Julian Barnes novel Arthur & George hits the Birmingham stage
Mar 18 2010 By Lorne Jackson
A novel on a Midland miscarriage of justice is being adapted for stage. Lorne Jackson talks to the author.
The novelist, Julian Barnes speaks in a voice that is as refined, smooth and precise as the paws of a Siamese cat, padding across a narrow window ledge.
His books are equally sleek and sophisticated.
In the ‘80s he was grouped with others writers of his generation, including Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, who were trumpeted as the most important English novelists of the era.
Amis prospered with a prose style that sizzled with the swagger and sheen of a glossy airport magazine. McEwan made up for a more low key style with the creepy content of his novels.
Barnes, meanwhile, always seemed loftier. His interest in formal experimentation and French literature was reflected in the themes of his books.
Breakthrough novel, Flaubert’s Parrot, blended the fictional story of an elderly doctor obsessively working on a biography of Gustave Flaubert, with real life events in Flaubert’s life.
Later came A History Of The World In 10 And A Half Chapters, an ambitious novel that spread its tentacles across several countries and centuries.
The works have brought many plaudits, especially in France, where he has been awarded the prestigious Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Barnes is clearly a man of noble tastes. Not the type to be too caught up in ripping yarns.
Yet in 2005 he published Arthur & George, a novel featuring as one of its two protagonists Arthur Conan Doyle, a man who ripped so many yarns, he must have kept a pair of garden shears next to his writing desk.
The book is about the Sherlock Holmes creator’s real-life involvement in a sensational Midland criminal case known as the Great Wyrley Outrages.
Six horses had been slashed in a Staffordshire meadow, and George Edalji an innocent Birmingham lawyer, was blamed, largely because he was Asian.
Conan Doyle heard about the case and became determined to overthrow this miscarriage of justice.
The book has now been adapted into a stage play by local playwright David Edgar and will be performed for the first time at the Birmingham Rep from this week. It promises to be a fascinating play, but how did Barnes become interested in Conan Doyle?
Not surprisingly, the roots of his interest originated across the Channel.
“Like most people I read the Sherlock Holmes books as an adolescent,” he says. “But I was never really the greatest Doyle fan. They weren’t books that I kept coming back to at a later date.
