- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Aurum Press Ltd; illustrated edition edition (22 May 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1854108387
- ISBN-13: 978-1854108388
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13.6 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 653,854 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Last Englishman
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
J.L. Carr was the most English of Englishmen: a man who spent most of his working life in the middle of Middle England, as headmaster of a Northamptonshire school, an enthusiastic follower of cricket and a tireless campaigner for the conservation of country churches. But he was also the author of half a dozen of the quirkiest, most comic novels in English, a publisher (from his own back bedroom in Kettering) of some of the most eccentric, collectable - and smallest - books ever printed, and an enigmatic, elusive individual. Among Carr's novels are "A Month in the Country", his moving story of a World War I survivor that is now a Penguin Classic - which won the Guardian Fiction Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a highly successful film starring Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth; "How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup", now published as a Prion Humour Classic and acclaimed as one of the funniest novels ever written about football, and "The Harpole Report", acknowledged to be one of the funniest novels ever written about a school. Meanwhile his own self-published "Carr's Dictionary of Extraordinary Cricketers" became the smallest bestseller ever printed. This biography tells the life story of this fascinating man - a life both surprising and varied, from war service on a West African flying-boat base to a strange interlude teaching in the heart of South Dakota - and discovers a headmaster who would hold arithmetic races on sports day, a mysterious individual who buried all his treasures in his garden and was someone different to everyone who met him, and a novelist whose fiction is partially autobiographical.
About the Author
Byron Rogers writes for the Sunday Telegraph, Guardian and Saga magazine. His collected travel writing, An Audience with an Elephant, was published by Aurum Press in 2001.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
J L Carr, was a man whose name is as enigmatic and as varied as his writing. Christened as Joseph, know to his friends as Jim and published at least once as James, J L Carr is quite possibly one of the finest English novelists of the 20th century. He was also well known for being a private and closed person, who presented a different side of his character to different people. And for being a puckish humorist who enjoyed teasing the literary establishment. As he did with the biographer Michael Holroyd to whom he awarded the fictitious Ellerbeck Literary Award, along with a remaindered copy of "The Harpole Report" and a token for a pound a best steak.
An enigma. A private person. A bit of "card". A tough proposition for any biographer, let alone one who confesses at the start of the book, "until I started writing this book, I had little idea of what biography involved". And yet, Byron Rogers' painstakingly researched, beautifully written and immensely pleasing book is not only a worthy tribute to his memory and achievements but in its own right, a fine example of the biographer's art.
Perhaps his lack of experience as a biographer is the reason that he devoted the time and effort to track down and interview first hand the witnesses to the events in Carr's life. This not only includes friends and colleagues but also pupils and even parents of the children he taught both in the UK, and on his two exchange experiences in the US.
This research gives the reader familiar with Carr's work a fascinating insight into where the facts of his life merged into the fiction he wrote. On several occasions Rogers reminds us that Carr's publishers would have had a heart attack if they knew just how close to real and living individuals some of the fictional characters in his books really were.
If there is one biographical work you should buy this year, this is it. Here is the story of an Englishman, his love of the real England (outside of London!), his devotion to his profession (both teaching and writing) and how his life experiences found their way into some of the most urbane, original and exquisite literature of the last 50 years.
By the time the book is finished, I felt as though I had really come to know J L Carr, almost to the extent that I could sit down in the pub with his friends and swap stories. The book itself includes some excellent photographs in which readers familiar with Carr's work will recognise many references to his works.
The real legacy of this work is that Rogers' book will be available for many generations in the future to understand the context and complexity of J L Carr and for that both he and his subject will be remembered for many years.
NOTE on 09/2006: I think it an absolute crime that this book is currently unavailable. It is a classic and well worth the money for any true J L Carr fan.
An enigma. A private person. A bit of "card". A tough proposition for any biographer, let alone one who confesses at the start of the book, "until I started writing this book, I had little idea of what biography involved". And yet, Byron Rogers' painstakingly researched, beautifully written and immensely pleasing book is not only a worthy tribute to his memory and achievements but in its own right, a fine example of the biographer's art.
Perhaps his lack of experience as a biographer is the reason that he devoted the time and effort to track down and interview first hand the witnesses to the events in Carr's life. This not only includes friends and colleagues but also pupils and even parents of the children he taught both in the UK, and on his two exchange experiences in the US.
