Wilson’s jaundiced narrative tone is infected at times with outright bitchiness; he does not love humans in general. It adds a sour readability to the novel. The following observation, as Simon strolls through the zoo, indicates his feelings about the British people: The Old Men at the Zoo, a 1983 serial for BBC2 based on the novel by Angus Wilson, leaves the flashpoint unfashionably late. Although the threat of war is ever present the focus is very much on preparation, propaganda and domestic politics. Curiously, and rather more indicative of the age in which it was adapted, the nuclear bomb that arrives four fifths of the way through was not even present in the novel. urn:lcp:oldmenatzoo0000wils_s1v7:epub:0aa5c2c2-7453-4551-b85c-d34b4d6fea04 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier oldmenatzoo0000wils_s1v7 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t7ds31f93 Invoice 1652 Isbn 0140020799

This is definitely a change for Wilson, moving away from his bitter comedy of manners to what might best be described as a political fantasy-cum-allegory. Its themes are freedom and power and, particularly, where they intersect – what we might now call accountability though then would probably have been called responsibility. As it is Wilson, it is also a vicious satire – on politics and politicians, on civil servants, on sex and sexuality, on the European idea. But what it most is a particularly effective allegory on power and freedom.

If you like animals, you're going to find this unevenly brilliant dystopian novel pretty rough going, particularly toward the end (Remember DISGRACE? Almost like that). Don't let that dissuade you from reading it, though. Published in 1961, it's set in the early 1970s but exhibits some interesting parallels with today's Britain--e.g., the pugnacious "England-versus-Europe-and-everybody-else" mindset--as well as unsettling intimations of J.G. Ballard, who was publishing his first book right around the time this came out. I get the feeling that if I knew more than I do (i.e., pretty much nothing) about postwar British political history, I might find some lightly disguised characters here--Lord Beaverbrook for one-- in the factional infighting amongst the "old men."

The book is so cleverly worked out, so detailed and so complex, that it is impossible to give more than a flavour here. But anyone interested in power games and the incompetent (rather than malicious) abuse of power and in the idea of freedom and how we all have responsibility for it and any Brit who still has doubts about the European Union would be well advised to read this first-class novel. Publishing history The added advantage would be that in the artistic realm, we can also disengage suddenly, we are not forced to continue to participate as is the case in the ‘real’ realm – for instance, right now I have a serious crisis on my hands with the spouse, who is out there, maybe in the mountains, carrying with (my) car the family to who knows what spending shindigs and this at a time of crisis, when bills will reach extreme highs for energy, fuel and what not – and if we find The Men at The Zoo irritating, boring o just not appealing enough to stay connected with their saga, well, then we can just stop reading… War brings some hideous changes to the zoo, and poor old Simon's such a good administrator he forgets to ask the big questions. He leaves that to the old men, and they keep making a mess of it. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-02-17 12:01:23 Boxid IA40061818 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifierThe Old Men at The Zoo by Angus Wilson, author of the much more appreciated, fabulous Anglo-Saxon Attitudes http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/01/a... He worked as a reviewer, and in 1955 he resigned from the British Museum to write full-time (although his financial situation did not justify doing so) and moved to Suffolk. The work situation was stressful and led to a nervous breakdown, for which he was treated by Rolf-Werner Kosterlitz. He returned to the Museum after the end of the War, and it was there that he met Tony Garrett (born 1929), who was to be his companion for the rest of his life. urn:lcp:oldmenatzoo0000wils_y9n3:epub:28e752ca-3022-4865-b7fb-7a2cc85e3b1a Foldoutcount 0 Identifier oldmenatzoo0000wils_y9n3 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2rfm2jf74b Invoice 1652 Isbn 0586049029

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-03-29 03:10:19 Autocrop_version 0.0.9_books-20210916-0.1 Boxid IA40413314 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Five parts. Writer: Troy Kennedy Martin; Adapted from (novel): Angus Wilson; Producer: Jonathan Powell; Director: Stuart BurgeA bizarre performance, which has disconcerted many of Mr. Wilson’s English admirers; I have already heard the book described as a burlesque of C. P. Snow, a veiled account of Munich, and a prolonged leg-pull. But Mr. Wilson isn’t the man to fob us off with a private joke, and even when his symbolism seems clumsily contrived it demands serious consideration. One thing is plain: he isn’t concerned with the futuristic aspects of his story. The treatment of politics is perfunctory, the details of warfare vague, the scattered references to social change almost deliberately inept. Mr. Wilson is no H. G. Wells; his theme is present-day England, which he sees lying at the mercy of unbalanced old men and increasingly cut off from reality. The officials and curators in the novel have lost all sense of proportion; after all, a zoo is an important institution, but it is no more the whole world than—shall we say?—a Cambridge college is. In the outside world terrible things are happening, but the old men go tottering to their graves wrapped up in private manias, jealous and pig-headed to the last. Each of the three directors averts his eyes from what he doesn’t want to see, and each suffers horribly as he is overtaken by events. This is so serious, for they even calibrate to say that they could use tactical nuclear weapons, in other words, smaller devices, but still devastating ones, for to my knowledge, they are still more powerful that what they used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for in the meantime, they have ‘pe4fected the capabilities, to the point where the H bomb and others have incredible powers to destroy and kill humans… Falcon is at once more manly and more childish. He is a famous explorer, whose name is surely intended to recall that of Captain Robert Falcon Scott of the Antarctic, perhaps the last of the pre-1914 storybook English heroes; yet his fixation on the past is not so much jingoism as sheer nostalgia for the nursery. He rechristens the Zoo’s prize elephant Jumbo, while on the eve of war he is engrossed in arranging a tableau of animals from children’s classics: Kipling, The Wind in the Willows, and so forth. He thinks of the public as a cheerful music-hall crowd; there is no place in his outlook for the mob violence which follows the destruction of his Victorian jamboree. Of all the characters in the book he is the one most plainly self-deluded, yet the fantastic preparations for his “British Day”—fireworks, multicolored fountains, patriotic recitations, emblematic flowerbeds—are described in elaborate and loving detail. Mr. Wilson has always reserved some of his sharpest darts for the soft underbelly of English culture, the whimsical, jocular, pet-loving, and sentimental side of the national character; but what stirs him to satire also exercises a lasting fascination.