Bibliography, December 2008

Books bought / received (15)
B. Bryson, Made in America
L. Cohen, The Favourite Game
J. Darwin, After Tamerlane
M. Druon, Le Roi de fer
M. Druon, La Reine étranglée
M. Druon, Les Poisons de la Couronne
M. Druon, La Loi des mâles
M. Druon, La Louve de France
M. Druon, Le Lis et le Lion
M. Druon, Quand un roi perd la France
R. Gildea, Children of the Revolution
R. Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs
H. Rasky, The Song of Leonard Cohen
F. Wheen, How Mumbo-Jumbo conquered the world
A. Wheatcroft, The enemy at the gate

Books read (13)
M. Bywater, Big Babies
B. Chatwin, The Black Hill
L. Cohen, The Favourite Game
A. Enwright, The Gathering
W. Goldman, The princess bride
M. Hamid, The reluctant fundamentalist
S. Jordison, The Joy of Sects
D. Lessing, The Golden Notebook
A. Powell, At Lady Molly's
A. Powell, Casanova's Chinese restaurant
A. Powell, The Kindly Ones 
H. Rasky, The Song of Leonard Cohen
J. Tiptree, Her smoke rose up forever

December has been a good month. Christmas has not been too overbooked - coming away with less than twenty acquisitions is good work - and I've read some crackers, with one major exception - Bywater was terrible, bile-strewn, illogical ranting drivel. Do not read it. Ever.

I wanted BOTM to be Powell, and Casanova's Chinese restaurant almost made it. It's well constructed, without the disjointedness of the early volumes, or the slightly clumsy deliberate structural contrast that marr The Kindly ones. However, it was eclipsed by Chatwin's surprising novel (For a man who made his reputation as a travel writer and student of nomads, the last novel I would have expected was a tour de force of a claustrophobic setting of the lives of a pair of twins in rural Wales), and especially by the Golden Notebook.

Now, I really didn't want to like Lessing's masterwork. It's been sitting reproachfully on my shelves for a year because it is a) long, b) about communism c) and femminism, and d) structured in what can only be described as experimental. It is however also excellently written, gripping, and insightful. For an 'old red' as Lessing describes herself in the preface, it's an unflinching examination of the bankruptcy of the party during and especially after Stalin, but it's great strength is how it deals with the main protagonist and her disordered, fractured mind - hence the notebooks. It took me many days, but it's worth it.

As a final postscript, I should probably cover off the year in this post as well. As the Whitbread (sorry Costa), I've split this up, though more simply - into fact and fiction.

• Novel of my year was V. Nabokov, Lolita which was as good as it is controversial and the first half is probably as close to perfection as writing gets
• I had real trouble with factual between several great books, but in the end, J. Berendt, Midnight in the garden of Good and Evil edges out D.Brown, Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Both American, and both with some similarities, but the quality, detail and warmth of Berendt's book make me to long to visit and to reread.

Pretty in Mink

I'm not the sort of person that often points out calendars full of pictures of young ladies, but this rather provocative one is really going to irritate vegetarians and that has to be a good thing.

I've never seen the real fuss about fur. Yes, it's probably not the nicest way to treat an animal, and it's not necessary, but as is true of almost all activities relating to animals, I fail to see why it makes it to the top of the canon of sins above, say, battery farming (the same applies to hunting of course, which is at least old-fashioned class warfare masquerading as conscience). So good on this lot - it's only a shame we couldn't do one in Britain.

As far as I can see, the institute that does it is largely mad, but the point remains sound.

The Mighty Quin

I went to the Stoop on Saturday to watch one of the most exciting matches I have seen as Harlequins managed to win deep beyond injury time. And, though I cannot quite be seen, I was just to the right of the image above, behind the post when the final drop goal went over. It was great.

What was doubly great was also the sheer joy of having a civilised night out at a contact sport. A minor fight on the pitch aside (when gloriously, the PA played Give Peace a chance), it was done in great spirit and I watched lots of big (and by the end drunk) men cheerfully cheer Frenchmen waving their flags when they were ahead, and the French similarly gracious in defeat.

So, hurrah for middle class sport and down with Association Football.

Everything louder than everything else

I'm in the middle of a glut of cultural activity at the moment, as a coincidence of tickets etc seem to have come in at the same time. Last night I went out to see The Dog Roses play in Kennington, which was great fun. It's times like this when you realise that you are blessed in London with an abundance of cultural activities - I've just booked Richard Thompson in Feb to complete the picture.

However, at the risk of sounding old before my time, they were loud, though by no means as loud as other bands I have seen. They were playing in a pretty small room and they weren't very far away so I feel they could have turned it down a little. Their interval act, a man who has been listening to a lot of Dylan (not that that's a bad thing), managed to easily fill the room without any amplification. Now, clearly they are meant to be louder, but do we really the fiddle to amplified to such a degree.

Of course, this is not a new development, and the loudness war (I'm delighted that this is its name) has been knocking around for a while and has been bemoaned by many. I notice it more now that I have an iPod, when the contrast between old and new recordings is striking. It's also pretty much impossible to listen to some tracks on a busy train as they are simply too quiet, though these are mostly spoken word or the like.

However, it's a little hypocritical for any of us - as consumers of amplified music - to really complain about this development, when the real gripe remains with classical aficionados. Amplification robbed a massed orchestra of the title of being the loudest music act one could seem and now, a handful of boys with electronics can outdo a large collection of classical instruments. (I always this record was held by the Who, but apparently no longer). However, I do think it has got worse and shops and pubs have become complicit in robbing spaces of quiet.

So, consistency forbids the anathema, but I still wish people would just turn the music down a little.

Another child gone

I nearly expired from ranting this morning. multimedia technology enabled me to simultaneously read an infuriating work email at the same time as listen to this story on the radio. So angry was I with both of these that I exploded into a coughing fit that took some minutes to subside, and hurt.

At the time, work irritated me most, but during the commute the schooling story just depressed me. Here is Radio 4's summary:

A mother is refusing to send her daughter to school because it will not let her wear earrings. Eight-year-old Alisha Dixon has not attended school for nearly a month.

It's a fair summary, but it doesn't convey the problem once the mother started talking - the interview was just bleak listening. The school is probably being inflexible and a little bit overly draconian on uniform - I neither like nor defend uniform policy in general. However, as soon as the mother started you realised it doomed. Having revealed that she pierced the girl's ears at four initially, she argued that once she had done them again at eight, she wasn't letting them be done again. She ended up saying 'I went to the papers because no-one was listening to me.' It had clearly never occured to her that four year olds, and probably eight year olds simply shouldn't have pierced ears, and people ignored her because this just isn't important.

However, this isn't really the point. What is central to this is her assumption that her view is so important that the school should abandon their policy (albeit one I also don't agree with) and - most importantly - such trivia are more important than her daughter's education. And you know - right there - that's a another child gone - education of so little consequence in the family that it would be a miracle if she comes out engaged and given the tools for a future career. People witter on about academic routes not being best for everyone, but it's pretty much a disaster if they don't even get to find out.

I'm sure the mother has nothing but her daughter's best interests at heart and it's this that makes it so depressing. She sounded caring, and interested in her daughter, but there was obviously no-one to tell her to grow up, stop wasting time, take the earrings out and send her back. Society isn't great to those without opportunities, but there are times when people really don't help themselves.

In the name of God, go!

One of the reasons the raid by police in the Commons is so sensitive is because of the regicide, to whom this quotation is ascribed, when he purged the parliament. However, it has become a more general purpose call to urge individuals to obey a moral imperative, it was used to Chamberlain, and appears to get routinely rolled out in US politics.


