Food, marriage and intertwined lives combine in this latest feel-good factor film from Hollywood screenwriter-producer Nora Ephron, who brought the world When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and Heartburn. It tells the story of Julia Child, food writer and doyenne of TV chefs, whose cookery show was the first to have subtitles of the deaf and hard of hearing, in the America of the 1950/60s/70s through the eyes of a twenty-something newly married girl in New York, Julie. Julia Child wrote the seminal book on French cuisine (Mastering the Art of French Cooking), that revolutionised American attitudes to cooking. A daughter of Californian privilege and wife of an American diplomatic official, Julia Child became the unlikely star of the television age and food writer of enormous distinction. It was said that every College girl moving to New York across the decades of the mid-twentieth century had to have three items in her possession: a couch, a copy of Joseph Heller’s book Catch 22 and a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child.
Based on Child’s autobiography and a book by Julie Powell, the film’s central dynamic takes a twenty-first century newly married girl Julie, played by Amy Adams, living with her journalist husband above a pizza shop in downtown New York. Commuting to an uninspiring government agency job Julie dreams of accomplishments beyond her humdrum existence. She finds it in her twin passions of cooking and writing by resolving to spend a year cooking her way through recipes in Julia Child’s magnus opus Mastering the Art of French Cooking and to blog about the experience.
By using the classic cinematic device of running two stories simultaneously, Julie’s story unfolds in the New York of the 2000s whilst Julia’s autobiography develops in the postwar Paris as she evolves from government service wife to legendary food writer by way of happenstance and accident. Meryl Streep gives one of her best screen performances to date, displaying once again a gift for light comedy as luminous as her dramatic talent. Streep captures the awkward, ungainly, forthright yet well-meaning manner of a very tall woman brilliantly and her well known facility with accent and tone evokes the educated, well-bred voice of her subject precisely. Stanley Tucci plays her affectionate husband Paul with humour and a touch of gentle comic irony which complements his co-star’s large screen persona. The film is as much an analysis of a loving marriage as it is affectionate tribute to a much-loved figure. The theme of relationships between the central characters are contrasted by the pressures of modern living faced by Julie and husband Eric in twenty-first century New York with the diplomatic life of Julia and her husband in postwar Europe.
A recurring theme beloved of Nora Ephron is that of friendship between women – they meet for lunch and dinner to compare notes, parade successes and give bittersweet advice to each other. There is the inevitable tension between Julie and her partner as the cooking obsession takes hold and starts to affect their relationship with crisis ultimately resolved when the project ends with media interest and beginnings of a writing career. This is in counter-point to Julia’s life – she forged a career almost by accident and in spite of herself from a desire to be occupied when women of her age and class were expected to marry well and be decorative, whereas the young protagonist Julie has a conscious drive to succeed with an expectation of that possibility in an age of opportunity for women that would have been almost unknown to Julia’s contemporaries. These parallels, however, should not be overplayed. If the film is an examination of modern sensibilities: relationships, work, career, self-fulfillment, ambition and the role of the internet in life and living; it is also a reminder of the universal theme of the quest for the good relationship and what the songwriter called the ‘fight for love and glory’. Could it be that it really is the same old story after all?
Thursday 25 February 2010
Monday 8 February 2010
The Eternal City on screen and in print
For the discerning actual or armchair traveller, there are many city guides giving details of where to visit and how to spend time. This is a different approach – introducing some wider ‘popular culture’ reference points – some history, some reading, a film or two.
Attempting to condense the history of Rome into a few hundred words is a little like setting out to paint the Forth Road Bridge with one tin of paint – a wee bit optimistic. However, what the Reduced Shakespeare Company has managed to do for the Bard, appreciated by many over a long period of time at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I will attempt for the Eternal City.
From its beginnings in the early settlement of antiquated legend through to its heyday as seat of Republic, Empire and on to its role as capital city of the Catholic Church, Rome has enjoyed a history about which big words are used: resplendent, majestic, awe-inspiring. The settlement on the banks of the Tiber, beleaguered by warring tribes, was fated to grow into a city-state that dominated the world in antiquity and the history books from the moment Romulus, Remus and a she-wolf entered the scene at stage left – or forest right depending on your view. Being men – nearly always men but Roman matrons are not to be trifled with – of rugged independence with a tendency to violence when het up or riled the Romans re-invented the idea of the Republic as a way of governing affairs. This idea was inherited from the Greeks whose power by this time had waned but still had an influence: heard of that chap Socrates or his friends Plato or their pal the playwright Aristophanes?
Due to a series of accidents; murders; armies needing pacifying and powerful men seeking more power, the Republic gave way to the Empire which, as old-fashioned historians (often in glasses and tweed jacket with initials such as AJP or WF or BHS) used to tell their students and anyone who would listen, sowed the seeds of its decline from its very inception. Thus began an era which made internecine warfare between families such as the Mafia quite tame. Aristocrats, plebians, the mob, heroes and villains, soothsayers, political intrigue, big battles, huge triumphs with lunatic Emperors and their loopier progeny and relations – the story has it all.
