This Sporting Life - sports book of the half century

There was an interesting article about the novel 'This Sporting Life', by David Storey, on this morning's Guardian sportblog.  The point is made that the depiction of Rugby, both the on and off pitch side, is as realistic a portrait as you will get.  I knew when watching the film that it was pretty brutal, both on and off the pitch, but as a non-sports person with no knowledge of rugby I had no idea how true a depiction it was until it was pointed out to me in reviews of both the book and the film.

Here's an exert from the article by Frank Keating.  The original article can be read here

"By nice coincidence, this modest commemorative hurrah to mark the half-century since the publication of the finest British novel about professional sport to be written by an actual professional sportsman coincides with yesterday's naming of Brian Moore as 2010's winner of the William Hill prize for sports book of the year.

In the 50 years since its first appearance in 60s' pre-Christmas bookshops, David Storey's This Sporting Life remains not only the best literary novel by a sportsman, but the only one...

This Sporting Life has stood the test of "classic" category; at the time the Guardian staffer and rugby league buff Geoffrey Moorhouse hailed the novel as "unique", adding that "an interest in rugby league is by no means necessary to appreciate this story, any more than a fascination with whaling has ever been vital to an enjoyment of Moby Dick"...

Indeed, only this very year, the novelist Caryl Phillips was acclaiming Storey in our books' pages as "the only author who knew what it was like to be raked and stamped on by opponents, and then patronised by the chairman over drinks in the boardroom, so only he could have written such a fiercely authentic account of the hypocrisies of British sporting life"...

The novel's uneasy love story of insecure anti-hero tough, Machin, and his world-weary landlady, Mrs Howard, earthily provides harrowing off-field narrative, but it is in the raw sporting passages where the reader can wince at the resonance of uncomfortable truths as in, to take a single example, this touchline gallop by the malcontent, joyless Machin...

In Robert Sellers's unputdownable new book Hellraisers, on the careers of various larger-than-life actors, the author quotes Storey on the first day's shooting of the film at Huddersfield's ground where the cynical local team, hired as extras, waited in a bored, heel-kicking cluster for Harris's entrance.

"They were at the other end of the pitch going, 'Oh, Jesus, look at this flower coming out.' Harris just took one look at them and ran down the whole pitch towards them. And as he ran, he got faster and faster until they suddenly realised with horror that he was going to run right into them, which he eventually did. It was that initial gesture of total physical commitment, indifference and carelessness, that caught the players' admiration and they really took to him in a major way."

For once a film was so faithful to its origins that it even enhanced the original novel's unfading and stimulating quality. Sports book of the half-century, you might even say."

The novel was first published in 1960 and the film, made by Lindsay Anderson, and starring Richard Harris, was made in 1963.

Lindsay Anderson and Richard Harris on set of This Sporting Life
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling Archives

'Home' and film preservation

Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud and Lindsay Anderson on set of Home
© Lindsay Anderson Collection

I have now started on material relating to Lindsay Anderson's television productions and have just finished cataloguing correspondence relating to Home. In 1971 Anderson directed a version of Home a play which he first directed in the theatre in 1970. The play, on the stage and television, starred John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Dandy Nichols, Mona Washbourne and Warren Clarke. The television production was funded by WNET/Channel Thirteen (a public broadcasting station in New York) and was then leased by the BBC and shown on national television in Britain.

Home concerns two elderly gentleman, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, reminiscing about their past, discussing the clouds, their childhoods, and the news. The conversation is punctuated by oft-repeated phrases such as 'oh yes' 'how extraordinary!' and 'my word!'. It becomes apparent as the conversation goes on, and as two women, played by Dandy Nichols and Mona Washbourne, join them, that they are all residents in a mental hospital. The conversation continues, the characters getting upset at different points, and in the end the women leave, leaving the two men to sit on their own again, contemplating their lives 'Time passes very slowly' says Ralph Richardson as 'Jack'. It's such a moving ending and I can imagine it would have been even more so to see it in the theatre, to see these two actors on the stage.

The correspondence concerns the loss of the original master copy of Home. Anderson spends two years (1986 - 1988) trying to locate the master copy, with help from a fan, and someone at WNET. It really struck me, once again, how little control the Director has over his work once it is made. Maybe this is why he liked to exercise so much control over the film-making himself, knowing that he would lose all control once the film became the property of the production company.

Talking about making the film in a letter to the fan who helped him locate copies of the film Anderson said "That production is certainly one of my most cherished memories... It was a happy experience for all of us." He finished the letter "I do hope we are able to find a copy of HOME - for you, for me and for the rest of the world." The correspondence continues, with Anderson locating, with the help of this fan, a copy of Home in the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library in New York. Writing to them to ask if he could have a copy of their copy Anderson explains "I'm sure I don't need to emphasise the value and importance that HOME has for both Mr Storey and myself, for purely personal as well as for creative reasons." Anderson is grateful to get a copy from them but is disappointed that it's not of transmission quality - so the quest continues...

He then finds out that there may be a copy at the National Film Archive (NFA) at the British Film Institute so he follows this lead up. Luckily for him, and for us all, they had a/the master copy of Home, which had been sent to them from the BBC, and made a copy for Anderson and for WNET (WNET paid for Anderson's copy as well as they had been as keen as Anderson to locate it). Writing to the NFA Anderson expresses his happiness at finding his film "I need hardly say how delighted I am to find that HOME is not after all lost, but has been in such safe keeping all this time." It turned out that the BBC had bought a/the master copy from WNET and that eventually this copy, in line with BBC policy at the time, was donated to the NFA. The final letter in the sequence of correspondence, once again to the NFA, ends with "God bless the National Film Archive!"

Contact sheet for stage production of Home © Lindsay Anderson Collection

The lack of concern over the misplacement/loss of the master copy seems to indicate that, as a television adaption, Home was deemed less important than a 'proper' film. From the stories we hear in the news about the loss of classic television recordings it seems that this was quite common in the 1960s/1970s and there was less concern over preserving television broadcasts. Neither are there any on-set photographs in the Anderson Collection, which, given the large amount that exist for Anderson's films and theatre productions, seems a bit of an anomaly. So the photos which I've included here are from the stage production. It must have been awful, as the creator of a film, to realise that it could be so easily misplaced, and to know, as Anderson did, that such events were outwith your control, although he proves that with some determination and good friends and supporters, there can be a happy ending. Home is now available to buy on Video and DVD through Amazon, although I have to qualify this by saying it is rather expensive. It is also available to rent on Lovefilm.