Food for thought - nourishment of the soul - books

Not Quite the Diplomat
By Chris Patten
(published by Picador Penguin, £8.99)

Chris Patten has spent his entire professional life engaged in political affairs: as policy researcher, Conservative MP, Cabinet Minister, the last colonial governor of Hong Kong and European Commissioner. He is known for his engaging, witty style combined with a wide-ranging interest in matters beyond the political podium. He has a talent, rare amongst front-rank politicians, to set his thoughts and actions in a wide sweep of historical and cultural context. If any public figure has what the Labour politician Denis Healey called a “hinterland”, Patten has. This book, part-memoir, part commentary and part personal manifesto is something of a ‘state of the union’, or state of the planet, report on where we all are now. Using anecdote, reportage and historical devices, the author takes his reader on a tour of the world culturally, politically and geostrategically. However, he wears both his knowledge and experience lightly and manages to flatter the reader with a presumption of intelligence that can deal with a complex or contradictory argument whilst deploying a a wit that combines dryness with generosity. His pen-portraits of international leaders from Clinton to Chirac, Blair to Cheney are entertaining, shrewd and believable. He manages to mix criticism with compassion and disagreement with tolerance, yet his views are no less strongly held for his humanity. He also has a wonderful frame of reference, from ancient Chinese writings to American song-writers of the mid-20th century, from Rudyard Kipling to AA Milne and Confucius or Sartre. In the middle of a discourse about the nature of modern American power, he will make mention of Cole Porter or Irving Berlin. His chapter headings begin with a quotation from book, play or ancient text which sets the scene. This is a man who likes to read, listen, travel and talk in the service of the profession he has adorned for many years, underpinned by the historian’s sense of proportion and context.

James Naughtie sums it up by calling the book “masterly, elegant, sprightly, wry..” whilst The Independent calls it “warm, witty, stylish and readable”. It is also a wonderful introduction to international affairs for any aspiring student of the subject as well as for those well versed in its contradictions and fallibilities. A rich resource, garnished lightly by erudition gently applied.

The Hubris Syndrome
By David Owen
(published by Politico’s , £8.99)

David Owen is something of a Renaissance man in public life. A trained doctor before entering Parliament, he went on to become a Cabinet Minister, under Prime Minister James Callaghan, and Foreign Secretary aged 37 before going on to co-found the Social Democratic Party as one of the original Gang of Four. Having spent a lifetime ‘up close and personal’ with major political figures, and having a medical interest in the powerful and how ill-health effects leaders, Owen is well-placed to write about the nexus of power, personality and the mental state.

Written as part-case study, part-polemic Dr Owen puts the case for the idea that the nature of power today can send some leaders to the point of a kind of mental illness which manifests itself as a condition that is similar to what the Greek dramatists called hubris. Whilst the popular terminology would be that ‘power has gone to their head’ or he or she is unhinged or has ‘lost touch with reality’, Owen traces the roots of the concept of hubris and applies it to messrs Blair and Bush, taking as the template the handling of the Iraq war and its aftermath. The idea of hubris has its roots in ancient Greek drama, and in the study of power and the impact it has on those who seek to wield it. It is the study of how powerful people – heroes in the drama - can become puffed up with pride and thus become contemptuous and dismissive of others which leads to excessive self-confidence causing misunderstanding of the situation around them and eventual destruction at the hands of their nemesis. In the Greek experience, the hero is brought low by trying to act as though he were more like a god and thus is humbled and brought to earth. Thus the moral is that we should not allow power and success to go to their heads. It is, perhaps, also captured by the aphorism that ‘those who the gods wish to destroy they first make great’.

