tomsharpe.co.uk

Vintage Stuff

Author Tom Sharpe
Publisher Secker & Warburg[1]
Published 8 November 1982[1]
Pages 220[2][3]
Price £7.50[1]
ISBN 0 436 45810 1[3]
Paperback Pan Books, 20 May 1983, £1.75[4][5]
Stage version Epsom Playhouse, March 2000[6]
Preceded by Ancestral Vices (1980)[7]
Followed by Wilt on High (1984)[7]

Vintage Stuff is a comic novel by Tom Sharpe, published by Secker & Warburg on 8 November 1982.[1] It was his tenth novel.[1][8] It sends up the 1920s and 1930s adventure stories of John Buchan, Sapper and Dornford Yates, and the boarding schools that brought up boys on them.[9][10][11] A romantic housemaster and his literal-minded pupil set off for France to rescue a countess who does not need rescuing. Sharpe found it harder to write than any of his earlier books.[12]

Background and writing

Sharpe had written Riotous Assembly in three weeks, and he said some of his books felt as though they had written themselves.[1] Vintage Stuff was the opposite. According to Alan Franks’s profile in The Times, its writing “ran into years, not weeks”, and it was cut down from a total of 600,000 words, “about nine times its actual length”.[1] Sharpe gave the same figure two years later:

‘I try to write a book a year, but it doesn’t always work out like that. Vintage Stuff ran into years and totalled 600,000 words — nine times longer than it should have been.’[13]

His friend and biographer Piers Brendon describes the struggle from Sharpe’s letters. By Christmas 1981 Sharpe had typed over half a million words in eighteen months, producing one version after another, and called himself a “post-midlife pessimist” who had “belly-flopped into the Slough of Despond”. Having written nine farces in eleven years, he felt “pumped out”. He even blamed the malign influence he believed St Ronan’s House, his home, had on his work (pp. 243–244).[12] Early in 1982 he stopped taking the antidepressant amitriptyline, which he felt was turning him into a zombie, and said he had then been able to finish the book “at a gallop” (p. 244).[12]

Sharpe later linked the book to his own childhood reading:

‘As a kid I loved the notion of catching a train, going somewhere and sleeping rough, then later I wrote Vintage Stuff about a man obsessed with thrillers who becomes disillusioned. I liked that.’[14]

Dornford Yates mattered most. Sharpe had looked into Yates’s life at Pau in the 1970s, and he thought Yates’s ideas “racist, fascist and fortunately ludicrous”. Brendon calls the novel “an elaborate backhanded tribute” to him (p. 350).[12] The Times‘s obituary of Sharpe also traced the book to his boyhood reading of Yates.[15]

Franks called the result a “Euro-farce, cutting between a chateau and another of those abattoir-like public schools”, and wondered whether Groxbourne drew on “the Bloxham of his pre-Lancing days”.[1] Brendon confirms that Groxbourne was based on Bloxham. When the book was finished, Sharpe tried to find out whether the one-eyed geography master who had taught him there was still alive, in case he recognised himself in Glodstone, who wears a monocle in front of a glass eye (pp. 251, 253).[12][3]

Plot

Groxbourne is a minor public school in Shropshire that offers parents “Assault Courses for Overactive Underachievers”.[16][17] Its star pupil is Peregrine Clyde-Browne, the son of a solicitor. He is a natural athlete and a dead shot, and so literal-minded that he “takes literally each and every word he hears”.[17][8][18] He passes his O-levels only by memorising answers supplied by a crammer.[19]

Peregrine’s housemaster, Rodney Glodstone, wears a monocle, drives a 1927 Bentley and has modelled himself on Richard Hannay, Bulldog Drummond and the Scarlet Pimpernel.[16][17][8] He believes the decline of the British Empire is the work of a conspiracy of Bolsheviks and foreigners.[20] His rival, the geography master Slymne (“pronounced Slime”), hates them both. Slymne forges a series of letters from a French countess who appears to be in danger.[16][21] In the Easter holidays Glodstone and Peregrine drive to her château in the south of France to rescue her.[17][10]

