Looking at the notes I took while watching In Their Own Words, I find more names of authors and titles of novels than I do impressions of the episodes themselves. Each disc of this BBC production profiles the authors from 1919-1990 across three episodes, and the thinkers from 1938 on, the latter not slavish to chronology. The narrator, Rebecca Front, sets the tone of the series from the start, hewing to the British style of getting on with it, and we are informed that in 1937, the BBC broadcast a radio talk with Virginia Woolf. We learn that Britain emerged from the casualties and catastrophes of World War I to be uncertain about itself at first, doubtful about its place and power in the world. From that came the Bloomsbury Group, of which I suppose the American equivalent would be the Algonquin Round Table, but with an eye toward looming over society with its sonorous judgments.
The major attraction of these first three episodes is learning what kind of interview programs the BBC broadcast, as well as hearing from these authors themselves. It was a shock to learn that Barbara Cartland wrote 700 novels in her lifetime, mostly dictated to her secretaries (The official count is 723, according to the website devoted to her work). The most fun to be found is Evelyn Waugh, who preferred to be a contrarian with interviewers, even demanding a female interviewer for one of his appearances. And Graham Greene provides his own measure of intrigue outside his books by refusing to be filmed for an interview, instead permitting a television crew to join him on a night train across Europe.
You might read Lord of the Flies, 1984, The Fellowship of the Ring, and other novels by British writers separately. But the big surprise here is how closely connected many of these novels are, those three especially, reactions to World War I, worry about the future of the world, an escape from the turmoil. It offers one of the great highlights of the series, that of J.R.R. Tolkien himself reading Elvish.
The “Great Thinkers” programs trigger much the same reaction. You’ll hear thoughts and convictions that might make you argue back at the TV, and certainly write down what you’ve heard to discuss with others, to seek out books about these philosophies, to see if they’re already apparent in your own life. Just like the “British Novelists” programs, it’s not possible to watch everything in one sitting. It took me two nights to watch all three episodes about the novelists because it does get overwhelming, and I also wanted time to look up a few of these authors. Then I started fresh again, and greatly enjoyed the rest. Take that more as evidence of how valuable these minds still are today, and not of the makeup of the programs themselves, which are terrifically made.
The set comes with a 16-page booklet providing “then and now” analyses of the impact of Sigmund Freud, John Maynard Keynes, Margaret Mead, Anthony Burgess, Kingsley Amis, J.G. Ballard, and Richard Dawkins, as well as profiles of the many interviewers featured in the clips, reactions to controversial books, background about the Bloomsbury Group, and a short history of the BBC, just as well put together as the programs.
Now I must go off in search of the Jeeves and Wooster stories by P.G. Wodehouse, hoping to read them all, certainly re-reading many. That’s the effect the Wodehouse interview clips have had on me. Your reactions may vary, but I’m absolutely sure you’ll come away with at least one author who interests you, one thinker whose views challenge you. That’s the brilliance of In Their Own Words.