These themes were to be repeated in later medieval and Renaissance periods – the Romans gave their fellow Italians a taste for city governance combined with family madness, public intrigue and dangerous power-plays involving Uncle Umberto or Auntie Bella. Eventually, as it is with these vainglorious human endeavours (as they say in all the best Victorian hymns), earth’s proud empires pass away and another rises from the ashes. Instead of the Circus Maximus with spectacles involving Christians being thrown to the lions, the Christians took charge and non-Christians or heretics (believers of a different sort) were often thrown into the fire. The martyr St Peter, the rock on which the Church was built, established the Apostolic Succession and his successors created the Papacy, built the Vatican and established the Holy See which became another city state with all the accompanying intrigue and machinations. This time the story involved men in cassocks of many colours (black for the humble priests and red for the not-so-humble cardinals), with the leader both temporal and spiritual, meaning in this world and the next, of the universal church known as Pope dressed in white. The Pope may not have many divisions (as 20th century dictator and son of the seminary Joseph Stalin once put it) but he did have millions of followers, an impressive civil service known as the Curia and ‘wheels’ to boot. Any aspiring Cardinal (in red) who was ‘papabile’ (deemed as suitable for both a change of wardrobe and status) could look forward to the motoring possibility of the ‘Popemobile’ – a transport of delight Vatican-style made famous by Pope John Paul II. In short, the man who is ‘papabile’ has a chance of transportation in the Popemobile. If the smoke from the chimney puffed white the world knew that a new occupant of the Throne of St Peter had been elected. A curious thing – God’s ultimate Holy Father is chosen by a ballot of his peers – the anointed one is elected.
The city on film – Spartacus, Quo Vadis, Roman Holiday, La Dolce Vita, The Shoes of the Fisherman
The late actor, writer, raconteur and all-round Renaissance-style polymath Peter Ustinov used to remark that the Americans were very good at making Hollywood movies about the Romans – they understood the Ancient Roman mentality. Thus it is fitting that Ustinov stars in two of the recommended films. Spartacus (1960) tells the story of the slave revolt led by Kirk Douglas as the eponymous hero and pitted against the might of Rome’s legions led by Crassus, played magisterially by Laurence Olivier. Ustinov plays the weaselly slave auctioneer (a memorable line is “why me? I am more civilian than most civilians”) who ends up helping to save Spartacus’ love interest, played by the classical actress Jean Simmons, by smuggling her out of the city
In Quo Vadis (1951), the story of the rise and spread of Christianity from the birthplace of Christ in Judea to the very gates of Rome is told set against the background of the persecution of the Christians by Emperor Nero. Peter Ustinov plays the murderous emperor with maniacal glee and much declaiming and rolling of eyes.
On a lighter, and much less epic note, Roman Holiday (1953) has two leading Hollywood stars of their day – Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn – having the time of their lives in 1950s Rome and duly falling in love. Scooters and ice cream abound which predates some of the famous scenes in La Dolce Vita (1960) when Swedish actress Anita Ekberg took a fully-clothed but very suggestive dip in the Trevi Fountain.
The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) is a film adaptation of a Morris West novel that imagines the election of an eastern European pope a full decade before it happened, played by the late film actor Anthony Quinn, famous for his role as Zorba the Greek. Quinn’s character tries to mediate between Russia and the United States during the Cold War and has a penchant for going among the people of Rome disguised as a parish priest. He has difficulty coming to terms with modern life after years in a Siberian gulag in the Soviet Union.
The city between book covers – Imperium by Robert Harris; I Claudius by Robert Graves; the Falco mysteries by Lyndsey Davis.
If the reader is looking for an insight into the political, social and familial workings of Ancient Rome the two Roberts – Harris and Graves – provide that in abundance. In Imperium Robert Harris, political journalist turned novelist, tells the story of the young lawyer Marcus Cicero who rose to greatness in the dying years of the Roman Republic as one of the finest orators the world had ever seen (note all those superlatives – the Roman story as a whole invites them). Harris writes a thriller at once captivating and colourful and evokes the very smell of the city as he paints the portrait of political lives in dangerous times.
Robert Graves (1895-1985) develops similar themes in his much earlier work – Graves is of Harris’ grandfather’s generation. Classical scholar, poet and writer of great renown in the mid 20th century, Robert Graves sets his novel during the high-point of the Roman Imperial adventure and the extraordinary story of the unlikeliest of Emperors – Claudius. A scholar, librarian and writer he is part of the Imperial Julian family and is a chronicler of the family goings-on. Murder, intrigue and lust for power form the driving narrative with Claudius grandmother Livia emerging as the most ruthless operator of them all, manipulating the central players through a combination of guile, charm and deadly poison. The book was turned into a celebrated TV serial by the BBC, starring many of the best and brightest of British stage and screen; Derek Jacobi as Claudius, Sian Phillips as Livia and Brian Blessed as the Emperor Caesar Augustus leading the cast.
