The value of a good story

Ian Appleby is entirely right when he suggests that it does not diminish a story when we try to understand its ideological and philosophical messages. Stories are wonderful ways of capturing ideas and taking us through them: if you think, as I do, that empathy is one of the most outstanding and underrated of intellectual faculties then you cannot but see stories as a vital form of communication. Understanding those stories means understanding the empathetic impact that they have on one- and means also understanding the world view out of which they come. For example I am not a radical Catholic, but Robert Bresson's films have taught me a lot about a certain strain within the modern church. Occasionally a story can expose a darkness in a contemporary attitude- Quentin Tarrentino's films expose for me a darkness in the way that people empathise in our society for example. You may not agree with my examples- but the central fact remains true, stories change us and propel us, we need to understand what they propel us to- what sympathies they create. We need to understand that, both so that we can understand ourselves and so that we can understand each other.

La Veuve de St Pierre: Responsibility and Orders

A central problem at the Nuremberg trial was, for those who do not remember it, a simple legal problem. Are you guilty of a crime if your excuse for committing it is that you were just following orders? It is a problem larger than the circumstances of Nuremberg merely- the trials established the principle in international law that you are guilty of any crime you commit, no matter the orders which force you into doing it. It is a philosophical problem whose pedigree stretches back in time- it was discussed for example during the Putney debates in the English Civil War. But it also has a contemporary salience- as the film La Veuve de St Pierre (the widow of St Pierre) describes. The film is set in the nineteenth century, 1849-50 to be precise, on the small French colony of St Pierre just off the coast of Newfoundland, the last remnant of French imperial possessions in North America. Two men murder an old fisherman. They are convicted: one of them dies swiftly following conviction but the other remains alive and is sentenced to the guillotine- which gives the title a double resonance, the guillotine in 19th Century French slang was called La Veuve- but the island has no guillotine and no executioner and so he has to wait, a prisoner, for the guillotine to arrive from Martinique and for an executioner to be found on the island.

Whilst he waits he becomes an object of sympathy for the commander of the garrison's wife, played by Juliette Binoche. She befriends him, gets him to plant her garden and eventually turns him into a model citizen on the island. He rebuilds the roofs of houses, takes sledges around, stops carriages wrecking cafes, generally is a good help and a good man. He even finds a wife on the island- getting her with child and then getting married to her. This creates a good amount of gossip- what exactly binds the Captain's wife to the prisoner, furthermore it puts pressure on the Captain himself. He is accused of fraternising with a prisoner, eventually he is accused of neglecting his legal duty and of sedition. The point of the story is less the redemption of a murderer, than the difficulties that that redemption creates. The murderer is in my view redeemed far too easily- the message of the film could be caricatured as give up drink and all your problems will disappear. But that is not a realistic message. What is realistic, what does make sense is the dilemma that such a miraculous transformation has for two individuals that it really impacts upon- the Captain and his wife. They are caught between the town officials, keen that justice take its course and that the majesty of law and state be respected, and the local populace with their own inclinations, which do not see the point of executing a good man.

That dilemma places them in a difficult position. At one point in the film, one character basically says that either the prisoner dies or you die- he is not at that point referring to the captain but he could as well be. The issue is that stark and it is the Nuremberg principle- at which point do you disobey what is an unjust order- at which point do you stop the process that leads to a crime by the state. The captain and his wife are in different positions here. For her sympathy is easy- it comes with no price- and her sympathy whilst it is more wideranging and impressive to the viewer of the film is also easier. She can afford compassion, she can afford to cry when the prisoner marries because his wife will soon be a widow. The Captain though has always a double pressure- his sympathy is constrained. The drama of the film is really the decision that he has to make about his future- does he lay down his life for a principle? Viewing the film in this way it makes much more sense. His love for his wife- which we see again and again through the movie- is weighed against his fears for her as a widow. His professionalism is weighed against his sense that this is the wrong thing to do and that he should stop it insofar as he has the power to, even if that delay or stop is ruinous for himself. In the end, he does make a decision- and from the first moment of the film when Binoche addresses us in the garb of a widow, we know what that decision will be. It is a brave decision and ultimately a futile one- but what it does is save his conscience at the cost of his life.

The film places this story into a stark landscape of northern mist, fog and snow. This is a beautifully filmed film- Binoche gives the kind of sensitive and thoughtful performance that we have come to expect from an actress of her standing. Daniel Auteil playing her husband is as I have argued the most interesting character, but he also gives a fantastic performance and the rest of the cast is good too. But it is more than that, the scenery and photography makes this a slow watch but an impressive one. Occasionally the director, one feels, has sacraficed speed for the enjoyment of a langorous shot of the landscape. There are some lovely movements with the camera, one can feel through the shooting the way that justice is often a matter of violence as much as of judgement. Foucault got that right in his histories of punishment and Leconte is eager to show us here, the impulsive violence that lies behind the system of courts and conviction. There is a semi-fascistic tone to this all, very much an emergence out of a France still reeling decades later from the memory of Vichy. Vichy permeates this film, it surrounds it and is embedded within it- indeed the point of the film is really about the responsibilities of minor officials when totalitarian or tyrannical government becomes the mode of the day. That has obvious resonances for European and world history in the 20th Century.

