BBC Two's blog

9.00pm Wednesday 2 February on BBC TWO

With the best jobs increasingly being filled by people from affluent backgrounds, Richard Bilton lifts the lid on access to the leading professions and talks to the people who are trying to level a rapidly tilting playing field

Author Sebastian Faulks gets to the heart of the British novel through its characters in a new four-part series for BBC Two.

Faulks On Fiction explores the heroes, lovers, snobs and villains in classics including Robinson Crusoe, 1984, Brick Lane, Emma and The End Of The Affair.

“In recent years people talking about novels have focused on their authors,” says Sebastian. “I’d like to rectify this. To me, the only people who matter are the characters; the heroes, lovers, snobs and villains, people whose inner lives we get to know so well that they’re more familiar to us than our own families and friends – so much so that it’s in the power of their experiences that we see our own lives in a new light.”

The series, written and presented by Sebastian, tells the story of how the British novel made us who we are and features characters including Fagin from Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, Mr Darcy from Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice, Chanu from Monica Ali’s Brick Lane and Jim Dixon from Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim.

In programme one, The Hero, Sebastian explores the characters readers root for in a novel, from heroes like Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe to more unconventional characters like the immoral Becky Sharp in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and John Self in Martin Amis’s Money.

Authors and writers interviewed by Sebastian in programme one include Simon Armitage, Martin Amis, Ruth Rendell and Tim Lott.

 

The characters featured are:

 

Robinson Crusoe 

The British novel’s first hero was Robinson Crusoe in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). He is an ordinary man caught up in extraordinary circumstances and what makes him a hero is his ability to survive alone for over 25 years on an island.

 

Tom Jones 

The History Of Tom Jones – A Foundling (1749) by Henry Fielding is the story of a hero trying to make his way in a chaotic world. He is a hero because of the way his good-hearted nature exposes the hypocrisy of those around him.

 

Becky Sharp 

In Vanity Fair (1847) by William Makepeace Thackeray, Becky Sharp is a woman who has charm, sex appeal and immense cunning and she uses these to get the things she doesn’t have – position and money. Sebastian argues that the standards we apply to people in books are different to those in real life, and that we are rooting for Becky for the purity of her ambition.

 

Sherlock Holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle drew a picture of London where crime pervaded the streets in his novel Sherlock Holmes (1887-1927). But the character of Holmes understood the dark side of life as well as any criminal and had the resources – both physical and intellectual – to combat crime.

 

Winston Smith 

Winston, in George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), looks at first glance more like a victim than a hero. What makes him heroic is that he takes on Big Brother even though he doesn’t stand a chance against him.

 

Jim Dixon 

Jim Dixon in Lucky Jim (1954), by Kingsley Amis, feels imprisoned by his dull job as a university lecturer and the need to conceal his true feelings if he is to survive. He uses humour to escape from the claustrophobia of provincial life and ultimately triumphs when he says what he thinks. For Sebastian, Jim Dixon was the original “angry young man” who spawned hundreds of imitators.

 

John Self

Martin Amis, Kingsley’s son, created a new kind of hero in the novel Money (1984). John Self, a small-time commercials director who tries to make it big in New York, is an obnoxious, gluttonous, misogynistic, lout. Sebastian argues that it’s John Self’s language which makes the reader take his side.

 

Interview with Sebastian Faulks

 

How long did it take you to read all the books for the series?

 

There are 28 books, though they include two trilogies and Clarissa, which is as long as five books. I also read four volumes of Holmes and at least three Jeeves novels. I read eight Bond novels the previous year. And I also read some we did not use – so, well over 60 books.

 

Of the 28 characters in the series I read 23 books before but I re-read all of those. I suppose the reading took about four or five months.

 

Did the locations you visited help bring the books to life?

 

Very much so. Whether it was Dorset for Tess, Shimla for Merrick or Manhattan for John Self – the actual places in the novels – or whether it was just a well-chosen location such as Arundel Castle for Steerpike, which helps the pictures live.

 

Which author from the past would you most like to meet?

 

Dickens – my admiration for him is boundless. Though I would be curious to see what manner of person Jane Austen was.

 

If you could be any character from any book for one day only who would it be, and why?

 

Do you mean from characters in the series? If so, Tom Jones, probably, though Connie Chatterley has her moments.

 

Did you learn anything new during the course of filming?

 

Most of the books were re-reads for me, and I learned something about all of them. I saw them differently from the way I saw them aged 18 or 20.

 

Do characters from books influence the way in which you write and are there any characters and books in particular which have been a big influence on your work?

 

I absorbed a lot from studying how different writers put their characters across. I suppose DH Lawrence, Henry Green and Tolstoy are the people I really studied closely in this way. And most of what I know about thought, emotion and the inner life is derived from fictional characters.

