John Colville’s Downing Street Diaries are not what they seem He could be taken to task under the Trade Descriptions Act (1968) as on the first page he “was living in luxury, at least by war-time standards, and basking in the Prime Minister’s favour.”
On the same page he is “sleeping on the floor of an unfurnished flat off Regent’s Park, an Aircraftsman 2nd Class”. He was posted to Cambridge but on 31st December 1941 was transferred to Padgate, “ a vast and dreary camp near Warrington, Lancashire”. Until the middle of February 1942, only two and a half months, he was locked down, mostly on the Orient liner Otranto (20,000 tons) en route to Durban.
If I may digress, hardly anybody knows that Otranto is a town in Apulia. You will associate the name with its castle, Horace Walpole’s ground-breaking Gothic novel. Actually not a digression as literature is today’s theme. Before we get there not all of us, not me probably, would have chosen to serve in the ranks, living like a sailor in Nelson’s navy (he was given lime juice to ward off scurvy) on the Otranto while the officers lived above him in relative comfort.
Can I digress again, briefly? Somebody wrote a cookery book about the food in Rebecca – mostly toast and anchovy paste, as I recall. Well, let’s draw a veil over John Colville’s inadequate wartime diet and see what he read; the progression is interesting. In Cambridge he reads I, Claudius (Robert Graves) then he’s pushed from pillar to post and it’s not until 10th January he is stuck into Richard Feverel (George Meredith). He enjoys it, “despite frozen feet … I soon lose myself in Meredith’s ornate prose. He has a great capacity for kindling the imagination.” On 15th January he is reading The Mill on the Floss (George Eliot). On 20th January he finishes it, remarking “it has fine passages but some longueurs”. Next he struggles with Faust in German and switches to Behind God’s Back (Newley Farson); “ a vivid, if slightly John Guntheresque, description of Africa”. On 24th January he starts Nicholas Nickleby which he finishes five days later “ rejoicing in the fate of Mr Squeers, delighting in the Cheeryble brothers, but somewhat antagonised by the hero’s’ primness”.
On 30th January he starts Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (RH Tawney) but the next day starts reading Quentin Durward (Walter Scott) alongside it – “Tawney being too heavy-going to read without respite”. 3rd February: “re-read and greatly enjoyed Vile Bodies. Evelyn Waugh is a good antidote to Sir Walter Scott.” On 6th February he finishes Quentin Durward, “a book which I should probably not have had the patience to read ashore”. He begins The Vicar of Bullhampton (Trollope), “ a book of which I had never heard”, and finishes it four days later. “Though there are novels with more attractive characters, Trollope’s are strikingly realistic. They act and react as normal human beings rather than romantic heroes and heroines. The book deserves inclusion among his better-known works.”
While on guard on 11th February he learns two of Shakespeare’s sonnets by heart: “They that have power to hurt and will do none” and “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought” . Two days later the Otranto docks at Durban after five weeks at sea. “The only advantage of this voyage is the gap it is filling in my literary education.” He returns to Downing Street in December 1943 after serving two years in the RAF and becoming a Pilot Officer, but only flew six operational flights. I doubt he will have much time for reading now.
Otranto is also somewhat notable for its moment as the beachhead for a planned Ottoman invasion of the Italian peninsula in 1480 (looked it up). Europe fought back, but it was likely the death of the reigning Sultan that foiled Ottoman plans for further conquest in that direction.
Given its location at the tip of the heel of Italy and just across the straight from Albania, Otranto had strategic importance from the ancient Greeks through WWI. Aficionados of John Julius Norwich may also remember the Normans conquering it in 1068 as they moved to expel the Byzantines from the peninsula on their way to setting up the Norman Kingdom of Sicily — featured in two of his first published books.
Your wonderful discursive style often sparks a memory that sends one down a rabbit hole of rediscovery. And hooray for Anthony Trollope, who is perhaps my favorite author (though, of course, Wodehouse is another).