Foreign Affairs: English As A Funny Language

Description: Foreign Affairs ... Between 1970 and 2015, 400,000 and 700,000 foreigners per year studied English in England. English as a Foreign Language hovers somewhere between business and education. But ... The story takes place at World English Centre, a large language school in Bournemouth in 1972. A bizarre collection of teachers wait for their monthly intake of fresh language students. Cosser is an ex-Marks & Spencer trainee manager. Hamish once played rugby for Dorset. Barry, the new arrival, has bookshelves full of Marx and Lenin. Roger is an ex-actor with astonishing charisma. The contrast between the predatory younger teachers and the settled, prematurely mature Yorkshireman John Smith couldn't be greater. They're presided over by ex-theatrical impresario, Malcolm O'Reilly, the Director of Studies. The school employs just one female teacher in a staff of thirty. One of the fresh arrivals upsets the entire pecking order. Zenubia is a Swiss actress of gypsy origins. Her quest for her own identity throws up questions of identity for everyone else. And it turns out that no one is exactly who they seem to be. Students are most confused to find that John Smith has the same name as a character in their textbook. Everyone else tries to figure out why he calls his small son Frank, while his wife calls the boy Tarquin. Throw in minor problems with gun-running to the IRA; Libyan commissars; a Brazilian beauty-queen and her beefy brother; an ex-paratrooper who is suddenly appointed as a teacher; a venereal disease that baffles the London School of Tropical Medicine; a jolly ex-SS man proud to show off his tattoos ... and finally a Swiss eugenics programme which stole gypsy babies from their parents.

About the Author

Dart Travis was born on the island of Jersey to a French-speaking mother and an English-speaking father, which he claims gave him an early interest in the intrinsic lack of genuine communication between cultures. His mother, Denise Leniece, was an accomplished painter, who was fond of the works of Alexandre Dumas, and Dart said she was only dissuaded from calling Dart’s three older siblings Athos, Porthos and Aramis by a delegation from both sides of the family (I don’t believe a word of it). Whatever, she insisted on christening her youngest son D’Artagnan. Her Jersey landscapes were too bizarre to sell well locally at the time, but are now collected. Dart and I first met teaching in the 1970s, and I take credit for persuading Dart that while one apostrophe in a name was mildly irritating, two plus an intercap was ridiculous. After a few days of trying to explain his chosen spelling (D’Art’) to classes, D’Art’ became Dart, and has remained so ever since. We kept vaguely in touch through the 70s, and I received an occasional rude postcard from the various places where Dart had ended up teaching: The British Council in Bulgaria; the Oxford and Cambridge Language Institute in Phuket and The Kool Skool (sic) in Amsterdam. I met him once, in 1983 when I was in Viareggio, Italy and he turned up with his stunning Italian wife and took me to dinner. He told me he had taught in England again the previous year for a few months, and had tried to look me up but had failed to locate me. So I was surprised to receive a barrage of e-mails with the manuscripts of five novels enclosed. Dart had found my current address on the internet, and he wondered if Three Vee was interested in publishing any or all of them. I know the eras, and I can confirm the accuracy of the setting of these picaresque novels. Dart has researched the music and events that form the background to the stories so as to give a feel of the era. I read them avidly, and it was with major relief that I realized that at least no character bore any resemblance to me. I know Dart had done lights on variety shows in his summer holidays for three years, lived through the May demos at university in 1968 and was a roadie for a rock band in 1969. We were working together in 1972. Dart was always a weaver of tales and the ones here are somewhat different to those he told me nearer the time. Peter Viney, Three Vee Limited