Hilary Spurling Christopher Ondaatje Jenny Colgan Craig Raine David Crane Sam Leith Autumn Books Salman Rushdie Roddy Doyle Ryan Gattis
16 september 2017 [ £4.25 www.spectator.co.uk [ est. 1828
Playing the race card Munira Mirza on Theresa May’s cynical new strategy
Why footballers dope Angel Hernández
THE MADNESS OF ARONOFSKY DEBORAH ROSS
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Red Tories
eremy Corbyn has never been very keen pay rises must come out of existing budgets, The Tories have not won a convincing on parliamentary democracy. He may be it is difficult to see how public sector spend- election victory for 30 years now, and these Jchanging his mind now. The British elec- ing will be contained. Now the cap has been decades of drift seem to have damaged the toral system has allowed him to strip the breached, there will be unbearable pressure party’s self-confidence. Even when Theresa Conservatives of their majority, an extraor- from other groups of workers, such as nurses May was expecting a landslide, she filled her dinary result that not even he had thought and teachers, to ditch it altogether. manifesto with bad ideas left over from Ed possible. As a reward, he can watch the gov- This week we heard Len McCluskey Miliband’s disastrous tenure of the Labour ernment squirm as well as shape its policy. threatening to co-ordinate illegal strikes — party. She promised that her government All he needs to do is threaten a vote which a suggestion that until the recent past would would not ‘drift to the right’. It was as if she Theresa May thinks she might lose, and she have rebounded badly on Labour. But half thought the right is wrong. buckles — as we are now witnessing. the electorate now has no memory of the The race audit that Mrs May is due to For some time, the Prime Minister had Winter of Discontent or the miners’ strike. release in the next few weeks will likely stood firm on the public sector pay cap, Irresponsible unions feature low down the show the Conservatives again adopting the arguing that when you factor in generous list of priorities for younger voters, if they agenda of their opponents. Britain is one of pensions, the average government worker is feature at all. So McCluskey can compare the best countries in Europe in which to be still paid 10 per cent more than their private himself to Nelson Mandela defying an unjust young, gifted and black — the achievements sector counterpart. But the Tories have lost law. When Labour failed to condemn him, no of ethnic minority pupils in schools and uni- the argument on this and now fear they’d one really minded. versities encapsulate what Michael Howard lose a vote if they stuck to their guns. Back- called the ‘British dream’. The Tories should bench Conservative MPs are nervous of the The Tories have not won a convincing have adopted his message of optimism and political traction which it might give Corbyn election victory for 30 years, and this opportunity. But there are more votes in if they voted for the pay freeze now. So the seems to have damaged their confidence adopting a negative message, in claiming government is lifting the 1 per cent cap for the system is rigged against ethnic minori- police and prison officers. Similarly, the government seems ready ties. David Cameron should never be for- What they should have done was abolish to cave in on what seemed until this week to given for telling black children that they are nationwide pay settlements altogether, and be its robust position on student loans. Min- more likely to end up in prison than a good allowed flexible pay adjusted to local living isters are said to be reviewing the 6 per cent university. As Munira Mirza says this week costs. A bold Tory government might have interest rate on loans. It is hard to believe (cover article, page 12), the Tories risk send- done so; this one looks set to dance to a tune that this policy is a result of anything other ing a false message of despair — and all in called by its opponents. than fear of Jeremy Corbyn and his remark- pursuit of narrow political gain. The next step will be rowing back a little able popularity with the under-40s. There was a time, soon after the general bit further on what had, for the incoming Reducing interest rates on the repayment election, when Jeremy Corbyn fantasised Cameron administration in 2010, been the of student loans would be a regressive move that he would be prime minister within six government’s defining purpose: balancing that would really only help the most success- months. That prospect has receded a little, the books. In lifting the 1 per cent cap on ful graduates. According to the Institute of but it is still a very real possibility. If the gov- public sector pay for police and prison offic- Fiscal Studies, only a quarter of graduates ernment begins to lose votes on Brexit, as it ers, Theresa May has condemned the Chan- will clear their debt before the 30-year dead- briefly seemed that it might do over the EU cellor yet again to put off the great day line, after which all student debts are writ- withdrawal bill this week, it could fail to sur- when the British government lives within its ten off. A lower interest rate will save money vive the autumn. But if Corbyn’s ideas con- means. Ten years after the crash, the national only for this richest quarter of graduates — tinue to sneak into Conservative policy, it debt is still rising by £47 billion a year — or those who pay off their loans more quick- might be asked whether Labour’s seemingly £5,000 by the time you finish reading this ly — while having no effect whatsoever on absurd claim that he was the ‘real winner’ of sentence. While the government says the relieving the finances of the rest. the June election has come true. the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 3 He’s disgusting, p9 Beyond the cliffs, p50
Ave Maria, p40 THE WEEK BOOKS & ARTS
3 Leading article 12 A convenient untruth AUTUMN BOOKS 6 Portrait of the Week Theresa May’s cynical race strategy 26 Sam Leith Munira Mirza 9 Diary Cricket in Iceland, eating The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, by Stephen Greenblatt puffin and finishing my novel 14 Decision changers Sebastian Faulks Someone make a choice already! 28 Hilary Spurling Jenny Coad A Life of My Own, by Claire Tomalin 10 Politics How to unite the Tory tribes James Forsyth 16 Watergate 29 Houman Barekat Privatisation and an organised rip-off Elmet, by Fiona Mozley 11 The Spectator’s Notes Nick Cohen Talking with sporting types, 30 Ian Thomson and remembering Cormac 18 The straight dope In the Forests of Freedom, Charles Moore Even footballers take illegal drugs by Lennox Honychurch Damian Reilly 15 Matthew Parris 31 Christopher Ondaatje Return to an African childhood 20 Our browbeaten universities Madam, Where Are Your Mangoes?, They must declare independence by Desmond de Silva 17 Rod Liddle James Tooley An orchestrated race storm 32 David Crane 24 Ya Allah! The Fearless Benjamin Lay, 21 Letters Obesity, tapestries, and the Arabic-speakers are not all terrorists by Marcus Rediker England football player problem Michael Karam 33 John Jolliffe 24 Barometer Animal rights, iPhones The Age of Decadence, by and boozing with babies Simon Heffer 25 Any other business The City’s Jenny Colgan fight, Hinkley Point and phone deals Safe, by Ryan Gattis Martin Vander Weyer 34 Thomas W. Hodgkinson The Darkening Age, by Catherine Nixey 35 Tim Martin The Golden House, by Salman Rushdie Jonathan McAloon Smile, by Roddy Doyle
Cover by Morten Morland. Drawings by Michael Heath, Castro, Phil Disley, Robert Thompson, Nick Newman, Grizelda, Bernie, RGJ, Percival, Dredge, Geoff Thompson. www.spectator.co.uk Editorial and advertising The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP, Tel: 020 7961 0200, Fax: 020 7681 3773, Email: editor@spectator. co.uk (editorial); [email protected] (for publication); [email protected] (advertising); Advertising enquiries: 020 7961 0222 Subscription and delivery queries Spectator Subscriptions Dept., 17 Perrymount Rd, Haywards Heath RH16 3DH; Tel: 0330 3330 050; Email: [email protected]; Rates for a basic annual subscription in the UK: £111; Europe: £185; Australia: A$279; New Zealand: A$349; and £195 in all other countries. To order, go to www.spectator. co.uk/A151A or call 0330 3330 050 and quote A151A; Newsagent queries Spectator Circulation Dept, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP, Tel: 020 7961 0200, Fax: 020 7681 3773, Email: [email protected]; Distributor Marketforce, 161 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9AP. Tel. 0203 787 9001. www.marketforce.co.uk Vol 335; no 9864 © The Spectator (1828) Ltd. ISSN 0038-6952 The Spectator is published weekly by The Spectator (1828) Ltd at 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP Editor: Fraser Nelson
4 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk Take it private, p20
The inside dope, p18
The redcoats’ unlikely allies, p30
LIFE 36 Craig Raine LIFE Saying you want your impala steak Elizabeth Bishop, by 53 High life Taki rare, while from across the river a Megan Marshall Low life Jeremy Clarke lion roars, makes you feel like two 37 André Naffis-Sahely 54 Real life Melissa Kite of a kind: in Oscar Wilde’s words, ‘In the Catskills’: a poem 56 The turf Robin Oakley feasting with panthers Bridge Janet de Botton Matthew Parris, p15 ARTS 57 Wine club Jonathan Ray 38 Tanya Gold Venice is full of Chinese and In praise of Stephen King Indians walking around ancient AND FINALLY . . . 40 Michael Tanner monuments with vacuous The art of Maria Callas 50 Notes on… Dover Patrick West expressions, totally removed from 42 Cinema Mother! their surroundings Deborah Ross 58 Chess Raymond Keene Competition Taki, p53 43 Music Indie rock’s north-south divide Lucy Vickery Michael Hann 59 Crossword Columba What people forget is that Allah is not the Muslim god. Allah Exhibitions Rachel Whiteread 60 Status anxiety Toby Young Martin Gayford is Arabic for the monotheist Battle for Britain 45 Opera La bohème Michael Heath God. If Jacob Rees-Mogg were Michael Tanner a Lebanese Catholic, he would 61 Sport Roger Alton Radio Kate Chisholm offer his devotions to Allah Your problems solved 46 Theatre Mary Killen Michael Karam, p24 Follies; Ishq 62 Food Tanya Gold Lloyd Evans Mind your language 47 Proms Dot Wordsworth Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Richard Bratby 48 Television Tin Star James Delingpole
CONTRIBUTORS Christopher Ondaatje, Jenny Coad is the deputy James Tooley, a professor Michael Karam is a Hilary Spurling won the is the author of The Last travel editor of the Daily at Newcastle university, is an journalist and the author of Whitbread Prize for the second Colonial, and is a trustee of the Mail. On p14, she writes about expert on private schools for Wines of Lebanon. He explains volume of her biography National Portrait Gallery. He coping with an excess of choice. the poor in the third world. the dangers of speaking Arabic of Henri Matisse. On p28, writes about Ceylon on p31. He defends vice-chancellors in public on p24. she reviews a biographer’s on p20. autobiography. the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 5 Home Prices Index rose to 2.9 per cent in August, of Barbuda, population 1,600, ‘barely from 2.6 per cent in July; as measured by habitable’, and devastating the French he European Union (Withdrawal) the Retail Prices Index, the rise was to 3.9 and Dutch territories of St Martin, the TBill was given a second reading by per cent from 3.6. Unemployment fell to British territories of Anguilla (population 326 votes to 290, with seven Labour MPs 1.46 million, 4.3 per cent of the workforce. 15,000), the Turks and Caicos (35,000) rebelling against the whip. Tony Blair, and both the American (107,000) and the the former Labour prime minister, said rowds watching the Last Night of British (30,000) Virgin Islands (where it would be quite all right for Britain to Cthe Proms in parks in Glasgow and 100 prisoners escaped), as well as much stay in the European Union after all, with Swansea found that, unlike crowds in damage in Cuba, where a million were agreed adjustments to the free movement Northern Ireland and Hyde Park, London, evacuated. At least 90 people died in an of people. Jeremy Corbyn, the current they were denied that chance to join in 8.1 magnitude earthquake in Mexico, its Labour leader, said that it was ‘open for with ‘Rule Britannia’ because the live strongest for a century, causing damage in discussion’ whether Britain remained in feed was switched off. Nine members of a Tabasco, Oaxaca and Chiapas. the EU single market, though Labour’s Lincolnshire traveller family called Rooney policy is for Britain to stay in the single and another man were jailed for modern- ore than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims market after March 2019 for a temporary day slavery offences. A businessman Mhad fled to Bangladesh from Rakhine period. Sir Peter Hall, the founder of who supplied police at Leigh-on-Sea in Burma since violence erupted there in the Royal Shakespeare Company and a with footage of £26,000 worth of garden late August; Burmese military and Buddhist former director of the National Theatre, furniture being stolen from his property civilians were reported to have burnt died aged 86. A 130-ton fatberg 800 feet was told that officers were ‘unable to assist Rohingya villages. The Islamic State was long, made up of wet wipes, nappies, as they are at saturation point with their reported to have killed 18 policemen near condoms and congealed oil, was found workload’; following publicity, the assistant el-Arish in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. The blocking a sewer in Whitechapel. chief constable of Essex called for an urgent Pope was left with blood on his cassock and review. A couple removed their six-year-old a swollen bruise on his cheek after falling wo companies offered to build son from a Church of England school on as his popemobile moved through crowds Toffshore wind farms for a guaranteed the Isle of Wight after he became confused welcoming him to Cartagena during his price of £57.50 per megawatt hour for by a boy in his class who was to have a five-day visit to Colombia. 2022-23, compared with the new Hinkley girl’s name and be dressed as a girl. The Point C nuclear plant price of £92.50 per Dalai Lama visited Londonderry. he United Nations imposed import and megawatt hour. John Clancy resigned as Texport sanctions on North Korea after the leader of Labour-run Birmingham City Abroad its nuclear weapon test on 3 September. Council after criticism of his handling of Ukraine and the Baltic states watched strikes by dustmen that began on 30 June. urricane Irma left six million nervously as Russia held huge manoeuvres. Pay increases above the public-sector Hhouses, two-thirds of the total in Turkey, despite being a member of Nato, cap of 1 per cent were announced for Florida, without power as it roared up agreed to buy anti-aircraft missiles from police and prison officers, based on the the west coast. A quarter of houses in Russia. Dozens of civilians were killed in recommendations of independent pay- the Florida Keys were destroyed. The air raids on camps for displaced people review bodies. The rate of wage increases hurricane had caused terrible damage as in eastern Syria, which were blamed on remained at 2.1 per cent. The annual rate it moved westward over the Caribbean, Russia. Bolzano in northern Italy banned of inflation measured by the Consumer leaving the British overseas territory cricket in its parks. CSH
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never expected to visit Iceland, let day, we met a scruffy-looking man even I alone play cricket there. But the more dramatically refreshed. ‘How can Iceland national team was off to play he afford to be that drunk?’ asked the in the Pepsi Cup in Prague last week, sage football writer Jonathan Wilson. against Hungary and Poland among ‘He must be the richest man in Iceland.’ others, and needed some easy meat to Final gastronomic tips if you fancy a practise on. So the Authors XI found visit to this unusual island. Horse: please themselves in a vast indoor stadium in not. Seal: almost bearable. Whale: like a Reykjavik with artificial grass and a ercifully, a historian took a photo dense Bombay duck. Puffin: unspeakable. yellow ball, playing three 20-over games. Mon his phone, so the next day we The floodlights were dim and the ball could confirm what we had seen: a vertical have just finished a novel set in Paris swung prodigiously. When it bounced, greenish smudge, as though a decorator Iin 2006. What fun it’s been to write it either stood up, stopped or hurried with a thick brush had tried a new colour it, to live in Paris, either in fact or in my through low. The best word to describe (mucus) on the wall of the sky. It was more head, for two years, and how much I’m batting conditions would be ‘difficult’. stirring than that makes it sound. going to miss it. Above my desk were Our opening bowler, the novelist The business part of the trip involved the rules of the book. No war and no Nicholas Hogg, took four for seven in a ‘panel event’ on cricket at the student psychiatry. No croissants, no café au lait. four overs. The Iceland team had one bar as a curtain-raiser for the Reykjavik No arrondissement that any tourist visits. native Icelander and one Brit; the rest International Literary Festival. Attendance No baguette. No Pont Neuf. No spring, were from Sri Lanka or Pakistan. They was low, but the emotional moderator was no love affair. Nothing that anyone will were fit, quick and able — as players a show in himself. At the bus stop the next find familiar. I think I kept most of them. from that part of the world tend to be. It was finished too late for this Every time they threw at the stumps, September, so it won’t come out till from whatever angle, they hit. I’m proud autumn 2018. For reasons I’m not sure to report that we acclimatised quickly of, a book published in mid-September enough to win the third game. will always sell better than one that We then had one of Iceland’s rare comes out in May. So my publishers say. I sunny days for a bus tour of the island. It do what they tell me. was like a crash course in geology GCSE, as our guide pointed out volcanoes, tarns, sad week for people who like 1970s magma, calderas, tectonic plates and A music. Walter Becker, one half of terminal moraine. We urged him to go the peerless Steely Dan, has died. How further on the basis that one good tarn to define that acid melancholy, that deserves another. tuneful cynicism, that playful plangency? The only drawback was that since There was talk of putting an extra note the ‘investment’ bankers trousered all in a diminished ninth chord, and other the money in Iceland, everything is things I don’t quite understand. But you expensive. With beer at almost £10 a knew it was complicated because it was go, the duty-free at both ends had been so hard to sing. I didn’t finally crack ‘Dr plundered and our resourceful scorer Wu’ till duetting in a van with a British found a restaurant that would let us television cameraman. Simon Allen is bring it all along. The dinner table looked now the drummer/vocalist with the New like the police station after a speakeasy Mastersounds, while I am confined to raid in Prohibition-era Chicago. the bathroom. ‘Biscayne Bay, where the But the Authors XI enjoy a challenge. Cuban gentlemen sleep all day/ I went Some hours later, the table was clear. We searching for the song you used to sing were told the Northern Lights were now to me…/ Are you with me, Dr Wu?’ That Precious Mysteries visible and clattered downstairs onto the ‘Wu’ was a hard note to find. 26 September – quay to look at them. I saw them, dear There was a time in the early reader, I saw the aurora borealis. 8 October 2017 1980s when I couldn’t set off for work At least, I think I did. I kept Closed 2 October in the morning till I’d played ‘Kid remembering Sir Herbert Gussett, Charlemagne’ and wouldn’t go out in the who once wrote a letter to Private Eye Fine Jewellery and evening until I’d heard ‘Rose Darling’ claiming that on his way home late one Contemporary Silver twice. Those songs still sound good today. night from the Dog and Duck he had goldsmithsfair.co.uk RIP, Walter. I thought our little wild seen the European Monetary Snake. #goldsmithsfair time had just begun. the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 9 POLITICS | JAMES FORSYTH Can anyone unite the Tory tribes?
ne of the reasons that coalition gov- home elsewhere? Many moderates thought can path, with identity replacing economics ernments are so unusual in Britain the decision would be made for them; that as the prime determinant of people’s vote. O is that both main parties are coali- they would be chased out of the party. But By this logic, the Tories should be going tions themselves. The Tories have long been the Corbynites are keeping their powder after working-class voters worried about a party of both social conservatives and lib- dry. Moderates aren’t being deselected yet. immigration and economic insecurity. They ertarians, Eurosceptics and Europhiles, buc- Labour’s leadership has realised that a argue the party has a better chance of win- caneering free traders and economic nation- new, centrist party could keep it out of office. ning over Bishop Auckland in Co. Durham, alists. Labour has always brought together Even if this new party only polled in the sin- which voted Leave and which Labour held Methodists and Marxists, middle-class liber- gle digits, it would draw its support dispro- by just 502 votes, than of taking back Can- als and working-class trade unionists, hawks portionately from Labour voters. This could terbury, where university students and grad- and doves. These internal alliances mean the have a crucial effect in those key swing seats uates swung the seat to Labour. parties mostly avoid the need for an external that Corbyn needs to win. This desire not to Tories who believe culture is becoming one. But the Labour and Conservative coali- give the moderates a casus belli goes some the dominant force in politics point to the tions are nearing breaking point. way to explaining why Labour’s position fact that the Tories now have a bigger major- Labour’s problem is that its far left now on Brexit is softening. By indicating that ity in Sherwood, a seat dominated by the dominates, making the party unbalanced. the party is open to the possibility of stay- former mining town of Hucknall, than they The two years since Jeremy Corbyn won do in the home of high finance, the constitu- the leadership have seen his wing gain ever Several of those who first refused to ency of the City of London and Westminster. more control. When Corbyn first became serve under Corbyn are now trying to Other Tories take a very different view. leader, most of the shadow cabinet made no worm their way on to his front bench The ‘modern moderates’, as one minister effort to hide their doubts about his agen- dubs the group, regard winning back the da. But Corbyn can now impose collective ing in the single market, the shadow cabinet seats lost at the last election as key. Many in responsibility on it. Several of those who at is denying pro-single market Labour MPs a this group are attracted to the idea of Amber first refused to serve under him are now try- reason to walk out. Rudd as May’s successor because they think ing to worm their way on to the front bench. Whether the Labour coalition can be she’ll appeal to those professional-class vot- Even the party’s various committees, kept together for the whole of this parlia- ers the Tories have alienated. where the organisational skills of the old ment remains to be seen. At some point, Yet another set of Tories have a slightly Labour right used to act as a bulwark against candidates will have to be selected to fight different approach. They want to use Brexit left-wing domination, are now coming under the next election. When this moment comes, to make the UK economy even more open. Corbynite control. The leadership can now the Corbynites will have to choose between They want this country to embrace free put together a majority on the National remaking the parliamentary party in their trade and competition and are relaxed about Executive. Momentum-backed candidates own image and risking splitting the party. immigration. Such an approach, though, is romped to victory in the elections for the The most obvious threat to the Tory unlikely to win over those in traditionally conference arrangements committee. coalition is Brexit. One of the main rea- Labour seats who are pessimistic about their Changing the rules to reduce the number sons why Theresa May remains in place is economic prospects. So it would require the of parliamentary nominations that a can- Tories fear a leadership contest before then Tories to target fast-growing parts of the didate needs to stand for leader used to be could turn into the bloodiest battle of the country instead. regarded as the test of the Corbynites’ insti- party’s long civil war over Europe. But even The past two election campaigns have tutional strength. The Corbynites probably once Brexit is done there will be forces pull- shown how important it is for the Tories to do have the votes to pass this change at this ing at the Tory coalition. There are those broaden their coalition, and how difficult. month’s conference. But the truth is that it is Tories, including some in the cabinet, who In 2015, a Tory campaign whose targeting far less important than before because there think British politics is following an Ameri- was almost perfect garnered a majority of are far more Corbynite MPs now than there 12. The reason it was not larger was that were two years ago, when he had to rely on the party couldn’t make significant gains in the indulgence of Labour MPs, who should Labour areas in the north and the Midlands. have known better, to get on the ballot. Next This year, the Tories made much more of an time round, a left-wing candidate will find effort to win over these voters, with some it fairly straightforward to make it through success. But the tone they struck combined to the membership vote, even if that still with the policies they came up with alienat- requires the support of 15 per cent of MPs. ed some of their traditional supporters. Indeed, it is possible that the left is now set Victory at the next election will go to the for a period of dominance akin to the right’s party that does a better job of managing its control during the Blair/Brown era. own electoral coalition. This makes it imper- The question then becomes: will the mod- ative that the Tories’ next leader is someone erates stay and fight to save their party, or who can find a way to add to the Tory pool will they decide that they need to find a new ‘Oh well, boys will be girls.’ and reassure its existing members.
10 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk Charles Moore
pologies for my absence from He created an amazing, precarious Athis column. My editors kindly let bridge between East and West and me get on with the final volume of my persuaded the most extraordinary Thatcher biography. In my one week of collection of people to cross it. actual holiday — in northern England and in Scotland — I had cause to reflect he third was Cormac Murphy- on what makes a good conversation. TO’Connor. I was part of his flock The problem with so many social when he was Bishop of Arundel and conversations (lunch, dinner, parties) Brighton, and kept up with him when is that talk is compulsory. This can be a he became Archbishop of Westminster. helpful thing, but it penalises those who He was a good shepherd, who knew are interesting but shy against those his sheep and was known of them. As a who are more assertive than interesting. years ago, I was assigned a man who had shepherd should be, he was physically Conversations among people engaged previously worked for a notably villainous strong, but gentle. Although he was in an outdoor pursuit are quite different. plutocrat of the region. What was he like, I brought up entirely in England, he had They can start, stop and resume without asked. ‘Well,’ said the loader, ‘I would call an Irish accent. No one could have been any embarrassment, and they rest on the him a pig, but that would be an insult to less chippy about the British, however. reassuring basis of a common interest. those noble creatures.’ Indeed, he was too soft on us. He I imagine this must be true of sailing or admitted to me that he wanted to take fishing. It certainly is of hunting with hile I was away, I avoided the news, up Gordon Brown’s offer of a peerage. hounds. It also occurs if you are shooting Wexcept obituaries. Three people His maiden speech would have begun, with loaders, as I was. You stand all I knew quite well died. The first was ‘As my predecessor, Cardinal Pole, was day together, except when you move Sean O’Callaghan, the repentant IRA saying in this House…’ The Vatican, between drives. There is no requirement terrorist turned informer. He was one of however, has a rule that clergy should to chat at all, so when talk comes, it three friends I have visited in prison (the not be legislators. Cormac sought an is unforced. I can honestly say that in others being Taki and Jonathan Aitken). exception: ‘I worked out how best to scores of such days, I have never been So great was the risk from the vengeance of appeal to them. I thought, “Well, the saddled with a man who was boring, the Provos that Sean had an entire block to Vatican is really a medieval court, so I’ll drunk, rude or narrow-minded. Better himself in Maghaberry. He had a diffident put it in terms they’ll understand.” I said than that, I have almost always found demeanour, but great courage. Obviously, to them, “I believe the Queen would myself with a loader who has taught this involved straightforward physical like it.”’ Sadly, the austere position was me a lot — about the country before us, bravery, since — though he died of natural maintained, and the Cardinal remained about what I am doing wrong, sometimes causes — the threat of being murdered unennobled. It was part of his charm to about life in general. Although loaders was never lifted. But his intellectual tell such stories against himself. are often keepers from nearby estates courage was even more remarkable. He or retired keepers, they often have quite came to understand clearly and coolly nother death was that of Sir different backgrounds. This year, I had, why physical-force Republicanism was AEdward Du Cann, the former among others, an ex-electrician from the an atrocity not a crusade. I don’t think he chairman of the 1922 Committee, at the West Country who moved to the moors hated his former comrades. It was rather age of 93. Sir Edward’s longevity proved because he loves breeding pointers, that he saw through their pretensions, so a problem for me when I was preparing and a former senior emissions expert they never forgave him. my first volume for the publishers. A at Nissan who is married to a woman paragraph about him (incredibly, he priest. Cynics might object that loaders e were forewarned of the second came quite close to being chosen over are bound to be nice to the guns, since Wdeath. On 11 August, we received an Mrs Thatcher to challenge Ted Heath in they are paid to be so, and want tips invitation to ‘An evening with David Tang’ 1974) had to have two versions, one if he too. No doubt their role restrains their at the Dorchester. ‘As I have been “given” were still alive, the other if he weren’t. language a bit, but I have never noticed by my politburo of medical experts,’ it read, He lived, so my quotation from William the faintest sign of the servility which ‘just a month or two to last, I thought the Waldegrave said that Heath’s supporters you sometimes meet in conventional best way to go would be to give a party hoped that Du Cann would challenge service trades. These men live lives in where we can see each other at least one because they ‘all knew that he had such which telling the truth is important and more time, rather than at a memorial when a dubious financial record as to make showing off is unwise. To share their talk I shall be as dead as a dodo.’ But poor him an easy target’. In the ‘dead’ version, is a privilege. David died less than a week before his Waldegrave said: ‘all knew that he was party. His intended form of farewell was a crook’. Those who romanticise the have just remembered one instance entirely characteristic — being absurd, probity of politics in the old days would I of a loader being rude. In Scotland, generous and unreasonably optimistic. do well to study Sir Edward’s career. the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 11 Theresa May’s phoney war Her cynical attack on institutional racism is dangerous and divisive
MUNIRA MIRZA
ext month, Theresa May is expect- shows BAME individuals still face bias — the criminal justice system for the ethnic dis- ed to launch her long-awaited audit including overt discrimination — in parts of parities it describes. Black children are more Ninto racial disparities in public ser- the justice system’. He pointed to the statis- likely to grow up in a single-parent family, vices. We are being prepared for the worst. tic that BAME men and women make up 14 black and mixed ethnic boys are more like- Unnamed Whitehall insiders say that they per cent of the population but 25 per cent of ly to be permanently excluded from school, have been ‘shocked’ by the picture it reveals all prisoners. BAME male prisoners are more and BAME groups have a much higher of racial discrimination in the UK. All this likely to be in high-security prisons and the incidence of mental illness. All of these are suggests the scene is being set for another odds of a BAME offender receiving a prison linked to higher rates of offending. bout of political self-flagellation regarding sentence for drug offences is higher than for In short, there are many social and eco- the subject of race in Britain, in which half- white offenders. This, he argued, proves the nomic factors that go a long way to explain truths are peddled by lobbyists and swal- Prime Minister’s comment last year: ‘If you’re these ethnic disparities. It makes no sense to lowed wholesale by officialdom. black, you’re treated more harshly by the blame racism or the failings of professionals Several studies have already shown criminal justice system than if you’re white.’ in the criminal justice system. Differences in that some ethnic groups experience differ- Except this is not what the statistics racial outcomes are not the same thing as ent outcomes in policing, health, employ- in his report revealed at all. Rather, they institutional racism any more than the fact ment and education. There are many causes showed the Crown Prosecution Service’s that far more men than women are incarcer- behind these disparities but the evidence decision-making was broadly proportion- ated is evidence of institutional sexism. The will be carefully selected to suit a predeter- most anyone could reasonably say about mined agenda. Everyone is gearing up for Astonishingly, it seems that a lot of institutional racism is that the evidence is far the report to be a ‘game-changer’, because people in politics think it’s a good idea from conclusive. Yet virtually no one chal- ultimately that is what everyone wants. The lenged Lammy’s misleading claims. Prime Minister is desperate for a dramatic to exaggerate the problem of racism The same wrongheaded thinking about announcement to tick her ‘burning injus- race was at work in another government- tices’ box and reset her administration (for ate, once other factors were taken into commissioned review, Lady McGregor- ‘nasty party’ read ‘nasty country’). When she account. Jury conviction rates were simi- Smith’s report into BAME employment, announced the audit last August, Mrs May lar across ethnic groups at between 66 and published in February. It made the claim that dropped any pretence that she would wait 68 per cent. In some measures, BAME ‘people from BAME backgrounds are still to see the actual evidence by promising that groups actually had more favourable treat- being held back in the workplace because of it would ‘reveal difficult truths’. Her politi- ment compared with whites. It is true that the colour of their skin, costing the UK econ- cal advisers fondly imagine the audit will in the area of rape and domestic abuse, omy the equivalent of 1.3 per cent in GDP a somehow improve the Conservative party’s black and ‘Chinese and other’ groups had year’. Most people reading that might rea- relationship with BAME communities. A disproportionate rates of prosecution, and sonably deduce that British businesses were panoply of anti-racism lobby groups is excit- the report rightly called for more research discriminating against BAME people. ed at the prospect of a new Macpherson or to understand why. But if racial bias were But as Richard Norrie, a researcher at Scarman moment that will pave the way for a problem throughout the system, one Policy Exchange, pointed out at the time, fresh laws and more public funding for them. would expect the overall conviction rates the report paints an unnecessarily bleak And the Labour party sees this as home turf; to reflect this. By and large they don’t. picture of ethnic recruitment, because it the more everyone obsesses about race, they In fact, the detail of Lammy’s report con- assumes all workplaces should have at least believe, the more they stand to gain. cedes that there are many reasons outside 14 per cent ethnic minority staff, reflect- Everyone, including ethnic minorities, ing the percentage of ethnic minorities in should be worried about the way in which the population. What this ignores is that anti-racism is becoming weaponised across almost half of the non-white population in the political spectrum. What passes for pol- the UK are immigrants, and many of these icy discussion in this area is now so heav- have arrived recently with poor English ily divorced from the facts and driven by and low qualifications. It is crazy to insist ideo logy that there is barely any intelligent they should have the exact same outcomes debate. Astonishingly, it seems that a lot of as non-BAME groups within only a few people in politics think it’s a good idea to years of their arrival. BAME communities exaggerate the problem of racism. also tend to have a younger age profile, so it A telling example of this phenomenon is will take years for them to grow and assume the David Lammy review into race and the positions of responsibility. It would be bet- criminal justice system, which was commis- ter to look at how diversity develops over sioned by government and published last time, and whether people from different week. Lammy claimed his report ‘clearly backgrounds are coming through the talent
12 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk pipeline, which they are in most professions such as law, accountancy and the civil service. However, in this ideologically driven debate, there are no prizes for pointing out where Britain is doing well and creating opportuni- ties for BAME people. The logical fallacies about race have been taken to ludicrous extremes in the area of mental health. In 2004, John Blofeld, a former high court judge no less, published an investigation into the death of the black schizophrenic patient David Bennett at the Norvic clinic in 1998 which concluded that the mental health services were ‘a fester- ing abscess’ of institutional racism. In 2005, the government produced a new action plan for the sector to reduce ‘disproportionate’ admissions of black patients to psychiatric wards, a policy which has been continued by successive governments, including the pre- sent one.