From drama, literature and history Owen develops his theme that hubris could be seen as an ‘occupational hazard’ for many leaders in political, military or business roles, and this should be considered as a medical syndrome when it arises and can be described as such. Owen sees it as illness of position as much as personality, and some leaders fall prey to it whilst others do not. Given the context of power, position and hierarchical deference in a governmental system, hubris can develop as a sense of omnipotence can develop in the individual. Owen cites a list of behavourial symptoms which could identify the condition such as: an identification with the state and themselves to the extent that they regard the outlook and interest of the two as identical; a messianic manner of talking about what they are doing and excessive confidence combined with unshakeable self-belief of being vindicated in a ‘higher court’ or by ‘history’ rather than colleagues or public opinion. All this combined with recklessness and restlessness leads to a loss of contact with reality, and major mistakes in decision-making with huge consequences for themselves and others.

The thesis continues with examples of leaders – from Attlee to Thatcher and Truman to Bush Senior - who became hubristic and those who did not, in the author’s opinion. Ways of avoiding hubris include having a sense of humour, developing perspective through a sceptical approach, support of family and friends and avoiding being cut off from the idea that power, ultimately, enables influence for a short while but not the dominance of events. Simply put, the leader who succumbs to the trappings of power over a long of period of time is more likely to become hubristic. The main case studies examined are that of Mrs Thatcher and how her premiership came to an end and the whole run-up to the recent war in Iraq involving Blair and Bush.

The reader may feel daunted by the subject matter but David Owen writes in a clear, lucid and straightforward manner which seeks to enlighten, based on his considerable experience of medicine, politics and international affairs. The author writes with wit and grace and is refreshingly candid about his own shortcomings as perceived by others – once accused himself of megalomania he admits to arrogance and an impatience of others combined with a tendency to ‘over-examine the spilt milk’. Owen has been seen in the past as a controversial figure, borne from a reputation as being a ‘serial resigner’ and a divider rather than uniter. However iconoclastic his view, it is an independent one which is the product of a questioning temperament. His criticisms, although profound and stinging, are nonetheless measured. His tone is one of the doctor giving advice, which if ignored will not be advantageous to the body politic. A penetrating study from a political figure who has often trod his own path in the face of harsh criticism. A survivor of the syndrome which he describes so brilliantly? The reader can judge.

Our Game
By John Le Carre
(published Hodder & Stoughton)

The premier British chronicler of Cold War intrigue and spy politics turns his attention to post-Soviet Union geo-politics in this typical tour de force. It is the mid-1990s and retired secret servant Timothy Cranmer is nursing his grapes on a country estate in Somerset – the English equivalent of the Italians’ ‘growing the olives’ in retirement. He is also dealing with the consequences of two simultaneously difficult relationships: that with his young girlfiriend and with his long-time agent, also retired but still troublesome.

Familiar themes abound in this as any other Le Carre novel which the author has come to make his own: identity in a clandestine world; the self-deceit of honour amongst spies; the English class system as manifested in schooling and occupation; the past lurking in the every day. These novelistic trademarks are set against the background of a post-Cold War Europe dealing with the break-up of the Soviet Union, the claims of Chechnya and regional conflict in the Cauacasus involving the former Russian republic of Ingushetia. Through the characters of Tim Cranmer and his agent Larry Pettifer the big geo-political questions of the 1990s are explored: the break-up of states and the resulting religious-ethnic identity conflict.

The characters are bound together by history, occupation and school – Cranmer is the spymaster to Pettifer’s agent just as he was the prefect to the junior boy at public school decades before. However, just as at school, it is Pettifer who is the wayward prodigy and beyond control and authority of a traditional sort. These underlying tensions are reinforced brilliantly by episodic flashbacks exploring these motivations further. The duo becomes an emotional ménage a trios when Cranmer’s girlfriend Emma becomes involved with Pettifer and is drawn into the central action dynamic plot of the novel – a bid to start a small war in the former Soviet republic of Ingushetia.

