Tuesday, August 22, 2006

40 Million School Books Can't Be Wrong

One of the pleasures of revisiting favorite books from long ago is the changed perspective that one brings from the passage of years. I read and reread my favorites of Josephine Tey's mysteries when I was in high school ... Daughter of Time, The Franchise Affair, and Brat Farrar.

Rereading them all recently I discovered that not only were did they hold up splendidly as mysteries and portraits of a certain time in England, but that Tey used each to put forward specific commentary about issues in which she evidently took great interest.

Brat Farrar, a wonderful tale of a stranger carefully coached to enter a family as the heir who supposedly committed suicide many years ago, is also a love letter to English country living and horses.

The Franchise Affair, which I will post excerpts of later, is a tribute to the solid goodness of the English character as well as an exposure of the problem of media abuse. (More of that later.)

The Daugher of Time, my personal favorite of the three, was written in 1951 and considers the problem of history being rewritten to reflect the prejudices of those who come into power later. Tey tells the story through Inspector Grant who is laid up in the hospital with a broken leg and who becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the jealousy-ridden multiple murderer of Shakespeare's play. With the help of an American scholar, he applies his detective's mind to discovering the truth about what kind of man Richard III truly was and who actually killed the little princes in the Tower.

She introduces the idea of "Tonypandy" which deserves to be better known and which is the topic of this excerpt.
"Forty million school books can't be wrong," Grant said after a little.

"Can't they?"

"Well, can they!"

"I used to think so, but I'm not so sure nowadays."

"Aren't you being a little sudden in your scepticism?"

"Oh, it wasn't this that shook me."

"What then?"

"A little affair called the Boston Massacre. Ever heard of it?"

"Of course."

"Well, I discovered quite by accident, when I was looking up something at college, that the Boston Massacre consisted of a mob throwing stones at a sentry. The total casualties were four. I was brought up on the Boston Massacre, Mr. Grant. My twenty-eight inch chest used to swell at the very memory of it. My good red spinach-laden blood used to seethe at the thought of helpless civilians mowed down by the fire of British troops. You can't imagine what a shock it was to find that all it added up to in actual fact was a brawl that wouldn't get more than local reporting in a clash between police in strikers in any American lock-out."

As Grant made no reply to this, he squinted his eyes against the light to see how Grant was taking it. But Grant was staring at the ceiling as if he were watching patterns forming there.

"That's partly why I like to research so much," Carradine volunteered, and settled back to staring at the sparrows.

To be continued ...

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