The blessings of a literary upbringing

I was especially interested to read Fran Hill’s very moving piece earlier this week about a military mummy reading to her child, and Philippa Linton’s piece on Tuesday on The Springs of Imagination, because my thoughts had been roaming in a similar vein as I thought about what I would write this month.

I had been thinking back to my childhood, and the experience of my parents reading to me, and the thing that impelled my thoughts in this direction was Martin Jarvis reading Richmal Crompton’s Just William stories on Radio 4 every morning this week. The delicious hyperbole with which he enunciates the text is very reminiscent of the way in which my mother used to bring those same stories to life for me as a child.

It got me reflecting on my introduction to story via my parents. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t read to – indeed, I think for my mother half the point of having children was to be able to read to them and introduce them to the stories she loved, a delight I shared when I had children of my own.

My father also enjoyed reading. When my parents were first married, they lived on the south coast and my father worked in London. Every day on the train my father would spend the first half of the journey reading from his huge black Bible, and then for the second half of the journey he would take out a tiny volume of Shakespeare in miniature and read his way through one of the plays. It must have been a comical performance to observe. I have inherited his collection of Shakespeare’s complete works in miniature, and these photos are of the entire collection on my bookshelf, and one of the volumes in my hand to give an impression of the size.

My parents had a very different approach to reading to their children. My mother did the sensible thing, starting with books appropriate for very small children, such as Dick Bruna’s Miffy stories, then progressing through the Beatrix Potter stories, Peggy Parish's Amelia Bedelia books and Joyce Lankester Brisley's Milly-Molly-Mandy stories, some of the classics such as The Wind in the Willows and Alice in Wonderland (re-reading this to check it before pressing publish, I notice I didn't even feel the need to name the authors of those two!), stories which I suppose she thought would appeal to my brothers, but which I enjoyed as much as they did, for example, the Just William books mentioned above, H.E. Todd’s Bobby Brewster stories and Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings tales.  Then there were all the works of Gene Stratton Porter and of course, C. S. Lewis’s Narnia chronicles (over and over again). She also gave me many books to read by myself which, I suppose, she thought would not interest my brothers, such as L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series and all the books by Patricia St John. So the reading to which she introduced me was quite diverse, but strictly age appropriate.

My father, on the other hand, just read to us the books he wanted to hear. I can remember sitting by the fire on wintry Sunday afternoons while he read aloud from books like Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge, R. D. Blackmore’s Lorna Doone and John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps. I remember being very small and the stories were way above my head – it wasn’t really until adulthood that I revisited them. But I do remember loving the sound of the words, sitting there relishing the vocabulary, making a mental note of unfamiliar words so I could later go and ask my mother what they meant or, once I was older, look them up in a dictionary.

It’s hardly surprising, I suppose, with this heritage, that I was myself attempting to write stories before I even started school, and have been doing so ever since. It was when, at the age of 9, my class teacher introduced us to Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum, that I knew I was going to be a writer when I grew up.

Why I am reminiscing in this vein? I think I would like to convey to all of us who write, whether for children or adults, the immense privilege we have of enriching other people’s imaginative and intellectual life. Let’s all carry on writing and contribute as much as we can to the sum of human happiness which takes the form of getting lost in a book.

Ros Bayes has 12 published and 4 self-published books, as well as some 3 dozen magazine articles. She is the mother of 3 daughters, one of whom has multiple complex disabilities, and she currently works for Through the Roof (www.throughtheroof.org) as their Training Resources Developer, and loves getting paid to write about disability all day. You can find her blog at http://rosbunneywriting.wordpress.com and her author page at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ros-Bayes/e/B00JLRTNVA/.