From other sports or sport in general

team player: somebody who is good at

co-operating with other people

in groups run with the pack: have no individual

principles but just blindly follow

the majority win hands down: win easily go to the dogs: start to leadanaimless

and self-destructive life in the final.straight/on the last lap: in the

last stage of some process a safe pair of hands: a reliableperson

194 21 Sport and competition

> Notes on cricket • Eleven players in each team. • Test matches between nationalteamscan last up to five days of six hours each. Top club teams play matches lasting between two and four days. There are also one-day matcheslasting about seven hours. • Played at top level in Australia, England, India, New Zealand, Pakis­tan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the West Indies (those places in the Caribbean which once belonged to the British empire). Can be considered the 'national sport' in the Indian subcontinent and the West Indies.

English players but more of the very English associations that it carries with it. Cricket is much more than just a sport; it symbolizes a way of life - a slow and peaceful rural way of life. Cricket is associated with long sunny summer afternoons, the smell of new-mown grass and the sound of leather (the ball) connecting with willow (the wood from which cricket bats are made). Cricket is special because it com­bines competition with the British dream of rural life. Cricket is what the village green is for! As if to emphasize the rural connection, 'first class' cricket teams in England, unlike teams in other sports, do not bear the names of towns but of counties (Essex and Yorkshire, for example).

Cricket is, therefore, the national English game in a symbolic sense. However, to some people cricket is more than just a symbol. The comparatively low attendance at top class matches does not give a true picture of the level of interest in the country. One game of cricket takes a terribly long time (i> Notes on cricket), which a lot of people simply don't have to spare. In fact there are millions of people in the country who don't just enjoy cricket but are passionate about it! These people spend up to thirty days each summer tuned to the live radio commentary of'Test' (= international) Matches. When they get the chance, they watch a bit of the live television coverage. Some people even do both at the same time (they turn the sound down on the television and listen to the radio). To these people, the commentators become well-loved figures. When, in 1994, one famous commentator died, the Prime Minister lamented that 'summers will never be the same again'. And if cricket fans are too busy to listen to the radio commentary, they can always phone a special number to be given the latest score!

 

Football

The full official name of'soccer' (as it is called in the USA and sometimes in Britain) is 'association football'. This distinguishes it from other kinds such as rugby football (almost always called simply 'rugby'), Gaelic football, Australian football and American football. However, most people in Britain call it simply 'football'. This is indicative of its dominant role. Everywhere in the country except south Wales, it is easily the most popular spectator sport, the most-played sport in the country's state schools and one of the most popular participatory sports for adults. In terms of numbers, football, not cricket, is the national sport, just as it is everywhere else in Europe.

British football has traditionally drawn its main following from the working class. In general, the intelligentsia ignored it. But in the last two decades of the twentieth century, it started to attract wider interest. The appearance of fanzines is an indication of this. Fanzines are magazines written in an informal but often highly intelli­gent and witty style, published by the fans of some of the clubs. One or two books of literary merit have been written which focus not only on players, teams and tactics but also on the wider social aspects of the game. Light-hearted football programmes have appeared on television which similarly give attention to 'off-the-field' matters. There has also been much academic interest. At the 1990 World Cup there was a joke among English fans that it was impossible to find a hotel room because they had all been taken by sociologists!

Many team sports in Britain, but especially football, tend to be men-only, 'tribal' affairs. In the USA, the whole family goes to watch the baseball. Similarly, the whole family goes along to cheer the Irish national football team. But in Britain, only a handful of children or women go to football matches. Perhaps this is why active support for local teams has had a tendency to become violent. During the 1970s and 1980s football hooliganism was a major problem in England. In the 1990s, however, it seemed to be on the decline. English fans visiting Europe are now no worse in their behaviour than the fans of many other countries.

Attendances at British club matches have been falling for several decades (> Spectator attendance at major sports). Many stadiums are very old, uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous. Accidents at profes­sional football matches led to the decision to turn the grounds of first division and premiership clubs into 'all-seater' stadiums. Fans can no longer stand, jump, shout and sway on the cheap 'terraces' behind the goals (there have been emotional farewells at many grounds to this traditional 'way of life'). It is assumed that being seated makes fans more well-behaved. It remains to be seen whether this develop­ment will turn football matches into events for the whole family.

196 21 Sport and competition

> Notes on rugby • Similar to American football in the ball it uses (egg-shaped) and its aim (to carry the ball over the opposing team's line). But very different in details - most notably, you cannot interfere with a player who does not have the ball. Also different in that, like all British sports, there are no 'time-outs' and players do not wear body armour. • Fifteen players per team in rugby union and thirteen in rugby league. • Playing time is eighty minutes. • Rugby union is played at top level in the British Isles, France, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. Also to a high level in North America, Argentina, Romania and some Pacific islands. Can be considered the 'national sport' of Wales, New Zealand, Fiji, Western Samoa and Tonga, and of South African whites. The teams most frequently regarded as the best are from the southern hemisphere. • Rugby league is played at top level in Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Rugby There are two versions of this fast and aggressive ball game: rugby union and rugby league. They are so similar that somebody who is good at one of them can quickly learn to become good at the other. The real difference between them is a matter of social history. Rugby union is the older of the two. In the nineteenth century it was enthusi­astically taken up by most of Britain's public schools. Rugby league split off from rugby union at the end of the century. Although it has now spread to many of the same places in the world where rugby union is played (> Notes on rugby), its traditional home is among the working class of the north of England, where it was a way for miners and factory workers to make a little bit of extra money from their sporting talents. Unlike rugby union, it has always been a profes­sional sport. Because of these social origins, rugby league in Britain is seen as a working class sport, while rugby union is mainly for the middle classes. Except in south Wales. There, rugby union is a sport for all classes, and more popular than football. In Wales, the phrase 'interna­tional day' means only one thing - that the national rugby team are playing. In the 1970s and 1980s some of the best Welsh players were persuaded to 'change codes'. They were 'bought' by one of the big rugby league clubs, where they could make a lot of money. Whenever this happened it was seen as a national disaster among the Welsh. Rugby union has had some success in recent years in selling itself to a wider audience. As a result, just as football has become less

