‘The Tournament’ by William Sansom

This isn’t entirely successful, not as outstanding as other stories of his like ‘The Wall’, but it is an interesting attempt to write a political allegory using a future setting and a familiar trope, with a description of spectacle being used for political purposes, loudspeaker commentary subtly (at first) sowing propaganda, and a finale in which sport (of a sort) tips over into war, rules abandoned. It owes something perhaps to the novels of Rex Warner, and is one of the reasons people sometimes evoked Kafka as a comparison for Sansom’s writing. A period piece, in a way, but an interesting one, and I’ve never been quite able to get it out of my mind.

First published in English Story, Third Series, 1942; reprinted in Reginald Moore and Woodrow Wyatt eds., Stories of the Forties, Vol. I, Nicholson & Watson, 1945

‘A Woman Seldom Found’ by William Sansom

Chosen by Chris Greenhalgh.

Sansom’s story holds out the possibility of a perfect encounter on a romantic night in the streets of Rome. And everything seems to be going well for the narrator from its fairy tale opening – all too well, of course – until the final twist. The story is a bit of fun, but it is also a work of perfect scale, swiftly dispatched with a gut punch in just under two pages. Something of Hitchcock, Roald Dahl, with the compression of Kafka, or even Nabokov in gothic mode.

First published in A Contest of Ladies and Other Stories, London: Hogarth Press, 1956. Available to read online here

Chris Greenhalgh is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. He has published three volumes of poetry, two novels, and wrote the screenplay for Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky. You can read his full Personal Anthology here.

The Vertical Ladder by William Sansom

This is one of the many stories I would never have come across without A Personal Anthology. It was Roland Bates‘ first pick and he introduced it with this:

in 1981 my English teacher read to the class a story about a boy pressed into climbing the ladder on the side of a gasometer. He climbs, his friends kick away the first bit of the ladder, he climbs, they wander off, and he climbs… towards a truly oppressive ending. You could have heard a pin drop.

What teacher wouldn’t be tempted to give it a go on a rainy Friday afternoon? I can’t say my pupils were quite as rapt as Bates’ mates in 1981, but they did listen, and they occasionally mention the story even months later. Why does Flegg agree to climb? Why does he keep climbing? Is this just a story about a gasholder, or might it have a deeper message?

1944; now in The Stories of William Sansom, Faber. Online here

‘The Vertical Ladder’ by William Sansom

Thirty-five years spent chasing sheer dread: in 1981 my English teacher read to the class a story about a boy pressed into climbing the ladder on the side of a gasometer. He climbs, his friends kick away the first bit of the ladder, he climbs, they wander off, and he climbs… towards a truly oppressive ending. You could have heard a pin drop. I looked in vain for years, not knowing the title or author, until a Sansom anthology was recommended to me. The contents included “The Vertical Ladder”. Could this be it? It was, and immediately the horror was renewed. There’s no real plot: Sansom captures a feeling and then simply stays there. Why not?

(1944; now in The Stories of William Sansom, Faber. Online here)