ut the reality is that incidence of men- Btal illness is objectively much higher in the BAME population. Professor Swaran Singh, a social and community psychia- trist with more than 30 years of clinical experience, has argued for over a decade that institutional racism in his profession is not the cause of this. Academic studies show that BAME and migrant groups are more exposed to mental health risk factors, including family breakdown, substance abuse, poverty, living in areas with low social cohesion and, of course, the personal experience of migration and prior instances accusations of institutional racism — and the very least possible that much of it is also of racial prejudice. Afro-Caribbean people their official endorsement — have corrod- driven by the current accusations of racism. are more likely than whites to be diag- ed BAME communities’ trust in public ser- His report will do nothing to improve that, nosed with mental illness, sectioned, forci- vices, thereby making things worse. Singh and will probably make it worse. bly restrained and placed in seclusion. They found in his 2006 research into mental also make up a third of inpatients on medi- health services that the call to fight racism his shift in the way we think about rac- um-secure psychiatric wards. For a psychi- in mental health was ‘creating a self-fulfill- Tism has also had a wider cultural effect. atrist to turn away patients or amend their ing prophecy whereby [black] patients seek A generation of young BAME people treatment because of some government tar- help only in a crisis, disengage from services believe that they are disadvantaged because get would be, frankly, irresponsible. prematurely and have repeated admissions of their race, and they are angry. They are We have now reached a point where all with poor outcomes’. Patients and their told repeatedly about how racist universities differences in public service outcomes by families were so convinced that they would are (especially Oxbridge), how racist their race are assumed somehow to be the result be locked up and harmed by their doctors schools are, how racist employers are, how of ‘institutional racism’. The Macpher- that they were even refusing to take medi- racist the police are, and so on, ad infinitum. son report in 1999 into the police laid the cation. Often it was when they had already In pretty much all these areas, the statis- ground for this new orthodoxy, positing that caused or were on the verge of causing harm tics tell a more complex story about pov- racism exists all around us in the ‘system’ to themselves or others that they first came erty, class, cultural norms and expectations. and that it is perpetuated ‘unwittingly’ by to the attention of the authorities, at which In many areas, such as university entry or people working within it. Rather than judg- point more forcible means were required to recruitment into the professions, a number ing by objective criteria, it handed down protect them. of ethnic groups are actually doing better the unusual instruction to measure racism Hidden in Lammy’s review was a simi- than white British people. David Camer- according to people’s subjective percep- larly telling discovery: one of the reasons on even once claimed that a young black tions. If one believes something to be racist, why black people are more likely to receive man was more likely to be in prison than then officially it is. harsher sentencing in the courts is that they university, which was factually completely Paradoxically, just at the point when do not trust their solicitors’ advice to plead untrue (as this publication later pointed racist attitudes were declining in society guilty, meaning that they do not benefit from out), but imagine the message that sent out and many ethnic groups were integrating more lenient sentencing. Believing the accu- to thousands of hopeful parents who had successfully, our political leaders became sations of institutional racism, BAME com- come to this country with dreams for their obsessed with racism. The last decade in par- munities are afraid to trust their own lawyers children. ticular has seen a range of measures, from and end up making decisions that harm their Anyone who delves into the facts, how- diversity training to ethnic targets, aimed at chances in the system. Some of this lack of ever, is warned off by the prospect of a moral combating the widespread racism that sup- trust must be attributable to the historic leg- punishment beating. ‘I’m no longer engag- posedly pollutes society. The tragedy is that acy of racism from a previous era, but it is at ing with white people on the topic of race,’ the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 13 writes Reni Eddo-Lodge, a black British author, in her recently published polemic: ‘Not all white people, just the vast majority Decision breakers who refuse to accept the existence of struc- tural racism and its symptoms… Their intent Why can no one make up their minds about anything? is often not to listen or learn, but to exert their power, to prove me wrong, to emo- JENNY COAD tionally drain me, and to rebalance the sta- tus quo.’ Eddo-Lodge, like so many of the younger generation of anti-racist activists, is not interested in hearing people disagree with her. This is essentially demanding an he risk of a wrong decision is pref- Advisor — guaranteed to hinder not help, uncritical reception for contentious political erable to the terror of indeci- with its wildly ranging views on the same ideas on the grounds that it hurts too much ‘T sion,’ said Maimonides. How right place. ‘Don’t bother’, ‘We loved it’. to listen. When Trevor Phillips, the then head he was. Today, we are racked with choice, I tormented myself on a recent holiday in of the Equality and Human Rights Commis- and decision-making has never been more Lisbon by looking at Instagram and all the sion, dared to say that ‘institutional racism’ fraught. It’s hell. tasty images of food from local restaurants was no longer a relevant term in Britain, he Look at restaurant menus. Anything in which I wasn’t eating. There was always was widely denounced. Not long afterwards, longer than a page is alarming. So much mar- somewhere better gleaming tantalisingly on several members of the board resigned. gin for error. ‘Hold on a minute, I just need the horizon. We trawled the streets, ponder- By appeasing the anti-racism lobby another look.’ ‘What’s the special, again?’ ing one place over another, popping back to and affirming its culture of grievance, pub- Glance at a neighbouring table. ‘That looks one, having a quick drink somewhere else lic institutions and business leaders are not nice, is it the lamb?’ Turn to your partner. before deciding to go with this — or that. making Britain a fairer place. In fact they ‘What are you having?’ We can buy things, return them for a full are harming the very people they aspire to At least you’ve settled on a restaurant. refund and not worry about losing a few help. By importing into the UK the divisive Organising a dinner out generates endless pounds on the postage. We’ve even coined politics of anti-racism from America, with back and forth between companions, jos- a term for it, shopping bulimia, where a its demented campus dramas and neuroses tling politely for position, lobbying for a sackful of purchases are made and swiftly about ‘safe spaces’, ‘micro-aggressions’ and venue in a more convenient postcode, sug- returned. Two hits of dopamine, once for the ‘cultural appropriation’, they make it almost gesting somewhere a little less expensive splurge and once for the refund, phew. impossible for people of goodwill of all eth- or a touch more on trend: ‘I’ve heard this Deciding on a single career path or nicities to rub along together. place is good’, ‘That’s quite far…’ ‘OK. What climbing the ranks in one company is now May and her ministers may lack the cour- about x or y?’ ‘Maybe z?’ regarded as positively old-fashioned. These age to halt the bandwagon, but there is cause Part of the problem is technology. We’re days you are expected to diversify. Try some- for hope in the growing number of younger in touch with everyone all the time via our thing else. Perhaps have multiple jobs — just people from ethnic minority backgrounds phones and all looped into the decision- look at George Osborne. But is such flex- who can see through the divisive politics of making process, whether on email, text mes- ibility making us any happier? I’m not sure. anti-racism. Their lived experience gives the sage or WhatsApp. As a result, decisions can I wonder if instead we are permanently dis- lie to the idea of Britain as a fundamental- be delayed until the day (‘See how we feel’), satisfied, always seeking the next thing. Con- ly racist society. It is possible to acknowl- the hour before (‘What about this?’) and stantly trying on slightly ill-fitting shoes. edge that racism still exists without turning even en route (‘Change of plan!’). That seems to be the case with dating. its waning influence into the pretext for a I met two friends in an empty restaurant There are so many services, sites and apps bogus moral crusade that pollutes the public the other day. They had drinks in front of that you can go on endlessly giving people a space with false accusations based on selec- them but the chooser of the restaurant was go. Anna Heaton, an attractive 29-year-old, tive evidence. Despite the inevitable chal- nervously shifting in her seat. ‘Should we has been in the news recently for having had lenges of integrating millions of newcomers, go somewhere else? There’s another place 77 dates in two years. No one has yet meas- Britain is a country that is conspicuously fair I read about up the road?’ We hadn’t even ured up. Some might say she’s picky, others and tolerant by any reasonable standard. opened the menu. My friend clearly felt the that she knows what she wants. Maybe she We have earned the right to focus on the burden of having made the call. She didn’t simply has a serious case of decision-fatigue? positive. For the Prime Minister to claim want to get it wrong — when the right thing The American psychologist and philoso- that we have a serious problem with racism could have been just around the corner. pher William James believed there to be ‘no really would be a burning injustice. We’re constantly striving for perfection more miserable human being than one in and it’s driving us to distraction. Holidays whom nothing is habitual but indecision’. He Munira Mirza was deputy mayor for present all sorts of headaches before you’ve would know. This was a man who changed education and culture under Boris Johnson. even got to the airport. Budget withstand- his studies and career path multiple times, ing, the possibilities are endless. And we going from science to painting to natural understandably place so much importance history, followed up by medicine, then on to on our time away that the idea we might get philosophy via psychology and physiology. it wrong fills us with dread. If it’s a special Indecision is restless, time-consuming, holiday, a honeymoon say, where do you tiring. It is Theresa May. She has been criti- begin? One friend changed her honeymoon cised for flip-flopping over policies and over arrangements on the strength of negative calling the election. Lord Harris of Peckham online reviews. Another booked and can- has berated the Prime Minister for changing celled a sunshine getaway within the space her mind too many times. ‘Theresa May is no of 24 hours. He lost faith in his choice. Thatcher. Thatcher used to make decisions. There are so many options at our fin- Not everyone liked her but you knew where gertips. Endless people telling us what they you stood.’ The trouble is that, increasingly, thought of this or that on sites such as Trip- none of us know where we stand on anything.
14 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk MATTHEW PARRIS The African bush took me back to my boyhood
ntering the Bulawayo Club, you step helpful, the breakfasts magnificent and the (now spelt Save) river — or rather through out of the blinding African sunshine bar and billiard rooms massive. When I asked it — ‘Don’t feel we have to see every animal; Eon that safe and friendly city’s wide if there was a safe for passports and money, I know they can all see us and I like the feel- streets, and into the cool of a generous, the duty manager looked almost wounded, ing’, and he replied, ‘Spoken like an African. mahogany-lined reception hall, its glorious and replied that this had never been found I hate the pressure when you have to spot a art-deco doorways and fittings taking you necessary. I cannot imagine why any Specta- list of animals for visitors. Being in the bush back to another age: the early 1930s when tor reader would want to stay anywhere else. should mean less pressure.’ But he had a gun, the Club, already about 40 years old, rebuilt We spent our last night in Zimbabwe just in case. the clubhouse in the grand style of a confi- there, earlier this month. It capped a week I said ‘across the river’. We were based at dent colonial southern Rhodesia. spent mostly at the other side of the coun- a lodge near Chilo Gorge, where the great Facing you are two large portraits. One is try, whence we had driven. The Gonarezhou river rushes through throats of granite on its of Cecil John Rhodes in tunic and wing col- (pronounced more-or-less gonner-a-shoo) way through sandbanks and red cliffs to the lar. This you would expect, though the finest National Park. I will not bore you with check- Indian Ocean. Readers are rightly suspicious representation of that capable, restless, vain- lists of all the animals we saw (almost the lot) of product placement so I should tell you glorious, morally ambiguous and sometimes or the sounds of jackals, hyenas and leopard that though the management gave us a good duplicitous achiever hangs in the Lobengula in the night as we camped (disgracefully luxu- rate, we were paying guests and I’d actually room: a light and sensitive pencil sketch of riously) by the banks of a croc-infested river. hesitate to be so gushing if this had been a Rhodes as a very young man. freebie. Chilo Gorge Lodge’s grass-thatched Less expected is the huge portrait that The call of the boubou bird, the coo of rondavels (round dwellings) are perched hangs opposite Rhodes on the other side of the Cape turtle dove, the sun on your high above the riverbank, and there’s some- the portico. It is of Lobengula, chief of the back, and the swish of vervet monkeys thing special about starched tablecloths in Matabele people: brave, cruel, headstrong, the open air, and sipping tea and savouring perceptive — and haunted, as he went to his Suffice it to say that on the other side of the real marmalade on your toast while a hippo early and ignominious death, by the realisa- Limpopo lies South Africa’s famous and con- grunts and crocodiles bask not a hundred tion that he had been outwitted by Rhodes tiguous Kruger park. Everybody goes there. yards beneath. Saying you want your impala and sold his people’s lands and birthright for Nobody goes to Gonarezhou. You should. steak rare, while from across the river a lion a little money and a few guns. Rhodes had But no, game-spotting is a kind of train- roars, makes you feel like two of a kind: in promised Lobengula and his people pro- spotting and I care for neither. For me, it’s Oscar Wilde’s words, feasting with panthers. tection from the Portuguese and the Boers. just being in the African bush that thrills And nature is red indeed in tooth and He got it. What Lobengula had not under- and delights. The call, like a rusty wheel- claw. And jaw. Driving a dirt track with the stood was that he was also getting annexa- barrow squeak, of the tropical boubou bird; Lodge’s Clive Stockil (who is spearheading tion to the British empire. ‘Did you ever see the coo of the Cape turtle dove; the sun on an ambitious outreach project with the local a chameleon catch a fly?’ asked Lobengula, your back, the swish of invisible vervet mon- African community), we passed on the road- sadly. ‘The chameleon gets behind the fly and keys somewhere in that tree, the exquisite side a man who appeared to be wearing his remains motionless for some time, then he red-and-white flower of the Sabi star, deli- jacket casually over his shoulders. He was advances very slowly and gently, first putting cate blossom on bare wood, sweetness out called Maxwell. He had no arms. An enor- forward one leg and then the other. At last, of the dry earth … these take me back to mous crocodile had lunged at him out of the when well within reach, he darts his tongue my boyhood in Rhodesia. I said to our Afri- water as he was fishing. He was off-guard. and the fly disappears. England is the chame- can guide, who had driven us across the Sabi Crocs never are. A bloody struggle ensued. leon and I am that fly.’ Maxwell’s friend leapt in to help. Finally the Lobengula died in 1894. The Bulawayo pair got Maxwell back on to the bank. But Club was founded in 1895. The Matabele the croc left with both his arms. rebellion began in 1896. The railway reached Mr Stockil is getting advice from a pros- Bulawayo in 1897. Rhodes collapsed and thetic surgeon and needed to photograph died in 1902. The bloody, heady, daring turbu- the stumps. Meanwhile Maxwell’s little son, lence of those years survives only in the many Crispin, about nine, who accompanies his paintings and prints hanging on the enormous poor father everywhere to help him, stood clubhouse’s walls. Today a feeling of tran- faithfully by. I like stories with happy endings, quillity, almost sanctuary, has settled on this so it’s with that motive, rather than virtue- elegant place, beautifully maintained by its signalling, that I tell you we’ve set up a little 21st-century members, now of all races. You fund for the boy’s education. It isn’t much. can stay there as a tourist, and it is not expen- ‘My Facebook ads are the only And I’m going to apply for country mem- sive. The bedrooms are impressive, the staff ones that truly know me...’ bership of the Bulawayo Club. the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 15 Watergate Privatisation has turned into an expensive disaster
NICK COHEN
nough has been written about a Con- Macquarie has taken its profits. According using the money to make the water system servative government that knows its to Martin Blaiklock, an infrastructure con- better, they have paid out £18.1 billion in Eelectoral success depends on Britain sultant, its investors received returns of 15 dividends, and financed investment through remaining a property-owning democracy, to 19 per cent over 11 years — twice the loading £42 billion of debt on to consumers. yet offers nothing beyond token gestures expected level. All it has left behind is a £2 The university estimates the English are to stop the young being priced out of home billion debt and a very bad smell. paying £2.3 billion more a year in water and ownership. Enough, too, has been said about Now Thames Water is owned by a sewerage bills than if the utility companies graduates being overcharged, pensioners Kuwaiti investment fund and a Canadian had remained in state ownership. These soaking up the largesse of the tax and ben- pension fund. Its managers talk the sooth- costs might have been bearable in good efit systems, the failure to upgrade infra- ing language of customer service and cor- times, but as the Brexit-induced fall in the structure, the obesity crisis, and all the other porate responsibility. But when pressed by pound pushes real wages back down again, problems that can’t be tackled because of the BBC to say that they would not seek to the prices of water, gas and electricity are half-thought-through Tory prejudices. imitate Macquarie and extract rapacious bound to be political issues. Customers may Allow me instead to concentrate on the returns from a captive market, they refused not be overly keen to subsidise sharehold- scandal of the privatised water industry. to answer the question. ers and lavishly overpaid managers. Journalists and academics have been bang- What interest do Kuwaiti and Canadian I am not surprised that the Conserva- ing on for what feels like an age about an investment funds, Australian banks and tives haven’t joined Labour in demanding ‘organised rip-off’, to use the words of the the renationalisation of the water industry. It usually sedate Financial Times. Few took Firms promised effi ciency. Instead would cost about £70 billion, and in any case, notice, and that should not surprise you. they have brought unsustainable debt Tories don’t nationalise. But why, after the Causes can appear marginal for years. Poli- that the public will have to redeem Macquarie shambles, aren’t ministers and the ticians see no need to address them. Then, regulators saying that secretive private equity with no warning to those who haven’t been Cayman Islands financiers have in ensuring and Middle East funds should not be allowed paying attention, they explode. the quality and affordability of our water? to control utilities? Why have they allowed Last week Michael Robinson of the The hopeless regulators have no answers. Macquarie to move to the National Grid’s BBC presented a superb documentary on Since Margaret Thatcher privatised English gas division? Ofwat is huffing that it has got what Thames Water had done to London water companies in 1989, six out of the nine tough, but it imposes no penalties on manag- and the southeast. Most infamously, the have pulled themselves off the stock mar- ers who break their commitments. After load- company poured 1.4 litres of sewage into ket, meaning they do not have to release to ing Thames Water with debt and flooding the the Thames near Marlow alone, destroy- their shareholders information that the reg- Thames Valley with excrement, its then boss, ing fish and fouling the home lives of river- ulators can scrutinise. the unimprovably named Martin Baggs, side residents. The residents were also its They promised to bring efficiency. bagged a 60 per cent pay rise in 2015. customers. Not that Thames Water seemed Instead they have brought unsustainable Conservatives claim to believe in the free to care. Water is a private monopoly. Why levels of debt that, one way or another, the market. If they did, they would view monop- should it bother itself about the feelings of public will have to redeem. Researchers at olies as Adam Smith viewed them — as con- people who had nowhere else to go? After Greenwich University say that in the past spiracies against the public interest. They hearing how managers ignored warnings decade, the nine companies have made would not care whether the monopolies were from workers about persistent equipment £18.8 billion of post-tax profits. Far from public or private. Both give consumers no failures, Judge Francis Sheridan encapsu- choice. Both can put their customers’ inter- lated their attitude when he said that the ests last. But to the Tory mind, a distinction company had presided over ‘a shocking and without a difference makes all the difference. disgraceful state of affairs’. Because water companies are private As shocking is the way that the former monopolies, politicians and regulators back owners of Thames, the Australian bank away from confronting them with the nec- Macquarie, was able to pass its costs on to essary anger and vigour. If a nationalised the public. Macquarie took on £2.8 billion industry behaved as Thames Water has, they of debt to buy the company; it then loaded would be outraged. As it is, the mere fact £2 billion of Cayman Islands debt on to that the monopolies are private is enough to Thames Water and its customers, despite persuade politicians to stand aside and let a giving assurances to the water regula- scandal grow. No one will be more surprised tor Ofwat that it would do no such thing. Harvest-data festival than them when it explodes.
16 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk ROD LIDDLE An orchestrated race storm
fascinating story has emerged from have been hit with what I can only describe projects.’ It goes on: ‘In addition, I under- a north-western leftie quadrant of as a shitstorm of criticism over their deci- stand that you have been in discussions with A the United States: the sacking of sion. Halls was extremely popular, with the University’s School of Music to possi- British conductor Matthew Halls from his both players and concert-goers, and had bly teach conducting classes and various post of artistic director of the Oregon Bach done a good job at the festival. rehearsals this coming fall. Please note that Festival, in the college town of Eugene. But more than that, even in this most lib- the University is not able to proceed with Mr Halls insists he has not been told eral of cities (and Eugene is very, very lib- that contract as well.’ why he has been fired. Sponsors and sup- eral indeed), correspondents to both local And that’s it: terse, brusque, not even the porters of the festival are also in the dark. papers, the Eugene Weekly and the Register- vaguest ‘thanks for all the fish’. Not a single Oregon University, which runs the bash, Guard, have denounced the idiocy inherent line commending him for his previous good has said only that it intends to pursue a in construing racism in Halls’s remarks and work. Just empty your desk, scumbag, you’re ‘different direction’ to the one pursued by sacking him for it. There has scarcely been out. Is that the sort of letter that would be Mr Halls, and hence he has to go. I would a word of support for the actions of the col- sent if the university had, as it suggested, have thought there were a limited number lege. At the very most, a few writers have suddenly had a change of heart over how of directions one could pursue with a Bach wondered if the college is telling the truth it wished the festival to continue, with no festival, most of them in the general direc- and the non-racist racist stuff was nothing blame attaching to Mr Halls? It doesn’t read tion of playing some Bach, but there we are. like it to me. And why have the authorities However, a very close friend of Mr Halls’s Even in this most liberal of cities, remained silent? Privacy is scarcely an issue: thinks he knows why he was fired. Regi- there has scarcely been a word of Halls contacted the Eugene Weekly to tell nald Mobley, a hugely talented counter- support for the university’s actions them he’d been sacked but had been given tenor, and an African-American, believes it no reason why. Clearly privacy does not is because a stupid white woman overheard to do with his sacking. And even they write come into the equation. And then there is a conversation between himself and Halls with an air of utter mystification. the counter-tenor, Mr Mobley. He is furious and construed one of Halls’s comments as I think the university sacked him over on behalf of his friend. Did he make it all up, being — yes, yes, we’re there again — racist. the non-racist racist incident and is now the stuff about the stupid white woman and And complained to the authorities. deeply embarrassed. Let me explain why. the complaint? Why would he do that? The conversation involved Mobley com- First, it was only in June that Halls was The local papers are now suggesting plaining that a performance he had recently offered a very lucrative contract to direct that the Oregon Bach Festival is dead in given in England had a certain ‘antebellum’ the festival for the next four years. This the water. I have not been able to find a feel to it. Halls apparently apologised on involved a large pay rise which took his single person supporting the university’s behalf of England and added, in a humor- earnings into six figures. Second, I have view. And that’s the thing. Even though ous deep South accent: ‘Do you want some seen the letter sent to Halls informing him these sorts of stories crop up once a week, grits?’ The stupid woman heard this and of his sacking. It begins: ‘Dear Mr Halls: minimum, the proportion of people who later asked Mobley if he felt he had been Pursuant to the termination provisions in go along with this insane level of political the victim of a racist slight. The astonished Section 12(b)… the University of Oregon correctness is actually minuscule. A tiny singer replied, of course not, it was harm- is providing you with 30 days written notice handful of complainants, almost always but less joke between friends. I am not sure of its intention to terminate our contract… not exclusively white, and the white liber- what level on the official SJW Cretin Scale we ask you to cease work on all University als who run stuff become transfixed. Not you would need to be to find such a com- to take action when an allegation of racism ment racist. Fairly high up, I think. Anyway, or misogyny or homophobia is made, is far learning of his friend’s peremptory sacking, worse than sacking someone for, effectively, Mobley was furious, insisting that Halls had no reason whatsoever. Anyone who makes been victimised. Mobley was not invited to such an allegation, no matter how ludicrous, give his views of the matter to the univer- must be believed. sity, by the way. Meanwhile, Mr Mobley has been express- But Oregon University still refuses to ing his thoughts on it all. ‘I’m the subject of say why Halls was sacked, on one occasion a falsified story, without having the chance suggesting that his removal may or may not to have my say,’ he said. ‘My voice has been have been connected to this ludicrous alle- taken away in a conversation about race that gation of racism, and on a later occasion involved me, and technically that’s racist.’ (anonymously) saying it was nothing to do with it. And this I think is the interesting bit. SPECTATOR.CO.UK/RODLIDDLE The festival organisers and the university ‘It’s been pretty quiet.’ The argument continues online. the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 17 The straight dope Ángel Hernández on why he’s no longer juicing athletes – but everyone else is
DAMIAN REILLY
t’s not easy to get hold of Ángel Hernán- away with all the other tricks in the house, [with performance-enhancing qualities] dez, the legendary Mexican chemist too. You can still get away with micro- dosing come to the public or into the research envi- Iwho for a decade provided illicit per- EPO [a red blood cell booster], micro-dosing ronment. What happens is the testers don’t formance-enhancing drugs to numerous IGF-1 [a muscle growth hormone]. catch up until later on. There is always a gap. athletes, including, he claims, all eight 100 ‘The problem is that the testing has got Some of the athletes are cheating now; they metres finalists at the Beijing Olympics. It better, but it has not got to the point where are taking advantage of an opportunity that took me just over a year of trying. The FBI they can detect everything, as they say they lasts a year, maybe a year and a half, before also struggled. The story goes that when they can.’ He adds that drug-testing bodies are the testing authorities have any idea what eventually caught up with him in 2005 he reluctant to admit publicly the limitations is happening. They are abusing those drugs.’ had been holed up in a hotel room Drug-testing bodies are today in Texas, living under an assumed supposed to hold athletes’ samples name for two years. Presented for a minimum of ten years so they with numerous incriminating wire- can be retested in future, when new tapped telephone conversations and ones might have been developed. bank statements as part of the inves- However, in reality that practice is tigation that eventually sent three- not always observed. Hernández time Olympic gold medallist Marion says that he knows of testing bod- Jones to prison, Hernández became ies that dispose of samples almost a state witness in return for avoid- immediately. ing chokey. ‘If you don’t hold those samples Today, he says, he is clean, no for the ten-year rule, then there is longer juicing athletes but instead nothing you can do. You can assume, working in top-level boxing (‘It’s but you have no proof,’ he says. terribly dirty’), putting his deep On the subject of drugs that are knowledge of sports science to use easily available over the counter in as a conditioning expert. ‘I’ve been any pharmacy and that have perfor- clean since I became a Federal wit- mance-enhancing qualities, Hernán- ness and that is the only way for me dez is fascinating, although he refuses until the day I die.’ to name the most potent ones for fear Perhaps more than anyone else of facilitating cheating. He will say alive, Hernández — who was pre- Viagra is a drug that can make a viously known as Ángel ‘Memo’ sprinter run faster, but that it’s not Heredia — understands the cha- on the banned list of athlete medi- rade that top-level international cations. ‘If I was a sprinter, I would sport has become and the inability not take Viagra,’ he says. ‘You do not of drug-testing programmes to pre- want to have a boner while you’re vent athletes from cheating in order running a race.’ to win enormous sums of money. He What about asthma inhalers? So knows what athletes — ‘like the soc- often we see top-level endurance cer players in London’ — are pre- athletes sucking on inhalers, a sight pared to invest in order to ensure they are of their testing procedures for fear of losing at odds with most people’s childhood mem- quicker and fitter than the other guy. funding. ‘They have to justify to the public ories of asthmatic classmates’ loathing of Are footballers really doping? ‘Yes, of how much money they make, saying they aerobic exercise. Could it be the humble course.’ He says drug testing in the game is are working on detection methods, when in asthma inhaler holds performance-enhanc- nowhere near frequent or aggressive enough reality the detection methods they have are ing qualities? to prevent it. ‘Think about it; if you are a not 100 per cent reliable.’ ‘I call it the “transporter”,’ he says. soccer player you can do a blood transfu- Hernández says a major problem for ‘It opens and expands not only your lung sion [to boost oxygen levels in the blood]. If testers is the ever-increasing number of capacity but also your pulmonary capabil- there is no testing, like a biological passport, drugs coming on to the market. ‘You have ity, so it has improved capacity to move the then you can get away with a blood transfu- got to understand that as the pharmaceuti- blood cells… sion. Get away with it easily. You can still get cal industry grows year by year, new drugs ‘In other words, if you were using EPO,
18 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk or if you were using another substance like How about in sprinting? He is emphatic. ‘As EPO, it would help you to boost endurance a sprinter you cannot, no. No.’ even more. It is like multiplying the effects Hernández stresses that he is a world by between three and five times.’ expert in human fitness and conditioning, He points out some athletes are using the now walking on the right side of the law. He pumps legitimately because they have what expresses frustration that his past still clings he calls ‘induced asthma’ from training, but to him, and that if a boxer he is training wins that others are cheating by conning doctors a fight, aspersions are immediately cast. into giving them medical letters stating that ‘I’m being judged every time my athletes they have the condition, letters that no anti- get a good performance, because of science doping agency on the planet can argue with. and training. But the problem is not me. ‘It’s like a green light for doping,’ he says. The problem is the system itself. It allows Certainly, this is a version of events that ‘I was hoping for a handshake the athletes to have the tools and the abili- tallies with the experience of elite American Mr Hollywood...’ ties to cheat.’ distance runner Lauren Fleshman, who in I finish by asking if he would want his 2015 spoke publicly of the pressure she felt would be waiting to test you. So that is what son to be an athlete. A note of resignation she was under to be diagnosed with asthma. I did and I failed the test.’ comes into his voice: ‘When I was young I She claims that coach Alberto Salazar — Once prescribed Advair, to be taken by was a national champion, a record holder for inhaler, she claimed Salazar ‘encouraged me the discus, Central America champion, you The testers don’t catch up till later to push to be on the highest dose of it year name it. I was projected to become an Olym- on. There is always a gap. Some round, which was something different than pian. But then, after seeing so many things, what the doctor said’. Salazar denies the that’s when I started understanding what of the athletes are cheating now allegations. the whole business is about. It changes your Did Hernández encourage the athletes view. I want my son to be what he wants to head of the Nike Oregon Project — ‘set up he doped to use asthma pumps? ‘Of course,’ be. An athlete, a pianist. But frankly, I don’t an appointment in Portland, during allergy comes the reply. ‘All of my athletes were want him going into the Olympic world, season, with a doctor who had seen many using pumps.’ I ask him if at the elite level or boxing. A scientist or a doctor, maybe. other runners. He had a specific proto- it is possible for a clean athlete to beat an Sports are getting worse and worse.’ col… you would go to the local track and athlete who is doping. He says in boxing it run around it, work yourself up to having an would be very difficult, because the doped SPECTATOR.CO.UK/PODCAST asthma attack and then run down the street, fighter would be able to throw heavy power Damian Reilly and Sean Ingle on up 12 flights of stairs to the office and they punches from round one to 12 without tiring. doping in sports.
