The Flag

by Robert Shaw

Genres: Fiction

271 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Robert Archibald Shaw was an English actor and novelist, remembered for his performances in From Russia with Love (1963), A Man for All Seasons (1966), The Sting (1973), and Jaws (1975), where he played the shark hunter Quint.

In addition to his acting career, Shaw was also an accomplished writer of novels, plays and screenplays. His first novel, The Hiding Place, published in 1960, met with positive reviews. His next, The Sun Doctor, published the following year, was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 1962.

Reviews

[Stephen McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book in my father's collection after he passed. It sat on a shelf for many years.
Once I finally picked it up to read I couldn't put it down.
It is fascinating and engaging with elements of revolutionary politics woven into old english smalltown drama. The subplot of rockingham's march has elements of Beckett's Godot to it.
It is the most curious thing. Worthy and whimsy in equal measure.
I enjoyed it.

[Graham Connors · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because it was written by Robert Shaw, yes, THE Robert Shaw, the blond haired villain of From Russia With Love, and the salty, manic captain of the Orca from Jaws. A wonderful actor and, as it turns out, a wonderful writer too!

Now, I won't lie and say this is a fabulous novel, it's not, but it's a great read. I found it a bit slow in places, and I wasn't (still am not) sure of what contribution the Vicar's children were to the plot. There are also passages (mainly Rockingham's flag bearing travails), which read like an excerpt from Waiting for Godot (or at least inspired by Beckett). I nearly gave up on at least two occasions, but I'm glad I didn't.

Would I recommend this novel? I would, but I'd qualify that by saying it was my interest in Shaw that kept me going through it. If you don't have that, you might fail.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Church Militant

Can religion and politics mix? How can they not, if you believe that politics is morality put into practice? Certainly the once notorious "Red Vicar of Thaxted," Conrad Noel, believed this when he hoisted the red flag of the workers in his church in the 1920s. And, as a parson in the established Church of England, sometimes referred to as "the Tory party at prayer," Noel's call to arms was all the more shocking.

Robert Shaw's novel The Flag, based on the Noel affair, made an indelible impression on me when it was published in 1965. Although long out of print, copies are still available via Amazon; I bought one to see if the book was the masterpiece that I remembered. The verdict: not quite, but very nearly. Its social world is quintessentially British; this is part of its appeal, but it may not travel well. Also its pacing is slightly off, seeming too slow at the start and too fast at the end. But it is powerful, visionary, and dramatic, investing ordinary people with almost scriptural overtones—imagine an English Steinbeck. And it presents a richer portrait of a clergyman, both sympathetic and searching, than anything I can think of before Marilynne Robinson's Gilead..

Miner Calvin, Shaw's protagonist, is no ordinary Anglican. A former miner, as his sobriquet implies, he was sent to night school by the local Socialist party before going through WW1 as a stretcher-bearer and then serving as a curate among his own people in the North of England. The market town of Eastwold in Suffolk, Calvin's first parish as vicar, is a totally different world, with blossom-laden hedgerows replacing the mine tailings, and the working poor thrust out of sight behind the civilized facades of the well-to-do. But Calvin has unexpected supporters as well as class enemies, and his arrival causes a radical realignment of forces in the sleepy town, just as the new surroundings affect the dynamics within his own family. Meanwhile another ex-miner, an elderly man called Alfred Rockingham, leaves Calvin's old parish on foot carrying a flag that he himself has made, intending to present it at the vicar's induction. He is joined first by a pregnant girl and then by a variety of other tramps, in a bizarre pilgrimage that is like something out of the Gospels reinterpreted by Ingmar Bergman. Rockingham's arrival at Eastwold will mark the start of the book's finale.

Finale: the theatrical term is intentional. Shaw was an actor—yes, that Robert Shaw, of Jaws, The Sting, and From Russia With Love—and he wrote with a dramatist's flair throughout. The scenes with Rockingham are cinematic, those in Eastwold almost conceived for the stage. Shaw keeps bringing pairs of characters together, striking sparks off one another entirely through dialogue, and forming unexpected yet heartwarming bonds. So, for example, when Calvin meets retired General Andrews, a local worthy who is in many respects his natural opposite, his first instinct is to shock. But the General gives as good as he gets; and when they discover they have both fought on the Somme, their mutual respect overcomes their differences. The late-night scene in which they recall the names of tunnels dug and battles fought has remained with me for forty years for the power of its Homeric resonance. But then Homer is only one of the many echoes in this remarkable book, which seems to reach back to Shakespeare, the Bible, and half of British history.