rocks where the Sirens live.
0:09:55 > 0:09:58No-one has ever lived to tell the tale
0:09:58 > 0:10:00of what it is the Sirens sing,
0:10:00 > 0:10:04as their song is so powerful, it lures men to their death.
0:10:04 > 0:10:08But Odysseus is intent on hearing it and surviving.
0:10:10 > 0:10:12"I took a large round of wax,
0:10:12 > 0:10:14"cut it up small with my sword
0:10:14 > 0:10:17"and kneaded the pieces with all the strength of my fingers.
0:10:17 > 0:10:21"I took each of my men in turn and plugged their ears with it.
0:10:21 > 0:10:24"They then made me a prisoner on my ship,
0:10:24 > 0:10:27"by binding me hand and foot,
0:10:27 > 0:10:29"standing me up by the step of the mast
0:10:29 > 0:10:32"and tying the rope's ends to the mast itself.
0:10:32 > 0:10:36"We made good progress and had just come within call of the shore,
0:10:36 > 0:10:39"when the Sirens became aware that a ship was swiftly
0:10:39 > 0:10:43"bearing down upon them and broke into their liquid song."
0:10:46 > 0:10:48" 'Draw near', they sang,
0:10:48 > 0:10:51" 'illustrious Odysseus, flower of Achaean chivalry,
0:10:51 > 0:10:55" 'and bring your ship to rest so that you may hear our voices.' "
0:10:58 > 0:11:00"The lovely voices came to me across the water
0:11:00 > 0:11:04"and my heart was filled with such a longing to listen that,
0:11:04 > 0:11:09"with nod and frown, I signed to my men to set me free.
0:11:09 > 0:11:13"But they swung forward to their oars and rowed ahead."
0:11:16 > 0:11:20"However, when they had rowed past the Sirens and we could no longer hear their voices
0:11:20 > 0:11:22"and the burden of their song,
0:11:22 > 0:11:27"my good companions were quick to clear their ears of the wax I'd used to stop them
0:11:27 > 0:11:30"and to free me from my shackles."
0:11:38 > 0:11:41And of course we never learn from Odysseus
0:11:41 > 0:11:43what that Siren call sounds like
0:11:43 > 0:11:46but we know what it means.
0:11:47 > 0:11:48Two millennia later,
0:11:48 > 0:11:51James Joyce reinvented that scene
0:11:51 > 0:11:56and, indeed, the whole plot of Homer in his masterpiece, Ulysses.
0:11:58 > 0:12:00Look at that pair acting up!
0:12:03 > 0:12:09Homer's Odysseus is reincarnated as a Jewish Dubliner, Leopold Bloom,
0:12:09 > 0:12:11whose contemporary encounter with the Sirens
0:12:11 > 0:12:15was considered in its day deeply shocking.
0:13:00 > 0:13:03David Norris is not only a Senator
0:13:03 > 0:13:07but also an acclaimed and inspiring Joycean scholar.
0:13:09 > 0:13:13I suppose the genius of the book is that he managed to find, in a single day in Dublin, Joyce,
0:13:13 > 0:13:17examples of Odysseus's adventures in the Homeric epic,
0:13:17 > 0:13:22like the Sirens, the escape from Polyphemus, Circe.
0:13:22 > 0:13:25He found a modern equivalent.
0:13:25 > 0:13:27It's a tour de force of writing
0:13:27 > 0:13:30that has since never been matched, I don't think, has it?
0:13:30 > 0:13:32I can't think of anything to match it.
0:13:32 > 0:13:34Nobody's tried it in the same way.
0:13:34 > 0:13:37- No.- But I think Joyce had that extraordinary genius.
0:13:37 > 0:13:40- I mean, chapter four, you hit the kidneys.- Yes.
0:13:40 > 0:13:43"Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs..."
0:13:43 > 0:13:46Read this, cos this is where we're introduced to our great hero.
0:13:46 > 0:13:49Here we go. Do you want to read this for us, just this opening?
0:13:49 > 0:13:52Cos it's such a wonderful introduction to a character.
0:13:52 > 0:13:56"Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.
0:13:56 > 0:14:01"He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart,
0:14:01 > 0:14:06"liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes.
0:14:06 > 0:14:10"Most of all, he liked grilled mutton kidneys,
0:14:10 > 0:14:14"which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine."
0:14:14 > 0:14:18- Isn't that mouth-watering?- It is! And at first you think,
0:14:18 > 0:14:21"A fine tang of faintly scented urine" is a good thing?
0:14:21 > 0:14:24And yet, anybody who eats kidney, there is that and it is...
0:14:24 > 0:14:27- Yes, there is. - ..faintly scented is so right.
0:14:27 > 0:14:30But it brings us straight into having met characters
0:14:30 > 0:14:32who are very intellectual, you think,
0:14:32 > 0:14:36this is about very smart people who quote Shakespeare all the time.
0:14:36 > 0:14:39And suddenly you hit this man Bloom, with his love of his...
0:14:39 > 0:14:42and he's going about making breakfast for his wife,
0:14:42 > 0:14:44setting things on the tray.
0:14:44 > 0:14:47The cat's running, you know, stalking him...
0:14:47 > 0:14:49And the cat is the most wonderful detail because...
0:14:49 > 0:14:51When he looks at the cat first, the cat looks at him back and says,
0:14:51 > 0:14:53HE MIAOWS
0:14:54 > 0:14:56And then when he says "Milk for the puss."
0:14:56 > 0:14:59And then he leans down to pour milk for the puss
0:14:59 > 0:15:03and the cat says almost the same... But not quite.
0:15:03 > 0:15:04HE MIAOWS
0:15:04 > 0:15:07- There's an R and that is the cat. - Indicates satisfaction.
0:15:07 > 0:15:11There's a communication and the whole book is about communication.
0:15:11 > 0:15:14Now, a lot of people have picked up Ulysses
0:15:14 > 0:15:17and been baffled by it or thought,
0:15:17 > 0:15:21"Oh, I might dip in and slowly get the odd sentence
0:15:21 > 0:15:23"but I'm never going to understand it".
0:15:23 > 0:15:25How would you suggest they go about reading it?
0:15:25 > 0:15:28Jump in. Don't expect to understand everything
0:15:28 > 0:15:31because the beautiful thing about Joyce is you don't
0:15:31 > 0:15:35and you never come to the end of it. It's an inexhaustible treasure.
0:15:35 > 0:15:39- And read it aloud.- Yes.
0:15:39 > 0:15:41It doesn't matter what accent.
0:15:41 > 0:15:43The moment on the Strand, for example,
0:15:43 > 0:15:48where Stephen has been trying to make a note of the sound of a wave.
0:15:48 > 0:15:49Oh, yes.
0:15:49 > 0:15:52It looks like the typewriter letting a sneeze,
0:15:52 > 0:15:54but it's exactly the sound, if you say it.
0:15:54 > 0:15:58Most people would be put off looking at:
0:16:00 > 0:16:01And they say, "Well, hump that for a lark"
0:16:01 > 0:16:06But if you hear it, listen, a four-worded wave speech:
0:16:12 > 0:16:14- It's exactly the sound of a wave. - Fantastic. Yeah.
0:16:14 > 0:16:18- And Joyce does that all the way through.- Yeah.
0:16:18 > 0:16:22And, you know, Budgen tells a story of meeting Joyce in Zurich
0:16:22 > 0:16:25and Joyce was looking pleased with himself and he said,
0:16:25 > 0:16:29"Good day's work, Joyce?" And Joyce said, "Oh, yes".
0:16:29 > 0:16:30"Write a chapter?"
0:16:30 > 0:16:31"No".
0:16:31 > 0:16:33"Couple of pages?"
