Park Lane – by Frances Osborne

Presented as the interweaving stories of Grace-the-maid and Lady-Beatrice-the-reluctant-and privileged-daughter, on face value Park Lane looks like it's jumping on the back of the revived popularity for 1910s pomp, as exemplified by the recent TV hits Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs.

That’s fine, but there were two other factors that drew my attention to this book. First, it is written by Frances Osborne (wife of George Osborne, and author of The Bolter: a 2008 biography of her great-grandmother Idina Sackville, who ‘bolted’ to Kenya with other women’s husbands), and second, it appears to be about the fight for women’s suffrage.

I say ‘appears to be’ because Park Lane is very much a book of two halves, which seemingly bear little resemblance to each other, save for a recurrence of the main characters; although they themselves bear little resemblance to their earlier versions. But perhaps that’s what enduring a world war will do to you.

The first half of Park Lane is a frustrating read. It’s a slow trudge through the pages, despite what should be a fascinating read. Lady Beatrice becomes wrapped up in the forefront of the militant suffragettes with extraordinary speed, thanks to her rebellious aunt Celeste. Lady Bea keeps this secret from her family, most of all her mother, who also wants women to win the vote – but not at any cost. Downstairs, new maid Grace has ideas of becoming a secretary and instead pretends to her family in Scotland that she is one, while secretly carrying on as a lowly maid… albeit one who steals a Friedrich Engels book for her socialist brother.

All of that could have been an exciting page turner, but instead it feels like a clumsy trawl through disjointed sentences and clunky speech. And, in the exact opposite of what I’d expect from a page turner, I found myself physically wanting to read it, but mentally desperate to do anything but read it. Strange.

But I ploughed on and got to the second half, at which point war had broken out and the characters had undergone a dramatic reinvention. As had Osborne’s writing, which now picked up pace, became engaging and absorbing, and finally I got the page turning story I’d been after 200 pages previously. Although it remains hard to reconcile the characters in the second half with their first half versions – Grace loses her vim, Lady Bea fades into a wet fart, and what of the campaign for suffrage? Never far from the pages of the first half, the fight for female emancipation has vanished from the second half of Park Lane. While I know that Mrs Pankhurst asked her troops to call a halt to activity during the war, it still struck me as strange that the feistiest of her army would suddenly never mention the campaign again… not even in the 1918 chapter: the year that women over 30 were granted the vote.

The chapters following Lady Bea into the secret suffragette offices of Lauderdale Mansions are among the most exhilarating for me – conjuring up what the smell, noise, pace and atmosphere of the place must have been, and the majesty surrounding Mrs Pankhurst. But, inexplicably, the suffrage story vanishes from the pages of Park Lane as quickly as Lady Bea manages to rise to a position of suffragette respectability. Most infuriating.

But not as infuriating as the conveniently neat way in which the lose ends are all tied up at the end of the book. Which takes away from any vague credibility the plot had. 

While Park Lane was an enjoyable enough read once I’d pushed through the first 200 pages, I struggled with the implausibility of the two main characters throughout, and the treacly writing, which at times was a joyless trudge. After the unmitigated pleasure of reading The Bolter, I’d hoped for better from a suffrage novel by Frances Osborne.

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Here’s a link to the inimitable John Crace and his digested read of Park Lane.

Although, even more fun can be had by having a read of Julie Birchill’s review of ParkLane, which is a hoot. “Seriously, I've come across paper dolls with more depth than this crew.”

Fifty Shades of Subtlety

Just as you don’t need to be talented to be celebrated these days, you don’t need to be any good at writing to be a bestselling author. This was increasingly in evidence throughout seven instalments of the Harry Potter books (though I forgave JK Rowling, owing to the millions of children in whom she inspired a love of literature), and is painfully on show in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.

I’ve only read one of EL James’ three books, by the way – Fifty Shades of Grey. Life’s too short for the rest of the series, and my brain was numbing up. More than my exhaustion from reading the shoddy writing, I simply didn’t give a phlegmatic cock what happened to the implausible characters.

But I’m still glad I read Fifty Shades of Grey, if for no other reason than it’s a pretty funny book. And here are my top ten reasons why:

10 – On page 26 of the book, anti-hero Christian Grey goes into the HARDware shop where the object of his lust, Anastasia Steele, works. What does he do in the HARDware shop? He buys cable ties and masking tape while COCKing his head in the SCREW aisle. Subtle.