Coming back to Nuremberg, the most interesting issue there was of course the futility of resistance. If I don't agree to take a job at Auschwitz, somebody else will. What La Veuve de St Pierre argues is that that doesn't matter. It is still important to take the right decision, no matter whether realistically it can have any effect. We should revel in those who contradict through conscience the mistakes of their state and their government. Reading the film as a tract against the death penalty locates the drama in the wrong place- the characterisation of the convict is too thin to warrant an impressive argument- reading it as a treatment of the Nuremberg issue makes much more sense of the film and is a much more interesting argument.

America the Immigrant

This is a quick thought. Rereading Olivier Roy's classic on Islamic fundamentalism, Roy has a really interesting point that I don't think we think about enough. He suggests something about the nature of fundamentalism- the return to the 'fundamentals' of faith- which is incredibly interesting and makes a lot of sense. Roy argues that religion normally combines a belief with the workings of a society- religion is ultimately social, woven into the fabric of a country. Much of what we think of as traditional Christianity- the mitre of a bishop or the structure of a cathedral- is actually historically embedded within near Eastern and European culture for example. Roy argues though that the way that religious people identify with their faith changes with their conditions. Imagine for instance that you are thrust outside your local world, made to change your ideas about the way that people dress etc, you then go off and search for the fundamentals of your belief- and can be propelled in a variety of directions- amongst which fundamentalism is one attractive prospect, another is liberalism, a third is mysticism.

Lets leave aside the complexities of the situation for a moment; I think there is something interesting and basically true about Roy's observation and the way that he applies it to thinking about contemporary politics and the way that social change intersects with religious instability. But it is also an interesting thesis in another context. The difference between European and American societies at their base is quite a simple one- one that can be quickly caricatured. Europe is the land of the sedentary- life here has been the same for the last two thousand years and basically most of the people are the same as those who lived here thousands of years ago. America is the land of movement- the icons of American culture are the cowboys moving across the plains, the immigrants in their ships coming across the sea, the colonial architecture of the south and the buffalo praires of the north. Now that is a caricature which contains a lot of falsehood- but there is a certain truth to it. Americans start with a narrative of immigration- the Pilgrim Fathers for example- Europeans with a narrative of ancient history- Rome. One lives, to reverse Robert Kagan's argument, beyond history: the other is imbedded within it.

So far so conventional. But there is something else here which I think is more interesting than ruminations on European 'Greekness' and American 'Romanitas' and that is the nature of religion in the United States. We often forget that the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand were born in upheaval. Whatever comforting notions we have of immigration from 19th Century novelists like Dickens, immigration was a profoundly upsetting and disturbing experience. And that is true whether that immigration was from York to New York or New York to Utah. In the days before good communications, going meant never coming back, going meant never having contact again. In a sense what Roy describes as the impulse behind some Islamic fundamentalism today, provides us with an interesting analytical method to work out another great distinction in the modern world. Perhaps one of the reasons that America is prone to religious revival and also to fundamentalist movements, is that it is a society on the move. Few people in America live in their traditional communities and furthermore fewer even are not challenged by wider society. The process by which immigration and social disturbance forces you back upon 'pure' religion is an interesting one- and there is no reason to believe that it is more true of boys from Pakistan than of those from Peckham. American susceptibility to religious fervour might therefore in part derive from America's status as a nation of immigrants.

Of course I am going to hedge that- and I don't want anyone to believe that I mean any of these things absolutely- Americans and Europeans come in all shapes and sizes. But the two vague facts- that America is an immigrant community and that it is more religious than Europe- I don't think are unrelated. We should connect them more when we try and understand the two continents and when the two continents try and understand each other.

Harry to Galatasaray

Changing football clubs is normally something that football fans accept as part of life. Noone is neccessarily happy when they lose their best players- but whether its Cardiff City losing Ramsey this summer or Manchester United losing Ronaldo (if they do), it is something that happens to every football club and the alternative, that players would never move, would be a terrible idea. Equally though there are some transfers that just instantly strike you as wrong. Eight years ago, two Leeds fans were stabbed to death when the team travelled to Turkey to play Galatasaray in the UEFA cup, now one of the stars of that team has decided to move to Galatasaray. Harry Kewell in doing that has asked Leeds fans to move on and recognise the reality of modern football- that stars go where the money is, and that not to move would be to damage his career.

