Having grown up loving whales as a boy – in the era of the Save the Whale campaigns of the 1970s – I was underwhelmed when I watched John Huston’s grandiose 1956 film, Moby Dick.
It is the Mount Everest of literature: huge and apparently insurmountable, its snowy peak as elusive as the tail of the great white whale himself. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen eyes glaze over when I ask people if they have conquered Moby-Dick.
T hursday marks the 200th birthday of Herman Melville – the author of the greatest unread novel in the English language.
