The challenge continues.....

So perhaps this is the challenge of the blank page. To say something useful, interesting, challenging or just entertaining in order to fill up the white space with black words. Black on white. A most beautiful sight, a glorious vista of everyday creativity. A testament to human imagination and ingenuity. A small contribution to an ocean of mind-based activity. A hope for the artistic endeavours past, present and future. Sentence building, paragraph construction and page making, word by word, brick by brick. The edifice arises...

The challenge of the blank page - throwing words at the screen

What makes us sit down and try and throw words at the screen in whatever form comes to mind whether essay, short story, poem, novel, play, screenplay, adaptation…what is the writer’s compulsion? Is it fame, glory, money (a la Dr Johnson?), posterity, the regard (even respect) of one’s peers? Today it is easier to gain access to the world of what used to be called the ‘belles lettres’ now renamed ‘arts and media’ (or meedja) as the late British politician Tony Benn lately dubbed it, but harder than it ever has been to make a living of some kind. More people are banging away at keyboards (silently), tossing paint at easels, producing podcasts, weaving tapestries, taking photographs, telling stories in one way or another but to what effect? The age of the internet has ‘connected’ us all up but taken away the means by which ‘artists’ earn a living? With more people ‘at it’ has the quality gone up? Are we more enlightened? As there is more of everything so there is more of the good but also is it not the case there is also much more of the bad? Never mind the quality look at the quantity! Or should the maxim less is more be the guide? In which case how does the current maker of these sentences think his contribution to the sum of human understanding is to be advanced by adding his pennorthworth? The great writer-producer John Lloyd maintains that everyone has talent of some kind but success (in any and many fields) comes with the desire to do very good work and the persistence to do it well along with effort, luck and all the other mysterious things. So, no challenge there then? It is called the challenge of the blank page…

Book Review: The Time of My Life by Denis Healey (Michael Joseph)

There are many political biographies which can seem rather self-justificatory, if not self-serving, often 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 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. 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 more than 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.

Book Review: 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.

Book Review:Team of Rivals –the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

By Doris Kearns Goodwin “has anybody seen my old friend Abraham? Can you tell me where he’s gone? He freed a lot of people but it seems the good die young I just looked around and he was gone” - Abraham, Martin and John (Marvin Gaye) For once the words ‘magisterial’, ‘monumental’ and ‘magnificent’ does justice to a book. Famously praised by Barack Obama as a remarkable study in leadership it tells the story of how the ‘prairie lawyer’ Abraham Lincoln rose from obscurity in the backwoods of Kentucky to win the Presidency of the United States in a time of great crisis and the catastrophe of the Civil War to emerge as one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known. Doris Kearns Goodwin tells the extraordinary story of Lincoln with warmth, humour, penetrating insight and great humanity – many of the same qualities she shows to be found in her subject. The device she uses to tell it is by way of a group biography of the men who were Lincoln’s rivals in the race to win the nomination of their party for the office of President of the United States– the newly formed Republican Party – and how it came to pass that a man born in poverty in a log cabin prevailed over men of wealth, position and prominence in the political race but then forged those very same men into a team to help him save the Union. Men such as William H Seward, senator and governor of New York, whose disappointment turned to impassioned respect for the extraordinary man whom he served with distinction as Secretary of State; Salmon P Chase, governor of Ohio and man of family tragedy; Judge Edward Bates prominent lawyer. No less fascinating, and central to the tale, is the role of the wives and daughters of these men and their encouragement of and dependence on their educated, enlightened womenfolk in both private and public life. Kearns plunges the reader into the world of mid-19 century America with verve and skill painting a picture of an expanding continent just discovering what would become known, and debated aver after, as its ‘manifest destiny’. What is heart-warming and encouraging about this saga is that despite the enormous suffering both personal, public and on an epic scale the central heart of the story is one of a man with extraordinary gifts – of friendship, forgiveness, empathy and the ability to illuminate these through anecdote and illustrative vignettes – using them to the betterment of those around him with unparalleled generosity. Lincoln even found time in the midst of the Civil War to sign the enabling act of the world’s first degree college for deaf and blind people that became Gallaudet University and has ever since had the sitting President as patron. Although a tragic age – the Civil War cost more American lives than all the other wars combined – it is also heroic and this account brings it to vivid life and should inspire all that, in the words of Lincoln himself, appeals to the “better angels of our nature”.

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.