Bibliography, November 2016

BOTM: H. Jeffreys, Empire of Booze (2016)

J. Bloodworth, The myth of meritocracy (2016)
D. Brown, The American West (1994)
J. Crace, The Pesthouse (2007)
A. Huxley, Antic Hay (1923)
D. Levy, Hot Milk (2016)

I was surprised by most of this list. Levy, rounding off the Booker shortlist, was surprisingly good - especially as the synopsis sounded dire. Huxley, Bloodworth and Brown all disappointed. Jim Crace didn't, but he never does.

There were no surprises around Book of the Month. I came across Henry Jeffreys in Slightly Foxed (which is also brilliant) some years ago, and he's been a great discovery, not least because he comes from my home town. More importantly, he has an excellent, accessible and interesting drinks blog. Now, he's written an amazing book, which I helped fund - in somewhat bizarre company. Now, given this, and the fact it's about two of my favourite things, Empire and Booze, I was bound to like it. But it is also excellently written, fascinating, practical, and makes good use of amusing footnotes. What more could anyone ask for?

In other news, my definitive Booker ranking this year

1. Beatty
2. Thien
3. Levy
4. Moshfegh
5. Macrae Burnet
6. Szalay

Bibliography, October 2016

BOTM: P. Beatty, The Sellout

G. Macrae Burnet, His Bloody Project
O. Moshfegh, Eileen
D. Szalay, All That Man Is
M. Thien. Do Not Say We Have Nothing

On my third, equally doomed, attempt to get through the Booker shortlist before it's announced, I managed three of them, though I did pick the winner. I read Eileen and the Szalay afterwards and they definitely did not change my mind - indeed I'm not sure what Szalay is doing on the list at all. Like the bookmakers, I thought the jury would choose Thien, and it was good - I was particularly struck by the obvious but important insight around how those in the vanguard of the Cultural Revolution were the parents of the 1989 protesters.

Beatty has his own kind of history to tell, and tells it rather brilliantly - but it's really about how we think about race now, or rather specifically how Americans think about race. It's well done, outrageous, and very funny. I've heard him say he doesn't want it to be labelled as a satire and it is hard book to pin down in a genre, though it is definitely at least partly a satire. I'd call it a somewhat madcap fantasy about the complexity of racial politics. That said, I certainly wouldn't want to be the person doing the press lines on the plot.

Bibliography, September 2016

BOTM: E.L.Carr, A month in the country

R. Adams, The coming of the Horseclans
R. Adams, Sword of the Horseclans
R. Adams, Revenge of the Horseclans
R. Adams, A cat of silvery hue
J. Smiley, A thousand acres
S. Pinker, the better angels of our nature

So, I read some classic (by which I just mean old) fantasy novels last month after I found them in Hay on Wye. They were splendid, especially given this intro:

However, it must be confessed everything else was actually better. I thought I was going to give this to Pinker which is well written and (for the first two thirds) and excellent history of the decline of violence, but a) the last section is about psychology and I lost a little bit of interest and b) having read it, I'm increasingly concerned about the robustness of some of the data. Instead, Carr's book, a sixth of the size, is BOTM. It's perfectly formed, charming and brimming with gentle mischief and melancholy. And it's got churches and religious art in it. I loved it.

Bibliography, August 2016

BOTM: P. Frankopan, The Silk Roads

K. Amis, The Riverside Villas murder
J. Littell, The Kindly Ones
M. Wickstead, Aid and Development

It took me two months to read Jonathan Littell's work on the Holocaust. Last month, I said it was brilliant, but harrowing. Having finally finished it, I'd qualify that. The end (and especially the bit before the end) is very weak. However, the book as whole is also deeply flawed. In some ways it is brilliant,  and it's one of the best treatments of the bureaucratic workings of the Nazi state and the Holocaust I've read. It really drives home the nature of how the task sucked in so many otherwise decent enough people; and in the first section, which is the best, it outlines what it did to them. But in the end, the book is hamstrung by the main character. He is sympathetic - given he is a murderer and a mass murderer, this is impressive - but he's also psychologically damaged before the action even begins. This means not only does the book fail to address the question that Littell posed himself - what would someone like me have done in Nazi Germany - but it also bloats the book with a fantastical subplot that adds little. A better book would have excised that entire element, which would have made it better and happily shorter.

So I've given, not without reservations, book of the month to Frankopan's on Central Asia and the Near East. I've issues with this too. It's a worthwhile book and is jam-packed with gems, but it suffers from two major issues. Firstly, I don't think it holds focus well enough in the middle, where we flit too rapidly from the ostensible subject of the book to the West. In a work seeking to correct western centric views of history, there's just too much on the European age of discovery rather than its impact on the aforementioned Silk Roads and this leads to real compression; Timur gets a single page. Secondly, and surprisingly given Peter's background (he taught me middle Byzantine history briefly), it has what might be termed 'Ferguson syndrome' where the lure of modern politics gets in the way of the historical analysis. That means that it's got too much modern in - we get to 1900 with 40% of the book to go. And some of it is too obviously the author's political view without enough backup: for example, he's keen to emphasise the Taleban's insistence in the 1990s that they wouldn't shelter Bin Laden if he committed terrorist acts, but no comment on their volte-face in the aftermath of 2001 two pages later. This is a shame ass the historical perspective he brings to the twentieth century is actually fascinating, just a) overlong and b) too partisan. 

I'd read both of these, but with caution.

Roots

I listened this to promising, but actually pretty bad, summary of women in Country music last week. It was poor for a number of reasons, not least because the presenter couldn't bring herself to call it Country, but instead referred to roots and Americana (I hate it when they do that), but it was mostly disappointing because it couldn't do its history properly. I find this is often the case when niche genres are discussed in music (though pop and rock bands tend to receive absurdly detailed excavations of their backgrounds and influences). This may be a small problem in genres I don't listen to, but it's a disaster for Country. There are few more self-referential and historically orientated genres of popular music. In this case, there were a few minor infelicities - there's no need to labour a plot precis of Ode to Billie Joe - and one big one: the airbrushing of the roots of Country music from a programme notionally about roots. 