OVER AND OUT: AN EVENING WITH HENRY BLOFELD
THURSDAY 19TH OCTOBER | 6.30 P.M. EMMANUEL CENTRE, WESTMINSTER, LONDON
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Join us for an unmissable evening with Henry Blofeld in conversation with Roger Alton, The Spectator’s sports columnist, to discuss the cricket broadcasting legend’s eagerly anticipated book, Over & Out, and to mark his retirement after a superb innings in the commentary box.
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the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 19 Our browbeaten universities They must have the courage to declare themselves independent
JAMES TOOLEY
re university vice-chancellors paid After the first world war, government fund- from students (44 per cent), often through too much? The government clearly ing increased to roughly 40 per cent of the Student Loans Company. Shouldn’t we Athinks so, and is planning to fine uni- total income (the remaining 60 per cent include this as also being government fund- versities that can’t justify paying their lead- from private sources), and the total then ing? Not really. Yes, there may be some sub- ers more than the Prime Minister’s salary of crept up to a peak of around 60 per cent sidies which the taxpayer has to meet, but £150,000 per annum. government funding. any subsidy is an arrangement between gov- Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor of But something very important has hap- ernment and student. Oxford University (salary £350,000), strong- pened in the past few years to our univer- In any case, the University of Bucking- ly disagrees, and has contrasted her salary sities. Since the 2010 Browne Review of ham, which many people believe is Britain’s negatively with those of bankers and foot- student fees, direct government funding only private university, can also receive this ballers. But bankers and footballers work in of universities has shrunk to only a small funding, so again this need not compromise the private sector and so are not the concern proportion of total funding. Universities a university’s independence. And there are of government. It’s surely an established on average receive only around a quarter also discussions afoot for the government to principle that government can intervene in of funding from government sources (10 sell off the student loan book, so that this the pay of chief executives of public bodies, per cent for teaching and 16 per cent for in effect becomes fully privatised. Again, but not of private ones. And any fool knows research). Even this figure is misleading there is no reason to think of this propor- that universities are public bodies. tion of university income as being govern- Or are they? Actually, Professor Rich- For most of university history, ment funding at all. ardson is on to something important. It’s universities received Curiously, although since 2010 direct a myth that we have public universities in no public funding at all government funding has shrunk, there has England. It is worth reiterating (because in been no concomitant decrease in govern- my experience, it’s always news to some- if we’re thinking through how universi- ment regulation of the sector — quite the one) that our universities are all in fact pri- ties can be positioned as independent from opposite. And spending by universities to vate institutions. the state: for private organisations are also satisfy regulations has been forced to dra- Richardson’s university is a civil corpo- able to access government research fund- matically increase. One estimate was that ration, first established under common law, ing, as long as they are registered as Inde- £1 billion was spent by universities satisfy- then formally incorporated in 1571 under pendent Research Organisations (IROs). ing the government’s last round of research the name ‘The Chancellor Masters and Just because they can receive government regulations alone. Scholars of the University of Oxford’. research funding doesn’t mean that the So there is a solution for Professor Rich- Most of the other old universities are cor- Institute for Fiscal Studies or the British ardson and other vice-chancellors who are porations under Royal Charters, which spell Trust for Ornithology, two of the 60-odd feeling queasy about the government’s out the corporation’s objectives and typically IROs, are public bodies. The implication for threat to meddle with their salaries. It does include all graduates as university members. universities is clear. require them to be a bit brave — but per- New universities are often Higher Educa- A larger proportion of university fund- haps no more than might be expected from tion Corporations, a legal status enshrined ing, of course, comes in the form of fees people with such high salaries. in the 1988 Education Reform Act specifi- They can persist with the myth that their cally to ensure that the old polytechnics universities are public institutions. But then became independent of the local govern- they will have to accept that government is ment authorities that previously ran them. well within its rights to curb their salaries. Other new universities are companies lim- Or they can call time on this myth, and ited by guarantee, a legal status also adopt- announce to the world that their universities ed by the London School of Economics. are in fact private bodies, and so government So why do people usually think of our has no more justification in intervening in universities as public? Simply because they their leaders’ salaries than it would in trim- receive public funding and, as a result, are ming the salaries of footballers or bankers. subject to a huge range of government regu- I look forward to hearing from the vice- lations. For most of university history, how- chancellor of Oxford University that she’s ever, universities received no public funding worth every penny of her salary and to at all and so were very clearly private insti- prove it she’s going to decline public money tutions, funded through philanthropy and and reclaim independence from govern- fees. It was not until 1889 that some very ment. That would be something to get genu- small grants were made to universities. ‘I’m a mature student.’ inely excited about.
20 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk LETTERS
Fat responsibility already responsible for more than 65 per World Cup winning teams can you actually cent of global CO2 emissions, it seems they name? I managed four from each. I can Sir: Prue Leith is right to note that the don’t believe decarbonisation is the most easily recall their collective efficiency state picks up the bill for our national attractive development path. and cohesion, though. What we ought to obesity problem (‘Our big fat problem’, Robin Guenier do is take pressure off the individuals by 9 September). But the kind of large St Albans, Hertfordshire concentrating solely on how the team and expensive scheme she proposes performed as a unit. Giving an overall only deepens the mindset that the Teams, not players score out of ten would be a small step in government is responsible for our choices. the right direction. Manufacturers should be forced to display Sir: Rod Liddle has missed a key point Philip Patrick hard-hitting facts about obesity on the about England’s footballing malaise Tokyo, Japan labels of the unhealthiest food, in the vein (‘Why English footballers are so useless’, of cigarette packets. This would leave 9 September). Life’s rich tapestries people in no doubt about the consequences Leaving aside that Malta and Slovakia to their health, while avoiding extra cost have produced creditable results against Sir: The V&A does indeed have a fantastic to the state or punitive taxes which also hit much higher-ranked teams than England collection of tapestries, as there are woven those who exercise moderation. and that population has never been a rarities to be seen in so many of England’s Theo White reliable guide to quality, it is his summation great houses (Notes on tapestries, Chelmsford, Essex of English players as ‘crap’ that rankles. 9 September). Fellow tapestry enthusiasts The comment reveals a basic problem might enjoy a visit to the Holburne Bring back smoking — why English ‘players’, why not the museum in Bath. ‘Tapestry: Here and Now’ England team? We constantly focus on the is a wonderful exhibition of modern work Sir: Surely the way to counteract ballooning individuals, expecting them to produce the from many countries. It finishes on obesity would be to reverse the smoking magic they occasionally conjure up at their 1 October, so readers haven’t got long. ban, as obesity’s rise correlates directly clubs every time they pull on an England Anthony Weale with the imposition of the ban. If one looks shirt. Disappointment is inevitable. Frome, Somerset at news films from the 1950s until that We should, rather, focus on the team. legislation, one sees that young people had That’s what the Spanish and Germans do. Ban phones in school perfect figures, clear skins and glossy hair. How many members of the 2010 or 2014 It seems that if people can’t smoke, they Sir: In answer to the question posed by binge on junk food. Rhiannon Williams in this autumn’s Nicky Haslam Spectator Schools, ‘Should schools ban London SW5 mobile phones?’, I answer a resounding ‘Yes’. I firmly believe that electronic Overblown wind devices of any type have no place in childhood, and they are banned at the Sir: James Murray’s claim that most EASTERN school where I am headmaster. Phones are countries are embracing decarbonisation not allowed on school premises at any time is ill-informed (Letters, 9 September). For AIRWAYS — for day children or boarders. example, his claim that China is the world’s A SUPERIOR The parents are overwhelmingly largest ‘cleantech’ investor may be true, supportive of our position. I don’t doubt but it overlooks the vast size of China’s MODEL that it makes the inevitable arguments economy: in 2015, it was responsible for over screen time easier at home, and more 24 per cent of the world’s total electricity – Up to 4 daily departures*† importantly, they experience the positive generation, yet only a tiny proportion of – Same day return journeys* effect it has on their children. Our children that was generated by wind and solar power. – Complimentary on board are full of life and creativity, they revel in And current plans indicate that despite drinks & snacks playing traditional games, and they talk substantial investment, wind will by 2020 – Express check-in service happily and eloquently with each other and still be responsible for only about 6 per cent with adults. – Fast track security channel* of electricity generation. As wind power in ICT is a timetabled subject within our * the UK is already responsible for more than – Executive airport lounges curriculum, and we also teach e-safety and 11 per cent of electric power, that’s hardly easternairways.com awareness, but the critical difference is impressive. The reality is that China is ZK\Ʈ\DQ\RWKHUZD\" that the children’s lives are not dominated continuing to invest massively in fossil fuel- by a fixation on smartphones. Surely this based power plants that will dominate its is a better grounding from which to give energy mix for the foreseeable future. children the personal maturity they need as Moreover, China is also investing vast they travel towards adulthood? sums in new coal-fired power generation Peter Phillips and mining plant overseas, in particular Headmaster, S. Anselm’s Preparatory in Africa, southeast Asia and the Middle School & College, Bakewell East. And contrary to James Murray’s claim about the plans of ‘virtually every WRITE TO US government on the planet’, developing The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, countries throughout the world are * At selected airports † Except Saturdays London SW1H 9HP adopting a similar strategy. Although [email protected] the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 21 THE ULTIMATE DISNEY HOLIDAY
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Selfie-worth Stop treating Arabic speakers like terrorists
The animal rights charity Peta dropped a MICHAEL KARAM case claiming that a macaque which took its own photo was entitled to the royalties, rather than the camera owner (but only after the photographer agreed to donate a quarter of the royalties to animal charities). — The idea of animal property rights was advanced by Australian philosopher John ast month Luigi Brugnaro, the mayor more likely to get you escorted off a plane, Hadley in the Journal of Social Philosophy of Venice, warned that anyone who or — if you’re in Signor Brugnaro’s manor in 2005. He suggested animals be granted yelled Allahu Akbar (‘God is the — shot dead by a Carabinieri marksman. rights over territories and human guardians L appointed to represent them in court. greatest’) in his city was liable to be shot But the phrase is, in and of itself, harmless. — There are issues still to be reconciled, dead by a police sniper. A bit harsh you Then there is bismillah (‘in the name of however: what of non-territorial animals, might think, but it’s weird how tricky it’s God’) and mashallah (‘God has willed it’), and those which dispute each other’s become to use the world’s fifth most spoken which is what I exclaimed to a Harrow-edu- territories? Would cats be expected to language in Europe, let alone invoke the cated Iraqi friend when a pretty barmaid resolve differences in court rather than Arabic name for God. hove into view as I waited to be served in a yowling at each other? Three days after the London Bridge pub in West Sussex the other week. attacks, a trio of Muslim women attacked Those of us who have another language Smart money a female nursery worker on Wanstead High to draw on should surely be forgiven, in our Street in north-east London. One of her more puerile moments, for using it when Apple introduced its iPhone 8 at $1,000 colleagues told the Daily Mail they were we want to be discreet — but next to us, (£760). Who owns a smartphone in the UK? ‘chanting the Quran, and invoking Allah’. three men, waiting for refills, instantly and 16-24 age group ...... 90% I doubt — though I may well be wrong — noticeably tensed up. This wasn’t what they 25-34 ...... 87% 35-54 ...... 80% that the victim’s co-worker spoke Arabic, let expected to hear in their local boozer. So we 55-64 ...... 50% alone was familiar with the verses, or ayat, of quickly reverted to foreign-looking, middle- 65+ ...... 18% the Quran (if she did, surely she’d be more aged hoorays. Drama over. Source: Ofcom specific about the content of the alleged Later, in the dining room, my Iraqi rant), and I would wager her testimony was friend replied to something I said by saying Baby booze based on the knee-jerk assumption that any ‘inshallah’, literally ‘God willing’, but basi- excitable activity with an Arabic commen- cally ‘I hope so’. The woman at an adjacent A Bristol University study analysing data tary must be religious and bloodthirsty. table turned to look at us as if someone had from other research said there was little But what people forget amid the mis- just let out an enormous burp. evidence that light drinking in pregnancy trust is that Allah is not, as many believe, Inshallah is something of a throwaway (up to four units a week) can damage a baby. the Muslim god. Allah is Arabic for the word. It can be used sincerely as in ‘I hope How many women in various European monotheist God and is used by all Arabs; I get that job’ or sarcastically as in ‘I won’t countries drink during pregnancy? highest lowest Muslim, Christian and Jew. If Jacob Rees- hold my breath.’ It is not exclusive to the UK ...... 28.5% Poland ...... 9.7% Mogg were a Lebanese Catholic, he would jihadist lexicon. So spare a thought for poor Russia ...... 26.5% Sweden ...... 7.2% offer his devotions to Allah. old Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, the Iraqi stu- Switzerland....20.9% Norway ...... 4.1% And while Arabic may be the language dent from Berkeley, who was booted off a Source: Norwegian Institute of Public Health/ of Islam, the fact remains that Arabs regu- Southwest Airlines plane in Los Angeles last University of Oslo larly invoke ‘Allah’ for reasons other than year when a fellow passenger got spooked the spreading of mayhem and death. after hearing him end a phone call with Tunnel visions I’m a Lebanese Maronite, a kind of East- inshallah. ern Catholic if you like, and we say ‘Allah’ It’s funny — and it’s not — this reflex The government published proposals for a or ‘Rubb’ when we speak of God, as do terror of Arabic speakers. Last July Faizah 1.8 mile tunnel near Stonehenge. This saga Lebanon’s other half-dozen or so other Shaheen, a psychotherapist from Leeds, was is almost as old as the stones themselves: Christian sects. Arabic-speaking Jews, espe- detained by police at Doncaster Sheffield 1993 John Major’s government first cially the Mizrahis, do the same. Airport (no, me neither) on her return from proposes tunnel for A303. We will say Wahyet Allah when we want 1995 Conference of transport and Turkey. The reason? A Thomson Airways heritage interests urges a 2.5-mile bored you to believe that we are being serious cabin-crew member had spotted her, two tunnel. Government proposes instead a or telling the truth, and we might exclaim weeks earlier on the outbound flight, read- cheaper ‘cut and cover’ tunnel. ‘Allah!’ when we see someone trip or lose ing Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the 1999 Labour government drops the their balance. My wife does this a lot and has Frontline, published by the respected Lon- scheme on grounds of costs. told me she is scared people will think it her- don-based Saqi Books. 2002 Government revives scheme, this alds something cataclysmic. She or I might What to do? A satirical online magazine, time with 1.3-mile bored tunnel. say ‘Ya Allah’ out of exasperation, when The National Profiler – ‘Muslim news you 2004 £3 million inquiry approves scheme. the kids fill the sink with unwashed dishes can use’ – recently created a spoof advert in 2005 It is dropped again on cost grounds. or drink all the milk. This might sound quite which Southwest advertised ‘Arabic Select’, 2006 New plans include possible bypass alarming, but it simply means: ‘Oh God.’ an upgrade for passengers who want to ‘fly with a surface route to the north. And there are a whole host of ways we with confidence knowing your language 2007 Scheme dropped again. can declare our amazement. There is of choices won’t arouse suspicion that you’re a 2013 George Osborne revives tunnel plan. course Allahu Akbar, but these days that is terrorist’. It’s not an entirely bad idea.
24 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk ANY OTHER BUSINESS| MARTIN VANDER WEYER The City still leads the financial world but faces a fight on all fronts
hould we place faith in a survey, Fair winds We may also see a new crop of mini nuclear conducted in June but published this reactors, quicker to build and (according Sweek, that says London is still the The price of offshore wind power has halved, to one manufacturer, Rolls-Royce) viable world’s pre-eminent financial centre? Yes, making those giant inshore turbine arrays at £60 per megawatt hour. Hinkley Point C in the sense that no one challenges that we love to hate look competitive with new was the best idea available when it was first long-standing claim as of today; no, in the nuclear power for the first time. The head- mooted seven years ago, but time and tech- sense that complacency would be a huge line number in this story is £57.50, which is nology are inexorably overtaking it. mistake while every financial firm operat- the guaranteed electricity price per mega- ing in the City, the West End and Canary watt hour bid by two windfarm ventures in 21st-century shopping Wharf is busy making contingency plans for the government’s latest ‘contracts for dif- a bad Brexit outcome. ference’ subsidy auction. Both due for first Am I ready to shell out £1,000 for an iPhone The gist of the six-monthly Z/Yen ‘Global delivery in 2022-23, these projects at Horn- X with its exciting new ‘Face ID’ feature? Of Financial Centres Index’ — which assesses sea on the East Yorkshire coast and Moray course not. Readers may recall I was keen 92 cities around the world, taking account East off the north of Scotland, are between to take several tech-steps back to the retro of everything from telecoms infrastructure them theoretically capable of powering 2.4 Nokia 3310 that was relaunched in March to homicide rates — is that London has held million homes. Just two years ago, windfarms — but when I finally plucked up courage to its own at the top where it has always been, were bidding up to £120 per megawatt hour take my unloved iPhone 3 to what turned while Frankfurt has risen from 23rd to 11th in comparable auctions; their slashed pric- out to be a Carphone Warehouse inside place and improved its rating, which is the ing today can be set alongside the £92.50 fix a Currys PC World on the York bypass, I survey’s measure of perceived confidence that underpins the finances of the Hinkley was so hypnotised by the sales patter that I and quality. Other European contenders Point C nuclear power station, whose pro- swiftly lost my willpower. Within moments such as Luxembourg, Paris and Dublin also jected cost has now topped £20 billion and I had given so much personal data that the moved up, but are not serious threats. More whose likely completion date is drifting gen- salesman (as he acknowledged with a thin interestingly, New York (which held on to tly towards 2027 and beyond. smile) could have emptied my bank account second place) saw its rating drop sharply, I have long argued for pressing on with and assumed my identity before I got home. while several other major US cities moved Hinkley Point, on the basis that it was the Had I really survived this long without their downwards: ‘presumably due to fears over only serious option for securing a substan- £10-a-month insurance deal on top of my US trade’, say the survey’s authors. tial slice of future UK electricity demand contract? OK, sign me up. How about a So Donald Trump, with his protectionist from one domestic source, in the face of a £19.99 gadget to transform my connectivity rhetoric, is London’s friend for the time looming energy gap created by the closure of on the move? Sounds great. Only another being — but will be much less so if he suc- old nuclear and coal-fired plants. Hinkley’s £25 a month! Aha, no thanks… ceeds in deregulating the US financial sec- 3,200 megawatt capacity compares with And so we went on for an hour or so, tor, a move which Morgan Stanley thinks 2,300 megawatts for the two new giant wind- until I left with a new contract that costs a he can do without Congressional support farms together — but as a nuclear industry third less than the old one, and a new iPhone and which could boost Wall Street’s earn- spokesman was eager to point out, offshore SE — almost identical to my previous model ings by more than 15 per cent. That would wind ‘only produced electricity for 36 per but with much longer battery life — that draw many American bankers back from cent of the time’ last year and has yet to didn’t cost me a penny even though its man- London, while the tide of jobs migrating to solve the problem of storing excess power ufacturer Apple retails them at £379. This Frankfurt and elsewhere in the EU, though generated when winds are high. is the modern mode of business that blinds still quite small, is only likely to grow Look forward a decade, however. French consumers with dynamic-pricing complexity throughout the period of Brexit uncertain- energy giant EDF, leader of the Hinkley overlaid on technical jargon; but if you go ty and transition: most pundits agree that project, may still have problems delivering with the flow, challenge the salesman when some tens of thousands will eventually go. the ‘European pressurised reactor’ model he doesn’t look you in the eye, and keep London’s in-built advantages as a financial that has been so troublesome for its own asking for discounts, you should come out centre — language, law, space, staff, lifestyle Flamanville plant in Normandy. Wind, solar feeling you’ve snatched a good deal. And and time zone —will keep it in the lead for and tidal power may all look more viable feelgood is what it’s all about, because in the the time being, but City chiefs face a fight than today, through advances in efficiency alternative universe of 21st-century shop- on all fronts to stay there, and nothing in the and economies of scale; and progress will ping, you can never really tell when you’ve Brexit talks so far can have reassured them. surely have been made in power storage. just been royally ripped off. the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 25 BOOKS & ARTS
AUTUMN BOOKS The journey of Adam and Eve Stephen Greenblatt’s ‘biography’ of the Christian creation myth is a fascinating cultural road trip, says Sam Leith
The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve academic superstar in the United States. I tion from which they originally emerged’; yet by Stephen Greenblatt first came across his work as an undergrad- they retain ‘the life — the peculiar, intense, Bodley Head, £25, pp. 432 uate, reading his superb Renaissance Self- magical reality — of literature’. Fashioning (1980). He’s interested in how But I’m getting ahead of myself. One Trying to reconcile a belief in the liter- literature fits into its cultural context — and of Greenblatt’s most fascinating chapters al truth of the Bible with the facts of the so, here, though he delves deftly and lucid- deals with the origins and sources for the world as we observe it has never been the ly into theology, he’s primarily interested in creation myth in Genesis itself: essentially, it easiest of things. But heaven knows, peo- the literary power of the fable. He’s writ- emerged from the ‘Babylonian woe’. Exiled ple did try. Well enough known, I suppose, ing the biography of a story on its journey in Babylon, the Hebrews were exposed is the work of the 17th-century Archbishop through the culture. to their hosts’ written creation myth, the of Armagh, James Ussher, who totted up all And, as he sees it, the trajectory of that Enuma Elish, and the urban cult of their those begats to establish that the creation of story is of one that was given force by the chief god, Marduk. the earth took place at six in the afternoon attempt to make it literal — to body out the Those who remained loyal to Yahweh on 23 October 4005 bc. (‘He added,’ reports sketchy and paradoxical account in Genesis (many converted, or folded the Mesopo- Stephen Greenblatt, ‘that Adam and Eve with real human detail; but, in turn, giving tamian pantheon into their scheme), when were driven from Paradise on Monday, the fable tangible reality brought its contra- their exile was over, seem to have decided November 10.’) In like manner, in the 18th dictions more starkly into relief and so, in they needed a written myth of their own — century, a French mathematician called the end, did for it. one which drew directly and indirectly from Denis Henrion calculated, from a bunch of the Enuma Elish, and the far older Atraha- what were presumably dinosaur bones, that Milton made Adam and Eve into sis and Epic of Gilgamesh, but which pos- Adam had been 123’ 8” tall and that Eve real people, and in so doing, he sowed ited Yahweh as a single, universal God who had been 118’ 9”. their retreat back into myth demanded loyalty, took a dim view of idol- In the 19th century Edmund Gosse, dis- worshippers, and was solely responsible for concerted by the growing evidence from Were there two trees (Life, and the the creation of everything. The division of the fossil record that things might not have Knowledge of Good and Evil), or one? earth from sky (Enuma Elish), the man gone quite as the Book of Genesis claims, Were Adam and Eve mortal before they of clay (Gilgamesh) and the Flood (which reasoned triumphantly that if Adam had ate the fruit? How could they be punished appears in both Atrahasis and Gilgamesh) a navel (which he must have had, because for doing evil before they knew what evil are all borrowings. he’d have looked weird without one), then was? What sort of language did they speak? It was a work, then, of polemical appro- God put it there — and so the new discov- How could Adam have named every animal priation — a subtler and more complex eries of the geologists were like Adam’s in half a day (given, as one literal-minded myth, but one with its roots in exactly the tummy-button. God put them there just to commenter pointed out, ‘thither must the culture it sought to reject. Not that we’d baffle and amuse us. Elephant come from the furthest parts of have known it had it not been for the aston- By the 19th century, though, people were India and Africk, who are of a heavy and ishing rediscovery and translation of these prepared to greet this sort of speculation slow pace’)? How come there was a woman Mesopotamian myths in the 19th century. with open laughter. His peers never stopped for Cain to bump into when he pushed off Anyway, they now had a written myth and giggling at poor old Gosse. Here was, if not for the Land of Nod? And what was the the Hebrews, effectively, became Jews. the end, then the beginning of the end, to snake’s beef, anyway? Where it all gets a bit odd is with St the story of Adam and Eve as it had been The story went, as Greenblatt puts it, Augustine — who was forceful, learned, understood through much of Western histo- through a ‘long, tangled history from archaic ingenious, tangled in overbearing mother- ry. But, as Stephen Greenblatt’s gently pun- speculation to dogma, from dogma to literal love, and more than a bit batty. Like many ning title indicates, there was a rise before truth, from literal to real, from real to mor- of us, he was preoccupied with sex. And he this Fall. tal, from mortal to fraudulent’. In the end, was convinced that his unruly private parts Greenblatt, a scholar of early modern ‘the naked man and woman in the garden were prima facie evidence for man’s fallen literature and the inventor of something with the strange trees and the talking snake state: if they did not respond to reason, but called ‘the New Historicism’, is a bit of an have returned to the sphere of the imagina- did their own thing, we are all, necessarily,
26 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk GETTY IMAGES
the story of Adam and Eve. Milton made Adam and Eve into real, breathing people. And in doing so, Green- blatt argues, he sowed their eventual retreat back into myth. It’s a cutely ironic detail that one of the books that Darwin had with him on the Beagle was Paradise Lost. The Greenblatt on show here offers a more populist touch than in his aca- demic work. He’s content to talk airily of Adam and Eve as ‘a mirror in which we seem to glimpse the whole, long history of our fears and desires’, or to marvel at Mil- ton’s achievement as ‘almost impossible to account for rationally’. His narrative is bookended with per- sonal material, too. He opens by describing how, as a child, he had defied his parents’ injunction to keep his head lowered during the benediction at the end of the Sabbath service lest he see God face-to-face and be killed on the spot. A Fall, perhaps, of the author’s own. ‘The air above my head was completely empty.’ Seeing others looking ‘Adam and Eve in Paradise’, by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1531) around, he thought: ‘I have been lied to.’ But now, he says, ‘something lives in me on the other side of lost illusions […] and I have come to understand that the term born in and through the sin of lust. So he among them linear perspective and classical “lie” is a woefully inadequate description went big on original sin, and the Church was rules of proportion — fed into ever more of either the motive or the content of these off to the races. realistic (and theologically and psycholog- stories, even at their most fantastical’. He’s It was Augustine, too, who insisted ically subtle) portrayals of Adam and Eve dead right. (in the face of earlier and arguably more in the work of Masaccio, Van Eyck and, In a rather moving epilogue, he describes sophisticated authorities such as Origen, supremely, Dürer. visiting a chimpanzee colony in Uganda’s who sought to read Biblical texts allegori- But he’s also heading for Milton — to Kibale National Park. One evening, he sees cally) in the literal truth of the story told in whose Paradise Lost he rightly, and expert- that the beta male of the group has sneaked Genesis. And if that seems odd to us now, ly, gives a great deal of attention. Here, he away from the pack with a female, at great it did produce — in artistic terms — some- argues, is the first really detailed portrait risk of a thumping from the alpha: ‘Through thing quite marvellous. For the portrayals of a marriage in literature; and one which violating the will of the supreme ruler and of Adam as what Greenblatt calls the ‘holo- wrenches the poem, in a sense, off-beam risking punishment, they had become a cou- type’, or ‘type specimen’, of mankind neces- (the heavenly host come to seem a little ple. They looked around the clearing and sarily make our thinking about Adam and weightless beside the suffering and tender glanced quickly at us. Then, set on contin- Eve a central way of thinking about our- humans). But Greenblatt also sees Milton’s uing their consort, they plunged together selves. radicalism — both politically and in terms into the dense thicket where, set on contin- Greenblatt rapturously traces the way in of his broadsides against the prohibition of uing our spying, we struggled to follow. The which the discoveries of the Renaissance — divorce — as rooted in his understanding of world was all before them.’ the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 27 BOOKS & ARTS True grit GETTY IMAGES Hilary Spurling
A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin Viking, £16.99, pp. 352
