Almost finished this without aids, but there was (as usual) a large amount of guesswork involved. Yet again they managed to cock up the enumeration, this time for 3dn. That might have thrown me in the past, but it was an answer I was sure of and one of the first to go in.
| Across | |
| 1 |
ARROWS – Four books about ARROWS here: The Black Arrow (1888) by Robert Louis Stevenson; The Arrow of Gold (1919) by Joseph Conrad; The Golden Arrow (1916) by Mary Webb; Arrow in the Blue (1952), an autobiography by Arthur Koestler. |
| 4 | SCHUMANN – ANN joins S(econd) + CHUM. Robert Schumann (1810-1856), German composer. |
| 10 | BARTIMEUS – I put this in from “Blind Bartimaeus” in the Bible, whose sight was restored by Jesus. After a bit of research I eventually discovered that “Bartimeus” was the pseudonym of Sir Lewis Ritchie (1886–1967), a British naval officer and the author of many fictional stories of naval life. |
| 11 | POMES – Pomes Penyeach (1927) was a poetry collection by James Joyce. |
| 12 | TEA LEAF – no idea what Arnold Bennett’s got to do with it, but it’s Cockney rhyming slang for a thief, and it would be put into hot water to make a cuppa. |
| 13 | LORENZO – Jessica is Shylock’s daughter in The Merchant of Venice. She converts to Christianity and elopes with Lorenzo, taking most of her dad’s money with her. |
| 14 | OSSIA – OSSIAN is the bard, minus the N giving an Italian musical term for “or”. |
| 15 | EURYDICE – the wife of Orpheus in Greek mythology, so more than just a friend! David Mallet wrote a play about her in 1731. |
| 18 | BERGERAC – BERGER (French for shepherd) + AC. Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-55), French dramatist and duellist. |
| 20 | FOSCO – F.O.’S CO. Count Fosco is a character in Wilkie Collins’ 1859 novel The Woman in White. |
| 23 | RICHARD – CHAR inside RID. As a stage king it could be Richard II or Richard III (both by Shakespeare). |
| 25 | RE-ENACT – (erect an)* |
| 26 | HORSE – Horse Under Water (1963) was Len Deighton’s second novel. |
| 27 | MANNERING – M(otorway) + ANNE + RING (a ring-road is another name for a bypass). Guy Mannering, 1815 novel by Sir Walter Scott. |
| 28 | MITCHELL – Harold Mitchell was one of the passengers in Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire. |
| 29 | ATHENE – hidden in “Hardy’s Egdon Heath energy”. Greek goddess of wisdom, and helper of Odysseus. |
| Down | |
| 1 | AMBITION – 1929 poem by W.H. Davies. |
| 2 | REREADS – don’t get it, but it fits. From what I can tell, this is a well-known misquotation from Habakkuk 2:2 “Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it”, which sounds to me like a warning to get the hell out of there! |
| 3 | WHITE FANG – 1906 novel by Jack London. |
| 5 | CASTLE RACKRENT – RACK (stretch) + RENT (amount paid) under CASTLE (a move to protect the king in chess). 1800 novel by Maria Edgeworth. |
| 6 | UPPER – cryptic definition. |
| 7 | ALMANAC – hidden in “How to calm an actor. |
| 8 | NESTOR – NEST + OR. An older Greek warrior in the Trojan war, noted for his wisdom. He was also married to 15ac, but not the same one. |
| 9 | LES FLEURS DU MAL – (useful small red)*. 1857 poetry collection by Charles Baudelaire. It says on Wikipedia that the themes are mainly of decadence and eroticism – doesn’t sound downbeat to me! |
| 16 | DIFFERENT – A Different Drummer, 1986 poetry collection by Jack Clemo, a Cornish poet who was both blind and deaf for most of his life. |
| 17 | MONTAGUE – Dramatic Values (1911) was a book of reviews by Charles Edward Montague. |
| 19 | EXCERPT – double definition. |
| 21 | SEASIDE – I assume this refers to On the Beach (which appeared as an answer in TLS845). |
| 22 | GRAHAM – couldn’t track down the quotation, but Harry Graham wrote Ruthless Rhymes in 1898. Geoffrey Grigson (another poet and father of cookery writer Sophie) is presumably the speaker. |
| 24 | ALEPH – (a help)*. The Aleph (1949) is a short story collection by Jorge Luis Borges. |
– The Black Arrow
– White Fang
– On the Beach
– M. of Venice
I remember thinking White Fang wasn’t so bad, but the rest were tedious in the extreme.
The Shakespeare I did for O-level was Much Ado About Nothing, but luckily I enjoyed it then and I still enjoy it now. We must have done The Merchant of Venice at school, and that too seems to have survived unscathed. I’m particularly fond of the scene with Lorenzo and Jessica at Belmont (“The moon shines bright: in such a night as this …”), which Berlioz ripped off for Dido and Aeneas in Les Troyens (“Par une telle nuit …”).
The other answer I missed which I really should have got was GRAHAM, as I was brought up on More Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (as illustrated by Ridgewell) and can probably still recite a fair number of them. I was sent in the wrong direction by the word “poems” and missed the significance of “ruthless”. GRAHAM would probably have given me HORSE and MITCHELL (because they fitted rather than for any other reason).
The Arnold Bennett reference at 12A is another citation from the OED: “Imperial Palace v. 20 The badinage .. was more picturesque … ‘You dirty old tea-leaf.'”
I wasn’t at all sure about REREADS at 2D, and was pleased to find I’d guessed it right. The best I could come up with was some reference to resitting exams.
I thought of WHITE FANG immediately for 3D, but (given the duff enumeration) didn’t dare to put it in until I had a few crossing letters. The story goes that it’s the only book that Lord Redesdale (father of the Mitford sisters) ever read.