All language subtitles for BBC.Unfinished.Masterpieces.with.Alastair.Sooke.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

This imposing house in Kent

was once the setting for one
of literature's greatest mysteries.

Our story begins in 1870,

on the 8th June, around about
six o'clock in the evening.

On that particular day,

Charles Dickens had been
hard at work on his latest novel.

He'd worked for eight hours solid,
which was unusual for him -

he preferred
working in shorter bursts.

And that evening here at Gad's Hill,
which is now a school.

He came down to the dining room

to have dinner with
his sister-in-law, Miss Hogarth.

Almost as soon as he entered,

he started complaining
of a toothache,

and immediately, he collapsed
and lost consciousness
and never recovered.

He died shortly afterwards, and
he'd never complete his final novel,

even though the first three
instalments already being published,

gripping the nation,
leaving his audience with this
unquenchable thirst for resolution.

The Mystery Of Edwin Drood
is one of the most perplexing

and celebrated unfinished
masterpieces in English literature.

It's a story that continues
to haunt us and entice us.

I'm going to try and prize open
our fascination with this

and other unfinished masterpieces

that some of our greatest authors
and artists have left behind.

Dickens' death before he got
to complete his final masterpiece

is one of the great frustrations
of British literature.

And more than 100 years later with
a new drama adaptation on the BBC,

we're still trying
to solve his riddle

and find the right ending
for this tantalising tale.

KNOCKING AT DOOR

Rosa! To your room this minute!

What is it? When did you last see
Edwin? Yesterday afternoon. Why?

You saw or heard nothing of him
last night?

What has happened to Eddie?

He departed my house last night
with Neville Landless

and he never came home.

Neville left at first light
to walk by the coast.

Thank you, Miss Twinkleton.

What Dickens left us
in the few chapters he had completed

was a cast of brilliant characters,
and a riveting mystery to solve.

Edwin Drood is the nephew
of John Jasper, a choirmaster

who becomes obsessed
with Drood's fiancee, Rosa.

Jasper seems respectable,
but he has secrets.

He's addicted to opium, and he has
designs on the underage Rosa.

So when his nephew disappears,
the finger points at him.

There's a certain irony
to the fact that

of all the works
he could have left unfinished,

Dickens managed to die
in the middle of a murder mystery,

leaving behind a whodunnit
that could never be solved.

It's fiendishly frustrating.

The full title is
The Mystery Of Edwin Drood.

We don't know
what's happened to Edwin,

whether Jasper has killed him

and he's buried under
the cloisters in the cathedral.

The Mystery Of Edwin Drood
is a special case, I think,

of an excitement to want to complete
on the part of the reader

because we know that Dickens had
a plan for it, cos he always did.

We know that he had a plot

and its incompletion is like

the incompletion one might imagine
of an Agatha Christie novel

or a John le Carre novel.

It was designed as a puzzle
and it's the perfect puzzle.

We'll never know, I mean, everyone
who's tried to - as it were -

complete it, it's like completing
an incomplete game of chess,

after two or three moves you don't
know where the game is going to go.

One question
is whether Dickens himself

knew where this story was going.

The actual manuscript that Dickens
left behind still exists,

here at the
Victoria and Albert Museum,

so I'm going to take a look at it.

Volume Two.

And we turn to the end.

This is the manuscript
of Edwin Drood.

It looks very... This is bizarre,
looking at this!

Here is this kind of cacophonous
page of writing with crossings-out

and different coloured ink
and messy bits and neater passages.

So there's a real sense
of a mind at work here.

Cacophonous is a very good word,
actually.

Dickens is always working
at a frenetic pace, as you know.

One's feeling is when you see this
that he's throwing the words down.

Some passages come out totally
clear, others he has to revise.

I'm very glad to have seen this

because Dickens has such
a teeming, fertile imagination,

it would have been an immense
disappointment to find

a very crabbed,
precise handwriting style

that he was writing
in his original manuscript.

So this is the very last page?

It's the last page.

"And then falls to
with an appetite."

And then there's this
kind of spiralling flourish.

Of course, this was written
within hours of him collapsing

and having a stroke at Gad's Hill,
shortly before he died. Yes.

I mean, this was in the final
24 to 48 hours of his life.

He's not supposing that
he won't start with renewed energy

the next time he sits down
to produce the next chapter.

Don't you love that
the last word he wrote was appetite?

There couldn't be
a more Dickensian word.

But the thing that's so, in a sense,
moving but also slightly frustrating

about looking at the manuscript

is this idea that because you
look at it in his own hand,

it feels so intimate and close to
him and to the workings of his mind

that this reminds us
that we're all locked inside

the fortress of our own solitude, of
our own identity and individuality.

This doesn't reveal anything
about Dickens, does it,

in terms of what he was going to do
with the story?

It FEELS like it must,
there must be a clue here

but what we're left with is just
this fainter and fainter line

going down the page.

o, no clues in the manuscript,
but back at Gad's Hill,

Dickens' ancestor -
the biographer Lucinda Hawksley -

might be able to help.

Could we talk a little bit
about the whole sort of make-up

of Dickens' imagination?

Do we know where Dickens
got the plot for Edwin Drood from?

Was it a figment of his imagination
or inspired by real-life events
or what?

It was a little bit of both
and he started off,

he wrote to John Forster and...