As literary editor of the Sunday Times in the early 1980s, when the rest of the edito- rial staff routinely papered their offices with mildly erotic female images, Claire Tomalin stuck up pictures of sexy men: ‘Some found it hard to believe I could do anything so shocking.’ Double standards, casual sexism and blanket prejudice were normal at the time, even on a relatively civilised national paper. I know because I had the same job a few years earlier at The Spectator. Men ran the world and women answered the phone. Claire had come down from Cambridge with a first in 1955, but the BBC refused her a job on the grounds that it did not employ female graduates. Her father paid for her to learn shorthand and typing instead, but she got her first job as secretary to a publishing house only after the male editors had vetted her looks (her score was 7 out of 10). This is a cool, level-headed, unsensation- al account of a ground-breaking career that clearly owed much to remarkable parents. Claire’s mother, Muriel Herbert, had already Claire Tomalin in 2007 built a considerable reputation as a compos- er when she married, in 1926, Emile Delave- nay, a much younger French student who restrict his travels, or his passionate affairs In 1973 Nick flew off to report for the abandoned his studies for her sake. ‘I see my with other women, although his response, Sunday Times on the Israeli war, and was young father advancing towards a fate that when his wife took a lover of her own, was killed by a Syrian missile on the Golan will change his prospects and character, driv- to beat her up. In 1968 he started divorce Heights, leaving his wife as a single parent ing him close to madness,’ she writes of her proceedings, as his father-in-law had done with three teenage daughters and a severely parents’ marriage. It was already headed for before him. Claire earned some sort of liv- disabled three-year-old son. Claire became disaster by the time she was born six years ing as chief reader for the publisher Jona- literary editor of the New Statesman, mov- later. than Cape. She also reviewed books for the ing on in the late 1970s to run the Sunday In practice, Claire was brought up by her Observer, whose proprietor, David Astor Times’s books pages. She was a bold, deci- mother, a single parent struggling to hold sive and discriminating editor. The alter ego down a job and fight off divorce proceedings, Nick had passionate affairs with invented for her by Clive James — Clara scandalous in themselves, and exacerbated other women, but when Claire took Tomahawk — reflects the ambivalence of in this case by the husband’s allegations that her male contemporaries. his wife was insane. The taint of divorce hung a lover of her own, he beat her up The year after Nick died, she published over Claire and her elder sister, making them a life of the radical 18th-century feminist, seem ‘corrupted, and possibly corrupting, (himself notorious for his role in the recent Mary Wollstonecraft, exploring a sensibil- influences’ to their contemporaries at board- Profumo sex scandal), rejected her request ity in some ways not unlike her own. ‘Those ing school. Claire responded by adopting a for a more permanent job on the grounds who loved her usually had reason to be a lit- tree in the grounds: ‘I decided that trees were that it was her duty to stay at home and look tle afraid of her,’ said the publisher’s blurb, like mothers, and this one was to be mine.’ after her children. summing up the author perhaps as much as By the age of 21 she was married her- In the end the Tomalins patched up their her subject. The book was perfectly timed, self to a glamorous, ambitious and highly marriage, Nick moved back into the fam- confronting the historical origins of femi- successful gossip columnist, Nick Tomalin, ily house near Regent’s Park, and they cel- nism as a fresh surge of energy and power whose career as a foreign correspondent ebrated with a new baby. Tom Tomalin was galvanised the movement. was about to take off. Claire had four babies born with spina bifida, a condition not much ‘It changed everything for me,’ Toma- in five years. ‘My role now was the boring talked about in an era when children who lin writes, describing the strange, symbiotic, suburban wife with too many children who had it were still commonly kept in the dark, sometimes disturbing relationship between held him back.’ Fatherhood for Nick meant or parked out of sight in institutions. Claire a biographer and the life he or she attempts entertaining his little daughters by giving was 36 years old. Another boy, born almost a to possess: ‘I now had a purpose and a field them rides on his motorbike, or waltzing his decade earlier, had died in infancy. Her com- to explore… biography demands wide-rang- car from side to side with them in the back. mitment to this second son was absolute: ing research and precise thinking… I was He spent less and less time at home. ‘When the situation is uncertain, precarious, intensely happy.’ Work gave her the cour- He saw no reason why marriage should threatening, the love grows fiercer.’ age and will to withstand crushing pres-
28 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk sures at home. Gritty and determined as Folk-tale redux wishes, she decides against taking part: ‘Even his mother, her son grew up against all the if she played, and even if she played well, it odds to lead an active and independent life. Houman Barekat would always be their game.’ The casualty in their family was the mid- The story is narrated by Daniel, but Cathy dle daughter, Susanna, whose struggle with Elmet is its undisputed heroine. Daniel is diffident the demons of self-doubt and depression by Fiona Mozley and effete, whereas his sister, preternatural- ended in suicide midway through her time at John Murray, £10.99, pp. 311 ly strong despite her slender appearance, has university. inherited their father’s steeliness. Harassed The Life and Death of Mary Wollstone- Daniel and his big sister, Cathy, do not go to and roughed up by Price’s entitled sons, her craft was the first of a series of searching, school. They live with their father, a gargan- fearless resilience forms the moral centre of humane and perceptive lives that put Toma- tuan former prizefighter, eking out an autar- this tautly written folk-tale redux. lin for the next 40 years at the forefront of kic existence as squatters on land belonging The backdrop is a tableau of agrar- what is generally agreed to have been a to the unscrupulous Mr Price; on a typical ian subculture, where traveller lads on dirt golden age for biography. In some sense, day they are engaged in woodwork, pluck- bikes use ferrets to hunt rabbits, and labour- presumably, these steadily more ambitious ing mallards or tickling trout. Price’s person- ers let off steam in a black economy of illicit lives — of Katherine Mansfield, Jane Austen, al fiefdom operates outside the law of the fights, angling and horse-racing. The milieu’s Pepys, Hardy and Dickens — fed off her own land, with violent henchmen enforcing his carny charm is tempered by the ever-present life, enriched by deepening emotional as well will. The children’s father had once worked menace of thuggery. If Mozley’s evocation as historical understanding. as a fixer for him before turning renegade, of rural life bears some of the hallmarks of The first two thirds of this memoir con- rallying Price’s exploited workers and ten- social realism — the dialogue is in Yorkshire stitute a dramatic and absorbing survivor’s ants into collective action to improve their diction, with ‘doendt’ for ‘don’t’ and ‘wandt’ tale. In the last part, as the author approach- lot. Price’s vendetta against him is pursued for ‘wasn’t’ — Elmet is closer to a suspense es the present and settles into a highly suc- with icy determination across the pages of thriller in its pacing and structure. cessful partnership with her fellow writer, Fiona Mozley’s debut novel: ‘He must return Cathy is an intriguingly unconvention- Michael Frayn, her narrative becomes cor- to the fold. I used to own that man’s muscles, al heroine, but the novel’s broad narrative respondingly scrappier, more reticent and and I owned his mind.’ thrust is far from transgressive: protagonist perhaps inevitably more superficial. Tomalin Elmet casts a clear nod to Leveller rad- and pals vs cartoon baddie and his cronies. has, as she says, fought through life on two icalism, but its salient feature is its pointed Its longlisting for this year’s Man Booker fronts — ‘taking a traditional female role portrayal of gender privilege. The tone is set Prize is unsurprising, as it fits the Booker and also seeking male privileges’ — and she in an early chapter, when Cathy briefly dis- mould perfectly: engagingly plot-driven, with paid a price that later generations treading rupts a boys’ football game. Having caused just enough cleverness to get you thinking, a smoother path should not underestimate. a scene by entering the field against their but not so much as to trouble you unduly.
Scotland: History & Identity Speakers: A symposium in Edinburgh Professor Dauvit Broun with leading historians, Nick Card curators, commentators Ruth Davidson MSP and politicians Professor Jane Dawson 3–5 November 2017 Professor Sir Tom Devine David Forsyth Dr Anna Groundwater George Kerevan Professor Murray Pittock Professor Tony Pollard Professor Pamela Robertson Dr David Torrance Find out more: +44 (0)20 8742 3355 Image: Flora Macdonald [Fionnghal nighean martinrandall.com/edinburgh Raghnaill ’ic Aonghais Òig], 1722 - 1790. Jacobite heroine, by Richard Wilson. Photograph courtesy ATOL 3622 | ABTA Y6050 | AITO 5085 of The National Galleries of Scotland.
the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 29 BOOKS & ARTS THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY
‘The Pacification of the Maroons in Jamaica’, by Agostino Brunias (18th century)
Redcoats and runaways the cleft of her buttocks. (It is more like- tion system. They laid pit-traps concealed ly that Nanny simply lifted her skirts to by branches and hid out in ‘back-o-water’ Ian Thomson moon at the troops — a gesture of extreme caves alongside Kalinago co-conspirators. contempt signifying ‘batty man’ or homo- The eerie wail of the conch shell, used by In the Forests of Freedom: sexual.) the Maroons to communicate over dis- The Fighting Maroons of Dominica The word ‘Maroon’ probably derives tances, warned the British that a maraud- by Lennox Honychurch from the Spanish cimarrón, meaning ‘wild’, ing party was on its way to harry the sugar Papillote Press, £9.99, pp. 231 originally applied to the interior of Hispan- plantations and their owners. iola — present-day Haiti. Maroons have During Dominica’s first Maroon War Much romantic nonsense has been writ- long existed throughout the Caribbean. The of 1785–1786 the runaways were easily ten about the runaway slaves or Maroons mountains and waterfalls of British Domi- outnumbered as the Redcoats infiltrated of the West Indies. In 1970s Jamaica, dur- nica provided them with an ideal refuge; in their scout networks and used Kalinago ing President Michael Manley’s socialist double agents. experiment, Maroons were hailed as fore- The eerie wail of the conch shell Some 150 Maroons were killed in the runners of Black Power. Rastafari militants warned that marauders were on their course of the short-lived conflict and their and back-to-Africa ideologues saw a nobil- way to harry the sugar plantations chief, Balla, was captured and hanged in ity in Maroon descent. The Jamaican black Dominica’s capital of Roseau. Betrayal was nationalist Marcus Garvey had claimed a constant danger and even today in Domi- Maroon ancestry for himself; as has, more their geographic isolation they were able nica the few surviving Maroon communities recently, the British Jamaican hip-hop sing- to conserve a unique subculture of Afri- remain suspicious of outsiders. Only with er Ms Dynamite (whose debut album, A can slave language, music, divination and emancipation in 1838 were they able finally Little Deeper, remains a UK drum and bass spirit animism. to glimpse their own freedom. masterwork). According to the Dominica-born his- As well as a valuable history of Afro- In Jamaica, at any rate, Maroons fought torian and anthropologist Lennox Hony- Atlantic slave custom and revolt, In the exclusively for their own liberty, not for church, the Maroons’ African lore was Forests of Freedom celebrates the beauty the overall liberty of the island’s enslaved fortified by exposure to the island’s pre- of rural Dominica, with its glittering palm Africans. As a condition of their freedom Columbian Kalinago Amerindian peoples, groves and rivers dashing white over rocks. (and in return for land and other privileg- who had used their knowledge of the vol- In Honychurch’s estimation, the ‘spirit of es), they were obliged to return other fugi- canic massifs and wild jungle to wage guer- the Maroons’ continues today in Rastafari tive slaves to the imperial British and even rilla sorties on the Spanish, French and and other pan-African religions, which dis- help put down slave revolts. The Maroons British in the 16th and 17th centuries. play a Maroon-like cussedness and defiant of Jamaica thus inherited an ambivalent In his lively history of Dominica Mar- New World blackness. Privately published legacy: they are both heroes of, and trai- ronage, Honychurch chronicles the island’s by the author in 2014 (and reissued now tors to, black freedom. Their most famous Maroon Wars of 1785 to 1814. Runaway by Polly Patullo of the excellent Papillote leader, an African tribeswoman known as slave chiefs such as Jacko, Balla, Elephant Press), In the Forests of Freedom opens a Nanny, was said to have been able to fend and the Nanny-esque Angelique and Calyp- window onto a little-known West Indian off British Redcoats by catching bullets in so significantly menaced the British planta- history.
30 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk Courting trouble ous criminal trials; inherited the magical island of Taprobane off the south coast of Christopher Ondaatje Sri Lanka; married a royal princess; was knighted by the Queen under a Labour gov- Madam, Where Are Your Mangoes? ernment and appointed a privy councillor by Desmond de Silva under a Conservative one. Quartet, £25, pp. 330 Madam, Where Are Your Mangoes? is a fascinating biography of a fascinating man; Desmond de Silva was born in the colony a revealing portrait of Britain’s postwar of Ceylon in the early months of the sec- social, political and cultural landscapes; and ond world war, the only son of a barrister. an affirmation of the importance of the rule After the Japanese entered the war in 1941, of law. Ceylon was in the front line and it faced And what of the title? De Silva, aged an onslaught. Winston Churchill appoint- and Taylor’s involvement in a savage, dec- 28 and junior to the bon vivant Noel Gra- ed Lord Mountbatten as Supreme Allied ade-long civil war to secure Sierra Leone’s tiaen, QC, once unwittingly took rooms in a Commander South East Asia, based at mineral wealth. It was a trial in which the brothel when in Freetown on a capital case. Peradeniya, just outside Kandy. De Silva’s supermodel Naomi Campbell and actress Having spent some time at the bar drink- grandfather George E. de Silva was a mem- Mia Farrow gave evidence; yet it could not ing brandy among scantily dressed ladies ber of the Ceylon war council, and Mount- have been more serious. These memoirs of the night, he and his leader headed to batten, for Desmond, was ‘Uncle Dickie’. include excerpts from de Silva’s diaries, their rooms across the courtyard. One of Four decades later, he was to marry Mount- one of which reveals the steps taken to pre- the ladies approached the portly QC and batten’s great niece, Princess Katarina of vent an invasion of Sierra Leone by Tay- asked if he would like some mangoes. A Yugoslavia. De Silva’s life, as seen through lor’s forces after the special court for Sierra few minutes later de Silva, disturbed by these episodic memoirs, has a Boy’s Own Leone was set up. sounds in the corridor outside, opened his quality. De Silva’s adventurous life has involved bedroom door to see Gratiaen towering These memoirs deal with an often for- being shot at, imprisoned, and there’s even over a topless prostitute, wailing: ‘But gotten fact: that by April 1942, because an attempted poisoning for good measure. madam, where are your mangoes?’ imperial Japanese forces had overrun the The other side of the coin is that he saved For all those even vaguely interested in rubber-producing countries of Southeast a future Commonwealth head of govern- the British empire and colonies in the years Asia, Ceylon was the only reliable source ment from execution; became the Queen’s after 1939 this sometimes hilarious, some- of rubber for the Allies. If Ceylon had fall- Counsel of choice for footballers, jockeys times disturbing, always buoyant autobiog- en to the Japanese, the impact on the Allied and other sporting celebrities facing seri- raphy is compulsory reading. invasion of Europe would have been enor- mous. Artificial rubber was in its infancy and needed oil to manufacture in any case. De Silva’s was a colonial boyhood with visits to the family rubber and tea estates in the highlands of Ceylon, swimming in the clear waters of rock pools formed by estate waterfalls, with shooting parties and visits from celebrities such as Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Gregory Peck, William Hold- en and other great screen stars who came to Ceylon to act in films. The young de Silva was sent to Dul- wich College prep school in 1951, returning later to Ceylon and entering Trinity Col- lege, Kandy. He was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1964, and entered the famous chambers of the Rt Hon Sir Dingle Foot, QC. With over 50 years’ practice in the courts of England and the Commonwealth, de Silva has carved out a unique reputation as a defence counsel, earning him the sobri- quet ‘the Scarlet Pimpernel’. But his greatest legal achievement was perhaps the role he played in 2002 in the prosecution of Liberia’s Charles Taylor — the first head of state to be convicted of war crimes since Grand Admiral Doenitz at Nuremberg. Having secured Taylor’s arrest and transfer to Freetown, Sierra Leone, de Silva, for reasons of regional security, then had Taylor transferred to the Hague for trial. Once that was accomplished, in 2006 de Silva retired as chief prosecutor, leav- Pre Order Now. Visit www.wilkinsonpublishing.com.au ing his successor to conduct the trial and bring out the evidence of ‘blood diamonds’ the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 31 BOOKS & ARTS
the meeting houses of Colchester and Lon- don had a brother whose ‘inward light’ was not for quenching. There is not very much known about his early years in England, but what we do know largely comes from the THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY THE BRIDGEMAN ART disciplinary records and correspondence of the various London and Colchester meet- ing houses as they endlessly, and hopelessly, tried to censure or expel their most violent and exhibitionist critic. Lay was clearly an impossible creature, and they sound a mealy-mouthed, legalistic lot, and none of this would really warrant a book if Lay had stayed where he was born. As a young man, however, he had spent the best part of a decade at sea, and in 1732 he and his new wife — as small a figure as him- self — quit England for good to raise Cain among the Quakers of Pennsylvania’s City of Brotherly Love. In the years since Penn had founded the settlement, America’s Quakers had done particularly well for themselves, dominat- ing the social, economic and political life of Philadelphia with a worldliness that had very little to do with the movement’s early history. It is hard to imagine that an unreconstructed old radical like Lay could ever have found a place there, but the abomination that really stuck in his craw and turned him from a fringe nuisance into Benjamin Lay (American School, 18th century) America’s ‘first revolutionary abolitionist’ was the fact that more than half the city’s Quaker elite were slave owners. Lay had seen the horrors of slavery some years before in Barbados and in the barely Raising Cain the New Model Army and Commonwealth nascent abolitionist cause he had found his — the Levellers and True Levellers, Dig- calling. He had long since honed his disrup- David Crane gers, Ranters, Seekers, Familists, Grindle- tive skills in his battles with the ‘covetous’ tonians, Chiliasts, Anabaptists, Quakers, of Colchester, and over the next 25 years he The Fearless Benjamin Lay: Proud Quakers and all the rest of them waged a virtual one-man guerrilla campaign The Quaker Dwarf Who Became — that Lay would have found his natural against the city’s Quaker ‘apostates’, terror- the First Revolutionary Abolitionist bedfellows. ising them in their meeting houses and sav- by Marcus Rediker Lay ought to have been there in the aging them in print with a prophetic fury Verso, £17.99, pp. 240 stocks with James Nayler — and there that harked back to the first heady days of would certainly be any number of quiet- the Commonwealth. It is a pretty safe bet that for every 1,000 Marcus Rediker sees in him, though, as people who know of William Wilberforce, Benjamin Lay may have been the much a voice for our times as a throwback no more than the odd one might have heard to an earlier age. As he grew older, living in of Benjamin Lay. In many ways this is under- most radical person on the planet in a cave after the death of his wife, eating his standable enough, but if anyone deserves to a time of exhilarating radicalism vegetables and spinning his flax, Lay’s pas- muscle in on the mildly self-congratulatory sionate fight against slavery broadened into and largely middle-class pantheon of Abo- ist Friends who would happily have driv- a democratic and egalitarian opposition to litionist Saints, it is the gloriously improba- en a nail through his tongue — but it was exploitation — animal, human, environ- ble and largely forgotten Quaker throwback his vocation instead to be a thorn in the mental — in all its forms. In those concerns, and hero of Marcus Rediker’s generous increasingly soft flesh of his 18th-century and in his direct-action methods — he once and absorbing act — his own phrase — brethren. In its earliest days Quakerism had spattered a Quaker meeting with a bladder of ‘retrospective justice’. been as radical as any of the sects, but by of pig’s blood to register his protest — this There was probably only one period of the time, in 1682, that Benjamin was born may well be true, but he still remains most English history in which Lay would have to second-generation Quaker parents in remarkable when seen in the context of his found himself at home, and that period, Essex, George Fox was well on his way to own world. along with all the hopes and aspirations imposing the discipline of a church on the His was, it is worth remembering, the it had given birth to, had ended 20 years untrammelled spiritual individualism of his age of that rather more exquisite minia- before he was born. The revolutionary wars first adherents. ture, Alexander Pope, and if he seems a of the mid-17th century had spawned an The ultimate logic of Protestantism, bridge between the God-infused politi- exhilarating range of religious and political however, of Luther’s priesthood of all cal radicalism of the 17th century and the radicalism, and it was among the visionaries, believers, is a Church of One, and in the concerns of our own day that is a measure reformers, cranks, madmen and prophets of four-foot high antinomian Benjamin Lay of just how remarkable he was. How effec-
32 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk tive his struggles were, how vital his role in sharp religious differences notwithstanding. — a man far better equipped for philoso- stirring the Quaker conscience, is hard to Who knows? As it turned out, only the out- phy than for the role of prime minister, and say, but that is not the point. ‘In his time,’ break of the European war in 1914 prevent- who never bothered to read the newspapers Rediker concludes, ‘Benjamin may have ed civil war in Ireland, the prospect of which — but is not wholly appropriate. And since been the most radical person on the plan- had been of far more concern to Asquith’s few people will read this book from cover et. He helps us to understand what was government than events in faraway Sarajevo. to cover, it would have been helpful to have thinkable and what was politically and In England, although electric light, tel- published it in two volumes instead of the morally possible in the first half of the 18th ephones, motor cars and underground rail- present monster, which weighs in at over century — and what may be possible now.’ ways were introduced, the country was three and a half pounds. Nobly said. resting on its economic laurels after the huge impact of the Industrial Revolution, and the severe problems of the workforce needed to A game of cat-and-mouse Swagger and squalor man it. Our industrial performance was lag- ging behind that of Germany and the Unit- Jenny Colgan John Jolliffe ed States. Free trade and cheap food had wrought havoc in British agriculture, and the Safe The Age of Decadence: owning of land, previously of prime signifi- by Ryan Gattis Britain 1880 to 1914 cance, had become far less profitable. Picador, £12.99, pp. 272 by Simon Heffer I never knew that in the Boer War there Random House, £30, pp. 912 were truces to prevent fighting on Sundays; All Involved, Ryan Gattis’s breakout novel but the earnest Boers were deeply shocked about the LA riots of 1992, was an absolute This is a monumental but inevitably selec- that British soldiers played cricket instead blast. Ballsy, vivid and immersive, it took tive survey of all that occurred in Britain, for of going to church. Heffer is equally good various voices from the gangs, from fami- better or worse, in the late 19th and early on the suffragettes and provides details of lies left behind and the thin blue line, join- 20th centuries. It is certainly a useful sum- their brutal treatment. But considering the ing them in a rousing cacophony that made mary, with much illuminating detail to carry wealth of more significant detail available, up a frightening mosaic of a hot, heady, the story forward: describing the opulence do we really need ten pages on the shallow violent time. that was so much in evidence, Simon Heffer and selfish views and habits of H.G. Wells, In Safe, he returns to more recent his- mentions the diamond which adorned Lord and another eight on the tedious scandal of tory, choosing the 2008 financial crisis to Randolph Churchill’s cigarette holder. Lord Arthur Somerset? chart a game of cat-and-mouse between He kicks off with Queen Victoria’s Jubi- More interesting is the brilliant early life Ghost, a drug-addict turned federal safe- lee of 1877, and Disraeli’s proclamation of of Beatrice Webb, and her subsequent sad cracker (who has stolen a large amount of her as Empress of India. At home, swagger decline. There are also less widely known money to fund the father of his dead lov- and squalor went side by side, and living and fascinating details about cricket, which er’s sinking property business) and Glasses, conditions, both rural and urban, were often at the time was far more popular than foot- the gang member tasked with getting the appalling. The population increased from 35 money back. million in 1881 to over 40 million by 1906. Civil war in Ireland was of far more There are two problems with this. A Water supplies and sanitation were often concern to Asquith’s government Fault in Our Stars back story has been bolt- lacking, causing frequent outbreaks of chol- ed on over Ghost’s tale — he himself is also era and typhus, tuberculosis and dysentery in than events in faraway Sarajevo dying of cancer. This doesn’t always feel overcrowded and unhygienic locations. like comfortable territory for Gattis, who is By the time of her Diamond Jubilee the ball. In 1904, in the course of three days, absolutely brilliant on the brutality of life Queen was asked by one of her grandchil- 78,972 people attended the benefit match of on the edge; he writes good violence and dren if the endless dazzling parade of her the Yorkshire hero G. Hirst (and consumed is terrific on masculinity and hard choices. imperial troops made her feel proud; she 135,000 bananas). It was the age of C.B. Fry But the softer sentiments here are conveyed replied: ‘No, it makes me feel very humble.’ and Ranjitsinhji, who played for Sussex, and via old cassette tapes, and are never quite But she often had a funny way of showing it, also for England because India did not yet convincing; the female characters are, yawn, and would tick off her ministers angrily when have a national team. Another hero was wafer-thin wisecracking angels. she disagreed with their policies. In politics it A.E.Trott, the only batsman recorded to There’s a second problem you wouldn’t was the age of three supreme leaders: Glad- have hit a six over the pavilion at Lord’s. expect: All Involved was told through 17 stone, who she disliked on the grounds of We then come to the great social reforms polyphonous voices, and for the main part stiffness and pomposity; Disraeli, who knew of Asquith’s government, already set on the separate characters stayed distinct exactly how to flatter her; and Salisbury, who course by the underrated Campbell-Ban- and easily identifiable — not unlike Max having overseen the addition of vast territo- nerman, who however sadly died (chief- Brook’s excellent World War Z. Here there ries to her empire, declared with deep disap- ly, it is said, from over-eating) before they are only two narrators, Ghost and Glasses proval that ‘All empire is necessarily a love were implemented. Old-age pensions and — their names are similar, and their inte- of war’. By comparison with them, nearly all National Insurance were strongly opposed rior monologues are almost identical. While prime ministers in the last 50 years look like by the Tories, and battle was joined with the this is presumably done on purpose, you can pygmies. House of Lords over Lloyd George’s budg- find yourself flicking back and forward to By far the worst problem of the age was et of 1909, when a large increase in taxation remember who’s talking. Britain’s relations with Ireland, and the was needed to pay for these measures and But when they finally meet, it’s all 65-page chapter on them here is admira- also for the new Dreadnoughts to match change. In the final third — the last heist — ble, though depressing. Ulster failed to rec- the Germans’ great naval expansion pro- everything steps up a gear and all of Gattis’s ognise that if Home Rule had prevailed, gramme. pulse-racing talents come to the fore. It’s Belfast, with its factories and excellent har- The whole drama is well described here, tense, exciting, beautifully paced and you’ll bour, could have run rings round Dublin as but no new details are added to the many be unable to stop reading. There are no the industrial and commercial centre of Ire- previous accounts. Heffer takes his book’s twists; it’s just tremendously well done, and land, to the benefit of the whole country, title from that of a lecture by A.J. Balfour absolutely pays off its slightly fuzzy set-up. the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 33 BOOKS & ARTS Christianity triumphant – and destructive Thomas W. Hodgkinson
The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey Macmillan, £20, pp. 352
In the late years of Empire, and early days of Christianity, there were monks who didn’t wash for fear of being overcome by lust at the sight of their own bodies. Some con- cealed their nakedness in outfits woven from palm fronds. One designed a leather suit that also covered his head. There were holes for his mouth and nose, but not, apparently, his eyes. There was a monk who spent three years with a stone in his mouth to remind him not to speak. Another wept so hard, his tears dug a hollow in his chest. There were those who went about on all fours. St Anthony, one of the founders of monasticism, chose to make his home in a pigsty. St Simeon Stylites stood on a pillar for 37 years until his feet burst open. What are we to take away from all this? First, that you should think twice before becoming a monk. Make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. Second, that Christianity is a fundamentally maso- chistic religion. And third, that its self-pun- ishing characteristics are a particular product The Emperor Constantine renames Byzantium of time and place: not only a reaction against Roman decadence but also, as Catherine Nixey points out in her clever, compelling book The Darkening Age, a response to the tianity helps him defeat his enemies; 330, exceptionally well written book by a jour- end of imperial persecution. The theory goes Christians begin desecrating pagan temples; nalist for being insufficiently academic. I’m that, after the Empire adopted Christianity, 385, Christians sack the temple of Athena at in danger of coming across as a literary some felt nostalgic for the enlivening fear of Palmyra, decapitating the goddess’s statue; Theophilus, the temple-trashing cleric who martyrdom, and compensated by metaphori- 392, Bishop Theophilus destroys the tem- Edward Gibbon described as ‘the perpet- cally martyring themselves. This, then, is the ple of Serapis in Alexandria; 415, the Greek ual enemy of peace and virtue, a bold, bad essence of asceticism. It was a syndrome that mathematician Hypatia is murdered by man, whose hands were alternately polluted St Jerome dubbed ‘white martyrdom’, to dis- Christians; 529, the Emperor Justinian bans with gold and with blood’. Or will I seem like tinguish it from the red kind, which got you non-Christians from teaching; 529, the Acad- one of those sad, God-addled wretches who killed in front of a baying, paying crowd. emy in Athens closes its doors, concluding a rounded on Hypatia, the female Socrates, a If there were persecution junkies who 900-year philosophical tradition. heartbreaking early example of a woman longed for a return to the good old days This gives some idea of the merit and who was killed for being clever? when Nero might set them on fire, there remit of Nixey’s book. Also its demerit. In one of many instances where Nixey were also avenging angels. As its title sug- What should be presented as conjecture is alchemises an anecdote with a few well gests, Nixey’s book presents the progress of styled as fact. And when conjecture is admit- chosen words, she describes how, while work- Christianity as a triumph only in the military ted, the reasons for uncertainty aren’t given ing as a teacher in Alexandria, this extraordi- sense of a victory parade. Culturally, it was or gone into. Visit the Parthenon Marbles at nary heroine learned that one of her students genocide: a kind of anti-Enlightenment, a the British Museum and you’ll see that the was in love with her. It was her beauty, he darkening, during which, while annihilating east pediment is particularly badly dam- mumbled, that haunted him. Hypatia left the the old religions, the rampaging evangelists aged — ‘almost certainly’ by Christians, the room. A moment later, she returned with a carried out ‘the largest destruction of art that author tells us. But that’s about all she tells handful of sanitary towels, flung them on human history had ever seen’. This certainly us, except to note that the marble was ‘likely’ the floor, and declared, ‘You love this, young isn’t the history we were taught in Sunday ground down and used for mortar to build man, and there is nothing beautiful about it!’ school. Readers raised in the milky Angli- churches. This is a terrifically exciting aside: As Nixey exquisitely observes, the relation- can tradition will be surprised to learn of the the greatest achievement in Greek art was ship ‘went no further’. savagery of the early saints and their sledge- pestled into cement for Christian construc- If you take home nothing else from this hammer-swinging followers. tion work? How likely is this? How do we book, take home this: it’s a tactic to bear in Here are some darkening dates: 312, the know? How could we know? mind, the next time you find yourself the Emperor Constantine converts, after Chris- Yet perhaps it’s not fair to attack an subject of unwanted romantic attention.
