Lifelong English master Jonathan Smith has written a wonderful book about his relationship with his son, a former England cricketer. Who says those who can't, teach?
The English teacher in English letters is like Prospero: a mixture of muse and magus whose severe but benign spirit presides vigilantly over generations of former subjects. Writers and journalists who subject their words to the scrutiny of an invisible inner critic often concede that this all-important voice in their head has the accent of their English teacher.
I remember Harold Pinter speaking with tremendous enthusiasm about Joe Brearley, who taught him English in postwar Hackney. Elsewhere, Michael Frayn has described how "Mr Brady" first read him Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark" and changed his life for ever. "I sat there entranced," says Frayn. When he became inspired by this example to write his own teenage poetry, Mr Brady "read it aloud to the class; and so he got me", remembers Frayn. "I started to work on English." Presumably, the same sort of thing can happen with maths and chemistry.
Jonathan Smith, who has devoted his life to teaching English at Tonbridge school in Kent, is one of those in the Brearley-Brady tradition. He taught the poet Christopher Reid, the 2009 Costa prize winner, and Vikram Seth, author of A Suitable Boy, and also directed the kind of school production that students talk about for years after.
Smith's essential Englishness is underlined by his passion for cricket, a game he learned in the 1940s at Patchway elementary school in Bristol, bowling a red composition rubber ball in the deserted playground. Cricket is a literary game. Smith quotes from Stoppard's The Real Thing, recently revived at the Old Vic, and its famous celebration of the cricket bat: "The whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor? What we're trying to do is write cricket bats."
The fulfilment of the English teacher's obsession with leather and willow was the professional career of his son, Ed, the Middlesex, Kent and England batsman, and author of What Sport Tells Us About Life. What literature tells us about cricket is a book that's been written many times, though rarely as persuasively as in Soumya Bhattacharya's recently published Why India Can Never Do Without Cricket (Peakpublish).
There's a cruel jibe that teaching is for those who can't, but Jonathan Smith is hardly an also-ran. He has had a distinguished career as a writer as well as a teacher, notably with Wilfred and Eileen, a novel set in the Great War, and The Learning Game, an acclaimed memoir about teaching.
In 2006, Smith was diagnosed with cancer, put the novel on which he was working aside, and embarked on a trip to India with his son in quest of a deeper paternal understanding as well as the realisation of a dream: to see cricket played on the subcontinent.
The Following Game, just published by Peridot Press, is the outcome of Smith's journey; a touching, episodic memoir about the way in which cricket and literature can take over your life and how, through poetry and cover drives, Smith found a way to accommodate the complexity of his paternal pride in his son's sporting prowess. This beautifully produced little book says more about family, books and the game of cricket than many flashier volumes by well-known names. It is modest, candid, personal and brief, but full of surprises.
As well as following his son's game, and teaching Vikram Seth, Smith can claim credit for the theatrical career of Dan Stevens, who recently starred as Matthew Crawley in Downton Abbey. One of the most arresting passages in The Following Game describes how the 14-year-old Stevens auditioned for a school production of Macbeth, expecting to be allocated the part of Macduff's son, or Fleance, and found himself playing the lead.
"I felt my hands and neck and back go funny," writes Smith, recalling this audition. Here was "a voice to die for. This young boy was already much better than many professional actors." This, says Smith, is the joy of teaching ? "sensing you have spotted someone of extraordinary potential". Anyone who has found a new writer for themselves will know the sensation, the inimitable buzz, of true originality. Like watching a great batsman in his prime.
Living history, coming to a field near you?
English festival fever seems to be turning historical. Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire will host Europe's biggest live action historical extravaganza on 16 and 17 July, a blockbuster weekend of clashing swords and thundering hooves. More serious, and more innovative, James Heneage (above), the former Ottakar bookseller, and Grenadier Guard, is going into partnership with historian Tom Holland to launch the Chalke Valley History Festival (7-9 July) in Bowerchalke near Salisbury with contributions from Peter Snow, Michael Wood and Max Hastings. Heneage is devoting the proceeds to Help For Heroes ? and a new pavilion for the local cricket club. Those who know the maverick bookseller as a would-be rock singer are relieved he's sponsoring patriotism and cricket rather than rock music.
What happens on the next page? You decide
As every literary genre goes into flux online, publishers are coming up with new wheezes to appeal to teenage readers. The latest, Fiction Express, enables readers to interact with books and authors as never before. At the end of each chapter, readers can vote on what happens next. Fiction Express authors ? including Alex Woolf, Rebecca Morton and Luisa Plaja ? write the next chapter of their book based on the results of the vote, and the whole thing is thrillingly interactive. Ezra Pound said the watchword of literature should be "make it new". Somehow, I can't see this catching on in creative writing programmes.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/19/jonathan-smith-following-game-robert-mccrum
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