Who was Forster? Sorry, his best
friend and his first biographer.

And Dickens wrote to him and said
that he was going to do a story

of a young couple who'd been intended
for each other from childhood
by their families,

who go their separate ways
in the world.

A very simple love story is how
he almost described it really,

and at the end of the book they would
come to their "impending fate"
as he called it - marriage.

Then he wrote to Forster in 1869,

so just ten months before he died

and he said that
he'd decided to turn it into

a murder of a nephew by his uncle.

We know from his time in America

that Dickens had been
very interested in a real-life murder

that had happened there.

There was a chap called Parkman
who was a moneylender

and he had a client
who was Professor Webster

who owed him around $2,000,
which he just couldn't afford to pay.

It was known that Parkman
was going to expose Webster.

Parkman went to Harvard to meet the
professor and was never seen again.

From that moment on,
Webster kept his laboratory locked

and eventually the body
or parts of the body were discovered

when the janitor - who'd become
very curious by all this -

actually broke through the brickwork
to enter the laboratory that way

and found human remains.

It's known that Webster
had burned Dr Parkman's clothing

and he'd also thrown the doctor's
watch into the river, in the hope...

That's what happened in the novel!
Yes. The watch appears in the river.

Absolutely.
Is the conclusion of this then,

Dickens had killed off Edwin Drood
by the time of his death?

I don't know if we can.

That was his intention
originally in August of 1869

but I don't know
if we can say for certain

because Dickens liked to change
and keep his readers guessing.

Part of the reason
the mystery is so tantalising

is that it is unresolved, we don't
know whether he has been murdered.

Exactly and he does say
in the same letter to Forster

that it's a very good plot
but it's difficult to bring about.

So, he says he doesn't want
to give away all of the plot

because that would make
the book unreadable.

So actually, he was even having
double thoughts at the time.

For months after his death,

the obituaries mourned
Dickens's characters

as much as the man himself.

It's as if the vivacity
of the characters

that sprung from Dickens's
fertile imagination,

gave them a life off the page

that almost demanded
further attention.

This, coupled with the
murder mystery format of Drood

was just too much
for a clamorous public.

The desire for a finished
Edwin Drood became like an itch

that needed to be scratched.

There have been all manner
of attempts

to complete
The Mystery Of Edwin Drood.

Already in 1873, for example,

which is only three years
after Dickens' death,

an American writer
called Thomas James

attempted to finish the novel

claiming that he'd been possessed
by Dickens's ghost

and the books enjoyed afterlives in
a number of different media as well.

I mean, there was a film,
a gothic horror movie in 1935

with Claude Rains,
who starred in Casablanca,

and my favourite I think,

in the '80s there was
a Broadway musical version.

It won five Tony awards.
It was the first musical ever

to invite the audience to decide
on the ending, every single night.

And certainly for the latest person
to finish the tale,

this time for the BBC,

reviving the characters
that Dickens so brilliantly sketched

has been the key to completing
The Mystery Of Edwin Drood.

I started off looking at the clues
that he left behind

and I soon found
they were quite self-contradictory.

And some of them didn't work,

and some got in the way of the story,
particularly in this book,

where he was writing in such a dark
and almost Gothic new style for him.

The characters just spring out
of the page at you.

They are the reason
people love this book.

In fact, I was helped very
much in my wanderings

by Dickens' favourite daughter,
Katie,

who counselled everybody at the time.

She said, "Don't get too hung-up..."

I'm paraphrasing!

"Don't get too hung-up
on the mystery.

"Remember what my father loved
and was good at,

"which was his fantastic

"and strange insight into the
mysteries of the human heart."

Fortified by Katie
the favourite daughter,

I felt emboldened
to go with the characters,

to go where I felt
they were going to take me.

In the end, the person whose desires

I most wanted to follow
to the end of the story

was John Jasper,
the hero of the story.

The dark, controlling, mad figure
right at the heart of this story.

I always knew where I wanted
to end up with John Jasper,

this wonderful anti-hero.

I always knew where he would end up.

And if you've seen the thing already,
you'll know that he ends up dead.

He sort of...
He's a tragic hero. He needs to die.

It needs to go so horribly wrong for
him that the only outcome is death.

And I hope the nation weeps
at the loss of him,

even though
he's a really horrible person.

'Choose the light.
Our Father, who art in heaven...

'Jasper, won't you join me?

'Our Father, who art in heaven...'

Hallowed be Thy name...

'Hallowed be Thy name...'
Jack! 'Thy kingdom come...'

Thy will be done...

No!

When you talked about your process,

it sounded like you left
Dickens behind altogether

and you imagined John Jasper.

Were there ever times
when you're sitting at your desk
in the room next door

where you would suddenly think,

"This is quite an enormous thing
I'm taking on.

"Dickens is one of a handful
of the greatest geniuses
in English literature

"and I'm now trying to
complete the novel

"and in a different medium.

"Is that right? Is it wrong?"

Those questions must have
troubled you at points.

Yes, there were points when I felt,

"Oh, Lord, I'll never scale
this mountain.

"This is just too difficult.

"I'm just little me
and he's Charles Dickens..."

A giant in every way,
a man I love and respect.

But I think, because I love
and respect him, it's OK.

I think it's OK.

I just sat on his lap
and listened to what he said,

and sometimes he did object,
so I took it out!