The château turns out to be a semi-private hotel where an international conference of diplomats is meeting.[22][19] The countess is an English-born adventuress and a former Hollywood starlet, “more than capable of looking after herself”.[2][23] Peregrine takes all his master’s heroics at face value. His assault on the château leaves conference delegates shot, and the plot climaxes in the threat of an assassination.[3][20][24][25] Slymne and Major Fetherington, who runs the school’s survival course, are sent after Peregrine and are interrogated by French security; Slymne apparently loses his mind. Glodstone is humiliated, while Peregrine escapes with the countess and a quantity of gold bars.[19] Peregrine is last seen serving with the British Army in Northern Ireland.[2][26]

Publication

The Times printed an extract from the novel alongside Franks’s profile of Sharpe on publication day.[1] Brendon records that the BBC’s Robert Robinson also planned an Arena documentary about him. Sharpe’s publisher, Tom Rosenthal at Secker, and his agent, Richard Simon, were both “effusive” about the book, though it sharpened the friction between them (pp. 247–248).[12]

Sharpe signed copies at The Book Shop in South Street, Bridport, near his Dorset home, on 20 November 1982. The owner said the book was “selling well for a hardback”.[27][28] By January 1983 the South Wales Argus was describing it as “already a best seller”.[29] Brendon notes that disappointing notices were “offset by buoyant sales” (p. 252).[12]

Pan published the paperback on Friday 20 May 1983 at £1.75.[4][5] Sharpe signed copies at Longmans in Dorchester on 25 May,[4] and appeared on Grampian Television’s book programme Cover to Cover the next day to discuss it.[30]

When the novel was translated into Hungarian, the translator, Viktor Mészáros, asked whether he could change the Ford Cortina that Slymne drives into a Citroën, because this would get him “an absolutely huge discount” on a new car from Citroën Hungary. Sharpe agreed (p. 359, n. 84).[12] A stage version toured in 2000 and played the Epsom Playhouse on 14 March.[6]

Reception

Brendon sums up the reviews as “the usual mixture of kicks and ha’pence” (p. 251).[12] Norman Shrapnel, in The Guardian, called Glodstone “a kind of sick Quixote” and wrote: “I found it a funny, frightening book.”[9] Gay Firth, in The Times, compared Sharpe to Wodehouse and played on the title: “Vintage stuff, all right; and very funny.”[8] The publisher’s advertisements quoted Martin Seymour-Smith of the Financial Times (“His funniest novel”) and Stanley Reynolds of Punch, who found it “marvellously funny”.[31] The Daily Express called it “an hilarious send-up of the Dornford Yates style of thriller”.[20] The Northern Echo found the “action, dialogue and commentary” all “hilarious”,[18] the Torbay Express said it “lives up to its title”,[32] and the Cambridge Evening News thought it found Sharpe “back in his best form again”.[33] The Scotsman called it the nearest Sharpe had come to a morality novel and liked its central idea “that people who live vicariously through fiction can find themselves dangerously exposed”. It welcomed the fact that the book had “far less gratuitous violence” than its predecessors.[22]

Other critics were less kind. Anthony Thwaite, in The Observer, thought Sharpe had been in decline since The Great Pursuit and called the book “very tired stuff indeed”.[34] Thomas Hinde, in the Sunday Telegraph, found the characters ciphers and the jokes childish: “Mr Sharpe’s appeal still mystifies me.”[2] Stuart Sutherland, in the Times Literary Supplement, said that Sharpe at his best could pile up mischance in a way that was “imaginative, plausible and funny”, but that he never stayed at his best for long. He listed the book’s scatological episodes and concluded: “All good clean fun, though not particularly risible.”[3] John Mellors, in The Listener, called it “more of a rough-on-the-palate vin ordinaire” with “too many misses”, although he thought the countess “a splendid creation”.[23] Brendon reports that Auberon Waugh found it “curate’s eggy” and that Nicholas Shrimpton, in the Sunday Times, saw it as less a farce than a thriller and accused Sharpe of running out of targets (p. 251).[12]