Specifically, when introducing with one of Loretta Lynn's many great songs for women, the presenter made the big claim that she is 'arguably the cornerstone for all women of roots and Americana.' This is nonsense (and I love Loretta Lynn) and ignores the pre-1960 Country tradition. Where are Sara and Maybelle Carter? Where, most pertinently, is Kitty Wells? Her It wasn't God who made Honky Tonk angels was the first song by a solo woman to top the charts, in 1952. Here she is:

That song is a riposte to Hank Thompson's The wild side of life. By pure coincidence, in the same week, Bob Harris played them both. I've not listened to them together before and it's extraordinary, making a very good song into a powerful cultural statement. Bob Harris knows his history, most people don't. They should, and until they do, we definitely shouldn't give them a radio show about roots. Anathema.

The Alteration (a historical prosopography)

I reread The Alteration a couple of months ago (I love The Alteration). A friend who read it at the same time noted the sheer wealth of historical allusion. I thought there would be a list somewhere, but couldn't find it, though wikipedia is a decent crib for some of it. So I made my own. For those who have not read the Alteration, 1) read The Alteration, 2) it's an alternative history where the divergence from ours comes in the Reformation: Luther, Calvin and Thomas More are successively Pope ('The three Northern Popes') and Arthur, Henry VIII's (here, Henry the Abominable) elder brother has a son (Stephen II) who is restored to the throne by Catholic forces. Britain is therefore catholic and the church is triumphant. As a result, almost every historical figure (unless they are American) has been pressed into the service of the church, usually in painting one of them or composing for it. Amis spends much of his time amusing himself by having real figures pop up in unlikely places.

So here goes. Page references from the Vintage Classics edition and refer to their first appearance only.

Contemporary figures - it's set in 1976 (*denotes a any reference that's less than obvious):

• A.J. Ayer, Professor of dogmatic theology (119)
• Tony Benn, as 'Lord Stansgate', head of the Holy Office in England (122)
• Beria, Monsignor (8) 
• Enrico Berlinguer, Cardinal and chief of staff to Pope John XXIV (109) 
• Anthony Burgess, still a novelist, but who has met an unspecified bad end by the 70s (194) 
• Francis Crick, a disastrous scientist (194)
• Philip K. Dick, who Amis has great fun with, making him an alternative history writer, whose Man in the high castle outlines 'our'  history  - or something close to it (25)
• Ian Fleming*, as author of the Father Bond novels - with a nod to Chesterton (78)
• [Paul] Foot, a policeman for the church, not a crusading journalist (126) 
• Harry Harrison*, I think this is who is meant as the engineer who builds the channel tunnel, as an homage to his SF story on the issue (105)
• Himmler, Monsignor (8)
• Ernest Lough, singer, presented as the case for castration - his career faltered once his voice broke (50)
• Paulo Maserati*, the Papal 'inventor general' [There's no useful contemporary Maserati, but the link is clear] (194)
• [Corin] Redgrave, a policeman for the church (126)
• Keith Roberts, as another alternative history author - I'm told there's complicated reference about dancing, Galliard here doing duty for the real life Pavane. (132)
• Jean-Paul Sartre, Monsignor and Jesuit (though I've not actually found the reference)
• Tolkien*, or at least an author of Lord of the Chalices, (78)
• Harold Wilson*, reinvented as Pope John XXIV (109)
• John Wyndham*, as J.B. Harris - Wyndham's real name - author of The orc awakes (100)
• Fritz Wunderlich*, the castrato Federicus Mirabilis (9)
• Wolfgang Windgassen*,the castrato Lupigradus Viaventosa (9)

Historical references:

• Benedict Arnold, American leader. So significant, he gets the capital named after him (164)
• John Bacon, sculptor (16)
• William Bartholomew*, called Bartley here, but the writer of Hear my prayer (50)
• Beethoven, here dying young (28)
• Blake, though only as a painter of frescoes (8)
• Brunel, who Amis credits with designing the highest cathedral spires of the world (10)
• George Butterworth (201)
• Jefferson Davis, ambassador to England (63)
• Rudolf Diesel, whose eponymous invention is ubiquitous as electrical ignition is discouraged (13)
• Epstein, Anglicised to Epstone here, but still a sculptor (8)
• Gainsborough (7)
• Richard Grenville, knight and sailor, who fights at Lepanto, with not against the Spanish (109)
• Kenneth Grahame*, assuming that's what's meant by The Wind in the Cloisters (77).
• Hockney, referred to, maliciously, as 'excessively traditionalist, almost archaizing' painter (8)
• Holman Hunt, painter (8)
• Willem de Kooning, painter (78)
• Rudyard Kipling, the First citizen of 'New England' 1914-18 (56)
• Thomas Kyd, whose version of Hamlet is famous (14)  
• Labelye, bridge builder, who builds here the London bridge he never did in reality (173)
• Michelangelo*, here 'Boonarotty', ie.Buonarroti, who kills himself when Luther, as pope, stops the construction of St Peter's (111)
• William Morris (8)
• Mozart, given both extra years and more compositions (8)
• Nelson, here famous for defeating the Turks at Lipari (200)
• Purcell, seemingly unaffected: there's a Dido and Aeneas here too (12)
• Edgar Allen Poe, a New England General (177)
• Satie*, though a piano maker rather than pianist (61)
• Schumann composer (30)
• Shakespeare, famous only in America, banned in England (152)
• Percy Shelley, who survived longer and led an expedition that burnt down the Vatican in 1853, but dismissed as a 'minor versifier' (199)
• Sopwith, engineer, but a builder of a channel bridge rather than aeroplanes (105)
• Jonathan Swift*, only a book Saint Lemuel's Travels (77)
• Zachary Taylor, one imagines still American President, certainly important enough to get a major New York bridge named after him (164)
• Tintoretto, the painter of the victory at Lepanto in Amis' and the real world (109)
• Turner, who paints a ceiling devoted to the restoration of Catholicism in England (7)
• Velluti, the most famous castrato in this version of history, as in ours (34)
• Weber, composer  (30)
• Wagner, composer (201)
• James McNeill Whistler, though we only know he had airship named for him  (177)
• Wren, architect (7)
• Yamamoto* (maybe), in Amis' world he's an architect. He's most likely the same as the real commander in chief of the Japanese navy (155)

There are a few others who may be specific individuals (e.g., Joshua Pellow, the 'archpresbyter'), but I think they are pure inventions. There are also references to places which suggest different roles for the individuals concerned, all in the US - Cranmeria, Hussville and Wyclif city - but not enough to go on. 