And just tried to do something
he would have liked,

but not worrying about
what he wanted to do.

I did what I wanted to do with
the story, with his characters,

in a respectful and loving way.

I'm sure Gwyneth is ultra-meticulous
in reviving Dickens's characters,

but she's aided by the fact

that she's adapting something
for TV,

something that was originally
designed to be read.

It's an important point to remember,

because when you're making
a drama adaptation,

in a sense, you bypass
the voice of the author altogether -

his or her distinctive prose style -

and concentrate instead on the words
of the characters.

I wonder whether
if you're commissioned
to complete an unfinished novel

that means in fact you face a
tougher challenge altogether?

In most cases,
for an ordinary reader,

we feel a connection
with the writer of the book.

As in, famously, Catcher In The Rye,
where the narrator says,

if you read a really good book,

you want to ring up the author
and talk to them.

And all readers recognise
that emotion.

And so it becomes very strange
if you're ringing up somebody else.

What we expect when we read
a novel by Austen or Dickens,

or Laurence Sterne or whoever,
is actually a certain voice, really.

And it may be the voice
of a character

rather than the voice of the author,

but that's terribly difficult
to bring off.

And, in a sense,
even if somebody brings it off,

the reader won't read it
as the genuine thing -

they'll read it
as burlesque or pastiche.

And that already
kind of undermines it.

A whole industry has grown up
around the unfinished novel,

of so-called "continuators" -

authors who attempt new endings
to old stories.

But honestly,
how successful can they really be?

There's another great author
who left behind an unfinished work.

'Jane Austen also died in the middle
of writing her last novel,

'and I wonder whether her fans
really care to have it "continued"?'

It was against the blustery backdrop

of a seaside resort in Sussex
called Sanditon

that the characters of Jane Austen's
last and unfinished novel

lived their brief and aborted lives.

'When Austen began writing Sanditon
in January 1817,

'she was already in delicate health.

'She died six months later,

'with just 11 chapters complete.

'But the scene was already set.'

So Sanditon is a new coastal resort
with very grand ambitions,

because its inhabitants

are determined
to put the town on the map,

and cash in on this recent vogue

for holidaying
by the British seaside.

It's quite a claustrophobic
community,

but under Austen's expert eye,
it offers an opportunity

for whip-smart social satire about
hypochondria, commercial greed,

and what happens when a fresh-faced
singleton suddenly arrives in town.

I was hoping to read you
a bit of description about the town,

but we're enjoying such a blustery
British seaside weather

that I'm a bit worried
the book's going to blow away!

You'll just have to take it
from me

that the book's actually
a very good read.

I was going to say that we've come
to Sanditon, but we haven't -

it's Eastbourne! Eastbourne.

Because Sanditon is supposed to be
an up-and-coming seaside resort.

It's all a terrific joke.

There's this foolish Parker family.

Mr Tom Parker, who actually owns
the village, the estate of Sanditon,

is trying to turn it
into the best seaside resort.

And we can see that Sanditon

is going to turn into a cold turkey,
a dead duck.

All Mr Parker's great ideas

are probably going to fall
flat on their face.

We know it's unfinished.

There are 12 chapters,
but there may have been up to 30.

But what about
the actual quality of the prose?

Are we looking at something which is
a final draft up to that point?

Or would this have been revised
had she lived?

Well, people do comment that despite
the fact she was so ill,

there's no sense of illness
in the story.

It's very funny. It rushes along.

And this is part of the sadness
of why it's unfinished,

because it was obviously
going to be very long and very funny.

How do you feel about the idea
of other authors attempting
to complete it?

Well, I mean, would you want to copy
Jane Austen's style?

COULD you copy her style?

People now and then do try, and it's
so obvious that it's not hers.

And they'd have to know
an awful lot about the social history
of the period,

which all too many of the people
who do try and write completions
and sequels and continuations,

they just don't, and it's so obvious.

So, to finish, or not to finish?
That is the question.

Is it better to have
half an original Austen,

or a full story completed by
a more recent writer?

'I thought I'd do
a bit of a straw poll.'

Excuse me, hello, I'm Alastair.
Hi, Alastair.

Excuse me, sir. Hello.
I'd like to give you a book.

By Jane Austen -
her last novel, called Sanditon,

possibly partly inspired
by Eastbourne.

Are you a Jane Austen fan? No!

The only catch is that she died
before she completed it.

You want us to finish it off
for you? If you could!

You haven't heard of it?

Not that many people have.

It's partly because
she never finished it. Ah!

What I would love would be for you

to choose either to take away
a copy of the incomplete novel -

just her words -

or there are some people
who got to it before you did,

and tried to complete it.

So you get the whole story with this
one, but not necessarily the whole
story that Austen herself imagined.

The choice is yours, Barry!

I don't mind reading the unfinished
one, because you can put your own
ending to it.

You'd rather have the incomplete,
would you? Because it's shorter?

Yeah, I can see me reading that.
It's not going to take me
too long, is it?

I would go for
the half-finished one.

Half-finished? Right, that's one
for you. Can I ask why?

Because the inspiration
and the character

came from an original author,

and I don't see how someone else can
pick it up and do the same thing.

So the idea of the complete one
is a bit of a turn-off
because it's not her original...?

It's not her writing. Yes.

You don't think that if the writer
was sufficiently brilliant

they could get into the mindset
of the original author,
and complete it?