Well Kewell may argue that, and some of the more idiotic Leeds fans would definitely be wrong to take out reprisals upon the Australian forward. But it still doesn't alter the fact that what Kewell is doing is immoral. The fans of Galatasaray have not changed. Turkish football is still accompanied by unpleasant scenes and violence- for what is afterall only a game (anyone who says otherwise demonstrates that their idiocy is indeed authentic). There are two points here worth discussing: one is that morality still operates within the market. Just because someone offers you more money to do something, doesn't make that something right. It is an interesting thing to see, as soon as you do understand that principle, you can comprehend the fact that whenever a company performs an illegal or immoral act, those performing that act are culpable no less for the fact that they have been ordered to perform the act. Furthermore if corporate interest is not a moral defence, when it comes down to it ethics trumps economics.

But why is this immoral? Well Kewell is moving to a side whose fans murdered people who had gone to Turkey in order to support him and his teammates. The position of fans in football is often taken for granted and ignored- they are told to grow up and shut up, until it comes to season ticket sales and replica shirts. Kewell has made a lot of money off the fans who support his activity- no matter that there is no legal obligation or no economic obligation, there is a moral obligation for him to reciprocate their loyalty. Over years at Leeds, Kewell was supported and cheered by the Elland Road faithful. To go to a club where some of them were murdered, a club that has never acknowledged that murder, is to slap them in the face. To go to a traditional footballing rival is a decision that is absolutely fine- rivalries in football are not serious- but murder is serious. And if we consider that a player has reciprocal obligations to those that support his work, then he ought to avoid such a symbolic identification with those thugs that have in the past attacked the supporters who lauded him.

That this is immoral is beyond the question- Kewell shouldn't be banned from moving. Morality and law are different things in a liberal state. But that does not mean that he should not be condemned. The Australian has acted foolishly- and has acted in a way to demonstrate that money drives him, not consideration for others- like a corporate lawyer or a business man who makes their living from firing small people in order to replenish a good salary, Kewell has revealed himself to be longsighted enough to see the main chance, but blind to the moral judgements that he should be making.

The world and the academy

What unites Niccola Machiavelli, Edward Gibbon, John Le Carre, Austin Woolrych and Cicero? Obviously their high intelligence- but there is something else. Machiavilli, Gibbon, Le Carre and Cicero all share two characteristics- all of them are cultural figures, all of them are cultural figures who have said something important about humanity and none of them originally worked in the humanities. Machiavelli was a statesman and ambassador, Gibbon a country gentleman, militia commander and MP, Le Carre a spy, Woolrych a Harrods salesman and then soldier and Cicero the leading politician of the Roman Republic for a time- all of them used that knowledge though to put into argument and philosophy. As Gibbon put it the commander of the Hampshire militia had given the historian of the Roman Empire's decline invaluable material, and the historian of Rome's decline would not have emerged in my view without the commander being present. The same might be said of the others: to give another great example, Cornelius Tacitus, the greatest historian of Rome, understood the fear of Sejanus and Tiberius because he had lived through the reign of Domitian. Modern historians often dismiss Tacitus's account as being semi-hysterical: but the coolness which is so self evident from the lounges overlooking Harvard Yard is not so self evident when you have served through a reign like Domitian's. Experience helps us to understand the humanities in general.

The problem is not that universities exist- that is good and the world of history for example has expanded and become more rigorous thanks to the work of many professional historians over the years. But that the world of universities is too closed in on itself. Academic monographs are interesting to those involved but scarcely raise a smirk outside the academy, some academics even go so far as to disdain the idea that they have any responsibility to anyone who is not inside the tiny circles of a common room. The tradition of an amateur man of letters, so vital to the nineteenth century academic world and without which much of the history done today would be useless has died. That means that there is less connection between the academy and outside than there should be. Outside experience should fertilise the understanding of historical reality and novelistic inquiry, academic rigour should strengthen the processes of thought outside the groves of the university. The decline of the essay in some ways is a parallel process to this- the great essayists from Hume to Orwell were in touch with the intellectual climate and transmitted that to others on the outside better than journalists do today.

I suppose ultimately that is the hope for blogs, that they can fulfill part of that role. But there also has to be a relaxation of the snobberies on both sides- academics have to realise that you can do good work whilst being an amateur, others have to realise that they should take on what academics do and use it. Sir Alan Sugar's derision for academics on the Apprentice is well known- the worrying thing is that such a bigot is advising the Prime Minister of the day. Blogs like Stumbling and Mumbling, Willelm Buiter's, Ben Goldacre's or this humble effort can help but in order to do so- they need to be taken seriously both inside universities and outside them. We need to talk over the professional boundaries that infest knowledge- and academics need to take the effort to make rigour accessible seriously, whilst others need to make the effort to understand a greater part of their lives. That has an impact obviously on another subject which is the leisure available in modern society- part of the problem is that those naturally most receptive are those who work hardest- but the ultimate problem is one of attitudes on both sides. The fact that the gulf has developed and that academics have lost experience of the real world whilst the real world has stopped paying attention to academics is a tragedy, not merely for universities but for societies in general.