This research gives the reader familiar with Carr's work a fascinating insight into where the facts of his life merged into the fiction he wrote. On several occasions Rogers reminds us that Carr's publishers would have had a heart attack if they knew just how close to real and living individuals some of the fictional characters in his books really were.
If there is one biographical work you should buy this year, this is it. Here is the story of an Englishman, his love of the real England (outside of London!), his devotion to his profession (both teaching and writing) and how his life experiences found their way into some of the most urbane, original and exquisite literature of the last 50 years.
By the time the book is finished, I felt as though I had really come to know J L Carr, almost to the extent that I could sit down in the pub with his friends and swap stories. The book itself includes some excellent photographs in which readers familiar with Carr's work will recognise many references to his works.
The real legacy of this work is that Rogers' book will be available for many generations in the future to understand the context and complexity of J L Carr and for that both he and his subject will be remembered for many years.
NOTE on 09/2006: I think it an absolute crime that this book is currently unavailable. It is a classic and well worth the money for any true J L Carr fan.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Let's be frank. Many people will not be familiar with, nor possible even have heard of the name J.L.Carr. That is a pity. Carr's novella 'A Month in the Country' (rendered into a beautiful movie with Richard Brannar, Colin Firth, Partick Malahide and Natasha Richardson et al) is one of the finer pieces of English literary fiction which resounds strikingly with awful reminiscences of the Great War.
In actual fact, 'A Month in the Country' is only an indication of the rich and - in certain ways - 'regular, yet curiously off-beat' personality and character that was the man called Jim Carr; a collector, decrepit Church fanatic, miniature book publisher and a superb writer.
Byron Rogers has produced a superbly interesting and readable biography about the life and happenings this quite remarkable man. We could argue around the clock about whether or not the epithet 'The Last Englishman' (also attributed to Hereward the Wake, and others, by the way!) is an entirely defensible one; in any case it is one quoted not smithed by Rogers. This would be to miss the point, though, which is that the achievements and struggles of Carr's life will strike familiar chords with many of us.
The work is both, at the same time, appreciative and highly critical of Carr. Rogers has not skimped on his research and has managed to delve and to unearth heaps of what were (this reviewer suspects) largely redundant and forgotten ecclesiastical and municipal documents which shed light on the controversies and contests Jim Carr was involved in with one institution or another. Such research requires considerable time, patience, diligence and expertise and this reviewer congratulates the author on his achievement: a remarkable book about a remarkable man.
Michael Calum Jacques
In actual fact, 'A Month in the Country' is only an indication of the rich and - in certain ways - 'regular, yet curiously off-beat' personality and character that was the man called Jim Carr; a collector, decrepit Church fanatic, miniature book publisher and a superb writer.
Byron Rogers has produced a superbly interesting and readable biography about the life and happenings this quite remarkable man. We could argue around the clock about whether or not the epithet 'The Last Englishman' (also attributed to Hereward the Wake, and others, by the way!) is an entirely defensible one; in any case it is one quoted not smithed by Rogers. This would be to miss the point, though, which is that the achievements and struggles of Carr's life will strike familiar chords with many of us.
The work is both, at the same time, appreciative and highly critical of Carr. Rogers has not skimped on his research and has managed to delve and to unearth heaps of what were (this reviewer suspects) largely redundant and forgotten ecclesiastical and municipal documents which shed light on the controversies and contests Jim Carr was involved in with one institution or another. Such research requires considerable time, patience, diligence and expertise and this reviewer congratulates the author on his achievement: a remarkable book about a remarkable man.
Michael Calum Jacques
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
For any readers who know nothing of J.L. Carr beyond his classic "A month in the Country", Byron Rogers' book introduces a portrait as detailed as the maps of England his hero drew and illustrated.
Carr led a very public life as a headmaster, campaigner and publisher. But he was not an intimate man, as his son ruefully commented to the biographer. Many of his acquaintances were baffled by him. Reading this book merely increases his mystery for the reader. And his fascination: for Carr wrote like an angel. He wrote in terse, dry sentences with the ability to move you and make you laugh very hard. Byron Rogers is clearly influenced by him, in awe of him, and tries to recapture in his biography some of the mood of Carr's own work. He succeeds in doing that, and has created a lovely book and a fine biography.
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