Paul Bailey, reading Sharpe for the first time for the London Standard, called the writing “not only crude but insultingly facetious”.[16] A reader wrote in to agree.[35] Several regional reviewers felt Sharpe had lost his touch. The Swindon Advertiser found it funny in places but thought he overdid “the schoolboy smut”.[36] The Newcastle Journal found “a lot less laughs than any other Sharpe novel”, the Derby Evening Telegraph said he seemed “to have gone off the boil”, and the Coventry Evening Telegraph called the result “disappointing”.[37][38][39]

Several reviewers noticed that the comedy was darker than usual. Elizabeth Berridge, in The Daily Telegraph, wrote that “the wicked, riotous humour flips over into cruelty and the result is chilling”.[17] Writing in March 1983, Bernard Phillips of the Eastern Daily Press felt the farce had “acquired a terrifying reality”.[26] The Huddersfield Daily Examiner suspected that Geoffrey Household, rather than Buchan or Sapper, was the real target, and thought this unfair to Household, but still found the book “very funny”.[24]

The paperback reviews were mostly warmer. The Observer called it “wildly hilarious”,[40] and the Sunday Telegraph called it “manic comedy, Mr Sharpe’s undisputed forte”.[41] The Birmingham Evening Mail said it “may lack a certain wine-dark quality but it’s still very, very funny”.[42] The Wales edition of the Daily Post said Sharpe’s humour “has lost none of its penetration”.[43] The Literary Review praised its “frenetic, slapstick energy” and called it “vintage Tom Sharpe indeed”.[44] The Times warned that readers “won’t remember much about it afterwards”,[5] but at the end of the year it named the book the most conspicuous light-fiction paperback of 1983: not quite vintage Sharpe, but “characteristically rude, anarchic and funny”.[45]

Sharpe’s own view swung between hailing it as his best book and dismissing it as “feeble and puerile”, and he worried about the charge that he was running out of plots and targets. Brendon’s verdict is that it is “a rattling good yarn” that seldom produced the “gut-wrenching laughter” Sharpe aimed for (pp. 251–252).[12] Reviewing Wilt on High in 1984, the Swindon Advertiser found the new book laboured by comparison with Vintage Stuff.[46] Looking back in 1992, Brendan Wignall called it “a splendid send-up of boarding schools and teachers who read too much Bulldog Drummond and John Buchan”.[11]

