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I dedicate this book to Mum and Dad, and to my teacher, Bobby Brown.
CONTENTS
The Seven Ages
Prologue: The Boy with the veil
AGE I INFANT, MEWLING 1 The front room
2 Our war
3 The return of Alfred Jacobi
4 The Christmas Conned ’em
5 Mum
6 Dad
AGE II SHINING MORNING FACE
7 ‘With one little touch of her hand’
8 Confinement
9 East London boy
10 My teachers
11 Intimations of immortality
12 The lads of life
13 The passport prince
14 Cloud-capped towers
AGE III SIGHING LIKE FURNACE
15 First term, first love
16 The Marlowe Society
17 Princes and puppets
18 ‘Honorificabilitudinitatibus’
19 Encounters with a colossus
20 The Brummie Beast
AGE IV SEEKING THE BUBBLE REPUTATION
21 A shameful episode
22 ‘I thought Hamlet looked a bit down at the wedding’
23 Sir
24 Clay feet and other parts
25 Giving away Michael York
26 Leading in the dark
27 The Idiot
AGE V AND THEN THE JUSTICE
28 The intangible ‘it’
29 From Kaiser to Emperor
30 ‘Hamlet, played by Derek “I, Claudius” Jacobi’
31 Enter Richard II
32 A marriage proposal
33 Terrible news
34 So we’ll go no more a-roving
AGE VI A WORLD TOO WIDE
35 Ultimate nightmare
36 The RSC
37 Proboscis magnifica
38 The Jacobi Cadets
39 Two broken codes for the price of one
40 Life among the great and good
AGE VII STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY
41 My new family
42 The summons
43 Walks on the dark side
44 Russell Crowe’s bum
45 Shakespeare’s end-games
46 Aren’t we all?
Picture Section
Afterword and Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Publisher
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Shakespeare, As You Like It, II, vii. It shimmers and enchants; it belongs to a secret, magical, forbidden world, and I have always wanted it. She keeps her glorious white silk wedding veil – part of her wedding trousseau – in her wardrobe, and I sometimes sneak into my parents’ bedroom and gaze at it. And then one day in 1945, when I am six years old and they are both out at work, I creep into their room, open the wardrobe and carefully lift out the veil. I drape the gorgeous white material round my shoulders and over my head, and, swishing it around and puffing myself up like mad, I go out of the house and parade up and down Essex Road. We East London kids like to play out in the