0:16:33 > 0:16:34"Paragraph?"
0:16:34 > 0:16:36"A sentence?"
0:16:36 > 0:16:39And Joyce said, "I had the words in the sentence yesterday
0:16:39 > 0:16:42"but I got the order right today."
0:16:42 > 0:16:44I mean, he's a mosaic artist.
0:16:44 > 0:16:49- Yeah.- Every tiny little coloured stone is in exactly the right place
0:16:49 > 0:16:52- to give the effect Joyce wanted. - Yeah.
0:16:56 > 0:17:01The right word in the right order, as Joyce said,
0:17:01 > 0:17:04is as good a definition of good writing as I can think of.
0:17:04 > 0:17:07"Le mot juste" as Flaubert would have it.
0:17:07 > 0:17:10It's that precision in creating a whole world
0:17:10 > 0:17:12through the inventiveness of language
0:17:12 > 0:17:15that provokes and delights the mind
0:17:15 > 0:17:18and makes great literature so memorable.
0:17:18 > 0:17:21Joyce had this extraordinary ear
0:17:21 > 0:17:25for the musicality of the Dublin language.
0:17:25 > 0:17:30I mean, if you think, a word like howanever. "So howanever".
0:17:30 > 0:17:34I mean, just see the way the body fits into that.
0:17:34 > 0:17:37Or when Bloom was being attacked in the citizen episode.
0:17:37 > 0:17:42And, "Eh, mister! Your fly is open, mister!"
0:17:42 > 0:17:46And that second "Mister"
0:17:46 > 0:17:50is the perfect pointing and resolution of the line melodically.
0:17:50 > 0:17:54- Yeah.- And Joyce could hear that. - He had that kind of ear, didn't he?
0:17:54 > 0:17:57Yes, and every kind of Dublin saying,
0:17:57 > 0:18:00like "suck whiskey off a sore leg" is one of these.
0:18:00 > 0:18:03Joyce kind of almost collected these things
0:18:03 > 0:18:05and I often think that subsequent writers
0:18:05 > 0:18:08must have thought it terribly unfair competition,
0:18:08 > 0:18:10cos Joyce was so terribly greedy.
0:18:10 > 0:18:11Yes. He was, he was a hoarder.
0:18:11 > 0:18:14Left almost nothing behind for other people.
0:18:14 > 0:18:15A hoarder of linguistic treasure.
0:18:15 > 0:18:17- Yeah.- Oh, look, here we are!
0:18:17 > 0:18:20- Some kidneys. - Is this...lamb's kidneys?
0:18:20 > 0:18:22- It is indeed.- Fantastic! - And a nice bit of Gorgonzola.
0:18:22 > 0:18:25And are they faintly scented with urine?
0:18:25 > 0:18:27And would you like a glass of Burgundy with that?
0:18:27 > 0:18:30A glass of Burgundy would be lovely, thank you.
0:18:30 > 0:18:34So we're going to have a Bloom feast cos that's what he has - gorgonzola.
0:18:34 > 0:18:37Yes, it is. Gorgonzola and good red Burgundy wine.
0:18:37 > 0:18:42I think he calls it, "the feety savour of green cheese". "Feety".
0:18:42 > 0:18:46- Shall we see if there's a faint scent of urine?- I think so, yeah.
0:18:46 > 0:18:49And I wasn't going to, but the smell is so delicious.
0:18:49 > 0:18:52It is, it is good, isn't it? There we are.
0:18:53 > 0:18:56Mmm! Lovely.
0:18:56 > 0:18:58Delicious!
0:18:58 > 0:19:00Mmm.
0:19:00 > 0:19:02- And tender.- Very tender. Mmm!
0:19:04 > 0:19:08Ulysses was the book I chose as my Desert Island Disc.
0:19:08 > 0:19:11It's one I can go back to again and again
0:19:11 > 0:19:14and not only for the sheer joy of his language,
0:19:14 > 0:19:18but also the humanity of his flawed and un-heroic characters.
0:19:18 > 0:19:21Joyce's books only sell thousands,
0:19:21 > 0:19:26but one of his contemporaries sells hundreds of millions.
0:19:26 > 0:19:28The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings trilogy
0:19:28 > 0:19:33are the second and third best-selling novels of all time,
0:19:33 > 0:19:35just after Dickens' Tale Of Two Cities.
0:19:35 > 0:19:38New Zealand-based director Peter Jackson
0:19:38 > 0:19:42has devoted many years to bringing JRR Tolkien's books to the screen
0:19:42 > 0:19:46And, for him, Tolkien's admixture of Norse, Middle English
0:19:46 > 0:19:48and Anglo Saxon is one key
0:19:48 > 0:19:53to the enduring success of both the books and the films.
0:19:53 > 0:19:57"Roads go ever, ever on, under cloud and under star,
0:19:57 > 0:20:01"yet feet that wandering have gone return at last to home afar.
0:20:01 > 0:20:07"Eyes that fire and sword have seen and horror in halls of stone
0:20:07 > 0:20:10"look at last on meadows green
0:20:10 > 0:20:15"and trees and hills they long have known."
0:20:15 > 0:20:20I wondered how much you felt, because you adapt these, how much the language matters to Tolkien,
0:20:20 > 0:20:25- I think he's an extremely good writer of English.- Fantastic. - Just at the level of the sentence,
0:20:25 > 0:20:27that you really can't improve much, can you?
0:20:27 > 0:20:31It was one of the decisions we made when adapting Lord of the Rings, was that we tried
0:20:31 > 0:20:34to work as much of his language into the script as we could.
0:20:34 > 0:20:36I think that one of the beauties of the book
0:20:36 > 0:20:39of the Lord of the Rings, and I think it ultimately worked in the movie,
0:20:39 > 0:20:43is that they're talking in a language that is beautiful and poetic and,
0:20:43 > 0:20:46even though it's not one that we're used to hearing...
0:20:46 > 0:20:49- It's so good...- ..On the street, you understand it. It becomes...- Actually...
0:20:49 > 0:20:51..accessible in a funny way.
0:20:51 > 0:20:54But what Tolkien did great with his stories and especially
0:20:54 > 0:20:58his use of language is that he treated them as historical.
0:20:58 > 0:21:02- Yeah.- And I think that's the way that we found, you know,
0:21:02 > 0:21:07that was the door that we entered when we went into the movies, is that this isn't made up.
0:21:07 > 0:21:11it's not a piece of gobbledygook, you know, set on the planet Zog or...
0:21:11 > 0:21:13Yes.
0:21:13 > 0:21:15I mean, every name, every place name,
0:21:15 > 0:21:20every plant name that Tolkien wrote about, he based in some form
0:21:20 > 0:21:24of a language, it was a language sometimes that he created himself.
0:21:24 > 0:21:27It was an archaic old Middle English form of language.
0:21:27 > 0:21:31- Like Oakenshield or something. - Yeah.- Wonderfully...- Everything meant something.
0:21:31 > 0:21:37Everything actually had a reality, and it was almost like he did literally create a history.
0:21:37 > 0:21:41What I also admire about Tolkien is, like Joyce,
0:21:41 > 0:21:45his protagonists are reluctant heroes, grounded in a reality,
0:21:45 > 0:21:48no matter how fantastical the world they inhabit.
0:21:48 > 0:21:53- But for Tolkien, the real heroes, the true heroes, were the simple folk.- Yes.- The decent folk.
0:21:53 > 0:21:59There's, I think, you know, what Tolkien's saying ultimately is to be a real hero
0:21:59 > 0:22:04if you're good, if you're decent, if you are prepared to offer yourself
0:22:04 > 0:22:08up to protect your fellow friend. And you have to wonder how much
0:22:08 > 0:22:11of that came from his experiences in the trenches and World War I.
