You've got me wanting to listen to it again - I did enjoy it!
An enjoyment in reading Tolkien's Letters again, which I had somehow forgotten, was Letter 241 on his lecture, 'English and Welsh', and the anecdote about the mainlanders calling the inhabitants of Môn "moch 'swine'" and Sir John Morris Jones telling visitors to his new house "overlooking the Menai Straits, to Môn" who "asked if he was going to give it a name. 'Yes', said he, 'I shall call it Gadara View.'" ('Mochyn drwg' - 'bad pig' - was one of the Welsh phrases still common in my immigrant-descended family when I was growing up...)
Yes, the 1969 Hamlet was my introduction to Nicol Williamson. And with the enchanting Judy Parfitt as Gertrude and Anthony Hopkins as Claudius. I remember that Richardson staged Hamlet's interaction with the ghost of his father to suggest that he may have imagined the conversation.
@ap - I loved the way that the 1969 Hamlet movie was cut (from a very long and sprawling un-cut text - that would (apparently) never have been performed complete in Shakespeare's time.
(Probably the plays as-performed were all done in versions about as short as Macbeth - which is nowadays the shortest of Shakespeare's plays, and not coincidentally has the least corrupted text.)
The movie kept all my favourite bits, and fused them into a concentrated and tremendously powerful structure - yet with no sense at all of rushing or skimping, but on the contrary a spacious quality.
Thanks for this, I will listen to it. Sounds great! As regards the Andy Serkis and Rob Inglis, I'd say Inglis version is like the experience of having a talented story-teller read the book for you, while Serkis' version is almost like a full audio play with a full cast. Very different, and both very good.
13 May 2024 at 14:44
[Image] There are (officially) only two (!) complete recorded readings of The Hobbit (Rob Inglis and Andy Serkis) - all the rest have cuts, thereby (almost-inevitably) removing some of my personal favourite parts. Of these condensed Hobbits; my favourite is that of Nicol Williamson; who loved Tolkien's works, and carefully edited the text himself; so that it is mostly shortened by very large numbers of small cuts: leaving-out innumerable little phrases and joining passages - rather than the usual (because much easier) practice of deleting whole major chunks of text. (By contrast; Martin Shaw's excellent narration astonishingly leaves-out Thorin's deathbed reconciliation with Bilbo!) Furthermore, Williamson was - at his best, such as here - a genuinely inspired actor. His Hamlet in the 1969 movie is overall the favourite I have encountered (and I've seen many versions of this greatest of all Shakespeare's works); and his Merlin in the movie Excalibur is deep, brilliant, and unforgettable. The characters are clearly distinguished by dialect and pitch: e.g. dwarves deeper voiced and with Yorkshire accents, elves lighter in tone and with Received Pronunciation. Smaug speaks like a "peppery" senior officer in the British Army; while Gollum - being a thief - is naturally Welsh (;-p) Here, Williamson narrates with absolute commitment and detail, and with beautiful phrasing; avoiding that "on autopilot" quality, with false emphases and mispronunciations, that is all-too-common among audiobook readers; who work under extreme pressure of time, and with little chance for preparation - and who are at root "busy professionals" doing a job - rather than doing what for Williams was clearly labour of love. The soundscape and background music, of a medieval type, enhances the reading. I can't discover much about the musicians, except that Bob Stewart, the renowned psaltery player, was involved. The original multi-LP vinyl version of The Hobbit, must have been a treasure to possess - as such things often were in that era of "concept albums", with art work, booklet etc.
"Nicol Williamson's abridged audio Hobbit (1974)"
5 Comments -
You've got me wanting to listen to it again - I did enjoy it!
An enjoyment in reading Tolkien's Letters again, which I had somehow forgotten, was Letter 241 on his lecture, 'English and Welsh', and the anecdote about the mainlanders calling the inhabitants of Môn "moch 'swine'" and Sir John Morris Jones telling visitors to his new house "overlooking the Menai Straits, to Môn" who "asked if he was going to give it a name. 'Yes', said he, 'I shall call it Gadara View.'" ('Mochyn drwg' - 'bad pig' - was one of the Welsh phrases still common in my immigrant-descended family when I was growing up...)
David Llewellyn Dodds
1 May 2024 at 01:41
Yes, the 1969 Hamlet was my introduction to Nicol Williamson. And with the enchanting Judy Parfitt as Gertrude and Anthony Hopkins as Claudius. I remember that Richardson staged Hamlet's interaction with the ghost of his father to suggest that he may have imagined the conversation.
1 May 2024 at 06:05
@ap - I loved the way that the 1969 Hamlet movie was cut (from a very long and sprawling un-cut text - that would (apparently) never have been performed complete in Shakespeare's time.
(Probably the plays as-performed were all done in versions about as short as Macbeth - which is nowadays the shortest of Shakespeare's plays, and not coincidentally has the least corrupted text.)
The movie kept all my favourite bits, and fused them into a concentrated and tremendously powerful structure - yet with no sense at all of rushing or skimping, but on the contrary a spacious quality.
1 May 2024 at 06:57
@DLD - Yest, a pretty good learn-ed pun.
1 May 2024 at 06:59
Thanks for this, I will listen to it. Sounds great! As regards the Andy Serkis and Rob Inglis, I'd say Inglis version is like the experience of having a talented story-teller read the book for you, while Serkis' version is almost like a full audio play with a full cast. Very different, and both very good.
13 May 2024 at 14:44