34 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk Madness in Manhattan ator, there’s also an air of the author nailing happiness was finite’). his colours to the mast. René wonders: This all works well. And in a novel that Tim Martin How does one live among one’s fellow coun- hinges on the fallibility of memory, a narra- trymen and countrywomen when you don’t tor’s misremembering of a crucial point is The Golden House know which of them is numbered among expected. What is unexpected is quite how by Salman Rushdie the 60-million-plus who brought the horror far Doyle takes this. Cape, £18.99, pp. 380 to power, when you can’t tell who should Dialogue, narrative pacing, humour and be counted among the 90-million-plus who marvellous set pieces are immaculately shrugged and stayed home, or when your fel- Life has far more imagination than we do, low Americans tell you that knowing things marshalled throughout Smile. But in the says the epigraph from Truffaut that opens is élitist and they hate élites, and all you have final pages, the mysterious Ed Fitzpatrick Salman Rushdie’s 12th novel — as though, ever had is your mind and you were brought reveals not only that Victor has misremem- these days, anyone needed reminding. Set up to believe in the loveliness of knowl- bered a life-changing event, but suggests in New York and running between the start edge…? that as a result he has misremembered most of the Obama administration and the rise It’s hardly subtle, of course, but this is of his life to date. You almost expect a dead of Trump, this book about gangsterism, art, Rushdie’s most urgent novel for years. character to step out of the shower. dynastic ambition, secret identities and the The book wants us to understand that tragedy of plan-making charts the descent certain evil things can all but entirely pull of America into satire-killing oddity and Looking back, losing bits the rug out from under a life; but unreliabil- social danger as it follows the lives of the ity is so deeply dependent on, and filtered Goldens, a family of larger-than-life Indian Jonathan McAloon through, its own standards of reliability. Too squillionaires who come to live in Manhat- much of it is irresponsible and ultimately tan in the wake of the 2008 Bombay terror Smile unsatisfying because it negates the process attacks. by Roddy Doyle of looking back over your own steps and the The Goldens are Nero, a Gatsbyish busi- Cape, £14.99, pp. 224 narrator’s prompts, working out where you nessman whose past and business interests have been led astray. are murky, and his sons Petronius (Petya), As Roddy Doyle’s 12th novel begins, Victor At the beginning of Smile, Fitzpatrick Apuleius (Apu) and Dionysus (D). Not Forde, a washed-up writer, has returned to pronounces that memory is ‘like dropping their real names, naturally. ‘Say we are from the part of Dublin where he was born. He bits of yourself as you go along’. It says a nowhere or anywhere or somewhere,’ says has a tendency almost to romanticise his lot about Doyle’s power that he is able Nero when someone questions his ori- loneliness, turn it into witticisms. It ‘would to create such an intensely moving book gins, ‘we are make-believe people, frauds, have been sad,’ he thinks, ‘a man of my age that yet drops so much of itself as it reinventions, shapeshifters, which is to say, going back to some wrinkled version of his approaches its end. Americans.’ childhood. Looking for the girls he’d fan- Shacked up in a mansion on Mac- cied 40 years before. Finding them.’ Dougal St in Greenwich Village, they throw He is followed by a man who claims to themselves vigorously into the self-inven- be called Ed Fitzpatrick, and to know Vic- tions of their adopted country. Petya, a tor from school. ‘Everything about him was high-functioning autistic agoraphobe with abrupt, a bit violent.’ Victor can’t place him. a martini habit, becomes a world-famous And this initiates a deep dive into what INTRODUCTORY OFFER: designer of video games. Apu becomes an Victor thinks he can remember: his youth artist and playboy. D becomes a woman. as a music writer, ‘pretending to be Dub- Observing them all — as well as the skilful lin’s Lester Bangs’, and a pro-choice radio Subscribe for machinations of Nero’s new Russian wife — pundit and his marriage to a celebrity. And, is René Unterlinden, an aspirant filmmak- most memorably, his time at the local Chris- only £1 an issue er who lives nearby and narrates the book, tian Brothers school. convinced that the lives of the family should Anyone who has been to a boys’ Cath- 9 Weekly delivery of the magazine be the subject of his first feature. After all, a olic school — even years after the decline
‘golden story’, as he knowingly observes, was of corporal punishment and institutional- 9 App access to the new to the ancient Romans something that was ised sexual abuse that the book makes its issue from Thursday ‘obviously untrue. A fairy tale. A lie.’ focal point — will be vividly reminded. Few 9 Full website access Longstanding readers will recognise the writers are as consistently good as Doyle initial tone here; elaborate, discursive, self- at conjuring this specific childhood mental referential and buzzing with allusion to films, geography; he won the Booker for it in 1993 songs, books, politics, kitchen sinks. ‘My pre- with Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Iran is our natural ally The National Trust in trouble Boris in Libya But Victor’s mental geography destabi- Can you forgive her? ferred manner would be something I pri- Isabel Hardman and Matthew Parris on Theresa May’s fate
MY DATES WITH DIANA vately called Operatic Realism, my subject lises the book. We know from the start we’re TAKI the conflict between the Self and the Other,’ in the literary sub-genre of mid-to-late life explains René, half in auto-send-up and half meditation on the unreliability of memory. in deadly earnest. Gravity takes hold of this Victor never lets us forget he is in the act The Houstonlesson of airy prose, however, as Rushdie’s narrative of reminiscing, piecing together his past. (‘I approaches the Clinton-Trump race, which can’t remember what song was playing, just he envisages as a contest between Batwom- that it was shit.’) There is the self-interro- www.spectator.co.uk/A152A an and a green-haired, laughing maniac gation (‘It wasn’t nostalgia. I don’t think it (‘D.C. was under attack by DC’) who just was’), and the careful oscillation between 0330 333 0050 quoting A152A wants to watch the world burn. past and present tense. (‘I thought, and UK Direct Debit only. Special overseas rates also The plot moves towards a serviceably think, she was in pain.’) There is a forebod- available. $2 a week in Australia call 089 362 4134 tragic conclusion but, as the gap dwindles ing, wistful concision to the prose (‘I didn’t or go to www.spectator.com.au/T021A between René and his visibly pissed-off cre- know I was happy and I didn’t know that the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 35 BOOKS & ARTS
Marjorie Stevens, had commented on this. Another former lover, Roxanne Cumming, laughs it off: ‘She must have been having a bad day.’) Bishop’s ravishing poem, ‘Under the Window: Ouro Prêto’, is a collage of conver- sation overheard as people come to drink at the cold rope of water from an iron pipe. The pipe is under the window, we now learn, of the bedroom where Elizabeth Bishop made clandestine love to Lilli Correia de Araújo, while Bishop’s regular lesbian part- ner Lota (Dona Maria Carlota Costallat de Macedo Soares) was occupied with design- ing a park in Rio. Megan Marshall’s biography is really a sexual supplement to Brett C. Hillier’s more detailed 1993 biography. It is based,
Bishop’s poetry is beautifully contained: the slim, silent perfection of a Swiss watch
she finally explains on p. 303, on a trove of letters in the Vassar Bishop Archive. These were locked away until the death (lung complications) of Alice Methfessel, Bish- op’s last partner, in 2009. They consist of letters to her psychiatrist Ruth Foster, who asked for, and got, a detailed sexual history of her patient — including bath-time moles- tation by an uncle, who later tried to fondle her breasts when they appeared. The other previously unavailable letters are exchang- es between Bishop and Lota, Bishop and Alice Methfessel, Bishop and Lilli. Without prurience, they definitely enrich the sex life of the ‘life’. Elizabeth Bishop had quite a few sexu- Elizabeth Bishop in the 1950s al partners. Or so it now seems, by contrast with her unsleeping discretion in her life- time. But I wonder if the total is so very great, were hypocrisy and concealment more generally set aside in favour of frank- Sappho in America tinence, her wry tone, her meticulous ness — and intimacies calibrated across a descriptive accuracy and her beautiful con- lifetime. At Camp Chequesset, she was tar- Craig Raine tainment. Lowell might announce in verse geted by Mike, the summer camp’s female that he was tired of his turmoil — indeed, swimming instructor, ten years her elder, Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for that everyone was tired of his turmoil — but who got into her bunk, ‘kissing her, excit- Breakfast Bishop’s poetry is unlikely to embarrass any ing her’. At Walnut Hill School, she fell for by Megan Marshall reader, yet isn’t remotely genteel. Cool per- Judy Flynn, a fellow pupil. At Vassar, she Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $30, pp. 368 fection: the yacht ‘stepped and side-stepped was in love with Margaret Miller and also like Fred Astaire’; ‘mildew’s ignorant map’; had a flirtation with Louise Crane. Marga- We are gripped by gossip. Curiosity is a ‘rooms of falling rain’. The slim, silent per- ret Miller didn’t respond to overtures, but tenacious emotion. In her essay on Push fection of a Swiss watch. there was a fully-fledged affair with Louise Comes to Shove, the autobiography of the It is no surprise that Iris Murdoch Crane — terminated when Bishop discov- choreographer Twyla Tharp, Joan Acocella should write in 1948, ‘One of my fundamen- ered her in their bed with Billie Holiday. acknowledges this in an untroubled way. If tal assumptions is that I have the power to Their affair lasted two years, ending in 1940. you want to know what Baryshnikov was seduce anyone.’ It is surprising to learn that They shared a house in Key West, Florida. like in bed, she advises, look at p. 208 in a Elizabeth Bishop boasted to Lowell that Crane was replaced by Marjorie Stevens, bookshop: ‘Tharp gives him better marks she’d ‘never met a woman I couldn’t make’. in Key West to recover from TB, ‘leaving than [Gelsey] Kirkland’ in her 1986 autobi- The boast is even more surprising given behind a husband in Boston who preferred ography Dancing on my Grave. that in 1947 Bishop told her psychiatrist, an open marriage’. In 1942, they parted. In On the other hand, we have our settled Ruth Foster, ‘I have no clitoris at all.’ (You 1946, Marjorie discouraged Bishop: there idea about Elizabeth Bishop, a famous- can find this disclosure on p. 319 of Megan was, she wrote, no point ‘trying to make ly unconfessional poet, marked out from Marshall’s biography, discreetly among the something work that doesn’t’. Lowell, Sexton and Berryman by her con- endnotes. Two lovers, Loren MacIver and Before Marjorie, there had been Loren
36 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk MacIver, wife of the artist Lloyd Franken- creating scenes. Bishop begins an affair Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Break- berg, who briefly became her lover after the with Alice Methfessel in Boston. Roxanne fast has new information, but it is mistak- break-up with Louise Crane. (Chronology is dumped, but shows up in Harvard, and enly interleaved with Megan Marshall’s is a problem in Marshall’s biography, as it is ‘firmly rebuffed’. (Hillier’s account is the own boring and otiose autobiography. The backtracks to ‘previous’ history. In 1958, we fuller, including Bishop’s financial provision narrative is semi-novelised and often tan- learn that Bishop, after breaking up with for her ex.) Alice Methfessel’s and Bishop’s gled. The endnotes are maddeningly incon- Marjorie Stevens, had a consolatory affair relationship, thoroughly documented here venient. The poems are frequently misread. with Jinny Pfeiffer, the sister of Heming- thanks to the correspondence, survives the (She thinks Bishop’s moose might be Mar- way’s second wife.) Bishop seems to have interruption of a male suitor. Her villanelle ianne Moore.) But given the sensational fallen for her shrink, writing in February ‘One Art’ arises out of this serious threat of sexual disclosures, Marshall’s tone is com- 1947: ‘I really do love you very much… all displacement. mendably calm, level and factual. transference aside.’ A profound attachment but without a sexual outcome. She stopped seeing Dr Foster in 1947. Foster died, aged 57, of pancreatic cancer in 1950. Bishop was clearly impulsive and also In the Catskills an intermittent drunk, which encouraged for Zinzi her amorous outbursts. In 1947, she met the couple Mary Morse and Lota de Mac- edo Soares — and phoned Mary to declare We were trapped in a town called Liberty. her love. In the event, it was Lota she paired Our cabin lay on top of a hill, where the snow up with in Brazil. (Mary Morse wanted a kept us caged for entire weeks at a time. child and for that she turned to men, finally resorting to adoption.) Lota never discovered the affair Down the dirt road, past a couple of bends, between Bishop and Lilli Correia de Araú- lay the hamlet of Neversink, which of course jo up in Ouro Prêto. But she went nuts when she read a letter from Lilli’s replace- had been drowned by a reservoir. It was hard ment, Roxanne Cumming (Suzanne Bowen in Brett Hillier’s biography), whom Bishop to think of anything human around us as serious; had met in Seattle where she was teaching: ‘a pixyish blonde, blue-eyed 23-year-old, all man had built reeked of failure and rust. the newly pregnant wife of a 48-year-old We lived amidst the ruined remnants Seattle artist’. The subsequent wreck of Bishop’s relationship with Lota is chart- of a Yankee frontier town – slumbering mills, Marshall’s biography is really a silent railroads, idle factories, gutted houses, sexual supplement to Hillier’s more a few drowsy strip malls... It was the nonsensical detailed 1993 work heart of Angry America, where descendants ed more fully and persuasively here than of Unionists proudly flew Dixie flags in Hillier’s necessarily sparer account. For example, Hillier mentions a doctor. Mar- to spite the dark man in the White House. shall is able to name him. He is Dr Decio de Sousa, a Kleinian shrink whom Lota and The one half-decent bite to eat was at Stu’s: Bishop shared. In this account, he is a disaster, a tyrant a blue Kullman diner formerly on 49th and 11th and a quack, dispensing medication and that got pushed out by franchises, then inhuman advice. They try sonoterapia — sound therapy, which aggravates Bishop’s asthma but effects some improvement in exiled upstate on a flatbed, never to return. Lota’s disposition. He insists they separate When the mulch plant shut down, the sons absolutely. He ‘forbids’. He banishes. He and daughters of Liberty debated at length relents, he permits. After Lota’s acciden- tal or deliberate suicide in New York — a conjugal visit countenanced by Dr Decio the great prospects before them: casinos — Mary Morse refuses to speak to Bishop, or fracking; but the rich second home-owners steals her photographs of Lota, and destroys her correspondence. Lota’s sister Marietta fought the oilmen and won, so casinos it was. disputes the will on the grounds of insan- ity (and loses). Lilli also quarrels with Bish- ‘Liberty, son,’ an old schoolteacher told me, op for reasons given more fully in Hillier’s exhaustive biography (Bishop thought Lilli ‘is where the past comes to die.’ Ain’t it funny to think, was misappropriating funds for a house- my beloved, that this was where our future began? build she was supervising for Bishop). Roxanne Cumming proved to be too hot to handle, taking Bishop’s medication, — André Naffis-Sahely the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 37 BOOKS & ARTS
ARTS Art of darkness The genius of Stephen King, by his number one fan Tanya Gol d
tephen King, 69, has sold more than He says he fears insanity and that when schoolteacher, like William Golding and 350 million books, and tries not to he writes his nightmares stop. In his memoir Evelyn Waugh. As they raised three chil- Sapologise for being working-class, or On Writing (1999) he wonders if he might dren on a pittance he wrote stories for imaginative, or rich. The snobbery has ebbed have become a mass murderer without fic- magazines called Dude, Cavalier, Startling a little, though; in 2003 he won the National tion. I find this hard to believe but perhaps Mystery Stories and Swank. Carrie (1974), Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished I am thinking of an older, slightly happier a novel about adolescence and telekinesis, Contribution to American Letters, and now King, living calmly in a parody ‘monster was his breakthrough and his first successful the BFI is screening a series of adaptations splice of two good ideas to make a great one. of his novels, which show how versatile King wonders if he might have become Tabitha picked it out of the wastepaper bin he is. Why can’t you write stories like Rita a mass murderer without fiction and Brian De Palma made it into a terrify- Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, a ing film. King’s plots have always attracted woman asked him once. I did write it, he told mansion’ in Maine, New England. He didn’t great directors because he’s an ideal man to her, but she did not believe him. even leave his wife when he became a multi- butcher. He writes like a journalist — a hack King has published 59 novels, but he is a millionaire. I don’t think he would eat any still, but what a hack — and a man being recovering addict and can’t remember writ- heart but his own. devoured. In ‘Survivor Type’ (1982), a sur- ing them all. Most of Cujo (1981), a story His father was a travelling salesman, who geon amputates and eats his own body parts; about a rabid dog and adultery, is news to disappeared when Stephen was two: he went he only ceases to record this, for us, when he him. Tabitha, his wife of 46 years, would out to buy cigarettes and never returned. He has eaten his fingers. In Salem’s Lot (1975) sometimes find him asleep on a keyboard was raised poor, by his mother, the first per- Jimmy Cody is devoured by rats. When he dotted with vomit, or blood, with cotton son to pay him for writing. ‘As a kid,’ he says, opens his mouth to scream, a rat eats his swabs stuck up his nose. ‘All that’s danger- ‘I went to see every horror movie I could tongue. Or it did. King’s editor made him cut ous and sick and foul within me I’m able possibly see. Sometimes my brother went it, to save the publisher’s screams. to spew into my work,’ he says. Or, as his with me. My brother’s two years older, and King was superficially pliant. He took the grandfather said, ‘When Stephen opens his he would put his hat over his face. I never cut. Cody was impaled instead, but King had mouth all his guts fall out.’ As an adult, King put my hat over my face.’ his revenge. In The Plant (2000), he sends treated that observation as a bet. He married Tabitha and became a a possessed plant to a publisher. The novel
38 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk Tears of a clown: ‘Clowns hate Stephen King. They blame him for the “creepy clown” epidemic, which has led to multiple clown arrests’
is unfinished, but I am sure it will eat the of the World Clown Association said: ‘It all gathered carefully by drudgery over many publisher eventually. In Misery (1987), he started with the original It. That introduced years — stays with me. King writes women murders his Number One Fan with a type- the concept of this character. It’s a science- very well. He likes them. He was brought up writer because she has abducted him, cut off fiction character. It’s not a clown and has by his mother. his foot and, worse, tries to make him write nothing to do with pro clowning.’ This is, partially, why he hated Stan- genre fiction. He later said that Annie was The supernatural element is not the ley Kubrick’s famous film of The Shin- really cocaine; even so, how does King man- dread part of his fiction; this is what makes ing. The novel is about a writer going mad; age to have so much fun in hell? Many of it palatable because King, essentially, writes in Kubrick’s film, he is already mad. ‘And his protagonists are writers: in Salem’s Lot, fairy tales. The real horror is domestic, as it is as far as I was concerned, when I saw the in ‘1408’ (1999), in The Dark Half (1993), in in life, always. In The Mist (1980), the horror movie, Jack [Nicholson] was crazy from the the magnificent The Shining (1977), as fine first scene,’ he says. ‘I had to keep my mouth a novel about alcoholism as The Strange King’s wife would find him asleep on a shut at the time… And it’s so misogynistic. Tale of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde. In The keyboard dotted with blood, or vomit, I mean, Wendy Torrance is just presented as Body (1982), a tale of childhood friendship with cotton swabs stuck up his nose this sort of screaming dishrag.’ and abuse that became the Rob Reiner film With his anger and fear safely channelled Stand By Me, Chris tells Gordie: ‘You’re is not that monsters invade a town. It is that into his fiction, King appears a gentleman, going to be a great writer some day.’ King a man kills his son to protect him, and then notoriously kind to younger writers. ‘He’s was writing about King, and he was right. the monsters leave, so the child dies point- not competitive,’ his agent Chuck Verrill King can make everything horrifying, lessly. In It, the horror is that the adults are once said. ‘The only guy he ever cared about and still I can laugh. In It (1986), an entire immune to the deaths of their children. was Tom Clancy. They were both at Penguin town (in his native Maine, of course) is pos- Sometimes he forgets to write ghosts, or once, and it was made clear to King that he sessed by a monster who often appears as a vampires, or aliens at all. Dolores Claiborne was seen as the second banana to Clancy. He clown. This must be said in any serious study (1992) is about a woman seeking to protect didn’t like that.’ of King: clowns hate him. They blame him her daughter from her father’s lust. In the for the ‘creepy clown’ epidemic, which has film, the scene in which Dolores realises that Stephen King On Screen is at the BFI until led to multiple clown arrests. The president her husband has withdrawn her savings — 2 October. IT is in cinemas now. the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 39 BOOKS & ARTS Ave, Maria Michael Tanner on why the impact of Callas is unrepeated and unrepeatable
ERIO PICCAGLIANI, TEATRO ALLA SCALA of my time in the RAF attempting to deci- pher signal from noise, listening in to Rus- sian pilots communicating — or failing to — with one another, I find this no strain, but hi-fi devotees may. So, leaving or attempting to leave on one side questions about how one perfor- mance of, say, La traviata differs from anoth- er, though that can be interesting and even relevant to experience and judgment, what makes the impact of Callas so extraordinary, unrepeated and unrepeatable? In a nutshell, she was not only a re-creative but a co-crea- tive artist. She took the notes offered to her by the composer and made them her own in a way that is unique in its scale and depth — whole roles emerge as new when she sings them. Many of her roles seem to me to be in second-rate, or anyway less than great, operas and, like all creative artists, she has her fluctuations in achievement, but she is always recognisable — instantly — and she frequently imbues the commonplace with an inflection that turns it into a revelation. Other singers and instrumentalists and con- ductors do that too, but Callas does it on a scale and with an intensity that mark her out as unique in her field. It is significant that she sang little Mozart and was not inclined to sing more. A composer on his transcendental level of achievement can only be more or less ade- Maria Callas as Anna Bolena quately interpreted: enhancement of his work is not a possibility. Callas did record a few Mozart arias in one of her later recital nyone who thinks that an art- The first and most decisive way to coun- discs, but they sound routine. Though she ist’s life is irrelevant to their artis- ter all that fascinating irrelevance is to put professed, in one of her reginal interviews Atic achievement, and for that mat- on a CD of her in a full operatic perfor- with Lord Harewood, which is on DVD, ter anyone who thinks that it isn’t, must mance, or in a recital, and see what effects that she always began with a profound be given pause by Maria Callas. It is now it has. They are, for a sensitive listener, respect for the music she was to sing, she exactly 40 years since her death and every- likely to be immediate and powerful. To actually, in all her greatest performanc- thing she recorded is available on multiple commemorate her death Warner is issu- es, takes it and makes it new, as any real- pressings. But of the huge body of material ing a large and sumptuous box set of her ly significant performing artist does. What that has appeared about her, only a small ‘live’ performances, beginning with Verdi’s makes Callas unique is the degree to which percentage concerns itself with the record- Nabucco in 1949 and ending with Covent she transformed a role, above all her two ings. There are innumerable biographies, Garden’s Tosca in 1964, together with three signature roles, as Norma and as La traviata memoirs, refutations of memoirs, studies of Blu-ray discs of Maria Callas in Concert, — in the latter work to a point where I can’t the influence of her fluctuating erotic life including two versions of the Act Two of find any interest in anyone else singing on her singing, her meteoric rise, the Great Tosca, tragically the only complete operatic the title role. By the time Callas began to Decade, the tragic decline, and so on. All of act in which she was filmed, and extended develop her interpretation of it, Norma was these might be fascinating, but they draw excerpts of interviews. regarded as antiquated. But thanks to her, attention away from the only thing that All this material has been issued before, and with only moderate support from her mattered about her: her art. Even when dis- but Warner’s engineers have used an colleagues (until Christa Ludwig joined her cussion homes in on her voice, it tends to advanced system of sound enhancement, in a 1960 commercial recording), it became be on whether she was a pushed-up mezzo, and these transfers are mostly in consid- a tragic masterpiece to rank with any other whether her unique sound was the result of erably better sound than they have been work in the Italian repertoire. a gothic arch-shaped roof of the mouth, and before, though in some cases a high degree The earliest works in this new set are so forth. of tolerance is required. Since I spent much Gluck’s Alceste and Ifigenia in Tauride, the
40 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk Banksy NYC
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BOOKS & ARTS first well conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini. Callas’s intensely dramatic approach to the title roles is unfortunately not shared by her colleagues, but once again she shows her instinct for intense communication in every phrase. So does she in the one Wag- ner opera of which her interpretation sur- vives, and which is on the Warner set in decent sound: Parsifal, though with many cuts and sung in Italian by a mainly non- Italian cast. Kundry, Wagner’s most com- plex female character, is, in Callas’s throat, not surprisingly very seductive, and Callas has no difficulty with the ungainly vocal writing. But it gives her no scope for the creation of character, which remained her gift to the end of her career, even when she sings an aria. Watch her performance in Hamburg of Verdi’s ‘Tu che la vanità’ from Don Carlo, and see whether you don’t find out more about Elisabetta than in most full stagings of the opera. If you look for the things that vocal pundits insist on — steadiness of emission, smooth movement between the registers, and so forth — you will lament that Callas had them and lost them or never really had them. Consider- ations of beauty in the most simple sense were never her concern, though she didn’t disdain them. But if truth to the nature and depth of feeling — whatever exactly that comes to — are what you want, then you will get them from Callas in a way that no Mad house: Jennifer Lawrence as Mother one else provides.