Hence, I'm not going to feel too bad about using it for England's cricketers, though I'm not calling for any of our players to be fired (at least not for non-cricketing reasons, any side under pressure would always be better for losing Ian Bell)

They need to go back to India, and they have to do it at as close to full strength as possible. Some of them will be worried, especially those with young children, and that's not helped by the inevitable exaggeration by distance and ignorance. Nonetheless, they all have duty to go. When violent loonies attack in otherwise safe areas, people shouldn't back out and they shouldn't back down. Partly because those places tend to get safer through the swarming number of troops, but mostly because that's yielding.

Now, private citizens can do as they please (though I think Indian flights must be supercheap now), but these young men get paid lot of money and given adulation for playing a game for their country. And that means they have to go. It's especially important because it's cricket, India's sport, and a game that has higher standards than others. Precautions can be taken (it's probably sensible to move the Mumbai test) but if we want to make any claim for our ties to India, we need to go and send the message that we don't run scared just because it's in a foreign country, with brown people in.

The Americans bottled coming here in 2001 for the Golf - they were wrong, and we pilloried them for it. But broadly we haven't been the victim of many cancellations despite years of IRA murders. And I'm grateful, but now it's our turn. Instead we are to be treated to over ten days of shilly-shallying while they decide - would that we had a modern Keith Miller to remind them of real pressure. He would have gone.

Cromwell's quote in full. The ECB and the England management should listen, whether here or in Abu Dhabi:


You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing. Depart I say and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

Bibliography, November 2008

Bought / recieved (17)
R. Benaud, My spin on cricket
M. Bywater, Big Babies
W. Goldman, The princess Bride
N. Gordimer, Writing and being
S. Jordison, The joy of Sects
D. Lessing, Shikastra
S. Leys, The wreck of the Batavia
D. Lodge, Small World
A. Powell, The Valley of Bones
A. Powell, The Soldier's Art
A. Powell, The Military philosophers
A. Powell, Books do furnish a room
A. Powell, Temporary Kings
A. Powell, Hearing secret harmonies
C. Rossant, Return to Paris
J. Tiptree, Her smoke rose up together
S.J. Taylor, The reluctant Press Lord

Books read
I. Asimov, Foundation
S. Brook, The double eagle
A. Cobban, A history of modern France, vol. 2.1799-1871
T. Heyendahl, The Ra expeditions
D. Lessing, Shikastra
D. Lodge, Small World
A. Powell, The Acceptance world
I. Szerb, The Pendragon legend
M. Tully, India in slow motion

I'm really failing in my ability to make inroads into the unread pile, but it is worth noting that nine of them were Powell, and they were due to be bough in the next six months anyway.

BOTM was The Pendragon legend, which was lent to me by a friend of Anna's who, gloriously, is more anal than me about books and inscribes in them his name and date of acquisition. Anyway, it's very easy to read, rolls along excitingly, and really shows up all the more modern (it was written in the 1930s) grail and secret history novels.

Let's not piss about

The arrest of Damian Green is outrageous. I never advocate the reining in of policemen by elected officals, but it might be time for some guidelines. This just should not happen. The government is either lying or had buggered up its chain of communication (I suspect the latter) and needs to fix it. At least there has been outrage across the spectrum.

However, can we get some proportion. It's important not to start banging on about Zimbabwe at this time, as it makes you look silly.

Doesn't make it OK though - 'not as bad a Mugabe' isn't a defence.

At the margin

Last weekend, Martin Johnson said that 'International rugby is all about fine margins' after our depressing loss to South Africa. He is of course right: though there were times when the gap looked a little bigger than that, the reality is that minor changes appear large when played the game is played at that level - small differences matter.

This is hardly news to any economist. The reason demand curves look like they do is because marginal changes to feed through to behaviour overall even if they individually appear to be negligible. Of course this is slightly counterintuitive because no one wants to admit that they might be influenced by 1 or 2% at the margin, but at some point price changes mean behaviour changes, so that margin works somewhere. You would have thought from the coverage of the various economic discussion that people had fogotten this essential fact. Labour has long been guilty of this - I remember Adair Turner's Just Capital which claimed that the difference in incentives didn't change at low increases in income tax - rubbish - and a general heavy handedness on economic policy. Now we're at too: John Redwood may have a point about income tax being a better cut than VAT, but not that 2.5% doesn't matter when goods have been reduced by 10-20% so it won't matter.

I'm not a professional economist; I haven't done this formally for over 10 years, and then hardly to a high level, but I know that we need to stop pretending that the only change that counts is a big bang. Small percentages always matter.

Anthony Stewart Head

A quick hurrah for Anthony Stewart Head, famous now for Little Britain, but initially for coffee adverts that I never saw, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I watched endlessly.

It was my sister's birthday yesterday, and having time to kill before lunch with my parents, she (who has also watched Buffy endlessly) bought a Buffy book to read. At lunch (at which I was not there - the perils of working in White City), they spotted the actor in question and my father made the slightly trepidatious approach. I'm reliably informed he was lovely, came over, wished my sister happy birthday, signed the book (with some astonishment that someone would accidentally have it on them), and made a point of coming over again when he left to repeat his best wishes for the day.

He's not stratospherically famous but must get this quite a bit, so I think all credit must be given to him for being lovely about it all.

Such stories should be told.

There are some things money can't buy

This quote is priceless.* I almost want to frame it. It's not that she's entirely wrong, it's the totemic significance of 3 million for Labour and the sudden renunciation of its importance:

Even if unemployment reaches 3 million, that still leaves 90% in secure jobs. Most people will suffer not at all in this recession: on the contrary they will do well
Polly Toynbee, The Guardian 25.11.08

The rest of the article is also bit rubbish. My personal favourite is describing a tax that she admits affects 1.3% of the country as Labour having 'unfurled its old battle banner for social justice.'

Incidentally, Polly's grandfather, A.J., was a wide ranging historian and one of the first Byzantine chairs. He's less fashionable now, but he would have been pleased at the cyclical nature of politics and the significance of his grandaughter acknowledging that 3 million may not have been so bad after all.

*BTW, I've shamelessly stolen someone else's research to find it.

Gotcha

There has been much hand-wringing about the BNP's membership being leaked, and clearly it's not pleasant to have emails leaked, but but I find it very difficult to care about any rights infringement. After all, I am very happy for people to know my politics - it's presumably only a problem if it's really embarrassing.

Anyway, a spreadsheet to play with is too great a temptation. There can be some difficulty in locating it, but it's easily available here. And the heat map is great, though I think it needs some percentage analysis, I would do this in a table, but getting hold of the relevant census data is all but impossible online - outrageously.

However, at least as fun is the comments you can read on the details, except for the kids who get included because of their nutter parents. Some of these are just a reflection of the oddity of people - I can imagine mine would read oddly - but some you can only reflect BNP members, or sit incongruously with the rest of the BNP policy. Here are some of my favourites:

• Hobbies: motocycling, Staffordshire bull terriers
• State registered nurse. Orthopaedic nursing Cert. & Diploma in Nursing. Hobbies: walking, caravanning, cross-stitch & knitting, helping people in need
• Will not be renewing 07 (objects to being told he shouldn't wear a bomber jacket)
• Hobbies: freemasonry, church singing - activist
• Member of the Toastmasters Association
• Active Odinist/member of Pagan organisations. Hobbies: folklore
• member describes himself as a witch: potential embarrassment if active
• Retired antique dealer. Owner: tourist attraction in Canada. Former racing driver (British champion 1958). Hobbies: competition shooting, sword collector. Author.
• Retired historian, teacher & tutor. BA (Hons) History. Hobbies: occasional speaker (nationalist views); writing poetry

And of course there are there are the ones who live abroad. Six live in France, what do they say about foreigners there?

The second time as farce

I've deliberately not said much on the Ross / Brand stuff, for obvious reasons, but I find the news that Ross has been replaced by Angus Deayton for the comedy awards hugely amusing. It calls Marx's old adage to mind, though I wouldn't call Deayton's original firing as tragedy; and I'm not commenting on Ross.

