The A to Z of Dr Johnson: The Life of Johnson
Radio 4
“Nobody can write the life of a man, but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.” Thus spoke Dr Samuel Johnson and he should know. Or, rather, James Boswell should.
The BBC is quite rightly celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Johnson in 1709. He was (and is) one of our greatest Britons. Radio 4 kicked off with a two part dramatisation of James Boswell’s immortal biography of the great man. This radio version is written by Robin Brooks and produced and directed by Claire Grove. The production does not go over the top with music and other atmospheric apparatus – for which, much thanks. All round, this is a brave and creditable effort at an impossible task. Characters speak for themselves and we sense that we are there. Now that is something.
I read Boswell’s biography after finding the two grey volumes of the Everyman edition in my dad’s bookcase. I still have these precious books . But, it has to be admitted, to bring to the radio in something like its overwhelming genius such a work as Boswell’s Life is really not possible.
Boswell’s biography exerts its charms by gradual immersion over a fair space of time. It cannot be savoured in spoonfuls, no matter how generously served. The basic problem is that Boswell’s work does not have a beginning, middle and end in the form we now accept as literary biography. The main body of it– and this is what gives the book its weight and effectiveness – is the accounts of Boswell’s meetings and companionable sessions with the great man. This means that the core of the work is a series of beautifully recreated scenes. To translate this material into radio drama would be a truly considerable task. That this Radio 4 version does not quite succeed is inevitable, as it is impossible to achieve.
Nevertheless, what we get is very good. The narrative flow, ease and general pace of the biography is of necessity abandoned in this two-hour dramatised format.
Sensibly, a great deal of Boswell’s narrative is retained, so we constantly get things as they are observed by the biographer .In the course of this, we get to know Boswell, too. This is part of the magic. Paul Higgins as Boswell does a grand job. The biographer is bit of a creep, to be sure, but a likable creep and we are grateful for his crawling so productively.
“The Great Cham” is impressively played by the admirable Kenneth Cranham, but the fact is that Johnson had a marked Staffordshire accent all his life. He was teased for it by David Garrick, who mimicked him to his face. It is shame, when those a the BBC goes to so much trouble to get Boswell’s Scots and Oliver Goldsmith’s (Stephen Hogan) Irish right, that they cannot bring themselves to give us a provincial Lichfield accent when it is so obviously needed. I was a student at Keele and I know what Potts people sound like.
Robert Giddings