Passionate Friends

David Lean's film Passionate Friends is an unknown- comparatively- gem. It stands comparison with some of the director's best work- both for being a subtle character study and for the brilliant displays of acting contained within it. Passionate Friends contains the simplest of simple stories. A woman, Mary, is in love with her friend Stephen, who is likewise in love with her, and yet she decides, for various reasons, to marry a rich and successful banker- Howard. The resulting love triangle plays its way out through the film- to much heart ache- as Mary is unable to sever herself from Howard but unable to forget that she truly loves Stephen. It might seem trite when expressed like that- but actually both cast and director manage to imbue it with meaning- using their skills as storytellers they gave the story layers and subtlety that the simple telling of it might well have missed.

Meaning is a hard thing for films to convey- especially when it comes to love, it is very easy to be trite and to sound trivial. That or one can end up lauding motherhood and apple pie- making points noone would refute. The interesting thing about this film is that it manages actually to say something about what love is and why it is successful. In the film shadowlands, a student turns to C.S. Lewis and tells him that we read to know that we are not alone, similarly in this film, I get the impression that the director is telling us that love is part of the growth of our personality outwards into the world. There is something here about love as communication. Time and time again Mary says to Stephen that she is unwilling to give herself up to him- he offers himself to her but she never is able to offer herself to him. Now one might argue that this reflects the comparative position of men and women at the time- and there is a feminist reading of this film- but I am not sure that is what Lean was driving at. Rather I think he was driving at the idea of love as sacrafice for both sexes- love as something that brings you out of yourself and for which you become a part of another unit, not a whole entire to itself. Its an interesting way of reflecting about love- but what Lean seems to argue here is that without it relationships will fail- they will always be bloodless. The argument between the husband's and the lover's love is between a love that exacts no price, has no passion and one that is passionate and enthusiastic, that is painful and expensive but ultimately more rewarding.

Pain and reward are bound up in this film with feeling. And Lean wants you to see the depth of a 'true love' throughout the film. So he provides us with texture. An essentially simple story has woven into it flashbacks which take us to the trajectory of the relationship between Stephen and Mary- their relationship is complex and terrifying. It binds them together- so that fortuitous accident means that they keep on meeting until the denoument. Those meetings reinforce the motif of depth. Whereas Mary and Howard have few meetings and they are always unhappy or worse- they are meetings whose tenor is light grey, insipid. The tone is set by the first shot of Howard as he falls asleep by the side of dancing- he is old, busy and does not throw himself into his life with Mary. Stephen does throw himself into his relationship with Mary- it might not work but it is not for lack of effort on his part- he cooks, helps her confront her husband and treats her with loving care. The direction here is incredibly skilled- Howard played by Rains is always wearing dark suits, Stephen played by Howard is always dressed sleekly. The fashions in this film are gorgeous. But it goes further than that, the camera work is fine- particularly in Switzerland and in some of the scenes, particularly one in Mary and Howard's living room, we see the choreography of direction exercised as well as it ever was. I have never seen the phrase 'would you like a cup of tea' sound so much like a dagger stabbed into a gut before. If there is amazing direction- there is also amazing acting: Rains and Trevor Howard in particular are fantastic, Ann Todd isn't as good but she still holds her own.

The only thing to say about the Passionate Friends is that it is an argument for all friendship to be passionate, it is an argument for love. The only response I could find to it was to love the film itself- wonderful acting, wonderful direction and a genuinely interesting thought about a subject on which humanity has said more than it has about just about anything else.

Queen of Spades

The Queen of Spades is a short story written by Pushkin. It is incredibly macabre. A young officer learns that one of his friend's grandmothers has a secret ability to win games of cards, having been told of how to win by the Comte de St Germain, the famous occult figure. She henceforward is able to win in every game she gambles in. She passes this secret on once, on the understanding that the man she passed it to would never use it ever again once he had played three times. The story concerns events set years afterwards, when a young officer, called Herman, who desires the secret and will do anything- including seducing the grandmother's young companion, to get the secret and obtain a fortune. The story sounds and is simple enough, it has macabre twists and dark moments aplenty.

But beyond the fantastic story, there is something else here. The story is not just a thrilling yarn, it is also a description of a society. Russia at the eve of the 19th Century was a society in flux. The social reforms of Peter the Great had produced a society where rank was assigned on the basis of service to the state. That left a society filled with minor civil servants and junior officers. A society one might think of useless butterflies. All of the characters in Pushkin's tale are beautiful and brilliant, but they are also all useless. They have charm and sophistication but they are all superfluous. The grandmother for instance was a beauty at the court of France, but her beauty has faded and now she is merely an imperious old woman, holding court at balls amongst the children of people she knew. Her grandson is an officer, fine eppaulettes but basically frivolous, he exists in the whirl of balls and losing games. Chasing princesses and cards, he lives for nothing but his idleness. Her companion Lizaveta is the most useful character, but she is confined by the demands of her Grandmother and her imperious hauteur. Lastly there is Herman.