If they were that brilliant,
why would they want to? Why not
just do their own thing?

You're going to give this to me?

It's a gift from me to you, Barry!

Thank you very much. Not at all!

It's lovely in Eastbourne, normally!

Do I get to keep this?
Yes. Enjoy it! Bye-bye.

I'll tell you what puzzles me.

If attempting to complete a Dickens
is so controversial

or finishing an Austen is always
going to be seen as second best,

then, in a sense,
why bother in the first place?

Surely it's the literary
equivalent of a suicide mission?

Or perhaps our desire as readers

to keep characters alive
and here to the end

is so strong that,
after all, we don't really mind?

Frank Kermode wrote a book
called Sense Of An Ending.

And one of the bases of what
he was saying in that book is that

all our ideologies in the West
are teleological.

They're going somewhere -
the final judgement,

the withering away of the State
if you're a Marxist.

And so, to some extent,
we're all wired for conclusions.

Very famously, Kermode came up with
the observation that

when we hear a clock go
"tick tick tick",

what we hear is "tick tock", because
we like beginnings and endings.

"Every tick," he said, "is a genesis.
Every tock is a feeble apocalypse."

That is, to some extent,
how we frame our universe.

So, we're, as it were, motivated
like lemmings going over a cliff.

We're motivated to look for endings.

One of the principles of any art
is that it's unified.

And so they expect that all
the elements in the work somehow

thematically or structurally
relate

to all the other elements
in the work.

And that it'll all be tied
with closure.

I have a plan, sir... Really,
Baldrick? A cunning and subtle one?

Yes, sir.

As cunning as a fox
who's just been appointed

Professor of Cunning
at Oxford University? Yes, sir.

A work of literature takes its
meaning from the ending.

Whatever it was, I'm sure it was
better than my plan

to get out of this
by pretending to be mad.

Who would've noticed
another madman around here?

Blackadder Goes Forth

is perhaps the darkest sitcom
there's ever been,

because they all die
at the end of it.

And if you took that scene off it,
it becomes a comedy,

a lighter comedy,
in which they might have survived.

And this is important.

So if you have an unfinished story,

then, at quite an important level,
it's meaningless.

Good luck, everyone.
WHISTLES BLOW
Go!

So we're culturally hardwired
to want an ending.

We expect closure
and we desire the meaning

that only endings can deliver.

Fair enough.

But can it ever be the case that all
these ingredients are contained

WITHIN an unfinished novel
or a painting?

For instance, there's the case
of the famous unfinished portrait

of one of America's
greatest presidents.

This is a reproduction
of the portrait

of the first American president,
George Washington.

It was begun in 1796

by the charming, fashionable
portrait painter, Gilbert Stuart.

And it went on to become
quite a famous image.

It didn't have very auspicious
beginnings, for two reasons.

Firstly, the president recently had
acquired a new set of false teeth,

which meant that his jaw line
bulged in a disturbing way,

which wasn't very flattering,
and Stuart had to negotiate that.

Secondly, Stuart normally
tried to liven up his sitters

by engaging them
with repartee and banter,

but Washington proved to be
quite a dry old stick.

He wouldn't really liven up at all
until Stuart eventually

engaged him on the president's
favourite subject of horses.

But in spite of Stuart's efforts,
the painting remained unfinished.

In fact, at some stage, the painter
just stopped trying to complete it,

and instead put his efforts
into reproducing it
almost a hundred times

and selling it
in its unfinished state.

I'm curious as to why he did this,

and why the portrait was
so desirable nevertheless.

So I've come to a patch of the US
in the UK to find out more.

Thank you for inviting
me into your office.

I feel like I'm in an episode
of The West Wing,
but we're in Edinburgh.

The first thing that's obvious when
you come into the office

is there is a replica
of Gilbert Stuart's famous portrait
of George Washington.

And you can see at once,
even though it's cropped,
the thing was never finished.

Why do you think it was incomplete?

I have a theory that he didn't
finish it on purpose,

because it did generate buzz,

it did generate enthusiasm.

People did pay a lot of money at that
time for replicas of that painting,

so I think it was his way of creating
a commercial interest in it.

What does that portrait mean,
if you like, to most Americans?

I think most people who look
at portraits of George Washington,

especially this one,
because it's one of the best-known,

probably feel a sense of pride and
affection for their first president.

And not just in an abstract
or historic context, either.

Gilbert Stuart's portrait
of Washington

has been copied
on to the one-dollar bill,

which has been in circulation in the
United States for over a century.

As a result,

it's now one of the most
recognisable symbols of America.

The US one-dollar bill is the most
widely circulated note in America

and a lot of gentlemanly bets
get done with that one-dollar note.

People with their first business
frame that first note they got
from their first customer.

Do you think most Americans realise
the image of George Washington

on the one-dollar bill is based upon
a portrait that was never finished?

I would guess most people don't know
it's an unfinished portrait, that
they haven't seen the whole thing.

You are American - right? Yes.

So I'd like to give you
this dollar bill. Thank you!

What does that image mean to you?

That's George Washington,
first president of the US.

This is quite a famous image.
Do you know what it's based on?

I believe it's a portrait.

This is a reproduction
of the portrait.
What are your first impressions?

I guess I assumed it would've been
a finished portrait.

