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There was no more quintessentially English writer than Agatha Christie. Through her sensational murder mysteries she created a literary universe that captured our national spirit like no-one before or since. The magical worlds where she set her stories are in fact drawn from real places. Agatha Christie’s England, Channel 5 2021
Born 1890 in the Devon town of Torquay. The youngest to three children she lived a charmed life thanks to her American father’s large inheritance. ibid.
She introduced the world to Miss Marple when she published The Murder at the Vicarage. ibid.
In 1920 Agatha published her debut novel: The Mysterious Affair at Styles. The lead character was the now iconic Belgium detective Hercules Poirot. ibid.
‘Agatha absolutely abhorred the loss of empire, the changing attitudes to British dominance over the world. This big change in social values, the class system.’ ibid. J C Bernthal, Agatha Christie scholar
Arguably the biggest writer of the Twentieth Century. ibid.
I hate these academics that get praise, and they’re shallow. It’s all smug and bullshit. [Ian] McEwan and [Martin] Amis and all them. Middle-class mafia … They can buy their way to a lifelong competitive advantage over the uneducated and poor. This middle-class business, it’s the only place in the world where it’s really strong because it comes right down from the Queen. It’s a nepotistic way British society is run. They don’t draw from the whole gene pool, like America. That’s why you get good writers in America. There’s never been any great writers here in England, not in the last century. Look at Kingsley Amis. You can’t believe in the characters he writes about. And the experiences he attributes to them. And yet they made him a Sir. They’re disgusting people really. It can be treacherous, the publishing world. John Healy, interview May 2012
The Cuirt Festival is renowned for risk, but do the daredevils of Galway know what it means to invite John Healy, the author of The Grass Arena? Barbaric Genius, Observer 9th April 2007, Sky Arts 2012
I had a very violent childhood. ibid. John
It’s a mental opiate – chess. ibid.
‘There are no tomorrows. Tomorrow can’t be relied upon to come. Each day you have to prove yourself anew – stealing, fighting, begging and drinking.’ ibid. John Healy’s The Grass Arena
In 2008 The Grass Arena was brought back into print by Penguin Books. ibid.
During his chess career John won ten international chess tournaments. ibid.
The Grass Arena was published in 1988 by Faber & Faber to immediate acclaim. ibid.
The Grass Arena was to remain out of print and unobtainable for fifteen years. ibid.
John Healy’s first book in twenty years Coffee House Chess Tactics was published in August 2010 by a Dutch publisher. The Metal Mountain and The Glass Cage remain unpublished. ibid.
I never knew what a tyrant was, or how I’d become one. The Grass Arena 1991 ***** starring Peter Postlethwaite & Mark Rylance & Lynsey Baxter & Marian McLoughlin & Andrew Dicks & Billy Boyle & Nick Dawney & Simon Napper & John Garrett & Brian Hall & Gerard Horan et al, director Gillies MacKinnon
What’s it gonna be, Johnny, drinking or boxing? Stop drinking, or you won’t get to box as a pro. ibid. bloke after fight
Been fighting. Naah, not out there – in the ring, proper. It don’t half take it out of you, throwing punches, ducking ’em, even when you’re winning. ibid. John to woman in café
Same faces but they’re all sober. ibid. bloke in Nick
This won’t hurt a bit; it’ll stop you wanting a drink. ibid. nurse
Listen, if I told you about a game … it’s more like a battle, an old-day warfare – it’s called chess. ibid. bloke in nick
When you’re in the parks, mum, you’ve got to live their way or die. ibid. John
Most of the inhabitants of the grass arena have since died. John Healy is now an acclaimed author. ibid.
But for brilliant writer J G Ballard, this suburban sprawl is as provocative in its way as Tahiti was for Gauguin or Dublin for James Joyce. This, believe it or not, is a land of dreams. Profile: J G Ballard, BBC 2003
‘Disquieting diorama of pain and mutilation. Strange sexual wounds, imaginary Vietnam atrocities …’ ibid. Atrocity Exhibition
In his next novel Crash, Ballard followed this route to a shocking destination. A work which contrived the disturbing pile-up between sexual arousal and crumpled bodywork. ibid.
‘Throwing a literary bomb into a rather smug you know cafeteria.’ ibid. Ballard
There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. George Washington
The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic. Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry. Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy. Gustave Flaubert
The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Pat Conroy
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1955
You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. ibid.
All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter. Vladimir Nabokov
I loved it. Especially the stories. This Bible was originally published in 1611. It aimed to take the Protestant faith to the English speaking world and it did. Hundreds of millions of copies have been printed over the last four hundred years. But there were radical unexpected consequences. You may think our modern world is founded on secular ideals. But I think that the King James’ version not only influenced the English language and literature more than any other book, it was also the seed-bed of Western democracy. Melvyn Bragg, The King James Bible: The Book that Charged the World, BBC 2011
One of the epic American novels of the twentieth century, The Grapes of Wrath. Melvyn Bragg, John Steinbeck: Voice of America, BBC 2013
His range was vast and his output prolific. ibid.
In The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck describes the natural disaster which befell the farmers as a catastrophe of Biblical proportions. ibid.
Of Mice and Men which follows the fortunes of two itinerant fruit tramps, Lennie and George ... ibid.