Howards End

Hidcote, Cotswolds

I thought, "Do I need to watch this? Because I've seen the film." But it turns out that the film is now 25 years old and the plot I remembered was actually the one for The Remains of the Day (there is a small cast overlap). But I suppose that is at least one step better than remembering it as Howards Way. In fact, it's pretty remarkable - I can't remember the plot of a film I see nowadays for longer than five minutes. I saw The Girl On The Train at the weekend, for example. It was about a girl on a train. She drank a lot. She got confused. And so did I.

So yes, it turned out I did need to watch Howards End, and I am glad that I did. But a shock similar to the realisation of how long ago the film was made was seeing Matthew McFadyean eligible to play the part of "stuffy old man", when I still like to think of him as "bright young thing". It's a bit like if Ewan McGregor was asked to play Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That hasn't actually happened yet (has it? Renton was still only a mildly craggy middle-aged man in T2, even if he did have a heart attack at the start (don't ask me the rest of the plot - it's been weeks)), but elsewhere Phillip Schofield is a white-haired man fronting This Morning without Gordon the Gopher, and Paul Nicholas and Wayne Sleep are presenting documentaries about retiring. It seems we've all moved on, people. Alas. I've aged, and so have they. (Shopping list item one - reading glasses.)

Another shock was how little of the plot takes place in Howards End itself. Mr Wilcox struggled with his property portfolio, inadvertently buying an estate in the wrong part of Shropshire, where there were "no grouse to shoot". He didn't seem sure what to do with any of his dwellings or which of them to live in, because there were just so many of them. He couldn't keep track and just let them all slowly decay. A bit like the landlords of the properties either side of us here in York. But then the point of this adaptation did rather seem to be its relevance to now - the class divides of wealth, opportunity and sexual attitudes; the gulf of achievements and expectations between genders; the rich decimating the lives of the poor with no heed of the consequences, like water running off a duck's back; the difficulty of climbing back on the ladder when society dictates that you slide off it; wandering about on top of a cliff edge looking longingly across to Europe.

The BBC had thrown in some racism for good measure (and Lord knows, there's still plenty of that around today) with servants and partners from ethnic minorities being regarded with a frown beyond the disapproval of all things German that the Schlegel family faced. But I loved the unconventionality of the Schlegels - the assertive sisters with their cosmopolitan tastes, wonderful dress sense and free opinions (which they were able to express, even if Mr Wilcox wasn't listening), and Tibby with his hypochondria, apprentice pipe smoking and eccentric academic foibles such as suddenly sitting down to learn Chinese. I am not sure if he set foot outside during the whole series.

It was all very subtle, with long scenes and gentle putdowns dismissing great ambitions. So subtle that I didn't even notice that the first Mrs Wilcox was terminally ill, or that Leonard and Helen were supposed to have had sex. The big dramatic climax - the reveal of the illegimate pregnancy, the beating with a sword, the bookcase end of poor Mr Bast - was over in a moment. Then we were back to a slow meadow, reminiscent of that wonderful scene between Lucy and George in A Room With A View where they kiss for the first time in the Tuscan hills (another, even older film). Only this time the love was between two sisters and a child, and for a man who finally understood what it is to honour a legacy, a dying wish, and who had accepted that you cannot act differently to the rules that you dictate to others. There was thunder rumbling in the distance.

There were many scenes in London. The Wilcox's London apartment was in a block on Kensington Gore opposite the Royal Albert Hall, through a window of which I once saw pornographic material being projected onto a giant screen during an interval at the Proms. I thought the soon-to-be-demolished Georgian terraces of Wickham Place were on that perpetual weekend film set of Lincolns Inn near Holborn but apparently they were in a square in trendy Clerkenwell.

Photo: Becky Buckley

This Howards End, with its gorgeous country garden reminiscent of the one in the opening photograph of this post, was a house near Godalming in Surrey. West Wycombe House in Buckinghamshire stood in for Oniton in Shropshire, but I can't comment on the National Trust's permissions for grouse-shooting. Aunt Juley's house and the cliffs looking out to Europe were above Studland Bay in Dorset. They all made England look far lovelier than the realities of 2017, where sadly the "remains of the day" are just too many of the attitudes in Howards End.

Dorset cliffs

Broadchurch

Yes, I know, we are three years behind the rest of you. Sorry. That's our Lovefilm subscription for you, and my fault for missing it on television in the first place. And by the time the Broadchurch discs finally landed on our doormat, I had accidentally found out whodunit from a careless comment by a television reviewer in the Guardian. (Spoiler alert next time, please!) So I was in two minds about whether I should bother watching it after all. But anyway, I did and here we are.

This is ITV's attempt at Scandi Noir. The music is almost copied and pasted in from its Danish forebears; it's too similar to be a coincidence. (Although they would probably prefer to use the word "influence".) We have no quick resolution but instead eight episodes to draw us in, befriend the community, and see the consequences of the tragic events unfold. We don't just get to know the police investigators and the victim's family, but also the wider world at large - the journalists, the vicar, the caravan park cleaner, the plumber's mate. We have to sit through a bunch of red herrings, as each episode focuses on a different suspect before the killer is finally revealed.

But it's not as good as The Killing or The Bridge. We are definitely on ITV rather than BBC4. Somehow detective musings don't work as well in a West Country burr as they do when full of Copenhagen phlegm. And the sun was shining all the way through the first episode, which seemed wrong. But as the story progressed, the rain set in. This was Dorset, after all.

Do all coppers have a brooding and complicated back story? Is this why everyone is so rude to them in television dramas - the police have become so ineffectual in their misery that they can no longer afford respect? Have some sympathy, Joe Public. Besides, even if you are a character on a TV show, shouldn't you be just a little bit scared of someone who has the power to chuck you in a cell if you don't play your cards right? Because being surly, dismissive or just plain unhelpful is definitely not playing your cards right, in my opinion.