9 – Anastasia falls head over heels in lust with the mysterious Grey. He charms her with his good looks, immense wealth and mysterious ways. Here’s a genuine sentence from the book describing how she sees him: “His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel… or something.”

8 – We are told – on no less than four occasions throughout the book – that Christian smells of “freshly laundered linen and some expensive body wash”. This much-repeated phrase conjures up an olfactory image of Bold 2in1 and Java by Lynx in my mind’s nose. Sexy. (See also: “Oh my… Sweat and body wash and Christian. It’s a heady cocktail. So much better than a margherita.”)

7 – The night before Christian finally seduces virginial Anastaia, she goes out and gets steaming drunk, and calls him from the stinky toilets of a bar. Being her knight in shining armour, Christian comes to rescue her from the toilets… and she thanks him by vomming all over his expensive shoes. Yet still he boffs her the next night and buys her a laptop. Romance is not dead.

6 – EL James has a fascinating choice of adjectives at her disposal. For instance, we learn that Christian talks “phlegmatically” and that he “quirks” his eyebrows. My favourite metaphorical moment in the whole book, however, is when Anastasia blushes “the colour of the Communist manifesto”. That’s literature that is, right there.

5 – Despite his wealth, none of Christian’s clothes fit properly. Throughout the book, we are repeatedly told that his grey linen trousers are hanging off his jutting hips “just so”. Doesn’t that make you want to mother him?

4 – During the sexy bits, an extraordinary amount of page space is devoted to the removal of each other’s Converse trainers and socks. I’m not making it up.

3 – When the characters (aged 21 and 27) choose to listen to music, they listen to such contemporary artists as Snow Patrol, Bruce Springsteen and Kings of Leon. It’s like EL James rang my dad (73) and asked him to name drop a few bands that the young people like these days.

2 – Without the Fifty Shades of Grey series, we would never have met Anastasia’s inner goddess. I like to think of the ever-present inner goddess as a Tinkerbel-lite figure… ie, if we all believe in her, she WILL exist. Even better, her inner goddess is constantly at war with her subconscious, meaning that we have three female heroines for the price of one. But which would win in a fight?

1 - However, the best sentence in the entire book is this one: “My heartbeat has picked up, and my medulla oblongata has neglected to fire any synapses to make me breathe.” I’m not making it up. I promise, hand on heart, that that is a genuine, unadulterated sentence from the book. In fact, EL James is so pleased with her use of the term “medulla oblongata” that it’s not long before it cracks a second mention. (Medical ignoramuses will be turned on to learn that the “medulla oblongata” is the part of the brain that controls breathing and vomiting. It’s true. I checked on Wikipedia.)

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Of course, I’m being flippant. Fifty Shades of Grey is badly-written, populist tripe that’s benefitted from a great marketing campaign. And just as Oasis became famous because everyone bought their records when they heard everyone else was buying their records, people are buying Fifty Shades of Grey because they don’t want to be left behind. Hell, I only read it because everyone else was, so who am I to talk? Exactly.

PS – I’ve deliberately avoided mentioning the many reasons why this book is a feminist’s worst literary nightmare. The contracted ownership, coupled with the stalking, mental and physical abuse, and more… it’s appalling to see the mainstream acceptance of such behaviour in 2012, at a time when we should be further ahead than ever in putting an end to this degrading treatment of women. But there are many other people, far better qualified than me to speak on such matters, who have already written about this so well in relation to these books.

My evening listening to rape jokes

“Are you married?” yelled an audience member to the cocky comic who’d just spent an hour spewing out rape jokes, an endless stream of misogyny and a smattering of casual racism aimed towards his mostly white audience. “That depends,” replied the comic. “On whether I want something from the kitchen, or whether it’s a hot girl asking.”


Amazingly, Imran Yusuf is married. I say “amazingly”, because it’s a brave woman who commits to a man who includes in his set a ‘gag’ about their recent trip to South Africa (of which Johannesburg is, in Yusuf’s words, “the rape capital of the world”), and how he explored the country’s shanty towns alone… because his wife was too scared to leave the hotel: the implication being that if she left the hotel, she would be raped. Ha ha ha.