The Maria Callas Live Remastered Edition is available on Warner Classics.
writing again, she imagines. Meanwhile, none of the usual house-guest rules. They Cinema Him, we learn, previously lost everything make a mess. They smoke inside. They break in an inferno, which somehow managed to beloved objects. Then their two sons turn Nut job create his most prized possession, a thump- up (played by Brian and Domhnall Glee- Deborah Ross ing great crystal. Him may be one of those son), who partake in some kind of Cain and writers like Paulo Coelho, who say much Abel-style fracas. Mother is appalled by the that sounds profound yet means nothing intrusion while Him seems to welcome it. Mother! when it comes down to it, and many will And Us? We are just puzzled. What’s that in 18, Nationwide say similar about this film. the toilet? A bloody heart? What’s that fur- We are certainly discomfited from the nace in the basement? What is it with Man The film-maker Darren Aronofsky says he off. Right at the beginning, we see Moth- and his cough? Mother discovers that she’s wrote Mother! in five days as if in a ‘fever er go up in flames, her skin bubbling and pregnant, which allows for some downtime dream’ and, as a general rule, what hap- charring. But is that from the past or is it in the second act, but after that it escalates pens in a fever dream should stay in the the future? Here, in the house, she drinks a into full-blown, bloody carnage. It does not fever dream, as the content will be plainly hold back. nuts. This is plainly nuts. This is even plainly This is plainly nuts. This is even Aronofsky, who has always been a sin- nuts with an exclamation mark. Plainly nuts! plainly nuts with an exclamation gular film-maker (Requiem for a Dream, However, it’s never plainly dull, so it does mark. Plainly nuts! The Wrestler, Noah, The Fountain, Black have that going for it. I think. Swan), keeps the camera either over Law- Described as a psychological horror strange yellow tincture and can feel a heart rence’s shoulder or on her face. It’s told thriller, the set-up has a poet and his young- palpating from within the wall. (I’d have got entirely from her point of view but, even er wife living in a magnificent, isolated on to the estate agents about that.) Our dis- so, you wouldn’t want to be a woman in an house in the countryside that she is doing comfort is increased when they receive a Aronofsky film, frankly, as you will almost up. She is Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) and visitor, a doctor with a bad cough who says certainly be terrorised. J-Law is firmly com- he is Him (Javier Bardem). She is in thrall that he thought this was a B&B. He is Man mitted to the lunacy and is compelling, even to Him, and exists only to serve Him, while (Ed Harris), who is later joined by his wife, though she’s not given much to do beyond he is suffering from writer’s block and is Woman (Michelle Pfeiffer, doing her bitch rushing about shouting ‘Stop!’ and ‘Please distant. She just needs to make everything shtick), but not by their Dog, if they have leave!’ and ‘Don’t sit on that sink, it’s not perfect; just needs to create some kind of one. Or Cat. Or pet Fish. It’s clear that they braced yet!’ Also, it’s a psychological hor- paradise — an Eden? — and he’ll soon be have no intention of leaving and observe ror thriller that isn’t properly psychological
42 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk — we understand nothing about anyone — in which of Britain’s big cities, going by its temakers’ — not just in print, but on radio, isn’t properly horrifying (unpleasant, yes; streaming figures. Indie rock was most pop- too — dislike not just the music, but the horrifying, no) and isn’t properly a thriller, ular in Newcastle, followed by Manchester fact that lots of people like it. ‘I’ve stopped as it’s too irrational, and also rather repeti- and York. The only place south of Sheffield being surprised by what is a subconscious tive. Who are these people in my house and paying any attention was Brighton. Punk anti-northern agenda,’ Murray says. ‘It’s so why won’t they go? Essentially, it’s that, and metal were overwhelmingly northern sad,’ Marshall says. ‘I’ve worked with a lot over and over. genres, too, with the south preferring hip- of guitar bands and it’s never been as hard As to what it might have to say, you’ll hop and R&B. to get support for them. There’s a real dis- drive your own self mad trying to figure It’s always been that way, to some extent. it out. Is it allegorical? Is Mother, in fact, The band manager Conrad Murray points There’s a real discrepancy between Mother Earth, being defiled by human- out that ‘Blur were always miles bigger in too-cool-to-dance London media and London. So were the Libertines, so is Jamie real bands with real fans Who are these people in my house and T. To the northern bands, the Stone Roses why won’t they go? Essentially, it’s are their Beatles. But people from Lon- crepancy between too-cool-to-dance Lon- that, over and over don don’t come to the north to gigs, so they don media and real bands with real fans that don’t see it.’ become successful without the help of Lon- ity? Is it about our extinction and a pos- Murray pretty much has the market cor- don media, who resent their success.’ sible rebirth? If Him is God, and Mother nered in bands popular in the north-west. Marshall and Murray are resigned these is God’s wife, what are We meant to take The Stone Roses are one of his. So are the days to their bands being loved by fans but from that? Or is it just Aronofsky taking Courteeners, who headlined in front of critically ignored (not even despised; just the piss and putting us and his cast through 50,000 people in Manchester just five days ignored). The Sherlocks’ album was barely the mill simply for the sheer hell of it? It after the bombing at Ariana Grande’s con- reviewed in national print media; few both- could be all of the above or none of them. I cert. So are Blossoms, from Stockport, so ered sending reviewers to the Courteeners’ have no idea, given it’s plainly nuts(!). But, popular in the north-west that road signs Old Trafford show less than a week after that said, it is never plainly dull. I was not in their hometown were changed to read the bombing — despite its newsworthiness. Bored. ‘Stockport, home of Blossoms’. It’s no longer a problem for them — they It’s easier to work out why the Lon- have found ways around it. But it might don media aren’t interested in these bands prove to be more problematic for the ever- Music than why they are so popular in the north. shrinking world of the music press. After For starters, they are lumped into the pile all, if you refuse to cover bands your read- Northern rock marked ‘landfill indie’, a term coined by the ers like, why would they continue reading? Michael Hann writer Andrew Harrison in the Word maga- zine, and which rapidly became the descrip- tion for any loudish guitar band writing A fortnight ago, the debut album by a young conventional verse-chorus-verse songs. Exhibitions British guitar band entered the chart at No. ‘Landfill indie’ became the signifier for 6. You might have expected to see this pored music that was pale, male and stale. Hence Space odyssey over with some interest by the press, for you are far more likely to read a newspaper Martin Gayford whom the search for the New Arctic Mon- interview with a bedroom R&B auteur who keys, the New Oasis and the New Smiths has can play to a 400-capacity club, but who long been a matter of urgency. Instead, you represents the future, than you are with a Rachel Whiteread will scour the daily newspaper arts pages in guitar band who can play a 5,000-capacity Tate Britain, until 21 January 2018 vain for mentions of the Sherlocks, and you theatre, but who represent the past, despite won’t fare much better looking at the spe- their youth. Rachel Whiteread is an indefatigable cialist music magazines. According to the Murray suggests guitar bands’ populari- explorer of internal space. By turning hum- self-anointed tastemakers of British pop, ty in the north-west is because they support ble items such as hot-water bottles and they might as well not exist. each other: he cites the Stone Roses back- sinks inside out — that is, casting the cavi- That’s because the Sherlocks are rep- ing the Courteeners and they in turn back- ties — Whiteread has accomplished one of resentatives of a growing trend in British ing Blossoms, though this rather ignores the the traditional tasks of art: revealing struc- music: the straightforward indie rock band fact that since he manages them all (and his ture, beauty and mystery in the everyday. who are hugely popular in the north — the business partner Simon Moran promotes Her work is a remarkable contribution to north-west especially — but whose fame them all) he’s in a position to guarantee an overlooked genre: the sculpture of inani- falls off a cliff the moment you get south of that mutual support. Marshall suggests a mate things or still-life statuary. Birmingham. ‘We’d sold 9,800 copies of the less nebulous reason. In the south-east, he Nonetheless the large-scale, mid-career Sherlocks as of this morning,’ Korda Mar- says, the gig-venue circuit has been deci- Whiteread retrospective at Tate Brit- shall, who signed the band to his label Infec- mated by pub venues being bought and ain, which ought to be a triumph, does not tious, told me earlier this month. ‘I reckon turned into gastropubs and flats. It’s not quite come off. Ironically, since her idiom a good 6,500 to 7,000 of those have been that way in the north, he suggests, so young is derived from minimalism, the exhibition north of Birmingham.’ You can see the rela- bands can still tour, building up a following fails to observe the law that less is more. tive levels of popularity when you look at across the region in a way they can’t in the This is a common problem with museum the group’s upcoming tour dates: their show south. He points out that before he signed displays of all kinds — people are tempted at the 2,600-capacity Manchester Academy the Sherlocks last year, they were already to show too much — but it is particularly is long since sold out; there are still tickets playing to between 500 and 1,000 people acute with objects that are pared down to available for their London gig, at Heaven — each night across the north. That breeds a simple essence. A room jam-packed with which holds 1,000 people. loyalty, he says: ‘They champion their own, paintings can look marvellous — depend- This divide is a real thing. A couple of and they’re not interested in what the ing, of course, on what they are. But a gal- years ago, I asked Spotify to hunt through “cool” London media are saying.’ lery containing an assortment of minimalist its data to see which music was most popular Both Marshall and Murray think the ‘tas- sculptures — a Donald Judd box, some Carl the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 43 BOOKS & ARTS © RACHEL WHITEREAD
‘Untitled (Clear Torso)’, 1993, by Rachel Whiteread
Andre bricks, a Flavin light piece — always the voids beneath that number of assorted a faint suggestion of tombs and mummies ends up looking cluttered, like the stock- chairs and it fills one half of the grand neo- about a Whiteread. room of a DIY megastore. And that’s what classical Duveen Galleries in the centre of The more you wander around the show has happened with the Whiteread show. the museum. itself, though, the less magical it all seems. For this, Tate Britain has opened up a This is Whiteread at her best. To look Retrospectives work best with artists whole suite of galleries on the main floor at, it is almost edibly attractive: the casts, in whose work has changed over the years — to form one large space — which probably transparent pink, orange and blue, resemble or those who, at least, do various diverse seemed a good idea since some of the works things. Whiteread has carried on doing the are on a very large scale (a cast of a com- A gallery containing an assortment of same thing. From time to time, she casts plete stairwell, for instance). The objects she minimalist sculptures ends up looking a new sort of object — or a fresh type of has chosen to cast over the years vary in size like the stockroom of a DIY megastore material (recently, she’s tried out papier- from entire buildings to toilet rolls. mâché). But you couldn’t say there’s been There’s nothing wrong with making giant jellies or Turkish delights set at per- any stylistic development. sculpture by casting rather than carving fectly judged intervals on the floor. And the What you see at Tate Britain is more a or modelling: it can produce remarkable more you contemplate it, the more odd and systematic exploration of an idea: variations results. But in aggregate the effect here is interesting it becomes. on a theme. To succeed, her work depends repetitive. And it is certainly not the case The empty air underneath the ordinary on finding a suitable kind of object to cast, that the more Whiteread you gather togeth- pieces of furniture we all sit upon, oblivi- and the ideal material in which to do so. She er, the better. ously, turns out to have as intriguing a shape does not always manage that double feat. On the other hand, ‘Untitled (One Hun- as any archaeological treasure dug up from Her moulds of the hidden zones to be found dred Spaces)’ from 1995, a single, large — underground. A similar piece, ‘Table and underneath baths are less than exciting in fact, multiple — work shown just outside Chair (Clear)’ from 1994, brings to mind a because — the shape of the outside and the the exhibition proper, looks superb. This miniature Egyptian temple — or perhaps inside being much the same — the results consists of a set of casts in coloured resin of a funerary monument. There’s sometimes just look like a large plaster bath. This is
44 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk strange, admittedly, but mysterious and fas- and we’re off. Unfortunately, the lighting Radio cinating? No. remains the same, cold white, so the two Formally speaking, Whiteread’s output characters holding candles seems absurd. Face time often echoes the earlier generation of mini- The act’s second half must be in semi-dark- malists. Her casts of floors, for example, are ness; sitting just in front of Jones, I almost Kate Chisholm much like Carl Andre’s checkerboard floor turned round to tell him. pieces made of rectangular metal plates. To Act One’s austerities give way to three The inimitably pukka voice of Jacob Rees- this geometric grid, Whiteread adds natu- luxurious shopping arcades, impressively sol- Mogg echoed through Radio 4 on Thursday ralistic detail: the cracks and irregularities id-looking though proving to be quite rest- morning. He was not, though, talking about of real tiles or the grain of actual wooden less, as contemporary directors like buildings nappies, nannies or even Brexit; his topic boards. It’s those delicate surfaces that show to be. The usual Act Two romps take place instead was death masks and specifically she’s not an abstractionist but a realist. in front of them, until they slide away and that made of his father William, the news- Even so, without a strong formal template we’re in an upmarket Café Momus, far too paper editor and vice-chairman of the BBC, the results can just look dull (as the casts of expensive and lavish for the bohemians to who died in 2012. Not long after Rees-Mogg bookshelves, for example, do). be admitted, one would have thought. That, had passed from this life, his facial features This kind of show brings out such weak- in turn, gives way to a street of 19th-centu- were immortalised in wax and silicon rubber nesses. But that’s not really the trouble. The ry lamps. Meanwhile, the crowd does what by Nick Reynolds, godson of Ronnie Biggs problem is simpler: some works of art, like the crowd always does, many members of and son of Bruce Reynolds (whose names some people, need a room to themselves — it dressed to the nines — is a point being you may recall from the great train robbery and Whiteread’s, as this show demonstrates, made? Act Three is desolation itself, the of August 1963). are of that unsociable kind. tavern being a small rundown hut. Rodolfo In Death Masks: The Undying Face (pro- and Marcello exchange dreadful news about duced by Helen Lee), Reynolds talked us Mimì’s condition while she is in full view. through the whole process, from the initial Opera Once again, snow has to do all the work. Act making of an impression of Rees-Mogg’s Four is back to 7b, now with a small couch. face with alginate (that horrible pink stuff DIY Bohème The bohemians get up to more convincingly which dentists use to model your mouth) Michael Tanner merry pranks, though lack of props means to layering with bandage strips and plaster that Marcello has to do his painting on to of Paris to make the negative. From these mere air. Musetta enters and the rest of the basic materials emerges a 3-D image, some- La bohème act is properly direct and ungimmicky. thing solid and tangible, a way of cheating Royal Opera House, in rep until What of the music? In an interview in 10 October last week’s Sunday Times, Antonio Pap- Not long after Rees-Mogg had died, pano, who conducts, lapses effortless- his facial features were immortalised The Royal Opera’s one production that, it ly into management-speak, stating: ‘Star in wax and silicon rubber has always confidently been claimed, need power is important to sell the product.’ never be replaced has been replaced. John But star power isn’t mainly what he has death, of creating a form of immortality. ‘All Copley, vintage 1974, has given way to Rich- here — though the Rodolfo and Mimì will it needed was a pair of glasses and there was ard Jones, in a production full of his trade- no doubt become stars after this. Pappano my father staring out,’ said Jacob. mark quirkinesses and mischief, though he clearly loves this particular product, but not ‘Have you ever spoken to it?’ asked is respectful enough of Bohème to keep his to death. His conducting is marvellously Reynolds. irony out of sight for the last two acts. Stew- detailed but flowing, and changes of mood ‘No,’ Jacob replied. art Laing is the designer, with a separate are managed with unostentatious precision. ‘Has your mother?’ movement director (I thought that’s what His singers couldn’t ask for better sup- ‘No… It’s not my father,’ Jacob insist- directors did) in Sarah Fahie. port. There is one established star, Mariusz ed. ‘It’s a representation… It’s comforting, Snow falls continuously before the cur- Kwiecien (Marcello), who is ideal in whatev- though, because it’s evident that he was at tain rises, but the set of Act One inevita- er he does, the most spontaneous of operatic peace.’ bly strikes you as a gauntlet thrown down actors. The Australian Nicole Car has previ- Rees-Mogg senior is in the company of to Copley. Flat 7b, which is the abode of ously sung for the Royal Opera in Holten’s Ronnie Biggs and Peter O’Toole, both of the bohemians, is nothing more than roof detestable Eugene Onegin, where no one whom have been ‘immortalised’ by Reyn- beams, with a single chair, no bed, a tiny could make an impression. She is a demure olds, along with the film director Ken Rus- stove that produces plumes of smoke emit- Mimì, a decent actress with a lovely voice, sell and Reynolds’s father. ‘It allows me to ted from a tall chimney. Clothes are char- if at the moment rather a small one. In her talk to my Dad,’ says Reynolds, whose home ity shop, with touches of the 19th century. scenes with Rodolfo, especially in Act One, is filled with death masks he has collected, It’s not atmospheric, so the actors have to the American Michael Fabiano was con- ‘even though I don’t believe in the afterlife.’ work hard to convince one that they are sistently louder, but only within decent lim- He became interested in death masks cold and hungry, and this team, though they its. His Act One aria was intoxicating, while after seeing Oliver Cromwell’s at Warwick have many virtues, don’t really do that. In Car’s answering one wasn’t quite that. The Castle when he was a child. ‘There’s some- fact, the first 20 minutes of laddish horse- role of Musetta, which she will sing in some thing magical and mystical about them,’ he play resolutely refuses to be fun either for subsequent performances, may suit her bet- says. ‘You capture that person as they would them or for us, though the music bubbles ter. Simona Mihai, the Musetta of this per- have looked at the moment of death, as if and frisks along in a way irresistibly remi- formance, will later sing Mimì, and would they are sleeping.’ niscent of Falstaff’s opening scene (it had have made more of an impression in Act Two The art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston never struck me so forcibly before). if there had been fewer visual distractions. asked Reynolds to make one of her partner, Once that prime operatic bore Benoît La bohème is indestructible, and this Sebastian Horsley, who died suddenly of an has been disposed of, and the bohemians production certainly didn’t attempt to overdose, unprepared, without warning. For leave with Rodolfo staying to finish an arti- destroy it. It was more of a DIY affair in her, the mask proved ‘a stepping-stone… a cle — presumably standing up — the music the main, with the audience being the Y. I link between his animate being and the inert undergoes its magical change, Mimì knocks cried at the end. corpse’. It was as if, she said, the mask was an the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 45 BOOKS & ARTS interface, ‘a pair of doors that led me away just a way of ensuring they were tough JOHAN PERSSON from him’. enough to deal with anything that might go It is hard to imagine either Nadia wrong on the day. ‘That’s the mentality, you Comaneci or Simone Biles sitting still for have to think… If you’re really tired, do one long enough to have their image captured more routine.’ by an artist. In 1976 the gymnast Comaneci stunned the world with her perfect 10 per- formance on the uneven bars at the Mon- Theatre treal Olympics. No one expected anyone to achieve such perfection so the scoreboard Age concern recorded her mark as 1.000, unable to clock Lloyd Evans up 10 out of 10. Check it out on YouTube, urged Kim Chakanetsa on The Conversa- tion, the World Service programme (pro- Follies duced by Sarah Crawley) in which two Olivier, until 3 January 2018 women from the same specialist field of endeavour are invited to share their experi- Ishq ences under Chakanetsa’s expert guidance. Sadler’s Wells If you look again at Comaneci’s gravi- ty-defying catapults and tumbling, leaping, Stephen Sondheim’s Follies takes a huge turning and twisting, without ever looking leap into the past. It’s 1971 and we meet two down or having to check her balance, what is middle-aged couples who knew each other so striking is how young she looks, how slen- three decades earlier at a New York music der (where did she find the strength to hurl hall. The building faces demolition and the her body about with such apparent ease?), owner is throwing a party for his old danc- and her absolute joy in every slick, perfectly ing-girls. poised movement. Dominic Cooke’s lavish production of ‘What is happening when you compete?’ this vintage musical boasts 58 performers, asked Chakanetsa. ‘How do you focus? Can 160 costumes and 200 production staff. Yet you hear the crowd?’ it’s a curiously small show that could be Bring on the dancing-girls: Follies at the Oliver ‘I can remember exactly what music was performed, with a few cuts, in a pub thea- playing,’ said Comaneci. ‘Even though I had tre. There are four main characters and a to think about every detail I was doing on smattering of cameos. Phyllis and Ben are the beam. That minute and 10 seconds is so rich New York grandees, unhappily married. drawing, on doctor’s orders no doubt, to let long.’ Their chums Bud and Sally are also wealthy a younger, sexier troupe take over. What a She was in conversation with Biles, who and disappointed with life. During the war, relief. Then we get a couple of show-stop- stunned the crowds in Rio de Janeiro last Phyllis and Sally were Broadway hoofers, ping tunes, ‘Broadway Baby’ and ‘I’m Still year, winning five medals, four of them gold and they meet up with their former col- Here’. These are done brilliantly, but they’re (her fans told her how disappointed they leagues to share old memories and present not performed by the main characters. Both were that she did not make the full five), frustrations. are incidental numbers assigned to cameo as part of the US gymnastics team. Both Janie Dee (Phyllis) is a sophisticated players. This unbalances the script. A show’s of them recalled how competitive they temptress with a wicked tongue and an air highlights should involve its stars and not its were right from the start. Aged about six, of moody bitterness. By some distance, she’s supporting cast. And although Sondheim is Biles was discovered while bouncing on the the best asset here. Her husband Ben is a fabled for the dexterity of his lyrics his work trampoline at a daycare field trip in Texas, flabby sex pest who prefers ogling young doesn’t always bear scrutiny. ‘The Story of Comaneci sent to the gym by her parents, waitresses to romancing his still-gorgeous Lucy and Jessie’ introduces us to two chorus who were fed up with her breaking the fur- wife. His chum Bud (Peter Forbes) is a girls whose names have been selected, one niture as she somersaulted round their living greasy muddle. Bud keeps a 29-year-old mis- assumes, for their rhyming potential. Lucy room in Romania. tress on the go and yet he professes undy- If someone said, ‘I bet you could not ing love for his sixty-something spouse, Sally. The first dance number is performed do that, I wanted to prove them wrong,’ OK. But why cheat on her? Sally, mean- by seven ladies whose combined age, said Comaneci. ‘I was the same kind,’ Biles while, wants to rekindle an extinguished and I’m not joking, is over 400 replied without blinking. affair with Ben, but she’s unaware that he By strange coincidence they have shared prefers teenage serving girls. When Phyllis is ‘juicy’, and Jessie is ‘dressy’. Next, Lucy the same coach, Biles coming under the tute- catches the eye of a hot young barman they is ‘lacy’ and Jessie is ‘racy’, and their story lage of Marta Karolyi, who was the national have a quick knee-trembler on the theatre’s is ‘very messy’. Fine, but hardly world-class. coach of Romania until she defected to the cramped and rotting seats. Not very edifying. Then Sondheim’s ingenuity falters and he US with her husband Bela in 1981 (as did And it’s hard to care about these geriatric tells us that Jessie is ‘classy’ and ‘wants to be Comaneci in 1989). bed-hoppers who are desperate for one last Lassie’. Am I missing something? Would a Were her methods brutal? asked Chaka- fling before they get shunted into the care- Broadway starlet really desire to be a celeb- netsa. home for ever. rity sheepdog? ‘I always did more than they asked me Cooke’s production spends too much The show’s final half-hour consists of to,’ Comaneci replied. time warming up. The theme is dancing- stand-alone numbers performed by the Simone recalled how Marta used to tell girls and yet it takes an hour before the first leading characters. The costumes are great, us, ‘If I come and wake you guys up at mid- dance arrives. And it’s performed by seven especially the chorus girls’ foldaway but- night and you can’t land a beam routine, ladies whose combined age, and I’m not jok- terfly wings, and the songs are executed that’s not good.’ ing, is over 400. They totter about on their superbly. But the narrative simply vanishes. She didn’t see it as unnecessarily harsh; creaking pins for a few minutes before with- It may make sense to give Phyllis and Sally
46 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk Proms and then there’s the phenomenon of the Vienna string sound: the tensile strength of The sound of no hands steel, combined with inner luminosity and a way of leaning effortlessly, eloquently into clapping any phrase they’re given. Richard Bratby All of which they duly delivered, even at Harding’s often breathless tempos (the Proms 72 and 74: Vienna ‘Alma theme’ sounded hyperactive). The Philharmonic Orchestra Sixth is sometimes described as a classical Royal Albert Hall tragedy, and Harding seemed to be aiming for clarity and relentlessness. So quite why ‘We’re going to live for ever!’ declares Rob- that first movement didn’t ignite, why the ert Powell as Gustav Mahler at the end of uneasy idyll of the Andante didn’t really Ken Russell’s 1974 biopic. We’ve just had flow, and why the finale never accumulated the big reveal (Russell said it ‘out-Holly- the overwhelming emotional momentum woods Hollywood’) in which Mahler admits upon which its whole structure depends, is to his young wife Alma that she inspired hard to pinpoint. It’d be too easy to con- the lyrical theme in the first movement of clude that Harding had simply slipped this his Sixth Symphony. It’s a tale for which luxury orchestra on to cruise control — the the only source is Alma herself, but hey, energy of his gestures contradicted that. But over the course of the movie we’ve already I didn’t sense a particularly vital connec- had exploding garden sheds, interpretative tion between those gestures and the sounds dance and Cosima Wagner in fetish gear. the VPO produced. And then there were Russell cues the music, and few film-makers the tell-tale slip-ups: a perfunctory oboe have understood better how to cut to a com- solo, fluffed brass entries, and cowbells that poser’s emotional core. As the credits roll, sounded as though they’d come from Lidl. the first movement of Mahler’s Sixth blazes The higher the expectations, the sharper the triumphantly to its close, glockenspiel jan- sense of frustration. Musicians whose judg- gling. Russell leaves the tape running, and ment I respect speak highly of Harding. I we hear the audience explode into cheers. couldn’t hear why, but I’ll keep listening. At this performance by the Vienna Phil- If the VPO’s Mahler was emotionally harmonic under Daniel Harding, there was underpowered, the following night’s pro- silence. That’s not unusual in itself, simply gramme under Michael Tilson Thomas was solo numbers because they’re professional normal concert-hall behaviour between singers. But why do Ben and Bud, a couple movements of a symphony. But inter-move- A perfunctory oboe, fluffed brass of bean counters, become crooners all of a ment applause, often curiously forced- entries and cowbells that sounded as sudden? This long finale might have been sounding, has become common in recent though they’d come from Lidl placed elsewhere without impairing the Proms seasons — discreetly encouraged by integrity of the whole. It feels like a separate the BBC, who’ve recruited Stephen Hough, bewilderingly dull. I’d always had ‘MTT’ show bolted on at the end to give the stars a no less, to confirm that ‘Brahms and Tchai- down as a live wire, but he conducted reason to turn up each night. That said, I can kovsky would have expected applause’, Brahms’s Haydn Variations without much still recommend this sugary piece of escap- though he stops short of endorsing other characterisation or dynamic variety beyond ism. If you have an elderly relative to enter- forms of enjoyable 19th-century audience that supplied by the VPO’s individual wood- tain, it’s ideal. behaviour: smoking, chatting through over- wind players. In Mozart’s 14th Piano Con- Ishq is a Pakistani tale of two star-crossed tures and hurling fruit at unsatisfactory per- certo Emanuel Ax fingered the solo part as lovers. This version, popularised by the Sufi formers. Actually, it seems to have fallen off though it were Meissen porcelain while the poet Waris Shah, has the simplistic outline since July. Perhaps it’s a fad that’s run its orchestra laid down plump velvet cushions of a panto. Princess Heer is seduced by the course, because if any composer is going to of tone. Relax, it’s Classic FM! And while music of Ranjha, a handsome but homeless trigger spontaneous applause, it’s that king it’s not really possible for Beethoven’s Sev- flautist. Their affair incenses a nasty old git of the Hollywood ending Gustav Mahler: an enth Symphony to be boring, there were called Kaido who has a limp, a knobbly stick old stager who’d worked in theatres from the moments in this stolid performance where and, one assumes, a long history of sexual age of 19, and who still knows precisely how it sounded like the VPO’s first trumpet was disappointment. Yet he claims no respon- to twist a crowd round the tip of a baton. single-handedly trying to deliver an urgent sibility for his campaign of hate. ‘I am the But no, total silence, and I’m still won- telegram from old Ludwig van B himself: for product of elements beyond my control,’ he dering why. Even in the Spotify era, a god’s sake, pull your socks up. wheedles, as he plots to wreck the lovers’ chance to hear Mahler’s Sixth performed At the last moment, Tilson Thomas and happiness. Technically, the show is very pro- by the Vienna Phil counts as a bit of a treat, the VPO redeemed themselves with an ficient. The costumes are terrific, the danc- and believers in that semi-legendary ‘Vien- encore: Delius’s On Hearing the First Cuck- es are thrilling to watch and the drumming na sound’ will have been able to get their oo in Spring, the first time that the VPO has is so accomplished that it might work as an fix right from the very beginning. The bass- played this piece since 1936. The clarinet’s attraction in its own right. es, massed between the back of the strings bird call melted in and out of the shaded The show is part-sponsored by Pakistan’s and a towering bank of horns, dug crunch- haze of strings; little splashes of bitonality high commission and it offers a glimpse of ily into the opening death march, and no blinked with wide-eyed surprise. Extraordi- a cohesive and egalitarian society under a orchestra’s basses sound deeper, blacker or nary that the most persuasive music-making benign form of Islam. In the closing scene, more sepulchral. The horns, too, glow even in either concert came in a piece so utter- a powerful woman dispenses justice to all. If while they bite; a muted snarl from this lot is ly remote from the Viennese tradition. But that’s the future of Pakistan, good. But this downright poisonous. The woodwinds stand then as Mahler supposedly said, ‘Tradition is story, alas, is set centuries ago. out with an almost hallucinatory sweetness, slovenliness.’ QED. the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 47 BOOKS & ARTS SKY
Kevin Hanchard as Rev. Gregoire and Tim Roth as Sheriff Jim Worth in Tin Star, which is like the rejected first draft of a really bad movie by Quentin Tarantino
Television ing round in her underwear; cute five-year- ny so dodgy that it employs a sinister bald old kid — being threatened in their car by bloke with an indeterminate scary accent Rockies horror show a masked, gun-wielding assailant. There’s a whose job title appears to be Head of Evil. shot. The interior of the car explodes red. When the Head of Evil hears someone James Delingpole Did someone die? Is this a dream or is this innocent has died, he doesn’t care — for real? We’ll find out soon enough… all that matters to him is the ugly business Tin Star, the latest Sky Atlantic drama, has I ought at this point to warn: ‘Plot spoil- of getting that deadly black stuff out of the a comfortingly familiar premise: Jim Worth er alert!’ Except I’m not honestly sure it ground and into the markets, where presum- (Tim Roth), an ex-detective from London matters because a) I really wouldn’t bother ably it will be sold for disgusting profit. That with an alcohol problem, heads out to rural and spying on people. Inexplicably, he has Canada with his family to start a new life Nothing wrong with the odd cliché but planted a bug under the desk of Sheriff Jim only to find himself embroiled in crime, vio- Tin Star is almost nothing but cliché and sits there listening to his conversations. lence and personal tragedy far worse than But the melodramatic Head of Evil anything back home. watching — it’s just not worth the effort — looks positively restrained next to the rag- It begins well. There’s a lovely establish- and b) because it’s all so predictable you’ll bag crew of incompetent assassins who ing scene where Roth walks down the street probably guess the plot twists anyway. include: Taciturn Black Man; Baby-Faced with his new Canadian sheriff’s badge and How many times, for example, have you Psychopath; Bickering Northern Thugs 1 everyone greets him, as people presumably seen a drama where there’s a panicked char- and 2, one of whom carries a guitar and sings do in sleepy Canadian Rockies towns like acter fleeing a pursuer through the woods. songs. Possibly the screenwriter was aiming Little Big Bear, where everyone’s got time It’s hopeless: any moment now they’re going for ‘quirky’ and ‘out there’. What he’s given for one another. In the police station, his two to get caught and killed, when suddenly a us is the rejected first draft of a really bad junior officers have so little crime to solve lifeline presents itself. They see the lights of Quentin Tarantino movie. they’re playing video games. At their sugges- a car on the road. Gasping, they stagger in So no matter how much tortured angst tion, Jim heads off to the picturesque river front of it to flag it down. Cut to interior of Roth gives us, no matter how gorgeous the nearby to fish for salmon and spots his first the car. But wait: you’ll never guess who the Canadian scenery (and it really does make bear. Gosh, how delightful it’s all going to driver of the car is… you want to go there), no matter how thrill- be: a bit like that gentle 1990s comedy series Nothing wrong with the odd cliché. But ingly bloody the payback is going to be Northern Exposure… Tin Star is almost nothing but cliché and when Worth unleashes all those long-sup- Except, of course, we know that it won’t a terrible waste of a talented cast which, pressed inner demons against his tormen- because right at the beginning we’ve seen Jim besides Roth, includes the lubricious Chris- tors, it still won’t make a difference. It’s so and his family— grumpy teenage daughter; tina Hendricks from Mad Men here playing implausible, so hackneyed, that already we attractive blonde wife who insists on wander- the sexy spokeswoman for an oil compa- just don’t care.