 

Animals in sport 197

exclusively working class in character, rugby union has become less exclusively middle class. In 1995 it finally abandoned amateurism. In fact, the amateur status of top rugby union players had already become meaningless. They didn't get paid a salary or fee for playing, but they received large 'expenses' as well as various publicity con­tracts and paid speaking engagements. Animals in sport Traditionally, the favourite sports of the British upper class are hunting, shooting and fishing. The most widespread form of hunting is foxhunting — indeed, that is what the word 'hunting' usually means in Britain (> Foxhunting). This is a popular pastime among some members of the higher social classes and a few people from lower social classes, who often see their participation as a mark of newly won status. Killing birds with guns is known as 'shooting' in Britain. It is a minority pastime confined largely to the higher social classes; there are more than three times as many licensed guns for this purpose in France as there are in Britain. The birds which people try to shoot (such as grouse) may only be shot during certain specified times of the year. The upper classes often organize 'shooting parties' during the 'season'. The only kind of hunting which is associated with the working class is hare-coursing, in which greyhound dogs chase hares. However, because the vast majority of people in Britain are urban dwellers, this too is a minority activity. The one kind of'hunting' which is popular among all social classes is fishing. In fact, this is the most popular participatory sport of all in Britain. Between four and five million people go fishing regularly. When fishing is done competitively, it is called 'angling'. Apart from being hunted, another way in which animals are used in sport is when they race. Horse-racing is a long-established and popular sport in Britain, both 'flat racing' and 'national hunt' racing (where there are jumps for the horses), sometimes known as 'steeple­chase'. The former became known as 'the sport of kings' in the seventeenth century, and modern British royalty has close connec­tions with sport involving horses. Some members of the royal family own racehorses and attend certain annual race meetings (Ascot, for example); some are also active participants in the sports of polo and show-jumping (both of which involve riding a horse). The chief attraction of horse-racing for most people is the oppor­tunity it provides for gambling (see below). Greyhound racing, although declining, is still popular for the same reason. In this sport, the dogs chase a mechanical hare round a racetrack. It is easier to organize than horse-racing and 'the dogs' has the reputation of being the ' poor man s racing'.

> Foxhunting Foxhunting works like this. A group of people on horses, dressed in eighteenth century riding clothes, ride around with a pack of dogs. When the dogs pick up the scent of a fox, somebody blows a horn and then dogs, horses and riders all chase the fox. Often the fox gets away, but if not, the dogs get to it before the hunters and tear it to pieces. As you might guess in a country of animal-lovers, where most people have little experience of the harsher realit­ies of nature, foxhunting is strongly opposed by some people. The League Against Cruel Sports wants it made illegal and the campaign has been steadily intensifying. There are sometimes violent encounters between foxhunters and protestors (whom the hunters call 'saboteurs').

 

198 21 Sport and competition

> Rounders This sport is rather similar to Amer­ican baseball, but it certainly does not have the same image. It has a long history in England as some­thing that people (young and old, male and female) can play together at village fetes. It is often seen as not being a proper 'sport'. However, despite this image, it has recently become the second most popular sport for state schools in Britain. More traditional sports such as cricket and rugby are being abandoned in favour of rounders, which is much easier to organize. Rounders requires less special equipment, less money and boys and girls can play it together. It also takes up less time. It is especially attractive for state schools with little money and time to spare. More than a quarter of all state-school sports fields are now used for rounders. Only football, which is played on nearly half of all state-school fields, is more popular. > A nation of gamblers In 1993 a total of £ 12.7 billion was wagered by the British - that's £ 289 for every adult in the country. £ 9,.5 billion was won. The government took just over £ i billion in taxes. The rest was kept by the bookmakers. About half of all the money bet in 1993 was on horses or greyhounds. 74% of all adults gambled at least once during the year. At least once every two weeks: • 39% did the football pools; • 20% played on gaming and fruit machines; •18% played bingo; •14% put money on the horses. In Britain in 1993, there was one betting shop for every 3,000 adults. There were also: * 120 casinos; * 120,000 fruitmachines; * 1,000 bingo clubs; *1,000 lotteries; *59 racetracks; *37 greyhound stadiums.