What have I missed?

Bibliography, July 2016

BOTM: P.K. Dick, Flow my tears, the policeman said*

E.M. Brent - Dyer, Eustacia goes to the Chalet School*
G. Burrows, Men can do it

It's been a bad month. I'm still reading the book I started the month on, and I'm not even half way through. It's brilliant, just harrowing (and very long). In between, I read a couple of lighter things. They were fine - Dick was the best.

Early retirement?

While Theresa May is being awesome today (and I am definitely developing a little political crush on her), let's spare a thought for David Cameron - in fact, let's spare Ken Clarke's thought, who in the final question to the now ex-PM, called for him to stay in the Commons. I hope he listens, because the haste with which our recent Prime Ministers have left the Commons has been unseemly. Here are all the post-war holders of the office, with ages (Cameron is 49) and their stints in the Commons post premiership.

Brown, 59 at end of premiership, stayed in the Commons 2010-15 (aged 64)

Blair, aged 53, resigned his Commons seat immediately (so still 53)

Major, 54, stayed 1997-01 (59)

Thatcher, 65, stayed 1990-92 (67)

Callaghan, 67, stayed 1980-87, staying as Labour leader for a year after the election defeat (75)

Wilson, 60, stayed 1977-83 (66)

Heath, 58, stayed 1974-2001 (85)

Home, 61, stayed 1964-74 (71)

SuperMac, 69, stayed 1963-4 (70)*

Eden, 59, left almost immediately (59)

Churchill, 79, stayed 1955-64 (89)

Atlee, 68, stayed 1951-55 (72)

Before Major, nobody left the Commons before 65 save for Eden, and he a) regretted it and b) had had a traumatic end. Since Major, it seems like they couldn't wait to get out. Of course, in part this is due to the age of leader - Theresa May is the oldest new PM since Callaghan. However, the differences aren't that great. Heath, Wilson and Home were all c.60, the same age as Brown, and only just over five years older than Blair and Major, yet they stayed on.

Worse, the priority for our recent premiers has not just been to exit the Commons, but to flee the domestic political arena altogether, eschewing the Lords as well. No-one since Thatcher has taken a peerage. As a result, and I think for the first time in modern* Parliamentary history, our past leaders are absent from the deliberations of the day. Nor is this trend limited to Prime Ministers - David Milliband is in New York; and the glorious Clarke-Rifkind conversation was notable because though Clarke admirably remains in the Commons, Rifkind has left, and not taken a peerage either. He has in fact no formal political role Ironically, it is now the second-raters and the placemen to who continue to hang around, not the grandees and especially not the grandest of them.

This makes me sad, and it should make us all sad. One of the strengths of our constitution is that is does not cut off expertise and provides for multiple ways in which elder statesmen can remain part of the process without distorting it. Both the Lords and the Commons have a role to play, but together they stop the guillotine of term limits and ex-Presidencies more concerned with their libraries and their legacy than the reality of the world as it is. In an age of Party, the Commons could do with more people of great experience beyond the reach of the whips and heedless of promotion (even if, like Heath, they spend a lot of time sulking). I don't consider Cameron a particularly good PM, but his would be a welcome voice from the Backbenches or even the red benches (though as he's less than 50, he should hang on to the green for some time yet).

Without the ex-premiers, not only is political life weaker, but it also frays the constitution. There's been a lot of hysteria about the need for an election for Theresa May May, but it's all nonsense - because we have a Parliamentary system. People vote for MPs and the Prime Minister is he who can command the confidence of majority of those MPs. Resigning from public life as soon as that confidence is lost undermines that principle and drags us closer to the presidential model.

Cameron's reputation has been strengthened by the manner of his going. To me, he has an opportunity to strengthen it still further. He should, perhaps aptly, Remain.

*As an aside, Wikipedia's Macmillan summary has this immense line: Macmillan was the last British prime minister born in the reign of Queen Victoria, the last to have served in the First World War, the last to wear a moustache when in office (all prime ministers since have been clean shaven), and the last to receive an hereditary peerage.

** Post Walpole

Bibliography, June 2016

BOTM: E.David, An omelette and a glass of wine

J. Crace, All that follows
M. Holland, The edible atlas: Around the world in thirty-nine cuisines
R. Murphy, The Joy of Tax
N. Mitford (ed.), Noblesse Oblige
J. Roth, What I saw: Berlin 1920-23

That Elizabeth David is marvellous is not in doubt; that her journalism would be rewarding was. I need not have worried. This, a collection of her best pieces, is excellent: elegant, interesting and often funny. It beat out Roth's also excellent journalism on a more sombre subject.

Reflections on a referendum (III): how's that hopey-changey stuff working out for ya?

I forget where it was, but one of the obituaries of Margaret Thatcher opined that while she intended her reforms to make Britain more like her father, it ended up making it more like her son - namely that while she intended to create a a nation of robust, self-reliant individuals, she in fact encouraged recklessness and shifting of responsibility.  Whether or not that's true (and I don't think it is), it came to mind at various points in this campaign, and not just when looking at her splendid 1975 jumper. This campaign has been marked by a lack of concern about consequences, and an irritating vagueness about 'Hope.' To outline risks and impacts has been characterised as fearmongering. 

That's unfair. Fear has been a bad name in  this debate. Because fear is a respectable response to unknowns or potential risks. It's legitimate to be afraid about economic turmoil, about our reputation in the world, about pressure on services and about impacts on national identity. It's right to respond to those fears, either to allay them or to mitigate them. Actions have consequences, and people, especially those about to vote, should understand them. What's wrong isn't the fear, it's all the lying. Leave are right to criticise Donald Tusk for his absurd claim that Brexit would destroy western civilisation; Remain are right to attack Leave's tactics on Turkey and about refugees. But the issue with all of these isn't the fear, it's the lies. 

