Road Tale
Sunday, April 5, 2009
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Some books I just go back to again and again. Three Men In A Boat, Billy Liar. I've just finished Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male for the second time, his tale of a very single-minded hero going to ground in remote Dorset after a breathtaking chase on the London Underground. All in order to escape both a villainous tweeded-up representative of a dictatorial government (it's the 1930s so we can guess which one, although Household doesn't say) and slow-moving policemen with flash lamps. You can virtually follow his footsteps on a good Ordnance map, and Roger Deakin and his mate in Notes From Walnut Tree Farm even go and camp out in not quite the same style at the exact spot. Clive Donner made a superb film of the book for television in 1976 with Peter O'Toole, and left us in no doubt as to who the dictator was. I would think it's ripe for turning over a Panavision Reflex again in an overgrown Dorset trackway, but the trouble is I fear it would get re-set in the Appalachians or somewhere, with rednecks hee-hawing in the back of a pick-up. Anyway, where's the Optimus stove and my dad's pre-war binoculars...
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