Lyndsey Davis’ Falco is a private detective in late-Empire Rome with a line in world-weary scepticism and a complicated emotional life. Davis paints a vivid picture with her hero constantly fighting Roman bureaucracy and his prospective in-laws. His adventures takes the reader into the heart of the uncivilised aspect of the Rome of the Emperor Vespasian where slaves are downtrodden, life is cheap and business of any sort corrupt. Falco does his best to remain above the stench whilst wooing his love - the aristocratic Helena Justina.
- All films mentioned are available on DVD and books from all bookshops and online. Imperium and the Falco mysteries are published by Arrow Books and I Claudius is published by Penguin
Attempting to condense the history of Rome into a few hundred words is a little like setting out to paint the Forth Road Bridge with one tin of paint – a wee bit optimistic. However, what the Reduced Shakespeare Company has managed to do for the Bard, appreciated by many over a long period of time at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I will attempt for the Eternal City.
From its beginnings in the early settlement of antiquated legend through to its heyday as seat of Republic, Empire and on to its role as capital city of the Catholic Church, Rome has enjoyed a history about which big words are used: resplendent, majestic, awe-inspiring. The settlement on the banks of the Tiber, beleaguered by warring tribes, was fated to grow into a city-state that dominated the world in antiquity and the history books from the moment Romulus, Remus and a she-wolf entered the scene at stage left – or forest right depending on your view. Being men – nearly always men but Roman matrons are not to be trifled with – of rugged independence with a tendency to violence when het up or riled the Romans re-invented the idea of the Republic as a way of governing affairs. This idea was inherited from the Greeks whose power by this time had waned but still had an influence: heard of that chap Socrates or his friends Plato or their pal the playwright Aristophanes?
Due to a series of accidents; murders; armies needing pacifying and powerful men seeking more power, the Republic gave way to the Empire which, as old-fashioned historians (often in glasses and tweed jacket with initials such as AJP or WF or BHS) used to tell their students and anyone who would listen, sowed the seeds of its decline from its very inception. Thus began an era which made internecine warfare between families such as the Mafia quite tame. Aristocrats, plebians, the mob, heroes and villains, soothsayers, political intrigue, big battles, huge triumphs with lunatic Emperors and their loopier progeny and relations – the story has it all.
These themes were to be repeated in later medieval and Renaissance periods – the Romans gave their fellow Italians a taste for city governance combined with family madness, public intrigue and dangerous power-plays involving Uncle Umberto or Auntie Bella. Eventually, as it is with these vainglorious human endeavours (as they say in all the best Victorian hymns), earth’s proud empires pass away and another rises from the ashes. Instead of the Circus Maximus with spectacles involving Christians being thrown to the lions, the Christians took charge and non-Christians or heretics (believers of a different sort) were often thrown into the fire. The martyr St Peter, the rock on which the Church was built, established the Apostolic Succession and his successors created the Papacy, built the Vatican and established the Holy See which became another city state with all the accompanying intrigue and machinations. This time the story involved men in cassocks of many colours (black for the humble priests and red for the not-so-humble cardinals), with the leader both temporal and spiritual, meaning in this world and the next, of the universal church known as Pope dressed in white. The Pope may not have many divisions (as 20th century dictator and son of the seminary Joseph Stalin once put it) but he did have millions of followers, an impressive civil service known as the Curia and ‘wheels’ to boot. Any aspiring Cardinal (in red) who was ‘papabile’ (deemed as suitable for both a change of wardrobe and status) could look forward to the motoring possibility of the ‘Popemobile’ – a transport of delight Vatican-style made famous by Pope John Paul II. In short, the man who is ‘papabile’ has a chance of transportation in the Popemobile. If the smoke from the chimney puffed white the world knew that a new occupant of the Throne of St Peter had been elected. A curious thing – God’s ultimate Holy Father is chosen by a ballot of his peers – the anointed one is elected.
The city on film – Spartacus, Quo Vadis, Roman Holiday, La Dolce Vita, The Shoes of the Fisherman
The late actor, writer, raconteur and all-round Renaissance-style polymath Peter Ustinov used to remark that the Americans were very good at making Hollywood movies about the Romans – they understood the Ancient Roman mentality. Thus it is fitting that Ustinov stars in two of the recommended films. Spartacus (1960) tells the story of the slave revolt led by Kirk Douglas as the eponymous hero and pitted against the might of Rome’s legions led by Crassus, played magisterially by Laurence Olivier. Ustinov plays the weaselly slave auctioneer (a memorable line is “why me? I am more civilian than most civilians”) who ends up helping to save Spartacus’ love interest, played by the classical actress Jean Simmons, by smuggling her out of the city
In Quo Vadis (1951), the story of the rise and spread of Christianity from the birthplace of Christ in Judea to the very gates of Rome is told set against the background of the persecution of the Christians by Emperor Nero. Peter Ustinov plays the murderous emperor with maniacal glee and much declaiming and rolling of eyes.
On a lighter, and much less epic note, Roman Holiday (1953) has two leading Hollywood stars of their day – Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn – having the time of their lives in 1950s Rome and duly falling in love. Scooters and ice cream abound which predates some of the famous scenes in La Dolce Vita (1960) when Swedish actress Anita Ekberg took a fully-clothed but very suggestive dip in the Trevi Fountain.