Another reason I’m amazed Yusuf is married is that he uses the trick of telling “fuck me jokes”, as dissected by the fabulous comedian Danielle Ward in her Edinburgh preview last week. Danielle talked about the type of male comedian who goes on stage, performs a misogynistic set, and then drops in a few lines designed to make women feel he’s vulnerable – so much so that they’ll go backstage and have sex with him. Yusuf did this several times with no shame. Littered throughout his set were loaded lines about how he didn’t lose his virginity until he was 25, or about how very sensitive he was, and he pointedly addressed these lines to the “ladies”. Classy.

Now, you’d be forgiven for wondering what I was even doing at Yusuf’s gig. Well, I’d gone to a double-bill of Edinburgh previews at the Tobacco Factory because Lucy Porter was on the bill. The other act was someone I’d never previously heard of (Yusuf), but I thought since I was there I’d see what he was like. I wish I hadn’t. Yet I couldn’t get up and walk out because I was hemmed into a corner, and I also suspected Yusuf would pick on me if he saw me leave. So I stayed. And I survived his set by live-tweeting the second half of it.

Initially, I simply tweeted: “At Imran Yusuf ‘comedy’ gig. He thinks rape and misogyny are funny. So does much of his audience. I’m stuck in a corner and can’t leave.” The response was instant and huge – via retweets, supportive @ comments, new followers… So I sent a second tweet: “Such a hostile crowd to be with. What’s worse? The man with the mic telling rape jokes? Or the audience laughing at him. This is shit.” The support from Twitter grew further.

But what was Yusuf saying that was so terrible? Surely it was just a bit of harmless ‘banter’? It’s depressing that so many people (although I didn’t see many women laughing) were bellowing at gags about spiking drinks with Rohypnol, or how men are ruling the world while women read Heat magazine. It was an oppressive and nasty atmosphere to be in. The overweight and sweaty man beside me, for instance, was roaring with laughter the whole time, shaking his plastic beer mug like an over-excited toddler with a rattle, and pressing his huge sweaty frame against me, while snorting with laughter all over my arm that was squashed against him. Yuck. I couldn’t escape (but I did shower when I got home).

Placed in a wider context, Yusuf’s jokes are not imaginative, new or exclusive to him. There are a lot of comedians who think rape is a suitable topic for comedy, and who think nothing of filling their set with casual misogyny (just look at Daniel Tosh for a recent example). They’re often young, male comedians, who play to an audience of young men who, terrifyingly, might look up to the person on the stage with the microphone and think, ‘Well, if he’s saying it, then it must be true’, and the situation worsens.

The argument against rape jokes is not new and I’m not going to patronise you to explain why they’re not funny. But what I wonder is why nothing is done to penalise those comedians who persist in making jokes about (and money from) rape and misogyny? Yusuf, for instance, has been on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, which is broadcast on BBC1, and he now has his own show on BBC3. The BBC penalised Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand for their Andrew Sachs ‘prank’, and Angus Deayton was sacked from the BBC after his cocaine and prostitute scandal. Yet apparently the BBC has no problem giving airtime to a comedian who tells rape jokes (NB: Yusuf may not have made rape jokes on TV, but the fact remains he still makes them in his solo show).

Statistics tell us that one in four women will experience rape. The unpleasant conclusion is there were women in Yusuf’s audience last night who had survived rape. I wonder what they felt about his jokes? I wish the atmosphere had been less aggressive and testosterone fuelled so that we could have challenged him – but of course, you can’t do that to a misogynist with a mic who’s standing in front of a room filled with his hyped-up allies, because you’ll get bullied en masse. Aka: silenced.

To make matters worse, Yusuf rounded up his set (before a quick quip about honour killings – another obvious topic for comedy) saying: “If you were offended by anything I said tonight, don’t be offended. It’s just a joke. We’re all the same underneath.” Woah! Let’s just take a moment to think about that. Saying “we’re all the same underneath” implies that Yusuf only thought people might have been offended by his racist jokes (not covered in this post). And didn’t give any indication that he thought his misogynistic jokes were offensive.

