J. I. M. Stewart (1) (1906–1994)

It is very nearly forty years since I started listing the books that I read, and the running total is now over 4,600. To identify an all-time favourite would, therefore, be very difficult, and even whittling down a small selection that might sustain me in a Desert Island Discs scenario would be a significant challenge. One’s list of top ten or even top fifty books is a very nebulous concept, and a selection I arrive at today is likely to differ significantly from the corresponding choice I might make tomorrow or the day after.

One book that could certainly be depended upon to feature in almost any selection of my top ten, regardless of my mood on any given day, would be Young Pattullo, by J I M Stewart. I find myself re-reading this book every two or three years, and it never ceases to entertain and delight. It actually represents the second volume in A Staircase in Surrey, a series of five novels by Stewart recounting the experiences of Duncan Pattullo who returns to his old Oxford college some twenty-odd years after he graduated and finds himself being absorbed back into the fold and appointed as a Fellow.

Much of J I M Stewart’s early life mirrors that of Duncan Pattullo. Born and educated in Edinburgh on the fringes of the middle class, he too secured a scholarship to Oxford, where he studied English. There, perhaps, the principal similarities end, and Stewarts chose to remain in academia, securing teaching posts at universities in Leeds, Adelaide and Belfast, before returning to Oxford where he subsequently became Professor of English Literature.

These academic endeavours were not, however, the only string to his bow. While Duncan Pattullo’s post-Oxford career had seen him establish himself as a successful playwright, with three plays running simultaneously in the West End as The Gaudy, first instalment of A Staircase in Surrey opens, Stewart chose a different creative route. Under his own name, and also as Michael Innes (two of his middle names), he wrote more than fifty novels, including the prolific series of crime stories featuring John (later Sir John) Appleby, an unorthodox policeman who rose from detective Inspector in his first outing to become Commission of the Metropolitan Force. These novels proved immensely popular, both because of the enigmatic character of Appleby and the unconventional quirkiness of their plots.

I found this volume of memoris both entertaining and frustrating. There were plenty of anecdotes that illuminated some incidents from the novels. On the other hand, as with John le Carre’s very entertaining memoirs, The Pigeon Tunnel, Stewart pulls off the dexterous feat of holding the reader’s attention while giving away surprisingly little about himself.… (altro)

I have always been a fan of the roman fleuve, and count Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time, C P Snow’s Strangers and Brothers and especially Simon Raven’s Alms for Oblivion sequences among my favourites. I had tended to group J. I. M. Stewart's marvellous five novel sequence A Staircase in Surrey as being on a par with them. It does, after all, include Young Pattullo, which is possibly my favourite novel ever (out of about five thousand that I have read to date).

I have, however, found myself pulled up short while re-reading the sequence. The first three volumes had been as enjoyable as ever, but I found myself thoroughly out of sorts with this instalment, and am going through a grievous process of reassessment. The book picks up almost immediately after the end of its predecessor, A Memorial Service, with Duncan Pattullo finding himself in the third term of his first year as a Fellow of his old Oxford college. His aging mentor (and distant relative) Arnold Lempriere is concerned about the state of the College's historic and imposing tower, and it gradually becomes apparent that extensive and unavoidably expensive restoration work will be required, at a cost considerably beyond the College's current means. Meanwhile the likeable Nick Junkin has been soliciting support among the Fellows for the College’s Dramatic Society to be allowed to stage Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great in the quadrangle.

Pattullo, as one would expect, is playing his part to help Junkin’s project but is rather distracted by the sudden reappearance in his life of his former wife, the beautiful but utterly ghastly Penny, who seems bent on strewing mischief in her wake. At this point an old master is discovered in a lumber room at the base of the College’s threatened tower. The painting depicts the Madonna and Child, the latter of whom is clutching an astrolabe. Could this be salvation for the College?

Stewart handles his characters with dexterity and affection, steering them through the rapids and pitfalls (hey, I can mix metaphors with the best of them!) of this short (just eight weeks) but hectic final term. Duncan Pattullo is sensitive and always plausible and the humour is intelligent and engaging. I wish I had had tutors like that when I was an undergraduate! I did, however, find the whole sub-plot involving Penny Pattullo added nothing and, indeed, detracted quite a lot from the flow of the story. Considering how deftly Stewart writes elsewhere, this novel seems a poor companion to the rest of the sequence.… (altro)

I found re-reading this novel particularly moving. This is the third volume in Stewart's masterful sequence A Staircase in Surrey and it opens with Duncan Pattullo embarking on a new career as a Fellow of his old Oxford College. I had the great good fortune to enjoy a brief tenure as a (decidedly junior) Fellow of an Oxford College during the early/mid 1980s, perhaps ten or fifteen years after this novel is set, and despite that slight time lag I felt that I could recognise almost everything that Pattullo encounters. Certainly the relationships between the different tenants of the staircase struck all too poignant a chord with me.