A whiter shade of pale

My period of silence since the last post has been in exciting times - US elections, all manner of children trouble, G20 fixing the credit crisis and even a priest punch-up in the holy sepulchre. This is not that uncommon, but it has meant I have had to explain multiple times what the difference is between the Armenian and Greek Orthodox churches (it's Chalcedon, though Wikipedia is out of its depth here).


However, my time has been focused on none of these, but instead on redecorating our flat - more properly, getting other people to do it. My contribution has been limited to choosing paint colours (with spousal supervision). I have learnt:

a) white - terrifyingly - comes in more varieties than I had thought possible
b) when Anna says that our woodwork should be painted white, she doesn't actually mean white, she means off-white, but doesn't say so.
c) handymen are actually as bad as they are portrayed by Flanders and Swann (in lego here)


There's a broader point about the problems of too much choice in some areas and not enough knowledge or skill in others, but I cannot be bothered to make it. I just want my house back in time to host dinner on Wednesday (at the moment, all the common rooms are uninhabitable and the others full of the books I've taken out of the common rooms.

Oh, and the white I chose was this one.

On the bandwagon

I wasn't on the Obama bandwagon early. I'm still not really on it. His foreign policy in particular makes me very jittery: his naive assumption that Iraq can be fixed by 'forg[ing] a new coalition ... one that includes all of Iraq's neighbors.' I just don't think he understands the complexity of the Iranian relationship for example. And getting it wrong and pulling out is worse than getting it wrong and staying in (going in is a different matter). Elsewhere, I think he's too young and he is going to struggle with the almost Messianic expectations in an acute economic downturn.

Nonetheless, the alternative is worse. McCain, though clearly a bona fide all American hero (and I get irritated when his opponents challenge this), is out of his depth on the economics and I cannot abide her.*

So tonight, I'm with the left at a party hoping for an Obama victory and trying to avoid contact with my more right wing American friends. Last time I was up till 4; the time before 7. I'm really hoping this gets done and dusted early - the up all night bandwagon isn't one I fancy jumping with.

* In general, I've never really quite got the orientation right on US politics. I'm a centre-right man and though logically I know this makes me a Democrat, I still instinctively feel Republican - it's tribal thing. So, it's always disappointing when they turn out to be rubbish, even though there is no reason for me to feel this.

Abomination

News that councils have begun to ban Latinisms truly deserves the anathema. I wouldn't go as far as Mary Beard here who describes it as ethnic cleansing, but I'm not far off.


There is a long involved explanation for why it is terrible, but essentially it suggests that people should be assumed to be morons, incapable of looking anything up or reading about anything they don't encounter elsewhere. Now, a lot of people are morons who are incapable of doing any of the above, but we let them vote and pretend their opinions matter, so tough. We can't have it both ways.

In addition, latin really shouldn't get banned just because we have refused to give state school children access to the intellectual heritage of the West. Pick on something else.

Bibliography, October 2008

Books bought (7)
B. Bryson, Life and times of the Thunderbolt Kid
F. Stark, Ionia
M. Tully, India in slow motion
A. Powell, At Lady Molly's
A. Powell, Casanova's Chinese restaurant
A. Powell, The kindly ones
Wisden, Cricketers' Almanack 2006


Books read (12)
P. Auster, New York Trilogy
M. Beloff, An Historian in the 20th Century
S. Foehr, Waking up in Nashville
P. Glazebrook, Journey to Kars
Q. Hogg, The left was never right
A. Kenny, A path from Rome
D. Lodge, Changing places
J. Major, More than a game: the story of cricket's early years
A. Powell, A buyer's market
G. Robb, The discovery of France
R. Thaler and C.R. Sunstein, Nudge
M. Younus, Banker to the poor


These little bibliographic excursions are running the risk of getting overlong. I'm just going to highlight a book of the month now and then comment on a couple of others briefly. This time, it's been a pretty high quality month actually, though I didn't really understand Auster and Nudge was overlong.

The best though was Robb - stunningly good and an original piece of work. He takes as his subject the local, regional France of the Early modern era and charts its emergence as an at least partially united country over the nineteenth century, driven in large part by technology - obviously the railway, but also critically the bicycle. It's a fascinating glimpse into a recent, yet compellingly alien, past of isolated villages, and a France that clashes with all our conceptions of a centralised monarchy. Required reading for Francophiles - I'm buying it for my dad.

Learn some maths

One of the downsides to the credit crunch is the sheer number of people who now have an opinion on what the economy needs despite knowing nothing about economics nor, in many cases, having any understanding of basic building blocks of finance.

I've ranted about idiots (specifically Billy Bragg) talking about debt earlier (see footnote), and while Bragg-bashing is fun for everyone concerned, he is not the only one. Listening to Any answers - I know, it's a bad idea - I heard, again, the tiresome line that the banks were to blame and people used to be allowed only a multiple of three for their mortgage.

Every time I hear another moron repeat this asinine statement, I want to tattoo 'interest rates' on the inside of the eyelids. The triple multiples was current when my parents first bought a house in the 70s, and when they bought their current one in the 80s, but then so were double digit inflation and correspondingly high interest rates. Now, the base rate is 4.5; in 1975 it was 11, in 1985 it was 12.

Now, at the risk of being patronising, if you apply those rates to a mortgage taken out at the different periods (a formula here), you get radically different numbers. Let's assume market rates a generous 1 percentage point about base and you get figures for annual repayments of £7,455, £11,874, and £12,750 respectively for now, commensurate with a 4-5 multiple of salary for the same monthly outlay.

Einstein called compound interest the eighth wonder of the world - it would be good if people ever bothered to do the calculation.

*By the way, this achievement is Tory one which Major, Clarke and Eddie George can take much credit (helped by benign global conditions). Labour complained and said that reducing inflation wasn't worth short term job losses. Don't ever let them pretend otherwise - Tessa Jowell once tried to do that to me when I lived in her constituency, but then she has never been good with numbers.

Live from the BL

At last, the BL has finally stopped charging for internet access and allows me to access it for free. I'm sure the Bodleian had this some time ago, though I'm not sure it's wireless.

It will allow me to work here and access work email etc. as well as stop me bothering people for the rugby or cricket scores while pretending to work on doctoral matters. I'm not sure it's an unmixed blessing though, it does mean there are even more distractions than there used to be, this blog among them.

UPDATE: It does appear however that the BL haven't been spending enough time at doing at their actual job. Both my orders were wrong today and having re-ordered them, they failed to arrive before the arbitrary cut off for delivry of half an hour before actual closure. I was (am) not happy.

Hurrah for Alan Bennett

I hear on Today that Alan Bennett's papers are being lodged in Oxford with the Bodleian, rather than shipped off to the States for a shedload of cash.

I'm with this lot who thinks this happens too much. I'm pretty relaxed from a cultural perspective. There is broad cultural continuity between us and the US, and any country with the Elgin Marbles cannot complain too much about these things - a narrow definition of national elements serves no-one well. However, the acquisition of most major archives by US institutions undermines the reputation and support for serious research in the UK, and that can only be a bad thing for our universities.

Hurrah for Alan.

It's the way they think we care

I'm probably not supposed to like this, but the news that atheists are going to advertise on buses strikes me as brilliant. Following friends on facebook, it appears they are going to raise a fortune, suggesting they might be able to do this all year. Good for them - should be fun, much better than those amateurish Jesus posters and the tedious ones for 'philosophy' lessons on the tube.

But, though it will be fun, I cannot see what it's going to achieve. The Christian ones are bad enough, but they are at least pointing people to scripture which is vaguely interesting. This is just going to be funny. Maybe we should be funny too (I've long argued that God has a sense of humour), but this isn't going to make people think, it will make clever people laugh at other people (mostly stupid ones). And while I'm all for that, I'm not sure it gets you the moral high ground.

I am however annoyed that Dawkins has started using the word anathema - that's our word. Perhaps if we stopped pretending we can prove God's existence, he could not use nice religious words.

Baptism

I went to a Christening on Sunday, at St Michael's, Cornhill, allowing me to see one of our more notorious priests in action. More importantly, although I've seen a lot of Christenings in recent years, this was the first for ages done outside of the normal Sunday service. it threw up a number of issues for me:

• I had forgotten how short baptism is. As I said, I haven't been to a standalone Christening for years, not since the last round of family ones, and I didn't make all of those. We're were done inside 15 minutes, and, while it was perfectly nice to see, it felt odd going in and out so rapidly.
• I felt the lack of a congregation. Inevitably, the small set of us there were all family and friends, not parishioners. It makes the welcome very different to a congregation-led one. And I think I prefer the latter.
• I wasn't entirely sure what it was for? I later chatted to another friend who was godfather, but didn't stand in the church because he was uncomfortable about saying 'I renounce Satan.' I'm not then sure why he is godfather.
• It reminds me of the strength of the social element of the CofE. Even though I don't think the parents really believed very hard, they still wanted their baby baptised.

It's that last that I was most surprised by. I had roughly assumed that my friends pretty much divided into people who went to church semi-regularly and those who thought it was all nonsense. The former would baptise, the latter wouldn't. But I have a feeling that hard edge is very much a function of youth, and I can look forward to the occasion when previously irreligious couples starting frequenting church when pregnant, only to ramp it once more when the children get to school age.

Now, we can easily make too much of an issue about this - godparents have always been a bit random; religiosity has never been a major part of church for some people. But, though it was a nice little service, I cannot help feeling that it's not quite right for churches to let people get away with this. I have long advocated higher charges for non-Christians at church weddings; and I feel that it should insist if you want the second sacrament, you have to sit through the first.

It plays into a general view in my mind of what baptism is and what it is for. My own views on which are complicated, and also the scene of a hard fought compromise between A & I over how we tackle the God issue with them so I might do them later. For now though, I think I'll limit myself to going on record as saying when it happens for mine, it will be during the service. It's supposed to be (at least partly) an initiation into the wider church; done on a standalone basis, it looks a bit like a naming ceremony for your friends, and that's slightly odd, though there are worse problems. I will withhold the anathema.

Rubbish ends

We went to see I've loved you so long last night, which - and I'm not a big film man - was very good. Or rather, it would have been very good if they hadn't stuffed up the ending. Having done all the hard work around the characters, the director decided to waste it. If you watch it, it's best to just ignore the last scene, though the rot does start before then.


It's part of a greater problem, that besets a number of books as well as films, of not paying enough attention to structure. The best work is balanced and pays attention to the structure. And there are a lot of ways to get it wrong. I read Nudge the other day, and it struggled to fill out the book, and just meandered through the second half (really second two thirds) without adding much to the admittedly good start. Often you just get bad endings. Captain Corelli's mandolin's is terrible, the endless iteration at the end of Lord of the Rings boring and the 'analysis' essay at the end of War and Peace pretentious and disjointed. See also bad editing, which I am convinced is behind the growth in long books, though its roots are old - volumes five and six of Proust suffer just as much a Harry Potter from this. But it can be done very well indeed. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a classic short book, but length can be just as well done - the first three volumes of Gibbon's Decline and Fall are magisterially structured as well as written, the pace and the rhythms cover a complex world and long timespan effortlessly.

I spent my entire academic career at university being told to structure arguments and making sure I ended with a flourish. I doubt I was the only one, but it is striking how often this lesson is ignored: organise the material, make sure the ending is worth having, and don't overrun.

I won't either.

The problem of presentation

When I was at Ofcom, I remember telling one of the junior members of our team (who is paranoid about identity thievery, so I won't mention his name), that his work was fine, but ugly, so could he change it so that it was easier to read. He was appalled - as if such a trivial matter could be so important.

I was reminded of this over the weekend, when I went to a workshop on prosopography (if you need to look it up, here). It was an excellent day, with some really good thoughts for me to take away, but I was struck by the variability of the presentations. Everyone in the room was clever, everyone was probably pretty eloquent (given most had written long, well-structured PhDs), yet most presentations were either mediocre, or good extemporisations. In fact, most of the best academic presentations (be they lectures or papers) have been of this type. The best was by a chap called Richard Price, who opening his talk with, 'I reread my paper on the train this morning and decided it was too boring to read out' and then proceeded to give an accurate and witty account of the Council of Chalcedon without notes - glorious.

But this was a workshop to compare methods and such extemporisations don't work quite so well. What does work well are slides. And almost everyone used them, mostly badly. There was one exception, Stephen Baxter gave well run though and clear summary of the work he'd been doing on Anglo - Saxons. I looked him up: he used to be a management consultant.

I do slides a lot; I was rubbish at them to begin with - it's a different skill to essays and papers, but it's not that hard: they need to be short, clear and allow you to talk to them, not read them out. I doubt historians are taught how to do this (I wasn't), but - on the evidence of this - God they need to be. A shame too, because it made it harder to understand what were fascinating issues and less appreciative of what was excellent work.

Who will rid me of this turbulant priest?

Sometimes it's just deeply embarrassing to be a Christian, especially an Anglican. Largely because all we tend to talk about is homosexuality at the moment. The latest injudicious comment, from Peter Mullen, that 'homosexuals should have their backsides tattooed with the slogan: "Sodomy can seriously damage your health".' is - to say the least unfortunate. And does rather reinforce the view that we are incapable of communicating with the world around us.

Agreeing with the modern world isn't really necessary in the Christian - cue long digression of eternitym, but it would help if our priests had some regard for communicating with it. There's lots already been said on how unchristian his comments were, but I'm not sure what that means in this context, though it was childish and a bit nasty. More importantly, it was the rant of a public figure who either had no concern for his institution or seems to have realised what he was doing.

That said, I've always found Mullen a bit shrill, even on debates we agree on (he's sound on BCP). But I think what is so depressing about this is the failing on his own standards. An advocate of the enduring value and richness of the prayer book tradition, who for decades has thundered forth at the poverty of language and crassness of tone of the the modern liturgy (all of which is true) should do better. What would Cranmer make of a 'satirical' comment on sodomy on a blog? (which I might add you cannot now read).

Offensive I can live with; Paul was offensive, but not crass, stupid and self-destructive. Time for retirement I think.

Anathema indeed.

Bibliography, September 2008

Books bought / recieved (20)

J. Barnes, Cross Channel
S. Brook, The Double Eagle
A. Camus, Les Justes
J.M. Coetzee, Youth
R. Delderfield, A horseman came riding by
M. Drabble, Jerusalem the Golden
J. Fowles, Daniel Martin
G. Greene, The Entertainers
M. Hamid, The relectant fundamentalist
T. Heyendahl, The Ra expeditions
C. James, The Remake
D. Lessing, The fifth child
D. Lodge, Changing places
M. McBride, The fall
G. Robb, the Discovery of France
R. Tremain, Restoration
B. Unsworth, After Hannibal
J. Vance, Tales of the dying earth
A. Weisman, The world without us
Malcolm X, The autobiography of Malcolm X

Books read (16)

J. Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
J. Berendt, City of falling angels
J. Goodwin, The Snake Stone
T. Heyendahl, The Kon-Tiki Expedition
D. Hughes, The Imperial German Dinner Service
R.P. Jhabvala, Esmond in India
N. Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
C.S. Lewis, Till we have faces
M. McBride, The fall
A. Powell, A Question of Upbringing
J.D. Salinger, Franny & Zooey
B. Scovell, Dickie: A tribute to Harold Bird
C. Stewart, The Almond Blossom appreciation society
C. S. Saunders, Hawkwood
A. Weisman, The world without us
B. Unsworth, Sacred Hunger

I'm rattling along at the moment. The commute into White City has really driven up my book consumption (this is the only upside of working in White City). And I'm approaching the fabled 150 p.a. mark. Unfortunately, a lot of what I am getting through is rubbish.

Actually nothing was terrible, just a bit disposable. Even The Kon-Tiki Expedition was imperfect. It lacked tension, though clearly fascinating and an astonishing expedition. I read earlier this year that it's wrong, Sykes in The Seven daughters of Eve argues that genetic records show the islanders are descended from Asians, not Americans, but even that doesn't prove no journey of this kind took place. The best things I read all month were Berendt's two books. Midnight... was probably the best , with an excellent account of what's clearly a fascinating town. My desire to go to the American South intensifies; Angels was intoxicating and thrilling, but did have a the advantage of the Venetian setting. Both were great.


In terms of fiction, I've commented on Powell already, but it was a good start to the Powellathon. I remain unsure about Zorba the Greek, basically I think because I just don't agree with the central premise and so I found the narrator quite irritating. Not as irritating as Salinger, but that's no surprise. Jhabvala and Unsworth were good though, with the former the best of the fiction crowd. I'm growing to like her work very much. And Sacred Hunger a sound neglected Booker winner, but not stunning - it lost its way a little towards the end, but was compelling in its well researched detail on the slave trade. The Fall, which I read on the last day of the month because I mislaid my copy of Nudge (on which more next month), was truly terrible.

Putting my money where my mouth is

Like most people of my age, I suspect I am entering a phase of life where a number of institutions in my past begin to try to extract maximum amounts of money from me.

Last night, college rang and I caved in. Actually, it was the third time they had rung and I could no longer claim that I was busy as I had done the last time. But it had given me time to think; and I had decided to give them some money.

In essence, my logic went like this:

• I believe in elite universities. It is paramount that we have academic centres of excellence. This is hardly controversial - ask and Frenchman or American
• I think Oxford should be one of them. Actually, I think this is really important. Oxford has a certain charm and refusal to take it all too seriously which I welcome. It's a useful corrective t0 the tedious seriousness which characterises working life
• I believe, again quite strongly, that private funding should be a part of the solution. Now isn't the time to detail my thoughts on university policy (there are many)
• I approve of philanthropy. I give.
• I owe a great deal to Oxford, both for the obvious career benefits it gave me, but also the enjoyment and the friends I made

So, actually the resistance to handing over cash is irrational. The only rational objections remaining were either financial (which doesn't stack up. I have the money - it comes out of my tithe) and the feeling there are more deserving causes. Clearly this last is powerful, starving children in Africa &c. &c. But I think we have to move past that, otherwise nothing would be donated to anything other than development charities. They are both important.

As a final aside, in the cold light of day, I feel slightly cowardly in that I did specify that it should be spent on student support. This is obviously an accounting fiction and Christ Church will just rebalance the books accordingly, but it made me feel better. If I had really had the courage of my convictions, I would have given it to them to spend at their discretion. Maybe next time.

No, Marx was still wrong

Right, after some faffing around over the summer, proper politics starts again, and where better to start with this ill concieved article where our primate attempts to argue that Marx was partly right about capitalism (actually he doesn't, but it's his title)

It has become an oddly fashionable line to take recently (i.e., in the last generation) that although Marx was wrong about the answer, somehow he was right about his diagnosis of the issues around capitalism - in effect to argue that Das Kapital was right, and The communist manifesto wrong. This is of course absurd, and the issues that Marx was wrong about suggest his diagnosis cannot have been very good either. If you are consistently wrong about the long term economic prospects of the industrialised poor, worng about how they will react and wrong about what the 'post-capitalist' society looks like, then the odds are you were wrong to start with.


To his credit Williams isn't really doing any of this. It's noteworthy that he opens with Trollope, a man much more attuned to how people actually behave than Marx ever was. In fact, much of the article is very sensible: he is of course right to point that trading in debt is not new (though it's much older than the C19), and doesn't fall into the ridiculous trap of arguing that banks should only lend what they have in deposits. Given that stretching beyond that point is the point of a bank, it would be odd to limit them.* However, there is a degree of naivity about the nature of finance and what I think is an arbitrary line between, put crudely, speculation and financing. The archbishop argues that:


'And a particularly significant line is crossed when the borrowing and lending are no longer to do with any kind of equipping someone to do something specific, but exclusively about enabling profit.'

This is a facile distinction and it hinges on a definition of 'specific', which is basically untenable and contains substantial inconsistencies. For example, preumably, mortgages are OK, as they clearly are for something specific (though they have caused much of the problem); government borrowing is borderline if not a problem, as it tends not to be for something specific (but I suspect this is not what he means). The problem is I suspect, those bankers who are dealing with loans fourth or fifth hand, but levelling accusations based on what it's for misses the point. Failing to understand your risk and liabilities is really really stupid, but a significant qualitative line itsn't crossed when you do.


later on we see the real crux of the problem comes when he moves onto the percieved moral issue. Here:


'the deeper moral issue. We find ourselves talking about capital or the market almost as if they were individuals, with purposes and strategies, making choices, deliberating reasonably about how to achieve aims.'

Now, again, this is a really bad idea. Sometimes people use language that suggests the marekt acts like an individual, but that's a convenience. When economists talk about markets, they are really commenting on a number of observed characteristics that have (more or less) predictable outcomes. They know it's not an autonomous individual. So, what is described here is not a moral issue, but a factual error, albeit a big one.

Now, this does mean, following the line of his argument, that a belief in markets that will provide just outcomes is misplaced, but again, this is an absurdity. Markets don't allocate on a principle of justice, but on one of efficiency (even assuming they worked perfectly). Justice isn't a market word.

However, the real problem comes in the last section, where he equates this to idolatry. Now, idolatry is a bit of a problem in the modern world so we get this wishy-washy definition here: 'ascribing independent reality to what you have in fact made yourself .' But that won't do; the second commandment reads as follows (KJV, naturally):

'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.'

By contrast, the unsupportable breadth of Williams' modern defintion does the decent thing, and collapses. In some philosophical senses, I don't doubt that power, reality and agency can be circumscribed such that this definition works, but given the language here is of a political periodical, it is abundantly clear that power does reside in market forces, and their effects are real. But even if they weren't, the market is not something we have created, it is our behaviour. When the Israelites worshipped the Golden Calf that they had created, it had a physical existence; when our markets collapse, they represents our own debts coming back to haunt us. It is Dr Williams here who is in real danger of ascribing an kind of existence to a form of words, not supporters of market led economies.

We shoudn't expect markets to do what all economists know they cannot, but that doesn't make Marx right, and getting your economics wrong doesn't make you an idolator either.

* Not that this stops people mind. One of the most idiotic comments on the banking crisis that I have heard so far came from Billy Bragg (this is no surprise) on BH no less, where he opined that banks shouldn't lend money they don't have from depositors. I learnt about banks and multipliers at 14. It's not very hard.

What I do

This is yet another indulgence, and it's probably not that interesting, but given I seem to spend a lot of my time explaining what I actually do for a living, today presents itself a good opportunity to show people.

For the next ten weeks, I'll be writing the BBC's response to Ofcom's Review of Public Service Broadcasting (phase 2), which they published today. I've been reading it for some hours now, though I have managed only three of the 17 annexes. The weekend promises to be fun, as does my autumn. Last time, our submission was pretty hefty.

I tried to persuade my sister that this was really important and akin to saving the world (in a cultural sense), but that's a lie. It is pretty important though and it's almost certainly the most fun of any job I have ever done. And when it's done I'm going to California, which will be even more fun.

Mythical tribes

The Guardian carries an article highlighting the welcome growth in current affairs periodicals. The penultimate paragraph ends with this question:

'Might there, I wonder, be people out there who read both, say, the
Spectator and Heat?'

I do, and from the sounds of this article I'm not the only one.

Myers-Briggs

Here's my new favourite personality test. I sat in a very long meeting today about research today and we talked about it a lot. It was probably the most exciting part of the day. Most alarmingly, our consultant was able to guess most people's sets accurately.



Anyway, I am ENTJ

• Extraverted (by 1%), not Introverted
• iNtuitive (38), not Sensing
• Thinking (50), not Feeling
• Judging (33), not Perception

The detail is here; I don't think there is any surprise. Apparently NTJ is the classic consultant profile, and the borderline exterversion is probably about right, given my slight schizoid tendency on that axis. In fact, none of the tendencies were particularly pronounced, which I think means either that I am mild in my opinions, or a little confused (probably the latter).

Anna, alarmingly, was ESFJ, which means we aren't compatable, or something. It's probably best for work, rather than relationships.

Feeling of failure

Tom Lehrer had a wonderful line about failure, in the intro to Alma, he claimed 'it is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.' Astonishingly, there is an online debate about how old that makes them, which isn't really the point. Mozart died at 35 .

On this theme, one of my contemporaries at university has just taken over at Policy Exchange, having run a relatively successful anti-European think tank up to now. Many congratulations are in order as, given the imminent (and overdue) change of government, by the time we return for our college gaudy in 2010, he is therefore likely to be the most prominent of our intake, though presumably waves of bankers will be richer.

By contrast, I have done little. It is even touch and go as to whether I will even complete the doctorate by M-day. I have six years.

Re-organisation

This is a serious contender for the most boring post I have every written, but it has occupied most of the last week, so blogged it must be. I now finally have enough bookcases to house my collection (with some double stacking). So I've been spending the last week or so re-organising my books. The list is below. It actually includes a selection of Anna's fiction, which inflates the total by around 200.


When I first built a record of books, in 2001, I had four main sections: Fiction, Reference, Philosophy and Theology, and History. This worked well for a while, but fell apart as unanticipated collections emerged. The burgeoning travel literature section was put in Reference for lack of anywhere else to go. Politics was roped in with history, but policy documents sat uneasily with the writings Nikephoros Phokas. Religious history I could never decide what to do with and so put in Philosophy and Theology. And I kept moving sport between reference and history, when of course it is neither.


I've now had a back to basics look at the system, added new categories, broken up all the old sections apart from fiction, and have what I hope is a robust, though still provisional, system: 6 sections, 31 categories, and multiple subcategories. It's still a moving feast and I suspect subcategories will expand into full categories over time. But nonetheless, here is an stucture with some non-obvious rules listed out:


Fiction (c.950), sorted by author
Excluded from this are fictional works whose entire purpose now belongs elsewhere, e.g., the Fable of the Bees (only philosophical interest). The boundaries of the categories above are weak and relatively unimportant, but broadly:

• Classic literature: C17-C19
• Classic literature: C20
• Contemporary Literature. As a rule of thumb, classic authors are dead, contemporary authors are not
• Childrens
• Crime
• Fantasy
• Science Fiction
• Humour
• Poetry

History (c.450), sorted by category, country, then date.

• General. Includes theory of history, counterfactuals, and some reference
• The classical hereitage . Includes Byzantium and the early church
• UK and Ireland
• Western and continental history
• Non-western history

Includes church history allocated by country, though much is in the general European sub-category.

Politics (c.70), sorted by category, then subject / author

• Recent political history. Includes memoirs and biographies
• Policy (subdivided by area)
• Economics

Philosophy and Theology (c.200), sorted by category, subcategory, then author

• Philosophy. Including natural philosophy (i.e., science)
• Non-Christian religions
• Christianity. Excludes primarily historical works, but includes all analysis directly pertai ning the bible as well as liturgical, spiritual and contemporary church subcategories

Cultural (c.200), sorted by category, then subject / author

• Books and literary theory
• Art
• Music
• Travel literature. There isn't a satisfactory definition of this, but to my mind includes all first person narratives that are specifically geographic and primarily non-analytical
• Contemporania. Mostly memoirs, but includes biography and of contemporary figures whose significance is primarily cultural, e.g., the diaries of James Lees-Milne
• Sport

Reference (c.75), sorted by category, then subject / author

• Food and Drink
• Language
• Travel Guides
• Reference
• Guides and 'how tos'

I've had most trouble with the political / historical divide which I have relatively arbitrarily put at Suez in the UK, but much later for other countries, about the fall of the Wall. There are obvious contested areas: Cold war IR goes in politics, an accout of the Gulag in History/Western/Russia. Other issues abound in the small miscellaneous books. The New Book of First Names is a reference work I suppose, but so is Kenneth Williams' Complete Acid Drops.

There is some shoehorning, and much of Anna's still to be databased which will push the fiction up by another 200 or so and a few things in history.

Bibliography, August 2008

Books bought / received (0)


Books read (16)
M. Amis, Koba the Dread
D. Cruickshanks, Around the world in 80 treasures
D. Devonshire, Counting my Chickens
N. Ferguson, Colossus
D. Lodge, How far can you Go?
V.M. Manfredi, Tyrant
M. Marquese, War minus the shooting
A. Maupin, Tales of the City
I. McEwan, Amsterdam
T. Mosely, Zogonia
R.T. Moss, Cleopatra's wedding present
M. Rendell, The death of Marco Pantani
J. Solomon, Accessing Antiquity
J. Steinbeck, The short reign of Peppin IV
S. Townsend, Number Ten
A. van Voght, Moonbeast

A triumph of willpower. I have successfully resisted buying a single book and read many, though my unread percentage is still way too high, with 8.5% of my collection unread.

A lot of the reading though was average where it should have been good. Some were dire - Townsend especially; other merely a bit empty - Maupin, McEwan; and Ferguson's Colossus promised much but fell down on the history. There are better analysts of the future, and he didn't give enough attention to the past.

However, there were some gems. my infatuation with David Lodge is increasingly as I loved this one and would be about to go on a major raid if I could spare the shelf space. Another deft and witty triumph. He packs a great deal into short books, but they are enormously satisfying. I reread Moss' great book on Syria which still sparkles as it did when I read it in 2003. Though there are better books on the region, he treads a unique path. Similarly, Koba the Dread was best when it spoke more personally about Amis' own experiences with the communist-apologist left rather than his documentation of the communist years themselves. There are better surveys of the history though.

Unprecedentedly, two of the best books I read this month were sport books, and I don't even have a large sport section (15 books). Rendell's book was a fascinating account of a strange sport and a strange character. I'm an occasional cycling follower, essentially just doing the Tour, but this was none the less compelling and a well told tragic tale. Marquese's book - about the 1996 world cup - was great, with a great story to tell, and in its backdrop of subcontinental security fears, very apposite given the current crisis over Pakistan. Of course, it is also worth a read given how much has changed in 12 years - No Twenty20 even on the horizon - but most of all, it's a great book about a game and a culture.

Another pointless list

London has a plethora of free magazines and papers, most of which have no merit other than that they are free. Thursday's magazine is Shortlist, which takes approximately 2 minutes to read, but does have a lot of lists.

I like lists, but they do have a habit of revealing my increasing distance from contemporary life. I was struck by the list at the back of this week's edition which listed out Moby's top ten tracks to exercise to. Here they are:

Led Zeppelin, Immigrant Song
Rolling Stones, Gimmie Shelter
Public Enemy, Fight the power
Pantera, War nerve
The Clash , White Riot
Black Flag, Thirsty and Miserable
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Mercy Seat
New York Dolls, Trash
Thelma Houston, Don't leave me this way
X, Sugarlight

Obviously, I haven't actually heard of about half of these, but I don't even understand the logic for the ones I have. What pace do you jog along to the Mercy Seat? Regardless, here are my current favourites, though I spent my Monday session in the gym exercising to Noel Cowerd, which isn't normal, even for me.

Fairport Convention, Cajun Woman
Waylon Jennings, Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way
Creedance Clearwater Revival, Born on the Bayou
S Club 7, Don't stop movin'
Kylie, Your Disco needs you
Rolling Stones, Carol
Sparks, This Town ain't big enough for both of us
Rolling Stones, Happy
Chicory Tip, Son of my father
Bruce Springsteen, Born in the USA

Only the first four to six are truly key; the others fluctuate in and out. There are some vaguely (only vaguely mind) fashionable modern tracks bubbling below my top ten, but they're just not as good.

All for Jesus

Sometimes, no matter how much time we spend on things, we tend to forget the emotional reason why we do them. They tend to be things that require constant work, where you find that getting the immediate tasks out of the way takes over from remembering the point of what you were trying to do.


And while this gap is sometimes hypocrisy (think of eco-tossers banfing on about saving the planet in between flights to far flung destinations), often it's just a result of day to day life. For me, I find God a bit like that. Inevitably the early fire of conversion fades (quite rightly) and by now sucked into the detail of actually helping run a church, I often find myself worrying more about the church finances than about, well, Jesus.


I was reminded of this on Sunday. I went to Holy Trinity to see Marcus gave his maiden sermon. Although clearly biased, to my mind it was excellent. It was technically well done: focusing on a short section of one reading, but using the full range of the two texts in the sermon. Too often, one gets the preacher's thoughts on one line and a general exposition of the theology that links to it. Sometimes that's appropriate, but it's overdone (this has long been a problem - Alan Bennett's parody is as good now as it was then). Marcus avoided this problem and resisted the temptation to preach on the papal supremacy (and why it's bad), but most importantly he delivered a sermon that spoke about something much deeper than the bits of text he had to play with and one that helped remind me why I do this.


Now, it helps that in many ways, Marcus and I agree on the essentials here, but then, they are, well, essential. Rooting ethics and actions in Christ and the incarnation is critical to Christianity. In explaining away the miracles of Christ, we risk losing a Christian conception of the world and the miracle of the resurrection, which the point. I was given a further forcible jolt on this later in the service, when the priest returned to the theme to comfort a family over a death and declaimed very movingly on the promise of the glory of eternal life. At the heart of this is Christ who through life, death and resurrection makes this promise of redemption real.

But its the manner of his doing so that is important. Marcus put it well in this sermon. "Because God has been in the world ... that makes him a God capable of redeeming the world." This is familiar, though important, and one is reminded of the immortal words of Gregory of Nazianzus: "that which He has not assumed He has not healed," though the points are slightly different (fabulously, you can find that letter here). However, I was struck by Marcus' counterpoint, where he argued that because Christ has rejoiced in the world, "he doesn't just love his creation, but he has lived his creation as well." And it is that joyful, living and generous Christ whom I hold dear, as well as the sufferer on the cross. Because I think that a religion without that joy at its heart could not offer the final reward and mean it.

But Christ does, and it was good to be reminded.

Our classical heritage

By the way, this is an Olympic post with a pretentious title. It may save time


Well, it's all been jolly exciting this time round. It's so much better when we're not rubbish. It does make me a little nervous though - there is a real risk 2012 will be a massive anticlimax. In fact, I am very worried about London. Here's my favourite stat:

• Number of post war British double gold medallists to 2004: 2
• Number of British double gold medallists 2008: 3

We may struggle to match this next time.

Quite frankly, I never really wanted them here. I rather hoped they would go to Paris, which would be near enough to get to easily, but not involve me paying for them or having hordes more people buggering up the transport. Anyway, the French also have a better track record than us in delivering public buildings, so it would have been best there (incidentally, I think everyone outside Africa has a better record than us).

Also, the our segement in the handover to us was truly awful. However, I was pleased to see Boris in full classical flow in his speech. It's about time a classical revival got a classicist to receive them.

Maybe it won't be so bad after all.

It's grim up north

I went to Manchester last weekend, for a stag weekend. Actually, we were staying in Ashton-under-Lyne, where elements of my family come from, though I didn't have time for getting in touch. It was quite fun, but I remain very glad I don't live there.

Specifically, I'm glad I don't have to travel there. Both trains (to & from) were delayed by a total of 2 hours. And Ashton taxis don't know their own bloody area. I came with address in hand and it took me 25 minutes and 9 cabs to find someone who knew where the house I was staying was. This would not happen in London and Ashton is a somewhat smaller town. And there was limited wine available in the bars that wasn't shit.

Other than that, it was OK - no-one fought (somehow disappointing) and I did manage to fall asleep in the house of ill-repute we ended up in. But I was glad to be home. It should be noted that I was a lot less philosophical about this on Sunday

At the time, I could certainly understand the sentiment behind the Policy Exchange recent report on the cities of the North. That said, in the cold light of day, I don't quite know why anyone commissioned such an obviously inflammatory report. However, what is more depressing is that no-one seems to have taken the trouble to read it.

For example, this statement is clearly true: 'We cannot guarantee to regenerate every town and every city in Britain that has fallen behind.' As is this one: 'Just as we can't buck the market, so we can't buck economic geography either.' They're the end of the exec summary - they are in fact the point of the paper.

On the other hand we get somewhat dodgy arguments. Here's Chris Grayling: 'Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds have successful financial services sectors.' Not that successful. Edinburgh does, Manchester might, but Liverpool?

The FT reports Peter Kilfoyle, known for his economic skill, with 'It doesn’t ring true economically, socially or politically.' But I'm not sure that's true. The polotical bit is obviously, but economically and socially. Have you read the report by the economic historian?

But the key point is not about the detail, but about the broad thrust of the critique. The report doesn't suggest that we close the north, but that the geographic and economic logic that propelled such large numbers of people to live in industrial cities no longer apply, while the economic logic that kept cities which had limited industry but large number of highly qualified staff small (e.g., Cambridge, Oxford etc) was also defunct. So we might want to reconsider the numbers rather than pour money into replacing the wealth.

It's still a politically stupid thing to say, but I'll end with some historical context is in order. These are new cities (though old towns) we're talking about in the main. And if we let them shrink a little we will be doing everyone a favour, including their inhabitants.

And their taxi drivers who might then know where they are supposed to be going.

Relative poverty

I've always hated the term 'relative poverty.' It's false language and disingenuous. I was reminded of it by this rather good post on it - my favourite line - 'if Warren Buffet moved to London poverty would increase' - I think nicely skewers the point.

Some technical notes: The definition of relative poverty is 60% of median average income. The details are here. For a single adult, it means an income below £5,200 per annum excluding income tax, council tax and housing costs, (rents, mortgage interest, buildings insurance, water charges).

Now, the level of relative poverty may have kept me as a student (no, that's a lie, but I had a rather extravagant student life, and it could have done), and it's clearly not a lot of money, but it's not poverty to have a house, insurance, and a decent amount of spending money.

What they actually mean is of course inequality. Inequality is important, we can all have opinions on it, but it's not necessarily linked to poverty, so can we defend policy on relative poverty on inequality grounds please? And not raise the totem of poverty, which is overly emotive and just not true.

Personally, I am not very interested in inequality, rather in outcomes for the genuinely poor, which is why most of my donations go abroad. Anyway, this isn't even one of the things that annoys me most about government use of statistics and maths: that's the tax system, but I'll post on that later.

All that Glitters...

I haven't done very well at keeping this ticking over recently, but I thought I would summon some words on the fall of Paul Gadd.


