Reading the Empire

A-ha! I found the reference to "the pink bits" I'd mentioned yesterday--and it was indeed from the movie Hope and Glory (1987). Funny what you remember: I haven't seen that since it came out.

Well, okay, I just watched the scene, a 1-minute clip on youTube, and now I'm not surprised I remember it--the teacher (Barbara Pierson) is terrific! And the sound of her pointer on the hanging world map...

• Teacher: [thwacking lands in pink on a map of the world]  Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. What are all the pink bits?
  Rowan.

  Bill Rowen: They're ours, Miss.

  Teacher: Yes. The British Empire. Arthur...what fraction of the earth's surface is British?

  Arthur: Don't know, Miss.

  Teacher: Anyone? Jennifer Baker.

  Jennifer Baker: Two-fifths, Miss.

  Teacher: Yes, two-fifths! Ours. That's what this war is all about. Men are fighting and dying to save all the pink bits for you ungrateful little twerps.
  

  

  
  ^ "Pink." thwack

"Jennifer Baker".... One of the girlette's must have that name--perfect for a cousin of Penny Cooper & Sunny Khan!
(All the girlettes are cousins, actually.)

I found a Barbara Pierson who's an actor and a painter...
No, not the same person-- but I like her art:
www.barbarapeirson.com 
Also, her Instagram ...I see she posted one of Mary Fedden's cats--that makes sense--she seems to be in that school of English art--also Winifred Nicholson (at the Tate)--wonderfully flat like flounders...

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"I don't know much about it," said Big Boss when I mentioned Queen Elizabeth's death in the lunch room yesterday.

And then he talked for ten minutes about the football game with Art, the volunteer in frames & pictures.
I understood all their words but almost none their meaning.

Gathering booksby authors from the former British Empire or a display at the store [posted pictures yesterday], I had to check a few.*

Looking them up, I found The Big Jubilee Read < scroll down on that site for an illustrated annotated list:
70 book suggestions compiled for the 70th anniversary of the queen's reign (1952–2022)--many from the Commonwealth.

To Sir, with Love (1959) would never have occurred to me. (Not that the store has a copy.)
I didn't realize it's an autobiographical novel: author E R Braithwaite was born in Georgetown, British Guiana, now Guyana (where Jim Jones set up his commune, Jonestown).

I also hadn't thought to include Canadian writers, such as Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. The display is crowed, but if room opens up, I can include them. Also Douglas Adams.
(I did leave the Terry Pratchett novels, which were already on display. Their humor seems especially English to me--like Monty Python.)

Lots of complaints about the list--who's not on it (and who is--Seamus Heaney**) --but I think it'd be a great place to start.
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* Where, exactly, was V. S. Naipal from? Somewhere in the Caribbean...

Trinidad. Right.
What do I know about Trinidad? Less than I know about football.

"Trinidad and Tobago, ruled by Britain, 1802 to 1962."
It was all about the islands' sugar and cocoa. (Now it's petroleum.)
I'm always floored to realize how much history is driven by food. And not essentials, but luxuries such as HOT CHOCOLATE.

And Wole Soyinka? 
Palm oil and peanuts:
"Colonial Nigeria was ruled by the British Empire,starting with the annexation of Lagos in 1861, until 1960."
Soyinka was born in 1934--same year as my mother.

I'm interested in reading Mrs. P's Journey: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Created the [London] A-Z Map, by Sarah Hartley.
"Mrs. P." was Phyllis Pearsall, daughter of a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant father and an Irish-Italian mother.

** Seems Heaney might not have minded? From an interview in 2015 with the Irish Times:

IT: And that famous line of yours: ‘Be advised my passport’s green. No glass of ours was ever raised to toast the Queen’.
Did people overplay the significance of that line?

Heaney: The Queen thing – green, Queen – it’s a rhyme. I mean, truly, there’s a bit of a spring to it. I didn’t want to sound a bigot in the pamphlet. At the same time I wanted to address the breach in the community at that stage.

"In fact even though I declared my passport was green on one famous occasion, I had a British passport for the first while in my life and that is typical of the bind and the contradictions.

"I was going to Lourdes on a pilgrimage and I was getting a British passport – not that that should matter. I remember Ben Kiely saying that if you were living in the Republic of Ireland you didn’t need a passport to go to Lourdes because it was part of the jurisdiction!"