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.

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…

Out of Cornwall, Eden and the World

“ if you want to do the impossible, ask the young because they don’t know it cannot be done “

Cornwall boasts many delights to its residents, tourists and visitors: countryside, beaches, cliffs and coves, wild flora and fauna. But it also has something which goes far beyond these attractions and which celebrates them all. It may not be widely appreciated by many people outside Cornwall but near the small village of St Austell, on the site of a reclaimed clay pit, stands the Seventh Wonder of the World. The Eden Project. The largest botanic conservatory in the world housing the largest collection of plants outside their natural habitat the world has ever seen.

The ambition is stratospheric – to become the leading educational and research centre for the study of, and contribution to, man’s future on planet earth. Sited under specially created conservatories or biomes, which re-create a tropical rainforest, a Mediterranean habitat the project seeks to harness the power of story-telling and theatre to the narrative of the natural world building up the connections between people and the natural world through the plants that enable humankind to exist on the planet. One of the many mottos, aphorisms and inspirational sayings that adorn the exhibitions and displays such “the future depends on the stories we tell ourselves”.

These stories are told beautifully through poetry and sculpture, music and painting as well as narrative prose. For example, in the Mediterranean Biome the visitor learns of the ‘Tribunal of the Waters’ – a dispute-resolution council which has been meeting every Tuesday in Valencia, Spain to adjudicate farmer’s disputes since the times when the Moors ruled.

In the Rainforest Biome, for example, we learn of the connections between deforestation and the palm oil industry of Indonesia. It is about regeneration and education according to Chief Executive and co-founder of the Eden Project Tim Smit. (www.edenproject.com). It won a Reader’s Choice award at the Rough Guide to Accessible Britain Awards earlier in the year.

http://www.edenproject.com/come-and-visit/plan-your-visit/access-guide/index.php
http://www.edenproject.com/media/eden-top-uk-accessible-attraction-pr.php

From the appreciation of flora and fauna of the natural world to another sort of Cornish paradise. The beaches, inlets and coves are a surfer’s paradise and there are many surfing schools catering for those hungry to learn the art of taking the wave. One school, in Bude, has taken customer service that one step further and teaches in British Sign Language (BSL), which the instructor Becky Price has added to her other languages of French and Italian. There are internationally recognised hand signals in surfing and she regards BSL as a logical progression from that.

The Big Blue Surf School
www.bigbluesurfschool.co.uk
UK Deaf Sport
www.ukdeafsport.org.uk

Old School by Tobias Wolff ( Bloomsbury, 2005)

Tobias Wolff, a celebrated novelist and short story writer, has crafted a wonderful short novel which is both part-memoir and part literary criticism. It is set in an East Coast American boys boarding school, known as a prep school, in the early 1960s and is something of a coming-of-age, rites of passage story. But it is also much more than that – Wolff deals with big themes such as class, trust, loyalty, honour and the nature of friendship as well as the writer’s art, and artifice.

The plot is concerned with a story-writing competition amongst sixth form boys at the unnamed prestigious school, which could be one of a dozen such establishments, from Groton to Andover, that has educated the mainly white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) offspring of networked established families of the East Coast elite from the mid-19th century until the present day.

The focus on literature is an important part of the school’s educational agenda. It provides the driving narrative of the story, which is in the first person. The visiting writer chooses the winner of the competition among the senior boys, the prize being a private audience with the visitor and publication in the school magazine.

The rivalry amongst the book-obsessed aspiring writers that make up the sixth form student body is intense. One of the themes taken up by Wolff is that of identity: the narrator has a fear that his Jewish origins will be discovered, which he has kept a secret.

The climax of the novel brilliantly brings these overt and hidden themes together. The narrator wins the competition but is expelled for copying another’s work and passing it off as his own. He discovers a story written some years before by a pupil from a nearby girls’ school and so closely identifies the events of the story with his own life that he believes it to be something he could and should have written himself. It deals with Jewish identity kept secret; privilege and class and self-concealment. It itself encompasses the strands of the wider novel. A story within a story expertly accomplished. The deed is discovered and punished by banishment for breaking the honour code.

