All About William

A frivolous article about people called William

I have always had a thing about people called William, and not all of them are male. I have a cousin called Hillary whose father, now deceased, used to call her William. I have no idea why. Also I nicknamed my first wife, who rejoices in the aristocratic Christian name of Venetia, Bill. I was clearly influenced by my Uncle Frank who often referred to his daughter as William, but I employed the diminutive, Bill.

William is a very English name. Woody and melodious. My favourite uncle was a William, although everyone called him Bill. William Cartwright. He owned a big stretch of the River Vyrnwy in Shropshire and taught me how to fly fish.

In history there are a plethora of Williams, far too many to elucidate on here. British school children, and I was one, learned about the Normans and William the Conquerer who booted Harold from the throne at the Battle of Hastings in the memorable year of Our Lord A.D.1066. Harold, you may recall, met a grisly end: a Norman arrow pierced his eye. In the Bayeux Tapestry King Harold Godwinson’s right eye is shown to be thus afflicted. And so, the English became French. Bloody ironic that; a few centuries later we had a war with the frogs which went on for a hundred bloody years. We’ve held the grudge for centuries; today, the English and the French can’t stand each other.

Then, there’s a particular favourite of mine, the fictional William Brown: Just William. Richmal Compton’s loveable rascal is the indefatigable and immortal leader of the Outlaws (Ginger, Douglas and Henry). He invariably falls in some ordure or other, gets involved in desperate scrapes and precarious predicaments, but always comes out on top, if not exactly smelling of roses. I must have read every single story Compton wrote and chuckled at Thomas Henry’s fantastic illustrations of the loveable, perennially mud-besmeared, cap-askew ragamuffin. I passed on my great affection for William Brown to my children, who I suspect will pass it on to their children.

Naturally, when speaking of William, we can’t possibly omit William Shakespeare. And don’t tell me Bacon wrote his plays. I have never heard anything more idiotic than the assertion that Bacon wrote the plays of William Shakespeare! It’s codswallop. Francis Bacon was a philosopher and a politician; he knew zip about the theatre, so how could he possibly have written those dramas? Shakespeare was a theatre man, a scriptwriter with a deadline to meet. Stands to reason, to use a favourite phrase of William Brown, that he wrote those immortal plays. In fact, the Bacon versus Shakespeare controversy crops up in a hilarious Just William story titled William Holds the Stage (found in the short story collection William the Pirate). In the story, William Brown gets involved in a school production of Hamlet overseen by a fellow named Mr. Welbecker, an avid supporter of the theory that Sir Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays. There is a hilarious exchange between William and Mr. Welbecker:

Mr. Welbecker: There was a man called Hamlet…
William Brown: You just said he was called Bacon.

Mr. Welbecker tries in vain to explain his Bacon theory. William gets completely confused between Francis Bacon, ham and bacon and eggs. I can thoroughly recommend the inimitable Martin Jarvis and his side-splitting narration of William Holds the Stage. You can find it on Youtube.

I have almost come to blows with people arguing about Shakespeare’s best play. I maintain King Lear; others reckon Hamlet. Both contain much royal hysteria, skullduggery and mayhem, but KL’s mythic darkness edges the incestuous gloom of Elsinor in my opinion. However, both are peerless examples of dramatic art and poetry. My generation read him at school, but today’s school kids don’t. Apparently he’s too difficult for them. I reckon it’s part of a dreadful conspiracy to lower the common denominator of intelligence in a bland and anodyne world ruled by dangerous and misguided nitwits.

A big William crush of mine is William Boyd, British novelist and author of such glittering literary hits as The New Confessions, Any Human Heart and Restless. Boyd is a realist who doesn’t bamboozle or tax the reader with modernist legerdemain, such as stream of consciousness and other weird tricks of a Joycean nature. He is a writer who manages the feat of combining literary excellence with downright entertaining stories: the narratives are gripping, the characters memorable, the settings suitably fresh and exotic. Mr. Boyd is known for what he calls the ‘whole-life novel’; these follows a character from birth to old age and death, or on the cusp of demise. There are several exemplars of this in his oeuvre: The New Confessions, Any Human Heart, Sweet Caress and The Romantic.

Will the real William Boyd please stand up. Of course, William is not such an uncommon name, whereas Boyd is less prevalent. There are apparently 1,151 William Boyds living in the United States today, and some 228 registered in the UK. I daresay there must be a few in Australia and New Zealand but I don’t have stats for them. If you google this distinctly woody name, the first one on the plate is William Lawrence Boyd (1895 - 1972), a Hollywood actor famous for playing Hopalong Cassidy in no less than 143 movies! I don’t think I’ve watched even one of them. I daresay I should remedy that. My William Boyd comes second (why I should be so possessive? I don’t know!). In a page by the Booker Prize people we are told which of his books to read. Read them all for goodness’ sake! Each and every one is brilliant. And don’t forget his short stories; if you’re short of time Boyd’s brief fictions will surely corroborate his fictive genius.

Many chaps christened William forsook this noble name and became Bill or the questionable Billy or Will or the execrable Willy! There are, in no particular order or preference: Bill Murray, Bill Clinton, Bill Cosby, Bill Gates, Billy Joel, Billy Preston, Bill Withers, Bill Bailey, Willy Nelson and etcetera etcetera, ad infinitum, if not nauseam. However, one couldn’t possibly countenance a Bill Wordsworth, could one? Or a Bill Shakespeare for that matter. At a pinch the Bard may be referred to as Will but I would discourage it. The future king of England is a William. Bill the Fifth? Risible, no doubt, but I crown you Bill the fifth… I don’t think so. So why did all those christened William become Bill or the egregious Billy? Billy Boy! Silly Billy. Billy Bunter and so forth. Was it a need to be alphabetically further up the queue than William? Or some kind of logomantic fiddling intimating a desire to be more down to earth, a piercing of pompous nomenclature? Bill sounding more plebian than the patrician William. I could have asked my Uncle Bill, but he’s dead now. I suppose in some cases Bill sounds well, but not in others. Bill Boyd? Definitely not

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