Room at the Top by John Braine..

[salymap]

I worked for the sales manager at the publisher Eyre & Spottiswoode for about six months at the time in the 1950s when this novel was published. What a fuss was made of it and about its
frankness about life and sex.

The film with Laurence Harvey gave it an extended life but it's a pretty routine story now surely. Has it worn well - it's on BBC4 at 9pm tonight in the first of two parts.

Me, I'm going to bed, feel very tired. Hope someone listens though.

[salymap]

I worked for the sales manager at the publisher Eyre & Spottiswoode for about six months at the time in the 1950s when this novel was published. What a fuss was made of it and about its'
frankness about life and sex.

The film with Laurence Harvey gave it an extended life but it's a pretty routine story now surely. Has it worn well - it's on BBC4 at 9pm tonight in the first of two parts.

Me, I'm going to bed, feel very tired. Hope someone listens though.

As I've seen others answer themselves recently, was it worth watching? AG didn't exactly welcome it in the RT

[mercia]

Telegraph seemed to like it

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9569030/Room-at-the-Top-episode-one-BBC-Four-review.html

Guardian "gripping"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/sep/26/room-at-top-doomsday-preppers

Independent "unexpected bounce"

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/last-nights-viewing-room-at-the-top-bbc4mrs-biggs-itv1-8180722.html

[salymap]

Thanks. It's hard to imagine the furore about the novel when first published. My boss, who was a sweetie, didn't think I should read it - I was in my mid-twenties, not that young

[Mandryka]

I worked for the sales manager at the publisher Eyre & Spottiswoode for about six months at the time in the 1950s when this novel was published. What a fuss was made of it and about its
frankness about life and sex.

The film with Laurence Harvey gave it an extended life but it's a pretty routine story now surely. Has it worn well - it's on BBC4 at 9pm tonight in the first of two parts.

Me, I'm going to bed, feel very tired. Hope someone listens though.

I read it when I was 14 and was confounded by its 'risque' reputation (this was 1981, though). Re-reading it now, it's obviously the product of a deeply repressed and uncer-confident Yorkshireman (and a Catholic to boot) who was probably prey to all sorts of inecurities about his flat vowel sounds and the size of his member.

John Braine is actually in danger of becoming a forgotten novelist (mainly because, being of the Kingsley Amis tendency, he fell foul of the left wing literary establishment), which is a shame as his best work - The Jealous God and The Vodi - is very good indeed.

As to the adaptation.....it's a while since I've seen the film but this BBC4 adaptation struck me as far truer to the spirit of Braine's novel: this very British story was not well served on the big screen by the unlikely casting of Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret. Maxine Peake was certainly more like my idea of Alice.

[Guest]

Turned it off tonight. Lurching from bonk to bonk. Lost track. The book is a bit more searching than that.

Only good thing about it was Maxine Peake who acted everyone else off he screen.

O yes, and the snowy bus rides in an inexplicably highly polished, pristine clean bus. Across top of t' moors in snow in ungritted days in a double decker and finish that clean???? Do me a favour.

[Mandryka]

Don't understand why they dirtied it up (language, etc). Utterly pointless.

[jayne lee wilson]

Remember the 1970s TV series Man at the Top with Kenneth Haigh? Great TV - oh yes, sexy and sexist, but great script and - really great theme tune!
I never missed it, even recorded the theme on Dad's Akai 4000D...

[eighthobstruction]

Entrepreneurs must have been flavour of month in 70's....there was that other programme The Maine Chance with John Stride....

Yes a lot of continuity problems with RatT....but enjoyed acting in general....I thought Joes clerk buddy very well cast....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Remember the 1970s TV series Man at the Top with Kenneth Haigh? Great TV - oh yes, sexy and sexist, but great script and - really great theme tune!
I never missed it, even recorded the theme on Dad's Akai 4000D...

Yes, I do (I was 10 when the series first started!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r553WbuIl8

I think it was this series that made my father say to me that I needed to get a degree: Lambton was asked in an interview about his education and replied "Grimmupnorth Grammar School" (I forget precise details) which made his interviewer smirk. "Y'ad to ave BRAINS t get there!" protested Joe, leading to my father's comment.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, I do (I was 10 when the series first started!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r553WbuIl8

I think it was this series that made my father say to me that I needed to get a degree: Lambton was asked in an interview about his education and replied "Grimmupnorth Grammar School" (I forget precise details) which made his interviewer smirk. "Y'ad to ave BRAINS t get there!" protested Joe, leading to my father's comment.

"You sure she's only fifteen?" has an unfortunate timely aftertaste...

[vinteuil]

... there's northerners. Then there's chippy northerners. Then there's chippy northerners with ideas above their station. Then there's all the above in the 1950s.

[eighthobstruction]

Ah but the Northerners sorted him out goodn'proper back in Duffield....Warley....!!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"You sure she's only fifteen?" has an unfortunate timely aftertaste...

Quite so: it really grates, doesn't it?

[jayne lee wilson]

"You sure she's only fifteen?" has an unfortunate timely aftertaste...

That line still makes me giggle though...

er, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry"...