This event is what forms the author as a writer, but the story does not end with disgrace and humiliation. Many years later his former master tells him a postscript to the saga which provides an insightful twist: the senior teacher known as the Dean resigned from his post the day of the expulsion. So who is the writer whose work is to prove both the undoing and salvation of more than one character in the novel? It is Ernest Hemingway.

An evening in May at Glyndebourne

Every year since 1934 the Sussex country house of the Christie family has played host to an opera festival known the world over simply as Glyndebourne.

On any evening (from May to August) amongst the gentle Sussex hills near the old town of Lewes, people bearing rugs, collapsible chairs, picnic hampers and dressed in evening wear can be spotted. They are opera goers and are taking part in a uniquely British summer season ritual. The picnic is an integral part of the Glyndebourne experience, the consumption of which can be enjoyed during the ‘long interval’ – a performance break of up to 80 minutes.

The intimate setting of house and grounds, complete with grazing sheep, provides the backdrop to productions by composers including Mozart, Verdi, Rossini, Stravinksy and Britten. The original theatre was replaced by a new opera house built in1994 with a capacity of over one thousand, and now luxuriates in the sounds produced by the celebrated Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras, beloved of singers and musicians alike.

Cosi Fan Tutte is one of Mozart’s greatest works, but also one of his most perplexing. The music is sublime but it tells a story of jealousy, infidelity and cynical manipulation of emotion. The plot is simple enough: two men (Ferrando and Guglielmo) are persuaded by a friend (Don Alfonso) to test the love of their fiancees (Dorabella and Fiordiligi) by playing a trick on them. The men pretend they have been called to the war but disguise themselves in order to tempt each other’s girlfriend as an experiment in fidelity. Aided and abetted by the scheming housemaid Despina, the plan plays out with the two girls ‘falling for’ the two strangers and ends up with the four protagonists realising that they have played a game that has backfired and left them confused. The test has undermined their love, not strengthened it, and they will have to live with the consequences. The title of the opera has been debated ever since Mozart wrote the piece but it gives the general meaning as “they all do it”. It is a brilliant dissection of what men and women do to each other in the comedy and tragedy of life and love.

Hearing access at Glyndebourne is provided by a Sennhauser sound enhancement system which is available on request. It is an innovative, infra-red audio system which technician David Yapp describes as “ a two-channel or a stereo system. It can be run with an audio soundtrack of the show on one of the channels, and then the other channel can have an audio description of what’s happening on stage for blind or partially sighted audience members……... the receivers go under the neck. They’re very discreet, and there are no cables. There are no switches. You turn it on and it’s working “. Exactly as those at Glyndebourne would wish it.

Michael Foot- A Life by Kenneth O Morgan

M Foot (1913-2009)–

The death of Michael Foot at the age of 96 has marked the passing into history of an era in British political life whose like, as the poet says, we shall never see again. With perhaps the exception of Foot’s friend and rival Denis Healey, now advancing into his nineties, there are few standard bearers left of that generation of political figures born in the closing years of the First World War who experienced the harshness of the “low, dishonest” decade that was the 1930s, survived the titanic struggle of the Second World War and emerged from that epoch-defining period to build the peace and a new world ‘fit for heroes to live in’. It is said that all political careers end in failure but, in Foot’s case, if failure, it was of a glorious and romantic kind. The political cause of democratic socialism never had a more eloquent exponent or more committed advocate. Whether writing leader columns for papers as diverse as Tribune or the London Evening Standard or books on HG Wells or his hero Aneuran Bevan, and in philosophical tracts and polemical pieces, his prose was scintillating and his wit razor-sharp; on public platform in full oratorical flight he could be mesmerising and in person charming and erudite.

All these traits have been brought to magisterial life by Foot’s biographer, the academic, historian and peer Kenneth O Morgan. With great insight and scholarship, one great intellectual and philosopher-historian has celebrated another. Although not from the same tradition of the Labour movement as Foot, Morgan has captured the life, the work and the man both sympathetically and objectively as well as generosity laced with scepticism when necessary.

Born to a prominent Liberal family near Plymouth, Michael Foot inherited the love of literature, music and public debate from his father, as well as a passion for soccer which he manifested in a life-long devotion to Plymouth Argyle. As a journalist in his late twenties, he published the book that made his name exposing the delusions of those who appeased Hitler – Guilty Men. The man who was later to become a founder-member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and self-styled ‘inveterate peace-monger’ was also the protégé of press baron Lord Beaverbrook and a supporter of humanitarian intervention by force in Bosnia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s. Old age may have slowed him but it never wearied him, although the death of his beloved wife Jill Craigie, a celebrated film-maker, affected him deeply.

The blessing of binaural hearing aids meant he was able to debate, comment and perform in private and public as vigorously as ever. Although an atheist by inclination he was ever the Nonconformist and his was a true Pligrim’s Progress, charted brilliantly by Professor Morgan - son of Wales and possessor of the gift of words himself.

Review of The Ghost by Robert Harris

Robert Harris has written a critique of the Labour government in novel form.
The premise is brilliant – former Prime Minister Adam Lang is indicted on war crimes charges through endorsing the kidnapping and torture of suspects by the CIA. The agent of said ex-PM’s destruction is his former colleague and ex-Foreign Secretary. The ghost writer protagonist tells the tale in a Philip Marlowesque first person, having uncovered the plot during the course of his duties ‘ghosting’ the ex-Prime Ministerial memoirs. He is Lang’s alter ego personally and professionally – literally his shadow and his ghost. Packed with references and allusions to those he has modelled the characters on – direct comparisons do not have to be drawn because the audience knows for whom the plot tolls. The narrative voice of Robert Harris reveals a man writing with the hot indignation of one who knows of what he speaks and uses the novel’s creative devices to tell a wider truth: the satire borne of intimate knowledge.

In a television documentary on the Tony Blair years, Harris revealed his disappointment about his generation not living up to the promise of their own and others expectation when in power. This book is his response – a polemic disguised brilliantly as a satirical page-turning thriller of exceptional quality.

The novel is an encapsulation of the hopes and subsequent disappointments
of the generation that came to power, influence and prominence in the late 1990s. After a dozen years, the bright new dawn has given way to the dark night of the Iraq war, extraordinary rendition and the War on Terror; ‘governing for the many not the few’ ends up lining corporation pockets; ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with the United States in its hour of sorrow ends up with acquiescence in extraordinary rendition and the condoning of torture. Written as much in sorrow as in anger by an insider who knows the way governments work as well as the personalities involved, it is a very powerful critique.

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.

October in the West - San Franciscan ventures

It is often said that the people of the United Kingdom and the people of the United States of America are divided by a common language. The framer of this much-quoted aphorism, which has something of the cliché about it, was articulating the myriad of ways in which so-called American English and so-called British English differs. Just as a ‘sidewalk’ is a pavement, the ‘trunk’ of a car is the boot, a supermarket has ‘carts’ and not trolleys and road users are told to ‘yield’ rather than give way so it is in the world of hearing devices.

I have, therefore, a set of instructions for obtaining hearing aid filters when on vacation in the United States. When preparing to travel internationally it is advisable for the hearing aid user to pack enough (wax) filters to cover the period away. To those not familiar with such matters the filter is a small perspex finger-tip sized piece of plastic which is affixed to the hearing aid to prevent wax from the inner ear entering the device. In the United Kingdom they are known as ‘filters’ and in the United States as ‘wax traps’.

Step One: find a representative of the company that supplies your hearing aids (or listening devices as the current parlance has it) by way of internet search and the discovery of an exhibition (Hear the World – www.hear-the-world.com ) at a downtown department store in the city. Macy’s Department store, Union Square, San Francisco was the scene of the latest stage of the globe-trotting exhibition of celebrity photographs by the celebrated musician Bryan Adams aimed at publicising hearing loss issues specifically and the promotion of hearing health issues more widely. The exhibition consisted of a series of photographs of artists striking a hand-behind-ear pose as if they were straining to hear something being said – a typical every-day gesture brilliantly conceived to make the wider point. The singer Annie Lennox graced the front cover of the publicity leaflet which relayed a number of startling facts: one in every six people worldwide is affected by hearing loss which is equivalent to the number of people who own a car and on average people with hearing loss wait 10 years before doing anything about it.

Step Two: Contact the Hearing & Speech Center of Northern California and discover that the nearest audiologist dispensing hearing aid accessories has an office in the next bloc to the bookshop you are visiting.

Step Three: Locate the audiologist in his office and after some initial confusion about the elusive Dr Schindler (who has moved to the other side of the city) subsequently you are presented with two complimentary packs of wax traps. All courtesy of the company network via Macy’s department store, the Hear the World exhibition and the information resources of the Hearing and Speech Center of Northern California – a wonderful example of the combination of American know-how, can-do philosophy and pure serendipity.

Sitting on a balcony in Tiburon, California overlooking the yacht club in late October with the sun pushing its way through the cloud amid the famous fog rolling across the San Francisco Bay, one would be forgiven for thinking that there cannot be many better ways to spend a late autumnal day. The former railroad terminus town of Tiburon, named after the Spanish word for shark, faces San Francisco across the Bay which is itself flanked by one of the greatest engineering wonders of the world and symbol of the city the world over – the Golden Gate Bridge The town once known as rowdy and raffish – think navvies, trains, saloons and hard-living – is now a sought-after commuter town of smart shops, smarter houses and even smarter cars. - with the many BMWs, V-Ws and Mercedes to be seen, the European car market is being supported mightily in Northern California.. The nearest to a disturbance of the peace to be found of an evening these days is an argument over protocol in the Corinthian Yacht Club, scene of the annual Commodore’s Ball which is the social event of the autumn season. To be seen twisting the night away in the main room of the clubhouse is proof that you are on good terms with the cognoscenti and the ‘movers’n’shakers’ of this Californian enclave which could be a town out of Hollywood central casting with its wooden houses, main street, coffee shop and every kind of boutique outlet imaginable. It is reminiscent of the setting for the movie Roxanne, a remake of the French play Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah, based in small-town America.

The people of Tiburon have what is perhaps one of the easiest and most scenic commutes in the world. For those with houses overlooking the quay where the ferry docks it is a matter of watching the approaching vessel from kitchen or bedroom window and moseying or sauntering down to the waterfront, perhaps via the coffee house to pick up the obligatory ‘take out’, before boarding. Then it is sit back and admire the view of the Bay as your water-borne version of bus or tube conveys you towards the city either resplendent in its fog-bound glory or newly emergent from it as the ferry sails stately onwards.

At the ferry terminal building in San Francisco there is the wonderfully-named bookstore ‘Book Passages’ which contrasts in atmosphere and approach to the big down-town Borders bookshop on Union Square in middle of the city where the statue to Commodore Dewey hero of the Spanish-American war in late 19th Century (later made an Admiral) stands proud in front of Macy’s department store.

Fisherman’s Wharf with shops, such as Seasons dedicated to Christmas gifts and the National Football League (NFL) official outlet for American football merchandise, boasts restaurants and views of the harbour overlooking the infamous Alcatraz, now a museum.

As Tony Bennett describes in his signature song, I Left My Heart in San Francisco, the cable cars do rise half-way to the stars and the morning fog may chill the air -
through the evocative names of the streets as the cable car makes its journey up, over and through those famous avenues ( “the little cable cars rise half-way to the stars”).

The hills of San Francisco are well-known for the large houses perched on top of the impossibly vertical streets named after robber barons from the romantic buccaneering days of the Gold Rush and the frontier: Nob Hill is named after Leland Stanford of the Union Pacific railway and founder of California’s Stanford University – who had a house on Nob Hill. The name Russian Hill conjures up White Russians escaping both the Bolshevik Revolution and the frozen steppe with Dr Zhivago not far behind; and downtown can be found the streets where the iconic car chase scene in Steve McQueen’s Bullitt was filmed.
Twenty years after the first visit of the Tutankamun exhibition to San Francisco, the young pharaoh and his entourage into the afterlife was back at the city’s de Young Musuem. Dedicated to fine art, this now-venerable institution was set up by the patronal family that founded the daily newspaper the San Francisco Chronicle. Our early morning tour, before the museum opened for the day, was facilitated by a member of the fundraising committee and we were accompanied by the ladies of that committee . The guided preview , often undertaken by volunteer guides or ‘docents’ at the Museum. The story of how the archaeologist Howard Carter and the aristocrat Lord Carnarvon unearthed the tomb of the boy Pharoah is still a stirring one of adventure and romance. The exhibition was enhanced by all the knowledge and understanding developed over the succeeding decades and also featured the photographs taken at the original opening of the tomb in the 1920s now stored in New York (on loan to de Young). The physical access for disabled museum-goers is very good – hearing access is facilitated by trained museum guides and there is a deaf docent service provided by an organisation called Deaf Media. (www.deafmedia.org / www.tutsanfrancisco.org / www.deyoungmuseum.org).

The de Young specialises in art and a striking piece of sculpture was the anti-war installation model of a Cathedral, by Al Farrow, made out of old and decommissioned weapons and consisting of further materials such as guns, bullets, steel, glass, bone. It serves as a graphic illustration of the link between war and religion – http://www.alfarrowcathedral.com. My art education has been enhanced considerably and given a boost courtesy of Amy Whitaker’s book on museums (Museums Legs – Fatigue and Hope in the Face of Art)

The Muir Woods National Park Monument is a living museum of nature. Set up in 1908 by naturalist, frontiersman and ranger Gifford Pinchot, who was appointed first head of the US Forest Service (forerunner of National Park Service) by President Theodore Roosevelt, it boasts some of the tallest and oldest trees in the United States – the redwoods. These majestic trees can live up to 2200 years and many stand taller than the Statue of Liberty. They are guardians of the plant and animal life which grows in profusion across the national park and they are playing a vital role of environmental protection through carbon capture and water preservation. Pinchot was influenced by the pioneering environmentalist and woodsman John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club. The founding/organising conference of the United Nations in 1945 was held at Muir Woods. (http://www.nps.gov)

A Sunday afternoon trip to the Marin Headlands National Park which sits atop San Francisco Bay affords spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Bay and City. The land was originally farmed by the “vaqueros” cowboys of Spanish origin – followed by the Portugese community who made a living from dairy farming. The lighthouse commanding the entrance to the Bay, a difficult passage for vessels past and present, stands on its own promontory with the original mid-19 Century glass still intact which continues to bring light and relief to those who may find themselves in peril on the sea. A reminder of recent Cold War history and the real possibility of nuclear confrontation in those decades is the NIKE missile military encampment which stood on the Marin headlands, before the advent of the inter-continental ballistic missile rendered the base obsolete. The base is now a museum.

The Fort Bay yacht club stands in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge – it has a raffish, down-at-heel slightly faded but charming old-world feel with an air of past glory but uncertain future. The rather theatrical old salt of a barman was dumbfounded when confronted with the idea of a shandy – mixing beer and lemonade – which he regarded as both mystifying and almost sacrilegious. A white wine sprizer (white wine and soda) was incomprehensible so we settled on a glass of white wine straight – almost acceptable!

