It was another conflict meanwhile which informed Nicholas Hytner’s 2003 production at the National, where the parallels between Bush and Blair’s post 9/11 invasion of Iraq and Adrian Lester’s Henry riding off to war on the back of a dubious dossier (presented by William Gaunt’s Archbishop of Canterbury) were made searingly clear.
While Laurence Olivier had delivered a nuanced and multi-faceted performance as Henry at the Old Vic before the war, his patriotic 1944 film – part-funded by the British government and released in the wake of D-Day, was designed as a simple morale booster after five gruelling years of conflict. Moving forward a century, Henry’s stirring heroism on the battlefield was played up during the Boer Wars, as it was during the 1940s. England’s foe at Agincourt are of course the ‘old enemy’ France, and Henry V was revived throughout the Seven Years War of 1756-63, and again – by Kemble – in the 1790s in productions that reflected a national anti-French mood. He may have been the Queen’s favourite, but like Henry she was dispassionate enough to deal with a threat to her throne. And Henry V’s ‘we few, we happy few’ has echoes of Elizabeth I’s own speech to her troops at Tilbury in 1588 when she reputedly told them: “I am come amongst you….not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.”īut it was also penned against a backdrop of rebellion in Ireland, a rebellion whose failure to quell would lead to the final downfall of the arrogant Earl of Essex. Shakespeare wrote the play in the closing year of the 16th century, and in the long shadow cast by the Armada crisis. Henry V has taken on that mantle over many generations sometimes as a simple patriotic call to arms, and sometimes as a more complex commentary on the waging of war or the decision-making of our political leaders. But we also continue to look back to the Bard and his works, many of which remain pertinent four centuries after they were written. In recent years plays which have captured a certain zeitgeist or have made a social comment – either overtly or obliquely – on the idea of Britishness and our relationship with the wider world include Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, David Edgar’s Testing the Echo and Mike Bartlett’s bittersweet Albion. The 1950s for example gave us Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a stark metaphor for America’s Communist witch hunts, and, here in Britain, John Osborne’s post-Suez play The Entertainer in which the faded music hall star Archie Rice mirrored the decline of Britain as a world power. Often those times coincide with a turning point in society or a moment of national crisis or reflection. I may read the other books in some kind of geographic order or I might criss cross oceans and time zones.Art doesn’t only imitate life – at times it holds a mirror up to it and comments on it too. Of course every journey has to start from home so I’m choosing a novel set in Wales as my first book. It should be a very relaxing experience: no nail-biting waits for passports no long queues at check in and I will not be required to remove shoes, belts or jackets while moving from one reading nook to another.
Since a summer holiday looks unlikely I shall let my books do the travelling. This year’s list is designed to take me on a reading tour around the world. I know from previous years that it’s a good strategy to have plenty of choice of titles to allow for changes in mood. But I don’t want to miss out so I’m going for the entry level option of 10 books.Ĭoming up with the list is the best part of #20booksofsummer. Last year was my best effort with 18 books read (though not all of these were on my original reading list).Įven with the benefit of Cathy’s flexible “rules”, I doubt I’ll get anywhere near that same level this year (too many other things needing my attention right now). I’ve attempted this project six times but never reaching that magical figure of 20. It’s decision time once more: do i want to sign up for #20booksofsummer ? Created by Cathy at the idea is to read 20 books between 1 June and 1 September.
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