0:22:11 > 0:22:17'Jackson is also known as a schlock horror director, where plot is all,
0:22:17 > 0:22:23'and I wonder if, like me, he shares my love for the master of the genre, Stephen King.'
0:22:23 > 0:22:26I think he's one of the great storytellers of our time,
0:22:26 > 0:22:31of any time, really, partly because he is so obsessed with storytelling.
0:22:31 > 0:22:38That's right. The other thing about Stephen King which I think is fantastic is that I don't think
0:22:38 > 0:22:42he ever invents a character, every single character he writes about,
0:22:42 > 0:22:46- and these are good and bad, they're sane and they're insane...- Yeah.
0:22:46 > 0:22:50..are an element of him, that he's not afraid to,
0:22:50 > 0:22:56- you know, to dig into the dark depths of his...- Absolutely.- ..worst imagination
0:22:56 > 0:23:01and create a character out of that, so he literally mines what he considers
0:23:01 > 0:23:05the most evil part of himself and he creates and absolute psychopath.
0:23:05 > 0:23:08- Absolutely.- But you know it's coming from a real place.
0:23:08 > 0:23:10Whereas you get somebody who says,
0:23:10 > 0:23:14- "I'm gonna write the most evil psychopath in the world" and they make stuff up...- Yes.
0:23:14 > 0:23:16You read it and it might be horrifying,
0:23:16 > 0:23:21- but you're not connecting with it because you don't recognise any of it.- Yeah, I agree.
0:23:26 > 0:23:29Now, there's another of my favourite writers who,
0:23:29 > 0:23:34in his day was as popular as King, is as brilliant with words as Joyce
0:23:34 > 0:23:40and, like Tolkien and Homer, created fantastical imaginary worlds.
0:23:40 > 0:23:41Well, who could that be?
0:23:41 > 0:23:46You know, if I could time travel, this is where I would come to,
0:23:46 > 0:23:49410 years ago,
0:23:49 > 0:23:52and I would pop into one of the taverns that line the Thames here
0:23:52 > 0:23:58and I would listen to the language of the street and I would see if I could bump into Shakespeare,
0:23:58 > 0:24:02Marlowe, Turner, Kyd, Middleton, Webster, Johnson.
0:24:02 > 0:24:05This period, the 1590s to 1600, saw the greatest
0:24:05 > 0:24:08flowering of theatre that the world has ever seen.
0:24:08 > 0:24:11Poets and playwrights seemed to bubble from this town.
0:24:11 > 0:24:15Shakespeare alone had a vocabulary more than six times
0:24:15 > 0:24:18the average of 10,000 that you and I might have.
0:24:18 > 0:24:23He introduced 3,000 words into the English language.
0:24:24 > 0:24:30What distinguishes Shakespeare from all his colleagues, aside from his prodigious output,
0:24:30 > 0:24:33was his concentration on character,
0:24:33 > 0:24:37often at the expense of plot, which he was content to lift from others, Hamlet a case in point,
0:24:37 > 0:24:42which was a re-working of the Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd.
0:24:43 > 0:24:48Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt...
0:24:50 > 0:24:54thaw and resolve itself into a dew.
0:24:55 > 0:24:59Or that the everlasting had not fixed his cannon against self-slaughter.
0:24:59 > 0:25:00Oh, God, God...
0:25:02 > 0:25:06- It was a radical exploration of a single human soul.- Yeah.
0:25:06 > 0:25:10In a way that hadn't been done before either, but there hadn't
0:25:10 > 0:25:14been that type of sort of navel gazing, soul searching type of hero,
0:25:14 > 0:25:17- it was much more objective, as he called it...- Yeah.
0:25:17 > 0:25:22Whereas Hamlet does something which nobody had ever seen before, I don't think, to quite such an extent.
0:25:29 > 0:25:30Am I a coward?
0:25:34 > 0:25:38Who calls me villain? Breaks my pate across?
0:25:39 > 0:25:42Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
0:25:42 > 0:25:46Shakespeare's genius was to turn a pretty standard revenge tragedy,
0:25:46 > 0:25:49about the prince who has to avenge his father's murder,
0:25:49 > 0:25:53into a deeply thoughtful meditation about... everything.
0:25:53 > 0:25:59Pigeon liver'd and lack gall. To make oppression bitter, or ere this!
0:25:59 > 0:26:02I should have fatted all the region kites.
0:26:02 > 0:26:06Did you have a view of it, sort of growing up, when you started acting?
0:26:06 > 0:26:10- Did you always think, "One day"? - I suppose,
0:26:10 > 0:26:14- but only in that sense that it's seen as one of those Olympic events for an actor.- Yeah.
0:26:14 > 0:26:17- One of those...- I was about to say opening the bowling for England,
0:26:17 > 0:26:21- but that's rather inappropriate. - Quite, yes.- Keeping goal for Scotland.
0:26:21 > 0:26:23Keeping goal for Scotland, yes, it's one of those...
0:26:23 > 0:26:26- it's one of the sort of marker points, isn't it?- Yeah.
0:26:26 > 0:26:30Bloody, bawdy villain!
0:26:30 > 0:26:33Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
0:26:33 > 0:26:35O, vengeance!
0:26:35 > 0:26:38Everything is contained, particularly in Hamlet, isn't it?
0:26:38 > 0:26:41He's kind of the sex, life, death...
0:26:41 > 0:26:42Yeah.
0:26:42 > 0:26:49- Hope, revenge, despair...- Yes, and utterly contemporary.- Yes.- Which is sort of a magic trick,
0:26:49 > 0:26:55because it remains 400 years old and yet it seems to keep being reborn and rediscovered.
0:26:55 > 0:26:58I think Dorothy Parker said, "I go and see Hamlet every ten years
0:26:58 > 0:27:02"and I find Shakespeare's re-written it in my absence".
0:27:02 > 0:27:05That's absolutely it, and every time you see it
0:27:05 > 0:27:08every actor who does it and the thing about Hamlet, whenever you come to,
0:27:08 > 0:27:10and whoever comes to it, it doesn't resist.
0:27:10 > 0:27:13Because there's so much in it and so much scope in it,
0:27:13 > 0:27:17- everyone can throw something at it and reveal something new.- Yeah.
0:27:17 > 0:27:24And what Shakespeare then does is something no other revenge play dared to do.
0:27:24 > 0:27:26Ask the really big question,
0:27:26 > 0:27:30which has become the most famous line in the English language.
0:27:32 > 0:27:36To be or not to be? That is the question.
0:27:38 > 0:27:44I wondered how, you know, when you first sat in the rehearsal room for a read-through or whatever
0:27:44 > 0:27:47- and had to say "To be or not to be". - That is the cliche.
0:27:47 > 0:27:49- Yeah, quite.- Yes.
0:27:49 > 0:27:52Did you rush through it and think... Or...
0:27:52 > 0:27:58I think our director was savvy enough that we didn't sit down and do a read-through straight away,
0:27:58 > 0:28:02so we sort of circled round it and took the curse off it.
0:28:02 > 0:28:05But, yeah, I mean, so many lines are so well worn.
0:28:05 > 0:28:09- Cruel to be kind...- Yeah.- Method in his madness. All that sort of thing.
0:28:09 > 0:28:11- To the manor born. - They just keep coming...
0:28:11 > 0:28:14- Yeah. - And you think, "How do I begin?"
0:28:14 > 0:28:18And of course, you just begin by... not worrying about it is all you can, which,
0:28:18 > 0:28:20- it sounds terribly simple and isn't...- Yeah.