Because to be concerned based on reality is responsible. To dismiss it is not. Blithely asserting that we don't need to worry about economic impact because Brexit will unleash hope isn't a positive campaign, it's a no consequences campaign. This reaches its apogee in the assertion that we could have EU free trade without free movement. More generally, because the collective leadership of Leave aren't a potential government, they won't be held to account for any failure. They can promise what they like; it will be someone else's fault if it never happens. This is one of my main objections to referenda generally, it's certainly one of my major objections to this one.

For the record, here are I think the consequences are clear. Remain vote does mean more integration within the Eurozone and continuing EU harmonisation around other areas. I don't think they will be major, but they will be real. I'm relaxed about that: common tax IDs feel fine to me. Far more significantly, Leave will hammer the economy in the short term. The currency response to the polls tells you everything here. This feels much less fine to me.

But more than this, the wider consequences are also clear. This started personally, and it will end personally, and messily. There is some unwarranted discussion about how every international negotiation after Brexit will be rational (hence we will get a nice trade deal). Personally, I don't think it's that rational for the EU to give us a better deal than its own members, but even if it were, it is unlikely to happen. Does no one remember Charles de Gaulle? Do we think logicians make policy? Having raised alarm over Romanians, will they give their assent to favourable terms for exit? This is fantasy. What is reality is the damage it will do to British politics as well. Whatever happens now, the Tory party has ripped itself apart and the Labour party is guilty of passive acquiescence to irrelevance (if Remain lose, it will be Jeremy Corbyn's fault). And when the hope doesn't materialise, voters will have new reasons to distrust their leaders. All of these are both entirely predictable and a direct result of calling this referendum.

Reflections on a referendum (II): I do not think democracy means what you think it means (with a short discourse on sovereignty)

This campaign has been dogged by a discussion of Democracy (capital D). I find this inexpressibly tedious, partly because I have at best a lukewarm attachment to democracy, but mostly because so does everyone else.

Not that you would know it. It's long been an annoying habit in public discourse to conflate everything one likes with democracy. As a result, things we don't like tend to be labelled undemocratic, when they are often, for example illiberal. Absurdly, when Obama intervened in the referendum, Leave called it undemocratic, as if having a view is equivalent to having a vote. Obama wasn't being undemocratic; he's doing something the Leave campaign didn't like.

This conflation leads to confusion, bad policy and poor outcomes. It also leads people to believe that pure democracy is something that is both desirable and present in the UK. Neither of these statements are true, though not for the reasons that have been advanced by Brexiteers. We have a democratic system, in that it's a system where most levers are decided by election, but not all. The judiciary is not (see America for why this is a good thing); the civil service is not (also good, even the US seem to believe this is mostly a good idea). Rather excellently, even parts of our legislature are not either (for the avoidance of doubt, I am talking about the Lords). We certainly don't live in a pure democracy - not every decision is put to the vote or taken on the basis of popular opinion. Thankfully. If they were, we'd have Hanging back; we'd also have a mess. California is a good example of what happens when politicians are overridden by referenda - governments cannot govern. Like every other "democratic" country, we have a system for balancing popular views with the need to govern.

The European Union has another one. I don't think it's a particularly good one, though it's not bad, and the task is complicated. It's plain to me that every major appointment in Brussels is effectively selected democratically. Power is vested in the Council of Ministers (all elected), the President (chosen by elected heads of state), the commissioners (appointed by elected officials and then confirmed by the elected Parliament) and the Parliament (elected, albeit by a system that I don't like). We may not like the role of the Commission, i.e., that they can propose legislation, but they can't pass it. Both the Ministers and the Parliament can block it. All of these are institutions with problems, in large part because we don't take them seriously as institutions (note who we send and how we vote for MEPs and who we select as commissioners). But they are democratic.

That they are democratic does not mean they are desirable. It is entirely legitimate to reject institutions for lots of reasons, including that it's badly designed. We may feel that the UK is misaligned with the rest of Europe, and that it should be separate (a version of the SNP argument at home, i.e., a single demos does not exist). But that is to make a claim about appropriateness of structure, not democracy. To conflate them is unhelpful. I'd make the same point about policy. By all means object to EU policy, but then object to EU policy, not its democratic credentials. As an aside, the UK is overwhelmingly in line with EU policy on almost everything that passes. Insofar as these things can be counted, we have been outvoted about 2% of the time since 1999, though a higher number recently. I struggle to think of major elements where we have been heavily defeated, though there may be. Of course, that the UK is outvoted is not undemocratic; the clue is in the name.

I feel there are echoes of this in the debate about sovereignty. If I'm completely honest, I find the debate here bewildering. Last time I really considered sovereignty, I was studying the Dutch revolt and it meant William of Orange, as a sovereign prince, could license piracy. I understood that. What I don't understand is the suggestion that we are not sovereign now. That we are having a referendum is obvious and literal proof that we have sovereign power to change the terms of our treaty relationship with the other EU members. We don't stop being sovereign if we choose to vest decisions in supranational bodies, just as we do with NATO or the ECHR. I think what people mean when they talk about sovereignty is that they think the EU is making bad decisions and possibly that they believe our Parliament would be better at making those decisions. In many cases that's impossible, some decisions can only be made effectively at a supranational level, for example the recent changes to mobile phone roaming charges. More generally, I'm pretty sceptical about our own capacity to deliver, but it's a reasonable position. I wish we were having a debate about institutional capacity, rather than "Freedom." That sounds technocratic, but the EU debate is about how we do the running of things; or rather, it should be. If it was ever in doubt, we resolved the sovereignty debate the moment the referendum was called.

One more tomorrow, on consequences.

Reflections on a referendum (I): the war against maths

I can't resist. We're three days out, other people have started weighing in with their thoughts, and I've found this whole campaign so appalling, I don't think I can let it finish without a small rantette. I was going to start Thursday but it felt wrong. However, that it's truncated is probably a blessing - I'll only have a chance to do a handful of these, to everyone's relief. I'll aim to keep the most important things.

So let's start with numbers (I'll come back to democracy and identity another time), because I think of all the dreadful things, numeracy has been one of the most dreadful. I know this isn't news - I've discussed before how politicians can't do basic calculations and that the electorate doesn't know how to interpret counting. Nor is this a partisan point, Remain have been guilty of absurd hyperbole, though their basic trajectory is I think right. Leave have been cleverer and have used numbers better, but in a fundamentally misleading manner. It's good politics in the short term, in the long term it fuels expectations that cannot be met.

