Obituary
Isabel Colegate obituary
Author of The Shooting Party, the 1980 novel that was
turned into a popular film starring James Mason and John Gielgud
Polly
Pattullo
Wed 15 Mar
2023 18.15 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/15/isabel-colegate-obituary
The writer
Isabel Colegate, who has died aged 91, had her greatest success with The
Shooting Party, published as a novel in 1980 and adapted into a film four years
later. Like most of her 13 novels, it was set among the country-living English
upper classes in the first half of the 20th century.
This was
familiar home territory to Colegate, and although her writing never suggested
she was inclined to tear down that privilege, she nevertheless sought to
unravel the uneasy secrets of the grand English country house, often to a
backdrop of war, politics and financial disarray.
In The
Shooting Party, Colegate skilfully assembled a broad swathe of characters
representing both the aristocrats of England in 1914 and those who served them.
All seems set fair for a house party and a shoot, but there are undercurrents
of conflicting ideas, and the violent death of a poacher signifies the end of
that pre-first world war era. “Yes, he was only a peasant. But we all knew him,
you see,” explains the teenage granddaughter of the house – one of Colegate’s
strengths lay in portraying the nuances of class.
As the
novel’s first line proclaims: “It caused a mild scandal at the time …” But not
enough to frighten the horses. It was the coming conflict that would do that,
as Colegate, too, acknowledged.
When the
book came to be filmed, Colegate co-wrote the screenplay, and its starry cast
included Dorothy Tutin, John Gielgud and James Mason. The book was also adapted
for BBC Radio 4 in 2010, with Olivia Colman. In his foreword to the Penguin
Modern Classics edition, Julian Fellowes, who wrote the Oscar-winning script
for Gosford Park, wrote of his debt to Colegate; in 1981 the work won a WH
Smith literary award.
Born in
Lincolnshire, Isabel was the youngest of four daughters of Winifred (nee
Worsley), the daughter of a Yorkshire squire, and Sir Arthur Colegate, a
businessman and Conservative MP. Isabel spent a happy childhood in affluent and
rural surroundings, both in Lincolnshire and, during the second world war, in
Shropshire, in her father’s constituency, The Wrekin, and at Hovingham Hall,
the vast Palladian stately home in north Yorkshire that was the family seat of
the Worsley family (Katharine Worsley, later the Duchess of Kent, was brought
up at Hovingham, and was Isabel’s first cousin).
After Runton
school in Norfolk, in 1952 she went to work with the then literary agent
Anthony Blond, a flamboyant figure who had just set up shop in London’s New
Bond Street. Colegate, for whom the literary world would have been a suitable
destination for a well-brought up and moneyed young woman with an interest in
writing, was introduced to Blond when she was 19 by her future husband, Michael
Briggs (they married in 1953), who had been at Oxford with him. Investing £50
in his business, she was, in theory, his partner.
However, as
she recalled much later “I was too shy for what I think was not yet called
networking, so I did the typing, kept the accounts and wrote what must have
been deeply disheartening reader’s reports, so impossibly high were my
standards.” Despite being confined to running the office, Colegate was clearly
not a shrinking violet: when Blond, as he did, referred to her as “the girl” to
visiting clients, Colegate would glare at him from behind her typewriter. This
would compel Blond to backpedal and explain: “I see the girl’s not in today. My
partner, Miss Colegate, might be kind enough …”
At the same
time, she was writing her first novel, The Blackmailer. When Blond turned
publisher in 1958, it was one of the first books of his new imprint, and was
admired for its humour and incisive prose. Her next two novels, A Man of Power
(1960) and The Great Occasion (1962), were also published by Blond, and in
different ways examined Colegate’s interest in the clash between the world of
aristocrats and new money.
Then came
Statues in a Garden (1964), which to some extent foreshadowed The Shooting
Party. Set during the summer of 1914 among the English aristocracy, Colegate
exposed how sexual and financial shenanigans among the privileged and powerful
led to disaster. The Observer’s reviewer described it as having “the right
mixture of doomed fun, melancholy and faintly lascivious despair”.
Orlando King
(1969), Orlando at the Brazen Threshold (1971) and Agatha (1973) came in rapid
succession. Ranging over that familiar Colegate territory of powerful men and
politics, and their downfall before, during and after the second world war, the
three were republished in one volume as The Orlando Trilogy (1984) and later
under the title Orlando King (2020). Her eighth novel was News from the City of
the Sun (1979).
After The
Shooting Party came a collection of short stories, A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory
(1985), and three more novels, Deceits of Time (1988), The Summer of the Royal
Visit (1991) and her last, Winter Journey (1995), followed. None, however,
repeated her earlier success, although Winter Journey was relatively well
reviewed with its ruminations on the lives of a brother (a photographer) and
sister (an unlikely former MP) in late middle age reflecting on their pasts.
For a time, Colegate’s focus and style seemed perhaps just a little out of
fashion.
For nearly
half a century, until 2007, Colegate and her husband, who was for many years
chair of the Bath Preservation Trust, lived at Midford Castle, outside Bath.
Together, they took much pleasure in restoring its 18th-century Gothic
buildings complete with battlements, towers and a gatehouse.
They added
a croquet lawn and swimming pool, and incorporated surrounding woodland and
parkland, which they lovingly managed. In addition they renovated a house in
Tuscany and spent summers there for many years.