The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) is a film adaptation of a Morris West novel that imagines the election of an eastern European pope a full decade before it happened, played by the late film actor Anthony Quinn, famous for his role as Zorba the Greek. Quinn’s character tries to mediate between Russia and the United States during the Cold War and has a penchant for going among the people of Rome disguised as a parish priest. He has difficulty coming to terms with modern life after years in a Siberian gulag in the Soviet Union.
The city between book covers – Imperium by Robert Harris; I Claudius by Robert Graves; the Falco mysteries by Lyndsey Davis.
If the reader is looking for an insight into the political, social and familial workings of Ancient Rome the two Roberts – Harris and Graves – provide that in abundance. In Imperium Robert Harris, political journalist turned novelist, tells the story of the young lawyer Marcus Cicero who rose to greatness in the dying years of the Roman Republic as one of the finest orators the world had ever seen (note all those superlatives – the Roman story as a whole invites them). Harris writes a thriller at once captivating and colourful and evokes the very smell of the city as he paints the portrait of political lives in dangerous times.
Robert Graves (1895-1985) develops similar themes in his much earlier work – Graves is of Harris’ grandfather’s generation. Classical scholar, poet and writer of great renown in the mid 20th century, Robert Graves sets his novel during the high-point of the Roman Imperial adventure and the extraordinary story of the unlikeliest of Emperors – Claudius. A scholar, librarian and writer he is part of the Imperial Julian family and is a chronicler of the family goings-on. Murder, intrigue and lust for power form the driving narrative with Claudius grandmother Livia emerging as the most ruthless operator of them all, manipulating the central players through a combination of guile, charm and deadly poison. The book was turned into a celebrated TV serial by the BBC, starring many of the best and brightest of British stage and screen; Derek Jacobi as Claudius, Sian Phillips as Livia and Brian Blessed as the Emperor Caesar Augustus leading the cast.
Lyndsey Davis’ Falco is a private detective in late-Empire Rome with a line in world-weary scepticism and a complicated emotional life. Davis paints a vivid picture with her hero constantly fighting Roman bureaucracy and his prospective in-laws. His adventures takes the reader into the heart of the uncivilised aspect of the Rome of the Emperor Vespasian where slaves are downtrodden, life is cheap and business of any sort corrupt. Falco does his best to remain above the stench whilst wooing his love - the aristocratic Helena Justina.
- All films mentioned are available on DVD and books from all bookshops and online. Imperium and the Falco mysteries are published by Arrow Books and I Claudius is published by Penguin
Valkrye – Cert 12 A
Tom Cruise and host of British stars in this retelling of the July 1944 plot - - a war-time story of heroism and daring ending in tragedy
The latest vehicle for Tom Cruise is a well-made and exciting thriller set in the last months of the Second World War. It tells the story of the July 1944 plot against Hitler’s life by a group of German Army officers led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg was an establishment aristocratic scion of the German officer class, a decorated war hero, who became convinced that the only way to secure Germany’s future and save the fatherland from the continuing evil and madness of the Nazi regime was to kill Hitler and stage a coup allowing the Germans to sue for peace. This project was astoundingly difficult for practical and psychological reasons – Hitler was the German Army’s Commanding Officer and on taking power as Chancellor in 1933 had made the German armed forces swear a personal oath of allegiance to him as their Fuhrer. The film opens with that oath displayed up on screen. This meant that any disobedience or questioning of orders was considered as treason and the very notion of defying the chief went against the Army code. Thus the cause has to be honourable – that of stopping the horror and bringing peace – or the will to carry out the plot would have been lacking. These are men, by no means democrats, who would rather die in the attempt to show that some were prepared to resist Hitler than have the ignominy and shame cast on them as perpetuators of Germany’s dark night of tyranny.
Stauffenberg is invalided out of the fighting in the Western Desert and is posted back to Berlin as a staff officer where he falls in with the various groups of civilians, soldiers and diplomats who formed the disparate German ‘resistance’ at this stage in the war and at this moment in the life of the Nazi regime. The plot is hatched to plant a bomb in Hitler’s Army HQ and run Operation Valkryie designed to topple the Nazi government. Although Tom Cruise is hardly the epitome of what may be imagined as the Prussian officer of the old school he carries off the part with dash and style. Sporting an eye patch and a prosthetic arm, Cruise portrays Stauffenberg as arrogant yet a caring family man, driven yet compassionate. He has a fine supporting cast of leading British actors as his co-conspirators: the dependable Bill Nighy; Tom Wilkinson as the duplicitous General Frohm who switches sides; a character part for comedian Eddie Izzard as the staff officer inside Hitler’s command HQ; the hard-working and multi-talented Kenneth Branagh as the original leader of the plotters who makes a failed attempt on the Fuhrer’s life at the beginning of the film and ends up being posted to the Eastern Front; a strong performance by 1960s heart-throb Terence Stamp as the old general lending moral support to the operation and a study in fear from politician Kevin Mcnally.