Other sports Almost every sport which exists is played in Britain. As well as the sports already mentioned, hockey (mostly on a field but also on ice) is quite popular, and both basketball (for men) and netball (for women) are growing in popularity. So too is the ancient game of rounders (> Rounders). The British have a preference for team games. Individual sports such as athletics, cycling, gymnastics and swimming have comparat­ively small followings. Large numbers of people become interested in them only when British competitors do well in international events. The more popular individual sports are those in which social­izing is an important aspect (such as tennis, golf, sailing and snooker). It is notable in this context that, apart from international competitions, the only athletics event which generates a lot of enthu­siasm is the annual London Marathon. Most of the tens of thousands of participants in this race are 'fun runners' who are merely trying to complete it, sometimes in outrageous costumes, and so collect money for charity. There seem to be two main exceptions to this tendency to prefer team games. One is boxing, where some of the attraction lies in the opportunity for gambling. But while boxing is declining in popular­ity, the other exception, motor sports, is becoming more popular. Gambling Even if they are not taking part or watching, British people like to be involved in sport. They can do this by placing bets on future results. Gambling is widespread throughout all social classes. It is so basic to sport that the word 'sportsman' used to be a synonym for 'gambler'. When, in 1993, the starting procedure for the Grand National did not work properly, so that the race could not take place, it was widely regarded as a national disaster. The £70 million which had been gambled on the result (that's more than a pound for each man, woman and child in the country!) all had to be given back. Every year, billions of pounds are bet on horse races. So well-known is this activity that everybody in the country, even those with no interest in horse-racing, would understand the meaning of a ques­tion such as 'who won the 2.30 at Chester?' (Which horse won the race that was scheduled to take place at half past two today at the Chester racecourse? The questioner probably wants to know because he or she has gambled some money on the result.) The central role of horse-racing in gambling is also shown by one of the names used to denote companies and individuals whose business it is to take bets. Although these are generally known as 'bookmakers', they some­times call themselves 'turf accountants' ('turf is a word for ground where grass grows).

 

Lramblmg 199

> The sporting calendar

This chart shows the seasons for Britain's most popular spectator sports and some of the most important sporting events which take place every year. There are other, less regular, events which can be very important and other annual events in particular sports which are more important for followers of those sports. However, these are the ones that are well-known to the general public.

200 21 Sport and competition

Apart from the horses and the dogs, the most popular form of gambling connected with sports is the football pools. Every week, more than ten million people stake a small sum on the results of Saturday's professional matches. Another popular type of gambling, sterotypically for middle-aged working class women, is bingo.

Nonconformist religious groups (see chapter 13) traditionally frown upon gambling and their disapproval has had some influence. Perhaps this is why Britain did not have a national lottery until 1994. But if people want to gamble, then they will. For instance, before the national lottery started, the British gambled £ 250,000 on which company would be given the licence to run it! The country's big bookmakers are willing to offer odds on almost anything at all if asked. Who will be the next Labour party leader? Will it rain during the Wimbledon tennis tournament? Will it snow on Christmas Day? All of these offer opportunities for ‘a flutter'.

 

QUESTIONS

1 The manager of Liverpool Football Club during the 1970s once said: 'Football is not a matter of life and death to me - it's more important than that!' Do you think his comment is typical of the British attitude to sport (the traditional one, the modern one, both or neither)?

2 Cricket's great drawback is that it cannot be played during or immediately after rain because the grass is too wet. In the early 1990s it was suggested that first-class cricket should be played on plastic surfaces so that play could begin again as soon as the rain had stopped. English cricket enthusiasts were horrified by this suggestion. One member of the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club, the club which partly controls the sport in England) commented, "The man must have been drunk when he thought of it'. How do you explain this extreme reaction?

 

3 In 1993 Roddy Doyle, a winner of the literary Booker Prize (see chapter 22) made regular appearances on a television football pro­gramme. In terms of the history of football in Britain, how was this significant? Are the soci­ological associations of football in your country different from those in Britain?

4 For about three months each year, the British spend millions of pounds betting on the results of Australian football - a sport which the vast majority have no interest in (and no under­standing of)! Why do you think they do this? What does it tell us about British attitudes to sport and gambling? Are the chief forms of gambling in Britain the same as those in your country?

 

SUGGESTIONS

• Copies of football club fanzines can be bought from Sports Pages, CaxtonWalk, 94-96 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0JG. There is a general football fanzine called When Saturday Comes which is available from the same address or from 4th Floor, 2 Pear Tree Court, London EC1R 0DS. This includes details of most of the individual club fanzines available.

The arts

> What are'the arts'? The arts is an 'umbrella' term for liter­ature, music, painting, sculpture, crafts, theatre, opera, ballet, film etc. It usually implies seriousness, so that particular examples of these activities which are regarded as 'light' may be referred to simply as 'entertainment' instead. Art, or fine arts, is often used to refer to those arts which use space, but not time, for their appreciation (such as painting and sculpture). This, for example, is what is covered by the subject 'art' in schools. The word artist can sometimes refer to a person working in the fine arts, and sometimes to a person working in any field of the arts. In this chapter, it is used in this latter sense.

> What is'culture'? The word culture has two meanings. In this book, it is used in its anthro­pological sense to mean 'way of life'. But many people also use it as a synonym for 'the arts'. When it is used this way in this chapter, it has inverted commas around it.

The arts in society Interest in the arts in Britain used to be largely confined to a small elite. Compared with fifty years ago, far more people today read books, visit art galleries, go to the theatre and attend concerts. Nevertheless, the fact remains that most British people prefer their sport, their television and videos (> Videos), and their other free-time activities to anything 'cultural'. The arts in Britain are met with a mixture of public apathy and private enthusiasm. Publicly, the arts are accepted and tolerated but not actively encouraged. As a proportion of its total expenditure, government financial support for the arts is one of the lowest of any western country. During the 1980os it was the lowest of all. One of the principles of Thatcherism was that the arts should be driven by 'market forces'. The government reduced the money it gave to the Arts Council, the organization which allocates funds to projects in the arts. It was politically acceptable to do this because of the wide­spread view that 'culture* is of interest to a small section of the rich only. Therefore, the government's action was seen as democratic—it was refusing to subsidize the tastes of the wealthy. The counter­argument, that such an attitude is undemocratic because it makes 'culture' too expensive for the ordinary person, is not one that carries much weight in Britain. In schools, subjects such as art and music, though always available, tend to be pushed to the sidelines. In the national curriculum (see chapter 14), they are the only two 'core' subjects which pupils at the age of fourteen are allowed to drop completely. In addition, the arts are not normally given a very high level of publicity. Television programmes on 'cultural' subjects are usually shown late at night. Each summer, many high-quality arts festivals take place around the country (t> Annual arts festivals), but the vast majority of people do not even know of their existence. London has some of the finest collections of painting and sculpture in the world, but tourist brochures give little space to this aspect of the city. Except for the most famous, artists themselves have comparatively little public recognition. Some British artists have international reputa­tions, and yet most people in Britain don't even know their names.