0:28:20 > 0:28:23There's sort of no way round it other than going,
0:28:23 > 0:28:28"This character happens to say these lines here and they're the first time they've ever been said."
0:28:28 > 0:28:32Exactly. So that's why I think we should trim some of the dead wood.
0:28:32 > 0:28:35Dead wood?
0:28:35 > 0:28:38You know, some of that stand-up stuff in the middle of the action.
0:28:38 > 0:28:43- You mean the soliloquies? - Yeah. And I think we both know which is the dodgy one.
0:28:45 > 0:28:47Oh? Oh? Which is the dodgy one?
0:28:47 > 0:28:52Um..."To be..." "nobler in the mind," "mortal coil", that one.
0:28:53 > 0:28:57It's boring, Bill. The crowd hates it.
0:28:57 > 0:28:59Yawnsville.
0:28:59 > 0:29:02Well that one happens to be my favourite, actually.
0:29:02 > 0:29:05I was in front of university students the other day.
0:29:05 > 0:29:06- Wonderful. lovely.- Yeah.
0:29:06 > 0:29:10And I said, "Let's take what is now most...
0:29:10 > 0:29:12- "you'll be bored as I say it, to be or not to be".- Oh, yes.
0:29:12 > 0:29:17- "You'll be bored, bored, you're bored shitless now as I say it, right?" - Yeah.
0:29:17 > 0:29:20And I took out a Magnum gun.
0:29:20 > 0:29:24- Yeah.- And I fired it at the ceiling and half the bloody ceiling fell down
0:29:24 > 0:29:29and I went, 'Click, click, click' to blow my head off, "To be...
0:29:31 > 0:29:35"..or not to be". They were, "Fucking hell!
0:29:35 > 0:29:37- "Ah..."- Yeah. - "This is what it's about".
0:29:37 > 0:29:39Yeah.
0:29:39 > 0:29:43And I put this Magnum, of course I got the plaster up there and it was a blank.
0:29:43 > 0:29:49- But my God, you got their attention. - Got their attention and so...- And that's what, and it is a speech,
0:29:49 > 0:29:53'To be or not to be' that, as you say, is so worn down and eroded by familiarity that in fact
0:29:53 > 0:29:58- it is about exactly that. It is, "Do I do this?".- Yes.- "Do I pull the trigger?".- That's right.
0:29:58 > 0:30:00How's it begin, that speech?
0:30:00 > 0:30:02To be.
0:30:02 > 0:30:04Come on, come on, Bill.
0:30:04 > 0:30:08"To be a victim of all life's earthly woes or not to be a coward
0:30:08 > 0:30:10"and take death by his proffered hand."
0:30:10 > 0:30:13There, now, I'm sure we can get that down.
0:30:16 > 0:30:19No, absolutely not. It's perfect.
0:30:19 > 0:30:25How about, 'To be a victim or not to be a coward'?
0:30:25 > 0:30:30It doesn't make sense, does it? To be a victim of what? To be a coward about what?
0:30:30 > 0:30:33OK, OK. Take out victim, take out coward.
0:30:33 > 0:30:35Just start, 'To be or not to be'.
0:30:37 > 0:30:41You can't say that, it's gibberish.
0:30:43 > 0:30:46But it's short, William, it's short. Listen, it flows...
0:30:46 > 0:30:50'To be or not to be? That is the question'. Da-da da-da da da da da da da da.
0:30:52 > 0:30:54No?
0:30:54 > 0:30:59You're damn right it's the question, you don't have any bloody idea what he's talking about.
0:30:59 > 0:31:01What is it about it?
0:31:01 > 0:31:07Is it simply because it is the question that a lot of human beings face, whether to end life?
0:31:07 > 0:31:10- It's such a simple question. - Yeah.
0:31:10 > 0:31:12So I was sort of thinking, "Well, what's all the fuss about?"
0:31:12 > 0:31:13- I mean, you know...- Yeah.
0:31:13 > 0:31:17I mean, do I kill myself or not? And...
0:31:17 > 0:31:20t didn't sort of hit home until well through the run,
0:31:20 > 0:31:26when I suddenly thought the calmness of that soliloquy,
0:31:26 > 0:31:29the self control of that soliloquy, which is unlike the other ones,
0:31:29 > 0:31:33is part of that concentration of energy and if you get it right,
0:31:33 > 0:31:37you can feel it, feel the energy of the theatre concentrating to a point...
0:31:37 > 0:31:39You can feel that they're hearing it for the first time.
0:31:39 > 0:31:42- Which would be the real achievement. - That's the prize.
0:31:42 > 0:31:47He doesn't know what to say. 'To be or not to be?' and, you see,
0:31:47 > 0:31:49he has to find it right at that moment.
0:31:49 > 0:31:51- Yeah.- That might be all he'd say...
0:31:51 > 0:31:54- Yes.- That's the question.
0:31:54 > 0:31:57If you pause too long, as I did once, and there was a person sitting,
0:31:57 > 0:32:02- a little old lady and her...- No! - ..father, her husband sitting right...- Did he prompt you?
0:32:02 > 0:32:05I came up right next to him in my pyjamas, tearful and crying.
0:32:05 > 0:32:06I said, "To be or not to be?"
0:32:06 > 0:32:09And then I thought for a moment, you know, what does that mean?
0:32:09 > 0:32:15- And she's turned to her husband and said, "That is the question!" - That's very touching.
0:32:15 > 0:32:17And he woke up, I think, and...
0:32:17 > 0:32:24- so everyone heard it and laughed a bit.- Yeah.- But I was able to say, "That IS the question".
0:32:24 > 0:32:29- Oh, right, you...sort of joined in her thing, yeah.- Yeah.- You affirmed her...- That IS the question.
0:32:29 > 0:32:34- That is, yeah.- You're right. It was a wonderful moment, actually.- Yes. - "That IS the question".
0:32:34 > 0:32:38Bloody constraint, for if you hide the crown,
0:32:38 > 0:32:42even in your hearts, there will he rake for it.
0:32:42 > 0:32:44Therefore in fierce...
0:32:44 > 0:32:47Of course, most of Shakespeare's language is not as simple as
0:32:47 > 0:32:51"To be or not to be" and many people are, alas, put off for good.
0:32:51 > 0:32:54..that, if requiring fail, he will compel.
0:32:54 > 0:33:00This is his claim, his threatening and my message.
0:33:00 > 0:33:03What is your feeling about Shakespearian language?
0:33:03 > 0:33:06Have you always found it a simple matter to engage with the verse?
0:33:06 > 0:33:11Sometimes it's difficult, it does take a bit of unpicking in terms of just meaning sometimes.
0:33:11 > 0:33:13Well, I get sometimes very upset, the way he's caned
0:33:13 > 0:33:18- and then people say, "Well, his language". The language?!- Yeah.
0:33:18 > 0:33:22He has invented our language! He is so ultra modern...
0:33:22 > 0:33:27- Yeah. - He's so accessible. There is a power in the verse, you know...
0:33:27 > 0:33:32"O for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven in invention, a kingdom for a stage,
0:33:32 > 0:33:37- "princes to act and monarchs to behold the swelling scene..." - The swelling scene.
0:33:37 > 0:33:43"Then should the..." It has bounce and power and so Shakespeare has a reality, for God's sake...
0:33:43 > 0:33:44But you know...
0:33:44 > 0:33:47Here's a line from Shakespeare... 'Light thickens'?
0:33:47 > 0:33:49Yeah.
0:33:49 > 0:33:50Light thickens!
0:33:50 > 0:33:53- Yeah. - Where did that come from?
0:33:53 > 0:34:00This is why I will defend Shakespeare, this is why they need to look at it and bring it in.
