THE WEIGHT AND LIGHTNESS OF HISTORY
the splendour of Greece (Ancient of course), of the Common Man’s life under the
Roman Empire, but yesterday we did our final rehearsal-room work and tomorrow The Importance of Being Earnest rehearses on the stage of the Theatre Royal Windsor. I failed to make this
precious, fitfully sunny Sunday creative, or even recreative, and certainly it
was not global: chores mainly, though I managed three acts of charity.
and give a dinner suit away to a local charity shop. They seemed only faintly
pleased, but perhaps they were surprised that I wanted to check its pockets
first. What should I find but a name badge in the breast pocket: ‘Edward
Petherbridge, Guest Speaker’. There was a crest that I recognized – Reigate and
Banstead Borough Council – and I remembered then that I had actually bought
from this same charity shop the very suit I was giving them back. It had been
an emergency replacement because I’d found at the last minute that my old suit didn’t
really fit (it had been so long since I had appeared in evening dress). On the
way out of the shop I saw a very smart shirt with a Jermyn Street label, a snip
at £6.50, so I bought it. When a lady called at our house later in the afternoon
looking for support for St John’s Ambulance training courses in schools I
though here was my chance to be charitable without an ulterior motive.
H. G. Wells, 1934. Photo by Howard Coster. National Portrait Gallery |
‘The Neanderthaler, according to Prof. Rutot.’ An illustration from Wells’s A Short History |
I feel feckless when I am not making it my business to read such a handily succinct account of everything from the first stirrings in the primeval mud, through the evolution of man, the great personalities and eras up to the particulars of 1922 when the book first appeared (there have been additions in my Penguin paperback by Wells’s son and Raymond Postgate, taking us up to the mid-1960s).
The book has made the long Tube journeys to rehearsal in Clapham a pleasure, and I was astonished to find in the Independent the other day, a photograph of 37,300-year-old Neanderthal cave art and the claim that ‘4% of every modern European’s genome is traceable to Neanderthal origins.’
‘The Panel of Hands’, El Castillo Cave in northern Spain above and detail below |
Cartoon by Herbert Samuel Thomas. National Portrait Gallery |
Photo by EP |
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