 

202 22 The arts

> Videos Every year, more than £ i billion •worth of videos are sold or rented in Britain. More than 60% of all households in the country own a video cassette recorder. Every year, these households hire an average of about twenty-five videos each and buy an average of about five videos each. Here is a graph showing the types of video that people watched in 1993.

It is very rare, for example, for any British artist to use his or her fame in the arts as a springboard onto the political stage. If you were to ask the average person to name some famous painters, composers, opera singers and ballet dancers, you would probably be given very few British names - or even none at all. It is almost as if the British are keen to present themselves as a nation of philistines. And yet, hundreds of thousands of people are enthusiastically involved in one or other of the arts, but (in typically British fashion) with a more-or-less amateur or part-time status. For example, every town in the country has at least one 'amateur dra­matics' society, which regularly gives performances and charges no more than enough to cover its costs. All over the country, thousands of people learn handicrafts (such as pottery) in their free time, and sometimes sell their work in local craft shops. Similarly, there are thousands of musicians of every kind, performing around the country for very little money and making their own recordings in very difficult circumstances. Some amateur British choirs, such as the Bach Choir of London and King's College Chapel Choir in Cam­bridge, are well-known throughout the world. The characteristics of British arts and letters If there is one characteristic of British work in the arts that seems to stand out, it is its lack of identification with wider intellectual trends. It is not usually ideologically committed, nor associated with particu­lar political movements. Playwrights and directors, for instance, can be left-wing in their political outlook, but the plays which they produce rarely convey a straightforward political message. The same is largely true of British novelists and poets. Their writing is typically naturalistic and is not connected with particular intellectual move­ments. They tend to be individualistic, exploring emotions rather

 

Theatre and cinema 203

than ideas, the personal rather than the political. Whatever the critics say, it is quite common for British playwrights and novelists to claim that they just record 'what they see' and that they do not consciously intend any social or symbolic message. Similarly, British work in the arts also tends to be individualistic within its own field. That is, artists do not usually consider themselves to belong to this or that 'move­ment’. In any field of the arts, even those in which British artists have strong international reputations, it is difficult to identify a 'British school'. The style of the arts also tends to be conventional. The avant-garde exists, of course, but, with the possible exception of painting and sculpture, it is not through such work that British artists become famous. In the 1980s, Peter Brook was a highly successful theatre director. But when he occasionally directed avant-garde productions, he staged them in Paris! In these features of the work of British artists (lonely individualism expressing itself within conventional formats), it is perhaps possible to find an explanation for the apparent contradiction between, on the one hand, the low level of public support for the arts and, on the other hand, the high level of enthusiasm on the part of individuals. There appears to be a general assumption in Britain that artistic creation is a personal affair, not a social one, and that therefore the flowering of artistic talent cannot be engineered. Either it happens, or it doesn't. It is not something for which society should feel responsible. Theatre and cinema The theatre has always been very strong in Britain. Its centre is, of course, London, where successful plays can sometimes run without a break for many years (> They ran and ran!). But every large town in the country has its theatres. Even small towns often have 'repertory' theatres, where different plays are performed for short periods by the same group of professional actors (a repertory company). It seems that the conventional format of the theatrical play gives the undemonstrative British people a safe opportunity to look behind the mask of accepted social behaviour. The country's most successful and respected playwrights are usually those who explore the darker side of the personality and of personal relationships (albeit often through comedy). British theatre has such a fine acting tradition that Hollywood is forever raiding its talent for people to star in films. British television does the same thing. Moreover, Broadway, when looking for its next blockbuster musical, pays close attention to London productions. In short, British theatre is much admired. As a consequence, it is some­thing that British actors are proud of. Many of the most well-known television actors, though they might make most of their money in this latter medium, continue to see themselves as first and foremost theatre actors.

> Annual arts festivals There are many festivals throughout Britain during the year, but these are perhaps the most well-known. Aldeburgh June. East Anglia. Classical music. Relatively informal atmosphere. Edinburgh International Festival August. All the performing arts, including avant-garde. More than ten different performances every day around the city. World famous. The Proms July-September. London. Classical music. 'Proms' is short for 'prom­enades', so-called because most of the seats are taken out of the Albert Hall, where the concerts take place, and the audience stands or walks around instead. Glyndebourne All summer. In the grounds of a large country house in Sussex. Opera. Royal National Eisteddfod July. Wales. Music, poetry and dance from many different countries. Mostly in the form of competitions, with special categories for Welsh performing arts. Glastonbury and Reading Probably the two most well-established rock music festivals. The Bradford andCambridge festivals emphasize folk music.

> They ran and ran! In the second half of the twentieth century, the two longest-running theatrical productions have been The Mousetrap (from a novel by Agatha Christie) and the comedy No Sex Please, We're British. Both played con­tinuously for more than fifteen years.