 

Do you have another novel in the pipeline?

 

I am creeping up on something and hoping it doesn’t yet know I’ve sort of started until I’ve got 25,000 words down and by then it won’t be able to escape.

 

Which book do you wish you had written?

 

I don’t. You only want to do what you can with the cards available. If it was revealed to me that, without knowing it, I had written Ulysses or The Da Vinci Code it wouldn’t mean anything because one doesn’t write for the fame of the former or the sales of the latter, but only for the joy of wrestling the thin stuff of reality into something more interesting by using the resources inside your head. It’s the process that counts.

 

Of the books in the series, I suppose Emma and Great Expectations are the most flawless. But The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie and Money are each in different ways a tour de force.

 

Who are your top three characters of all time and can you give us a sentence about each one?

 

Joe Gargery in Great Expectations – he is a kind, slow-witted man whose goodness is finally rewarded when he marries the village schoolmistress, Biddy. He acts as a touchstone for Pip throughout the book. It is by steady light of Joe’s kindness that Pip’s attempts at self-improvement are illuminated. But he is somehow not sentimentalised – he remains solid and credible.

 

Madame de Rênal in Stendhal’s Le Rouge Et Le Noir is a pious and unhappily married woman in provincial town in eastern France who is brought gloriously to life by the amorous attentions of Julien Sorel, a 19-year-old woodcutter’s son. Madame de Rênal mixes lust and shame in a powerfully erotic way. When we think she has disappeared from the story, she dramatically re-enters. Julien tries to kill her… but, well, find out for yourself.

 

Mickey Sabbath is the main character of Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater, an out-of-work puppeteer who has devoted his life to chasing women. It is not a question of ‘liking’ Sabbath, more of looking aghast at the power of the life-force that animates him. I sometimes wonder how he would have got on with Madame de Rênal.

8.00pm Tuesday 1 February on BBC TWO

Self-taught pig farmer Jimmy Doherty presents a new series in which nine couples compete for the opportunity of a lifetime – to run their own 25-acre farm

8.00pm Saturday 29 January on BBC TWO

Three men – Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien, Leslie Voltaire, a political figure in Haiti, and John McAslan, a Scottish architect – try to pull the country back from the brink following last year’s devastating earthquake

The BBC today launches a nationwide interactive survey examining what class really means in Britain today, and whether it still matters in the 21st century.

The Great British Class Survey aims to be the largest study of its kind ever conducted in the UK, and is the first interactive commission by BBC Current Affairs. It is part of a wider BBC Current Affairs investigation into class, which also includes two documentaries on BBC Two.

The unique survey asks the British public to help answer important questions about class in Britain today. Many academics agree that the traditional model of class, with a clearly defined “working”, “middle” and “upper” divisions, is no longer relevant. So the survey will examine if we still have a class system and, if so, what kind it is.

Until now, most major studies have focused on economic factors such as wealth and occupation, and social factors such as networks of personal contacts to determine class. But there is increasing evidence to suggest that our interests and hobbies – or “culture” – can also influence our life chances. For the first time, this study will investigate all three factors together.

This project is a unique collaboration between the journalists of BBC Current Affairs, BBC Lab UK and prominent experts on class. It was designed by leading British sociologists Professor Mike Savage of the University of York and Professor Fiona Devine of the University of Manchester, in collaboration with BBC Lab UK.

Participants will answer questions that examine a wide and intriguing range of topics. The survey takes about 20 minutes to complete, after which participants will receive a detailed report that reveals how they scored on the three factors – economic, social and cultural. They will also be able to compare themselves to the UK population as a whole.

The results of the survey will be revealed later in 2011 as an interactive visualisation that will allow the public to explore the findings from every angle.

Clive Edwards, Executive Editor and Commissioning Editor, BBC Current Affairs, said: “The shape of Britain’s class system today is very much open to debate. Indeed, some people would argue that class simply doesn’t matter anymore. But our national fascination with class just continues – you only have to look at the huge popularity of programmes like Downton Abbey for the evidence. But when it comes to making policy decisions or having a proper debate about the class system, we need more than stereotypes and received wisdom. We need a proper assessment of what ‘class’ really is, and that’s what we hope this survey will produce.”

Professor Mike Savage, from the University of York, said: “The cultural aspect of class has so far largely been ignored, perhaps because it is a broad yet subtle concept that can be difficult to measure. The problem is, if we don’t measure it, we can’t know how important it is and how much it influences people’s chances in life. The Great British Class Survey will measure the cultural dimension of class for the first time, and will put into place another missing piece in a complex and fascinating puzzle.”

