The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes were first awarded in 1919, so happy birthday and may there be many happy returns. Unlike the not-Man Booker you will have read many of the authors and some of the winning books. I think I’ve read eighteen titles in the fiction category; fewer in biography.
I’m fond of an omelette so long as somebody competent does the cooking. So was Arnold Bennett, so fond that the Savoy still serves his eponymous omelette: smoked haddock, Parmesan and cream. If I may digress, under May Hill last month I had a super home-made fish pie at a most agreeable pub, the Glasshouse Inn. “Home-made” is the second biggest lie on pub menus (the biggest is “we serve food all day”) but the Glasshouse really does prepare the food they serve; I went into the kitchen on some flimsy pretext so saw it happening. The secret ingredient in their fish pie is smoked haddock – so much better than overcooked mushy salmon that often tastes slightly of soap. So hats off to Arnold Bennett and the Glasshouse.
Many of us, me for sure, would be happy to have an omelette named after us – OK I’d settle for a Bloody Mary – but Arnold Bennett has been short changed; novelist, playwright, journalist, screen writer and he wrote an opera to boot. Unfortunately, just as I have bought nine volumes of James Agate’s Ego, he also published his Journals. Agate appends this Note at the beginning of Ego, the Autobiography of James Agate (in effect volume I, but he’s not so presumptuous).
It was Arnold Bennett’s Journals which gave me the idea of keeping a Diary of my own. Two years of this form the second part of this volume. The first part is an account of my life up to the point where the Diary begins.
I must have them but they may be as difficult to land as a Boyne salmon – we will see. I have sourced Volume I: 1896 – 1910. By the way, I had an amusing conversation with a translator in Ukraine (not you, Tatyana) talking about the difference between a diary and a dairy.
Arnold Bennett won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1923 for his novel, Riceyman Steps. The following year EM Foster garnered the prize with Passage to India.
“Wild mushrooms” follows closely behind your two favourite restaurant lies.
This is not strictly a reply. I’d just like to mention that the first volume of Ego has been eaten by Bertie, a discriminating canine gourmand.