It must be difficult for him to think of a new thing to write about each week, and his much classier sister also struggles in today's Observer, but, notwithstanding some memorable pieces (the restaurant review in which he said the mayonnaise tasted like it came out of a bottle but the cole slaw tasted like it had come out of a baby), Giles will need to do better than reverting to heavy-handed diatribes in future.
To some of us the Shakespeare anniversary is of interest. Giles doesn't have to look at them if he doesn't agree in the same way that I don't watch television programmes about what food people ate in olden days. Last night's Channel 4 documentary on Shakespeare's Tomb was useful but could have fitted in a mention of the bust in Holy Trinity Church (and when did it change from apparently being one of his dad) without losing any of the tomb story; this 400th anniversary of his death has brought some issues to the attention of a wider audience than those of us self-appointed to think and write about them.
I'll live and let live as far as Giles is concerned in future and let him groan away unacknowledged as he clings on to his Times job because there might be readers who enjoy it. And I'll look forward to beginning Simon Andrew Stirling's Shakespeare's Bastard, the Life of William Davenant shortly. A review of that will thus be the next Shakespeare feature here as long as it doesn't annoy Giles too much.
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Because I have only just finished Hunter Davies' hugely readable biography of William Wordsworth. I'm not a great admirer of Wordsworth or Romantic poetry in general but thought I ought to give them more of a chance than enjoying Keats's sumptuousness but not so much his continual swooning.One doesn't need to be a Wordsworth fan to enjoy Hunter's lucid, lively account of the life. The poet is at times a comic figure- precious, earnest and, in his early years, idealistic and radical before becoming a Tory. His poetry, after long struggles towards critical and commercial recognition, came to 'set the taste by which it was judged' in the same way that T.S. Eliot's eminent dual role of critic and poet is said to have allowed his to do. 200 years later it is still Wordsworth's style of poetry that many non-poetry readers understand to be 'poetry', that is rhyming celebrations of innocence, nature, beauty and suchlike in an entirely unironic way. Each chapter of Hunter's book ends with a poem relevant to the events just described and we are reminded of how many fine lines Wordsworth wrote, not least,
The world is too much with us; late and soon
but the shifting alliances and fallings out between poets, the domestic dependance on the many female companions, the financial arrangements (while the lesser poet, Southey, is doing so much better for himself) and the touching seriousness are all parts of this highly recommended biography that ends with the great man venerable and venerated, born before but outliving the second generation of Romantics into still vigourous old age.
If it didn't much increase my estimation of Wordsworth, it did for Hunter Davies.
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But if my estimation of anybody went up this week, it was Barack Obama. Seeing not much, but enough, of Inside Obama's White House, it readily became clear that you don't appreciate what you have until it's gone. He probably was already well-placed among presidents of the USA, a very strong candidate in what for several decades has not been a very competitive field, but these programmes at least gave the impression that he is rare among contemporary politicians (and certainly most of ours) in that he achieved office in order to try to do something with it and not just to satisfy his own vanity.
As the process to find his successor continues, one can only shudder at the possibility that one of such dignity, purpose and some achievement with circumstances set so firmly against him, could be replaced with one so lacking in any such moral, worthwhile or even simply presentable qualities.
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Which, on a less global scale, could have been said about some of the weekend's sport. I'm not thinking quite so much of the admirable Roy Hodgson's young England side's performanmce in Germany which was fine but might not be repeatable if they meet Germany again in a proper match in the summer.
I liked Ben Stokes's innings v. Sri Lanka. Faced one ball, the last of the allotted 20 overs, and hit it for 6. The ultimate 'cameo', exactly the sort of performance I always aspired to but, sadly for me, I had to face more than one ball and I didn't always connect quite as well with the second one.
But, closer to my heart, wallet and the all-important profit and loss account versus the bookmaker. Post-Cheltenham, I thought I'd have a rest until Aintree but you can't help having a look. And, if you have a look, one can persuade oneself to have a dabble. There was No Duffer, who I remembered seeing at Cheltenham last April well-backed and showing up well. So I thought, 8/1, second last time out, it might be his time of year. So, if I'm going to do that, there's a good favourite for a novice hurdle here, a sound proposition at Newton Abbot later on and we can round it all off with the much-vaunted California Chrome in the biggest prize anywhere in the world at Meydan.
It happened once before, some decades ago, Oh, I don't think I'll bother. Oh, go on, then.