0:34:00 > 0:34:03We were very lucky cos presumably we had teachers at school who
0:34:03 > 0:34:06managed, well, I did, managed to inspire me,
0:34:06 > 0:34:10passionately inspire me about Shakespeare, and then it becomes...
0:34:12 > 0:34:14- completely compulsory. - Yeah.
0:34:14 > 0:34:18I'm afraid I am a little fearful that our education system makes it
0:34:18 > 0:34:23very frightening and off-putting to people who, like me, who couldn't speak till I was seven years old,
0:34:23 > 0:34:27you know, couldn't be understood by anyone, I spoke so fast.
0:34:27 > 0:34:29I speak fast still and maybe I can't be understood.
0:34:29 > 0:34:33I had to have elocution lessons to slow me down.
0:34:33 > 0:34:36- Me too. I had the same thing. Sent to rooms with two-way mirrors. - Yes.
0:34:36 > 0:34:39- Made to speak with other kids who couldn't speak. - That's right.
0:34:39 > 0:34:45And learning this stuff by heart and speaking it was the first time that I was able to express
0:34:45 > 0:34:49all kinds of things in front of people that I couldn't.
0:34:49 > 0:34:51- My mind just went too fast. - Yeah.
0:34:51 > 0:34:54I think in the final analysis, he is...
0:34:54 > 0:34:58- We've got our author.- Yeah.- The blue planet has its author...- Yes.
0:34:58 > 0:35:01- And it is Shakespeare, William Shakespeare.- Yes.
0:35:04 > 0:35:09I count myself exceedingly lucky to have been given English as my mother tongue.
0:35:09 > 0:35:14There's no doubt that Flaubert, Tolstoy, Goethe and any number of other writers
0:35:14 > 0:35:16are immense talents but, yes, Shakespeare
0:35:16 > 0:35:21is our planet's author and I am not talking jingoism here,
0:35:21 > 0:35:24he just covers all the bases.
0:35:24 > 0:35:26Over at the Comedie Francaise in Paris,
0:35:26 > 0:35:29they of course revere their literary giants...
0:35:29 > 0:35:32Racine, Moliere, Corneille, Marivaux...
0:35:32 > 0:35:37But do they also recognise Shakespeare as the master?
0:35:39 > 0:35:43Guillaume Gallienne is France's foremost classical actor
0:35:43 > 0:35:46and has played Shakespeare along with Moliere and the rest.
0:35:46 > 0:35:49What does he make of Hamlet's most famous soliloquy?
0:35:49 > 0:35:53'To be or not to be'. How does that sound in French? How does that go?
0:35:53 > 0:35:56Etre, ou ne pas etre, la est le la question.
0:35:56 > 0:35:58That's very good.
0:35:58 > 0:36:00But there's different theories.
0:36:00 > 0:36:04Some theorists believes that it's not 'To be or not to be, that is the question'.
0:36:04 > 0:36:10but believe it's 'To be or not? To be, that is the question'.
0:36:10 > 0:36:13Whoa! This is an example of what you're saying,
0:36:13 > 0:36:16about the reinterpretation that French allows that play.
0:36:16 > 0:36:23Well, it still engloves what's suggested in the first version, but it brings it somewhere else also.
0:36:23 > 0:36:27Do you think there's a freedom that you can have if it's in another language?
0:36:27 > 0:36:31You can translate it and it may not have the richness of the original English,
0:36:31 > 0:36:36but that you can just, you know, let go of having to pronounce every syllable and give it a...
0:36:36 > 0:36:38- I'm not so sure.- No.
0:36:38 > 0:36:41- I still prefer Shakespeare in English.- You do? Yeah.
0:36:41 > 0:36:47I learn a lot from how... When you know how to act Shakespeare, I think you can act anything.
0:36:47 > 0:36:50If I were to put to you an absurd question,
0:36:50 > 0:36:52that if either Moliere or Shakespeare had to be
0:36:52 > 0:36:56expunged from the cultural pantheon, hence they no longer existed...
0:36:56 > 0:37:00- I would choose... I would keep Shakespeare, by far.- Oh, really?
0:37:00 > 0:37:01- Yeah.- Yeah. Yeah.
0:37:01 > 0:37:03It's richer, for me.
0:37:03 > 0:37:07Shakespeare, you can reckon yourself in something human, in...
0:37:07 > 0:37:14a quality or defect, but it's very... it's higher, it goes higher.
0:37:14 > 0:37:20- It goes far away, for me.- Yeah. - It makes me travel much more.- Yeah. - Yeah.
0:37:28 > 0:37:30Translation is a tricky area.
0:37:30 > 0:37:34Can you even begin to grasp the genius of Shakespeare in
0:37:34 > 0:37:40another language, especially one as Different, say, as Mandarin Chinese?
0:37:40 > 0:37:42Entrepreneur and aesthete Sir David Tang
0:37:42 > 0:37:47and his old school chum, Johnson Chang, have a view.
0:37:48 > 0:37:56SOLILOQUY IN CHINESE
0:37:56 > 0:38:01So, "Shall we seek life or should we seek death? This is the main issue."
0:38:01 > 0:38:07- That's...- It's... - So that rather gives the game away.
0:38:07 > 0:38:12- As if Hamlet comes on stage and says, "Shall I commit suicide?" - It gives the game away.
0:38:12 > 0:38:16Yeah, whereas 'To be or not to be' is a sort of gentle, easing into the whole sort of meditation
0:38:16 > 0:38:17that he then goes through.
0:38:17 > 0:38:23The trouble is that the words 'to be' does not exist in China.
0:38:23 > 0:38:28Anybody translating 'To be or not to be' must use the same verb
0:38:28 > 0:38:30- and just put a not in front of it... - Mmm.
0:38:30 > 0:38:33but we have never seen a translation that does that.
0:38:33 > 0:38:35Isn't that interesting? Yeah.
0:38:35 > 0:38:39The Chinese just... gives the game away.
0:38:39 > 0:38:44"Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." Not easy.
0:38:44 > 0:38:48I can only do, 'O, for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.'
0:38:48 > 0:38:52- No, but we meant in Chinese. - Oh, in Chinese.
0:38:52 > 0:38:54MOCK CHINESE ACCENT
0:38:54 > 0:38:58You're not supposed to mock your own language. That's outrageous.
0:38:58 > 0:39:02MOCK CHINESE ACCENT
0:39:02 > 0:39:05That's very good. That's very funny.
0:39:07 > 0:39:11What I love about Sir David Tang is that he's funny
0:39:11 > 0:39:14and utterly unafraid to say whatever he likes.
0:39:14 > 0:39:19He reminds me, in some ways, of those delectable eccentric characters in PG Wodehouse.
0:39:19 > 0:39:23Now, Wodehouse is one of my all-time favourite authors and,
0:39:23 > 0:39:28while many might consider him about as far from Hamlet or James Joyce as you could get,
0:39:28 > 0:39:30I would disagree. I love them equally.
0:39:30 > 0:39:34And that's the beauty of great writing - it comes in so many guises.
0:39:34 > 0:39:38Suppose that you were strolling through the illimitable jungle
0:39:38 > 0:39:41and you happen to meet a tiger cub...
0:39:41 > 0:39:44The contingency is a remote one, Sir.
0:39:44 > 0:39:47- Never mind. Let us suppose it. - Very good, Sir.
0:39:47 > 0:39:50Let us now suppose that you biffed that tiger cub.
0:39:50 > 0:39:52And let us further suppose
0:39:52 > 0:39:54that word reached its mother that you'd done so.
0:39:54 > 0:39:58Now, what would you expect the attitude of that mother to be?
0:39:58 > 0:40:02In the circumstances, I should anticipate a certain show of disapprobation, Sir.
