BOOKS THAT WE READ FOR OUR HEALTH

THE POLDARK NOVELS OF WINSTON GRAHAM

Some books are not just old friends, meant to be revisited and cherished, but become absolute mainstays of our life. These are the books that I would designate as those that we read often, sometimes seasonally, for the good of our health. In this category have been the Poldark novels books of Winston Graham which have kept me going at strategically difficult times of my life. I’ve read them times without number, and began them again this year, reading through them in order every lunchtime, in the very brief time that I have had to call my own between summer and winter. Life became complicated with failing health and strength, but with no fewer tasks to maintain, and no help to fulfil them, so I am full of praise once more that these books have fed and sustained me on at an essential level.

Most people today know the Poldark book largely from the two tv series that have been made of some of them – but these depictions have not been as good as they might have been, and no-one yet has fulfilled making all of the books. Directors and screen writers have often played with these characters and their long story in ways that have been less than respectful, so I would always recommend reading the books first, so that you get their measure.

Winston Graham ..

Why do I like them so well? Well, I like a family saga, for one, but at a deeper level, I love the continuing and unfolding life of these books which has a remarkable feature. The English novelist Winston Graham, who was born in 1908 and died in 2003, achieved a truly astonishing feat. He wrote about his characters in real time: that is, within his own lifetime, so that the characters age as he aged, which I don’t think anyone else has quite done before. Graham wrote the series of Poldark novels from 1945-2003, covering the years of 1783-1820. In his 50 years of writing (and he wrote a lot of other novels besides) Graham covered 40 Poldark years. And this is the clincher for me, because every character had time to grow and develop in ways that are seldom granted to a novelist. They are very well written, superbly crafted, and carry the hallmarks of a real world, without ever making you aware that you now know more about pilchards, mining, the law, shipping and other aspects of 18^th century life that you never knew much about before. Above all, these novels are adventurous, revealing, deeply observant of human frailties and strengths, and Graham makes us care about his characters at a deep level.

We first meet Ross Poldark, the eponymous hero of the first book as he is coming home to Cornwall from the Colonial Wars in North America, after being wounded. From a well-to-do family that is economically struggling, like the rest of Cornwall, he finds his father recently deceased, his home in ruins and the family mine barely working. Ross is an adventurer, a gambler with fortune, but some part of him is deeply Cornish, stubborn and honourable at once, and determined to shape his future in some way. He returns home to also find that the women to whom he was loosely-affianced, Elizabeth, has just become betrothed to his slightly better-off cousin, Francis. Injured and humiliated, Ross grieves her loss. But destiny supplies him with a partner of another kind. He comes upon an urchin trying to fend off bullies who are torturing the urchin’s dog; he rescues the lad, as he thinks, only to discover that the lad is actually a girl. She has no other protector, so he brings her home to be a maid-servant to his struggling household. This is none other than Demelza, the woman with whom he will spend the rest of his life.

Demelza is from the lower-orders, a miner’s daughter, untaught, without graces, but loving, willing, and with a heart of gold. Slowly she begins to better herself, under Ross’s absent-minded tutelage, until she is puling her weight beside him as the household tries to improve itself. After a long period of being maid to the master, Demelza shows herself equal to Ross. He marries her, creating a nine-days-wonder among the Cornish gentry who sneer about him marrying his servant, but many laugh on the other side of their faces when they realize how beautiful, winsome, and full of joy she is: much of the unpleasant gossip turns to admiration, eventually.

The working out of the initial love story is laid against the greater backdrop of Cornish poverty, the political and international changes that, first the French Revolution, and then the Napoleonic wars, bring to the world of Ross and Demelza, and their family. But a saga of this kind is nothing without the enemy on the doorstep. This arrives in the person of George Warleggan, the grandson of a blacksmith turned banker, with aspirations to the very heights of English society. He and Ross were at school together and hated each other then: how their mutual hatred plays out in these books, I would be rash to mention, since so much of the story is shaped by their actions and reactions.

The joys and sorrows of our protagonists, and their many acquaintances, friends, employees, children, relatives and neighbours are all woven together. Ross and Demelza bridge many social divides, being middling people in terms of their times, while the greatly differing classes in which they mingle are from the poorest miners to the impoverished French aristos, and from the magistrates of the crown to the crown itself: our protagonists remain themselves – honest and honourable, but with the usual faults of human beings. We love them, we fear for them, we want the best for them. We live through the tearing times with them and weep with them. This is life, lived as we live it, and it runs alongside whatever we are thrown.

In the last six months, I have been upheld by the unfolding story which will see me through into the new year, as I am only half way through the great re-reading of this saga. I hope you will be inspired by this to seek out Winston Graham’s novels.

THE POLDARK NOVELS IN ORDER

If you are interested in the books: this is the sequence of the novels: read them first and then see the series, but remember, only the books will lead you to the very end of the story.

1945 – Ross Poldark (original U.S. title: The Renegade)

1946 – Demelza

1950 – Jeremy Poldark (original U.S. title: Venture Once More)

1953 – Warleggan (original U.S. title: The Last Gamble)

1973 – The Black Moon

1976 – The Four Swans

1977 – The Angry Tide

1981 – The Stranger from the Sea

1982 – The Miller's Dance

1984 – The Loving Cup

1990 – The Twisted Sword

2002 – Bella Poldark

To learn more about Winston Graham, see here: https://www.winstongraham.org

All of the pictures shown here are from the Mammoth Screen series of Poldark, screened from 2005 onwards. The series is available universally on DVD

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