After all, Stewart himself was an accomplished academic, publishing a series of highly regarded works on late nineteenth/early twentieth century English literature (with particular emphasis on Conrad), so he knew what he was talking about.

The plot revolves around an academic wrangle over a manuscript donated to the College by Lord Blunderville, one of its more celebrated alumni who had eventually risen to be Prime Minister at some unspecified spell between the World Wars. In the preceding volume, Young Pattullo, set during Duncan's time as an undergraduate, we happened to be present when Christopher Cressey, an aloof history don, made away with the book in question, seemingly with the former Prime Minister's blessing. More than twenty years on Cressey still has the manuscript, and the College is now striving to recover it using whatever means are available to it. Duncan is bemused, wondering why so much consternation should arise from the fate of this small book.

Meanwhile the loutish Ivo Mumford, son of Duncan's closest friend from his own student days, is struggling to retain his place in the College having completely fluffed his exams while revelling in the rowdy exploits of the Uffington Club, an exclusive clique of wealthy rowdies (presumably modelled on an early incarnation of David Cameron's Bullingdon Club). Duncan invites the wretched Ivo to launch with a view to trying to encourage him to greater application to his books. These advances are roundly snubbed, though Ivo does tell Duncan that he has been working with a friend to develop a new University magazine by the name of Priapus. Duncan is understandably concerned!

However, the plot, though engaging, is almost superfluous to the glory of the book. Stewart captures the eternal contradictions that bedevil almost every aspect of life in academic Oxford. The College basks in its centuries-long history and proudly defends its traditions, yet is also alive to the changing demands of its undergraduates in times of changing social mores. Personal animosities flourish between the Fellows, yet they are capable of immense sensitivity to the plight of their undergraduates.

Though far shorter than Anthony Powell's beautiful A Dance to the Music of Time, there are great similarities, not least in the use of hilarious scenes underpinned with waves of melancholy. Indeed, one of the leading characters, Cyril Bedworth, has made a career on critical appraisal of Anthony Powell's novels.

Eternally enchanting - I could happily re-read this series every year.… (altro)

This is, quite simply, my favourite novel EVER.

It is, as it happens, the second volumes in a sequence of five (A Staircase in Surrey) that chronicles Duncan Pattullo's experiences at, and relationship with, a fictional Oxford college. In the first instalment, The Gaudy, which is set in the late 1960s or very early 1970s, Pattullo, now a successful playwright, returns to Oxford for the first time in more than twenty years to attend a celebratory old boys' dinner at the college. During this visit he meets some of his contemporaries and, after inadvertently becoming embroiled in resolving an unsavoury episode involving the son of his closest friend from student days, he finds himself being offered the opportunity to take up a Fellowship in Modern European Drama.

For this second instalment Stewart takes us back to Pattullo's first year as an undergraduate. in 1945 or 1946. Raised in Edinburgh and educated at what is clearly meant to be Fettes, young Duncan Pattullo had never initially entertained the dream of going to Oxford. However, fate, in the form of his unorthodox father intervened with dramatic consequences. Lachlan Pattullo is an accomplished artist, generally specialising in landscapes, though not above accepting commissions for portraits. One recent such commission had required him to paint Professor McKechnie, a dreary though capable academic at Edinburgh University. McKechnie is a sombre and quiet man except upon the subject of his son Ranald, a schoolmate of Duncan's. Fed up of hearing the ceaseless eulogies about Ranald and his imminent departure on a scholarship to Oxford, Lachlan arranges for Duncan to have a shot at the John Ruskin Scholarship, which he successfully bags. Stewart gives us a lovely cameo in which young Pattullo first encounters the gathering of rather upper class English alumni of the more accomplished public schools, but without resorting to crass stereotyping - all of the boys seem immensely plausible.

Duncan is beset with all of the regular dilemmas and challenges of growing up, though it is clear that he immediately falls in love with everything about Oxford. He soon becomes friendly with the fellow residents on the staircase in Surrey quadrangle where his rooms are located, notably Tony Mumford (who would later evolve in Lord Marchpayne, Cabinet member), Gavin Moggridge and Cyril Bedworth. There are scenes of high comedy mixed with others of great sensitivity.

Stewart's masterful cameos are not just restricted to Pattullo's fellow students. Edward Pococke, Provost of the College, is a picture of urbanity and tends towards courteous litotes, while Duncan's two personal tutors, the permanently distracted Albert Talbert and the mage-like J B Timbermill, are particulrly finely drawn. The latter, who teaches Duncan the wonders of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English literature (my own chosen area of specialisation as an undergraduate) is clearly modelled on J R R Tolkien.

Alongside the beautiful depiction of Oxford in the 1940s Stewart also gives an insight into Duncan's far from conventional homelife which includes a slightly mad uncle, the self-styled laird of Glencorry whose Highland retreat Duncan visits at length.

I have often wondered why this novel means so much to me, and I have never quite put my finger on it. Still, I have read it many times already, and I look forward to reading it many time more!… (altro)