And why does everyone have an instant alibi spring to mind? I can't remember what I did yesterday without checking my diary, but these potential suspects can immediately say where they were and what they were doing to the nearest second as soon as they are asked, even if we are talking about weeks before. Although in this particular case, as the body was dumped on the beach in the middle of the night and I don't have much nocturnal fun any more, I would have been 99.9% sure to have been in bed. Whether or not I'd have been asleep would have been in the hands of my five-year-old. And I bet she would be unable to confirm my alibi without growling at the police officer. (I wish she would stop doing that.)

Apparently, the writers of Broadchurch didn't tell the cast who the murderer was before they filmed the final episode. So every actor was going through the whole thing not knowing whether it was them. While this is kind of a good idea for the innocent parties, surely you have to tell the actual murderer? Otherwise how can an actor give an accurate performance if they don't know they have something to hide? As I knew from the start who it was, I watched their character closely from the get-go. And they always seemed a little too innocuous and complacent given the torment they were in at the end. It was too much of a personality transplant in the last hour of the series. But of course it always has to be the person you suspect the least, just like in the days of Agatha Christie.

Most of Broadchurch was filmed in West Bay on Dorset's Jurassic Coast, and we were there in August, despite not having seen Broadchurch at the time. It was a drizzly, grey day and we almost had the beach to ourselves. In the gloom, West Bay looked exactly like the sort of desolate community where a misfit murderer might lurk. It was rundown and sad. The sea was hidden from the car park by an enormous pile of gravel. Other than a quirky antiques-centre-slash-street-food-emporium, it was a melancholy collection of shabby hotels, chandlers and charity shops. The surprisingly snazzy Broadchurch police station was a property redevelopment on the quay that looked empty and out of keeping with the rest of the town.

It might have all looked rather more appealing in better weather. Indeed those cliffs in the sun on the first episode of Broadchurch looked absolutely stunning, despite having a dead boy at the foot of them. In the rain, they looked fit to crumble. Which of course they are.

She would not confirm my alibi

The site of the dead boy

The police station on the quay.

Jurassic Coast

Restoring Britain's Landmarks

Oh, Wednesday night with no more Bake-Off or Doctor Foster - see what you've done to me. I have to watch renovation programmes instead. Which is, like, literally watching paint dry.

This new series highlights the work of The Landmark Trust, who do up dilapidated buildings of one-time historical significance and then rent them out as holiday lets - at significant prices.

This week they were in Lyme Regis, Lancaster and Hougoumont. The latter because the Landmark Trust will travel as far as Belgium if a property on the site of the Battle of Waterloo is involved. They send over their furniture designer John, who is the sort of bloke that has a towel rail collection (because "You never know when someone might break one by putting a wet towel on it") and wanders around warehouses saying things like "Haven't we got a box of Pugin handles?" In Belgium, John gets cross with the excessive and ugly lighting his counterpart has installed. Said counterpart has a wonderful line in Gallic shrugs to respond to John's withering comments. "What blind man chose this paint colour?" Shrug. "I feel like I haven't been heard." Another shrug. Maybe that's because you insist on speaking English to him rather than French.

In Lancaster, they are restoring the gilded ceiling of the Music Room, and creating a marbled effect on the walls using beer and swan feather brushes. The painter's cheeks end up speckled in gold leaf. He plainly loves his job.

In Lyme Regis, they are working on Belmont, a "maritime villa" owned by Eleanor Coade from 1784 and lived in from 1968 by John Fowles, the author of The French Lieutenant's Woman. Eleanor Coade invented Coade stone, an artificial weatherproof stone used for various statues across London and for the embellishment of Regency properties. Coade ran a factory in Lambeth roughly on the site of St Thomas's Hospital by the Thames, opposite the future Houses of Parliament. It's extraordinary to learn about a successful business woman in the Georgian era.

Needless to say, Belmont is covered in Coade stone, like a great big advert for the family trade. And it is soon, after the demolition of an extension, restored to its former glory by the Landmark Trust. (Although not as soon as the television programme would have you believe, it transpires, once you delve into local newspaper articles online.) Now open for business, it's fully booked until 2017. But somehow I don't think they would welcome our five year old's sticky fingers.

Just as well, then, that I have a friend who lives eight miles away. We went to visit her this summer and spent a rainy day in Lyme Regis. It was sunny up on the hill in Devon where we were staying - perfect beach weather. But Lyme down in the bay in Dorset was drenched in soggy drizzle. It was full of depressed families having arguments, wistfully remembering the summers of yore, when it didn't tip it down for the whole of August. Not even the happy (I won't say clappy) Christians playing Duck, Duck, Goose and making custard pies on the beach could cheer the kids up.

Arguing families on the beach

Unaware of Eleanor Coade at the time, we resorted to following the footsteps of another famous Lyme lady, Mary Anning. She collected fossils, discovered the ichthyosaur and is the subject of Tracy Chevalier's novel Remarkable Creatures. There are two fossil museums in Lyme Regis, only one of which is officially recognised and only one of which contains Lego. But if you want to see bad plastic dinosaurs and mouldy taxidermy, by all means visit the other. Neither museum occupied our girl's attention for long, so soon it was back onto the Cobb to watch the crabby families crabbing and screaming for ice cream. Nonetheless, our daughter was inspired enough to write a story over lunch in a cafe, the only word of which she could spell correctly was "chips".

Fossil Museum

Another Fossil Museum 

Fossil beach

Walking The Cobb

Crabbing and crabby