Colegate’s
one piece of non-fiction, A Pelican in the Wilderness (2002), and what was to
be her last book, was inspired by the ruins of an 18th-century hermit’s cell
that she discovered in woodlands around Midford Castle. Once it was rebuilt
using the original stone, it became a place for her own contemplation and
observation of nature. As she wrote: “The biggest roebuck will pass as close as
15ft, giving me time to smile at the lackadaisical way he dangles a sprig of
hazel from his mouth.”
As in her
novels, Colegate delves into a wide-ranging cast of characters in A Pelican in
the Wilderness: in this case hermits and recluses of many vintages, from Saint
Simeon Stylites to JD Salinger. She travelled widely for her research and used
her observant eye to explore how history, religion and the natural world
feature in the lives of her chosen figures.
From
Midford Castle the couple moved to Mells, Somerset, and again spent some time
in restoration work: this time, a house in the village. She was made FRSL in
1981, received an honorary MA from the University of Bath in 1988 and for some
time was a book reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and the Daily
Telegraph.
Michael
died in 2017. She is survived by two sons, Barnaby and Joshua, a daughter,
Emily, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Isabel Diana Colegate, writer, born 10
September 1931; died 12 March 2023
Tracing Downton Abbey's lineage: the novel that
inspired a TV hit
Isabel Colegate's The Shooting Party, published in
1980, is an acknowledged influence on Julian Fellowes's ratings monster. But
what can we glean from it about where the story will go?
Beulah Maud
Devaney
Mon 11 Nov
2013 14.42 GMT
With the
arrival of news that Downton Abbey is to return for a fifth series, speculation
rises over what Julian Fellowes has in store for us. How long can Mary's vision
withstand the punishing regime of never-ending eye-rolling over Edith's love
life? Will Carson ever recover from Mrs Hughes installing an electric toaster?
Has Daisy finally learned to breathe through her nose? For those starting to
wonder if Downton is in danger of going on so long that it catches up with the
21st century, there is one book that reveals Fellowes's motivations, intentions
and predilections: The Shooting Party by Isabel Colegate.
Set in
1913, the novel comprises one day in the life of a large country house. The men
are guffawing and shooting, the ladies are frostily lunching and servants dart
hither and thither like beleaguered nymphs as Colegate meditates on Fellowes'
favourite themes: frustration, friction between the classes, tradition v
progress, and the imminent disintegration of an aristocratic world. The day
culminates in a moment of tragedy that tugs at the tightly woven lives of the
masters and their servants and forces both groups to realise the extent of
their dependence on each other.
When The
Shooting Party was published in 1980, the popular representation of the
aristocracy was as a bunch of bungling toffs: weak chins and weak morals
abounded, while servitude was either mocked or ignored. Colegate, however,
chose to dispense with these tropes and present everyone as humans instead of
saints or villains. The book, written at the height of Thatcherism, is a
precursor to Fellowes's forelock-tugging that shows both poor and rich
characters in a sympathetic light.
In his
introduction to the 2004 edition of The Shooting Party, Fellowes was quick to
acknowledge that his screenplay for Gosford Park owed a great deal to the film
adaptation of Colegate's novel: "without it the seed of the idea behind my
script would never have been allowed to germinate". However, at the time
of writing Gosford Park Fellowes had not yet read the book, and in Robert
Altman was working with a director notorious for his fractious relationships
with screenwriters. As a result of Fellowes's novice status and Altman's heavy
hand on the tiller, Gosford Park ended up owing far more to Agatha Christie's
whodunnits than to Isabel Colegate.
Once
Gosford Park had hoovered up its Oscar nominations and Fellowes had completed
the transformation from actor to respected screenwriter, he finally got around
to actually reading The Shooting Party. The result is that Colegate's influence
runs throughout the four series of Downton: the aristocratic family, the restless
young women, the grouchy cook; entire scenes hanging on missing cufflinks.
Kemal Pamuk, who vigorously romanced Mary in the first series, has a Colegate
counterpart in Count Rakassyi, while Robert's overreliance on tradition echoes
that of The Shooting Party's beleaguered host, Sir Randolph.
The
similarities between Downton and The Shooting Party are most apparent in the
final scene of the novel, when the landowner Lord Hartlip endangers the life of
one of the gamekeepers by deviating from "the rules of the game".
Fellowes, in turn, has developed all four series around Robert's well-meaning
but near-disastrous mismanagement of Downton Abbey. Critics have griped about
the amount of time spent discussing entails and dodgy overseas investments, but
the series is largely powered by Robert's repeated gambling of the estate on
shares and his constant hope that some woman, somewhere in his family, will
produce a son.
It is the
suggestion of dry rot within their protagonist families that links Fellowes and
Colegate as writers and offers an insight into the eventual demise of Downton.
Colegate is concerned with characters who are unable to break away from the
established traditions, often at the expense of their own happiness. Everyone
is trapped in the role assigned to them at the beginning of the book, and the
result is a novel powered by nostalgia and pathos.
In his
introduction, however, Fellowes takes this doomy outlook as a rallying cry:
"If we cannot defend our own values against the trivial, fluctuating
fashions in morality, then we are lost." While Lord Fellowes valiantly
defends a life that was built upon the subjugation of the many and the profit
of the few he is simultaneously steering Downton Abbey towards the same
conclusion as The Shooting Party. With Robert reacting to Matthew's death and
relinquishment of the estate in the manner of Augustus Gloop confronted with a
chocolate river, Downton is once again in danger. The fun remains in deciding
if Fellowes will stay true to Colegate's novel or if he will keep Downton
afloat long enough for George Osborne to move in.
No comments:
Post a Comment