0:40:02 > 0:40:04Yes, very good, Jeeves. Very well put.
0:40:07 > 0:40:12'One of the best biographies of PG Wodehouse ever written is by Robert McCrum,
0:40:12 > 0:40:14'so it gave me great pleasure to catch up with him
0:40:14 > 0:40:18'and have a conversation about our beloved author.'
0:40:18 > 0:40:22When people hear the word "Wodehouse", they think the voice of the upper-class twit
0:40:22 > 0:40:24and that it's a world of silly asses and country houses.
0:40:24 > 0:40:29And they might be put off by that because they're not aware the great secret of Wodehouse
0:40:29 > 0:40:33is not the characters and the plots, wonderful as they are, but the language.
0:40:33 > 0:40:37Yeah, he's a virtuoso of language and he revels in it.
0:40:37 > 0:40:41But it's drawn on Old English, Latin and Greek,
0:40:41 > 0:40:45Middle English, Jane Austen, Dickens, Tennyson.
0:40:45 > 0:40:47These are all his subjects.
0:40:47 > 0:40:49And he loves American slang,
0:40:49 > 0:40:51poetry of everyday speech, and he just loves...
0:40:51 > 0:40:54He's got some great... I want to read you one bit, if I may.
0:40:54 > 0:40:58This is one of the most brilliant opening lines of any Wodehouse.
0:40:58 > 0:41:00This is The Luck of the Bodkins and he goes,
0:41:00 > 0:41:05"Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes
0:41:05 > 0:41:08"there had crept a look of furtive shame -
0:41:08 > 0:41:14"the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French."
0:41:14 > 0:41:16That's funny. That's so good.
0:41:16 > 0:41:17And another character says
0:41:17 > 0:41:22he doesn't try and speak French properly because if he does, it gives him a nosebleed.
0:41:22 > 0:41:23- That's very good.- Yes.
0:41:23 > 0:41:27That sentence could only have been written by someone who knew the classics.
0:41:27 > 0:41:30But at the same time as this wonderful language,
0:41:30 > 0:41:33he omits two of the great themes of literature.
0:41:33 > 0:41:36There's no sex and there's no death.
0:41:36 > 0:41:40The only use for a bed in Wodehouse is for someone to hide something under.
0:41:40 > 0:41:43- Or to put a hot water bottle in. - That's right, to booby trap them
0:41:43 > 0:41:47by putting a darning needle at the end of a broom handle.
0:41:47 > 0:41:49He's a bit like... He's a kind of Zelig-like character -
0:41:49 > 0:41:52- he passes through this 20th century...- Yes.- This incredible...
0:41:52 > 0:41:571900 to 1945's one of the great half-centuries in terms of drama...
0:41:57 > 0:41:59- Yeah.- ..of any historical period.
0:41:59 > 0:42:02- He passes through it...- Yes. - ..untouched. He never grows up.
0:42:02 > 0:42:04Care for a saunter, Angela, old girl?
0:42:04 > 0:42:07- Love to, Bertie, darling.- Good-oh.
0:42:07 > 0:42:12Ssh! Tom's listening to the news.
0:42:14 > 0:42:17I have much to say that's not for the public ear.
0:42:17 > 0:42:19CHINA SMASHES
0:42:20 > 0:42:26It's as if every sentence you read of his, he's looked at it and thought,
0:42:26 > 0:42:31"That's just a man crossing the room and sitting down in a chair - there must be another way."
0:42:31 > 0:42:35So he doesn't put the £5 note into his pocket, he "trousers" it.
0:42:35 > 0:42:38- Mm-hm.- So "to trouser" becomes a verb, which is fantastic.
0:42:38 > 0:42:41Words for "drunk" alone - here's a list of them...
0:42:41 > 0:42:43Awash, boiled, fried,
0:42:43 > 0:42:47lathered, illuminated, oiled,
0:42:47 > 0:42:49ossified, pie-eyed, polluted,
0:42:49 > 0:42:53primed, scrooched, stinko,
0:42:53 > 0:42:58squiffy, tanked and woozled.
0:42:58 > 0:43:00- That's fantastic.- All made up.- Yeah.
0:43:00 > 0:43:03So there it is.
0:43:03 > 0:43:08My only daughter, for whom I had dreamed of a wonderful golden future,
0:43:08 > 0:43:12is going to marry an inebriated newt fancier.
0:43:12 > 0:43:14Well, aunt of my heart, yes, I can't but agree
0:43:14 > 0:43:17that things are not too "oh, ja, come spiv" at the moment.
0:43:17 > 0:43:20Apparently, Wodehouse is most popular with...
0:43:20 > 0:43:24With, er, prisoners and people in hospitals and, actually,
0:43:24 > 0:43:27- if you think about it, I can't think of a greater compliment for a writer.- No.
0:43:27 > 0:43:30I mean, if you can make prisoners and the ill happy,
0:43:30 > 0:43:34then you've spoken to people who are low and you've warmed them...
0:43:34 > 0:43:36- Mm.- ..just by language.
0:43:36 > 0:43:40The number of people who I've encountered, having written this biography,
0:43:40 > 0:43:43- who tell me that when they're feeling down... - Yes.- ..they turn to Wodehose.
0:43:43 > 0:43:47- I don't know whether this works for you.- Absolutely does, yeah.
0:43:47 > 0:43:52They'll read a favourite or a new Wodehouse - and there are plenty of those - to cheer themselves up.
0:43:52 > 0:43:56George Orwell was a contemporary of PG Wodehouse.
0:43:56 > 0:44:00He was educated at Eton, but he rejected his caste and his class.
0:44:00 > 0:44:04Even his rather unprepossessing name of Eric Blair was changed.
0:44:04 > 0:44:06Politics were his theme.
0:44:06 > 0:44:10Animal Farm and 1984 have rightly become classics,
0:44:10 > 0:44:12warning us of the dangers of totalitarianism.
0:44:12 > 0:44:17Wodehouse and Orwell may seem like unlikely literary bedfellows,
0:44:17 > 0:44:22but they share a concern for using the English language accurately and precisely.
0:44:22 > 0:44:26But if Wodehouse never embraces change, Orwell is all about change -
0:44:26 > 0:44:31and his dystopian 1984 world sees a vision of the future
0:44:31 > 0:44:33that reduces English to a bare minimum,
0:44:33 > 0:44:37with the aim of reducing emotions and thought to the same.
0:44:37 > 0:44:40So with Newspeak, if you can't say it,
0:44:40 > 0:44:42then you can't think it or feel it.
0:44:42 > 0:44:45It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.
0:44:47 > 0:44:51You won't have seen the Dictionary 10th Edition yet, Smith.
0:44:51 > 0:44:53It's that thick.
0:44:53 > 0:44:55The 11th Edition will be that thick.
0:44:55 > 0:44:58APPLAUSE
0:44:58 > 0:45:01'Praise be to our leader and the party workers.'
0:45:01 > 0:45:05Newspeak was what Orwell coined as a title
0:45:05 > 0:45:10for this particular political language in a tyranny that he imagined as being in 1984.
0:45:10 > 0:45:11I mean, as ever,
0:45:11 > 0:45:15Orwell has written better about English than anyone else.
0:45:15 > 0:45:18And that particular invention is fantastic,
0:45:18 > 0:45:21cos it's very, very simple, all of Newspeak.
0:45:21 > 0:45:24You know, like Doublethink - they're all very simple sets of words,
0:45:24 > 0:45:29but the whole point of all of them is to be euphemistic
0:45:29 > 0:45:31and to prevent you thinking about the truth.
