Closing Ranks

by Dirk Bogarde

First published in 1997, this is a story about the Grayles. They have been at Hartleap since Canute. They know this and are proud of the fact. Now they stand round the bed of the very last of their nannies, who is quietly slipping away. Ada Stephens-known as Nanny Grayle, and well into her nineties-is saying farewell. In the strange clarity which comes with the last remission, she looks at the saddened faces about her and surprises them all. She says that the most adored of her charges, Rufus, is 'tainted' and that his father, the revered war hero 'Beau' Grayle, was 'wicked'. None of them is going to get anything in her will - she has left everything to her nephew, Robert. Thus begins the final demolition of a once-proud house. Slowly, from Sunday to Thursday, as they attend to the many small duties that follow death, the unravelling begins. The family must face the fact that their way of life, and the glory which was Hartleap, will slide into Nanny's grave with her. As the terrible truth becomes known, desperately they try to close ranks...

Genres: Fiction, British Literature, Modern

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Dirk Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde was born of mixed Flemish, Dutch and Scottish ancestry, and baptised on 30 October 1921 at St. Mary's Church, Kilburn. His father, Ulric van den Bogaerde (born in Perry Barr, Birmingham; 1892–1972), was the art editor of The Times and his mother, Margaret Niven (1898–1980), was a former actress. He attended University College School, the former Allan Glen's School in Glasgow (a time he described in his autobiography as unhappy, although others have disputed his account) and later studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design. He began his acting career on stage in 1939, shortly before the start of World War II.

Bogarde served in World War II, being commissioned into the Queen's Royal Regiment in 1943. He reached the rank of captain and served in both the European and Pacific theatres, principally as an intelligence officer. Taylor Downing's book "Spies in the Sky" tells of his work with a specialist unit interpreting aerial photo-reconnaissance information, before moving to Normandy with Canadian forces. Bogarde claimed to have been one of the first Allied officers in April 1945 to reach the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, an experience that had the most profound effect on him and about which he found it difficult to speak for many years afterward. As John Carey has summed up with regard to John Coldstream's authorised biography however, "it is virtually impossible that he (Bogarde) saw Belsen or any other camp. Things he overheard or read seem to have entered his imagination and been mistaken for lived experience." Coldstream's analysis seems to conclude that this was indeed the case. Nonetheless, the horror and revulsion at the cruelty and inhumanity that he claimed to have witnessed still left him with a deep-seated hostility towards Germany; in the late-1980s he wrote that he would disembark from a lift rather than ride with a German of his generation. Nevertheless, three of his more memorable film roles were as Germans, one of them as a former SS officer in 'The Night Porter'.


Bogarde's London West End theatre-acting debut was in 1939, with the stage name 'Derek Bogaerde', in J. B. Priestley's play Cornelius. After the war his agent renamed him 'Dirk Bogarde' and his good looks helped him begin a career as a film actor, contracted to The Rank Organisation under the wing of the prolific independent film producer Betty Box, who produced most of his early films and was instrumental in creating his matinée idol image.

During the 1950s, Bogarde came to prominence playing a hoodlum who shoots and kills a police constable in The Blue Lamp (1950) co-starring Jack Warner and Bernard Lee; a handsome artist who comes to rescue of Jean Simmons during the World's Fair in Paris in So Long at the Fair, a film noir thriller; an accidental murderer who befriends a young boy played by Jon Whiteley in Hunted (aka The Stranger in Between) (1952); in Appointment in London (1953) as a young wing commander in Bomber Command who, against orders, opts to fly his 90th mission with his men in a major air offensive against the Germans; an unjustly imprisoned man who regains hope in clearing his name when he learns his sweetheart, Mai Zetterling, is still alive in Desperate Moment (1953); Doctor in the House (1954), as a medical student, in a film that made Bogarde one of the most popular British stars of the 1950s, and co-starring Kenneth More, Donald Sinden and James Robertson Justice as their crabby mentor; The Sleeping Tiger (1954), playing a neurotic criminal with co-star Alexis Smith, and Bogarde's first film for American expatriate director Joseph Losey; Doctor at Sea (1955), co-starring Brigitte Bardot in one of her first film roles.

Bogarde continued acting until 1990. 'Daddy Nostalgie' was his final film.

Reviews

[Jane Wilson-Howarth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dipping into my Dad’s library, I was surprised to find a book “Closing Ranks” by Dirk Bogarde. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. The man was a film star during my Pa’s formative years and they’d both seen action during the Second World War. My immediate reaction was that it would be celeb eye-wash. Intriguingly though the dust jacket told me Bogarde had three honorary literary doctorates including one from France. Perhaps he could write as well as look glamorous on the big screen.

I started to read a tale set in the familiar and fine Sussex countryside. The story caught me up. It centres around a gentrified family with skeletons in their cupboards who gather to see off a dying nanny. There is reference to some under-reported messy British history: when Cossacks were forcibly repatriated into Russia at the end of the war.

Yet there were lovely descriptions of rural England...

“A dragonfly looped around her head, dipped low, soared up, a whispering crackle of papery wings..”

And

“every shadow of a thought or doubt.. crossed his face with the clarity of cloud shadows racing across the fields..”

And

“A moorhen hurried though the rushes on the stream bank and launched itself into the water, flicking its tail with fussy anxiety.”

And

“The first crack of true dawn split the greyness, and as the sun rose above the brim of the silent earth, the first birds started, calling and scolding, the light grew stronger, drenching the still-damp fields. A golden haze grew in brilliance.... the valley was all at once glowing with sunlight, rang to the sound of the birds in copse and wood.”

It was a thoroughly enjoyable read, and for me made all the more fun for being sited in beautiful Sussex woodlands. Is it my perception or is there a dearth of novels set in southern England??

[Lei Bancolita · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, I've got this book from Booksale at my place.

And what could be the genre of this book?

Family, a little bit of drama, and some for adults only.

The book tells us a story about the impact of Nanny dying to the relationships existing within the household of Grayle's.

The story is smoothly written, little drama and more on story-telling from third perspective.

It also tells the problem of most of the characters, adding the 'horrendous' secret of Rufus and Beau,

and the conclusion ended pretty well.

[Daniela Sorgente · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a sort of family saga which however does not keep all its promises (for example the story of the mysterious "girls", mentioned in the first part in a way that suggested a mystery, is resolved in little or nothing). The first part is very good and interesting, but then the narrative becomes verbose and there are parts of unnecessary "adult content". Still, an enjoyable read.

[Kath · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Not his best. But a small book in that it feels more close and descriptive than ‘big novel’. Always beautifully written.

[Nancy Pierson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just couldn’t get into his style…