Up to Oxford yesterday for Father in Law’s exhibition at Oriel. I wish we could have stayed there longer, and gone round the Ashmolean (wondering around the colleges wouldn’t really have been on, as it was University Open Day, so the whole city was full of 17 year-olds (often with their parents) trying to decide between Corpus, Merton, Jesus, All Souls… and so it continues), but this was not to be, with not only my parents, the three children and Wife’s Aunt in tow.
The exhibition was terrific: Father in Law was exhibiting his watercolours (over thirty of them) alongside an Oxford contemporary with whom he is still in touch, fifty years later (I find this amazing: the only one of my University contemporaries that I am still in touch with – other than the virtual world of Facebook – is Me As A Protestant: and that’s only fifteen years ago). Maybe it’s family pride, but I thought Father-in-Law’s work was infinitely better than his co-exhibitor’s: and fortunately there were enough little red dots on his work to suggest that a good number of people at the opening felt similarly enthusiastic.
Australian Brother in Law was there, his opening gambit being: “It’s rather like that scene in “Brideshead Revisited” isn’t it?”
I think he must have meant the scene about half way through the novel, where Charles is exhibiting his work in London, when Anthony Blanche reappears in the narrative. Given that the point of that scene is for Blanche to expose Ryder’s paintings as unfelt “ghastly daubs”, I thought that the comparison was a slightly unfortunate one – but it soon became obvious why the novel had raised its head: Australian Brother in Law had a name to drop.
“Have you seen the new film?”
“I haven’t: I don ‘t want to, actually.” (Andrew Davies’ idiotic and grossly offensive remark about wanting to give the film an “anti-Catholic ending” still plays in my mind as reason enough not to see it.)
“Oh but you should: it’s wrong to see it as an adaptation of the novel…” [so why give it the same name, credit Evelyn Waugh, and mention him all the film's publicity, I wondered, silently]“…I call it “Brideshead Revised”, not “Brideshead Revisited”.”
It will come as no surprise that Australian Brother in Law is a journalist, given that turn of phrase: and he made an interesting point about the film’s story being Charles Ryder’s attempt to take possession of Brideshead by any means necessary (Sebastian or Julia), rather than about what Waugh himself said it was about: “the operation of divine grace on a group of people”. I may see it: I am a huge fan of Ben Whishawe, and of Emma Thompson – but the horror of doing anything that might be seen to endorse the repulsive Mr. Davies’ world view gives me considerable pause.