I have the now dubious distinction of having been to his 90s Christmas concerts on no less than two occasions, and they were great: gloriously silly and over top pantomime pop, with some great tracks. To this day, I remain very fond my Best of Gary Glitter (well about half of it, he wasn't that good) - and I defy anyone to listen to Rock 'n' Roll (Part 2) without a glimmer of a smile.*


But it's all over now. And it's sad. While he may not deserve any sympathy (and I'm not sure about that) we (certainly I) have lost something. When someone who occupied a rather splendid, frivolous and joyful part of our cultural life turns out to be something different, there is a sadness and a sense of innocence lost. And I want know how long this all went on. His first child pornography arrest was 1997. Was he clean up to then, or has this been a recurring activity? For obviously reasons, I know I would like the former to be true.

The whole think also highlights our approach to paedophilia in general, which is hysterical and unhelpful. The coverage hasn't been particularly edifying, which is surprising given how perfectly it was all parodied seven years ago by Chris Morris.

But in some senses, we shouldn't be surprised. We've always been rubbish at this. The term itself is difficult, partly because people don't understand the word, and partly because it confuses prepubescents with older teenagers into the same category, when clearly they are not. And the violent thuggish pronouncements of this kind of site only divert attention from the real issues. I found the account of Roger Took's activities provoked a far more visceral feeling of horror than any amount of Glitter-baiting or ranting.

And for something to find me on the side opposed to ranting means it must be serious indeed.

*As an aside, this puts me on the side of the 'Art independent of morals' camp - no surprises there I suspect. What might be is that some time you have been able to do courses in it. Why?

Aging

I met someone yesterday who I hadn’t seen for about nine years. Andrew was president of the Oxford Reform Club when I was social secretary in 1998. Inexplicably, no online record of that termcard exists, but one for the term before does. He’s just cropped up the BBC, working for us on partnership ideas for the sector as part of Ofcom's PSB Review

This has given me a jolt about aging. I'm pretty relaxed about aging itself. I have no real qualms about the approaching slew of 30th birthdays, nor all the weddings, though the babies are a little terrifying. However, what struck me was how much has changed in the last nine years. Of course, I have been working for eight years, and with Anna for seven; I've even been doing my doctorate for two, though that's problematic on a number of levels.

But that isn't very interesting. What is is the change in interests. I like to think that I've been pretty static in terms of fundamentals since 1999/2000, but, and this is the advantage of having databases for everything, it turns out that's nonsense.

I could prove this in terms of politics (because I am so much more left wing now) or friends (over half of my friendships date from post-2000), but it's more striking to think about what I hadn't got or read in 2000. Then, my library had:

- Not a single work on the early church - I read Chadwick' History of the Early Church in 2001, which I have blogged about before. I'm doing my doctorate on it now
- No travel literature, Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain was the first thing I read (also 2001). I have about 60 of them now.
- Obviously a smattering of history, but no memoir until James Lees-Milne's Ancient as the Hills (2002)
- No formal theology. the first one I bought was Moltmann's The Crucified God (2003)
- An astonishingly limited selection of fiction. Over three quarters of my books were science fiction, fantasy or children's (this last, mostly the complete Chalet School series). I had no Fitzgerald, no Greene (though I had read a couple of my parents'), no Pamuk, Solzhenitsyn, Steinbeck, Trollope or Waugh. And this is just a partial list.
- They're not all positive developmentst: then, thankfully, I had no books on Buddhism

Sometimes I think I have dissipated my talents and failed to build a career effectively over the last eight years. Writing this, I am convinced that it was time well spent.

Sacrilege

I think this might be.

Bibliography, July 2008

Bought / received (75)
includes acquisitions on 2nd August in Hay

D. R. Allen, Jim: The life of E.W. Swanton
M. Amis, Koba the Dread
P. Auster, New York Trilogy
M. Beloff, An Historian in the Twentieth Century
M. Bradbury, (ed.), Penguin book of short stories
R. Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
V. Brittain, Testament of Youth
P.F. Browne, Rambling on the road to Rome
A. Burroughs, Sellevision
W. Churchill, Young Winston’s Wars
N. Cowerd, Lyrics
D. Devonshire, Counting my chickens
N. Ferguson, Colossus
F.M. Ford, The Good Soldier
A. Goldsworthy, In the name of Rome
G. Greene, A Burnt out case
G. Haigh, Silent Revolutions
T. Heald, Village Cricket
H. Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
T. Heyerdahl, The Kon-Tiki expedition
Q. Hogg, The Left was never right
S. Howatch, Glittering Images
D. Hughes, The imperial German Dinner Service
R.P. Jhabvala, Esmond in India
J. Kelman, How late it was, how late
R.F. Kennedy, 13 Days
M. Lang and Donald R. Dudley, (ed.), Penguin Companion to Classical, Oriental & African Literature
A. Lebor, City of Oranges
D. Lodge, How far can you Go?
R. Llewellyn, How Green was my valley
V.M. Manfredi, Tyrant
T. Mann, Death in Venice
M. Marquese, War minus the shooting
A. Maupin, Tales of the City
K. Meyer and S. Brysac, Tournament of Shadows
R.T. Moss, Cleopatra's wedding present
J. Osbourne, Luther
M. Rendell, The death of Marco Pantani
G. Riley, Eating Less
H.H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero
J. Steinbeck, The Short reign of Peppin IV
C. Stewart, The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars
G.Vermes, The resurrection
A. van Vogt, Moonbeast
M. Yunus, Banker to the Poor
A. Walker, The Colour Purple
A. Wilson, Late Call
A. Wilson, Hemlock and After
M. Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

& 25 from God

Read (20)
L. Adkins, Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon
A. Brookner, Hotel du Lac
*R. Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
A. Christie, Miss Marple's final cases
R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
P.K. Dick, The world Jones made
P.K. Dick, Flow my tears, the policeman said
G. Durrell, My Family and other animals
M. Gladwell, The Tipping point
B. Keenan, An evil cradling
*R.F. Kennedy, 13 Days
J. Lovegrove. Provender Gleed
D. Martin, and P. Mullen, No Alternative!
J. Morris, Wales
V. Nabokov, Speak, Memory
M. Proust, Pleasures and Days
*G. Riley, Eating Less
G. Sand, The Black City
S. Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox hunting man
D.L. Sayers, Whose Body?

Oh dear. My promise last month that I would try to restrict buying appears to have foundered spectacularly on the rock of Hay-on-Wye, where most of my acquisitions were got, although it should be said, I had bought 11 beforehand.

However, there is cause of celebration, I have matched my record reading for a month, and many (OK, some) of those of those acquisitions are reference and collecting books. I am never really going to read Cowerd’s Lyrics or Luther. I must confess that I bought the latter for one speech about allegories in sermons.

It's also no real surprise how I managed to reach 20 books this month (and I read 15 in the first fortnight): Lots of Science Fiction and Crime, most of it pretty forgettable, save for Flow my Tears the Policeman said, which I was inspired to reread by this review.

In fact, it wasn't a vintage month with some things disappointing me hugely, particularly Sassoon, which I found unappealing and self-indulgent, though apparently the second volume makes up for this. No Alternative! the collection of essays put together to oppose the ASB in 1980, has dated and there’s not much of interest there now. While I hope Jan Morris may have written better books; her Wales was evocative, but marred by too much affectionate, but sadly inaccurate assertion that jars.


Others were mostly as expected: there is not much I can add to the reams of comment on Kennedy (which I “had” to read for work) or Keenan, though I ‘enjoyed’ both. While Proust was predictably immature though of literary historical interest.


However, there were a number of good books. Hotel du Lac went some way to redeeming fiction, but the standouts were science and memoir. Dawkins’s most famous book is lucid and accessible and Gladwell was interesting and increasingly fashionable. My family and other animals is charming and well done, but Nabokov’s autobiography was excellent, both historically fascinating (his father was a prominent liberal in pre-revolutionary Russia) and evocative of a slightly strange, but endearing childhood. I don’t know how much read it is now, but it should be read more.

After this mammoth acquisition spree, it is time to abstain in August. Not one single book more will I buy until September, maybe.