Turing’s Cathedral
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Book review
Saturday
Man with a trade mission
About the second part of the title of Nigel Cliff’s excellent book there can be no argument. Vasco da Gama’s voyages do indeed remind one of those of Odysseus and Aeneas — in the range of adventures, mostly disastrous, which befell the tiny ships, and also in the iron will of their leader. His ruthless pursuit of his goal left a trail of destruction behind him, both for his own companions and for those whom they encountered along the way. It is the first part of the title, which claims that Portugese policy was the last fling of medieval crusading, about which there may be more doubt. The Christian
Dangerous territory | 14 April 2012
Fifteen years ago Ahmed Rashid wrote an original, groundbreaking and wonderful book about the Taleban, a subject about which few people at the time knew or cared. Then along came 9/11 and Rashid turned overnight from obscure scribbler into global sage. He was courted (as he reminds us from time to time in this book) by presidents and celebrated by Washington think-tanks. But all this recognition, while well deserved, has had a terrible effect on his prose. Instead of writing very good books, he now writes very bad ones. His Descent into Chaos, published in 2008, an account of the years after 9/11, was ponderous and loaded with received wisdom.
An elusive father
In a large upstairs room of the YWCA building behind Tottenham Court Road, a group of actors were nervously waiting for the arrival of the director. There was the powerful whiff of a good cigar, the faint scent of expensive cologne and Orson Welles arrived. He had been in Paris cutting his film of Kafka’s The Trial and now here he was; a huge man, beautifully dressed in a dark suit and floppy tie, full of good humour, apologising for having missed a week of rehearsal. The room exploded with his laughter, an explosion so loud you feared for the windows, and everyone relaxed. He had prepared a version of
Ditching Brother Leader
The date that rebel leaders chose for the final assault on Tripoli was auspicious: 20 August 2011 coincided with the 20th day of Ramadan by the Muslim lunar calendar, the date on which Muslim forces led by the Prophet Muhammad conquered the holy city of Mecca for Islamic rule in AD 680. It was also exactly six months since the Libyan people had risen against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his regime. The nomenclature of the operation — Mermaid Dawn — was no less bizarre than the regime it sought to overturn. Neighbourhood co-ordinators roused sleeper cells with the agreed code phrase ‘We’re going to have soup tonight.’ After sunset, when
Serpents in suburbia
Barbara Pym was never just a cosy writer. She could be barbed and sour — and seriously, hilariously funny. Kate Saunders, in her introduction to Pym’s last novel, explains how ‘Rather to my surprise,’ Barbara Pym wrote to her friend Philip Larkin in 1971, ‘I have nearly finished the first draft of another novel about a provincial university told by the youngish wife of a lecturer. It was supposed to be a sort of Margaret Drabble effort, but of course it hasn’t turned out like that at all.’ The novel was An Academic Question — witty, sharp, light as a syllabub, nothing like anything by Margaret Drabble and with a
The picture of health
It must have been hard to settle on a title for this book; but then this is not the book that Richard Cork originally had in mind. In his introduction to The Healing Presence of Art he describes how he was approached to write on the contemporary role of art in hospitals, but in beginning the research for this he became aware, as he puts it, ‘of the rich, complex and largely overlooked tradition’ to which modern art and medicine are the heirs. It is this vast hinterland that forms the theme of Cork’s book. It is neither ‘art in hospitals’, nor ‘art and medicine’ nor ‘art as therapy’
Spirit of Roedean
Ursula Graham Bower belonged to the last generation of those well-bred missy-sahibs who came out to India at the start of the cold-weather season in search of genteel adventure and a husband. But unbeknown both to herself and to those about her, the gawky, ‘well-covered’, Roedean-educated Miss Bower was of that stern stuff upon which empires are built. Having arrived at a frontier outpost of Assam in the autumn of 1937 as the 24-year-old guest of a friend housekeeping for her elder brother, she set about carving out her own niche as an anthropologist. Her chosen subject was the Nagas, a lose confederation of tribes much given to raiding and
Far from close
In 1598, a certain Margaret Browne of Houndsditch gave a graphic description to the court of her neighbour Clement Underhill engaged in an adulterous act with her lover, as observed through a hole in the party wall. Some people have always been very interested in what the neighbours are up to; all of us can be affected by them. Emily Cockayne has investigated the relationship by conjuring up scores of pieces of evidence such as the one cited, from the early Middle Ages till the present day, trawled from manorial records, police and law courts, civic authorities and newspapers. The result is a nicely personal view of how we have
Heroics and mock-heroics
‘Poets don’t count well,’ says Ian Duhig in his contribution to Jubilee Lines — an assertion unexpectedly confirmed by Carol Ann Duffy’s preface. Admittedly, if the book did contain one poem for every year since 1952, there’d be an annoyingly untidy 61. Even so, Duffy’s declaration that the Queen was crowned ‘on 2 June 1953, 60 years ago this year of 2012’ may come as a surprise. No less puzzlingly, we’re also told that in 1977 ‘the Queen had been on the throne for nearly a quarter of a century’, which makes the Silver Jubilee seem a bit ill-timed. Luckily, the Poet Laureate proves far better at putting together
A bit of slap and tickle
Hard on the heels of the ecstatically received London revival of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off (currently playing at the Novello Theatre) comes this hilarious novel. It’s not easy to pull off farce on the printed page when so many of the laughs of the genre generally depend upon physical comedy. In Noises Off, for example, one character hops about the stage like a demented kangaroo, his shoelaces tied together. But just as a filthy joke is made funnier when told by an apparently po-faced academic, so a really silly plot is enlivened when composed by a highly clever author. Frayn is that man. In the hands of someone less accomplished,
Bookends: Disarming but disingenuous
At first glance, Be the Worst You Can Be (Booth-Clibborn Editions, £9.99) by Charles Saatchi (pictured above with his wife, Nigella Lawson) seems a rather distinguished book, with its gilt pages bound in what feels like genuine Gnomitex, and this impression persists until one begins to read it. The title page explains the format — ‘Charles Saatchi answers questions from journalists and readers’ — and the first page sets the tone: ‘If you had a bumper- sticker on your car,’ asks a journalist or reader, ‘what would it be?’ And our modern Maecenas replies: ‘Jesus loves you. But I’m his favourite.’ (Boom boom!) So it’s not a distinguished book. It’s
Saturday
Death comes for the archbishop
Posterity has always embellished Thomas Becket. After his death in Canterbury Cathedral in December 1170 the Church idealised and canonised him; his tomb inspired miracles and became the most famous shrine in Christendom; the local monks grew rich and fat on the tourist trade that would attract Chaucer’s pilgrims. The 18th century invented Henry II’s hint, ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’ Playwrights spice the dish. Tennyson’s drama about Becket was staged by Irving; everyone remembers Eliot’s chorus, living and partly living; and Anouilh’s play, which turned the Norman immigrant into a Saxon, gave him, in the screened version, a wide and charismatic appeal. Not that theatricality or
Scotland’s phoenix
The late squarson, Henry Thorold, was fond of pointing out that his Shell Guide to Lincolnshire was the bestselling of the series, not because of any intrinsic merit but because no guide to the county had been produced since the early 19th century. The same might turn out to be true of the latest volume of the Pevsner Architectural Guides, Dundee and Angus. The county, which changed its name in the 19th century, has not been described since Forfarshire Illustrated (1843) and the five volumes of Alexander J. Warden’s Angus or Forfarshire (1880-85). The book under review cannot quite claim to be the last ‘Pevsner’. Whilst most English counties are
Living the music
I used to read NME when I was young. Of course I did. I was obsessed by pop music in its every colour and my youth happened to coincide with the old inky’s heyday, or certainly one of them. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the New Musical Express was one of four weekly music magazines. Record Mirror was for kids (people a year or two younger than us). Melody Maker was worthy and a bit dull. Sounds was brash and lively, but too keen on heavy rock for my taste. NME was broader in range and more ambitious in tone, and it had the writers: strung-out drug zombie
Figures in a landscape
As you cross the Trent, you are very much aware that you have moved from the south to the north country. The next great divide is the Tyne, with the dramatic straggle of Newcastle stretching east and west. Beyond lies mile upon mile of Northumberland, all the way to the Scottish border, arable land for grazing (punctuated with coal mines) by the coast, giving way to heathery moors and countless sheep. The centre of this often wild and always beautiful land is Alnwick, with roads stretching out, to north and south the Great North Road, east to the fishing port of Alnmouth, westward to the Roman Wall and the Cheviots.
On the way to the forum
In 150 BC, Cato the Elder arrived in the Senate House in Rome with an eye-catching basket of figs. This redoubtable statesman — often referred to as ‘censorius’, an epithet I have coveted since my childhood — was famous, apart from his censoriousness, for his conviction that the most important thing for Rome at any given moment was the military destruction of its enemy, Carthage. Yet here he was, instead of making another swingeing speech on that topic, apparently about to eat his lunch. Cato picked out an especially juicy looking fig. He took a bite. And then he asked, in his most censorious of tones, ‘Do you know where
A safe pair of hands | 7 April 2012
Michael Spicer is too honourable to be a brilliant diarist. As he himself says, ‘I eschew tittle-tattle or small talk.’ These diaries cannot be read, as Chips Channon’s or Alan Clark’s can be, because they offer a joyful cascade of indiscretions. When Clark dies in September 1999, Spicer writes of his fellow Tory MP: ‘We never really hit it off. I thought he was untrustworthy.’ Spicer’s father was a soldier, and these diaries read like the history of a regiment written by one of its most loyal officers. A few pages are devoted to Spicer’s hotheaded youth, in which he sets up Pest (‘Pressure for Economic and Social Toryism’) and
Life & Letters: A PM’s summer reading
One of the weaknesses of many political biographies is that they are so often all about politics. The authors either forget that politicians are people, and sometimes interesting people, or they assume that their private life is of neither interest nor importance. So the book becomes a record of what the politician did rather than a picture of what the man, or indeed woman, was. There are exceptions. One of the best of these is Roy Jenkins’s biography of H. H. Asquith. Jenkins of course covers Asquith’s public life in detail, acutely if at times rather indulgently. As a politician himself he is very good on the difficult matters Asquith
Not quite cricket
To the French, Albion’s expertise in perfidy will come as no surprise. But centuries of warfare have given them time to learn. With their experience only dating back to 1914, the Germans clearly found it difficult to grasp during the second world war that nowhere is the truth more expertly and instinctively spun than in the land of the gentleman. While a schoolchild soon masters the lie simple, and the lie financial merely requires a degree of brazenness easily developed by proximity to other people’s money, the lie belligerent demands an instinct for dis-simulation that must be bred in the bone of its practitioners to be carried off convincingly.Thus, alongside