48 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk
NOTES ON … Dover By Patrick West
hen people come to Dover, it’s GETTY IMAGES ple to be the nicest in East Kent. Go into usually to pass through. The mag- The Eight Bells Wetherspoons pub in Can- Wnificent castle on the cliffs may be non Street or the Beano Café on Worthing- a tourist attraction in its own right, but for ton Street to see the kind of warm, real-life the most part, Dover has been a place peo- community interaction that tends to be ple go through on their way to or back from imagined by soap-opera writers. the Continent. It’s never been much of a Perhaps it’s because they are aware of seaside destination. The rise of cheap flights, their town’s baleful reputation in the coun- the end of duty-free and the advent of the ty that Doverians make an extra effort with Channel Tunnel diminished its status as a strangers; I remember Belfast folk being port, and the 2008 crash hit it hard. The num- similarly cordial in the 1990s. ber of vagrants, street drinkers and empty The town has also been a relatively suc- shop premises in the centre bear witness to cessful melting pot. While Slovakian and a town that has seen better times. Balkan immigrants who reside around Yet things are looking up. Back in May, the down-at-heel London Road area do to the surprise of Doverians and the world’s Star attraction: A detail from Banksy’s mural live lives apart, the Polish and Baltic new- media, a new Banksy mural was unveiled on comers of the past 15 years have integrat- the side of an old amusement arcade in York at the centre of a huge row over whether or ed far better. Many have bilingual children Street. When I went to look at the work, it not it ought to be preserved. of school age, which enables contact with was clear that Dover had a tourist attraction Last year, the nearby and much-hated native English parents. You will hear Poles — people were coming to see it. Surprising- Burlington House — most people driving to and natives mixing as friends in cafés, and ly, the mural, depicting a man chipping away the ferry port will have noticed this brutal- Latvians talking to Doverians in grocery at one star in the EU flag, has found much ist beige eyesore — was finally demolished. stores as their customers buy cans of lager favour in the town. Its ambiguous mes- As we speak, a new shopping complex and from the Baltic. sage has been a source of much discussion. cinema is under construction in its place. All A few years ago, when a Banksy If the mural has put a smile on the face its plots have been sold. Elsewhere, empty appeared in nearby Folkestone, it was of people here, perhaps it’s because it sym- premises in Cannon Street have gradually defaced. Few were surprised; East Kent is bolises the town’s long overdue recovery. been coming back into commercial use. And Brexit country. The fact that even Banksy, The building it’s painted on was about to be local unemployment is falling. that metropolitan liberal par excellence, has demolished as part of the town’s regenera- Even if Dover has been superficially grot- put smiles on the face of Dover people is tion programme, and the mural is currently ty in recent years, I’ve always found its peo- quite remarkable.
Theatre ++++ The most provocative theatrical debate What of the decade Daily Telegraph Shadows 27 Sep 28 Oct by Chris Hannan Directed by Roxana Silbert Cast includes Olivier and Tony Award winner Ian McDiarmid
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52 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk ‘Should I tell my hostess if I notice a rat making its way across her patio?’ — Dear Mary, p61
High life was empty except for a few chic visitors and and doesn’t guarantee instant fame. In my us partygoers. It was, to use an understate- case, it was the opposite. A policeman ush-
Taki ment, paradise. ered me away until the director intervened. Now, as they say, Venice is sinking, liter- The producer of the Agnelli saga was Gray- ally, and overrun by the bane of the modern don Carter, and he has also produced Late world, tourism. Thousands upon thousands Lunch, which stars Reinaldo Herrera and are disgorged every day, and they walk about Taki talking over lunch about the good old aimlessly, taking selfies, clogging up the bridg- days. It took three years — yes, three years es and turning the sinewy narrow streets into — to film, but it’s now ready. Will it lead me Cairo-like bazaars. Great cafés such as the to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Florian are half full during peak hours, the where stars leave an imprint of their paws? I wouldn’t bet on it, but then stranger things I’m in Venice for the film festival that just Harry’s bar, once a rendezvous for have happened. Like Venice turning into Dis- ended and, as an American humorist once the chic and the beautiful, is now neyland and being overrun by Chinese mobs. wired his paper: ‘Streets full of water, stop. overrun by the obese and the ugly Send funds, stop.’ What is there to say about Venice that hasn’t already been said or writ- mobs of tourists never having heard of it, Low life ten by better men or women — Thomas thank God. Harry’s Bar, once a rendezvous Mann and Jan Morris to mention just two? for the chic and the beautiful, is now overrun Jeremy Clarke Yes, Venice evokes higher thoughts, but by the obese and the ugly. I stayed far away. not this time. I was thinking of Byron as I The Danieli was almost as bad. The Excelsior chugged past the Palazzo Mocenigo where at the Lido is the only place that evokes, via he lived, when I spotted a gondola with five its fascist architecture, a glorious past. Chinese women on board, all fiercely concen- Showing at the festival was James trating on their mobiles. ‘Stop that and look Toback’s The Private Life of a Modern at the buildings, girls,’ I yelled at them. They Woman, starring Sienna Miller and Alec completely ignored me and continued tex- Baldwin, a film that stayed with one for ting, or whatever they do nowadays, even on days after watching it. Although it was a gondola in the midst of Venetian splendour. called a masterpiece by some critics, I spot- The army patrols at Nice airport go around Venice is now a microcosm of what the ted a review in a major English newspaper three abreast, steely-eyed, fingers on the world will be like, say, 100 years from now: that claimed viewers were scrambling for trigger. They walk slowly and scrutinise the full of Chinese and Indians walking around the doors. That is an out-and-out fabrica- passengers carefully, assessing each indi- ancient monuments with vacuous expres- tion. I was present and no one left except vidual for minute clues to their psychology. sions, totally removed from their surround- for the odd oldie seeking to relieve him- or They take the incredibly boring job incred- ings. Ah, Venice! What a city it once was. herself. My friend Michael Mailer was the ibly seriously, or appear to do so, which must Anything could happen there. Its people producer of this movie that will astound you. be great comfort to those with honourable were cruel. Only a Venetian could fire at the What will further amaze you is that the same intentions but a nervous disposition. Parthenon, as Morosini once did, blowing up team, Mailer-Toback and Taki, that shone so Contrast, then, these highly disciplined the most perfect edifice ever. His descend- brilliantly in Seduced and Abandoned four men with the armed pair I saw recently ant was a great buddy of mine when we years or so ago — see Deborah’s Specta- patrolling the floor of the departures lounge were youngsters. I once asked Fabrizio how tor review (9 November 2013) — has done at Bristol airport. One had a comic, fall-guy, anyone could commit such an atrocity. He it yet again in another documentary, Venice laughter-prone face, as characterful and shrugged and asked why not. The Turks were Lives! Jimmy Toback calls it a cross between funny to look at as George Formby’s. His inside figuring that no one would ever fire on Seduced and Abandoned and The Talented boon companion looked like a great fellow the sacred site. Well, a Venetian did just that. Mr Ripley. I see it as a light version of Death to sink a few pints of cooking lager with, The Venetians also took over the Ionian in Venice, except that I don’t look at all like then go to a football match. One of them Islands, where the Taki family came from, the beautiful Silvana Mangano, who plays — hard to say which — had made a witti- keeping away the hated Turk and offering Tadzio’s mother. Actually, the documenta- cism and they were patrolling lopsidededly, us, among other goodies like titles, a Renais- ry is about the death of beauty, and Toback corpsing with laughter. In the soullessness sance, one the rest of occupied Greece never dies in the film looking as bad as Aschen- and anxiety of a British departure lounge, experienced. The results are easy to spot: bach did, but a bit heavier than Dirk. And their intimacy and unaffected mirth was a Ionian Greeks of a certain age are civilized less sweaty because he drowns in the Lido. kind of innocent rebuke. and poetic. The rest of the Hellenes may be This is all I’m allowed to reveal. I went into W.H. Smith’s ‘The Book- made of sterner stuff, but they are cruder, I also attended the HBO opening of store’ in the pathetic hope that I might and have Levantine manners. Be that as it Agnelli, a documentary about the fabled Fiat chance on something. Over several visits may, I feel little affinity with the Venice of owner, in which I had a very small part. Not to ‘The Bookstore’ at Bristol airport I have today. I used to be a regular at the Volpi ball many noticed me sitting in the audience. In looked at every title on the shelves, some- during the 1950s and 1960s, held at Palazzo fact, not a single person. I guess appearing times desperately, and not once carried any- Volpi on the Grand Canal. Venice back then in movies is not what it’s cracked up to be, thing to the till. Call me paranoid, but every the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 53 LIFE book for sale seems to have been selected display whose titles and red price-reduction club or a weekend’s bog snorkelling. to advance the cause of multiculturalism, or stickers are presumably meant to entice So I am going to need horse transport. feminism, or equality, or puerile psycholo- people into the shop. Dancing with Cats. Presumably, the No Horse-Riding policy gy, or gender ambiguity, or secularism, or a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. ‘What has resulted in quite a few people having to savage sort of capitalism, or all of the above about this?’ I scoffed, showing her the cover buy 3.5-tonne lorries to get their horses from crammed into one package. There were two of The Gods Never Left Us — Erich von their stable yards to the nearby bridleways, blocks of shelving seven feet high dedicated Däniken’s most recent appeal to the can- which is an interesting environmental posi- to the works of David Walliams. These bore nabis-smoking community. Again that com- tion for the Libs to have. titles like The Boy in the Dress, Billionaire posure. Again that slow, broadening smile, None of this prejudice is remotely legal, Boy, Gangsta Granny. The token bookshelf the unafraid eyes, the film-star teeth. Maybe of course. One of the tracks they’ve banned of black-spined ‘Classics’ — Dickens, Harp- Von Däniken is on to something, I thought. horses from is a byway — open to all non- er Lee, Dodie Smith, Virginia Woolf, Stella Over her shoulder I saw the machinegun- mechanised vehicles and horses by law Gibbons, Jane Austen, Truman Capote — toting response unit slouch past the shop — and the other is simply a road, a public was narrow. There was nothing in the True entrance. George Formby said something to highway. But I don’t think the laws mean Crime section that I wanted to read but his partner. The latter’s elbows and one knee much to these people. Or if they do, they’re hadn’t read before. I returned in desperation jerked spastically upwards, and his head shot working towards a total nationwide ban on to General Fiction, at least three-quarters of back, as he convulsed with laughter. all horse-riding anyway, on the basis that which was by women for women. a) they don’t know how to do it and b) posh, Thinking I’d give anything to meet the rich people know how to do it and they don’t person in charge of stock selection, out of Real life want to look at posh, rich people knowing curiosity, just to have a look at her, I noticed how to do anything. a cool, young, extraordinarily beautiful Melissa Kite Being part of the silent majority of young Asian woman floating between the horse-owners who are neither posh nor rich, shelves, who appeared, perhaps, to be in the I found a cheap lorry, a 1980s Ford Transit same difficulty as I was. She was swiftly and with a green cab emblazoned with faded expertly casting a gazelle’s eye along the gold lettering spelling ‘Horses’. The reg was rows of spines and finding nothing to divert all Gs and Ls and almost spelled a name. ‘It’s called Gill!’ I told the young girl who She wasn’t in the least bit had put it up for sale on Facebook, when I discomposed. I think she was a went to see it at the stable yard where she member of the global elite worked. Stefano and his boys got to work with gusto ‘It’s called Denis,’ she corrected me, flat- her sufficiently to finger it out and scan the and within a few days the upstairs of my ly, as if this were the most obvious thing in blurb on the back cover. Her interests must house started looking like the upstairs of a the world. have been eclectic because she browsed eve- house. A tiny slip of a thing with blonde hair she rything from self-help to David Walliams. ‘I’ve got walls!’ I exclaimed, after one was, so I contented myself with the thought, Disgusted, I gave up on General Fic- day. The next day: ‘I’ve got doors!’ as I climbed up into the cab, that if she could tion and had another look at Biography The day after that I had a wardrobe. ‘Oh, drive this rusted old beast then I could. and Autobiography — What Happened by you are wonderful!’ I told Stefano, and he The engine spluttered to life and I Hillary Clinton; How Not to Be a Boy by looked at me with his usual expression, a stabbed around with the long gear-stick, Robert Webb; George Michael: The Biog- bemused grin. ‘Getting… there…’ he said, in almost getting it to move, before it choked raphy; Freddie Mercury: The Biography. between the screeching of his boys putting out. ‘Oh, no petrol,’ said the girl, and went She hove to beside me. I couldn’t restrain electric saws through sheets of plasterboard. to get a can. myself. ‘What a load of utter crap!’ I ejacu- ‘There’s just one thing,’ I said. ‘What are I drove it round the car park twice. But it lated. ‘And this is supposed to be the intel- these?’ A bag of pink doorknobs lay on a had a year’s MOT. When I went back to pick ligent bit of the shop!’ table. it up, I couldn’t start it. ‘Again!’ she com- She wasn’t in the least bit discomposed. ‘You don’t like?’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t plained, and went for the can. ‘There’s £4 in I think she was a member of the global elite. be my first choice,’ I said. So he made me that now,’ she said, tipping it in. Did she want Her calm, slow, ever-widening smile said that promise to go to B&Q to buy knobs. the loose change, on top of the several thou- she was more relaxed about all this crap than ‘Yes, yes, I will,’ I said. ‘Just as soon as I get sand I had just given her? I was. It said that she hadn’t really expect- back from picking up this lorry.’ ‘Lorry?’ he I decided to brazen it out, driving off with ed anything intelligent in a bookshop cater- said, frowning deeply to signify that he was a wave and a screaming of gears. ‘Don’t take ing for a mass British audience. Propaganda, moving from bemusement to bafflement. yer foot off the accelerator!’ the girl called control, a dumbing-down and a tidy profit: While the Albanian boys have been after me. ‘Come on, Gill,’ I said, as we roared so many birds killed with one stone, Allah be making me a house, I have been buying a down the country lanes in first gear. After praised. What better outcome could possibly horse lorry. Just a little one, to transport the stopping at a petrol station in Woking, to be imagined? What are you worrying about, thoroughbred to somewhere not run by the the fascination of the locals on their way to it said? Of course it’s all crap! Actually, I Liberal Democrats, where I am allowed to mosque, the little lorry cheered up consider- wasn’t shopping, it said, I was just checking ride her. ably and we chugged home nicely. on the levels here. Oh, I see now, it said. You Realistically, the No Horse-Riding signs I’m thrilled. I’m going to use it to go drag are joking, of course. You are only pretend- in this village are not coming down while the hunting when the season starts next month. ing to be angry. You British are so funny. Libs are in charge, and they will be until at The way things are going, the left will prob- Class, diet, money, education, beauty and least next year, when the borough elections ably succeed in getting pretend hunting brains: my goodness, I thought, there must are held, and possibly for ever if enough Tory banned soon, as a pretext to the ban on all be a section of the global elite that has abso- voters go on buying into the idea that vot- horse-riding. After that, who knows? Stiff lutely everything, even the good manners of ing Lib Dem locally is a harmless and rather penalties for the illegal manufacturing of common decency. We went out of the shop fun hobby, a dalliance or flirtation with the jodhpurs, certainly, and possibly a year’s together. On the way, we paused at the table gauche or risqué, rather like a trip to a fetish imprisonment for the wearing of wax jackets.
54 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk Winemaker’s lunch with Gosset Champagne
Join us in the Spectator boardroom on Wednesday 11 October 2017 for the next in this year’s series of Spectator Winemaker’s Lunches with Odilon de Varine, Chef du Cave and deputy MD at Champagne Gosset, the oldest wine producer in all Champagne, founded in 1584.
Champagne is in Odilon’s blood and there is nothing he doesn’t know about the region and its wines. He was born and raised in Reims, and prior to joining Champagne Gosset in 2006, was cellarmaster at Champagne Deutz and then at Champagne Henriot.
During a delicious four-course cold lunch provided by Forman & Field, Odilon will introduce and discuss a glittering selection of his champagnes, including the Gosset Grand Rosé NV (en magnum), the Gosset Grande Réserve Brut NV, the Gosset Grand Blanc de Blancs NV, the Gosset Grand Millésime Brut 2006 and the Gosset Grand Blanc de Noirs.
These really are exceptional champagnes and our lunches are hugely popular, so do book promptly to avoid disappointment.
The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP Wednesday 11 October 2017 | 12.30 p.m. | £75
For further information and to book www.spectator.co.uk/gosset | 020 7961 0015 LIFE The turf a caution did not do him a kindness — he Bridge simply ensured that the wolves would circle Robin Oakley closer. Every sport is now under the all-see- Janet de Botton ing eyes of snap-happy citizens and social- media bloggers. A more unpleasant example of social This summer was the longest I have gone with- media’s role came with the tragedy of Per- out playing bridge since I began about 20 years mian’s death at Arlington Park. The colt had ago. Not one single game, unless you count won the Dante Stakes at York, a recognised Bridge Baron, the computer programme that Derby trial, and the King Edward Stakes at generates billions of deals to hone one’s skills Royal Ascot. At the end of the American and fend off withdrawal symptoms. Since my race on 12 August, Permian stumbled and return I’ve hardly had time to unpack: both Racing moves off the back pages only when unseated his jockey William Buick. Sadly, TGR’s and Young Chelsea’s autumn leagues its opponents have bad news to gloat over. he had broken a foreleg. Assistant trainer have started, the EBU’s Premier League Two examples lately have been the disciplin- kicked off last weekend and we will be playing ing of Irish jump jockey Davy Russell for All sport is now under the all-seeing the Vilnius Cup when you (I hope) read this. striking a wayward horse, and the death of eyes of snap-happy citizens and The Premier League is the contest that the Flat-racer Permian, trained in Yorkshire social-media bloggers decides who will play for England in the by Mark Johnston, after he broke a leg as he Camrose Trophy (the home nations champi- crossed the finishing line at Arlington Park Charlie Johnston, who had travelled with onships). There are now three divisions (eight in Illinois. him to the US, ran to assess the extent of teams in each) and it is played over three The Russell saga reminded me of the the horse’s injuries. Immediately, he phoned weekends. Relegation and promotion make morality tale of the frozen bird in a Rus- his father to tell him that Permian must be it highly competitive and highly exciting. sian forest that falls from the sky exhaust- spared further suffering and asked the race- Inevitably, there are heated post mortems ed. A kindly hunter places the tiny creature course vets to euthanise their stable star as and today’s hand was one of them. My partner, inside his fur jacket, where it thaws. Anx- quickly as possible. the brilliant Artur Malinowski, was the only ious to carry on his shooting, the hunter As Charlie confirms in the stable’s declarer to make 3NT and with that delightful spots a heap of still-steaming elk dung monthly journal, the Kingsley Klarion, he blend of arrogance and smugness he told us and places the creature in it to continue its told a press agency at the time that he got how ‘easy-peasy’ it was: recovery. Restored to health, the rescued to Permian within 30 seconds of the acci- bird sits up and sings joyously. Unfortu- dent. Unfortunately, this was reported as ‘I Dealer North Love all nately, his song alerts a passing wolf, who was with him for 30 seconds’ and that was snaps him up for lunch thus confirm- enough for the Twitter trolls. While good z A J 10 8 7 ing that ‘He who places you in the shit is folk on social media sent messages of con- y A 10 not necessarily your enemy. He who gets dolence to Mark, Charlie and all connected X 10 9 4 2 you out of the shit is not necessarily your with a popular horse, the other sort posted w 6 5 friend. But if you are in the shit, at all costs hurtful ones suggesting that a noble beast’s don’t sing about it.’ life had been written off callously within z 3 Before a race at Tramore, Davy Russell’s half a minute, that Permian had been over- z K Q 9 5 2 mount Kings Dolly approached the ‘show’ raced and that ‘inexperienced staff’ had y Q J 9 5 3 N y 6 2 W E hurdle at speed and halted abruptly, lift- been sent to the US with the horse. X K Q 5 3 J 8 7 S X ing him out of the saddle. The jockey, who They could not have been more wrong. w Q 10 4 w 9 8 7 insisted he did so without malice, and only Mark Johnston, a trainer for 30 years, is to get the horse back under control, then famous for the fitness of his charges and z 6 4 punched Kings Dolly on the neck. Soon a Permian was a sound horse who never y K 8 7 4 video clip and comments began circulat- missed a day’s exercise. Both Mark and X A 6 ing on social media. Russell complained of Charlie his son, who is 26, are qualified w A K J 3 2 media harassment, and with his defenders vets and every issue of the Klarion carries insisting that the blow wouldn’t have dam- a feature by the stable vet illustrating the West North East South aged Kings Dolly the jockey escaped ini- symptoms and treatment of regular horse Pass pass 1NT tially with an official caution. In reaction ailments. In Illinois the horse came first to Pass 2y pass 2z to the media furore over such leniency, the the extent that Charlie later apologised to Pass 3NT all pass Irish Turf authorities recalled the case to the injured jockey William Buick (who had an appeals body under a former supreme fractured his T12 vertebrae) for leaving Everyone was in the same contract and court judge. He imposed a five-day riding him to the care of others as he dashed to everyone I spoke to had the same lead of ban on Russell for ‘conduct prejudicial to reach his stricken horse. the yQ. Most declarers, wanting to preserve the integrity, proper conduct or good repu- Regrettably, when horses break their the precious entry to the Spade suit, won the tation of horseracing’, reduced by one day legs, in nine cases out of ten the only humane first heart in hand and led a Spade to dummy. because of the ‘strain and pressure’ exerted course is to have them put down and it is far Calamity! East won and played another Heart on Davy by the media. better to do that while they are still cush- and now, whatever he does, declarer can make Like the rest of racing, Davy Russell, ioned against the full pain of the injury by only eight tricks. ‘Bad luck, partner,’ sympa- a genius at Cheltenham and a true horse- the racing adrenaline still coursing through thised East. ‘Nothing to be done.’ Really? At man who achieves his results more often their system. Charlie Johnston was in fact the other table, Artur won the heart lead in than not by notably sympathetic handling doing the kindest thing he could do for poor dummy and took the losing club finesse. West of his mounts rather than by whip-happy Permian. The sad thing about social media is innocently continued with the yJ, pinning the aggression, knew perfectly well that he had that it gives equal exposure to the opinions 10, which Declarer won and played y8 estab- done wrong and harmed racing’s image. of those genuinely in the know and to the lishing the y7 for his ninth trick! Say what you The official who initially let him off with pig-ignorant. like — the boy done good.
