The government's tactics were self-defeating, making him more popular with those who had no one else to speak on their behalf.Ingrams is right to praise the independence of a man who, in the face of intimidation, denounced the royal jubilee of George III, attacked the clerics who tithed the poor, and foresaw the famine that would result from making potatoes the staple diet of those who lived off the land. It astounds, it sets thought to work in the minds of millions; it awakens recollections; it rouses to remarks; it elicits a communication of feelings; it makes the tongue the loud herald of the heart". That intoxicating mix of anger and jubilation reveals his gift for plain-spoken eloquence, which articulated the thoughts and feelings of thousands of labouring folk. Even today, the "savage indignation" that drives the best of his prose makes its cadences unforgettable, his Political Register having lost none of its rustic vigour. Here he is, as late as 1834, revelling in the destruction by fire of the Houses of Parliament, whose members had ruthlessly suppressed the interests of the populace: "It is a GREAT EVENT... Cobbett's great achievement, as Ingrams observes, was to educate his class and "to identify more clearly than any other, and in phrases that were instantly memorable, their causes of complaint". He wrote a grammar book, brought the American elm to England, became the first anti-potato campaigner, opposed birth control, and wrote some of the greatest journalism in the language.
William Cobbett was one of the first champions of working people in modern Britain, and Richard Ingrams's biography is a welcome celebration of him. The life of its odd, compelling author is in some ways a bizarre reflection of the insights that drove his work.Penelope Lively's new book, 'Making It Up', is published this month by Viking. This may indeed have been his problem, though it was also a source of inspiration.Arthur died young and cruelly of cancer Then a few years later, Sylvia too. And then tragedy came stalking back: George was killed in the war, Michael (Barrie's cherished favourite) was drowned with a friend while at Oxford. The fantasy of the boy who refused to grow up was given a gruesome twist.Peter Pan can be seen as a meditation on the problem of time: the ticking clock is always at our heels. Barrie was devastated; from then on, the boys became his central concern.
He simply moved in and took over; again, somewhat to the annoyance of others close to the family.He took the boys and their friends on prolonged fishing holidays in Scotland, provided lavish entertainment in the London winters, and maintained a lengthy power-struggle with the former nurse now turned housekeeper. Barrie became obsessed with the boys when he came across them playing in Kensington Gardens, and thereafter insinuated himself into the life of the family, to the dismay of some friends and, perhaps, testing the endurance of Arthur Llewelyn Davies. Sylvia, herself vibrant, charming and a universal favourite, seems to have been both fond of and to some degree dependent on Barrie.He had the most extraordinary way with children. The elaborate games of make-believe with the boys - the springboard for Peter Pan - must have been entrancing for them. Throughout their childhood, he supplied the boys with entertainment, holidays, and to some degree bankrolled the family.It is difficult to find anything subversive in his passion for the boys; it is the perception of today that insists on smoking out paedophilia where there is none Barrie worshipped children, and childhood. He fell in love with his leading ladies and made no attempt at concealment, and had intense, though entirely platonic, relationships with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and, later, Cynthia Asquith, who ministered to him in later life and was left the bulk of his estate.The Llewelyn Davies affair is very rum indeed. My one aim would have been to become a favourite with the ladies...