0:45:31 > 0:45:34And becomes really nasty when it's in military situations,
0:45:34 > 0:45:37so you have "collateral damage", which means "dead civilians",
0:45:37 > 0:45:41- and you actually don't really want to think about it. "Rendition."- Yes.
0:45:41 > 0:45:44"Someone's been rendered somewhere." Someone's been taken on a plane
0:45:44 > 0:45:47- to somewhere where you can torture them.- Yes, yes.
0:45:47 > 0:45:52You know, all of these words are deliberately vague and bland
0:45:52 > 0:45:56to stop you thinking, "That's really not what we should be doing."
0:45:59 > 0:46:03Ian Hislop, editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye,
0:46:03 > 0:46:06shares Orwell's love of clarity with language
0:46:06 > 0:46:11and has devoted columns to exposing humbug and the inglorious use of language.
0:46:11 > 0:46:14So, these columns tend to start
0:46:14 > 0:46:20because people are irritated with particular words or a particular sort of jargon.
0:46:20 > 0:46:21And the management speak -
0:46:21 > 0:46:25we originally called it Birtspeak, after John Birt,
0:46:25 > 0:46:31because the place where this management drivel reaches its apogee is the BBC.
0:46:31 > 0:46:34I mean, well away from the cameras and the creative process,
0:46:34 > 0:46:38there are decks and decks of people who are telling each other
0:46:38 > 0:46:42about "traction" and "rolling out 360-degree platforms"
0:46:42 > 0:46:45and this is taking up a lot of their time.
0:46:45 > 0:46:50This, I always thought, was the classic Birtspeak. A lot of these...
0:46:50 > 0:46:52A lot of the jargon's focused in job adverts,
0:46:52 > 0:46:55but you have to guess this one.
0:46:55 > 0:46:58"Procurement is targeted with delivering savings
0:46:58 > 0:47:01"on generic goods and services, pan-BBC,
0:47:01 > 0:47:05"through a competitive category-management initiative and driving compliance.
0:47:05 > 0:47:08"The Category Manager - Logistics, Ground Transport
0:47:08 > 0:47:13"is responsible to the Head of Production and Logistics and Senior Category Managee - Logistics."
0:47:13 > 0:47:16- Holy...- And guess what that is a job for.
0:47:16 > 0:47:20I know the word "logistics" means "haulage" - is it to do with transport? Lorries?
0:47:20 > 0:47:24- No, it's booking taxis. - HE CHUCKLES
0:47:24 > 0:47:26- That's it.- Taxis...
0:47:26 > 0:47:28Taxis that another manager has already decided
0:47:28 > 0:47:32BBC executives shall never, ever use, as it might get into the Daily Mail.
0:47:32 > 0:47:34That is astonishing!
0:47:34 > 0:47:38But we had a classic about three or four years ago of...
0:47:38 > 0:47:42- We called it "neologisms", but it was, everything was "the new" something else.- Yes.
0:47:42 > 0:47:46- Everything was the new black for a time, wasn't it? - Everything was the new black.
0:47:46 > 0:47:48"Botox is the new heroin.
0:47:48 > 0:47:50"Opera's the new cocaine.
0:47:50 > 0:47:53"Spelling's the new punctuation.
0:47:53 > 0:47:56"Checking your inbox is the new going out."
0:47:56 > 0:47:58Oh, here's a good one...
0:47:58 > 0:48:02"At the risk of going into Private Eye, I think white pepper is the new black pepper,"
0:48:02 > 0:48:06says Stephen Fry in Sainsbury's Magazine.
0:48:06 > 0:48:10I did know what I was doing but it was absurd, of course.
0:48:10 > 0:48:12So that's the point - all these...
0:48:12 > 0:48:16- Not things you've made up just to be amusing.- No.- They are genuine.
0:48:16 > 0:48:19No, and that is the great joy of, er, the real quote,
0:48:19 > 0:48:24is they're always funnier than anything you could make up.
0:48:24 > 0:48:27Alexander Pope, I think, he wrote this marvellous essay on criticism.
0:48:27 > 0:48:30If you want to talk about how well language can be used...
0:48:30 > 0:48:33He said, "True wit is nature to advantage dress'd
0:48:33 > 0:48:37"what oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd."
0:48:37 > 0:48:40- Gorgeous.- And that's it. You want someone to tell you something.
0:48:40 > 0:48:45- You think, "Yes, that must be right. I've thought of that but I've never said it that well."- Yeah.
0:48:51 > 0:48:54And that, in a nutshell, is what it's all about.
0:48:54 > 0:48:56It's why we turn to the poets
0:48:56 > 0:49:01in times of love, death, joy and grief -
0:49:01 > 0:49:05they just do it better than anyone else.
0:49:05 > 0:49:08"He was my North, my South, my East, my West,
0:49:08 > 0:49:11"My working week, my Sunday best,
0:49:11 > 0:49:16"My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
0:49:16 > 0:49:20"I thought that love could last for ever:
0:49:20 > 0:49:22"But I was wrong.
0:49:23 > 0:49:27"The stars are not needed now: Put them out, every one;
0:49:27 > 0:49:31"Pack up the moon, dismantle the sun;
0:49:31 > 0:49:35"Pour away the ocean, sweep up the woods.
0:49:35 > 0:49:40"For nothing now can ever come to any good."
0:49:45 > 0:49:49That poem was by WH Auden, but you may well know it better
0:49:49 > 0:49:51from the film Four Weddings And A Funeral,
0:49:51 > 0:49:56where it was magnificently used in the funeral of the title.
0:49:56 > 0:50:01It's extraordinary how something can have such impact,
0:50:01 > 0:50:05be so succinct and have such emotional truth behind it.
0:50:05 > 0:50:08Maybe it's something to do with the very nature of a poem.
0:50:08 > 0:50:12As Joyce would say, "The right words in the right order."
0:50:22 > 0:50:26'Richard Curtis - old friend, creator of Blackadder
0:50:26 > 0:50:29'and, of course, writer of the most successful rom-coms of our generation,
0:50:29 > 0:50:36'from Notting Hill, Love Actually and, of course, Four Weddings and that now-famous Funeral.'
0:50:36 > 0:50:39I mean, tragically in my life, in every film I've ever done,
0:50:39 > 0:50:43the actual single best moment in the film has nothing to do with...
0:50:43 > 0:50:46nothing to do with me at all - it's always the case.
0:50:46 > 0:50:50Why did you choose that poem? And secondly, were you astonished by that response?
0:50:50 > 0:50:53Yeah, I mean, I chose the poem because I didn't feel up to the job...
0:50:53 > 0:50:56- Right, I see. - ..of writing a moving funeral,
0:50:56 > 0:50:59so I thought I'd better leave it to a better man.
0:50:59 > 0:51:02But also, I mean, the fact that I knew it was, in a funny way,
0:51:02 > 0:51:05because I'd always been told I should study Auden and Lovell
0:51:05 > 0:51:08- and then I didn't understand most of his poems.- Right.
0:51:08 > 0:51:11I remember being very thrilled when I came across that one.
0:51:11 > 0:51:14I think it's no coincidence that it's in fact, as you say,
0:51:14 > 0:51:17- called Funeral Blues and is in fact a lyric...- Yes.
0:51:17 > 0:51:20- Was meant to be sung.- Right. - And that sort of is...
0:51:20 > 0:51:27probably, for me, quite symptomatic of the fact that I've got a great passion about lyrics -
0:51:27 > 0:51:29in a way, more than poems.
0:51:29 > 0:51:32It's become the thing for funerals, hasn't it,
0:51:32 > 0:51:35for music to be chosen, songs to be chosen?
0:51:35 > 0:51:39There are ones that are... They're cliches but one shouldn't mock them -
0:51:39 > 0:51:42you know, I Did It My Way and Je Ne Regrette Rien.