The audacious plan to plant a bomb under the table in Hitler’s map room of his command bunker has been the most celebrated of the numerous plots on his life that took place in those last, increasingly desperate days of the Third Reich. The film is an exciting thriller which maintains pace and plot whilst giving due attention to character and motivation. Stauffenberg is worried about the safety of his wife and family and there is a scene in which she signals that she is only too well aware of the consequences of failure for them all. There is a rather moving scene, handled well, between Stauffenberg and his wife when he sends them out of the city knowing they might not see each other again. At the end of the film the credits inform the audience that not only did Nina von Stauffenberg survive the war, she lived a long life into her nineties, only recently passing away. Although the audience knows the story ends in tragedy and the plotters will not succeed, the telling of the tale as to what went wrong with mishaps, mistakes and near-misses is compelling and the courage of those involved inspiring.
The threads of honour and decency and conflicts of conscience are well handled amidst the frenetic pace that builds through the movie. At one point one of the generals declares that even if they fail it will show that not all Germans went along with the Nazis to the bitter end and some had the courage to resist. That, of course, is a central thrust of the whole affair – some were prepared to risk all and resist the tyranny. Many of the best films, plays and books dealing with the wartime period confront the viewer with the uncomfortable but necessary question, contemplated from the safety of our modern lives in peace and security, of what we might have done or not done in circumstances depicted on screen, stage or page. As we salute the bravery of Stauffenberg and his comrades, and all those prepared to confront evil in whatever era, it is a thought to be pondered still.
The latest vehicle for Tom Cruise is a well-made and exciting thriller set in the last months of the Second World War. It tells the story of the July 1944 plot against Hitler’s life by a group of German Army officers led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg was an establishment aristocratic scion of the German officer class, a decorated war hero, who became convinced that the only way to secure Germany’s future and save the fatherland from the continuing evil and madness of the Nazi regime was to kill Hitler and stage a coup allowing the Germans to sue for peace. This project was astoundingly difficult for practical and psychological reasons – Hitler was the German Army’s Commanding Officer and on taking power as Chancellor in 1933 had made the German armed forces swear a personal oath of allegiance to him as their Fuhrer. The film opens with that oath displayed up on screen. This meant that any disobedience or questioning of orders was considered as treason and the very notion of defying the chief went against the Army code. Thus the cause has to be honourable – that of stopping the horror and bringing peace – or the will to carry out the plot would have been lacking. These are men, by no means democrats, who would rather die in the attempt to show that some were prepared to resist Hitler than have the ignominy and shame cast on them as perpetuators of Germany’s dark night of tyranny.
Stauffenberg is invalided out of the fighting in the Western Desert and is posted back to Berlin as a staff officer where he falls in with the various groups of civilians, soldiers and diplomats who formed the disparate German ‘resistance’ at this stage in the war and at this moment in the life of the Nazi regime. The plot is hatched to plant a bomb in Hitler’s Army HQ and run Operation Valkryie designed to topple the Nazi government. Although Tom Cruise is hardly the epitome of what may be imagined as the Prussian officer of the old school he carries off the part with dash and style. Sporting an eye patch and a prosthetic arm, Cruise portrays Stauffenberg as arrogant yet a caring family man, driven yet compassionate. He has a fine supporting cast of leading British actors as his co-conspirators: the dependable Bill Nighy; Tom Wilkinson as the duplicitous General Frohm who switches sides; a character part for comedian Eddie Izzard as the staff officer inside Hitler’s command HQ; the hard-working and multi-talented Kenneth Branagh as the original leader of the plotters who makes a failed attempt on the Fuhrer’s life at the beginning of the film and ends up being posted to the Eastern Front; a strong performance by 1960s heart-throb Terence Stamp as the old general lending moral support to the operation and a study in fear from politician Kevin Mcnally.
The audacious plan to plant a bomb under the table in Hitler’s map room of his command bunker has been the most celebrated of the numerous plots on his life that took place in those last, increasingly desperate days of the Third Reich. The film is an exciting thriller which maintains pace and plot whilst giving due attention to character and motivation. Stauffenberg is worried about the safety of his wife and family and there is a scene in which she signals that she is only too well aware of the consequences of failure for them all. There is a rather moving scene, handled well, between Stauffenberg and his wife when he sends them out of the city knowing they might not see each other again. At the end of the film the credits inform the audience that not only did Nina von Stauffenberg survive the war, she lived a long life into her nineties, only recently passing away. Although the audience knows the story ends in tragedy and the plotters will not succeed, the telling of the tale as to what went wrong with mishaps, mistakes and near-misses is compelling and the courage of those involved inspiring.
The threads of honour and decency and conflicts of conscience are well handled amidst the frenetic pace that builds through the movie. At one point one of the generals declares that even if they fail it will show that not all Germans went along with the Nazis to the bitter end and some had the courage to resist. That, of course, is a central thrust of the whole affair – some were prepared to risk all and resist the tyranny. Many of the best films, plays and books dealing with the wartime period confront the viewer with the uncomfortable but necessary question, contemplated from the safety of our modern lives in peace and security, of what we might have done or not done in circumstances depicted on screen, stage or page. As we salute the bravery of Stauffenberg and his comrades, and all those prepared to confront evil in whatever era, it is a thought to be pondered still.