Does it seem strange
that here's this iconic image,

which is very complete
on the dollar bill,

and actually, here's this clearly
incomplete sorcery?

I think George Washington is such
a major figure in American history,

you can fill in the gaps, even if the
portrait painter didn't have time.

There are a lot of artistic works
throughout history

that are incomplete.

It's one of those unique things.

Maybe you wish it was finished,
or want to know why it wasn't,
but it doesn't bother me at all.

Now, thanks to it being
used in a different context

on the dollar bill,
it has a whole set of associations,

a new narrative, if you like,
which feels much more finished,

even though Stuart never had
any control over that whatsoever.

Yeah, I think so.

I think you could probably ask
millions of Americans

what that portrait means to them,
what the dollar bill means to them

or what George Washington
means to them

and you would get a million
different answers.

But yeah, I think sometimes
you don't have to finish something

for there to be a complete story.

With his portrait of Washington,

Gilbert Stuart had told the story
his audience needed

without actually finishing.

Perhaps the very unfinished nature
of the work reflected the fact

that all Americans knew their
own story was only just beginning,

and that, like the painting itself,
their nation had a way to go.

This sense of what constitutes
the story of a work of art

must therefore be essential.

Sometimes it seems that
powerful meaning

can even trump polish and finesse.

But how does this work
with the written word?

Is there ever a time where a novel
or a poem can feel complete

without being finished?

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls
and towers were girdled round:

And here were gardens bright
with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many
an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests
ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Kubla Khan is one of the most famous
poems in the English language,

memorable not just for its pulsing,
musical originality,

but for the opium-induced reverie
in which it was conceived.

According to Coleridge, Kubla Khan
isn't actually finished at all.

The story goes,
that the entire work,

some two or three hundred lines,

came to him, unbidden, fully formed,
in a dream, and upon awaking,

flashing with inspiration,
he sat down

and began transcribing this poem.

But he only managed to get through
a tantalising 54 lines

before he was interupted by a person
on business from Porlock, he says.

By the time that
he returned to his desk,

his majestic vision had evaporated.

"Passed away," he wrote, "like
images on the surface of a stream

"into which a stone is being cast."
At least that's his line.

The thing is, the whole story
about this humdrum

mystery visitor from Porlock might
just be the biggest tease

in English literary history.

At the time, Coleridge considered
Kubla Kahan a mere fragment

and not a serious work.

It was only published about 20 years
later at the request of his friend,

the poet, Lord Byron.

Andrew, Kubla Khan is such
a beautiful poem,

such a well-known poem, but this
idea of its fragmentariness,

if we take his word,

then he was interrupted by
this fabled man from Porlock.

I think someone once said that if
anyone in the history of literature

deserves to be shot,
it's this bloke from Porlock!

I mean, do you buy that story?

Perhaps it is an invention,
but, actually, I have to say,

it doesn't really bother
me very much.

It must be one of the best-known,
best-loved poems in the entire
English language,

so people can't be feeling
too cheesed off not getting what
they paid for!

I guess the thing that intrigues me
about Kubla Khan is this idea that,

maybe it's not literally unfinished,
maybe it is finished,

but it's masquerading
as an unfinished poem. Yeah.

By advertising it as
an unfinished poem,

which he goes to some
lengths to do,

he appears to want to get out
of being responsible

for producing a more finished thing.
"The dog ate my homework."

That would be one way of reading it.

I think the other way of reading it,
and this seems to me more important,

and certainly more powerfully to do
with the purposes of the poem,

is to regard it as something which,
in completeness,

is something IS the point
of the poem,

that what Coleridge is writing about
is how our reach exceeds our grasp,

how our creative visions can
never be realised entirely,

and so on, and so forth.

In other words, the fragmentary
nature of it is the subject,

it's not a failure,
it is the subject.

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
floated midway on the waves.

Where was heard the mingled measure,
from the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome
with caves of ice!

For the Romantics, the creative
process was something

mystical and elusive, it was
sublime, it was almost God-like,

so, it wasn't all that surprising
if things couldn't be finished.

In fact, it was testament to the
power of imagination,

that shadowy realm of make-believe
inside all our minds,

our heads, that you can never really
tame, or transcribe, because,

ultimately, it remains forever
measureless to man.

Another famous author left
fragments behind him.

By the time that the modernist
writer Franz Kafka died in 1924,

he's produced manuscripts
of 3 novels,

The Castle, The Trial and Amerika,
and not one of them complete.

He left the manuscripts in the hands
of his friend Max Brod,

with instructions to burn them,
which Brod ignored.

They're now regarded as masterpieces
of 20th-century fiction,

their fragmentary nature
a reflection of an anxious

and uncertain modern world,
where neat endings, or resolutions,

no longer had a place.

Obviously I'm relieved,
for the sake of literary history,

that Brod disobeyed
his instructions,

isn't there a bigger issue here?
Coleridge and Gilbert Stuart,

they knowingly published
their unfinished, fragmentary works,

but Kafka himself never intended
his novels to be read.

It's pretty clear from everything we
know about Kafka's life

that he wanted to have a career
as a writer,

I suspect, and it was denied him.
So, in those cases it's OK.

I think it is very different from,
a writer dies inconveniently

to their family and their publisher,
and so they just carry on,

in whatever way they possibly can.