0:51:42 > 0:51:45Angels, I believe, is number one at funerals these days.
0:51:45 > 0:51:47They do have top-ten lists, don't they?
0:51:47 > 0:51:53I heard someone had Countdown playing when his coffin went through the curtains.
0:51:53 > 0:51:56"Da-dum, da-dum-dum, boom." It's another way of doing it.
0:51:56 > 0:51:59But still people read poems - there are a few -
0:51:59 > 0:52:03but you feel that actually lyrics have more...
0:52:03 > 0:52:07I won't say "more power", but that they do the job better,
0:52:07 > 0:52:11- they can express emotion everybody can understand? Is that...- I don't know.
0:52:11 > 0:52:15The thing is about poems, people don't have as passionate access to them now as they did.
0:52:15 > 0:52:18People were apparently outraged by the work of Byron
0:52:18 > 0:52:21- and people knew about it, and they were more famous...- Yes. Yes.
0:52:21 > 0:52:26It's hard for a poem to break through. Perhaps what happened on the Four Weddings one was,
0:52:26 > 0:52:31it was a rare example of a poem being put out to enough people...
0:52:31 > 0:52:36- Yes.- ..to get a passionate reaction and, of course, poems are often perfect, word for word.
0:52:36 > 0:52:41Pop lyrics are often not perfect, but they are known by so many people
0:52:41 > 0:52:45and they've got the passion and perfection of the music behind them.
0:52:45 > 0:52:47You know, there also are very...
0:52:47 > 0:52:50There are geniuses working in the world of pop lyrics now.
0:52:50 > 0:52:53Paul Simon has written some very extraordinary things.
0:52:53 > 0:52:57The Boxer is very extraordinary. Every day I think of that line...
0:52:57 > 0:53:00"A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
0:53:00 > 0:53:03As you go through life and realise people are only hearing a bit of what you say,
0:53:03 > 0:53:07because it's the bit that suits them.
0:53:07 > 0:53:09It's part of the fabric of your life now.
0:53:09 > 0:53:13Now, if you pick a poem, it may be the first time someone's heard it,
0:53:13 > 0:53:15they've got to piece it together...
0:53:15 > 0:53:19- Yes.- Whereas if you have... There's a song by Coldplay called Fix You,
0:53:19 > 0:53:22- and you can't do much better than... - Yeah, right.
0:53:22 > 0:53:26.."I will try to fix you," after a terrible sorrow has occurred.
0:53:26 > 0:53:28It's got a tremendous potency
0:53:28 > 0:53:33and the fact that the lyrics may not be as well crafted,
0:53:33 > 0:53:38the compensation of the beauty of the tune is enough to turn it back into something deeper.
0:53:38 > 0:53:42I suppose there's the feeling that your whole generation heard that song together,
0:53:42 > 0:53:44so it has a sort of binding effect.
0:53:44 > 0:53:48- It connects you all.- Yeah, you know, if you stood in a stadium...
0:53:48 > 0:53:53- Yeah.- ..with 45,000 other people who know those words...- Yes.
0:53:53 > 0:53:59..they become... It is, it's a Nuremberg Rally of pop.
0:54:36 > 0:54:39CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
0:54:43 > 0:54:48Well, there's no doubting the intensity of that collective experience,
0:54:48 > 0:54:52but can Coldplay or the rapper or band of the moment
0:54:52 > 0:54:56really stand alongside the pantheon of great poets?
0:54:58 > 0:55:02Sir Christopher Ricks is one of the most eminent literary critics of his generation.
0:55:02 > 0:55:06He's written on everything from Keats, Tennyson, Milton and TS Eliot,
0:55:06 > 0:55:10but he doesn't shy away from popular culture.
0:55:10 > 0:55:13His latest opus has been on one of his all-time favourites.
0:55:13 > 0:55:15# Thinking about the government
0:55:15 > 0:55:18# The man in the trench coat Badge out, laid off
0:55:18 > 0:55:21# Says he's got a bad cough Wants to get it paid off... #
0:55:21 > 0:55:24You've, you know, written a full-length work on Dylan,
0:55:24 > 0:55:30which I think you would call poetry, although, of course, it is written often and mostly for singing.
0:55:30 > 0:55:34Dylan is, I think, a great artist.
0:55:34 > 0:55:35I think that he's, er...
0:55:35 > 0:55:39simply astonishingly imaginative with words.
0:55:39 > 0:55:42# Darkness at the break of noon
0:55:42 > 0:55:44# Shadows even the silver spoon
0:55:44 > 0:55:46# The hand-made blade The child's balloon
0:55:46 > 0:55:48# Eclipses both the sun and moon
0:55:48 > 0:55:50# To understand, you know too soon
0:55:50 > 0:55:51# There is no sense in trying... #
0:55:51 > 0:55:55I think again and again, Dylan is very good when you could imagine
0:55:55 > 0:55:59an unimaginative creative-writing school telling him he'd got it wrong.
0:55:59 > 0:56:02# So don't fear
0:56:02 > 0:56:04# If you hear
0:56:04 > 0:56:08# A foreign sound to your ear
0:56:09 > 0:56:12# It's all right, Ma
0:56:12 > 0:56:13# I'm only sighing... #
0:56:15 > 0:56:21When you sing, "Don't fear if you hear a foreign sound to your ear,"
0:56:21 > 0:56:26you can imagine somebody saying, "No, no, it's either a sound that's foreign to your ear
0:56:26 > 0:56:29"or you hear a foreign sound in your ear.
0:56:29 > 0:56:34"You don't hear a foreign sound TO your ear". Oh, yes, you do.
0:56:34 > 0:56:37# As some warn victory, some downfall
0:56:37 > 0:56:39# Private reasons, great or small
0:56:39 > 0:56:41# Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
0:56:41 > 0:56:43# To make all that should be killed to crawl
0:56:43 > 0:56:47# While others say, "Don't hate nothing at all except hatred"... #
0:56:49 > 0:56:51This is wonderfully well put.
0:56:51 > 0:56:54It couldn't be better put.
0:56:54 > 0:56:57In a sense, that's almost the definition of poetry that you need,
0:56:57 > 0:57:01- and none other. "This is so well put."- Yeah.
0:57:01 > 0:57:04- It sounds almost trite.- Yeah.
0:57:04 > 0:57:07And yet that actually says so much.
0:57:11 > 0:57:14So that's it. There really are no rules.
0:57:14 > 0:57:18There is no right and wrong as to what makes good or bad writing,
0:57:18 > 0:57:22and all I can urge you to do is to read and read some more,
0:57:22 > 0:57:25for therein dwells the story of us all.
0:57:26 > 0:57:32Much of our extraordinary ability with, and delight in, language has ended up here,
0:57:32 > 0:57:36on the page, recorded forever, for us and for our ancestors.
0:57:38 > 0:57:42It has the power to move us, console us and inspire us.
0:57:42 > 0:57:46Without doubt, it is our species' supreme achievement.
0:57:46 > 0:57:48It is our glory.
0:57:53 > 0:57:54# So don't fear
0:57:55 > 0:57:57# If you hear
0:57:57 > 0:58:01# A foreign sound to your ear
0:58:02 > 0:58:04# It's all right, Ma
0:58:05 > 0:58:07# I'm only sighing
0:58:23 > 0:58:26# As some warn victory, some downfall
0:58:26 > 0:58:28# Private reasons, great or small
0:58:28 > 0:58:30# Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
0:58:30 > 0:58:32# To make all that should be killed to crawl
0:58:32 > 0:58:35# While others say, "Don't hate nothing at all except hatred." #
0:58:36 > 0:58:39Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:39 > 0:58:42E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk