Songs of the City - 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) A weekend trip to Paris, to celebrate an anniversary or other special occasion, should begin at the new Eurostar station at Ebbsfleet in Kent. On arrival at the Gare du Nord, if your hotel is some distance from the city, be prepared for the walk uphill along the Rue de Dunkirk. The hotels along the Rue de Dunkirk are 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. The new arrival can venture 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. Head for the bars and cafés forming the centre of the artists’ colony, previously frequented by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec. Then visit the studio off the Rue Lepic which, by repute, saw the birth of modern art. Lunch at the Café Sancerre, with tables spilling onto the pavement in haphazard fashion. Then walk 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?’ A traditional farmhouse-style restaurant is situated 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 can be 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. Take 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. Take the last bus to the Gare du Nord through the famous Parisian rush hour and travel 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. Songs of the City City profiles in music, film and song – Paris in Season Celebrating the belle époque – “Look at Paris in the Spring/Where each solitary thing is more beautiful than ever before “ (Gigi, Learner & Lowe) Cherie/Coco Before Chanel/Piaf/Moulin Rouge/Gigi Some films in celebration of the period in French history known as the ‘belle époque’ – the decades from the late 19th century (1880s) to the outbreak of the First World War when there seemed to be a flowering of culture, fashion, society manners and the arts among the French bourgeosie (middle classes). It was a time when Paris seemed to be full of charming boulevardiers, all looking like Maurice Chevalier as he is depicted in the Hollywood musical Gigi, and beautiful women driving in open-top carriages whilst exchanging witty repartee about life and love. The belle époque has been celebrated in books and film ever since the invention of café society, and the kinematic camera made moving pictures possible. Writers such as Colette developed the idea of the independent woman free to carve her own career as men did with accompanying affairs, entanglements and multiple marriages; artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec pushed the boundaries of painting, giving birth to modern art in the bars and bistros of Montmartre; the performers of the Moulin Rouge developed risqué revue theatre frequented by figures from high and low society including the future King Edward VII when Prince of Wales. In the long history of the link between the ‘Moulin’ and high society there is a story of a famous dancer spotting the then Prince of Wales, known as Bertie, in the audience and crying out across the floor “hey Wales, the champagne is on you”. No doubt Bertie’s great grandson Harry Wales (Prince Harry) may find an echo in that story about his fun-loving and high-living forebear. All this provides the backdrop for Cherie. Directed by Stephen Frears and starring Michelle Pfieffer it tells the story of society hostess and courtesan who befriends, seduces and falls in love with the son of a sister courtesan. It is a tale dealing with the eternal themes of love, obsession, the ravages of time, the attractions of youth and the hypocrisy of society. The older woman takes the younger man ‘in hand’ on the understanding that she is preparing him for marriage and the life his situation demands of him – respectability through marrying well and playing the game. Love intervenes, surprising both parties, but convention and circumstance dictate that he must return to his emotionally stifling marriage and she to her independent existence. Coco before Chanel (2009, Anne Fontaine (dir)). Nearly forty years after her death aged 88 a French language film starring Audrey Tatou, focuses on the early life of fashion icon style guru, provider of perfume and accessories to generations of women and doyen of sophisticated taste, Coco Chanel. The film is a biopic which tells the story of how a seamstress with the nickname Coco, abandoned by her father in a school run by nuns becomes the legend that is Coco Chanel, by way of a tour d’horizon of French social history in the first three decades of the 20th Century. Coco rises from oppressed seamstress, working for a pittance by day and singing risqué songs by night to drunken café revellers, to mistress of a well-meaning but dim-witted aristocrat: the developing Coco style can be seen in clothing and hair as the ingénue develops confidence and an emerging élan. The audience goes on a journey with her, through heart break, at losing the man she loves in a car crash and passion for the work and business which becomes her driving force. The closing scenes are a montage featuring the Coco Chanel that the world came to know so well in her salon, dressed to perfection in the style she made her own, symbolising grace, elegance and wit for millions. Coco Chanel was truly a daughter of the belle époque, independent and proud. La vie en Rose (2007, Olivier Dahan (dir)) – another biopic of a French legend, starring Marion Cotillard and featuring a cameo performance by Gerard Depardieu the film charts the rise to fame of the singer/chanteuse Edith Piaf. It is another story of triumph over adversity, with much heartbreak along the way. Born into desperate poverty the singer who would win the affections of the world with her heartbreaking, tremulous yet powerful voice was known as the little sparrow. The film follows her journey in early-century France through brutal circumstances and oppressive relationships and battles with drug dependency and ill-health. Depardieu plays the nightclub owner who discovers the street singer, takes her under his wing and promotes her talent as well as giving her the name by which she would be known the world over – Piaf or “sparrow”. Tragically he is killed in an underworld revenge attack and Piaf loses another protector and source of loving comfort, having no parents from an early age. The music provides the backdrop, theme and is a central character of the film in many ways. Piaf was closely indentified with her music – she embodied the lives of the street people about which she sang in haunting songs and these melodies flow through the film. Three of the songs that Piaf made her own and will forever be identified with are the song of the film’s title, La Vie En Rose; Hymn a Lamour (Hymn to Love) and Les Trois Cloches (The Three Bells). Perhaps the seminal cinematic moment in the film comes when Piaf is played the tune that will be become her signature. A young songwriter comes to the singer’s rooms at a time when she is ill and full of sorrow at the death of her boxer lover Marcel Cerdan, and he plays the opening bars of Je ne regrette rien. Piaf instantly recognises that this is the song that encapsulates her life and with this realisation comes the determination to carry on. The film ends with the collapse on stage which presaged her death – sad but uplifting, mournful yet hopeful. An inspiring life of hope transcending adversity. Another heir to the belle époque tradition. Moulin Rouge (dir Baz Luhrman) starring Nicole Kidman, Ewan MacGregor, is a remake of a 1920s film about the famous Parisian nightclub set to a modern pop music score and put to cinematic fanfare treatment by an Australian director renowned for his distinctive cinematic style mixing special effects, live action and a magical realism fantasy that is all his own. MacGregor plays the love-sick , abisenth-drinking writer who takes to his garrett in the City of Light to pine for a showgirl dancer at the Moulin Rouge. With lively production numbers, the ring-master played with great verve by British character actor Jim Broadbent and Nicole Kidman at her most teasingly provocative as the Moulin dancer, the old story is told thrillingly for a late 20thCentury audience with all the flair, pizzazz and showmanship that would be expected from a movie about one of the greatest night venues in Europe. Gigi – (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) – a Hollywood movie adaptation of the Lerner-Loewe stage musical about the life and loves of a French girl destined to be a courtesan in the belle époque era. Starring Leslie Caron, a ballet dancer turned actress, as Gigi; Louis Jourdan, later to play villains as well as lotharios, as the bored playboy who pursues her and the celebrated entertainer Maurice Chevalier as the aging boulevardier who observes the scene with a wry smile and a knowing look as well as the classical British actress Hermione Gingold as Gigi’s mother with big ambitions. It is a boulevard comedy, rather in the style of the farceur Georges Feydau who wrote the late French Empire play The Lady from Maxim’s. It follows the girlhood, growing up and flowering of the Gigi of the title, taken from a short story by the writer Colette, who is destined to be the companion of wealthy men of one type or another. The playboy at first flirts with Gigi and later realises he is in love with her. The music score is penned by the duo who gave the world My Fair Lady and the score features classics such as Thank Heaven for Little Girls, The Night they Invented Champagne and I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore. Gigi won thirty Academy Awards (Oscars) in 1958, more than any film up until that time, and legend has it that the singer Tony Martin forgot the lyrics to the title song, only remembering the opening word of it: Gigi…..

Film Review - The Imitation Game (Cert 12a)

The Imitation Game tells the extraordinary story of the group of brilliant young cryptologists at Bletchley Park who broke the German Enigma code thereby shortening the Second World War and saving millions of lives in the process. It focuses on the mathematics genius Alan Turing, who pioneered computers and built a ma-chine to decode the German army, navy and airforce signals. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the troubled ge-nius with sensitivity and extraordinary lightness of touch bringing out his social awkwardness, shyness bor-dering on a kind of aspergers and quicksilver mind. His relations with everyone around him are made diffi-cult by a manner which disguises huge emotional turmoil, the sources of which are revealed in a series of flashbacks. Terrible bullying at his public school and great love for a fellow pupil who dies of tuberculosis. Turing’s character is revealed through encounters with his team and superiors at Bletchley Park, the wartime codes and cyphers centre which was the forerunner of GCHQ. His lifelong battle with a misunderstanding and often hostile authority is brought out through clashes with a Naval Commander, Alistair Denniston, played by a suitably stiff-upper-lip Charles Dance who wants to reign in the undisciplined Turing. Members of Turing’s own team at first are also bewildered by his whole approach and as they begin to realise what an incredible man he is they are slowly won around. There is a powerful scene in the film when Commander Denniston wants to shut down the machine Turing is building and dismiss him. The team-members stand up for him despite their misgivings. A major theme underlying the film is Alan Turing’s homosexuality for which he is prosecuted after the war. This is examined by means of a love interest at Bletchley Park in the shape of Keira Knightley who plays a shy girl with a brilliant mind whom Turing offers to marry so she can escape the shadow of her parents and stay on at Bletchley. There is an understanding between them about his nature which serves as a metaphor-ical device for explaining the social, emotional and legal minefield which is Turing’s life. The twist and turns of wartime intelligence, spies and the attendant compromises with truth which have to be reached is personi-fied in the figure of Stewart Menzies, a smooth Mark Strong, of M16 who is overseeing the operation and manipulating all for the greater good of winning the war. The theme of what Churchill called the truth being guarded by lies is effectively examined and the scene between Menzies and Turing dealing with secret knowledge of several kinds - Menzies indicates he knows Turing’s secret - his homosexuality - and therefore must co-operate in not revealing the identity of the Soviet spy in the camp. The relations between team-members are sensitively drawn bringing out the frustrations of highly gifted people under unimaginable stress in close proximity. The easy-going affable Hugh Alexander, played by Matthew Goode, and the friendly John Cairncross, Allen Leach, who is leading a double life as well as the youngest member, Matthew Beard, worried about his brother at sea. The eureka moment, when Turing discovers how to break the Enigma code, is a cinematic set-piece of great charm. The joy is followed by the terrible realisation that they must keep the breakthrough a secret by using the knowledge to best advantage in the conduct of the war. In other words they have to decide which convoys at sea to save by warning of U-boats or armies to assist and which to let be destroyed so as to keep the Germans from knowing their code has been broken. It remained the biggest secret of the war and was known as Ultra. Teams of codebreakers were employed to perpetuate the deception that the code had not been broken whilst the decision-makers and strategists could use the invaluable intelligence. The style of the film incorporates voice-over and flashback particularly between wartime and Manchester in 1951 when Alan Turing comes to attention of the police when his flat is burgled. The policeman in charge of the investigation, played by Rory Kinnear, discovers that the maths professor has a classified war record and wants to know more. This is the period of Soviet spies and Cold War paranoia. Meanwhile Turing is charged with gross indecency. The post-war treatment of Alan Turing is one of lasting shame - a man who should have been a national hero was forced to take oestrogen hormone drugs which eventually led him to suicide because his mind was affected. The film dealt with themes reminiscent of a powerful play by Hugh Whiting featuring Turing - Breaking the Code - which deals with both the Enigma code and the social-conventional codes of the time. The contribution to winning the war that Turing and team made and the foundations he laid of modern com-puter science have been belatedly recognised. The Queen recently gave Turing a posthumous pardon and the wider work of the codebreakers has been uncovered and properly celebrated by historians, writers, play-wrights and film-makers. And should be by us all.

Concerning online applications, interviews, panels and competency tests.

In these days of commitment to fairness, balance and some sort of equity in the interview process many employers, from large corporations to small businesses and SMEs, utilise a technique known as competency based interviewing. This means that candidates are judged against a set of criteria and each question is asked and marked against these. For example: communication skills; relationships; influencing; decision-making; teamworking; flexibility. The questions are often about how the interviewee would approach the job or undertake a particular task. Question: give an example of how you contributed to a team? How do you deal with difficult colleagues? How do you cope with stress? When did you last make a mistake or miss a deadline? How do you cope with setbacks (testing resilience)? A question which many candidates underestimate is the one asking why they want the job. There is an element of mystery about the job application process, whether it is for shelf-stacking in a supermarket or aspiring to join a venerable institution, company or public sector organisation. It might not be on a par with the big bang or the origins of the universe but recent experience would indicate that it is up there with such elusive conundrums as the hunting of the snark, the white rhino or the hen’s tooth. The first hurdle to the aspirant applicant, to organisations large and small, is the online application form. The wired world has replaced the ‘snail mail’ process of old - papers posted along with a stamp-addressed envelope for return of acknowledgment card and an anxiously anticipated phonecall - with the keyboard and screen-induced anxiety of the internet failure at the moment the ‘send’ button is pushed or before the multiple-choice test is finished. The pre-interview-test test is designed to put the applicant in ‘real-time’ situations to probe, supposedly, the common sense as well as ability of the potential employee. In organisations with defined hierarchies, structural layers and bureaucracy underpinned by HR departments, what is being ‘probed’ ‘teased out’ and generally ‘reinforced’ is the absolutely fundamental requirement to recognise when to refer to management in the form of section leader, team head or department co-ordinator. Whether the challenge is returning the baked beans to the shelf of origin whilst simultaneously advising a customer on laxative powder or deciding to help a colleague in the midst of editing a piece for the evening news, the ability to spot the referral to management moment is key. These pre-tests often come in the form of ‘best-worst’/’effective-least effective’ outcome scenarios, with or without the optional extra of the said scenario being presented in the form of a short video. The next challenge begins with the email, text or telephone call summoning the applicant to the organisational presence. It is at this point that it is revealed to the future mover and shaker whether he or she is to face a ‘panel’. These specially-created bodies are designed to reassure folk as to the impartial, unbiased, discrimination-reducing nature of the process but often have the effect on the interviewee of being hauled before the grand inquisitorial committee of the central board of inquiry. Whatever user-friendly measures are put in place – cheery smiles and ‘informal dress – the fundamental terms of trade inherent in the process is one of question and answer and justification of a life lived thus far. One technique employed is the expansion of the personal experience question: ‘tell us about a time when you….. saved the paper clip fund’ or ‘give us an example of fortitude in the face of disappointment’. This invites the applicant to exemplify by way of illustrative example but not to lurch into anecdotage or after-dinner-style yarn spinning. This does not mean that the panel dynamic of ‘good cop/bad cop’ is entirely eliminated. The inter-panel competitive sport of who can ask the hardest question can take over proceedings at any time resulting in the applicant experiencing the interview equivalent of the hospital pass on a rain-soaked muddy field with the question in ever-diminishing prospect of being answered. In the case of a well-known publicly-funded broadcaster it has ever been thus: the late veteran foreign correspondent Charles Wheeler described his panel interview at which he was advised that it was not an advantage to learn a language and that moreover he shouldn’t be under the impression that ‘we take anyone off the street’. The political journalist John Sergeant describes his panel interview experience as being akin to being summoned by a heavenly committee whereat he was asked whether the writing work he had done for the award-winning satirical TV programme That Was the Week That Was was not an example of his ‘tendency towards puerile schoolboy humour’ – a suggestion at which he did not demur but he had been refereed in his application by leading playwright Alan Bennett. It is perhaps reassuring to note that Charles Wheeler went on to become one of the finest broadcast journalists of the twentieth century and John Sergeant had an illustrious career as political correspondent and found fame as Strictly Come Dancing competitor. The frustrations of seeking gainful employment in a world of competition overlayed with Kafkaesque absurdity are nothing new. In fact, twas ever thus.

Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother – The Official Biography by William Shawcross

