C O N T E X T 1 2 8 : M A R C H 2 0 1 3 7 Alan Bennett’s People and public perceptions of heritage There can be few professions with as wide and varied a popular appeal as heritage. Over a million people are members of English Heritage and 3.7 million of the National Trust, while Alan Bennett’s People is currently reaching the conclusion of a fivemonth, sell-out run at the National Theatre, despite mixed reviews. It is a play whose content, and the responses it has generated, tells us a great deal about the continuing appeal of heritage, and its contentious position in the national psyche. People takes as its subject the National Trust, and is set in the imagined, rotting ancestral home of the Stacpoole family (closely based onWentworth Woodhouse, a very real mouldering country pile near Rotherham). It sees Lady Dorothy, the last of the family line, and her archdeacon sister, quarrelling over the future of the house. Auction its contents and sell up, or donate to the trust? The National Trust is presented not as gallant saviour but, in Bennett’s words, as ‘entirely without inhibition, ready to exploit any aspect of the property’s recent history to draw in the public’. Everything, we are reminded, has a price, and we have the potential to lose just as much when a country house is turned into a museum as when yet another pub becomes a Tesco Express. Bennett has a longstanding interest in the commercialisation and touristication of heritage, and its position within the national psyche. Enjoy (1980) saw a back-to-back house in Leeds transported to a museum, while in The History Boys (2006), Hector notes his disgust at Auschwitz’s position on the tourist trail. Between the writing of these two pieces, the ‘heritage wars’ took place, with the industry’s image and purpose the subject of internal debate and public ridicule. These debates were embodied by Robert Hewison’s The Heritage Industry (1987) and later by Julian Barnes’ England, England (1998). Post-imperial guilt and post-industrial fear undoubtedly drove these works (Hewison’s book is subtitled ‘Britain in a climate of decline’, and its cover involves a rendering of Britain as a dodo). The debate has arguably moved on from whether Britain’s obsession with the past is reflective of its lack of industrial and economic dynamism. The debate, however, continues to rage. In the programme notes Bennett himself states that the play originated with ‘an itch’, a sense of unease at being required, when visiting a country house, to play the role of ‘reverential visitor’. Despite this, People also parodies new approaches. The ludicrous figure of Lumsden, the trust’s representative in People, notes that heritage today is ‘not aspic at all. Back in the day, yes, red ropes. “Do not touch”… Nowadays the scullery and the still room are as important as the drawing room. And we interact…’ Here Bennett is rather having his cake and eating it, something which has drawn the ire of Simon Jenkins, the trust’s chairman (‘Why Alan Bennett is wrong about the National Trust’, Daily Telegraph, 21 November 2012). Jenkins is firmly on Lumsden’s side, echoing his character’s claim that, ‘people are now encouraged to use the houses as might a guest’. It does reflect a genuine problem, however.While Bennett questions the ‘taste’ of preserving history’s more dubious aspects (represented in People by preserved chamber pots filled with celebrity wee), there remains the serious question of how historic buildings and objects should be presented to the public. Bennett does not want to see houses trooped through by ‘reverential visitors’, but nor does he feel it is entirely tasteful for visitors to revel in experiencing what it was like to live in Birmingham’s slums, or to hear, from the National Trust’s audio tour, about Soho’s salacious past. As Simon Jenkins himself asks, ‘what is to be done?’ There unarguably remains a sense of discomfort, within Bennett’s writing at least, about the democratisation of heritage (‘People,’ says one character, ‘spoil things’), but he is also clearly concerned about its purpose. Dorothy Stacpoole delivers People’s most haunting line when she asks a visitor on leaving her house, now under the trust’s ownership, ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ To an extent, I share Bennett’s discomfort. The public appeal of heritage forces those involved in it to ask themselves awkward questions, like, ‘why?’What is the purpose of retaining elements of our past, and of making them accessible to the wider public? Are we storytelling? Educating? Entertaining? It is not my intention to provide any answers here, and I do not agree with Bennett that the democratisation of history, or the development of interaction at historic sites, is necessarily a bad thing. But however farcical People is, however unresolved its issues, the heritage sector can not simply ignore its popular appeal. The heritage wars are far from over, and we still need to ask, ‘have we found what we are looking for?’ Laurie Handcock, senior historic buildings consultant with CgMs Consulting A scene from People: centre stage Linda Bassett as Iris, Frances de la Tour as Dorothy Stacpoole, and Selina Cadell as June Stacpoole (Photo: Catherine Ashmore)
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=