Take It or Leave It
Host
Alan Brien
Co-hosts
Adjudicator and question-setter: Brigid Brophy
Broadcast
BBC2, 7 November 1964 to 8 January 1971
A television literary quiz, with four writers and critics discussing books and poetry. A paragraph or verse would be read out, and the contestants asked to name the work and author. Contemporary writers suggested the enjoyment came not from instant recall, but the literary detective work employed.
Sunday 22 June 2008
Feliks Topolski R.A.
Feliks Topolski's 'Memoir of the Twentieth Century'
Alan Brien, Punch
"... his giant Memoir, in colour and on a grandiose old masterly scale, quartered in a brick dungeon like a Piranesi engraving, manages to distil the essence and apotheosis of his genius. Reworked and magnified from the thousands of sketches he has created hour by hour during an amazingly eventful career, they are for me one of our Century's great solid achievements."
Alan Brien, Punch
"... his giant Memoir, in colour and on a grandiose old masterly scale, quartered in a brick dungeon like a Piranesi engraving, manages to distil the essence and apotheosis of his genius. Reworked and magnified from the thousands of sketches he has created hour by hour during an amazingly eventful career, they are for me one of our Century's great solid achievements."
EVELYN WAUGH
EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER
Volume 7 Number 1 - Spring 1973
David Lodge, "The Arrogance of Evelyn Waugh," The Critic, 30 (May-June, 1972), 62-70, also a defense and explanation of the man, will interest casual readers but not Waugh scholars. His sources are principally Mr. Pinfold and Frances Donaldson, and though one of these is critically acceptable it has been exploited previously. He retells the standoff at White's between Waugh and Alan Brien, courtesy of Randolph Churchill - who really should have known better than to introduce anyone suffering from boredom to Mr. Brien, of all people. He quotes Harold Acton's "prancing faun" flourish, explains that Wormwood Scrubs is a prison, and concludes that Waugh's public image was the mask of a bored but decent man who valued his privacy. There is nothing at all wrong with this essay, but there is nothing at all new in it either.
TWO NEW BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ITEMS
D.S. Gallagher of James Cook University of North Queensland, who is well-known to EWN readers for some brilliant bibliographic investigations, has discovered a hitherto unrecorded Waugh letter to the editor by following up a clue in Alan Brien's "Permission to Speak..."
Evelyn Waugh, "Self-denial," Truth, October 15, 1954, p. 1729. Response to anonymous Profile: "Waugh Among the Ruins," Truth, October 8, 1954, pp. 1242-1243.
Gallagher observes that the author of the anonymous "Profile" appears to have been Alan Brien. His "Permission to Speak, Captain?" Spectator, CCXVI (April 15, 1966), 463 contains the following sentence: "My mind was packed with information I had laid in for my profile."
Gallagher notes that Truth was a London journal of comment which ceased publication around 1957. In his letter Waugh asserts that, contrary to the statement made in the "Profile," his home is not open to visits by the paying public.
Volume 7 Number 1 - Spring 1973
David Lodge, "The Arrogance of Evelyn Waugh," The Critic, 30 (May-June, 1972), 62-70, also a defense and explanation of the man, will interest casual readers but not Waugh scholars. His sources are principally Mr. Pinfold and Frances Donaldson, and though one of these is critically acceptable it has been exploited previously. He retells the standoff at White's between Waugh and Alan Brien, courtesy of Randolph Churchill - who really should have known better than to introduce anyone suffering from boredom to Mr. Brien, of all people. He quotes Harold Acton's "prancing faun" flourish, explains that Wormwood Scrubs is a prison, and concludes that Waugh's public image was the mask of a bored but decent man who valued his privacy. There is nothing at all wrong with this essay, but there is nothing at all new in it either.
TWO NEW BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ITEMS
D.S. Gallagher of James Cook University of North Queensland, who is well-known to EWN readers for some brilliant bibliographic investigations, has discovered a hitherto unrecorded Waugh letter to the editor by following up a clue in Alan Brien's "Permission to Speak..."
Evelyn Waugh, "Self-denial," Truth, October 15, 1954, p. 1729. Response to anonymous Profile: "Waugh Among the Ruins," Truth, October 8, 1954, pp. 1242-1243.
Gallagher observes that the author of the anonymous "Profile" appears to have been Alan Brien. His "Permission to Speak, Captain?" Spectator, CCXVI (April 15, 1966), 463 contains the following sentence: "My mind was packed with information I had laid in for my profile."
Gallagher notes that Truth was a London journal of comment which ceased publication around 1957. In his letter Waugh asserts that, contrary to the statement made in the "Profile," his home is not open to visits by the paying public.
Footlights
from The Mausoleum Club Forum
Tangocow
posted on 21-5-2007 at 11:25 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
26/10/79 - Alan Brian - Russell Davies, Harold Evans, Sponooch, Jilly Cooper, Prof Peter Townsend, Lord Melchett, Peter York, Lynda Hayes, Will Elsworth-Jones, and Jeremy Child, Norman Bird, Ronnie Brody in a sketch.
16/11/79 - Cambridge Footlights - Martin Bergman, Hugh Laurie, Robert Bathurst, Emma Thompson, Peter Cook.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who's Alan Brian? I can't find anything on him anywhere. (Maybe it was journalist Alan Brien?)
And is that a list of the Footlights members, or were they the guests?
andrew martin. posted on 21-5-2007 at 03:22 PM
Yes, it's Alan Brien.
Martin Bergman sat at the desk for the Footlights show, presenting - the others did sketches, Cook was a guest.
Tangocow
posted on 21-5-2007 at 11:25 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
26/10/79 - Alan Brian - Russell Davies, Harold Evans, Sponooch, Jilly Cooper, Prof Peter Townsend, Lord Melchett, Peter York, Lynda Hayes, Will Elsworth-Jones, and Jeremy Child, Norman Bird, Ronnie Brody in a sketch.
16/11/79 - Cambridge Footlights - Martin Bergman, Hugh Laurie, Robert Bathurst, Emma Thompson, Peter Cook.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who's Alan Brian? I can't find anything on him anywhere. (Maybe it was journalist Alan Brien?)
And is that a list of the Footlights members, or were they the guests?
andrew martin. posted on 21-5-2007 at 03:22 PM
Yes, it's Alan Brien.
Martin Bergman sat at the desk for the Footlights show, presenting - the others did sketches, Cook was a guest.
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