BBC Radio 4 Extra, 13-20 May 2011
Topkapi is best-known for its film version directed by Jules
Dassin in 1964 with Peter Ustinov and Melina Mercouri. Evidently the movie was to have starred Peter Sellers, but Sellers
refused to work with Maximilian Schell, whom he claimed had the reputation for being difficult. Ustinov won the Academy Award
for Best Supporting Actor, even though he had a starring role.
Set in and around Istanbul in the early 1960s, Topkapi is a crime-caper
involving a shady central character, the Anglo-Egyptian Arthur Abdel Simpson, who becomes involved with a multi-national gang
of equally shady crooks including Swiss master-criminal Walter Harper, the glamorous Elizabeth Lipp, and a shady Germany aide
Fischer. The plot twists and turns, with Simpson emerging unscathed from a series of dangerous situations. Despite
his unkempt - and rather down-at-heel - appearance, he has a quick brain as well as the gift of the gab; he
can make anyone believe in anything.
David Westhead's reading of the novel appeared to confirm most of the orientalist
stereotypes about Istanbul and the Republic of Turkey; it is a mysterious city full of eastern promise, with
tourists attracted like flies to the seraglio in the Topkapi Palace; its winding streets are both seductive and
dangerous; its people speak with mysterious English accents (more Balkan than Turkish in tone); and its police behave
in much the same way as they did in Alan Parker's Midnight Express - they are fat, greasy, moustachioed
and sadistic.
As Westhead continued, however, I began to understand that The
Light of Day/Topkapi is not really about the Republic of Turkey at all; rather it celebrates Simpson's apparently
inexhaustible ability to extricate himself from even the most ticklish situation. He is proud of his British background
(insisting frequently that he is "the son of a British officer"), even though he does not have a British passport, but
at the same time displays a local cultural knowledge that even the longest-serving British resident in Istanbul would
be hard-pressed to match. Simpson is a protean figure, who can readily adapt to any and every cultural
context - Turkish, Balkan, British, or whatever.
The reading itself represented a vocal tour de force on Westhead's part,
as he played all the roles using a stunning variety of accents. I'd have liked to have heard the Turkish names pronounced
properly ("Kosk" is pronounced "Kershk," while the famous aniseed drink should be "rakur" rather than "rakee"). Nonetheless
I admired Westhead's ability to sustain listener interest throughout the three-hour reading. The producer was Frank Stirling.
