HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H03059 7/6/03 "BBC ON HARDY"
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Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2003 15:13:11 -0400
From: Robert Schweik <schweikr@localnet.com>
Subject: BBC on Hardy


Dear Hardy Forum Members--

In searching the WWW for sites to add to the TTHA "Links" I
recently came across a BBC site whose URL is

http://www.bbc.co.uk/print/arts/books/author/hardy/

This, I emphasize, is the BBC. I was "informed" on that site
that "Thomas Hardy was born on Egdon Heath." But, I think
the most precious bit of "information" I gleaned from that site
was in the following sentence:

"Unable to find a public for his poetry and suffering from
ill health because of it, it was the novelist George
Meredith . . . who advised Hardy to write a novel."

Friends tell me that the BBC has declined in quality and
reliability. But I had not expected it to have plummeted to quite
that depth--not only in errors of fact, but in monstrosities like
that truly remarkable dangling participle.

Bob Schweik

Robert Schweik
Department of English
State University of New York
Fredonia, NY 14063
USA
schweik@fredonia.edu
schweikr@localnet.com

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Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2003 15:40:40 -0400
From: Robert Schweik <schweikr@localnet.com>
Subject: More on BBC


Friends,

Following up on the BBC page I previously posted a message
about, I found still another one of interest--but for a different
reason. In 2000, the BBC Radio Four transmitted a recording
of Hardy's *The Woodlanders*.

At the URL

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/aboutradio4/peacock/01.shtml

may be found an account of the production of that radio version
of *The Woodlanders* with, I think, interesting information about
the factors that affected its production. The account covers
events in the production from 1999 to 2000. Such records are,
it seems to me, likely to be very useful for anyone studying
BBC radio adaptations of Hardy's works. Does anyone know of
a scholarly study of those productions?

Bob Schweik

Robert Schweik
Department of English
State University of New York
Fredonia, NY 14063
USA
schweik@fredonia.edu
schweikr@localnet.com

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Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2003 23:12:15 -0400
From: Rosemarie Morgan <rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu>
Subject: Re: BBC on Hardy


Don't you love it!

My own interview with the BBC a few years ago was almost as ripe.

Interviewer: "You write about Hardy's sensitive insights into the condition
of women but he was a monster to his wives. How do reconcile that?"

Me: "Well, if Hardy couldn't 'reconcile that' I doubt I can do it for him.."

______

Incidentally I've just seen Patrick's posting about the window at St Juliot
which was unveiled this weekend. A fund raiser for this window has been
going on for several years now, Patrick -- but the artist had a lengthy
illness so I guess it all fell quiet for a while. The Hardy *Journal* did
have several notices about it though back in 2000-2002. I believe the
church fund still needs contributions ---?

Best

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From: "K Eldron" <kaffi@onetel.net.uk>
Subject: Re: More on BBC
Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 15:40:26 +0100

I particularly liked the Hardyesque echo in the description of Doreen
Estall, who abridged the story (to 20,000 words):
"A trained architect, she has a good eye for the shape of a book "

K Eldron
kaffi@onetel.net.uk

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Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 11:32:42 -0700
From: Betty Cortus <hardycor@owl.csusm.edu>
Subject: BBC Bloopers


The sad thing is that any institution promoting the arts, the BBC included,
seems to be among the first to suffer when budget cuts take effect. This
holds true on both sides of the Atlantic, and inevitably means the hiring
of fewer, and arguably less qualified people.
Betty Cortus

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