I think with The Trial
we have something different,

because I think Kafka was,
in some sense, deluded,

or at least hugely over-pessimistic
about whether this thing

deserved to survive.
I mean, that's the point,

he didn't think
it deserved to survive,

and I think he's simply wrong
about that.

So, that's OK then,
Kafka just got it wrong,

we're all the beneficiaries
of his misjudgement,

but what happens when
artists or writers

suppress works that just
aren't worthy of publication?

What should we do when we come
across those?

I'm on my way to meet
Dr Jean Moorcroft Wilson,

an academic who recently
made an important discovery -

seven previously
unpublished poems,

that could completely
alter our understanding

of the First World War poet
Siegfried Sassoon.

Sassoon, like his contemporary,
Wilfred Owen,

has always been regarded as someone

who was against
the glorification of war.

Instead, he felt compelled
to present

its bleak truth to the world.

Sassoon arrived in the trenches
in November 1915.

His first poem, The Redeemer,

gives a particularly unsparing
account of life on the front line.

We lugged our clay-sucked boots
as best we might along the trench.

Sometimes a bullet sang,

and droning shells burst with
a hollow bang.

We were soaked, chilled
and wretched, every one.

Darkness, the distant wink
of a huge gun.

Dr Moorcroft Wilson's discovery
was of a series of Sassoon's

unfinished poems that were
out of character, to say the least.

One in particular, in contrast to
his other work of the time,

depicts war very differently.

This one, Glory 1916, I think,
was unpublished

partly because it was
unfinished.

Certain decisions hadn't been made,

and certain lines have been
duplicated with different versions.

But also because, he perhaps didn't
want to be viewed as a man

who hadn't been firm in his
movement towards anti-war poetry.

When you say
they hadn't been published,

this is his own self-censorship,
effectively?

He'd written these poems
during the war,

and he'd deliberately decided
to suppress the poems
you've discovered?

That's all I can conclude.
I don't know.

I can't...
I'm not in Sassoon's mind.

But I would assume
that that is the case, yes.

Because it's not a bad poem,
in fact, it's a rather nice poem.

Can we have a look at it?

Yes, of course we can.

So this is a facsimile
of the diary itself?

Yes.

This is a facsimile and the poem
is opposite the entry for Jan 25th.

You and the winds
ride out together.

Your company the world's
great weather.

The clouds your plume.

The glittering sky
a host of swords in harmony,

with the whole
loveliness of light,

flung forth to lead you
through the fight.

So he's been in the trenches
at this point...

Yes, he's been in the trenches.

..And he's written about the
experience as in a poem,

like The Redeemer,
which feels quite nightmarish,

and he's suddenly writing
glorified war poems?

Yes, and he's comparing himself
and his young companion,

who happens to be the man
he's in love with in real life,

his young companion, to Sir Galahad.

So, here he is writing Glory 1916.
I could hardly believe it!

I had imagined,
in my simplicity, that the line

went from glorying war to
criticising war, but it doesn't.

It goes backwards, forwards,
backwards, forwards.

You're a far cry from a tabloid
journalist

rummaging around in someone's bins,
but in literary biography,

is this in any way similar?

Essentially, you've found these
private notes and diaries

and poems which Sassoon didn't
want to see the light of day,

and effectively you are championing
them and bringing them out,

and allowing people to engage with
them, read them, know them.

That's going to change
our understanding of Sassoon.

Is that a morally right thing to do?

I think you're assuming that because
he didn't want them published

means that he didn't want them seen.

I don't think he thought
they were worthy of publication

because the others
were perhaps better.

I think we're really only adding
to our knowledge of Sassoon

when we publish this.

And don't forget we only do so
with the permission of his family.

We like to think of our artists

and writers as following career
trajectories as they develop.

But this suggests something
very different.

As a biographer,
I love the fact that it suggests
something very different.

I much prefer it
if he gives me a surprise.

And this gives me the sense that I
don't know Sassoon

as thoroughly as I thought I did.

Good. I'm glad about that.

It means I can go on indefinitely
writing biographies
of Siegfried Sassoon.

You know, thinking about Siegfried
Sassoon has made me reconsider

our whole attitude to unfinished
works of art and literature.

Because the poem Glory 1916 to me,
just seems to creak a bit.

All that Arthurian rhetoric
just feels false

and fanciful compared to the blunt
and much earthier power

of other poems from the same
period like The Redeemer.

So perhaps Sassoon didn't want to
publish it for a reason.

And perhaps we should
respect those wishes?

Perhaps we don't automatically
have the right to publish

an author's unfinished
work after all.

I always argue for
publishing art

even when it isn't as good
as it might be.

There are two alternatives.

One is that we destroy it,

that we actually burn
the manuscript ourselves,

in which case
I think we're basically Nazis.

Or we lock it away in an archive

and what we say is only scholars
can have access to it,

only the rich can have access to it

because they can get on a plane and
fly across the world to the archive.

Or even if the archive
becomes for sale,

then private collectors can have it
and really lock it away.

So, actually publishing is a far
more democratic mode

that says this will be available
to anyone that can come up
with a tenner

and then again
we can make distinctions,

we can make judgement calls
about what its value might be.

There is a tendency to think that
the dead person would have wanted
what most suits us.

For example, Ernest Hemingway.

Books have appeared posthumously

which he would never
have imagined existing.

They come from collections of notes
or things that he left unfinished

and somebody else has
shaped them into a book.

I think you have to be
so, so careful with that.

In fact, I think it is wrong

because that is a form of
literary necrophilia

in which you are completely altering
the shape of an artist's life.

Literary necrophilia
could also describe the phenomenon

of extending a writer's body of work
after their death.

I'm not talking about
cobbling together notebooks
or unfinished works.

I'm talking about hiring writers
to create entirely new stories.

Recently, both Sherlock Holmes

and James Bond have been
reincarnated to die another day.

Call me cynical but I'm assuming
the reasons for extending franchises
like that

are ultimately financial,
commercial.

The man I want to ask about this
is Jonny Geller,

a literary agent who works
here in central London.

He looks after on of the biggest
estates of them all,

that of Ian Fleming,
author of James Bond.

MUSIC: "James Bond"
by Scouting For Girls

# 007, Britain's finest
secret agent, licensed to kill

# Mixing business with girls
and thrills

# I've seen you walk the screen
It's you that I adore

# Since I was a boy
I've wanted to be like Roger Moore

# A girl in every port
And gadgets up my sleeve

# The world is not enough
For the both of us it seems

# So I wish I was James Bond
Just for the day

# Kissing all the girls
Blow the bad guys away... #

There's a tradition
of inviting great writers
to carry on the character

and the role of the estate
and my help

is to try and keep the integrity of
the character alive

with really the intention
that people go back

to those great novels
that he wrote.

Bond saw luck as a woman,
to be softly wooed

or brutally ravaged,
never pandered to or pursued.

But he was honest enough that he had
never yet been made to suffer
by cards or women.

One day, he accepted the fact

he would be brought
to his knees by love or by luck.

When you say "integrity
of the character", do you mean

literally how
we think about James Bond

or Ian Fleming's prose style?
Because they could be slightly
different things.

It's mixture of both.
Ian Fleming's prose style -

so that it's not written
in a completely different way

because modern thrillers have a
completely different tone and pace.

And the other side of it is
would James Bond,

in the way Ian Fleming
wrote it, have done this thing?

How consistent is that
with the character?

How do you go about choosing
the writers who become Ian Fleming?

Actually, fundamentally
a love of Ian Fleming's writing.

There's no point just hiring
someone who just thinks
it'll be a good opportunity

because it will show through.

And every writer who has done
the Ian Fleming continuation

including Charlie Higson who had
a very successful series of
Young Bond,

they grew up reading Ian Fleming
and they love it.

That is genuine
and it comes through in the writing.

You can't do this cynically,
strangely.

Very often authors finish a work

and then find that their audiences,

their readerships
won't let them finish it.

So, for instance,
Conan Doyle kills Sherlock Holmes,

has him fall in a fatal embrace
into the Reichenbach Falls
with Professor Moriarty

But then of course the readership,
the Holmesians,

those who feel that
life is meaningless

unless they have the sleuth of
221B Baker Street,
demand that he comes back.

So he's brought back from the dead.

Sherlock is another character
who seems to resist endings.

Having survived his own
fictional death,

and that of his creator Conan Doyle,
he's back.

After almost a century,
he's here again,

re-born in Anthony Horowitz's new
Sherlock mystery, The House of Silk.

"Indeed, Watson.
But there is one thing

"I would particularly like to know,

"for I am beginning to see great
danger in this situation."

He glanced at the fountain of
the stone figures in the frozen
circle of water.

"I wonder if Mrs Catherine Carstairs
is able to swim?"

It's interesting that Holmes, Bond,
they're genre fiction.

Genre fiction, even more than
literary fiction,

depends on the construction of
believable characters.

It's always character-driven.

That means we get to know
and like the characters.

We do not want them killed off.
We are cross if they are killed off.

So, there's
a kind of Houdini-like thing.

What does Conan Doyle have to do
to kill Sherlock Holmes?

How deep an abyss does he have to
fall into not to be able
to crawl out again?

It's absolutely fascinating.

However completed a story be,
we imagine what happens after it.

Imagining what happens after it

is one of our most important
responses to a story
that has really gripped us.

You get to the end of The Odyssey
and Odysseus is home

and he kills his rivals
and he's back with his wife.

End of story.
Perhaps the greatest story even told.

But for many people
over the centuries,

it's not necessarily the end.

Tennyson wrote a wonderful
poem, Ulysses.

Imagine what it would then be like
for this epic hero after the end.

Because how could such a person
settle down to suburban existence
in Ithaca?

I feel quite nostalgic looking at
these books in front of me.

I didn't actually own these precise
copies when I was little

but they're representative
of a particular genre I enjoyed.

Adventure books in which
you, as a kid reading the book,
shaped the narrative.

So here are several examples.

And one of the big things
about these books is that
they have many different endings.

Loads of different endings,
tens of different endings.

This one says choose from
28 endings. There's one here
that has 39 endings.

There are as many as 42 endings.
Look how small that book is.

It must be nothing
but endings, in a sense.

I think part of the reason
these appealed to me so much

is that... I'm trying to think of
the purest,

most innocent aesthetic response
you could have ever

and it would have been
when you're reading a book as a kid

and you're utterly immersed
in that imaginary world
that the author has created

and you don't want it to end.

The beauty of these adventure books
is that they never really
did have to end.

You could almost anticipate
when the narrative was trying
to shape your response

and create an ending
and you could defer it.