Let's start with the most infamous - the £350m a week to the EU claim. Everyone who reads knows this is a meaningless number, though it's emblazoned on every Leave bus. It's been attacked by all and sundry. We've spent what feels like a month talking about it, yet the majority of people still believe it to be true. I am entirely prepared to have a debate about the real number, but this is impossible if people cannot grasp addition, and campaigners have no qualms about manipulating that. I'm tempted to blame Leave for using it. I really blame the electorate for falling for it.

That said, however it's cut, the number is still big. The net number is £100m+ a week, £8.5bn a year. People keep asserting that's a big number. But the world is really big, even the UK is pretty big, Our GDP is £1.8 trillion; government spending is around £600bn; the NHS alone is over £100bn. So the number is less than 0.5% of GDP and only just over 1% of government spending. Even if you don't believe Sir John Major that the NHS is as safe as a hamster with a python under prominent Leavers, £8bn won't solve it. More importantly, it's irrelevant anyway. Nobody thinks Brexit will be neutral on the economy, and it would be fantastical if they did: either erecting barriers to our main markets hammers the economy (I include to this view), or in the future, the UK as a open trading nation booms as the Singapore of Europe (I do not incline to this view, but it doesn't matter), as soon as that impact is 0.5%, then the £8bn has vanished. And all this is before we talk currency. If you are weighing up the economic consequences of leaving, don't even bother to talk about the payment, talk about growth - not for nothing is compound interest the most powerful force in the world.

Finally, the most important number: immigration, announced at the end of May as a net 330k. For most people, Brexit is really a debate about immigration. I spent an evening with ex-colleagues last week where the Brexiteers all talked a good game about everything else, but they're a minority in their own campaign and the country. The only thing that's moved the polls is immigration. I would note that 1) 330k isn't actually that many people. It's easy to talk about a the size of city it represents, but we have a lot of small cities. It's 0.5% of population, the same increase as from our natural birth rate. High, sure, but neither unprecedentedly so nor impossible to manage. People who think Britain is full need to spend more time in Wales. And 2) Half of it is not from the EU. Where we can cut migration as we wish, we are not doing so. It's curious that we thus think the whole thing is out of control. This isn't to deny that there may be localised impacts, but it is now and will be in the future much smaller than people think. This is clear from the perception research: people think the EU-born population (including, I presume, me) is three times larger than it is. There's a positive and a negative case to be made around immigration. They both start with counting. We haven't got there yet.

Democracy tomorrow

Bibliography, May 2016

BOTM: T. Capote, In cold blood

K. Amis, The alteration
B. Bainbridge, The bottle factory outing
W. Fiennes, The Snow geese (from last month. I forgot)
A. Leckie, Ancillary Sword
A. Leckie, Ancillary Mercy
C. Mieville, Railsea
S. Rohmer, The mystery of Fu Manchu

K. Vonnegut, Cat's cradle

I think The Alteration is one of Kingsley Amis' best books - far better than the dire offerings I've read recently - though it's not in Lucky Jim's class. It is clever, and done very well right through the end, which I think is a nice subversion of the conventions of such novels. I have read it several times, but I'm rereading it as part of my plan to read all of the John W. Campbell award. However, although excellent, partly because of the frequency of reading, I've given BOTM to Capote's classic, which does not suffer from being overlooked. It's a book that spawned a genre. And, though true crime is not a genre I've read a lot of or intend to, this is outstanding. It's tense, even though we know the outcome, which is no mean feat. Above all though, it brings the human dimension not just to the victims, but to the murderers and the wider 'cast.' I also think it does narrative perspective well: it bring vividly to life the way such actions upend some lives and communities, but quickly wash through others. I gather bits of it are slightly made up, but I have no quarrel with that.

Bibliography, April 2016

BOTM: R. Graves, Goodbye to all that (1929)

J.E. Chamberlin, Horse: how the horse has shaped civilizations (2008)

G.G. Marquez, Memories of my melancholy whores (2004)

I'm really struggled last month, and not just because of my long standing concern that I can't decide whether Gabriel Garcia Marquez comes under G or M when cataloguing. Regardless, it was mediocre. I'm also really struggling with volumes. I haven't got the hang of my commute and I got stuck on both the BOTM and on an as yet unfinished Bainbridge. I'm unconvinced of the merits of the latter, but Graves is excellent. It's been lauded from the start and I won't add to them. The only wonder is that I've not read it before. 

Bibliography, March 2016

BOTM: R. George, The big necessity (2008)

A.C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama (1973)*
J.M. Le Clezio, Fever (1965)
R.K. Narayan, The painter of signs (1976)
W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants (1992)
P.G. Wodehouse, The small bachelor (1927)

I'm not sure about this. Rama is really good, even twenty years (at least) since I last read it. And it was a lot more uplifting then a book about excrement. However, although this is partly the new job talking, Rose George's book is important and highlights things I had never even thought of. With hindsight they seem obvious and terrifying. In fact, it's a tribute to the skill of the writing that the fairly depressing survey of what happens to the world's faeces does not drags. I wish I'd read it years ago. Someone at work recommended to me on my first week. I'm very glad they did.

A tale of two manifestos

Notoriously, a major part of the Liberal collapse last election was their failure to follow through on their pre-election promise on tuition fees, leading to one of the best uses of autotune in history. It also reflected an understandable, if intellectually confused, howl of outrage about politicians - namely they don't do what they say they will do. I think that was unfair on Liberals as they were in coalition, but it's not an insane position and it's a common complaint. It was repeated endlessly, usually with some variations on a theme about how we thought the Liberals were different and they're not. All of which was tedious, ill-informed and silly.

Five years later, the same electorate is aghast and appalled by the Conservatives, this time not in coalition, doing exactly what they said they would do before the election. Before the election, the party made it very clear that they would take £12bn out of welfare and they would protect pensions. This must mean brutal cuts to benefits, mostly if not exclusively targeted at the poor. It was one of the main reasons why I was unable to vote for them. Just as they promised, the government has sought to bring in those kinds of cuts - they've had two major failures about it in the last six months (remember the tax credit reversal). Both times, they have been savaged, both within and outside the party, and the cuts have been reversed. I'm pleased the cuts have been reversed. They were bad policy, done badly. But the approach and the numbers were in the manifesto. Where is the outrage on an election manifesto being broken before the year is out?

