Lost in a good book with Simon Russell Beale
Simon Russell Beale talks about his first encounter with Shakespeare, the lumpiness of Shaw, and the moment he gave up on Proust.
The first book I read that made an impact.
The first time I read Shakespeare out loud. I was at choir school. It was Julius Caesar. An incomprehensible plays for eight-year-olds. You're always given Julius Caesar as a child - subliminally safe. I clearly remember the headmaster at the choir school and where I was sitting, and I know where the sun was coming in through the window. He asked me to do the Dogs of War speech. I remember that thrill and I'm sure that provoked some visceral reaction about Shakespeare that hasn't gone away.
My favourite book...
There are so many books. I remember the first time I read Anna Karenina. The excitement of various popular history books, which I'm a great believer in; the classy writers like Simon Schama. His book Citizens [A Chronicle of the French Revolution], is a really magnificent book, the sort of book that leads you on to studying the period. John Julius Norwich: his two books about the Norman Kingdom in Sicily, which led me on to Byzantine and Medieval Italy. It became an obsession for ten years. Those sorts of books start you off on a journey, which I love.
The books I read...
I'm not a fiction reader any more, which is to my eternal shame. I think it's because I studied English at university. When I finished my degree I walked out of the exam room. It was a hot day and I bought the first book I didn't have to study. Bizarrely, I bought Roderick Hudson by Henry James, God knows why, and read that simply because I didn't have to write about it. But since then I haven't read any novels, partly because I wish I'd read history. I loved my English degree, but it's all been history since then. I love popular maths books - the moment you discover something and think, wow, I never knew about prime numbers. I never knew about the Riemann hypothesis. I suddenly realised it was a very beautiful world.
My favourite writer...
I don't think I have a favourite writer, but Schama's book on Rembrandt [Rembrandt's Eyes]: that opened up a whole world of art which I knew nothing about. I can't have a favourite fiction writer except the big man himself [Shakespeare] who I read continuously. I like the history cycles and the last plays... Cymbeline, Pericles.
The classic I've never read...
Madame Bovary. I've never read it, which is terrible, because that's not a hard one. I'm waiting for someone to ask me to record it as an audio book. They never give me the posh books. I know if I loved Anna Karenina, I'll love Madame Bovary. I just haven't got round to it. Of course there are the big ones: like Finnegan's Wake and Proust... I remember when I stopped reading Remembrance of Things Past. I was on the tube and I thought ‘I just can't do it'. That sort of book you have to give yourself time for. I went to Tobago recently and read The Iliad and The Odyssey properly, and that I found just thrilling. Picking up a book after a few days and trying to get back into it again is hard, but sitting on a beach in Tobago, where it pissed down with rain - rain like you've never seen - it was wonderful.
My favourite place to read...
I love the London Library Reading Room. Just popping in. And my local park.
When I first read Major Barbara...
Well I still have big issues about Shaw. I don't really know much about him. When I first read it, I didn't know what he was trying to do. I didn't know where to locate the mischief of it, whether he was writing sub-Oscar Wilde or what, and if that was a clumsy device or an enjoyable one. But he can write a genuinely funny line. I thought it was clumsy and bumpy and locked, but I've been proved wrong. It's actually extremely enjoyable to act. You know when you read Chekhov and you think that's just perfect. There's not a mistake made in those four great plays [Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull and Uncle Vanya]. You get mistakes with Shakespeare. With Shaw, there's something missing -something in the machinery of the plays, a bolt or a gear missing - and I can't locate it now. Act Two is a problem. There are lumps in the porridge. I like it much more than I did, but I'm still not entirely convinced.
My visits to the NT Bookshop...
I use it all the time. If you want any books on theatre, that's where you go. I'm always popping in. They have a very good Shakespeare section. If I have half an hour spare, that's where I go and get lost.
Simon recently played Andrew Undershaft in Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara. He returns from 21 July in Harold Pinter's A Slight Ache in the Lyttelton, which will be joined by Pinter's Landscape in a double bill from 13 September.
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