The Duchess, the Dame and the stirring poetry slam
The last thing I expected on Sunday was to be in the Garden Room at Clarence House with the Duchess of Cornwall, Gyles Brandreth and Dame Joanna Lumley chatting about books and poetry. But so relaxed and unstuffy was the launch edition of the Commonwealth Poetry Podcast (an ambitious project by Brandreth and his daughter Aphra to “virtually visit” all 54 countries of the Commonwealth through poetry) it really did conjure a sense of sitting around the table with them, enjoying a home-made cup of tea.
The Duchess was present in her capacity as Vice-patron of the Royal Commonwealth Society and as someone who, as Aphra put it, “is passionate about poetry, writing, reading, literacy, and the founder of The Duchess of Cornwall’s Reading Room”. (The latter an online book club founded by the Duchess during lockdown.) Brandreth was at his loquaciously affable best, drawing the Duchess out on the importance of reading (“it feeds the soul”) and her work promoting literacy through projects such as the Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition.
But the podcast’s chief focus, and pleasure, was poetry. You couldn’t say the choices were adventurous – taking in Kipling’s A Smuggler’s Song and Betjeman’s A Subaltern’s Love Song via Christina Rossetti’s Echo. But they were heartfelt, and it was certainly different hearing the Duchess reciting a much-loved verse from Belloc’s Matilda, recalling time spent with “Betch” (“a huge friend of my father”) or confessing in response to the Rossetti that “it stirs something in me, I think it’s so moving, so beautiful.”
Another lovely moment was a spontaneous reading by all four – prompted by Lumley entertainingly arriving late, mid-way through the podcast, having been held up in traffic – of Auden’s Night Mail. In the end Brandreth closed by admitting this had been “a very British edition” of a show whose aim was to be worldstraddling with upcoming editions devoted to Rwanda, Cameroon, St Kitts and Nevis, and more. A virtual trip that promises to be ever more interesting the farther from home they get.
One poem mentioned but not read was a favourite of the Duchess (“whenever I’m in Scotland and my time comes to an end, I always think of it”), Robert Burns’s My Heart’s in the Highlands. It recalled another poetically transcendent moment last week, during Petroc Trelawny’s hugely enjoyable week-long live tour of Scotland on Radio 3’s Breakfast, when we were treated to Arvo Pärt’s haunting adaptation of the poem, sung by countertenor Stephen Wallace. Exquisite.
Back down in the murk and grit of the real world, Emily Maitlis was embarking on a new eight-part series The People vs J Edgar Hoover (Radio 4, Monday-thursday) about the famed FBI director said to have been more powerful than the eight US presidents he served under during his 48 years at the head of America’s domestic intelligence service.
“Do you believe in the Deep State, some figure in the shadows pulling strings?” Maitlis asked at the outset, adding “I didn’t, but now I wonder.” The only problem with that argument was, as she proceeded to illustrate brilliantly in the first three programmes, the last place Hoover ever wanted to be was in the shadows.
This was a man so skilled at selfpromotion that he was a household name ever before he gathered any real heft. Even so, the fact that he was also a Machiavellian creep who didn’t think the law he imposed on others applied to him was already beginning to emerge by the close of today’s edition – which looks at how Hoover viewed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 as yet another opportunity to amass power for himself.
Commissioned by the BBC before she left in March, this is almost certainly the last time we’ll hear Maitlis on the network before her upcoming daily news podcast with Jon Sopel launches on the Global platform.
Finally, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford was a terrific choice of guest on the opening edition of the excellent The Secrets of Storytelling (Radio 4, Tuesday). Exploring various aspects of the craft of novel-writing, he was a bear-like contrast to presenter and Grantchester author James Runcie’s gentler approach.
“I’m just trying not to be boring,” growled Ford at one point. “For me a successful book is one that gets the reader from beginning to the last word. That may go against the grain for some writers who say they only write for themselves. Well, I don’t. I always write for somebody else.”
A sentiment any budding author would do well to take on board.