Mad, bad and dangerous to know

I've delayed this because I was rounded on social media for even briefly celebrating the return of the Stansgate viscountcy three weeks ago. Hopefully the dust has settled. Tony Benn is still dead; there is still a Viscount Stansgate again (it's his eldest son). And, hopefully, all those people who didn't really like Tony Benn now feel a bit silly for lauding him to the heights.

Because everyone (and I mean everyone, with the noble exceptions of Matthew Paris) fell over themselves to praise him. And I don't really know why. Now, I'm sure Tony Benn was personally lovely. His diaries make him out to be so, though he did write them himself. And he was certainly a fine example of the the benefits of a good education (Westminster. A fact he tried, despite his legendary 'integrity', to have removed from Who's Who) and a constant desire to document and make sense of the world. 

But he was wrong, about everything, and - for his party - wrong in a disastrous way.

I find it curious that the left lined up to bang on about how wonderful he was, when the only people who should celebrate his political career are the right. Benn was a, if not the, key facilitator of Thatcher's dominance. He was one of the major figures on the Labour left - a candidate for the deputy leadership (he lost), a potential leader - and he dragged the party leftwards into appalling places. His own politics by then were actively crazy: he wanted to nationalise everything (this was when the Government owned Pickford's), leave the EU, and forcibly reunite Ireland. They sound mad now; they sounded pretty mad then. And as a result, the party split, the vote collapsed, Thatcher got three terms, and in desperation, Labour jettisoned some decent elements alongside all the mad. If you were feeling uncharitable, you might make a direct link from Benn to New Labour. He would have hated that. 

And I don't think he ever realised it either. He had more self-awareness than most: in his later years, when called to explain the affection with which he was held, he used to say that he was 'harmless now'. That was definitely true, but he was also irrelevant, and I don't think he appreciated that. His facile quip in 2001 that he was 'leaving parliament in order to spend more time on politics' is revealing. He didn't spend more time on politics - he went on lecture tours. His audiences loved it; I suspect he did too. It did nothing, though I imagine it made everyone involved feel warm inside.

On one level, the obits were right. He will be missed; he was erudite, charming and he had conviction - all probably only possible because he lost. But without him, the Labour party would have been in better shape in the 1980s and I venture the country would be in better shape now. That's not a legacy to be proud of.

Bibliography, March 2014

BOTM: N. MacGregor, A History of the world in 100 objects (2010)

N. Bouvier, The Japanese chronicles (1989)
E. Christiansen, The Northern crusades (2E 1997)*
A. Patchett, Bel Canto (2001)
J. Wyndham, The Kraken wakes (1963)

I am surprised. I hadn't the BOTM expected it to work work as a narrative. I picked up 100 Objects because I found myself about at King's Cross about to go to Buckinghamshire without a book. Obviously I'd heard it at the time, or part of it, but always assumed it would work as reference, not a continuous read. I was wrong. Despite the breadth and the concept, it reads extraordinarily well. Of course, given its construct, it's not actually a very good on the detail of this history - you have to fill in the blanks yourself. But it is fresh, very well written, fascinating and illuminating. I'm slightly annoyed I didn't read it earlier.

The audio series is available, but I would still recommend reading the book. 

Bibliography, February 2014

BOTM: L. Hughes - Hallet, The Pike

A. Christie, Death in the clouds
A. Christie, The Hollow
W. Dalrymple, Return of a King

Unlike the Booker, the Samuel Johnson prize seems to have been awarded right. Excellent though Dalrymple's is, The Pike is astounding. Wonderful subject, wonderful period, wonderfully told. Importantly, looked at sympathetically, though without sentiment. It's a marvel.

The hammer of justice

Pete Seeger would have been a terrible hammer-wielder. Though an admirer, almost to the end, of Stalin (I'll come back to that), he was no dominator of men. When he spoke of the hammer of justice in his famous , and prosaically named, 'Hammer song' for at least part of the song, it's being used to hammer out a warning, rather than to fight. The only possible instance of him wielding weapons outside a military service is when he tried to take an axe to Bob Dylan's electric cables at Newport (allegedly).