 

204 22 The arts

> British films Here are some of the most successful and/or respected British films of the 1980s and 1990s: Chariots of Fire (1981) Gregory's Girl (1981) Gandhi(1982) A Letter to Brezhnev (1985) My Beautiful Launderette (1985) A Room with a View (1985) A Fish Called Wanda (1988) Shirley Valentine (1989) Henry V (1989) Howard's End (1992) The Crying Game (1992) Much Ado About Nothing (1993) Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) The Full Monty (1997) Netting Hill (1999)

> Some well-known arts venues The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford is the home of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). All the other venues mentioned here are in London. Theatres include the Old Vie (the home of the National Theatre Company), the Mermaid, the Royal Court and the Barbican (where the RSC also performs). For opera and ballet, there is the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden and the Coliseum, where the Sadler's Wells Company performs. The South Bank area has several concert halls (notably the Royal Festival Hall) and the National Theatre.

In contrast, the cinema in Britain is often regarded as not quite part of 'the arts' at all - it is simply entertainment. Partly for this reason, Britain is unique among the large European countries in giving almost no financial help to its film industry. Therefore, although cinema-going is a regular habit for a much larger number of people than is theatre-going, British film directors often have to go to Hollywood because the resources they need are not available in Britain. As a result, comparatively few films of quality are made in the country. This is not because expertise in film making does not exist. It does. American productions often use studios and technical facilities in Britain. Moreover, some of the films which Britain does manage to make become highly respected around the world (t> British films). But even these films often make a financial loss. Music Classical music in Britain is a minority interest. Few classical musi­cians, whether British or foreign, become well known to the general public. When they do, it is usually because of circumstances which have nothing to do with their music. For example, the Italian tenor Pavarotti became famous in the country when an aria sung by him was used by the BBC to introduce its 1990 football World Cup coverage. Despite this low profile, thousands of British people are dedicated musicians and many public libraries have a well-stocked music section. Several British orchestras, soloists, singers, choirs, opera companies and ballet companies, and also certain annual musical events, have international reputations. In the 1960s, British artists had a great influence on the develop­ment of music in the modern, or 'pop' idiom. The Beatles and other British groups were responsible for several innovations which were then adopted by popular musicians in the USA and the rest of the world. These included the writing of words and music by the per­formers themselves, and more active audience participation. The words of their songs also helped to liberate the pop idiom from its

 

Literature 205

former limitation to the topics of love and teenage affection. Other British artists in groups such as Pink Floyd and Cream played a major part in making the musical structure of pop music similarly more sophisticated. Since the 1960s, popular music in Britain has been an enormous and profitable industry. The Beatles were awarded the honour (see chapter 7) of MBE (Member of the British Empire) for their services to British exports. Within Britain the total sales of the various kinds of musical recording are more than 200 million every year - and the vast majority of them are of popular music. Many worldwide trends have come out of Britain and British 'pop' artists have been active in attempting to cross the boundaries between popular music, folk music and classical music. Literature Although the British are comparatively uninterested in formal educa­tion, and although they watch a lot of television, they are nonetheless enthusiastic readers. Many people in the literary world say that British literature lost its way at the end of the twentieth century The last British author to win the Nobel Prize for literature was William Golding, in 1983. Many others disagree with this opinion. But what is not in doubt is that a lot of the exciting new literature written in English and pub­lished in Britain in recent years has been written by people from outside Britain. The Booker Prize is the most important prize in Britain for a work of fiction. Starting with Salman Rushdie in 1981, nine of its next fourteen winners were writers from former British colonies such as Canada, India, Ireland and Nigeria. Although many of the best 'serious' British writers manage to be popular as well as profound, the vast majority of the books that are read in Britain could not be classified as 'serious' literature. Britain is the home of what might be called 'middlebrow' literature. (That is, mid-way between serious, or 'highbrow' literature and popular, or 'pulp' fiction.) For example, the distinctly British genre of detective fiction (the work of writers like Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell) is regarded as entertainment rather than literature — but it is entertain­ment for intelligent readers. There are many British authors, mostly female (for example, Norah Lofts and Rummer Godden), who write novels which are sometimes classified as 'romances' but which are actually deeper and more serious than that term often implies. They are neither popular 'blockbusters' nor the sort of books which are reviewed in the serious literary press. And yet they continue to be read, year after year after year, by hundreds of thousands of people. In 1993 more than half of the hundred most-borrowed books from Britain's public libraries were romantic novels. Many were of the middlebrow type. The rest were more simplistic stories about romance (she is young and pretty, he is tall, dark and handsome

> The arts and television There are now only a quarter of the number of cinema seats in Britain as there were in 1965. This decline is generally assumed to be the result of the popularity of television. In fact, television has taken an increasingly important supporting role in the arts. The making of some high-quality British films has only been possible because of the financial help of Channel 4. The BBC regu­larly commissions new works of music for the proms. Television drama and comedy help to keep hundreds of actors in work. Moreover, television can actually help to promote other art forms. When a book is dramatized on tele­vision, its sales often rocket. The most spectacular example of this occurred in the late 1960s. The Forsyte Sago, a series of novels by John Gals­worthy, had been out of print for several decades. When an adaptation. was shown on the BBC, half a million copies of the books were sold!

> Mountains of books! For the really scholarly reader, the British Library (a department of the British Museum) has more than 10 million volumes, occupying 320 kilometres of shelf space. At present, the library is obliged to house a copy of every book published in the country. This obligation, however, will probably disappear in the future. It is just too difficult to organize. By 1993, its collection was expanding at the rate of 150 centi­metres of books per hour. It possesses more than 6,000 different editions of Shakespeare's plays and more than 100 different editions of most novels by Charles Dickens. The result of all this is that it can take up to two days to find a particular book!

