I spent the Easter weekend in a holiday cottage, in whose library, next to the memoirs of Lord Hailsham, was The Dog In Sport. This blue-blooded compendium of the country canine included how to rate a terrier (25 points for colour), an anecdote about an aristocrat whose carriage was pulled by stags instead of horses, and a new use for a Dachshund.
When I got back to town, and the Internet I looked up its author, James Wentworth day. Amongst his writings, there's an interesting account of an awful-sounding ratting cellar in Cambridge Circus. His Wikipedia article includes in his main accomplishments "unrelenting racist".
An example of his unrelenting racism is in this episode of People in Trouble on mixed marriages. He does not come out of it looking very good at all, and I do wonder, when people do go on television and express their views in the role of token oddball, how earnestly they can really have held them.
Although finding out that its author was rude and unpleasant has tempered my enjoyment of The Dog In Sport, I am glad that it has introduced me to Daniel Farson, presenter of People in Trouble, Out of Step and other social documentaries. There's a tiny exhibition of his photographs in the National Portrait Gallery until September this year, and if you have a spare 20 minutes near Trafalgar Square it's worth popping in to see (ask for room 31).
Farson began his career with Picture Post, as did Ken Tynan. If Farson and Wentworth Day had one thing in common, it's the ease with which they produced books: in Farson's case, a two-week trip to Russia with Gilbert and George turns into a moderately sized volume. So I don't think I'll be reading their complete works, but both men have been interesting discoveries.
History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet
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