By ALAN WHITE [New Statesman] – During a discussion about War Music, I mentioned [Christopher] Logue’s use of modern martial metaphors, such as Napoleon, Rommel and the bomb, to describe the action between the Greeks and Romans – at which point he interjected: “It’s funny that you group those three together. Napoleon and Rommel, perhaps, but not the bomb.” Why? “Because the bomb is strangely outside military things. It is the military who detonate these things, but it passes much more into the realm of politics.”
In the 1960s, Logue was still years away from finding acclaim with War Music. He spent much of the next decade depressed – as he writes: “Then things improved. I met Rosemary Hill. She had a most beautiful smile. Open, friendly, sceptical.” Without realising, he let slip a charming aside during our discussion on humour in literature: “Sometimes Rosemary reads Dickens to me – you just find yourself bursting with laughter. The description of music halls, of people struggling for the best seats – it’s just wonderful.”
I stayed in touch with Logue for a while after our meeting. I received a couple of beautiful hand-written cards and spoke on the phone a few times, but I got the impression he was already bored of me. Then one afternoon a postman knocked at my door with a large brown tube. I opened it and inside was one of Logue’s poster poems from the 1960s, with a note of thanks inside.
That was Christopher Logue. Prickly, certainly. Highly impatient – by his own admission. And beneath all that, a kind and sympathetic man. It made him the artist he was.
In full at the New Statesman | More Chronicle & Notices.
