Something Understood Homesickness Radio 4
Word of Mouth: Hilary Mantel Radio 4
George Orwell’s evocation of homesickness after he is sent to boarding school at the age of eight is rank with sour cabbage and faecal smells wafting down cold corridors.
Something Understood, presented by Mark Tully, takes a theme and turns it into a meditation in music and song. The theme is homesickness.
Orwell’s lament turns to poet John Clare’s longing for home in another village.
He may be just up the road but it is not the same.
Is it that what we miss is our childhood and that world that seems to have ebbed away and gone forever?
The highlight of this Something Understood is poet Robert Burns’ lament “My heart is in the Highlands”.
It’s a song with a peculiar, piercing beauty. It is a soul’s yearning for home.
On the subject of laments, the death of writer Hilary Mantel at the age of 70 shocked many people.
The writer won the Booker Prize twice for her historical trilogy: Wolf Hall; Bring up the Bodies; The Mirror and the Light - based on the life of Thomas Cromwell.
The books were televised with actor Mark Rylance taking on the role of Cromwell in a spellbinding series.
In tributes to the writer, Radio 4 ran an interview with Michael Rosen in which she chatted in depth about her life.
She had a very high pitched, instantly recognisable voice.
She talked about the influence of Catholicism on her writing.
Catholics didn’t read the Bible in those days, she said, but it was the Mass in Latin had a huge impact.
The old prayers took root.
She quoted: “Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, Hail our life, our sweetness and our hope…”
“It’s not your everyday chit chat and it’s not a big jump from that to the world of Wolf Hall,” she explained.
As a child she read without discrimination - from Blyton to the Brontes.
She couldn’t wait to get an adult library ticket at the age of 14.
Her first ‘adult’ book was Brideshead Revisited.
“It felt like eating a whole box of chocolates at once.
“I loved the language and at the same time I knew it was preposterous.”
Listen back and you can hear her reading from her work and explaining how she uses language – it’s like exquisite embroidery.