A late afternoon trip to Mill Valley reveals a slice of American and Californian social history. It is one of the original hippy communities of Northern California (“if you are going to San Francisco be sure to go with flowers in your hair”) complete with Mill Valley Market selling everything organic from West Coast to Eastern Oriental and back via Northern approaches – including Yorkshire tea. Mill Valley also boasts some fine restaurants – Italian a speciality.

A Saturday afternoon spent sailing on San Francisco Bay aboard the fifty-foot yacht Georgia J with the Vice-Commodore of the Corinthian Yacht Club and her husband-Captain is quiet an experience. Under Captain Kim we sailed around the former prison and military camp of Alcatraz (being reliably informed that Burt Lancaster as the bird man had flown long ago) and into the famous fog – which descends and lifts in an instant – after nearly losing both the winch and the Captain’s hand. The ever-present sealions in and around the bay – sometimes to be seen sitting on the yacht club dock – provided an amused audience. It all brought to mind the old sea shanty, The Mermaid, that tells the story of how ships were lured on to rocks by pretty creatures holding a comb and a glass: “ when we set sail, and our ship not far from the land, we there did espy a fair pretty maid, with a comb and a glass in her hand….”. The night was danced away at the annual yacht club ball when tales of the sea were swapped to the sounds of the 1970s.

The wine-country of Northern California, based in and around the Napa Valley and its towns, was traditionally a patchwork of family-owned vineyards and wineries which are now increasingly being taken over by larger commercial entities. The region also has a growing reputation internationally for olive oil. As a sign of affluence, confidence and ‘chutzpah’ many of the vineyards boast art installations and architectural structures not out of place in big city plazas. They are incongruously sited in the middle of the Napa Valley ranges, commanding views across the Valley.
Just as the European immigrants who found themselves in Southern California used the natural resources (of light and space) to invent and develop the quintessential American art form of the 20th Century – the motion picture – so their compatriots who came to Northern California brought with them the skills of their forefathers in wine production, making use of the abundant natural resources of the Western fertile plains.

The history of the state of California is also bound up with the Spanish missions which were built by missionaries along the length of the coastline from San Rafael in the North to San Diego in the South – all the names we know that are synonymous with Californian living have their origin here. Indeed, the American rock band The Eagles – whose sales of records necessitated a new category (platinum) to be invented by the record industry – pay tribute to the “mission bells” which line the route of the highway across the state in the hit song Hotel California.

A visit to Angel Island, across the Bay from Tiburon, was a sobering one. It was the historic immigration station – the ‘guarded gateway to the West’ - and former Civil War Army base, although San Franciso never heard a shot fired in anger during the American Civil War of the 1860s. All the immigrants from Asia – particularly Chinese and Japanese – were held on Ellis Island (sometimes called California’s equivalent to the New York entry point Ellis Island) whilst paperwork was processed. A poignant moment was provided by a Chinese man, on a works outing from a city-based company who told the assembled company that his own mother had been held at the barracks we were visiting, as one of the last cohort of immigrants to pass through before closure in the 1940s. This is a powerful reminder that the American Dream is a story based on injustice as well as heroism, brutality as well as courage. The manifest destiny of the United States was forged in adversity and history lives on in people’s lives. The Island affords views of the Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge and the city from various vantage points.

In the canon of American popular music there are many songs celebrating the joys of particular places at particular times of the year: Frank Sinatra sings of the delights of Autumn in New York or Moonlight in Vermont, Joan Baez begs the object of her love (‘a rambling boy’) to Please Come to Boston for the Springtime. The Great American Songbook lyricists and composers turned their attentions to European cities as well – Yip Harburg on April in Paris or the Gershwins on A Foggy Day in London Town.. There should surely be a hymn to San Francisco in October, for it is very heaven. Perhaps it was October when Tony Bennett left his heart in the City by the Bay. I certainly did.

Julie&Julia: love&food across time in US and Europe

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?