Worse, saying “It’s just a joke” is as much of a cop out as ending a crap story saying “It was just a dream”. And the only response to such a weak and pathetic defence is to direct him to Stewart Lee’s Top Gear sketch: “It’s just a joke, like on Top Gear. So when I said I wished Richard Hammond had been killed and decapitated, like when they do their jokes on Top Gear, it’s just a joke.”

I accept that Yusuf is not the only comedian to think rape and misogyny are hilarious, and the reason I’m using him to illustrate my points is that I had the bad luck of seeing his show. I love live comedy (and I run my own comedy nights), but last night was the fist time I’d had first-hand experience of such a hateful set.

Why is there is no moderation in what comedians are permitted to make jokes about? I support free speech and I’m not advocating censorship, but jokes that rile several hundred people to laugh at a violent and degrading sexual assault are deplorable. Rape is often used as a tool to silence the perpetrator’s victim – and if a comedian makes jokes about rape, they’re further silencing that victim by denying them the respect they deserve for surviving the assault. What’s worse is the underhand way the comedians can do it. Yusuf, for instance, isn’t so crass as to use the word “rape” (except in reference to his wife in South Africa), but his intention is clear on numerous occasions.

It’s time the casual misogynists spewing rape jokes were called to account.

Note: I tweeted Yusuf to tell him I was writing this and asked if he’d like to comment. As yet, I’ve had no reply. I’ve also emailed the Tobacco Factory and promoter, but as yet I’ve also had no reply. Should any of the three answer, I’ll add their comment at the end of this piece.

A book from beyond the grave

My mother and I are different in many respects. While we’re very close, we agree we have few shared interests. She likes to travel alone to far-flung corners of the globe; I like coupled-up holidays in sunny spots. She has no qualms about building a cupboard from scratch; I think I’ve achieved the same if I assemble a flatpack shelf. But one thing we do share in common is a passion for old-fashioned women’s novels of the type republished by Persephone. What’s extra pleasing is that this is an enthusiasm that was also passed down from her mother, who died in 1978 just before I was born. 

So my mother and I swap and gift Persephones, Bloomsbury Classics, Virago Modern Classics and original Penguin paperbacks (among others). We read and talk about authors like Monica Dickens, Rachel Ferguson, Dorothy Whipple, Noel Streatfeild and more. We think we’re up to date if we’re reading Diana Athill.

When my grandmother died, my mum inherited boxes of her books, most of which fitted the above category. And over the past 34 years, these books have been shuffled around – between bookshelves, bedrooms, homes and sometimes – on an ill thought through whim – to the charity shop, only to be regretted. Some of the books we’ve read and loved, some we’ve thought: ‘What was she thinking?’ But to me, who never knew my grandmother, they offer a glimpse into her interests, and her way of life: most of these books were contemporary novels at the time she bought and read them. As an added bonus, some have handwritten inscriptions in.

And then something happened.

My mum was rearranging the bookshelves last weekend, creating a library of women authors in my old bedroom. And in the process of transferring books from several rooms to one, she leafed through some crumbly Angela Thirkell books (seemingly my grandmother’s favourite author, judging by the quantity of her books that we have) and two very old picture postcards fell out. They were addressed to my grandmother and sent by her next-door neighbour (who was on holiday at the time) in the early 1950s. This being the era when the postcard ruled, they contained mundane messages asking her to leave a particular pot in a safe place, and something to do with the bins. But added in a corner, in pencil, as an afterthought, was a recommendation for a book: A Picnic In The Shade by Rosemary Edisford. There was no comment about it, just the title and author.

Taking this as a sign, my mum went to Amazon and tracked down a second-hand copy (the book is long out of print), and is now eagerly awaiting its arrival. We’re both very excited, and my mum is firmly convinced that it will be a most enjoyable book – one that we will later deliver to Persephone for them to reprint, along the lines of the Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day story. 

I can find little information about Rosemary Edisford online. A Picnic In The Shade is listed on Amazon as her only book, however Google tells me she wrote a short story for the New Yorker in 1961 and possibly a guide to the saints. I’d love to know more about her. I’m intrigued and keen to romanticise this note from 60 years ago…

Once the book arrives and we’ve read it, I’ll report back. In the meantime, if you happen to know anything about Rosemary Edisford, please let me know.