Gray Matter
| OXFORD UNITED | | | NEWS |  | | | WHAT'S ON | | | | | | EATING OUT | | | | FOOD AND WINE | | | | NEWS | | |
|
|
|
No question of stopping for Stoppard
Tom Stoppard is another fine playwright with a love of nicotine. Simon Gray provides an amusing account in The Last Cigarette of a mismanaged meeting between the two of them in a New York restaurant which Stoppard had found possessed a 'little room' where favoured customers could puff away in defiance of the ban. Gray waited and waited in the restaurant for his friend - who was already in the 'little room'.
A roof terrace at Christ Church fulfilled the same function for Sir Tom, when he attended the buffet lunch party that followed his talk on the last day of the Oxford Literary Festival. A cigarette was rarely out of his fingers as he posed for photographers and chatted to other guests.
"And how is The Oxford Times?" he asked after I had been introduced to him by Susannah Herbert, the literary editor of The Sunday Times. It seemed to me that he was genuinely interested.
The regard he clearly feels for the provincial press was evident earlier that morning during his talk, when he spoke fondly of his six years working on newspapers in Bristol. One of his colleagues from those days worked with me in Oxford during the mid-seventies, and recalled what an entertaining companion the playwright had been.
Remarkably, you might think, readers of the Western Daily Press were not treated to his insights on theatre. "The newspaper already had a theatre critic," he said, recalling that his only contribution in this area had been the occasional one-paragraph puff for productions in exchange for free tickets.
I told Sir Tom that I had been a fan of his since reading his novel Lord Malquist and Mr Moon as a schoolboy. "One of that rare number," he remarked. Rather tactlessly, I told him I had recently tried to reread it and failed. A broad smile indicated why the great playwright thought this might have been the case. . .
3:53pm Tuesday 15th April 2008
Print 
Email this 
Comment
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