Herman announces right at the beggining of the short story his attitude to cards:

Cards interest me very much but I am not in a position to risk the neccessary in the hope of acquiring the superfluous.

Herman's statement is incredibly interesting. It demonstrates a cleverness, a mannerdness which produces the paradox. But paradox is dangerous, it demonstrates cleverness but also demonstrates an ability to twist concepts around in a morally dubious way. Herman furthermore is developed from another story of Pushkin that involved the seduction of a girl called Lisa (again) by letters, as in a Richardson novel. The point of Herman therefore is that he is a skilled seducer with words, hiding his disdain for the superfluous, whilst really fiercely desiring it. Of course wealth in this world is superfluous, it is not needed for the good life, but on the other hand as there seems to be no view of the good life, wealth in a nihilist world is the only thing that is there to be desired. Herman is a logical decendant of Valmont and the other cynical schemers of 18th Century European high society.

Pushkin of course merges that high society with the darkness of witchcraft and psychological breakdown. This is high society with an undershade of the macabre. The macabre is there to denote the victims of the intrigues- what the 18th Century critics of High Society got, just like a Fellini, was the dark side of the worlld of balls and gamblers. The dark side here is partly deception and partly magic, in truth there is little difference between the supernatural and the natural here. Magic is just another form of deceit. Ultimately the macabre, Pushkin reminds us, is the essence of the courtly life- of the superfluous life.

On Plato's Crito and the meaning of the Law

Plato's Crito is the dialogue that deals with Socrates and his reaction to his execution. His friends, including Crito, come to him to ask him to escape- they offer him money and safety and Socrates turns them down. Crito argues that Socrates must escape, as his friends will make it easy, but also the people of Athens expect him to and furthermore will despise his friends if Socrates does not get away. More than that Socrates by failing to escape will be neglecting his children. He also argues that plenty of others have escaped in the past from similar circumstances. Socrates rejects such arguments- mainly on the basis that one owes an obligation to justice over the opinions of the many and furthermore that one owes an obligation to the laws of the state which brought you up, in the same way as you owe an obligation to your parents. They have made your success possible, they have made your education and your birth possible- therefore you owe them the principle obligation of your life- even an obligation to obey an unjust rule.

There are plenty of good arguments for such a stance- Thomas Hobbes elaborated on them in his Leviathan. But I think there is something slightly interesting about how Socrates puts this case. He builds into his case an assumption that the law of Athens is that he should die. He is right, that is what the formal law of Athens says. What neither Socrates or Crito observe though is that there is a distinction between the formal and informal law of the state. This is perhaps a distinction that an Englishman might make as the British constitution formally looks very different from the way that it operates in practice, informal understandings are almost laws in the UK. I think they are almost laws elsewhere too. Arguably we see that in Crito, as the informal objective of the legal judgement, recognised by everyone who made it, was that it was a sentence of exile- we'll kill you (but we won't guard you until the execution and we expect you, even want you, to escape from our sentence). Socrates in that sense is showing his contempt for the laws of Athens by staying: his argument about the laws of Athens sets the laws against the people. This is an interesting understanding of the law- but in reality it places the letter of the law against its spirit.

The meaning of the law is a hard thing to assess. Socrates' actions may well have been intended to bring out by his suicide the distinction between the letter and the spirit of the law. to point out the law's absurdity. Perhaps though it also reflects Socrates' innate anti-democratism- ultimately his argument earlier in Crito is that the people cannot judge the justice of a case- informal procedure in a democracy though ultimately relies on popular understanding- Socrates places experts and laws above the people and holds democracy in aristocratic contempt. When we look at his death through the lense of Crito, we can see Socrates as a martyr against democracy for the principle of legal obscurantism.

Eva/Eve

Eve is one of the most beautiful films ever made- it is sensuously shot with a jazz score that is sumptuous and elegant. The movie moves slinkily through its scenes, along with its fabuluous female star, Jeanne Moreau, the definition of sixties French cinema and one of the icons of the last century. Jean-Luc Goddard once wrote in his journal that 'all you need for a movie is a girl and a gun', he was wrong- and Eva proves he was wrong, actually all you need for a movie is a girl, if the girl happens to be Jeanne Moreau. This is a story in which nothing much happens- a man, Tyvian Jones, who has just written a novel which has been adapted for a film, meets a woman, Eva, in Venice. He discards everything- wife, money, reputation- in order to make her his mistress and ultimately he fails to get anywhere with her. He falls in love with someone who cares nothing for him- and he is destroyed, turned from a proud potentate of luxury into a wrecked human being. It is such a simple premise- and one that so many great films have been made about- think the great film noirs: Out of the Past, Double Indemnity or Born to Kill.

What makes Eva extraordinary though is the simplicity of the plot- there are no thrills here, we have a femme fatale and nothing else, no murders, no crimes, no nothing- there is just the brutal examination of two people- a man and a woman and how their desire functions. Let us start by thinking about the man in this film. Played by Stanley Baker, Tyvian is a fop and a flop. He is a man without substance- we learn that he is duplicitous and unlikable, vain and thoughtless. He is guided by desire- he has never absorbed anything of meaning in his life, discards the feelings of others with a casualness born of a playboy outlook. By the end of the film he mutters religious analogies- beleiving that in some sense that women are more powerful than men, that Adam came out of Eve's rib, but that reveals his failure as a character rather than his perceptiveness as an observor. The reason that he falls a victim to Eve is not male weakness, but his own. Led by desires, we see by the end of the movie that all he desires is resistance to his desires. In truth, he desires not to have but to conquer, he desires the elation of conquest and thinks of the world as potential property. Because Eve resists his desire to make her his mistress, his property she becomes an object of fascination.

And what of her, what of Eve. A Salon reviewer said that she reminded a psychologist friend of his of classic cases of functional schizoids. There is definitely something amazing in the performance. Eve spends most of the film in absolute silence, Moreau just uses the amazing jazz score and her own body, not to mention some astounding camera work, to create the sense of Eve's allure. She is sexy, as sexy as the jazz music she listens to (jazz being as it is the most sexual of musical genres). She is a high class whore. But to be honest the ultimate sense I got from Eve was of emptiness, not of unhappiness or happiness, but of emptiness. What characterised her was a glittering boredom, this is decadence- the decadence of La Dolce Vita in Italy at the time but decadence worn thin. All Moreau can enjoy is twisting men, foppish idiots, round her finger. She takes no joy in human life. Her moods swing massively and her impulsiveness, her disorder is part of her allure- its what makes her the object that is not predictable, that cannot be owned. But also it is what makes her in part fundamentally empty. Does she care who is with her in every mood? No- she is so wrapped in an internal world, that prince or pauper, both are nothing to her. All she desires is money to fuel her jazz habit, the jazz that is the soundtrack to her life.

Between these two characters you see a massive battle develop- in truth it is no contest, neither in acting nor in character can the insipid Tryvian compete with the mesmeric Eve. But the contest is interesting as it opens up the emptiness of that kind of life- a life whose meaning is an endless circle of parties. In that sense Eve is the perfect counterpoint to Sex and the City- decadence lived creates a voracious desire after possession, a desire that can never be fulfilled.

Of pickpockets and prostitutes.

8th July 1774 saw two women convicted of picking the pocket of a Londoner, John White, at the Old Bailey. The account of what happened is fascinating, partly because of what it does not say, as much as for what it does tell us.

Hannah Ramsey , and Sarah Mackdonald , of the Parish of St. Brides , were indicted for privately stealing 6 Guineas, from the Person of John White , the 26th of June last. The Prosecutor depos'd, That be going along Fleet Street about Eleven a-Clock at Night, met with the Prisoners, who ask'd him to go with them to one of their Lodgings, but he refusing to do that, they carried him down into an Alley, and there being talking with them, Mackdonald was before him, and Ramsey either behind or on one Side of him, and that he perceived the Hand of Ramsey near his Pocket, and saw her take it away, that he thereupon put his Hand in his Pocket, and his Money was gone, and that he was sure that he had his Money but just before, that he charg'd her with taking it, and got them secur'd, and sent them to the Compter, but the Constable did not search them. The Watchman depos'd, That Ramsey denied that she had any Money, but half a Crown, which the Prosecutor gave her to lie with them. The Jury found Hannah Ramsey guilty of the Indictment. Death . But found Sarah Mackdonald guilty of Felony only, but not of privately taking from the Person . Transportation .

There are a number of things, apart from the severity of the punishment for a trivial offence, which stand out to me about the record of the trial. The first is the flimsiness of the machinery of justice- constables in Hanoverian London were not neccessarily efficient- they were not trained, they had no central organisation and as in this case, they could prove almost useless. Any police officer today on catching a criminal would search them- for this constable a search was too much work.

Secondly there is the fascinating question of what happened. White's story was believed. But there are two stories here. The story of the women is that they were prostitutes and that the 'prosecutor' (ie White) gave them money to sleep with him and then charged them before the court with theft. We have no idea what happened- I have no idea who White was or who these women were. If White were a powerful man with good connections he might well have obtained a conviction in this manner against a couple of prostitutes to save his reputation or even after a dispute about money. There is of course a third option which is that White was a troublesome client for one prostitute, the other turned up, they fled White and ultimately he prosecuted. We don't know- its equally possible that the prostitution story was invented. What it does tell us is the prostitution story was not an unliely one- that a single man on Fleet Street in 1774 might be searching for sex. Equally it demonstrates that contemporaries saw prostitution and theft as close partners- the idea that often it is the most poor and desperate women who go into prostitution receives some support.

