Hear Our Silence

Good on Cornwall! A pioneer venture, electricity from wave power. Proto-type units will be towed out and sunk to the bottom of the sea off Hayle early next year. A world first, the project has attracted numerous companies keen to develop this innovative technology. From these generator devices electricity will flow, eventually in sufficient quantity to be fed into the national grid. Wave power is acknowledged as the Cinderella of renewable energy sources. Yet once harnessed, it could prove to be a noble and mighty contributor.

The surfers off the Cornish coast are murmuring about diminishing the height of their waves. But experts have reasured them that this will be around 5% - an inch or two off their metre wave. They don’t own the stuff, we need it for all our futures.

I see we are to be treated to a bio-90 minutes of Robert Maxwell, portrayed by David Suchet: ‘For me, the voice is the entry point…’ Maxwell was 6ft 3in and weighed in at 22 stone: Suchet will have to find a good voice right from the belly.

Radio Times coverage brings back the memories. I first encountered Maxwell at the Mansion House banquet to celebrate our entry into Europe. I was covering for Londoner’s Diary and standing on the steps wondering when to creep in. Suddenly, I spied Maxwell, head down and resolute, clutching his invitation. How he dared show his face, amazed me. He had just been judged by the DTI unfit to run a public company. This was the Leasco scandal: a dubious takeover of an American company by Pergamon Press, his Oxford based publishing company. But there he was walking in to dine with the best of them.

Can’t keep a good man down. And on and on he went. My next showing was at a Booksellers Association conference. I was there to announce the launch of Puffin School Book Club. Again Maxwell moved in - to a hostile mixture of hisses and murmurs. The booksellers had never forgotten his dereliction of an early wholesaler -Sweetens, was it called, before my time. Apparently, he had bought in, moved out and had left many companies bereft.

As a rising bookseller myself, we would attend the Frankfurt Book Fair. I shall never forget the ‘process’ of Maxwell and his entourage as he entered the hall to mount his stand. Frantfurt was then a vast oversize hanger of a building. It has since been rationalised into smaller, more consumer friendly, spaces. I remember the susurration of dealings as the business of the morning progressed. Then, in came Maxwell: hugely capacious filling the aisle, with flunkeys processing alongside, as he advanced to his stand. Here was presence in person.

Later, buying books for The Red House list at BPC we were deafened by the arrival of his helicopter - atop the Mirror building. Meeting held until noise above subsides… you had to admire his style.

Finally, back in Oxford I met his son Philip, a gentle man who lived two doors away in Bob’s Oxford pad for visiting clients.

We met, had coffee… Then came The Invitation.

Bob was to be FIFTY: fireworks up on Headington Hill. Would we come???

We did not reply. Stuck it on the mantlepiece. A kind of trophy of sorts.

Not once, but twice, we are reminded of this gracious possibility. Then came the cut.

‘Since you have not replied, your name has been removed from our guest list.’

God bless Bob: give him your best bellyful voice, David. We look forward.

Every now and then, I wish I were nearer London. Devon is bliss - fifteen minutes from the sea - and yet …

This morning’s news that the British Library is mounting a major exhibition over the summer called Sacred made me salivate. What brilliant inspiration to race the pulse: our great library has decided to display its major treasures of Sacred texts from the three monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Gaze, ponder and realize: let us share, not split into warring factions.

The oldest [c.50] is a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, shedding much light upon religious expression and beliefs of the Essenes. (I think of them as early Jewish forerunners of the Carthusians!) Then we have the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest surviving Gospel text dating back to 350; a second of similar age is in Rome, the Codex Vaticanus. More recent, and representing a huge hinge in church history as well as the development of the English language, comes Tyndale’s Bible. The first vernacular translation dated 1526. The Latin fettered church resisted any such movement and would seize and burn these texts. Tyndale himself was to suffer the same fate, 10 years after its publication.

The Library purchased this first edition in 1994 for £1million, declaring it to be ‘the most influential book in the English language’ since so many of our phrases were first turned in its pages. A snip, although Lord Oxford had acquired it for his library in the 1700s for just 20 guineas. Someone willing to do the relative sums…

The Lindisfarne Gospels is star of the show. Luxurious illuminated Latin text from St Cuthbert’s Isle (d. 687), in 970 it came into the possession of Aldred, Provost of the Minster at Chester-le-Street. He laboriously translated (in red ink) into Anglo Saxon; so that this is also the oldest text in any form of English.

The Golden Haggadah, the Torah Codex, Sultan Baybar’s Qur’an . . . a wealth of sacred texts.

What are the ancients telling us today?

It was good talking to you on the phone yesterday when you told me about your art. How much you enjoy making pictures…

Yesterday morning, Grandma Jude and I went for a walk to Colyton. That name means ‘the town with the Coly [river: Coly is Celtic for narrow] running through it’. And there, swimming on the river, was a mother duck with her newly hatched baby chicks. They were all so close to her, in a bunch, so many, but it was difficult to count them. They wouldn’t stay still! We tried once, and then they all moved places - one even jumped on her and had a piggyback ride. But at last, after several tries, I managed it: she had sixteen chicks.

They sailed along down stream. And then we were worried because there was a waterfall. Not a big problem, but big enough for a small chick no longer than your finger. Mom went first, all sideways and wobbly. Then the chicks went swishing down: they seemed to enjoy it. Except for one, who suddenly got stuck on top of a rock. He looked puzzled for a moment, then scared that he would be left behind, he took a jump and joined his brothers and sisters as if nothing had happened.

I wonder if you want to draw me a picture and then I can post it on my blog - with your name and a big thank you.

Lots of love to you and Julia until next time we talk. It will soon be time for you to fly from Washington and find us in Devon.

Stone Curlew

One of the joys of living on the Ax is the welcome refuge it offers to migrant birds as it widens into the sea at Axmouth.

Judith and I were on our way to Seaton Hole for a cliffside walk yesterday, when we spotted a band of twitchers clearly entranced by some rare sight. We stopped to investigate. ‘What have you found?’ ‘Stone Curlew: on its was to Salisbury Plain to breed. Very rare in Devon…’ Then I was invited to take my first sighting of this somewhat emaciated looking bird - less rounded than the common curlew - and thanking my expert for the use of his hefty telescope went on my way.

Birders are a breed unto themselves. They use their mobiles to signal their latest find and gather in earnest groups to digest the experience.

We walked for two hours and returned. They were still there, swelled in numbers. So too the Stone Curlew: perhaps he was negotiating a less complex Latin name before making it to Salisbury Plain and commencing his arduous annual mating duties.