56 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk SPECTATOR WINE JONATHAN RAY
ur partners Yapp Bros have just The 2015 Ardèche Cabernet Sauvi- the Languedoc these days. It has an entic- scooped the coveted Wine List gnon, (4) is one of Jason Yapp’s so-called ing herbal, garrigue-like bouquet, buckets Oof the Year gong at the recent ‘go-to wines’ that he drinks at home. When of ripe, red and dark berry fruit, peppery International Wine Challenge, along with the French wine lake threatened to get out undertones and a fresh, succulent finish that Languedoc Merchant of the Year and Loire of control, enlightened producers in the simply forces you to take another gulp. Merchant of the Year. In their commenda- Ardèche grubbed up their over-yielding I gather that it’s a standard on the list tion, the judges said: ‘The Yapp Bros list is vineyards and concentrated on producing at Le Gavroche, where they certainly know concise, beautifully illustrated with great a good wine when they see one. £10.25 down writing and offers much more than a simple It’s exuberantly fresh and vibrant from £11.25. list of wines.’ I think it’s fair to say that Jason with nettles and elderflower on the Finally, the 2016 ‘Equinoxe’ Crozes-Her- Yapp is feeling rather chipper. nose and zesty citrus on the palate mitage, (6) from Maxime Graillot, son of So much so, in fact, that not only did the celebrated Alain, whose Rhône wines I Jason put up a particularly fine selection for single varietals of fine quality and decent adore (his spectacular white Crozes Hermit- me to whittle down on your behalf, he also price, such as this. Jammy and juicy with soft age is one of my desert-island wines). M.G. lopped a quid off every bottle and promised tannins and a faint hint of mint, it’s perfect has clearly earned his spurs, because this 100 to put a copy of Yapp Brothers’ award-win- quaffing fare to see one through to the per cent Syrah is a sleek, black beauty, for- ning, David Chandler-illustrated wine list in autumn. £8.50 down from £9.50. ward and accessible, pure and clean. I loved every case, along with a bound gift pack of The 2013 Ch. Milhau-Lacugue ‘Cuvée its spicy, ripe, bramble fruit and its silky tan- ten of David’s collage-based postcards. Magali’, (5) from Saint-Chinian is a cracking nins and long finish. £14.75 down from £15.75. We start with the 2016 Ardèche Viog- blend of Syrah, Grenache and Cinsault that The mixed case has two bottles of each nier ‘Grès du Trias’, (1). Viognier is a tricky typifies the value and quality to be found in wine and delivery, as ever, is free. grape, both to cultivate and to vinify, and outside its spiritual heartland of Condrieu, it’s rare to find affordable examples that ORDER FORM Spectator Wine Offer have the typical peach ’n’ apricot charac- ter its admirers so love. This is a charmer, www.spectator.co.uk/wine-club though, produced by the excellent Vign- Yapp Brothers, The Old Brewery, Water Street, Mere, Wiltshire, BA12 6DY erons Ardèchois cooperative and, consid- Tel: 01747 860423; Email: [email protected] ering you can pay northwards of £45 for Prices in form are per case of 12 List price Club price No. Condrieu these days, I reckon it’s a bit of a White 1 2016 Ardèche Viognier ‘Grès du Trias’, 14%vol £136.20 £124.20 find. £10.35 down from £11.35. 2 2016 Ch. Roubaud Blanc ‘Cuvée Passion’, 13%vol £155.40 £143.40 The 2016 Ch. Roubaud Blanc ‘Cuvée Passion’, (2) comes from Costières de Nîmes 3 2016 Domaine des Bruniers Quincy, 13% vol £174.00 £162.00 and the vineyards planted along the Rhône Red 4 2015 Ardèche Cabernet Sauvignon, 13% vol £114.00 £102.00 delta. They’ve made wine here since Roman 5 2013 Ch. Milhau-Lacugue ‘Cuvée Magali’, 14% vol £135.00 £123.00 times and in a nod to that heritage the 6 ‘Equinoxe’ Crozes-Hermitage, 13% vol £189.00 £177.00 bottle is embossed with the Nîmes emblem Mixed 7 Sample case, two bottles each of the above £189.00 £138.60 of a crocodile and a palm tree, denoting the African exotica that returning legionaries Total Mastercard/Visa no. had seen. Produced from old vine Grenache Start date Expiry date Sec. code Prices include VAT and delivery on Blanc and Roussanne, which both thrive in the British mainland. Payment should the alluvial soil and bask in 300 days of sun- Issue no. Signature be made either by cheque with the or- shine, the wine is wonderfully fresh, ripe, der, payable to Yapp Brothers, or by herbal and creamy. £11.95 down from £12.95. Please send wine to debit or credit card, details of which The 2016 Domaine des Bruniers Quincy, Name may be telephoned or faxed. This offer, Address which is subject to availability, closes on (3) comes from the Loire Valley and France’s 28 October 2017. second oldest Appellation Contrôlée area after Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Made from 100 Postcode per cent Sauvignon Blanc, it’s exuberantly Telephone fresh and vibrant with nettles and elderflow- Email* er on the nose and zesty citrus on the palate. Safe place to leave your wine Thanks to the appellation being a little less well-known than its Loire Valley siblings *Only provide your email address if you would like to receive offers or communications by email from The Spectator (1828) Limited, part of the Press Holdings of Sancerre and Menetou Salon, it represents Group. See Classified pages for Data Protection Act Notice. The Spectator (1828) Limited, part of the Press Holdings Group would like to pass your details on to other carefully selected organisations in order that they can offer you information, goods and services that may be of interest to you. If you would prefer that excellent value. £13.50 down from £14.50. your details are not passed to such organisations, please tick this boxR. the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 57 LIFE Chess Competition Study in obsession Watching the clock Raymond Keene Lucy Vickery
Genna Sosonko is a writer and grandmaster Diagram 1 In Competition No. 3015 you were invited to who straddles two great chess cultures, Holland submit a poem about Big Ben’s bongs. and the USSR, his chosen and native lands. His rDb1W4kD The decision to remove the 13-tonne bell latest book, The Rise and Fall of David Bronstein during the four-year restoration works on (Elk and Ruby Publishing House), does not 0pDWDWDp Elizabeth Tower has caused a right old ding- contain any actual chess analysis but instead dong, with senior ministers, including the focuses on Bronstein’s decade-long obsession WDpgWDWh PM, joining the fray. with his narrow failure to become world DWDpDpDW champion in his 1951 match with Botvinnik. There were lots of poems about health Bronstein was one of the most creative players in W)W)WHWD and safety gone mad, though given that the history of the game, yet his inability to unseat being at close quarters to the Great Bell’s Botvinnik gnawed at his soul and acted as a block DWGQ)W)B 120-decibel bong is the equivalent of putting on any future attempt to seize the supreme title, PDWDWDW) your ear right next to a police siren, I am not or even to win a major tournament. so sure about that. Commendations go to A good counterpart to Sosonko’s book is $WDWDRIW Nathan Weston and Adam Rylander (aged Bronstein Move by Move (Everyman Chess), 15). And with echoes of Wordsworth, Gray, by the reliable Steve Giddins, upon which the Auden, Lear and Newbolt echoing in my notes to this week’s game are based. Diagram 2 ears, I award the bonus fiver to Bill Green-
well. The rest take £25. Bronstein-Botvinnik: World Championship W4WDb1Wi Moscow (Game 22) 1951; Dutch Defence We were first pets of Bosanquet, $WDW4WDp Burnet and Sandy Gall: 1 d4 e6 2 c4 f5 3 g3 Nf6 4 Bg2 Be7 5 Nc3 WDpgWDWD Sonorous, we tried to whet the appetite of all — 0-0 6 e3 d5 7 Nge2 c6 8 b3 Ne4 9 0-0 Nd7 ITN is never wrong! 10 Bb2 Ndf6 A typical Stonewall. White has a DpDpHpDW Bong! and Bong! and Bong! and Bong! slight advantage thanks to the weakness of e5, but W)W)nDWD Black is very solid. 11 Qd3 g5 This is not quite When the hammer strikes our bell, the attacking gesture it looks. Black has a more DQDW)W)W We fly from out his throat: subtle, positional idea in mind — he wants to play Deep as from an ancient well, our half-hypnotic … g4, so as to secure control of the e4-square and WDWDWDB) note — stop White organising f3 and e4. 12 cxd5 exd5 $WDWGWIW Listen to our one-sound song: 13 f3 Nxc3 14 Bxc3 g4 15 fxg4 Nxg4 16 Bong! and Bong! and Bong! and Bong! Bh3 Nh6 17 Nf4 Bd6 18 b4 (see diagram 1) White aims to play a minority attack with b5 and Now we must rest, and that’s a fact: create a weakness in the black queenside. 18 … together for White. His knight irrupts into the We’re like the government — a6 19 a4 Qe7 20 Rab1 b5 This is one of the enemy position, exploiting the classic Ponderous, a little cracked, no instinct to repent: standard ways of meeting the minority attack. For Stonewall weakness on e5, and Black’s game is Hear the ding-dong of its throng! this to work, he needs to be able to prevent White now extremely hard to defend. 31 … Be8 Bong! and Bong! and Bong! and Bong! from playing e4. 21 Bg2 Ng4 22 Bd2 Nf6 23 (see diagram 2) 32 g4 A lovely positional Bill Greenwell Rb2 Bd7 Bronstein criticised this as allowing blow. With White’s pieces mainly infiltrating White a favourable regrouping, and instead down the queenside, Bronstein suddenly opens Since eighteen fifty-nine, Big Ben has tolled recommended 23 … Ne4. 24 Ra1 Ne4 25 Be1 a second front on the other wing. 32 … fxg4 the hours of one to twelve for England’s peers; Rfe8 26 Qb3 Kh8 27 Rba2 Qf8 28 Nd3 The With time-trouble adding to his other woes, yet wear-and-tear has put his voice on hold knight moves away, putting paid to any thoughts Botvinnik collapses. Black is still hanging on and stopped his hands, his clapper, wheels and of … Bxf4, and also defends the b4-pawn while after the cold-blooded 32 … Bxe5 33 dxe5 Rg7 gears. taking aim at c5 and e5. Now a possible Ne5 must 34 Rxg7 Qxg7 35 gxf5 Qxe5 36 Ra7 Kg8. 33 His stately bongs, before, were briefly stayed always be reckoned with, hoping to open up the Bxe4 dxe4 34 Bh4 Rxe5 35 dxe5 Bxe5 by zeppelins, by resting birds, by snow; long diagonal, if Black should capture twice on e5. 36 Rf1 Qg8 37 Bg3 Fatally luring the bishop a fallen workman’s hammer once delayed repairs while German bombers struck their blow. 28 … Rab8 29 axb5 axb5 30 Ra7 Re7 31 off the long diagonal. 37 … Bg7 38 Qxg8+ Today, uncanny silence looms until Ne5 Things are now really starting to come Black resigns a four-year spell, replete with doubts and fears, has passed; but ne’er did such a bitter pill taste better for the chimes of coming years. PUZZLE NO. 474 Rejuvenation’s borrowed at a cost — Black to play. This position is from Carlsen-Bu, WDWDWDWD a bell un-struck marks time forever lost. Paul Freeman Fidé World Cup, Tbilisi 2017. Can you spot Black’s 0pDWDWDW winning coup? Answers to me at The Spectator by WDWgWDWi There’s a breathless hush over Bridge Street, Tuesday 19 September or via email to victoria@ All along the Embankment as well; spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first DWDpDWDW Poor worthies of Whitehall, bereft of correct answer out of a hat. Please include a post- The adagio bongs of their bell. al address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. WDW)WDrD The nine-foot diameter alloy DW)WDNDp Leviathan, thirteen tonnes tare, Last week’s solution 1 … Qxc6+ Remains tristamente sordino Last week’s winner D.V. Jones, Bitterne, P)WDWDWD For the four-year-long mega-repair. Southampton This state-of-the-art restoration’s $WDKDWDW A cool forty-million-quid job; For that price the workmen should silence The whole ruddy Westminster mob.
58 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk LIFE
So, Ladies and Lords in attendance, 12345678 Every wizened or callow MP, Crossword Never send to ask for whom the bell tolls — 2327: 9 101112 Assuredly, ’tis not for thee. Mike Morrison Exhibition 13 14 15 16 Big Ben has bonged its knell — its ‘parting day’ by Columba 17 18 As journalists note, sadly, in its lee. 19 20 21 The tourist with his guidebook plods away Five unclued lights are titles And Westminster’s the sadder, just like me. 22 23 of works by a person whose name is formed by two unclued Beneath that gilded tower, by Abbey’s shade, 24 25 lights. Three clues are defini- Act piled on Act in history’s mould’ring heap, tions only; their answers exhibit 26 27 28 29 Foundations for democracy were laid all the unchecked letters of the Where rude MPs now argue, tweet and sleep. titles. One unclued light con- 30 31 32 sists of three words, and one The boast of Big Ben’s bongs, the pompous Tower, consists of two words. 33 34 35 That status being a UK icon gave, Now falls diminished to each unmarked hour Across 36 37 38 And Westminster as silent as the grave. 1 Action in public at an 39 40 end (8) On Radio 4 recorded bongs command 9 Fan-shaped tag left 41 Attention — but their fake tones we despise. among lot (10) This bong-less time is symbol of a land 16 Tawdry stuff in petition 42 43 That cannot speak with sense in Europe’s eyes.. for monument? (6) D.A. Prince 17 Lines in essence ignoring pressure causing poverty 4 Smooth second lap (5) A first prize of £30 for the first Benumbed Big Ben (long may his grime be (5) 6 Clean network up, correct solution opened on 2 greased) 18 Expert, as admitted, is possessed by keenness, first October. There are two runners- Awoke one noon to find his bongs had ceased shrewd (5) off (7) up prizes of £20. (UK solvers And, in the gloom, beheld a workman toil 20 Doctor, florid, missing old 7 Sudden episode of illness can choose to receive the latest Armed with a bag of tools and can of oil; country (7) (6) edition of the Chambers ‘What brings you here?’ Ben asked. The kindly 22 Dodgy dealer receiving 8 King not in pack (4) dictionary instead of cash — man money for stone (7) 10 Former student’s ring the word ‘dictionary’.) Smiled pityingly and raised his oily can, 25 Blunder from rogue short unbounded slander Entries to: Crossword 2327, ‘I bring to life,’ he said, ‘each battered bell of time (5) accepted (6) The Spectator, 22 Old Queen That bongs no more but once served all men well.’ 26 Returned a broken plate (5) 11 Workers, note, united in Street, London SW1H 9HP. ‘And shall I be among them?’ Big Ben said. 28 Bad end of move drills (9) Please allow six weeks for prize The workman turned and sadly shook his head. revolutionary attempted 12 Make sensational variety delivery. ‘Then,’ sighed the bell, ‘record one who was called (7) of meals to admire (13) To bong his best, but, being cracked, was flawed!’ 31 Absolute rule in form of 13 Spots and dots in plaster Four sombre years passed by in silence deep meditation about garments surface? Not so (8) When suddenly, as if aroused from sleep, (7) 15 Convivial, imbibing All London’s mighty bells rang loud and long 33 Bone, one with problem, everything in wineglass (7) And lo! Big Ben produced the loudest bong. broken by force (7) 19 Good and quiet in odd Name Alan Millard 37 Delay embracing pubs or restaurants (9, two independent destiny (5) words) Address There’s a God-almighty ding-dong 38 Bleak syllabus, first to last 23 Periodical energy, working About the absent bing-bong (5) in east (7) As powers-that-be emasculate Big Ben. 40 Leaves debate about 27 Fruit consumed by insect Behind this ringtone hoo-hah houses (3) for nourishment (7) Is an idiotic Pooh-Bah, 42 Substitute, unknown after 29 Being in a rage (6) The saviour, he says, of working men hesitation, brooded (6) 30 Find out about better part Under threat each quarter hour, 43 Can you be in trouble for of antenna (6) While refurbishing the tower… resilience? (8) 32 Lack of passion (6) Soon, time itself will be beyond our ken. 34 Positive demon in rowing Email Down boat (5) Let’s hope there’s no more blips — 2 Bird in river valley mostly 35 Break before noon for Just imagine if the pips (5) pancake (5) Were silenced by an H & S decree! 3 Minister, weak, in bad 36 Complete yellow house (4) There should be some sort of chime shape (6) To mark official time… What next? Will they abandon GMT? Paul Evans SOLUTION TO 2324: IN THE FRAME
NO. 3018: GET A LIFE 11, 42 and perimeter entries are titles of COMPUTER- Last autumn’s bestselling Little Book of ANIMATED FILMS. Hygge has been followed by another how- First prize B. Midgley, Ettington, Stratford-upon-Avon to-be-happy manual, The Little Book of Runners-up Arabella Grandage, Bradenham, Bucks; Lykke. You are invited to leap aboard the D.G. Tallis, Oxford bandwagon and provide an extract of up to 150 words from your own Little Book of [fill in the gap]. Please email entries, with a word count, to [email protected] by midday on 27 September. the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 59 LIFE Status Anxiety hard work etc, in private. It’s do as I universities accused her of ‘moral say, not as I do, which is odd because toxicity’ and ‘intellectual bankruptcy’. Do what they do, the liberal intelligentsia claim to care It seems extraordinary that there about the least well-off. If they want is so little tolerance of a pretty stand- not what they say to help them, why not recommend ard conservative argument in Penn- Toby Young the values that serve them and their sylvania’s universities. But, of course, middle-class friends so well? this liberal McCarthyism isn’t con- Wax and Alexander were careful fined to just one state. The politi- not to link these values with any cal scientist Charles Murray, who ast month, two law professors religious or ethnic group. They con- expressed similar views in his book named Amy Wax and Larry demned the rap culture of inner- Coming Apart: The State of White LAlexander published a piece city blacks, the anti-assimilationist America, 1960-2010, had to have a in the Philadelphia Inquirer praising attitude of some Hispanics and the police escort to speak at Harvard last ‘bourgeois’ values. They argued that bad habits of some working-class week. The evolutionary biologist Bret many of the social problems afflicting whites, particularly having children Weinstein is in the process of suing the American working class, such as out of wedlock. Their point was that Evergreen State College in Wash- the opioid epidemic, are partly due to all Americans had suffered from ington for failing to protect him from the decline of these values and that rejecting bourgeois values, just as all left-wing activists when he refused reviving them might go some way to had gained from embracing them in to leave the campus at the behest of help. They summarised them as fol- the past. They praised ‘the old pre- black students who were expelling lows: ‘Get married before you have cepts’ as the glue that bound the the university’s white population to children and strive to stay married American people together, and linked make a political point. for their sake. Get the education you the emergence of identity politics and Perhaps the most absurd exam- need for gainful employment, work cultural atomisation to their decline. ple is a decision by the University hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra Much of this is also true of Brit- of California, Berkeley, to offer stu- mile for your employer or client. Be a ain, and similar pieces have appeared dents ‘counselling’ to help them patriot, ready to serve the country. Be in the Telegraph and the Daily Mail recover from a forthcoming talk by neighbourly, civic-minded, and chari- — I’ve written some of them myself. the conservative pundit Ben Shapiro. table. Avoid coarse language in pub- But such articles don’t cause much of ‘We are deeply concerned about the lic. Be respectful of authority. Eschew a stir here, whereas in America this impact some speakers may have substance abuse and crime.’ piece has ignited a firestorm. At the on individuals’ sense of safety and That is a fairly uncontroversial Pennsylvania Law School, 33 of Amy belonging,’ it said. set of precepts and it’s hard to deny Wax’s academic colleagues wrote an Luckily, things haven’t reached that those who follow them are more open letter to ‘categorically reject this point here, but we shouldn’t be likely to lead happy, productive lives. If the liberal her claims’. The Law School’s chap- complacent. Last week, Oxford vice- The authors pointed out that most intelligentsia ter of the National Lawyers Guild chancellor Louise Richardson got successful Americans, including those care about condemned her views as ‘an explicit into trouble when she said she didn’t academics, writers, artists, actors and the least and implicit endorsement of white take seriously those students who journalists who preach the gospel of supremacy’ and said she shouldn’t complain about dons with anti-homo- personal liberation, tend to live by well-off, why be allowed to teach a mandatory sexual views. If free speech is to sur- these values themselves. They accused not recommend first-year course since it would mean vive on our campuses, we need to do the chattering classes of hypocri- the values ‘students of colour and members of everything we can to defend it. sy: they espouse an anti-bourgeois, the LGBTQIA community’ being hedonistic philosophy in public, that serve ‘exposed to bigotry’. And 18 law Toby Young is associate editor while practising fidelity, abstinence, them so well? professors from other Pennsylvania of The Spectator.
MICHAEL HEATH
60 the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk Spectator Sport t is now a sweat-inducingly short ful form. And Essex, in Division 2 a Itime before Alastair Cook and year ago, are poised to win the whole Why did you A.N. Other walk out at the Gabba in County Championship, possibly this Brisbane to take on the fire and fury week. Still a few thrills and spills, so to do it, Roy? of Australia’s pace attack in the first speak, left in the long-form game yet. Roger Alton Ashes Test. Joe Root is being pretty bullish about the series — and you hris Froome is one of the most wouldn’t expect him to be anything Cextraordinary British sportsmen else — but I can’t see it myself unless in history, with four Tours de France oor old Roy Hodgson, why did he gets superhuman performances and now the Tour of Spain as well. But he take on Crystal Palace? He out of himself and Ben Stokes, and why does nobody seem to love him? P was having lunch at a Côte in a Mason Crane proves to be a leg spin- Some of it is obvious: being resident salubrious suburb of south-west Lon- ner in the Shane Warne class. in Monaco doesn’t make you a folk don the other day, indistinguishable We have too many weak links in hero. His goading of Wiggins when in his blazer and slacks from all the our batting and our bowlers are pre- he won the tour in 2012 and Froome other old boys there enjoying a lei- dominantly set up for English condi- was just one of the team didn’t help surely retirement and looking for- tions. Jimmy Anderson is the smartest either. If only he’d get off his bike and ward to a postprandial nap. Roy is a seam bowler most of us have ever thump someone, or run off with Miss charming man, and one of a vanish- seen, but he has never taken more World — but we might have to wait a ing number of football managers to than four wickets in a Test in Austral- long time. have hinted at a non-footballing cul- ia, and in 13 Tests averages fewer than tural hinterland, entirely suited to a four wickets a match. If England can ibiana Steinhaus is a 38-year-old life of leisure. get Mark Wood fit, he at least has the BHanover cop who last weekend Yet now he is willingly going once pace to unsettle batsmen on Austral- became the first woman to referee a more unto the god-awful breach that ian pitches. But the Aussies haven’t German Bundesliga match. She did is Premier League management. lost in Brisbane for nearly 30 years: no it very well too. Glass ceilings are Imagine: wet afternoons at Selhurst wonder it’s known as the Gabbatoir. being smashed all over the place and Park trying to lift a struggling team it would be nice to think that can hap- out of the mire, surrounded by dis- or those of us nutty enough to pen here. I have my doubts though: it gruntled south Londoners who Fenjoy the isolation of being a spec- wasn’t that long ago, I am reminded already want you out, rather than a tator at county cricket games, consid- by an excellent new website, sport500, sun-dappled square near the villa in Imagine: wet er this: the three counties who had the that this conversation took place Portugal, enjoying a succulent pastel afternoons at title within their grasp on the last day between Andy Gray and Richard Keys de nata and a few chapters of the lat- Selhurst Park of last year’s race — Middlesex, who on Sky Sports after the appointment of est Sebastian Faulks in the company surrounded won it, Yorkshire and Somerset — are a woman assistant referee. Gray: ‘Can of a chilled rosé poured by the effer- all now in the bottom half of the table, you believe that? Women don’t know vescent Mrs H. Must be mad, but by disgruntled and could be in a relegation dogfight the offside rule.’ Keys: ‘Course they then I guess most of them are. Londoners were it not for Warwickshire’s woe- don’t.’ They were sacked.
DEAR MARY YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
A. This was undoubtedly a breach a rat making its way along her outside my house, though the road of etiquette, made worse by the patio. He did not allude to this in outside his — and his drive — are Peer’s assumption that others conversation with his hostess but empty. I’m not sure whether this present would be flattered by being wondered afterwards what the odd behaviour is the start of a new privy to a call between grandees. correct social response might be turf war, but I’d like to head it off Yet you were no more having in such a situation. To tell or not without confrontation. What do greatness thrust upon you than to tell? What would you advise? you suggest? had you had to sit through a call — B.W., London W6 — R.M., by email. between the peer and Ernie, Benny Q. My partner and I recently Hill’s milkman. It was a double A. Some people, wrongly, have A. One in five Britons is alleged had two close friends — one a breach, since the Peer should have shame issues about hosting to be involved in a dispute with a Peer, the other a former Member immediately informed the former rats. They attack even the neighbour. It could be that yours of the Scottish Parliament — PM that he was at a lunch table most hygienic properties. The feels psychologically comfortable over for lunch. During the course and with whom. No call should considerate response is to wait if he has an ongoing tension close of an otherwise splendid meal, be taken at the lunch table. If an until eating has stopped, then to home, and is unconsciously our friend from the House of urgent interruption is expected remark that you have just noticed trying to provoke one. Or he may Lords took a ten-minute call and cannot be avoided, then this ‘a very speedy hedgehog on the be concealing from someone that from a former prime minister, must be announced with apologies patio — oh! It’s already gone’. he owns a car. Put a postcard on remaining at the table for the prior to sitting down and the The host will get the message his windscreen inviting him for a duration of the somewhat recipient of the call should leave without being humiliated. glass of champagne. In this way banal exchange. Should we be the room to take it. you might tweak out of him the honoured to mix in such lofty Q. Having moved into an affluent reason for the mystery parking. circles, or should we be offended Q. I recently took a friend to Home Counties town, I am Since feuds are more easily by such a breach of etiquette? tea with my mother. Seated perturbed that my neighbour perpetuated with strangers, you — C.W.H., East Lothian facing the window, he noticed insists on parking on the road should see an end to the nuisance. the spectator | 16 september 2017 | www.spectator.co.uk 61 LIFE Food tendencies during something called Creme Egg lovers’. The Regent Palace ‘the seven-day war’. I had not heard Hotel is now an Ugg Boot shop; the In silent misremembrance of this. Either it was a secret sequel native rough trade, so bewitching to to the six-day war, shrouded by the the young suburbanite, have been Tanya Gold global Jewish media conspiracy which replaced by the fashion hags at their somehow includes Rupert Murdoch, fake university on Greek Street; the or people who hate Israel have added bookshops of Charing Cross Road an extra day. sell novelty gifts, if they still exist. Foxlow is consolation in a tall This is the fourth in the Foxlow stone house. Like almost everything chain and it comes from the makers these days, it is something built from of Hawksmoor, specialists in blood a misremembrance of something else and English baroque, who do a good (in this case an American diner), but steak and a bacon chop that can pen- it is reasonably charming for Soho, etrate the subconscious unasked. The which is hellish now, and for all the others are at Chiswick, Clerkenwell oxlow is near Golden Square in wrong reasons. It is no longer the and Balham. west Soho, where drunken hacks addled hell of the Colony Room, It is decorated like the Bette F used to take long drunken lunch- in which a drunk could suck on the Davis vs Joan Crawford feud; squares, es before having stupid drunken ideas. It comes from extremities of her own shame near curves, splashes of red and plen- My favourite stupid drunken idea was moderately famous artists, but the ty of alcohol. It calls itself ‘a neigh- from a Guardian hack and it involved the makers of more organised hell of Brent Cross bourhood restaurant’ but that is an renting an ice-cream van and asking Hawksmoor, shopping centre, where she can, if Americanism — a delusion — we can Nick Cohen and A.A. Gill to drive specialists so moved, visit Accessorize with her forget about. Soho is not a neighbour- around in it, selling ice creams, bick- mother. The restaurants are stupid: hood at all, although it used to be; for ering and hopefully breaking down, in blood Hip Chips, Mister Lasagna, the Cad- that, you need neighbours and here before writing up the experience for and English bury’s Creme Egg Hunters’ Lodge there are only clients. No, Foxlow is a Silly Season special. But drunk- baroque that offers ‘an immersive haven for a theatre that serves the sort of food en hacks no longer take long drunk- that numbs, steadily: immense break- en lunches in Soho. They get drunk at fasts; steaks (hangar, sirloin, ribeye, home, if there is one, or drink in the flat iron); lovely, flaky fried chickens; queue at Eat, if they can afford to eat. a baked Alaska, for nostalgia; sun- The piece was not commissioned, the daes; ice creams; ribs. They serve it in years passed, and I am now a guest at the quiet, for on a weekend morning, the funeral of my own profession each Foxlow is as silent as a glade. Here day. A.A. Gill is dead, Nick Cohen is you can pretend you are something sober, and even Silly Season has gone. that you are not, living somewhere (That Jacob Rees-Mogg rose as a pos- that has never existed — a romanti- sible Conservative leader in August cised 1950s America — which is, by is, in my view, both the invention of a any estimation, an improvement on 30 new sexual fetish and a coincidence.) different types of lasagne, one type of Or rather, it is forever Silly Season, Creme Egg, and listicles of any kind. and the remnants of civilisation crack under the glut. I was, for example, Foxlow Soho, 8-10 Lower James Street, chided last week for Israel’s genocidal ‘We’ve got the box set.’ London W1F 9EL, tel: 020 7680 2710.
MIND YOUR LANGUAGE Gorblimey trousers Piles of black plastic rubbish sacks the hero of Lonnie Donegan’s Phrases (‘Including Slang of lie in the streets of Birmingham song, so popular in 1960: ‘Oh, the Trenches’), published in because, since the end of June, the my old man’s a dustman/ He 1925, that ‘a Gorblimey was the dustmen have been on strike. That wears a dustman’s hat/ He wears common colloquial term for an is not quite what the BBC tells gorblimey trousers/ And he lives unwired, floppy, field-service us. On its website the corporation The BBC prefers sex workers in a council flat.’ cap worn by a certain type of says that ‘refuse workers have to prostitutes and refuse workers A dustman’s hat had flaps subaltern in defiance of the Dress resumed strike action’. to dustmen. It imagines that being over the neck so that a full Regulations’. That would have I complained here a year ago a refuse worker is a lifestyle wicker basket or dustbin could been in the first world war, for that dustcarts were disappearing choice for women as much as be shouldered without the the editors remember a song in favour of bin lorries, and now for men. No doubt there are stuff going down his neck. If before that war with the lines: the very dustmen are returning gender-fluid refuse workers too. anything’s difficult to understand ‘He wears Gorblimey trousers/ to the dust — dust and ashes. The picture on the BBC news site in that verse, it’s the gorblimey An’ a little Gorblimey ’at.’ ‘Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et showed eight picketers in high-vis trousers. I was disappointed to Hats, or trousers, are in pulverem reverteris,’ the priest jackets and overall trousers. All find that Lonnie’s lyrics were gorblimey when they elicit says, ‘Remember thou art dust were men. not as original as I’d thought, that response, which in these and to dust thou shalt return,’ as I find it odd to think that for we learn from Edward undemanding times, they he marks a cross of ashes on our anyone might find it hard to Fraser and John Gibbons’s seldom do. foreheads on Ash Wednesday. understand the profession of Soldier and Sailor Words and — Dot Wordsworth
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