A weekend in the City of Light
“Look at Paris in the Spring/Where each solitary thing is more beautiful than ever before” (Gigi, Learner & Lowe)
Our weekend trip to Paris, to celebrate our anniversary began at the new Eurostar station at Ebbsfleet in Kent. On arrival at the Gare du Nord, our hotel was some distance from the city, so we prepared for the walk uphill along the Rue de Dunkirk, a street we got to know well after missing several turnings.
Once settled into the hotel, small but with good views of the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, a monument to the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and unfinished till the next great conflagration in 1914. We ventured out for the classic French dish, steak-frites, at a local bistro and soaked up some local colour.
Montmartre, built on a hill at the heart of the city, is easily accessible. We headed for the bars and cafés forming the centre of the artists’ colony, previously frequented by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec. Then we visited the studio off the Rue Lepic which, by repute, saw the birth of modern art.
Lunching at the Café Sancerre, with tables spilling onto the pavement in haphazard fashion we then walked back along the Boulevard by way of the Moulin Rouge. Walking through student populated Paris, the Latin Quartier and Sorbonne, the Rue St Germain and Rue St-Michel, the tour was a reminder of the lyrics from Peter Sarsted’s hit song ‘Where do You Go To My Lovely?’
The traditional farmhouse-style restaurant behind the former HQ of the Ècole Polytechnique, where a meal with wine must be purchased with cash scratched together from purse or wallet, is a reminder there are still establishments left in the world that do not accept the ‘carte bleu’, as credit cards are known in France. So the diner resorts to counting the cash and enjoying steak and frites, a glass of wine à la rustic serves admirably. Neither ‘a la carte’ or ‘prix fixe’ but somewhere between the two.
The Metro looked more inviting from the surface, with its welcoming ‘belle époque’ signs above, giving way to a down-at-heel feel below. A tour of Paris by commuter bus can be taken with stops at such evocative place names and iconic buildings as Palais Royale and Comédie-Française.
The Louvre Museum was disappointing with crowds let loose with no control. It is also best to remember many Parisian museums and galleries are closed on Monday. This fact can be more than compensated for with a lunch near the Tuilleries Gardens in a typical city centre bar-bistro complete with waist coated waiters. We took a post-prandial stroll along the Seine’s Rive Gauche through the rain, passing green boxes where the artists keep their materials. The imposing riverside buildings of cultural and political Gallic life such as the Institute de France look down upon the artists at their easels, displaying the hauteur of their French Second Empire architectural heritage.
We took the last bus to the Gare du Nord through the famous Parisian rush hour and homewards on the Eurostar with billboards displaying the glories of the refurbished St Pancras station, running fashionably late as befits the essence and joy of Paree
Our weekend trip to Paris, to celebrate our anniversary began at the new Eurostar station at Ebbsfleet in Kent. On arrival at the Gare du Nord, our hotel was some distance from the city, so we prepared for the walk uphill along the Rue de Dunkirk, a street we got to know well after missing several turnings.
Once settled into the hotel, small but with good views of the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, a monument to the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and unfinished till the next great conflagration in 1914. We ventured out for the classic French dish, steak-frites, at a local bistro and soaked up some local colour.
Montmartre, built on a hill at the heart of the city, is easily accessible. We headed for the bars and cafés forming the centre of the artists’ colony, previously frequented by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec. Then we visited the studio off the Rue Lepic which, by repute, saw the birth of modern art.
Lunching at the Café Sancerre, with tables spilling onto the pavement in haphazard fashion we then walked back along the Boulevard by way of the Moulin Rouge. Walking through student populated Paris, the Latin Quartier and Sorbonne, the Rue St Germain and Rue St-Michel, the tour was a reminder of the lyrics from Peter Sarsted’s hit song ‘Where do You Go To My Lovely?’
The traditional farmhouse-style restaurant behind the former HQ of the Ècole Polytechnique, where a meal with wine must be purchased with cash scratched together from purse or wallet, is a reminder there are still establishments left in the world that do not accept the ‘carte bleu’, as credit cards are known in France. So the diner resorts to counting the cash and enjoying steak and frites, a glass of wine à la rustic serves admirably. Neither ‘a la carte’ or ‘prix fixe’ but somewhere between the two.
The Metro looked more inviting from the surface, with its welcoming ‘belle époque’ signs above, giving way to a down-at-heel feel below. A tour of Paris by commuter bus can be taken with stops at such evocative place names and iconic buildings as Palais Royale and Comédie-Française.
The Louvre Museum was disappointing with crowds let loose with no control. It is also best to remember many Parisian museums and galleries are closed on Monday. This fact can be more than compensated for with a lunch near the Tuilleries Gardens in a typical city centre bar-bistro complete with waist coated waiters. We took a post-prandial stroll along the Seine’s Rive Gauche through the rain, passing green boxes where the artists keep their materials. The imposing riverside buildings of cultural and political Gallic life such as the Institute de France look down upon the artists at their easels, displaying the hauteur of their French Second Empire architectural heritage.
