The Last Englishman: The Life of J. L. Carr

by Byron Rogers

Book by Rogers, Byron

Genres: Biography

256 pages, Hardcover

First published May 22, 2003

About the author

Byron Rogers is a Welsh journalist, essayist and biographer. In August, 2007 the University of Edinburgh awarded him the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the best biography published in the previous year, for The Man Who Went Into the West: The Life of RS Thomas. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said of the book: "Byron Rogers's lively and affectionate biography is unexpectedly, even riotously, funny."

Born and raised in Carmarthen, he now lives in Northamptonshire. He has written for Sunday Telegraph and The Guardian, and was once speech writer for the Prince of Wales. It has been written of his essays that he is "a historian of the quirky and forgotten, of people and places other journalists don't even know exist or ignore if they do".

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
J L Carr wrote one of my favourite novels, A Month in the Country and so I was interested to read a biography about him. Rogers is not a natural biographer and sometimes the biography is not easy to read. I can imagine it was probably difficult to put together because of Carr’s eccentricity and the way he organised his life. Carr didn’t start writing novels until he was 52 and always said he took up writing to encourage his son to do his homework, so they would sit at the table together and write.
Carr was brought up a Methodist and had signed the pledge by the age of 13. He failed his 11 plus and so his education was rather patchy and he later wrote about his experiences in the school system, both positive and negative. He went on to be a teacher. He was by no means conventional and in 1938 he spent a year in the US as a teacher; nowhere glamorous, but in South Dakota. A place called Huron in the Great Plains. He travelled westwards afterwards and ended up back in Europe as war started. He spent the war in the RAF as a photographer and went back into teaching afterwards. From 1952 to 1967 he was headmaster of a primary school in Kettering. He is still remembered with great affection and he was always getting into trouble with authorities for his unconventional approaches. He was very keen on ensuring everyone who went through the school could read and by his account he only failed once.
He retired early to focus on writing and publishing and published books from his own home. He took up causes, one of which was a redundant church in Newton-le-Willows which was falling into disrepair. Carr took up its cause and spent years battling with authorities to try to save it. He clashed with the local clergy and bishop and took his cause to the Church Commissioners, to the Government and the Crown. Car was like that as his son recalls;
"He had this watch, which, its Swiss makers claimed, was shockproof. He wore it to play squash and the watch stopped. For most of my childhood and well into my adolescence, airmail letters left our house and letters with Swiss stamps came, year after year ..."
Carr published a great deal with his Quince Tree Press, maps, lists (of cricketers, parsons and so on) and selections of poetry. He always had two price levels; the books were always cheaper for children to buy. Carr wrote several novels, two of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He also wrote school text books. There was a breadth to his interests which was illustrated at his funeral, many people attended, some of them had known him for years. The painter Chris Fiddes said that he felt he was a close friend of Carr over a number of years and yet he knew hardly any of the people at the funeral and he could see lots of others looking round clearly thinking the same thing. As the service started a very glamorous woman arrived, leaving as it ended; again no one knew who she was. It is almost the stuff of spy novels.
Carr struck me as being an interesting and decent chap. This biography is a bit workaday and plodding but its subject is fascinating.

[Nigeyb · Rating 4 out of 5]

"He was the Last Englishman"

I first became aware of J.L. Carr having read his novel "A Month in the Country". It is one of the best books I have ever read. It is rare that I have felt so powerfully affected by a story. In short, it's a masterpiece, and one that I look forward to re-reading. A few days after finishing "A Month in the Country", I read another J.L. Carr novel "The Harpole Report" - a very different book, both in terms of style and content, but a great read. So, by now, I was very intrigued by J.L. Carr. Who was he? How did he come to write two such contrasting books? Fortunately his friend, and journalist, Byron Rogers wrote this biography of J.L. Carr that was published in 2003.

I am very grateful to Byron Rogers for such a readable and thorough account of the unusual J.L. Carr. I tend to overuse the word maverick, however can confidently label J.L. Carr as a maverick. In short he was brought up in a staunchly Methodist, and deeply religious, family in the North East of England; he was a teacher, and head teacher; was a photographer in the RAF during the war; spent time in South Dakota teaching; played amateur football; campaigned for the preservation of a disused village church; and, upon retiring, became both a writer and a publisher. That, however, is but a fraction of what defined this fascinating character. It is his intellect, idiosyncrasies, values, determination, and originality, that make this book worth reading. Not only are all his novels biographical, and therefore this biography provides helpful and illuminating insights, his is also one of the most unusual lives I can imagine - despite hiding behind a facade of profound ordinariness. J.L. Carr died on 26 February 1994, and that was, to quote Byron Rogers, "the last day of his life and the only one in which he had not been fully conscious."

I will be reading the rest of J.L. Carr's novels, and my enjoyment and understanding will be greatly enhanced by this splendid biography. I heartily recommend it: interesting and inspiring.

Finally, I should mention that The Quince Tree Press, J.L. Carr's small publishing company, is still in business, and is run by J.L. Carr's son and daughter-in-law. All J.L. Carr's novels are available, in addition to to a range of pocket books, and J.L. Carr's maps of English counties. I intend to foist them on my friends and relatives at Christmas and/or on their birthdays.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book about a great writer. I used to order books from Mr Carr for Blackwell's when I worked there, which was a privilege.

[Ian]

A Month in the Country is rightly considered a modern classic, but most of those who have read it know little of its author, JL Carr, who was a extraordinary man. His novels closely parallel his life (not unlike Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time novels), and in many cases the most bizarre events in his books were taken from his personal history. He was brought up as a Methodist, which strongly shaped his basic personality, and struggled for the rest of his life with the emotonal consequences. But as a headmaster, a publisher, an author, and a guardian of English history and poetry, he was a man of implacable conviction and made an indelible impression on all of those who came in contact with him. This book in part tells his story, in an entertaining and humorous way. There is probably much more to emerge about the life of JL Carr, but I can heartily recommend this book, and even more the novels of its subject.

[Blaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this account of JL Carr's life, although I would have preferred a different title. Happily there are individuals like Carr in all places and times, even our own. People who move at their own pace, not caring to fit in and finding a way to live so they don't have to, whose lives express their unique, individual natures. Perhaps Carr wasn't the best teacher, mapmaker, publisher, headmaster, antiquarian, husband, father and novelist, but it's wonderful that he did all of these and in his own principled, caring way.

The biographer laid out his story very well, but I would have simply called it "Being JL Carr"

[Joann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A recent reread of A Month In The Country by J.L. Carr led me to this biography which has given me lots of information to share with book club. Carr was a very interesting person who fictionalized his own life experiences in his books. In many ways he was a self taught man who kept his eye on the goal and pursued each one with intent. As much as I enjoyed reading this book and A Month in the Country, I am not inclined to read any more of his books at this time.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Byron Rogers' biography of J.L. Carr is the story of an extraordinary ordinary man. Rogers confesses he is new to biography: 'until I started writing this book I had little idea of what biography involved: not for the reader (I'd read enough of the things, and they seemed fairly straightforward), but for the writer.' This unprejudiced view of the art of biography and of his subject serves him (and the reader) very well.
Carr achieved his literary greatness late in life. He wrote his first novel in his fifties, having taken early retirement from his job as a primary school headteacher. But he was an exceptional and eccentric headteacher, having been an exceptional teacher, and having lived an ordinary life, but one that was full of surprises and unlikely turns. His life after his literary success was a surprising one too: he set himself up as a one man publishing industry, buying back the rights to his novels as they became available, and producing a successful range of miniature poetry books, encyclopaedias and maps from his house in Kettering.
Carr's A Month in the Country is perhaps my favourite novel of all, and Rogers traces the roots of the story in a way that throws an entirely new light on the book. He does this with Carr's other novels too. It's an inspiring, inventive biography of a self-contained, largely private man, and one that does great justice to its subject.

[Patti Flanagin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book because Carr's novella "A Month in the Country" is one of my favorite books of all time. Anyone interested in English life and history would probably enjoy this biography of a most unusual man. It captures the conventions of middle class English life and events in the 20th century.

It was most enjoyable to read, in addition to the fact that Carr was a fascinating and multi-faceted character. Now I want to read all of his books!

Highly recommeded.

[Alastair · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book isn't anything for anyone who knows nothing about Carr. It is unfortunately clumsily structured: at times not chronological, leaving the reader a little confused. Despite some well-written anecdotes, it is easy to lose interest, with quite a lot of the beginning of the book being more about Carr's father and brother.

[MR BRIAN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honest succinct and full of love for its subject

It is beautifully written. No words to spare. Benevolent and quirky like it's subject. I laughed aloud, a lot. And read a great deal aloud to my long suffering husband.

[Markwoods · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not always an easy read. But Carr’s individuality and strangeness come over strongly. It did make me want to read the other books.

[David James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rogers, Byron. The Last Englishman: The Life of JL Carr

Who but JL Carr would leave cricket and the relative comfort of Birmingham to teach the sons of pioneers in the Great Plains of South Dakota? Nearly 40 years later - after writing and self-publishing his Small Books on every notable English poet, from Arnold to Wordsworth - Carr, through Viking, published the much revised The Battle of Pollocks Crossing, his American novel. ‘The horror [of America] was there almost from the beginning,’ says Rogers, when ‘he saw in Chicago police with axes raid a gambling hall, a savage scene that he, alone among passers-by, stopped to watch.’ For Carr violence ‘was as American as oversweet apple-pie.’ Although he carried no weapon, his pupils are shocked that that a teacher still uses a ruler to administer punishment. He believed in discipline, something entirely new to his unruly pupils.

The Harpole Report (Secker and Warburg, 1972) is based largely on his headship experience at Highfields in Kettering, where he stayed for 15 years. For Rogers, Kettering, once workaday but interesting has now become ‘a town of chain stores, supermarkets, inner ring roads, and is without past, character or point.’ Fame of a sort came to Carr when he won The Guardian Fiction Prize in 1980 for A Month in the Country,generally recognised as his best novel. Pollocks Crossing, shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize, is now a Penguin Modern Classic. Carr lives on as the essential English eccentric, his uneven work and his reclusive nature placing him in the odd-ball class of writers; he was perhaps more interested in public affairs and church preservation. A casual author, but a good one to relax with, like John Betjeman, homespun and very English.

[Pru · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book amazing. What a guy. He seemed to have two lives, one his professional life and then his life after he retired. He had boundless energy and interests and wrote about them. A real one off and worth reading about especially if you are from Yorkshire - it adds a dimension.

Enjoy!

He also ran his own printing company and made some of the most quirky maps you could hope to find. I have the one he did of Yorkshire but the Wales map which I also would love to have is out of print and the Quince Tree Press run now by his children will only reprint if enough people show an interest.

Do have a look at the website for this printers and see for yourself how amazing a mind J L Carr had.

[J8mper · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very readable book of a very interesting person.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comprehensive biography of the author of one of the finest novels of the 20th century, A Month in the Country.

[Jenny Caro]

I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this book - the life story of J L Carr is an amazing tale in its own right and is complemented by the writing style of Byron Rogers.

I read this biography after I had read most of Carr's novels and the joy was to clearly note the links between the two of them. My huge admiration for this eccentric Englishman and his achievements has been further enhanced.

I will put this book on my very limited list of loved volumes to be re-read at regular intervals.