 

206 22 The arts

> A child could do that! British people often complain about modem abstract painting by saying, 'It doesn't look very special to me. A child of four could do that’. Well, in 1993 a child of four did do it. One of the paintings offered to the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts for its annual exhibition was a work called Rhythm of the Trees. The Acad­emy's experts liked it and included it in the exhibition. Only later did they discover that its creator, Carly Johnson, was four years old (the title was her grandfather's idea). The news of this discovery was greatly enjoyed by the whole of Britain. Everybody loves it when experts are made to look like fools, especially when they are experts about something that most people don't understand. It did not occur to many people to think that perhaps a child genius had been discovered. Somebody else must have liked Carly's painting too - it sold for £295.

with a very firm jaw; whatever happens during the story, they end up in each other's arms - forever). The British publisher which sells more books than any other is Mills & Boon, whose books are exclus­ively of this type. It is more than 200 years since poetry stopped being the normal mode of literary self-expression. And yet, poetry at the end of the twentieth century is surprisingly, and increasingly, popular in Britain. Books of poetry sell in comparatively large numbers. Their sales are not nearly as large as sales of novels, but they are large enough for a few small publishers to survive entirely on publishing poetry. Many poets are asked to do readings of their work on radio and at arts festivals. Many of these poets are not academics and their writing is accessible to non-specialists. Perhaps the 'pop' idiom and the easy availability of sound recording have made more people comfortable with spoken verse then they were fifty years ago. The fine arts Painting and sculpture are not as widely popular as music is in Britain. There is a general feeling that you have to be a specialist to appreciate them, especially if they are contemporary. Small private art galleries, where people might look at paintings with a view to buying them, are rare. Nevertheless, London is one of the main centres of the international collector's world. The two major auction houses of Sotheby's and Christie's are world-famous. Until the 1980s, the country's major museums and galleries charged nothing for admission. Most of them now do so, although sometimes payment is voluntary. This has caused a lot of complaint that a great tradition of free education has been lost.

 

Questions and suggestions 207

Museums and art galleries The major museums in London are the British Museum (the national collection of antiquities), the Vic­toria and Albert Museum, which houses the world's largest display of the decorative arts, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. There are numerous other small, specialist museums in London and throughout the rest of the country, usually with an emphasis on history and British 'heritage' There has been a move to make museums come alive with appro­priate sounds and even smells. Art galleries in London which house permanent collections include the National Gallery, the

adjoining National Portrait Gallery, and theTate Britain, which is the nation's gallery of British art from 1500 to the present day. These galleries also hold special temporary exhibitions. The Hayward Gallery and the Royal Academy put on a series of shows, some of which are extremely popular. The Royal Academy is famous for its annual Summer Exhibition. Outside London there is the Burrell Collection near Glasgow and the Tate Galleries in Liverpool and St Ives. Most major towns and cities have their own museums and art galleries.

 

 

QUESTIONS

1 How does the British government justify its policy of low spending on the arts? Does the government in your country subsidize the arts and encourage artistic endeavor in schools and elsewhere?

2 What evidence can you find in this chapter to support the view that the arts are of interest to a small minority of British people only? What evidence can you find to support the opposite view - that interest in the arts is widespread? How is it that there can be an element of truth in both of these opinions?

 

3 Which areas of the arts seem to be particularly appreciated and valued in Britain and which seem to be ignored or under-valued? In what ways does the appreciation of the different aspects of the arts vary in your country?

4 The British are very conscious of the distinction between high art or 'culture' and light 'enter­tainment'. In what area of the arts have they succeeded in establishing a widely accepted and approved compromise which appeals to a broad range of people from different social back­grounds and with varying levels of education?

 

SUGGESTIONS

• Most of the major museums publish guides to their collections, pointing out their most highly-prized exhibits, which are often illustrated in the guides.

• Any biography of any of the major British theatrical figures of this century, such as Sir Laurence Olivier (there is one published by Fontana, written by Donald Spoto) would reveal a lot about the history of the theatre in Britain and about British theatre in general.

Holidays and special occasions

 

Britain is a country governed by routine. It has fewer public holidays than any other country in Europe and fewer than North America. (Northern Ireland has two extra ones, however). Even New Year's Day was not an official public holiday in England and Wales until quite recently (but so many people gave themselves a holiday anyway that it was thought it might as well become official!). There are almost no semi-official holidays either. Most official holidays occur either just before or just after a weekend, so that the practice of making a 'bridge' is almost unknown. Moreover, there are no tradi­tional extra local holidays in particular places. Although the origin of the word 'holiday' is 'holy day', not all public holidays (usually known as 'bank holidays') are connected with religious celebrations.

The British also seem to do comparatively badly with regard to annual holidays. These are not as long as they are in many other countries. Although the average employee gets four weeks' paid holiday a year, in no town or city in the country would a visitor ever get the impression that the place had 'shut down' for the summer break. (In fact, about 40% of the population do not go away any­where for their holidays.)

Traditional seaside holidays

The British upper class started the fashion for seaside holidays in the late eighteenth century. The middle classes soon followed them and

when they were given the opportunity (around the beginning of the twentieth century), so did the working classes. It soon became normal for families to spend a week or two every year at one of the seaside resort towns which sprang up to cater for this new mass market. The most well-known of these are close to the larger towns and cities (> Holiday resorts in England).

