It's World Book Day! And LGBTQ+ History Month!! And International Women's Day (on Sunday)!!! To quote Lorelei Lee in Gentleman Prefer Blondes, 'things keep on happening all the time'. We can't keep up.
We've got a couple of recommendations for LGBTQ+ History month in a moment, but first, a reminder to check out the Kayton Library's celebration of reading for World Book Day (and International Year of Reading). You can't have missed the magnificent Bookflix posters all around the school, blazoned with reading suggestions from teachers, prefects, Polecon, the Boat Club. If you want something a bit more targeted, try the librarians' 'Round the World in 80 Days' challenge. With just under 80 days left in the school year, can you read a book from every continent? You can pick up a booklet with suggestions for each location from the library: stickers and Haribo for every continent you tick off.
And if you fancy something more substantial (and possibly even healthier) than inter-continental Haribos, you can win Nando's vouchers in the library's annual 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?' quiz. Outside the library, there's a table laid for several mystery, literary guests: can you work out who they are? If you want some tips, have a look at last year's quiz (and the answers) here: have fun!
Meanwhile, some suggestions for LGBTQ+ History Month.
Recommended by Mr Gardner
This prize-winning collection of poetry, published in 2021, presents an extraordinary and at times quite explicit poetic exploration of the bodily. Whilst the collection is most striking for its focus on visceral suffering, anguish and persecution, there is also joy—or at least the tantalising promise of it—in the poetry’s projection of a transfigured ideal of beauty and desire.
This prize-winning collection of poetry, published in 2021, presents an extraordinary and at times quite explicit poetic exploration of the bodily. Whilst the collection is most striking for its focus on visceral suffering, anguish and persecution, there is also joy—or at least the tantalising promise of it—in the poetry’s projection of a transfigured ideal of beauty and desire.
Miss McLaughlin recommends The New Life by Tom Crewe: brilliant, thought-provoking and beautiful.
And finally, Miss McLaren recommends The Two Roberts by Damian Barr, a novel based on the lives of two Scottish artists, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, who met as students in Glasgow, and formed a personal and creative partnership that lasted for almost 30 years.
Nowadays, they're probably best known for playing colourful cameo roles in London's post-war Soho scene - throwing outrageous parties, matching Francis Bacon and Dylan Thomas drink for drink at the Colony Club, fighting with Lucian Freud or baby-sitting for Elizabeth Smart. Both died before their time - Colquhoun of a heart attack, on the eve of a come-back solo exhibition in 1962, and MacBryde in a car accident four years later - and their final years were blighted by alcoholism.
But Barr's novel focusses instead on their early life, re-creating their teenage years as students on scholarships at Glasgow's School of Art with a detail and energy that brings the lovers and their lost world alive. If you've read Shuggie Bain, and think of Glasgow from the perspective of 1980s post-industrial decline, Barr's portrait shows you a very different city - it's the Depression, and times are tough, but Glasgow is still a dynamic and cosmopolitan cultural centre, fizzing with vitality and dazzling to the eyes of the two young students from the sticks.
The novel is clearly a passion project for Barr, whose memoir of growing up in 1980s Scotland, Maggie and Me, follows a similar trajectory: a story of escape. Like Barr, both Roberts come from working-class backgrounds. Their homes are impoverished in different ways - MacBryde's materially, Colquhoun's emotionally - and their characters are also very different - MacBryde's ebullient sociability contrasts with Colquhoun's sardonic reserve. Art and love give them a way out - just as thez did Barr himself - and also draw them together: each is both a refuge and a destination.
The early sections of The Two Roberts paint an exhilarating picture of art school life, full of passion and creativity, although Barr doesn't shy away from the darker side of the two lovers' lives: the suffocating claustrophobia of intolerance and homophobia in 1930s Scotland, and the frightening violence that always flickers around the edge of their existence. A travel scholarship gives them glimpses of social and sexual freedom, via the liberating hedonism of London and Paris, but it's 1938, and Europe is changing: their travels through Fascist Spain and Italy hint at the horror that is about to swallow up millions of lives. The Roberts escape Europe, but not the war: Colquhoun is conscripted, and Barr vividly evokes the fear and squalor of army life. MacBryde's grief and isolation, when he visits Colquhoun at the military camp, with the other 'army wives', before his lover is shipped overseas, but can't acknowledge or express how he feels without risking violent retaliation, is heart-wrenching.
As Colquhoun starts to achieve recognition, and fame, if not fortune, after the war, and MacBryde bobs irrepressibly, but slightly desperately, along in his wake, the novel becomes looser and more fragmented, replacing the immersive detail of the earlier sections with isolated scenes and snapshots that illustrate the subsequent stages of their rise (and fall), but with a longer lens, and fewer close-ups. Barr's choices here make sense: this part of their life is better known, and documented in many other works, including an early Monitor documentary by Ken Russell. The montage of scenes subsides into a gentle fade-out, which (perhaps thankfully) obscures the sadness of the artists' final days - Colquhoun's untimely death, and MacBryde's subsequent decline.
But despite this sadness, and the definite shadows in both their personal lives and wider social context, the dominant mood of this novel is joyous and celebratory. Barr has also curated an exhibition of Colquhoun and MacBryde's paintings, which runs in Lewes until mid-April, and is well worth a look. Their passionate dedication to art and each other is matched by his dedication to them: The Two Roberts is a worthy celebration of their lives, their love, and their art, and a fascinating counterpoint to Barr's own story as a queer Scottish artist.
No comments:
Post a Comment