Without knowing more, we cannot speculate more- but this strikes me as a fascinating case that could reveal much detail about the sexual and class structures of 18th Century London- not to mention about the way that the criminal justice system worked then.

Mouchette

Mouchette is a dark and disturbing film. Some critics consider it too depressing to be comfortable viewing- even amongst the work of Robert Bresson, the grim Catholic master of the directors, many view it as the saddest and most wretched of his works. Devoid of grace, devoid of religion, the world that Mouchette portrays is ultimately a pagan one. This is the Catholic view of Paganism and ultimately it is Bresson's commentary upon the depressing nature of the world and our inability to get out of that world. Despite that Bresson leaves us in no doubt of his underlying sympathy for human beings- this is not as say Lars Von Trier's films often are an assualt on the very idea of being human, rather this is an assault on the merely human. Central to the film is the character of Mouchette, played exquisitely by Nadine Nortier who never appeared in another film but fills this one with her character, her emotion and more than anything her expressive face. Nortier's performance is enough to convince one that though the world is depressing there are things worth fighting for within it.

Mouchette is a heart rending film- perhaps because it is so close to reality. The film is set in a small peasant village at some time in the mid-twentieth century. Mouchette is a fourteen year old girl- at a brutal convent school- whose mother is dying and whose father and brother are alcoholic wastes of space. She is a loner, hated by the other girls in her school, excluded from their games and their growing up. Bresson captures a real moment of adolescent exclusion- he shows the other girls trying on perfume, an emblem of their budding sexuality, Mouchette excluded hides behind a hillock and throws mud at them. They ignore her, riding off with the sexy older boys. Mouchette cannot even touch these little princesses and half in despite, half in envy she hates them. Bresson really captures that truth about what it is to be a loner and an adolescent- the sort of half light that you dwell in more than any other director I have ever seen.

He also captures the fact that so many dislike Mouchette because she is actually not that likable. Watching the film, it made me question how as a parent you could love Mouchette- of course you could and would but she is unbearable in many scenes. She mumbles obscenities towards the adults in view- often without provocation. Like most teenagers she dwells in an imaginery world where a man who brutalises her is her lover and she lives amidst a dream. She is often surly, she is definitely ignorant. But as I write it I know I am being too harsh- for there are lovable things about her- and perhaps Bresson's greatest acheivement in Mouchette is that despite all of those things I mention above- it is hard to come out of this film without liking its main character. She is sympathetic, she bears the whole weight of her family and her lonely self sufficiency is the kind of dreaminess that alternately bears the names madness, introspection and independence. You can see that this is a girl who with nurturing could become an amazing twenty five year old.

Nurturing though is the key and part of the issue in the film is that she attempts all the time to reach out to others and they always knock her back. Solitude is her only refuge. In that sense death is her only refuge and becomes her spiritual retreat. Like the ancient philosophers unable to seek out other humans through the grace of God and the light of scripture, the only force that the grim Bresson acknowledges as enabling human social interraction in a positive way, she is reduced to the end of suicide. Every time she knocks at other people's doors the door is thrown back into her face- her father holds her in contempt, her teacher beats her up, her schoolmates ignore her, her brother is oblivious to her, only once on a dodgem car driving it against a boy she spotted does she seem to attain any happiness. Nortier's flirtatious smile at that point lights up her face and we see Mouchette as she might be, shyly smiling behind her curls, instead of scowling at a world of hate and siding with drunkards, criminals and fools against that world. As Christ did so she does- siding with the outcast, but unlike the living God she cannot remake for a few society, she has to retreat as the philosopher into death.

The film is eschatological but it is also a meditation upon the role of the sexes in French society. What I found interesting in that sense was the way that it balances and can be framed against another great film, Summer with Monica, by perhaps the only director whose vision matches that of Bresson, Ingmar Bergman. Bergman's film is about in part the way that men's lives repeat those of their fathers. Bresson does the same thing but for women- all the women in this family despite the warnings from the previous generation, are drawn towards the useless men who drink all day and brawl all night. The point though similarly to Bergman is that such dysfunctional backgrounds cause a longing for love that creates a vulnerability. Like Bergman's protagonist Mouchette desires love so much, she will assume that any gesture from anyone, however inappropriate, is a gesture of love. But what Bergman and Bresson's films have in common: and perhaps is a theme of the 20th Century, is that the men in them are much less vital than the women.