The writer William Shawcross has a long history of orbiting around royalty and the Royal Family, having written extensively about monarchy, so was regarded as well-placed to write about The Queen Mother’s long life. It is, subsequently, a long book. Born Elizabeth Bowes Lyon in the year 1900 to a comfortably upper class background, the woman who was to become Duchess of York, Queen Consort and then Queen Mother lived the entire span of the twentieth century. Every decade of that century was a significant decade for her and it is sobering to note that she was a widow for 50 years. Shawcross paints a portrait of a vivacious, fun-loving outward-looking daughter of the Scottish aristocracy who fell into the royal family because the King’s second son Bertie fell in love with her, pursued her and ‘won her hand’. The couple, feted by the public and the popular press, were not to know of the trials and tribulations that lay ahead and the happy family that Elizabeth and Bertie created as Duke and Duchess of York was to be altered forever by the Abdication Crisis which saw the Duke’s elder brother King Edward VIII step down from the throne thus casting them into the forefront of the nation’s affairs with all the attendant pressures. The highpoints and lows, the triumphs, tragedies and comedies of life and living in the twentieth century are captured through the prism of Elizabeth’s life. The familiar weigh-stations of the historical record are noted along with the personal details that serve to illuminate them. The accession of George VI, the outbreak of the Second World War, the death of the King, the coronation of Elizabeth II along with tales of house parties, dress fittings, letter-writing and horse-racing. And of course the story of the monarchy in the later half of the century with unhappy heirs, marriage failures and disgruntled subjects all set against a background of a changing world and the certainties of Edwardian society – into which Elizabeth Bowes Lyon had been born – giving way to the questioning and scepticism of postwar society. In many ways a social conservative the Queen Mother adapted to a much changed world in her way and on her own terms. This book is a study in how she managed to achieve this in her own life and that of the nation she served.

Book Review - 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.

Recommended Reads

Some recommended reads:
Gore Vidal, Point to Point Navigation (Vintage, 2007) and Palimpsest (Abacus, 1996)

Clive James, Unreliable Memoirs (Picador)
- the writer and broadcaster’s ‘hymn to an Australian childhood’
- published aged 40 which became a bestseller and laid the foundations for successive memoir editions (North Face of Soho, The Blaze of Obscurity)

Peter Ustinov, Dear Me (Penguin)
the actor, writer, director, polymath introduced a new style of memoir which set up a dialogue with himself as debater and protagonist in his own story

David Niven, The Moon’s A Balloon, Bring on the Empty Horses (Corgi)
The quintessential Hollywood Englishman accomplishes excellence in writing that eluded him in acting, telling the tales of his life set against a backdrop of the movies
Andrew Marr, My Trade
The distinguished political commentator on the media and his life as a journalist

Jeremy Isaacs, Never Mind the Moon (Bantam Books)
An account of life as Director-General of the Royal Opera House

Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
An elegy for a lost age – the author remembers his youthful friendship with an aristocratic family

The Art of the Memoir

‘We met at eight, we met at nine, I was on time, no you were late’
‘Ah yes, I remember it well’ (Gigi, Lerner & Loewe)
‘We dined aloneWe dined with friends’
‘A tenor sang/A baritone’
‘Ah yes, I remember it well’

It is often said that the past is another country or as the title of one wartime memoir puts it, the past is myself. The art of the memoir has been celebrated across the ages and in modern times the whole concept of memory, recollection and recall is bound up with issues surrounding increasing advanced old age in the general population and the attendant challenges and difficulties – we may all be living longer thanks to advances in medical sciences in the 20th century but we are surviving into an advanced old age which brings with it the danger of developing conditions which rob the mind of the very essence of humanity: memory and personality. If we are our memories, what is to become of us when recollection fails and the past plays tricks? A kind of sum of all we remember. As Shakespeare has it – “ I summon up remembrance of things past”.

The novelist, essayist, actor and chronicler of American political and cultural life Gore Vidal has turned to the memoir, like many before him, as a way of telling a story and as a summing up process. Like many artists and public figures down through the ages the act of sitting in the garden when day is done and ruminating on the life lived and the race run is as much a mental as physical one. The memoir as a literary device is different from that of the autobiography, which often has one eye on history and thus can be self-justifying at the expense of objective revelations. The memoir is almost entirely subjective and does not pretend an objectivity. The opening lines of Point to Point Navigation could stand as a working definition of a collected personal memory:

“As a writer and political activist, I have accumulated a number of cloudy trophies in my melancholy luggage. Some real, some imagined. Some acquired from life, such as it is, some from movies such as they are. Sometimes in time, where we are as well as were, it is not easy to tell the two apart. “

The beauty of the memoir as a literary form is that it can take many forms, encompass time, genre and style and stand the test of time whilst having a contemporary feel. Yet a memoir is not autobiography, although it can contain elements of it. A memoir does not have to justify or explain so much as give an impression – it is impressionism rather than portraiture. It often evokes time and place but is not bound by them. A memoir can start at the begiiniing and procees to the en vi a middle or it can start with the end. It is a most flexible of forms. I think therefore I am or perhaps I recollect therefore I am…