With the publication of the novel that made his name, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, it seems that Le Carre embarked on an ongoing voyage of autobiographical discovery which continues to this day. It is said that his first books were borne of anger at the outbreak of the Cold War and the way in which it was prosecuted by all concerned: he has knowledge of this as he was involved with the British foreign service in the 1960s and witnessed the building of the Berlin wall – the setting of the Spy. Subsequent books have developed, expanded and brought to life a parallel world which acts as a metaphor for everyday existence, as well as given birth to a host of vivid characters, notably George Smiley. Perhaps the anger has been tempered by experience but it is still evident and burnished by compassion and moral vigour. There is, as always, a whole universe of meaning in the title: the ‘game’ of the title is the traditional name given to the occupation of the spy as well as the game played out by the central characters – it is also the name traditionally given to football played at Winchester College. Our Game, as ever, in more ways than one.

The Time of My Life
By Denis Healey
There are many political biographies which can seem rather self-justificatory if not self-serving comprising a book-length catalogue of incidents in the life of the person concerned. This is not one of those. Written over twenty years ago by a man who had scaled the heights of the British political establishment by way of the British Army and the international department of the Labour Party to election as a Yorkshire MP and thence Defence Secretary and Chancelllor of the Exchequer, it stands as one of the best of the genre. Having a reputation as something of an intellectual bruiser, Healey’s style is both elegiac and honest – his well-known love of the Arts generally and poetry in particular is a central theme of the book. He is open about the trials and tribulations of political life and indulges a talent for character description with force and wit, even if his judgments are sometimes a little harsh. If he is unsparing with criticism he is also generous with praise, and his analysis of the post-war post-war world is all the more trenchantly convincing for the fact that he is of the generation that fought the Second World War and then set out to ‘win the peace’ by building the new Jerusalem based on social justice and equality of opportunity.

No dewy-eyed sentimentalist, his realism and gritty understanding of the challenges of changing society does not detract from his idealism, although his wartime experiences temper his expectations with pragmatism. It was Healey who declared that a politician must have a ‘hinterland’, by which he means interests, enthusiasms and passions beyond the fields of political play which are themselves sustaining, and he has them in abundance. A complex man of immense ability, he comes across on occasion as arrogant which is ultimately forgivable because it is balanced with tremendous good humour and self-knowledge. Now in his nineties having recently celebrated 60 years of marriage to his wife Edna, herself a successful writer, his much-tendered hinterland must be a solace and a comfort in the evening years of a life well-lived.

Look Me In the Eye - A Life in Television by Jeremy Isaacs (published by Little Brown, 2006)

Jeremy Isaacs, son of Glasgow, has lived many lives at the glittering forefront of the arts and media in Britain. The list of his appointments and achievements is long and distinguished in a career that took him from beginnings as a producer at Granada TV, when commercial television began in the mid-1950s, to current affairs at the BBC and on to the highest pinnacle of the arts establishment as General Director of the Royal Opera House in the 1990s – a period of his life chronicled with typical verve and style in his memoir Never Mind the Moon.

These were the days when television was controlled by the great panjandrums who were the abiters of taste and lords of the airwaves, enlightened autocrats who oversaw the more limited schedules then on offer, compared to our multi-channelled opportunities, according to their view of the world. The old two-state system of the BBC and ITV held sway until Isaacs was appointed first Chief Executive of Channel Four, courting much controversy along the way. The roster of his pioneering firsts in television production include the epic history of the Second World War, the World at War, which further developed the use of eye-witness account allied to documentary film footage and voice-over (provided by Laurence Olivier) and the development of the independent production industry when founding director of Channel Four.

The book deals with big issues, as befits a big character, with Isaac’s usual ebullience and brio – he robustly defends the medium of television and celebrates its power to inform, educate and entertain. His is a life marked by personal tragedy borne stoically: his brother was killed by a bomb in Israel and his wife Tamara died of cancer but also a life of great abundance with the arts his joy, consolation and constant comforter. Isaacs has that rare ability to see large things largely and he paints the picture of his life and times in primary colours for all to see.