Generously, one might argue that these particular cuts were not in the manifesto. Indeed they were not, but the numbers were there, and people wrote about them - here's a nice long article in the Telegraph, not behind a paywall, that outlines the issues. They were discussed at length by news programmes. It is not credible that anyone even vaguely interested and intellectually semi-competent can have been unaware of the numbers. Were it only the single cut that people opposed, I would have some sympathy, but the fact that it has been disastrous twice over suggests that the issue is not the specifics, but about the money, and the money was known. The government is doing what it said it would do.

Alternatively, we might believe that people voted for the Conservatives despite the welfare cut plans because they thought other issues were even more important. There is no evidence for this position in any post-election discussion and I just can't see what those issues would be. The people who really wanted an EU referendum above all else were already voting UKIP. I remain confused as to why people were so hostile to the SNP, but the number of people placing it above everything else was small. A decent number did vote Tory because of economic competence, but that is based on deficit reduction through this policy.

Instead, we must conclude that people voted for a policy they didn't actually want. This does not reflect well on the people, though it does not surprise me. Pertinently, it makes a nonsense out of those who complain that our politicians never keep their promises. Here they have, and we attack them for it.

Late night library

Last night, thanks to Anna covering children and my new policy of drink less, doctorate more which I'll be adopting till the damn thing is finished (hopefully December. They'll be a party), I spent an evening in the Library. I haven't spent an evening in a library for a long time. I used to. I remember very fondly coming out of the Bodleian at closing time at 10pm and into the pub. I should stress that outside of Finals panic, I had rarely got the Bod before lunch on said days.

Anyway, I certainly haven't spent any time in the Maughan library (that's KCL's) late at night. Here my reflections:

1. Late night usage is very different from the day. When I visited during the day in the spring, there were sections where I was alone once the motion sensitive lights went off). It was bustling in the evening. And everyone was a bit louder. Disappointingly, this didn't seem to be because they had been drinking.
2. KCL has a very curious cataloguing system. While I have a some sympathy for idiosyncratic approaches to taxonomy (see long and short posts), even I struggle to see why the Late Roman should be split from the Byzantines, but combined with modern Italy. I faced a wall that held biographies of Constantine and Cavour, but not Cantacuzenus. 
3. Despite the fact that everything has changed at university because they all have to pay and they can get all the articles online, undergraduates are still prone to a good old fashioned essay crisis. In the four hours that I was there, two of them sat next to me attempting to write an essay. They didn’t get very far and seemed to be settled in for the long haul. They were quite annoying and seemed to working on sociology (they obviously hadn't figured the cataloguing system out either), but I mellowed towards them through the evening.
4. As a result, I felt exceptionally smug. I also remembered how much better I work in the library compared to being at home, and how much more I enjoy working in them, even at night.
5. That's even true given the now common disregard for basic library etiquette. While I was there, one of my undergraduates got through two cans of Red Bull. Given I was there from 6:30 and 10:15ish, God knows how he was going to get through the small hours. More important, who thinks it's acceptable to drink sticky drinks in a room full of someone else's books?
6. I am very glad I didn't go to London. Regardless of the quality of the library environment, it's always a long way home. For all of my time at college, it was never more than ten minutes walk.
7. That said, cycling home through the centre of London late in the evening is simply amazing. I haven't done that for ages either, but spinning through the centre when the streets have started to clear, but everything remains lit up is magical. Not even a slightly malfunctioning gear changing mechanism can spoil it
8. My bike needs a service and possibly a new gear box.

It was great, and I got loads done. Unlike the undergraduates next to me.

A love letter

Last week, after nearly eight years, I left the BBC (I started at WaterAid on Monday). What follows here is my love letter to the Corporation. It's not a technical argument for it, though I am happy to have that argument (if increasingly sceptical of its value) nor any kind of defence of some of our unsavoury employees anymore than it is a tribute to the wonderful colleagues I have left. This is simply my farewell. It does of course repeat many of the things I said at my leaving drinks so isn't worth reading if you were there.

I shall miss the BBC terribly. I've been lucky enough to work across almost all of it, though I've seen some bits more closely than others. And I loved it because I got to defend things I loved. 

My affection for those things is deep rooted. When I think about the BBC, it comes saturated with memory. So saturated that some of those memories come from a time before I was born. I remember being played classic radio comedy as a child from the 1960s, so that I can still recite sketches from Round the Horne (e.g.,) and I'm sorry I'll read that again. I'm not alone in this - think of the Dr Who fanatics younger than me who can go back to the same decade. As a twelve year old, I fell asleep to the 1992 election coverage on Radio 4 amid the glimmerings of the great victory. Obviously I woke up the following morning to Today, but I've done that since the age of about eleven. About the same time, my whole family always watched Noel's House Party. I still have an enormous soft spot for Mr Blobby. (This, with Will Carling, is objectively brilliant)

So far, I've got to about 1992 and the list could roll on and on, but there are plenty of more comprehensive lists out there. My own consumption has waxed and waned over the years in entirely predictable ways - when I watched Benedict Cumberbatch play Stephen Hawking in 2004 I was watching very little, but it was still one of the most extraordinary pieces of television I have ever seen. My current favourites are shaped by my child centred timetable and would be dominated by Radio (note especially this this wonderful gem on Shakespeare last month), News, Politics, and CBeebies. And Pointless. It would have drama in, but I rarely have the energy to engage with much now, and I can't bring myself to watch War and Peace until I've reread the book again.

However, my favourites aren't really the point. That list could be entirely different and just as strong. The BBC is a place where magical things get made, lots of them, and many done in ways that commercial TV and Radio can't do and certainly can't sustain. This time last year, in the grip of a small baby and a lot of hours to fill, I listened to Serial. Frankly, I was dreading it being better than regular speech radio. It wasn't, though it was fine: a good story, told well. We do things that good every week on Radio 4, some better, and many times over. Serial, which lost money, has found it harder to replicate its success. Our music is unsurpassed, Radio 4 inimitable, and our News coverage wider, better and more diverse than anyone else. I wouldn't be without the Spectator and the Economist, but I rely on BBC News. And I know no-one else has as many correspondents in as many places because I've counted them.

I found that experience typical. Working for the BBC only increased my affection for most of the output, if at times straining my patience with the internal and external constraints. Working in News taught me not just to appreciate, but to love, the English Regions. My favourite BBC statistic remains that the regional current affairs strand Inside Out has higher audiences than Panorama. The BBC taught me how to think about digital with the whole audience in mind. BBC Radio, which is the best part of the BBC, gave me such pleasure. There, I got Radio 2 Eurovision approved and saw, brilliantly, Brad Paisley in session. It was marvellous.

This isn't a structured policy argument about the BBC. The technical arguments for and about funding are a reasonable argument to have, though not always had reasonably. There are things one could and should change about the BBC. However, I think this misses the point. The BBC's future has been dressed up in technocratic discussion for over a decade, yet for me it's never been about that. It's been about the institution. And any position anyone takes on the debate is about how they feel about the institution and I suspect institutions generally. David Hatch, quondam Controller of Radio Four, talked about running that station as like inheriting a long-established country estate that has to be handed on intact. I feel that about the whole BBC (and indeed the great estates). It should be handed on. I fear it won't be.

For now though, I feel honoured to have manned some of the barricades. It was an enormous privilege.

Bibliography, February 2016

BOTM: H. Trevor-Roper, The hermit of Peking (1976)

B. Aldiss, Hothouse (1962)
M. Atwood, The year of the flood (2009)
M. Atwood, Maddaddam (2013)
G. Maxwell, The Rocks remain (1963)
G. Maxwell, Raven seek thy brother (1968)
B. Malzberg, Beyond Apollo  (1972)
E. Rogan, The fall of the Ottomans (2015)

I seem only to have read in pockets this month. All the fiction was science fiction; the rest mostly consisted of the lives of oddities; and the Ottomans. Anyway, of all the oddness, the life of Edmund Backhouse was the best. Hugh Trevor-Roper (unfairly described as a discredited historian by my boss) never did get round to producing a masterwork. This isn't even close, but it is a compelling and extraordinary tale of one of the most fantastic chancers in modern history. That Trevor-Roper kept getting distracted by projects like this undermined his claims on posterity as an historian, but it is great fun.   

How to sound heartless (What are sieges for?)

As of this morning, aid is flowing into seven Syrian cities most affected by sieges from both rebel and regime forces (details here). Populations in dire positions will have food and other supplies they desperately need. But I'm not sure what the point is, and I'm not even sure it's a good idea.

Everyone seems very shocked that people in these cities are starving (in some cases to death). But of course they are starving; they're being besieged. Starvation is the point of sieges - it's a way to win without having to fight a battle; it's the only way to win if the defences are stronger than your army. This isn't comparable to helping refugees in camps or even people in large areas controlled by government. The deprivation of the people inside isn't a byproduct of the fighting, it's the point of the fighting. Hypothetically, if everyone in the contested towns were willing to concede , the sieges would stop. Obviously, because of reprisals and scare resources, it's more complicated than than, but it's still true that you don't besiege your own side. 

Of course, many people aren't on any side and, hideously, are simply caught in the middle. Their lives are awful and they die in numbers in ways I cannot imagine. But they are dying because there is a war on. They need that war to stop. Ultimately wars stop for two reasons: a) somebody wins, b) every sits down and plays nicely. The latter in this kind of case often because someone else is threatening you unless you do. I don't see how supplying cities under siege helps brings either of those forward. It very clearly prolongs the war. Cities that presumably were about to fall will now not fall, so we can do it all again next year. Similarly, I don't think entrenching existing positions makes anyone more likely to compromise.

Defenders will say that this is a precursor to a ceasefire which will pave the way to peace. God, I hope so. What follows makes me sound like a total bastard, but if it makes it worse by prolonging the agony, then this emergency aid hasn't done anything but make us feel better about ourselves at the expense of an already broken country. I'm not sufficiently expert to answer that question, but I really hope someone has thought about it very hard. I hope they decided it was worth it, and I hope they were right. I'm not sure either is true.

Bibliography, January 2016

BOTM: G. Maxwell, The ring of bright water (1960)

K. Amis, Take a girl like you (1960)
R. Crowley, Empires of the Sea (2005) 
R. Graves, Seven days in new Crete (1949)
F. O'Brien, The third policeman (1967)
J. Roth, The Spiders web (1932)
K. Stockett, The Help (2009)
T.H. White, [The Once and Future King]
_________ The Sword in the Stone (1938)
_________ The queen of air and darkness (1939)

_________ The ill made knight (1940)

_________ The candle in the wind (1958)

_________ The book of Merlyn (1977)

This was tight. I almost gave it to The Help, which I thought was outstanding. In fact I almost gave BOTM jointly, but that's pathetic (Yes it is Masterchef the Professionals 2012). It's always possible to make to choice. So, although I know it's partly because I have a weakness for barking mad aristocrats, it's Gavin Maxwell's account of how he kept an otter as a pet. That description does the book a disservice - it's a well known classic. Nonetheless, it is essentially about a man deciding to upend his life to keep an otter. As such, it's charming, what makes it brilliant is that he manages to do it while both avoiding tweeness - in fact the fairly bloody diet of otters is well documented - and anthropomorphising - he is very good on the animal personalities of the otters without projecting further. Also, impressive in a slight book, it manages to pack in delightful snippets of memoir (I then had to look him up properly) and a string of evocative segments on the region and the natural world. The reading public of 1960 were right; it sold millions.

As an aside, the reading public of 1960 cannot entirely be congratulated. Kingsey Amis' book of the same year, lauded at the time, is deeply unpleasant and though the reviews found it highly comic, I fear this has faded. The climax of the plot is exceptionally unpleasant.

It's not the side effects of the cocaine

I found this post very hard to write; I'm not sure I've done it justice. I don't think I realised before last Monday how much I would care when Bowie died. I definitely didn't imagine I would ever lay flowers at his mural, but I did. In a way, it's no surprise, I was obsessed by Bowie in my teens - he accounted for about half of all the CDs I owned at one point - to put this into context, I owned sixteen of his albums before a single one by Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones. I adored him, and this was despite my teens coinciding with his prolonged creative slump and his ill starred foray into drum and bass. But I spent more of the 2000s excavating the roots of pop music than delving into modern experimentation, listening to people who grew up with Johnny Cash, not those who listened to Bowie. But when he died, I realised I remembered every album in far greater detail than almost anything else I've ever listened to.

I don't think I'm alone in that. I've read a lot of of the appreciation, and the analyses of how important he was and why. I note that you'd be a lot better off if you started reading about Wednesday because the first few days had some dodgy analysis in, by some people who clearly hadn't listened to everything recently either. There were pieces banging on about the 'Berlin trilogy' which only namechecked tracks from 1972-4 (As an aside, I find the term Berlin 'trilogy' lazy and inaccurate. Lodger has very little in common with the other two). But I'd also note that the devotees of Bowie didn't talk too much about all the the weirder, more experimental music they then listened to, but rather how much he inspired other acts, almost all of whom were closer to the mainstream than he. That's no bad thing. While the coverage repeatedly praised his uniqueness as an artist, they also point to the unique role in Britain we've accorded him. He was our accepted window onto the weird stuff; the acceptable face of the avant-garde.

Now no-one starts there, and the vision, brilliance and bravery to aim for that and deliver is extraordinary. Given the volume of the tributes, I don't have to do any detail here. I did like this by Dylan Jones (see the end) and I thought the Economist was typically judicious in a rare two page obit about where the real value is (I've mentioned this before). They had a lovely graphic as well. Even the inevitable from Fact to Fiction was mediocre, rather than typically terrible. It is also definitely worth listening to Mitch Benn's the Fat Pink Duke which we've repeated from last year. We should luxuriate in this level of coverage; we will only get this again when Dylan dies. None of it really explains why I loved him. For some, his being an outsider crashing into the mainstream made all the difference. I am obviously not an outsider, but I am very grateful that he brought the esoteric to pop and kept it there. I am very much in favour of the esoteric.

Most people aren't, which is why Bowie was so important - transgressive, inventive, endlessly curious. There is no comparable artist that took such a range of odd, weird interests and obsessions, made them central to their output, sold in the millions, and then changed everything because they got bored. There are plenty of odd people with strange interests. They tend not to be pop stars. They certainly aren't very successful pop stars. That's a testament to his artistic ambition, but it's also a testament to his charisma: that magnetic, shape-shifting personality and wonderful cleverness that remains on view throughout. And I think that's an essential component, because while the restlessness that made him search out ever more obscure new genres makes him fascinating to follow, it does make him exhausting. And no-one can possibly like it all. When I was first discovering Bowie (early 1970s version), he released Earthlings, which, although on a re-listen is nowhere near as unpleasant as I remember, is never going to be the genre for me. A friend of mine told me it was the only Bowie album he'd ever thought was any good. All pop frontmen are charismatic, but few if any attempt to get over that hurdle of proving yourself again every time. He was an exceptional man.

And he leaves a body of work that is genuinely special, affecting and wonderful. Others can and have said much about the fashion and the theatre and the rest, but the quality of the music is what everything rests on. After he died, I listened to everything (except Tin Machine - I've always been scared to listen to Tin Machine). Some of them I haven't listened to for a long time. Some were really bad, and there is no disguising that everything after Let's Dance just isn't as good as what preceded it - soberingly too, I realise now I am already older than Bowie was when that was released. But the volume and pace of output through the 1970s is still bewilderingly brilliant. For me, though Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust and Station to Station remain the obvious pinnacle, there is so much scattered around the rest in almost all his albums that it's a hopeless task to gather up the pieces. Better instead just to listen to them, and be very grateful that you can.

In the end, I think I loved him because I couldn't believe he existed. There is no way anyone would imagine that mix of cleverness, art and weirdness being transmuted into the music he made. I won't see his like again and I will miss him terribly; we all should.

Bibliography, 2015

As ever, my list. I've put dates on because I think it's the kind of minor detail everyone is crying out for. A very good showing for recent books this time:

January - M. Cunningham, The hours (1999)
February - J. Wood, The Fun Stuff (2013)
March - P. Barker, The Ghost Road (1995)
April - P. Lively, Moon tiger (1987)
May - M. Robinson, Gilead (2004)
June - M. Pollan, Cooked (2014)
July - F.M. Ford, No More Parades (1925)
August - J.B. Priestley, English Journey (1934)
September - Cao Xuequin, Story of the Stone: the golden days (C18)
October - M. James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (2015)
November - H. Yanagihara, A Little Life (2015)

December - E. de Waal, The white road (2015)

Overall levels are slightly up on 2014 despite a very poor end and I read more books this year than any year since I've had a baby. However, it was absolutely dominated by fiction (75% of all reading; two thirds of BOTMs), a level not seen since 2012 - last time I had a small baby. Quality however, was much better and the months Feb to August outstanding.

A lot of the fiction was genuinely brilliant. However, my favourite by some distance was Gilead which I've bought for several priests and was beautifully done, and indeed beautiful. It's her masterpiece. It clearly gains from my religion - next time someone lets me preach I shall be using this wonderful passage about existence - but I can't imagine it loses much for the godless. Honourable mention for A little life and especially Moon tiger.

Non-fiction is smaller, but well contested. Essentially it's a three way showdown between Priestley, Polland and Wood. Wood wins from Pollan, though it's the latter who has caused me to bake bread, there were a few hippie infelicities in it. I can't remember any from Wood. It may be that I don't read enough literary analysis, but almost all of his collected essays were illuminating and insightful; some were revelatory.All were elegant. Most importantly, he also seems to have similar dislikes to me.

Bibliography, December 2015

BOTM: E. de Waal, The white road

E.M. Brent-Dyer, The rivals of the Chalet School
A.C. Doyle, The lost world
P. Fitzgerald, Offshore

A far from vintage month. Too much illness, parties and Christmas to do much work in. Nonetheless, de Waal's follow up to The hare with amber eyes is a triumph, despite being about pot. What's striking to me is how good his writing remains on historical detail and engagement with porcelain - sections which I think are stronger than the bits where he actually talks about pottery. I am happy to concede this may say more about me than anything else.