We took the last bus to the Gare du Nord through the famous Parisian rush hour and homewards on the Eurostar with billboards displaying the glories of the refurbished St Pancras station, running fashionably late as befits the essence and joy of Paree
An Hour in a Bookshop
Oh what a delight
To pass an hour
In the confines of a bookshop
A universe to be discovered
As varied as the four walls
Containing it
Sometimes to be found in
Shopping arcade, sometimes in favourite
Hideaway places, up alleyways, off high-street
At others in transient arenas
Such as airports, train stations
or hospital concourses
Sporting titles for their literary emporiums
As revealingly innocuous as ‘books etc’
An hour spent in the company of books
Wherever the purveyor may be
Whether before a flight or train
Or awaiting others on a family shop
Perhaps as a form of retail therapy
Is never wasted
Tis a joy and a balm for the soul
An uplift which never fails
To restore good humour whatever the travails
Of time and circumstance
Try it sometime – pop into your local
Arena of words
And marvel
WBR Jeremy
To pass an hour
In the confines of a bookshop
A universe to be discovered
As varied as the four walls
Containing it
Sometimes to be found in
Shopping arcade, sometimes in favourite
Hideaway places, up alleyways, off high-street
At others in transient arenas
Such as airports, train stations
or hospital concourses
Sporting titles for their literary emporiums
As revealingly innocuous as ‘books etc’
An hour spent in the company of books
Wherever the purveyor may be
Whether before a flight or train
Or awaiting others on a family shop
Perhaps as a form of retail therapy
Is never wasted
Tis a joy and a balm for the soul
An uplift which never fails
To restore good humour whatever the travails
Of time and circumstance
Try it sometime – pop into your local
Arena of words
And marvel
WBR Jeremy
Ear Pieces
I sit in the room engaged in conversation
With a charming, warm man talking of
Disability – hearing impairment – in terms
Of ranges of sound and levels of loss
Of hearing retention and damage done
Of future worsening and capturing sound
Told “grasping the nettle just as well now
Or face worse problem to come”
Told it is about enhancement and sustainment
If not replacement of sound
We talk of many things my
Hearing confessor and I
Of family and society
Children and parents
Speech and cadence
Rhythm and tone
Accent and articulation
The state of the health service
Situations and circumstances
We go on twice the time of
Regular consultations
Then comes the fitting
First the choosing
Involving discussions of placement
Where is comfortable, less or more conspicuous
Inside or out, noise control or not, larger or smaller
“No point if they are not to be worn but sit in a draw
Like so many do nowadays”
Next the moulding with wax imprinted
By firing from a special gun
Sitting with wedge in mouth whilst
Waxy substance melts
It goes off without hitch
The time is late we break off
To stroll to the gents still talking companionably
In generalities
And then more forms
Arrangements made to collect
A good-natured farewell
The deed is done
The nettle grasped
What has been spoken of, debated, alluded to, put off
Has been achieved
In short, two words describe my official state of disability
WBR Jeremy, May 2007
With a charming, warm man talking of
Disability – hearing impairment – in terms
Of ranges of sound and levels of loss
Of hearing retention and damage done
Of future worsening and capturing sound
Told “grasping the nettle just as well now
Or face worse problem to come”
Told it is about enhancement and sustainment
If not replacement of sound
We talk of many things my
Hearing confessor and I
Of family and society
Children and parents
Speech and cadence
Rhythm and tone
Accent and articulation
The state of the health service
Situations and circumstances
We go on twice the time of
Regular consultations
Then comes the fitting
First the choosing
Involving discussions of placement
Where is comfortable, less or more conspicuous
Inside or out, noise control or not, larger or smaller
“No point if they are not to be worn but sit in a draw
Like so many do nowadays”
Next the moulding with wax imprinted
By firing from a special gun
Sitting with wedge in mouth whilst
Waxy substance melts
It goes off without hitch
The time is late we break off
To stroll to the gents still talking companionably
In generalities
And then more forms
Arrangements made to collect
A good-natured farewell
The deed is done
The nettle grasped
What has been spoken of, debated, alluded to, put off
Has been achieved
In short, two words describe my official state of disability
WBR Jeremy, May 2007
Biographica Audiologica
The creative process is often accompanied by some sort of compulsion. This is what is sometimes known as the creative urge. And so it was with my poem Ear Pieces The compulsion was to explain what had happened – a diagnosis of hearing loss – and the urge took the form of a poem. It is said that the material chooses the writer.
The story is not conventional, in keeping with much of my life. Many narratives of hearing loss run thus: sound or possibly perfect hearing since childhood and into adulthood followed by loss – gradual or steep – into middle or later age. A traditional, linear, almost accepted, progression from perceived ‘perfection’ to imperfection, from ‘full faculty’ to ‘impairment’.
I discovered my hearing loss in my late 30s. I had difficulties with ears when young but this may have been hidden due to attention given to a stammer/speech impediment Growing up in a large voluble family with an average noise level much higher than the conversational norm, I was used to the projection of voices with an emphasis on diction and thus any problem would not necessarily have been picked up on because most of the time I heard everyone around me only too clearly!