You could deliberately
complicate the narrative

so that it would never
come to a conclusion.

But, actually, as an adult
these days it's no different.

Perhaps now the idea of
never finishing,

never letting go of
our favourite characters

is as hard-wired
into our narrative expectations

as the need for endings
and closure was in Dickens' time.

In fact, you begin to wonder
if Dickens were alive today,

whether he would be allowed to
finish ANYTHING

or, like the writers of the Archers
or EastEnders,

he'd be forever delivering endings
that set up new beginnings.

One of the great
unfinished works of art,

and obviously I would claim it as
this, is Coronation Street.

That sense that you get the feeling
it's never going to end.

Corrie, EastEnders,
Brookside in its day

or Frasier, Friends, whatever it is.

The point about these
are that they're people.

They become part of our lives,

we want them back
and we won't let them go.

The television series
promises the most,

I believe, remarkable expansion of
the storytelling arts ever in history

and this ability to get it in a book
or a box and download it

and watch at your convenience

and watch it season after season,
hundreds of hours of material.

If the writers can create characters
that are fascinating

and empathetic over a long period
of years like that,

then the complexity of story
will rival life.

Arguably the most influential TV
drama series of the noughties,

described as the greatest pop
culture masterpiece of its day,

The Sopranos was a story
of everyday mafia folk.

Tony Soprano wrestled
with the conflicting demands

of being a mobster as well as
an ordinary family man.

The series lasted almost
a decade before it ran out of steam.

Tony Soprano keeps fascinating us
over and over

cos he's got relationships with
his family, his professional family,

the FBI, the ducks on his pond, his
psychiatrist, all of his mistresses.

And because of this incredible
cast of characters,

Tony Soprano is endlessly
surprising,

endlessly revealing.

And just when you think you know
Tony Soprano, you really don't.

Until you do.

And when they reached that point
after eight years,

he was exhausted. There was
nothing left in Tony to expose.

The series conclusion
was feverishly anticipated.

Would Tony finally get clipped?

A mafia assassination
seemed on the cards

but it was a show that continually
defied expectations.

So what did happen to Tony Soprano?

Strangely,
even after the final credits rolled,

many felt that the story
was left unfinished.

Those craving
some kind of conclusion,

which they felt they deserved
after eight years of watching
this particular programme.

They thought they didn't get it.

For those of us weaned on Twin Peaks
and The Prisoner,

programmes like this
that ended without ending

but in a funny sort of way opened up
all sorts of possibilities,

it was the perfect happy ending.

I'm on my way to meet the British
film director Mike Figgis

just to have a chat about that
famously controversial ending
of The Sopranos

because he directed a single episode
in season five

and I'd love to hear his take.

I think he's... Ah, perfect.
Thank you. He's just in here.

Thanks.

I mean, obviously you didn't direct
the final episode,

but it's famously controversial and
I'd love to hear your take on it.

Press play.

In the final scene, the Soprano
family are due to meet for dinner
in their favourite restaurant.

There's an uneasy sense, as there
has been throughout the series,

that there may be a price to pay
for Tony's violent Mafia lifestyle.

Despite the apparent normality of
the diner, the camerawork suggests

that every character who swims
into vision could be an assassin.

Mm, onion rings...

Because we'd been brought up on
The Godfather and Scorsese's Mean
Streets and all the rest of it,

we understand the film genre
called, you know, the Mafia.

We expect them to get it.

And actually, given the history
of The Sopranos,

we expect them to get it in the most
horrifically bloodthirsty way.

The minute we see cars having a hard
time parking, and backing in,

we expect a car bomb, or we expect
someone to get out and go,

"Lady, can I give you a hand?"
And then bombs through the window.

You know what the shot will look
like. It'll be shattered glass,

blood sprayed on the glass.

There's only a small number of
cliches about how Mafia killings
are depicted in film.

As if the tension weren't ramped up
enough, there's also the knowledge

that in a matter of minutes,
the end must come

and the show must finish.

MUSIC: "Don't Stop Believing"
by Journey

Focus on the good times.

Don't be sarcastic.

The song that is used at the end of
the entire programme

is Don't Stop Believing,
the Journey version.

And it actually ends on "don't stop".

You know, "stop" is the last word.
And I do love that because it's using
the classic example

of the song that would always be used
for a big, joyous, climactic,

happy ending, closure, resolution.

But it's using it at the exact
moment...well, the exact opposite.

# Street light people

# Oh-oh

# Don't stop... #

Whoa!

I've never seen that before.

But I can see
why it's controversial.

How much more satisfying that was
in the long term.

Why is it more satisfying? Because
we're still talking about it.

If you can come up with a device

where you, the writer, director
and so on, the creators of this,

can take the audience
to somewhere where, almost like
they close the last minute,

then your imagination can continue
with those characters.

And somewhere in that virtual film
space, we can conjecture ourselves,

rather like reading a book,
what may or may not have happened
to all of them.

# Somewhere in the night... #

So, is that it?

Today we have never-endings
rather than conclusions.

I think so. I get the sense
that in the 21st century,

we want to keep the story expanding
and keep the conversation going.

# Don't stop believing

# Hold on to that feeling

# Street light people

# Don't stop... #

# Street light people

# Oh-oh

# Don't stop believing

# Hold on to that feeling

# Street light people... #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd