WINNER 2021
THE TWENTY-FOURTH KING’S ENGLISH SOCIETY PRIZE FOR EXCELLENT ENGLISH
The twenty-fourth Prize for Excellent English covered material published in 2020.
The Joint Winners
Oz Clarke for English Wine: From Still to Sparkling, A tour of the regions, South-East (London, Pavilion Press, 2020).
This has wonderfully lyrical descriptions of wines, tastes and places. The fascinating facts are brilliantly and digestibly presented, with real purple patches of prose. It is well-structured, starting with a mystery and leading the reader into an unknown region that is only six miles away from ‘the only certified desert in Britain’.
I was tasting the new releases from an outfit called Gusborne, above all their amazingly rich but dry, imposing Blanc de Blancs, with the thrilling flavours of sticky crème fraiche and croissant crust that you often hear tell of in Champagne, but rarely find. … That’s a piece of Kent where few people live, few people visit, where the mists linger late into the morning and the sodden soil squirts and squelches underneath your boots. Flat, strangely forbidding, dominated by the smugglers’ paradise of Romney Marsh, only famous for sheep and will o’ the wisps and shadowy figures going about their silent business.
… The sun hung low in a cold blue sky, that mid-winter sun which is so bright it near blinds you with its glowing whiteness but is suggestive of the brittle tingle of an ice world untouched by warmth. Steamy breath, a feathering of snow glistening in the sharp raw light, eyes searching for any sign of a pub across the crisp silent distance stretching away to the sleepy slovenly surf of Dungeness Beach.
Tim Ecott for The Land of Maybe: A Faroe Islands Year, Chapter 2, Westernmost (London, Short Books, 2020).
This chapter has a superbly evocative beginning and continues well. It is good at describing activity, such as hauling supplies up a hundred steep concrete steps, the dramatic scenery and local history, and adds a reminiscence of how his family lived there in former years.
The island’s only village, Mykinesbygd, is set well above the ocean, but when a stiff south-westerly blows, the Atlantic roars like booming thunder into the tiny harbour at the foot of the cliffs. It swamps the double breakwater and paints it white with spume. Then it inundates the rough-hewn jetty, kicking up a wall of spray, pure and delicate as a sunlit snow flurry high against the sky. The waves have cracked into fragments, temporarily separated but desperate to be rejoined. The sea now bubbles and froths across the harbour as foam. Cunningly and quietly, it slides up the foot of the steep concrete staircase leading to the village path above. Seconds later, the water withdraws like a tongue, disappearing swiftly under the rolling arc of the next run of breakers with a lisping whistle. … The boulders that form a small inhospitable beach rasp and cough as they scour the base of the cliff, rubbing away the rock a little bit more with each rolling wave. If they can’t attack the village from above, they will undermine it from below.
Four other finalists, in random order
Jackie Wullschläger, for England’s visionary chronicler (Financial Times ‘Life and Art’, 31October/1 November 2020). This has excellent descriptions of Turner’s paintings and of the feelings they inspire. Some great images of moods are appropriately impressionistic to match the style of painting.
Lesser known, a phantasmagoria of a skeleton falling off a galloping steed tilts menacingly towards us, titled “Death on a Pale Horse”, it was until 2016 assumed to be a Rider of the Apocalypse painted in response to the 1832 cholera epidemic. Tate renames it “The Fall of Anarchy” and substitutes political reference – the Reform Act. Either way, it is a hallucinatory dream-like painting inspired by a recent event.
… Late seascapes abstract tempest-whipped waves and baleful skies into vertices of terror. “Whalers”, “Snow Storm – Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth”. With shattering biblical intensity, all declare the mutability of society and nature, man sucked into the whirlpool of fate, as Turner’s theme for epic drama.
… The bridge’s steep foreshortening, a dynamic anchoring diagonal, hurtles our eyes to the horizon while, as if seen from a rushing train, swirls, smears, sprays of paint evoke how the trio of “Rain, Steam and Speed” blur the countryside; a rowing boat on the river, dancing girls of classical myth on the embankment, the plough in a distant field – the gradual fading of old life.
Melanie Phillips for Race radicals want to abolish standard English (online, thetimes.co.uk, 1 September 2020).
Her sensible views were very clearly expressed, although her use of so many short paragraphs seemed strange. The topic is of particular concern to the QES. She clearly argues that the proposals would harm most those they are intended to help.
Where to start? Far from being “racist”, standard English is a great leveller. Instead of a babel of dialects which erect linguistic barriers and can set us apart from each other, it helps us speak a common language. Attempts to undermine it would only damage our shared culture.
… Many ambitious working-class parents of all ethnicities have sought to ensure that their children speak grammatically correct English with received pronunciation in order to be taken seriously and become upwardly mobile. I should know – I was one such child.
… It’s a move that also devalues the evil of true racism. If reasonable people are deemed racist merely because they are white, actual racists can hide in plain sight.
Lucy Kellaway for A different education (Financial Times ‘Life and Art’, 11/12 July 2020).
She describes her experiences of race, as a white person, with disarming candour. Her matter-of-fact style suits this topic well. She describes how race has become the great taboo subject of our time and how those concerned must feel they are walking on eggshells.
My ignorance of these communities was humiliatingly obvious from the first time I tried to take a register. There were 32 names on the computer screen in front of me, of which only 10 I could pronounce without effort. … I felt I had a large sign over my head that read: this woman is a complete idiot.
What I am being paid to do is to teach economics and make students believe that a positive externality is a wondrous thing. If I make a good fist of that, I’m helping all my students – the boy who shares a two-room flat with his Bangladeshi mother and five siblings as well as the girl who lives in a big house on Victoria Park and whose father is a high-exec at the BBC.
Simon Schama for The two Americas (Financial Times ‘Life and Art’, 31 October/1 November 2020).
He writes in fine style and marshals his thoughts in an orderly way, bringing his arguments to a conclusion with a masterly concluding paragraph and sentence (not quoted here).
Infuriated footsoldiers will take to the streets and the cold cultural war that has been rumbling for years will ignite, in some places violently. Up until now it is yard signs that have been set ablaze (or, in one startling case in central Florida, systematically bulldozed by a Trumpian zealot who stole a backhoe to do the damage). In that no man’s land between the initial vote-count and a conclusive result, Trump, who has run as grievance warrior, will light new fires while Joe Biden, who has run as conciliator and unifier, will be holding the hose. The flames may not go out until trust in the democratic transfer of power has been burnt beyond recognition.