References

  1. Alan Franks, ‘The Sharpe end of reality’, The Times, 8 November 1982. Read on this site.
  2. Thomas Hinde, ‘Burgess in a hurry’, Sunday Telegraph, 7 November 1982. (Clipping in the archive.)
  3. Stuart Sutherland, review of Vintage Stuff, The Times Literary Supplement, 12 November 1982, p. 1243. (Clipping in the archive.)
  4. ‘Author at bookshop’, Dorset Evening Echo, 24 May 1983. (Clipping in the archive.)
  5. Anne Barnes, ‘Buried in thought or sand?’, The Times, 28 May 1983. (Clipping in the archive.)
  6. Theatre listings (Epsom Playhouse), The Times, 11 March 2000. (Clipping in the archive.)
  7. ‘Works’, tomsharpe.co.uk. Read on this site.
  8. Gay Firth, ‘Sharpe humours’, The Times, 11 November 1982. (Clipping in the archive.)
  9. Norman Shrapnel, ‘Back to the comic village’, The Guardian, 28 October 1982. (Clipping in the archive.)
  10. ‘What about the readers?’, Southern Daily Echo, 18 November 1982. (Clipping in the archive.)
  11. Brendan Wignall, ‘Attacking Pretensions’, Million, March–April 1992. Read on this site.
  12. Piers Brendon, Tom Sharpe: A Personal Memoir (Peach Publishing, 2024). Page numbers are given in the text.
  13. Max Hobbs, ‘A blott on the horizon…’, Daily Record, 18 October 1984. Read on this site.
  14. Jackie Aplin, ‘A Sharpe viewpoint on life’, Wales on Sunday, 27 May 1990. Read on this site.
  15. Obituary of Tom Sharpe, The Times, 7 June 2013. (Clipping in the archive.)
  16. Paul Bailey, ‘Poor little vintage’, The Standard (London), 10 November 1982, p. 19; reprinted as ‘What’s funny?’, Daily Post (Liverpool), 18 November 1982. (Clipping in the archive.)
  17. Elizabeth Berridge, ‘School for “heroes”’, The Daily Telegraph, 11 November 1982. (Clipping in the archive.)
  18. W. J. Nesbitt, ‘Sharpe stuff, this comic mayhem’, The Northern Echo, 19 November 1982. (Clipping in the archive.)
  19. Entry on Tom Sharpe, Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 231: British Novelists since 1960, Fourth Series (Gale, 2001). (Clipping in the archive.)
  20. Review of Vintage Stuff, Daily Express, 12 November 1982, p. 7. (Clipping in the archive.)
  21. Review of Vintage Stuff, Neath Guardian, 16 June 1983. (Clipping in the archive.)
  22. Review of Vintage Stuff, The Scotsman, 4 December 1982, p. 23. (Clipping in the archive.)
  23. John Mellors, ‘North country’, The Listener, 18 November 1982, p. 28. (Clipping in the archive.)
  24. Steve Woolley, review of Vintage Stuff, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 3 February 1983. (Clipping in the archive.)
  25. Simon Meeks, ‘Witty stuff’, Norwich Mercury, 17 December 1982. (Clipping in the archive.)
  26. Bernard Phillips, review of Vintage Stuff, Eastern Daily Press, 7 March 1983. (Clipping in the archive.)
  27. ‘Sharpe scores again’, Bridport and Lyme Regis News, 12 November 1982. (Clipping in the archive.)
  28. ‘Tom meets his public’, Dorset Evening Echo, 24 November 1982, p. 21. (Clipping in the archive.)
  29. Steve Hoselitz, review of Vintage Stuff, South Wales Argus, 24 January 1983. (Clipping in the archive.)
  30. Television listing for Cover to Cover (Grampian), Aberdeen Evening Express, 26 May 1983. (Clipping in the archive.)
  31. Secker & Warburg advertisement, The Standard (London), 17 November 1982; the same advertisement in The Listener, 9 December 1982, and Literary Review, December 1982, p. 11. (Clipping in the archive.)
  32. Review of Vintage Stuff, Torbay Express and South Devon Echo, 30 October 1982, p. 13. (Clipping in the archive.)
  33. Alan Kersey, ‘Diary: Cambridge authors complete double’, Cambridge Evening News, 1 December 1982. (Clipping in the archive.)
  34. Anthony Thwaite, ‘Girl, seventeen’, The Observer, 14 November 1982. (Clipping in the archive.)
  35. Philip Clery-Fox, ‘Tasteless’ (letter), The Standard (London), 15 November 1982, p. 12. (Clipping in the archive.)
  36. Review of Vintage Stuff, Swindon Advertiser, 11 November 1982. (Clipping in the archive.)
  37. Phillip Crowley, ‘Far from the best’, The Journal, 25 November 1982. (Clipping in the archive.)
  38. Review of Vintage Stuff, Derby Evening Telegraph, 6 January 1983, p. 17. (Clipping in the archive.)
  39. Sarah Crompton, ‘Sharpe loses his edge’, Coventry Evening Telegraph, 4 February 1983. (Clipping in the archive.)
  40. Paperback round-up, The Observer, 15 May 1983. (Clipping in the archive.)
  41. Paperback round-up, Sunday Telegraph, 22 May 1983. (Clipping in the archive.)
  42. Fred Norris, review of Vintage Stuff, Birmingham Evening Mail, 23 May 1983. (Clipping in the archive.)
  43. Don Sutton, ‘Obedient to every wishful thought’, Daily Post (Wales), 2 June 1983. (Clipping in the archive.)
  44. Paperback reviews, Literary Review, August 1983, p. 21. (Clipping in the archive.)
  45. Paperbacks of the year, The Times, 29 December 1983, p. 9. (Clipping in the archive.)
  46. Review of Wilt on High, Swindon Advertiser, 4 October 1984. (Clipping in the archive.)