These seaside towns quickly developed certain characteristics that are now regarded as typical of the 'traditional' English holiday resort. They have some hotels where richer people stay, but most families stay at boarding houses. These are small family businesses, offering either 'bed and breakfast' or, more rarely, 'full board' (meaning that all meals are provided). Some streets in seaside resorts are full of nothing but boarding houses. The food in these, and in local restaur­ants, is cheap and conventional with an emphasis on fish and chips.

209 > Rock There is one kind of sweet associated with holiday resorts. This is 'rock', a hard thick stick of sugar. Each resort has the letters of its name appearing throughout the stick, so that one hears of'Brighton Rock', 'Blackpool Rock' and so on.

Stereotypically, daytime entertainment in sunny weather centres around the beach, where the children make sandcastles, buy ice-creams and sometimes go for donkey rides. Older adults often do not bother to go swimming. They are happy just to sit in their deck chairs and occasionally go for a paddle with their skirts or trouser-legs hitched up. The water is always cold and, despite efforts to clean it up, sometimes very dirty. But for adults who swim, some resorts have wooden huts on or near the beach, known as 'beach cabins', 'beach huts' or 'bathing huts', in which people can change into their swimming costumes. Swimming and sunbathing without any cloth­ing is rare. All resorts have various other kinds of attraction, including more-or-less permanent funfairs. For the evenings, and when it is raining, there are amusement arcades, bingo halls, dance halls, discos, theatres, bowling alleys and so on, many of these situated on the pier. This unique British architec­tural structure is a platform extending out into the sea. The large resorts have decorations which light up at night. The 'Blackpool illuminations', for example, are famous. Another traditional holiday destination, which was very popular in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, is the holiday camp, where visitors stay in chalets in self-contained villages with all food and entertainment organized for them. Butlin's and Pontin's, the compan­ies which own most of these, are well-known names in Britain. The enforced good-humour, strict meal-times and events such as 'knobbly knees' competitions and beauty contests that were charac­teristic of these camps have now given way to a more relaxed atmosphere.

 

23 Holidays and special occasions

> Seaside postcards Humorous postcards like the one below can still be bought at seaside resorts. The joke always has an element of sexual innuendo in it. The traditional seaside holiday in the first half of the twentieth century represented a relaxing of Victorian restrictions on overt reference to sex. These days, of course, no such restrictions exist, so these postcards are mainly enjoyed in a spirit of nostalgia for the past.

Modern holidays Both of the traditional types of holiday have become less popular in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The increase in car owner­ship has encouraged many people to take caravan holidays. But the greatest cause of the decline of the traditional holiday is foreign tourism. Before the 1960s, only the rich took holidays abroad. By 1971, the British were taking 7 million foreign holidays and by 1987, 20 million. These days, millions of British people take their cars across the channel every year and nearly half of all the nights spent on holidays away from home are spent abroad. Most foreign holidays are package holidays, in which transport and accommodation are booked and paid for through a travel agent. These holidays are often booked a long time in advance. In the middle of winter the television companies run programmes which give information about the packages being offered. People need cheering up at this time of the year! In many British homes it has become traditional to get the holiday brochures out and start talking about where to go in the summer on Boxing Day (> Calendar of special occasions). Spain is by far the most popular package-holiday destination. Half of all the holidays taken within Britain are now for three days or less. Every bank-holiday weekend there are long traffic jams along the routes to the most popular holiday areas. The traditional seaside resorts have survived by adjusting themselves to this trend. (Only the rich have second houses or cottages in the countryside to which they can escape at weekends.) But there are also many other types of holiday. Hiking in the country and sleeping at youth hostels has long been popular (see chapter 5) and so, among an enthusiastic minority, has pot-holing (the exploration of underground caves). There are also a wide range of 'activity' holidays available, giving full expres­sion to British individualism. You can, for example, take part in a 'murder weekend', and find yourself living out the plot of detective story. An increasing number of people now go on 'working' holidays, during which they might help to repair an ancient stone wall or take part in an archaeological dig. This is an echo of another traditional type of'holiday' - fruit picking. It used to be the habit of poor people from the east end of London, for example, to go to Kent at the end of the summer to help with the hop harvest (hops are used for making beer).

 

Christmas and New Year 211

Christmas and New Year

Christmas is the one occasion in modern Britain when a large number of customs are enthusiastically observed by most ordinary people within the family. The slow decrease in participation in organized religion (see chapter 13), and the fact that Christmas in modern times is as much a secular feast as a religious one, has had little effect on these traditions. Even people who consider themselves to be anti-religious quite happily wish each other a 'Happy Christmas' or a

'Merry Christmas'. They do not (as in some other countries) self­consciously wish each other a 'Happy New Year' instead.

Indeed, the 'commercialization' of Christmas has itself become part of tradition. Every November in Oxford Street (one of the main shopping streets in the centre of London), a famous personality cere­moniously switches on the 'Christmas lights' (decorations) thus

'officially' marking the start of the period of frantic Christmas shop­ping. And it certainly is frantic. Between that time and the middle of January, most shops do nearly half of their total business for the year (most have 'sales' in early January when prices are reduced). Most people buy presents for the other members of their household and also for other relatives, especially children. Some people also buy presents for their close friends. And to a wider circle of friends and relatives, and sometimes also to working associates and neighbours, they send Christmas cards (i> Christmas cards). Some people even send such greetings to people whom they have not seen for many years, often using the excuse of this tradition to include a letter passing on the year's news.

^ Christmas cards Many people send cards at Christmas time depicting some aspect of the birth of Christ. Most people, however, do not. Christmas is an opportunity for the British to indulge their dreams about a van­ished rural past. You can see this on many typical Christmas cards. They often show scenes from either the nineteenth or eighteenth centuries and may be set in the countryside, very frequently covered with snow. (In fact, snow at Christmas is rare in most parts of Britain).