Richard Cable, Editor of BBC Lab UK, said: “Class has long been something of a national obsession, and the traditional language of class still pervades public affairs and continues to influence our opportunities in life. This hugely exciting project takes BBC Lab UK into new areas of research and we hope that with the help of the British public we will deliver a new and more meaningful understanding of class that’s fit for the 21st century.”

The BBC Two films broadcast around the launch of the survey examine what it takes to get on the career ladder in today’s Britain and who has access to the best jobs, including that of Prime Minister.

In Posh & Posher: Why Public School Boys Run Britain (BBC Two, Wednesday 26 January, 9pm) Andrew Neil hits the road to find out what’s happening to the background of our leaders and if British politics is dominated by posh people.

In Who Gets The Best Jobs? (BBC Two, Wednesday 2 February, 9pm) Richard Bilton explores to what level people’s backgrounds still dictate the opportunities open to them in leading professions.

9:00pm Wednesday 26 January on BBC TWO

Grammar school boy Andrew Neil takes a personal journey to discover whether the recent proliferation of public school boys at the top of British politics symbolises the decline of social mobility in our society, and if our politics is set to get posher still

Secrets Of The Arabian Nights

BBC FOUR

Richard E Grant re-opens one of his favourite children’s books, The 1001 Arabian Nights, to explore its extraordinary impact on Western culture.

Journeying to Cairo, and the desert wildernesses beyond, he searches for the world that led to the creation of the Arabian Nights.

The stories first arrived in the West 300 years ago, translated from a 14th-century Syrian manuscript by the French orientalist Antoine Galland.

Overnight the tales became a huge hit in every European country. Readers were fascinated by the central character, Sharazade, who each night recounted stories of princes, genies, demons and robbers, to her husband the King in a desperate bid to avoid execution.

Richard visits Galland’s original manuscripts in Paris and explores how the stories inspired hit shows on the 18th-century stage in London. Three of the stories, Sinbad, Ali Baba and Aladdin, have inspired countless plays, pantomimes and films as well as becoming part of the literary canon for children and adults alike.

However, during Richard’s journey he also discovers that the tales are shrouded in controversy, including calls for a ban on The 1001 Arabian Nights in some parts of the world today.

When God Spoke English – The Making Of The King James Bible

BBC FOUR

To mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, BBC Two and BBC Four present two major documentaries. When God Spoke English – The Making Of The King James Bible on BBC Four tells the unexpected story of how the King James Bible came into being.

Author and presenter, Adam Nicolson, reveals why the making of this great and powerful book shares much with his experience of a very different national project – the Millennium Dome.

The programme also delves into recently discovered 17th-century manuscripts, from the actual translation process, to show in rich detail what makes this particular version of the Bible so good.

In a turbulent and often violent age, the King hoped this Bible would unite a country torn by religious factions. Today, it is dismissed by some as old fashioned and impenetrable. This programme shows why, in the 21st century, the King James Bible remains the greatest book of all time.

King James Bible – The Book That Changed The World

BBC TWO

To mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, BBC Two and BBC Four present two major documentaries. In The King James Bible – The Book That Changed The World on BBC Two, Melvyn Bragg sets out to prove that the King James version has driven the development of the English-speaking world over the last 400 years – often in the most unanticipated ways.

Melvyn argues that while many think the modern world is founded on secular ideals, it is the King James Bible that influenced the English language and its literature more than any other book. It was also, he believes, the seedbed of Western democracy, the activator of radical shifts in society such as the abolition of the slave trade, the debating dynamite for brutal civil wars in Britain and America and a critical spark in the genesis of modern science.

In his quest to uncover the impact of the King James Bible, Melvyn travels to historic locations in the United States, where the King James Bible had a deep impact, including Gettysburg.

He also visits Washington’s Lincoln Memorial, site of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream…” speech.

Armando Iannucci On Dickens

BBC TWO

Two centuries after he was born, Charles Dickens stands alone as perhaps the world’s most popular novelist.

His characters are famous in their own right, his novels endlessly adapted for film and television – he even has his own theme park.

However, for life-long Dickens fan Armando Iannucci, something has been lost along the way. By turning Dickens into an institution we’ve forgotten why he matters as a writer.

In this programme, Armando sets out to rediscover Dickens the novelist – how he wrote, what he thought and why it works. Using Dickens’s masterpiece David Copperfield as a focal point, Armando unpicks the language, analyses the characters and explores the revolutionary development of Dickens as a story-teller.

Using encounters with present-day individuals, Armando opens up many layers of the texts, unlocking Dickens’s emotional power through contemporary situations and real-life experiences. He challenges the old view that Dickens could only write caricatures and shows instead how his exaggerated style actually allowed his novels to reach new heights of emotional truth.

Armando Iannucci On Dickens forms part of the BBC’s Focus On Dickens at the end of the year.