What a glorious Early Music Show today. Featuring the Early Opera Company for who, on the evidence of this programme 'early opera' means Handel. Perhaps they will do some Monteverdi another day. I will have to return to the Handel opera section of the shelves. He can't possibly be only my fourth favourite composer. Beethoven's elbowed his way back to prominence in recent years. Bach is surely unassailable and ring-fenced at no. 1, isn't he, and so my original favourite, the composer of The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro and all such things would miss out. Never mind feeling sorry for those who finish fourth in the Olympic Games but four into three won't go. I'm lucky if that's the most concerning thing I have to worry about.

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Reports of Bob Harris's illness has led me back to Sounds of the 70's in recent weeks. He still appears to think the 70's mainly happened in California and Nashville but at least this week he began with Curtis Mayfield and the Jacksons and ended with Thelma Houston. A comprehensive survey of the 70's should be the agenda and so I'm not necessarily complaining about the very worst record ever, Music by John Miles, or the hideous thing by 10cc. I even quite enjoyed the Genesis.

Hearing a few things well off the limits of my playlist, like Voodoo Chile and something by the Band was like a glimpse of the vast genre of 'rock' music that I drifted away from decades ago. All those old 'heads' in denim or some more flamboyant attire purveying their guitar skills and outré philosophies. It's impressive what a colossal body of work all those bands left behind but maybe the glimpse of the mountain is best left at that because I'm sure if I was left with a pile of Doobie Brothers albums I would capitulate very quickly, not unlike the way that Donald Trump solves wars.

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At halfway, The Woman in White is doing very well. It is genuinely gripping, and a bit of a psychological thriller, as Marian and Laura scheme clandestinely to uncover the secret of Sir Perceval and his friend, Count Fosco, while not much better than being kept hostages by them, not least because Laura is married to Sir Perceval.

Alongside Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, George Eliot, Hardy and plenty more, one can see how feminist readings of the Victorian novel are standard issue. Men are grotesque, women their idealized, innocent victims - we are betting without Becky Sharp here- and it's obvious whose side we are one. 

In Jane Austen, as it says in a poem, the main interest revolves around a heroine who either,

gets married, or doesn't, or dies, (my little joke) but in Middlemarch, The Mayor of Casterbridge and here, they've got married and that's the problem.

There are some fine passages in among the deepening tension. For example, of Count Fosco,

I have always maintained that the popular notion of connecting excessive grossness of size and excessive good-humour as inseparable allies, was equivalent to declaring, either that no amiable people get fat, or that the accidental addition of so many pounds of flesh has a directly favourable influence over the disposition of the person on whose body they accumulate. etc, etc. Brilliantly set out, citing Henry VIII as evidence against, and it's great to have the time and space for such diversions.   

Unless it throws all its early achievement away in its later stages, this might have been one of the best books I hadn't read but it's far too soon to be calling that because endings can be hard to do. I think beginnings are in some way easier, not least for not  being troubled by thoughts of 'the moral of the story' if stories need to have 'morals'.