I say this not to belittle him: he was tough, and exceptionally stubborn. Among the many obituaries, I discovered in one that he is the only member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to be convicted of contempt of Congress. He spent much of his prime years under the shadow of prosecution and indeed spent time in prison for it. This was no accident of course - he was a communist; and a proud one; a Stalinist long after most follow travelers had fallen away. We should be grateful that, by his lights, his activity was almost entirely unsuccessful. The image repeated in his obituaries is that he was 'America's tuning fork.' It's a hopeless metaphor: if America is using Pete Seeger as a tuning fork, then it's tone deaf. It's also woefully shortselling his potency - Seeger wasn't a tuner, he was a prophet - an Old Testament prophet. Like those men who came from the wild places (some having gone into them from rather more comfortable billets in the city, as Seeger did) and excoriated the people for failing to act justly. They placed themselves outside order, in opposition to authority, and preached righteousness. You wouldn't have put them in charge of government either: I love the writings of the prophet Amos, but I'm reading him for what he says about the poor, not the administration. 

And that's how I think we should think about Seeger. Of course he was wrong about the remedy, but the sniping from the right misses the point. His songs and speeches weren't exam answers, but pricks of conscience. Just as we would be fools to import his doctrine into the exchequer, we'd be even more foolish to explain away his ideals or his criticism. They represent a bright vision of America and of humanity, and he sang proper protest songs for the right reasons. Along the way he helped inspire an extraordinary flowering of popular song. We won't see his like again.

Bibliography, January 2014

BOTM: J. Crace, Harvest (2013)

E. Catton, The Luminaries (2013)
S. Delany, Babel 17 (1966)*
Levitt, S.D., and Dubner, S.J.,  Superfreakonomics (2009)
R. MacFarlane, The old ways (2012)
N . Mitford, The Sun King (1966)*
G. Orwell, Essays (ed. 1984)

I've added date of publication to the book lists. I've been meaning to do so for ages, but now I look at it, it may not last - consider it a bit of an experiment. In short, a great month: Orwell, Mitford and Catton all excellent. Indeed, I can see why the Booker jury gave Catton the prize. They were however wrong (and biased towards its structural conceit); it should have gone to Jim Crace's swansong. Harvest isn't perfect: the plot is a bit weak, and the isolation slightly inconsistent. However, the work overall is a masterpiece of evocation and pitch perfect in its description of the village in question as well as the rhythms of country life. Given most people find the era before the war a bit of a stretch, this reaching back - to a period before modernity had even begun to be thought of - is timely as well as outstanding.

Bibliography, 2013

For handy reference, here were my books of the month:

January - D. Athill, Instead of a letter
February - M. Atwood, The Blind Assassin
March - G. Orwell, Burmese Days
April - J. Crace, The Devil's Larder
May - M. Gellhorn, The Weather in Africa
June - R. Young, Electric Eden
July - G. Orwell, Coming up for air
August - J. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom
September - A. Patchett, Run
October - A. Munro, Runaway
November - A. Sisman, Hugh Trevor - Roper
December - W. Dalrymple, Nine Lives

First, the numbers. Only a very slight improvement on last year's volumes. 90 books overall, against 85 in 2012. Both well down on the long term average (125), though I think we know who to blame for that. Next, the ratios: seven fiction BOTMs, and only one history. That's broadly reflective of the overall numbers, exactly two thirds of the reading was fiction and I only read five history books this year. That's obscene; and it's changing from now.

Despite all these novels, there was no real contest over fiction book of the year. Atwood's Booker prize winner was outstanding. Certainly the best I've ever read of hers. Suspenseful, clever, and enchanting. It makes me want to go back to some of her works I've rejected in the past. Even the ones about Women.

Non-fiction was harder, but came down to two: McPherson and Sisman. They were both monumental works, though of varying subjects. Even here though, while part of me would love to say the biography of don was better than the one of a war, it is impossible. Battle Cry of Freedom was magisterial. Though long, it rattled by, brilliantly anatomising the Civil War and especially the long term causes. I'd recommend it for reading to anyone save for two things. Firstly, anyone who is interested has probably read it, I'm not the first to point to its brilliance. Secondly, it may make Marxist determinists of young historians reading it. Consider how good it must be to trump that caveat.

Bibliography, December 2013

BOTM: W. Dalrymple, Nine lives

S. Brook, Liquid Gold: dessert wines of the world
M. Kundera, The farewell party*
Montesquieu, Persian Letters*
W.S. Maugham, Liza of Lambeth

I almost gave this to Kundera (who is overdue a reread. I bought and reread this without remembering I'd read it before; and indeed own it), but Dalrymple's was consistently excellent, and engrossing. Basically, I can't really be bothered to read up on India properly, so I'm grateful for him and a selected handful of others for being effective and entertaining guides. He has never disappointed me. In other news, Maugham's celebrated debut is rubbish.