212 23 Holidays and special occasions

> The Christmas party In thousands of companies through­out Britain, the last working afternoon before Christmas is the time of the annual office party, at which a lot of alcohol is often con­sumed. Sexual feelings, hidden throughout the year, come into the open. This is a problem for company bosses. By law, an employer is responsible for sexual harassment at work and may have to pay as much as £ 10,000 in compensation. The peak time for complaints of sexual harassment is in January - just after the annual office party. Many employers now insure themselves against claims for compensation at this time.

> Christmas dinner The traditional meal consists of stuffed roast turkey with roast pota­toes and some other vegetable (often Brussel sprouts). Other foods asso­ciated with Christmas are Christmas pudding, an extremely heavy sweet dish made of dried fruits (it is tradi­tional to pour brandy over it and then set it alight) and Christmas cake, an equally heavy fruit cake, with hard white icing on top.

People also buy Christmas trees (a tradition imported from Germany in the nineteenth century). Almost every household has a tree decorated in a different way (in many cases, with coloured lights). Most people also put up other decorations around the house. Exactly what these are varies a great deal, but certain symbols of Christmas, such as bits of the holly and mistletoe plants, are very common, and the Christmas cards which the household has received are usually displayed. A 'crib', which is a model depicting the birth of Christ, also sometimes forms part of the Christmas decorations. In December, as Christmas gets closer, carols (usually, but not always, with a religious theme) are sung in churches and schools, often at special concerts, and also, though less often than in the past, by groups of people who go from house to house collecting money for charitable causes. The role of Father Christmas (or Santa Claus) and the customs associated with the giving of gifts vary from family to family. Most households with children tell them that Father Christmas comes down the chimney on the night of Christmas Eve (even though most houses no longer have a working chimney!). Many children lay out a Christmas stocking at the foot of their beds, which they expect to see filled when they wake up on Christmas morning. Most families put wrapped presents around or on the Christmas tree and these are opened at some time on Christmas Day. Other activities on Christmas Day may include the eating of Christmas dinner (> Christmas dinner) and listening to the Queen's Christmas message. This ten-minute television broadcast is normally the only time in the year when the monarch speaks directly to 'her' people on television. (When, in 1993, a national newspaper pub­lished the text other speech a few days beforehand, it was a national scandal.) The general feeling is that Christmas is a time for families. Many of the gatherings in houses on Christmas Day and Boxing Day consist of extended families (more than just parents and children). For many families, Christmas is the only time that they are all together (so it is often a time of conflict rather than harmony, in fact). Parties on New Year's Eve, on the other hand, are usually for friends. Most people attend a gathering at this time and 'see in' the new year with a group of other people, often drinking a large amount of alcohol as they do so. In London, many go to the traditional celebration in Trafalgar Square (where there is an enormous Christmas tree which is an annual gift from the people of Norway). In Scotland, where the Calvinists disapproved of parties and celeb­rations connected with religious occasions (such as Christmas), New Year, called Hogmanay, is given particular importance - so much importance that, in Scotland only, 2 January (as well as New Year's Day) is also a public holiday (so that people have two days to recover from their New Year's Eve parties instead of just one!). Some British New Year customs, such as the singing of the song Auld Long Syne,

 

Other notable annual occasions 213

originated in Scotland. Another, less common, one is the custom of 'first footing', in which the first person to visit a house in the new year is supposed to arrive with tokens of certain important items for survival (such as a lump of coal for the fire). As a well-known Christmas carol reminds people, there are twelve days of Christmas. In fact, most people go back to work and school soon after New Year. Nobody pays much attention to the feast of the epiphany on 6 January (the twelfth day of Christmas), except that this is traditionally the day on which Christmas decorations are taken down. Some people say it is bad luck to keep them up after this date. Other notable annual occasions Easter is far less important than Christmas to most people in Britain. Although it involves a four-day 'weekend', there are very few customs and habits associated generally with it, other than the con­sumption of mountains of chocolate Easter eggs by children. Some people preserve the tradition of eating hot cross buns on Good Friday (> Calendar of special occasions). Quite a lot of people go away on holiday at this time. None of the other days of the year to which traditional customs are attached is a holiday, and not everybody takes part in these customs. In fact, many people in Britain live through occasions such as Shrove Tuesday, April Fools' Day or Hallowe'en (> Calendar of special occasions) without even knowing that they have happened. There is one other day which, although many people do not mark in any special way, is very difficult to ignore. This is 5 November, the day which celebrates a famous event in British history - the gunpowder plot. It is called Guy Fawkes' Day - or, more commonly, Bonfire Night. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, a group of Catholics planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament while King James I was in there. Before they could achieve this, one of them, Guy Fawkes, was caught in the cellars under Parliament with the gunpowder. He and his fellow-conspirators were all killed.

Panto The Christmas and New Year holiday seasons bring with them a popular theatrical tradition. This is pantomine (often shortened to 'panto'), staged in hundreds of theatres and specifically designed to appeal to children. It usually involves the acting out of a well-known folk tale with plenty of opportunity for audience participation. There are certain established con­ventions of panto. For example, the cast includes a 'principal boy' (the young hero), who is always played by a woman, and a 'dame' (an older female character), who is always played by a man. The continuing popularity of panto is assisted by the fact that these leading roles are today frequently taken by well-known personalities from the worlds of television or sport.

214 23 Holidays and special occasions