Cold Comfort Farm (Penguin Classics)

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The reason why CCF has survived so well is that it's a splendid book in its own right. You really don't need to know Lawrence or Webb's work to enjoy the book, since the characters and dialogue are so good. It's a bit like Three Men in a Boat or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the works they make fun of are mostly forgotten now, but the work stands on its own …

Ada Doom: Judith's mother, a reclusive, miserly widow, owner of the farm, who constantly complains of having seen "something nasty in the woodshed" when she was a girl The Dramatization: The cast looks good on paper. Rosalie Crutchley is a perfect personification of Judith. Her burly son Reuben, who wants the farm from his father, is ably portrayed by Brian Blessed. Freddie Jones does a masterful job as the thoroughly disgusting Urk, as does Aubrey Morris as "Mr. Mybug." Peter Egan falls a little short as Seth, but he's good looking and a fine actor. https://www.theguardian.com/books/201... (has spoilers…you might want to wait on this review if you are thinking of reading the book)Like so much British television of the time, "Cold Comfort Farm" was videotaped in long takes, and apparently with insufficient rehearsal. The cast speaks over each other, like a bad Robert Altman movie. The production values are pretty grim--which is perfect for the first part, as the Starkadders start off pretty grim. But "Cold Comfort Farm" remains grim throughout. And why does Flora's friend Mary have that annoying accent? Not only that, the narration by Joan Bakewell simply isn't good (compare it to the narration of Elizabeth Proud in the radio version often repeated on BBC radio 4-extra).

Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm (actually a collection of short stories, of which Christmas was the first) was published in 1940. It is a prequel of sorts, set before Flora's arrival at the farm, and is a parody of a typical family Christmas. [13]Tanfani, Joseph (25 July 2013). "Late heiress' anti-immigration efforts live on". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 26 July 2013. Gibbons' elegant writing has more than a touch of Austen and Waugh about it, and she helpfully marks particularly purple passages with a 3-star rating in imitation of Michelin! It originated in Cold Comfort Farm (1932), a parody of contemporary novels about rural life, by the English author Stella Gibbons (1902-89). As Robert Allen explains in Dictionary of English Phrases (Penguin Books – 2006), this novel tells the story of a cheerful young heroine, Flora Poste, who visits her cousins in a dreary Sussex farmhouse dominated by Aunt Ada Doom, who had a traumatic experience in her childhood, as she keeps reminding everyone including herself. Exactly what this experience was, or whether it occurred at all, is left to the reader’s imagination, but Aunt Ada exploits it ruthlessly to feign her madness and as a pretext for demanding constant attention from the family around her. These are extracts from Cold Comfort Farm: How d’ye do, Aunt Ada?” said Flora, pleasantly, putting out her hand. But Aunt Ada made no effort to take it … and observed in a low toneless voice: ”I saw something nasty in the woodshed”’ ”Mother … it’s Judith. I have brought Flora Poste to see you … ” ”Nay – I saw something nasty in the woodshed”, said Aunt Ada Doom, fretfully moving her great head from side to side. ‘Twas a burning noonday, sixty-nine years ago. And me no bigger than a titty-wren. And I saw something … ”’ (p. 171)

Flora was asked what work she will do] "When I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion, but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, 'Collecting material.' No one can object to that." The earliest instance of the phrase that I have found is from A London Newsletter, by ‘the Old Stager’, published in The Sphere (London) on Saturday 20 th January 1934: The head of the family, Flora’s seventy-nine-year-old Great Aunt Ada Doom rules the household despite not leaving her room except for a few days in the year, to hold a “counting” as Flora’s cousin Elfine explains, ‘’Tes the record of th’ family that Grandmother holds ivery year. See – we’m violent folk, we Starkadders. Some on us pushes others down wells. Some on us dies in childer-birth. There’s others as die o’ drink or goes mad. There’s a whole heap on us, too. ’Tes difficult to keep count on us. So once a year Grandmother she holds a gatherin’, called the Counting, and she counts us all, to see how many on us ’as died in th’ year.” Flora, a bit. In the novel she can come off as a snobbish, shallow girl out to mooch off her relatives rather than support herself, and she seems to regard the Starkadders as if they were a science experiment. In the film she starts out a bit like this, but by the end she's genuinely invested in the Starkadders' happiness as people, not as a project. Technobabble: A rare non-SF version. Reuben suspects Flora of wanting to take over the farm, so his surly conversational opener with her is an attempt to intimidate her with his knowledge of farming: "I ha' scranleted four hundred furrows this morning down i' the bute." Flora has no idea what he’s talking about and can’t decide whether she should reply "Oh, you poor dear!" or "Come, that’s capital." Eventually she decides on a non-committal "Have you?"The novel is constructed of two elements the mash-up and topsey-turvey. The novel published in 1932 is set in a topsey-turvey near future – Lambeth has become the posh part of London (Oi!) while Mayfair has become the slums, the wealthy have private planes to zip about the country (not quite so fantastical) while the plot is broadly Jane Austen triumphs over Bronte sisters.

I was astonished and delighted to discover, quite by chance, that the BBC's 1971 production of Cold Comfort Farm was available on tape. Ironic that it should only be available in American format!The dramatisation of a favourite novel is seldom received with unreserved pleasure by aficionados, but I well remember my own wholehearted delight in this particular instance. This was my first Inquisitor by Augeas, and it followed a few days after solving a puzzle by Augeas elsewhere.Her portrayal of libidinous Meyerburg, "Mr Mybug", may have been aimed at Hampstead intellectuals (particularly Freudians and admirers of D. H. Lawrence), but has also been seen as antisemitic in its description of his physiognomy and nameplay. [5] [6] [7] Sequels, responses, and influence [ edit ] The psychiatrist immediately recognises this situation, and I have been relying on Aunt Ada Doom for many years for an example of traumatic fallacy. Spread by post-war Hollywood, owing something to battle neurosis and more to psychoanalysis in the USA, the notion that all long-standing psychiatric symptoms must have been initiated by a traumatic incident in early childhood is so embedded in our culture that most patients, at least those with anxiety symptoms, take it for granted. Behind their distress, their language reveals the plea to find the ‘real’ cause, after which everything will magically improve. It may also relate to the depressive nature of some symptoms, that the sufferer is in some way bad in their essence, with their own original sin, and throws an emphasis on the past. It also reveals the passive and pessimistic nature of these patients, since the past cannot be changed. Cool Old Lady: Flora admires Mrs. Beetle (Mariam the hired girl's mother) as the sole source of class, education, and organization in the entire farm. Nowadays, with the world in a fairly nightmarish and chaotic state, I find myself desperate for tidiness and happy endings, and even more desperate for a laugh. Cold Comfort Farm provides all of this. And what a relief it is for those of us who have slogged through numerous earnest rural novels in which there are no laughs at all. It is not easy to keep up the laughs in a comic novel, right to the very end, but Gibbons did it. Her nephew and biographer, Reggie Oliver, reports that she also laughed while writing it, and when she took her chums out to lunch and read them the latest bit, they laughed like drains too, often annoying the restaurant proprietor. How I wish I could have been at those lunches.