On marrying and moving to a much quieter environment my wife Karen realised I must have a hearing problem – she noticed I would not respond if I stood at one end of the kitchen with my back turned. I also had difficulty hearing low tones and certain pitches of sounds, both vocal and electronic.
Further investigation led to a diagnosis of audiosclerosis. This means the inner ear bone is stuck fast and does not vibrate. Through the process of diagnosis and acquisition of hearing aids I have learnt about the world of audiology, both its science and art. The hearing sense requires more in terms of ‘brainpower’ than sight. When man was living in the cave, the predators would come at night and sharp hearing was paramount in detecting them. Each person has a set number of ear hairs that facilitate hearing and once damaged the brain compensates in all sorts of ways. It is possible that I have been unconsciously lip-reading for many years. So much for survival of the fittest! The specialists could not accurately tell when the problem started, possibly in childhood, adolescence or early adulthood. Any operation to substitute an inner ear piece of bone would not be effective due to nerve damage. Hearing aids followed and the rest is an ongoing revelation, if not quite history.
The adjustment to the onrush of sounds and sensations with the hearing aids – birdsong, footfall on stairs, wind-in-trees, traffic – was unexpectedly emotional. I ‘knew’ all those sounds but re-discovered them anew in sharper definition for the first time in a long time. I had always been able to listen to the radio or TV and read at the same time. With my new ‘ears’ in the sounds are much higher volume, so the concentration on one medium at a time is important.
The hearing adventure has provided something of an explanation of things past: from school, through to University and into the working world. With a childhood stammer giving an existing, perhaps self-imagined perception of ‘slowness’, speed (of thought, reaction, approach) and its lack has always been an issue. In retrospect, how much might have been missed in arenas requiring aural faculty - the classroom, lecture-hall, at interviews and in the court-room?
Despite these difficulties early on I have achieved academically – at degree and post-graduate levels and professionally in public and legal affairs, research and the media.
My passion is the radio and all things audio and I am developing a freelance practice in research, writing and broadcasting. My hearing loss is by no means a curtailment of ambitions in the aural arena and may add an extra dimension to my life through the enhanced understanding of people with disability generally and hearing loss in particular.
The story is not conventional, in keeping with much of my life. Many narratives of hearing loss run thus: sound or possibly perfect hearing since childhood and into adulthood followed by loss – gradual or steep – into middle or later age. A traditional, linear, almost accepted, progression from perceived ‘perfection’ to imperfection, from ‘full faculty’ to ‘impairment’.
I discovered my hearing loss in my late 30s. I had difficulties with ears when young but this may have been hidden due to attention given to a stammer/speech impediment Growing up in a large voluble family with an average noise level much higher than the conversational norm, I was used to the projection of voices with an emphasis on diction and thus any problem would not necessarily have been picked up on because most of the time I heard everyone around me only too clearly!
On marrying and moving to a much quieter environment my wife Karen realised I must have a hearing problem – she noticed I would not respond if I stood at one end of the kitchen with my back turned. I also had difficulty hearing low tones and certain pitches of sounds, both vocal and electronic.
Further investigation led to a diagnosis of audiosclerosis. This means the inner ear bone is stuck fast and does not vibrate. Through the process of diagnosis and acquisition of hearing aids I have learnt about the world of audiology, both its science and art. The hearing sense requires more in terms of ‘brainpower’ than sight. When man was living in the cave, the predators would come at night and sharp hearing was paramount in detecting them. Each person has a set number of ear hairs that facilitate hearing and once damaged the brain compensates in all sorts of ways. It is possible that I have been unconsciously lip-reading for many years. So much for survival of the fittest! The specialists could not accurately tell when the problem started, possibly in childhood, adolescence or early adulthood. Any operation to substitute an inner ear piece of bone would not be effective due to nerve damage. Hearing aids followed and the rest is an ongoing revelation, if not quite history.
The adjustment to the onrush of sounds and sensations with the hearing aids – birdsong, footfall on stairs, wind-in-trees, traffic – was unexpectedly emotional. I ‘knew’ all those sounds but re-discovered them anew in sharper definition for the first time in a long time. I had always been able to listen to the radio or TV and read at the same time. With my new ‘ears’ in the sounds are much higher volume, so the concentration on one medium at a time is important.
The hearing adventure has provided something of an explanation of things past: from school, through to University and into the working world. With a childhood stammer giving an existing, perhaps self-imagined perception of ‘slowness’, speed (of thought, reaction, approach) and its lack has always been an issue. In retrospect, how much might have been missed in arenas requiring aural faculty - the classroom, lecture-hall, at interviews and in the court-room?
Despite these difficulties early on I have achieved academically – at degree and post-graduate levels and professionally in public and legal affairs, research and the media.
My passion is the radio and all things audio and I am developing a freelance practice in research, writing and broadcasting. My hearing loss is by no means a curtailment of ambitions in the aural arena and may add an extra dimension to my life through the enhanced understanding of people with disability generally and hearing loss in particular.
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