But that is a side point, ultimately this is a film about the darkness of the human soul. It is about the darkness that surrounds us, and the way that without a Catholic faith, in Bresson's view we are abandoned to the darkness of our own society without a fragile and quietist faith. What Bresson believed and it is a belief that I do not believe myself is that the fall corroded humanity, corroded it to such an extent that only through sainthood- only through what Rosselini described in his life of St Francis- could human redemption be acheived. Mouchette is not totally evil- she could be redeemed but not in our society or by our actions according to Bresson. If you, as I do, think that one of the themes of cinematic thought is the search for sainthood in the world after the great wars, then Mouchette is the darkest Catholic argument, the most pessimistic suggestion, and in a place where Catholicism and Calvinism become the same it rejects the Arminian conscience of most cinema, stressing the degree to which we are lost as upon a darkling plain, that the sea of faith is at the ebb and sun falling down the sky.

The Truth of Lord Hailsham

Iain Dale's new total politics site has a really interesting feature- which I recomend exploring- a collection of old good political speeches. Amongst those I was casually scanning this afternoon thinking of writing a blogpost about is a speech by Lord Hailsham, Tory Cabinet Minister, candidate to be Prime Minister in the 1960s, father of another cabinet minister and Conservative intellectual, made in 1992. Being neither a conservative nor a christian (though sympathetic to both streams of thought) I do not want to comment on their relationship. But I was seized immediatly by the fact that Hailsham identified a major enemy- nihilism and postulated a coherent philosophical view against that nihilism.

Hailsham argues that there are two ways of thinking about the world- one is experiential and experimental but Hailsham suggests that the experimental view of the world collapses after its encounter with the problem of induction, he proposes an alternative view of the world. He suggests that

There is, I believe, no answer to this argument unless, of course, we have what, in discussing the nature of human understanding, Locke called an 'innate idea', at least in the field of the observable, that things make some sort of sense, and that at least to some limited extent our reason can achieve it. In the field which is open to observation, measurement, and repeated experimentation we can readily accept this. It is indeed the hypothesis upon which the whole dramatic development of the physical sciences is based.

Now this is a reversion to a kind of theory of ideas- a Platonic sense that a word describes exactly the idea behind it and that idea is reflected in the world. It is interesting that Hailsham comes to argue this because the position he advocates is easily refuted and as problematic as any naive support for induction.

Such an argument for instance neglects the facts that we do not use these words to always embody the same ideas. There is a problem in that there is no way for example to say that the English are right to define Peppermint Tea as being part of Tea as a class, whereas the French define it as a Tizane. There is no particular reason to prefer one arrangement or another. There is no essential teaness to which both might be related. The relationship of words to the reality they refer to is not simple- nor is it in any way determined, rather it is socially constructed. Think of it simply in terms of the way that we describe social position- middle class might mean one thing to you, another to me- to argue that one perception is right and one is wrong is nonsensical. That doesn't mean at all that there is no reality, merely that our languages for describing it, our ideas that constitute it are unstable and socially constructed. There is ultimately no such thing as a river- but you'll get wet if you jump in one.

Hailsham is a Platonist- and the rest of his talk depends on the assertion that our words about the world are stable. He needs to know that our ways of describing the world are the only and best for the rest of his talk to work. It is an interesting problem- because he is ultimately wrong about that- words do not automatically map onto the world in such an easy way, nor do ideas. Rather we classify things as we need to use them: we do classify them in 'real' ways but those classifications are arbitrary. That does not mean that there is no truth- more it means that there is no true pattern of words to describe that truth with. There are false patterns of words, false patterns of numbers, but no uniquely true conception of the world and definitely no intrinsic ideas which relate to words and concepts in our minds. Hailsham wants to ground his philosophy on one set of rigid ideas, but in truth he is wrong- he is wrong because there is not merely one set of ideas that describe the world, there is an infinite set of terms, defined only by its relationship to reality which describe the world. Everything is a collective noun ultimately for a collection of phenomena- so long as I do not map inconsistantly I am speaking truth, but there are an infinity of ways to express what I see as reality.

Burleigh's Court

In 1572 William Cecil became Baron Burleigh, soon afterwards he became a knight of the garter as well to add to his glittering array of titles. The Cecil I have described so far has too much of the modern about him, too much of the religious radical and masterly scholar-politician. Perhaps though the most interesting conclusion of Alford's biography is that Cecil was a courtier also and a dynast, he was a man who in his house Theobalds placed the heredity of the English nobility as a massive tapestry upon his walls. He was obsessed by cartography partly because he was obsessed with the places that people came from- and also their unique histories- he engraved for instance all over his copies of the first maps of the world such details as the geneaologies of the Polish Kings and the titles of the French monarchs. His political mastery stemmed in part from the fact that he shared the preoccupations of the English nobility- Cecil combined being Elizabeth's Secretary of State (until 1572 when he was elevated to being Lord Treasurer) with being Master of the Court of Wards- an ancient office with responsiblity for orphaned noblemen. As such he designed and presided over the education of the Duke of Rutland and the Earl of Oxford.

Oxford is an interesting case. Cecil had two daughters- Anne and Elizabeth. Anne married the Earl of Oxford- formerly her father's ward- when she was 15 and he was in his early twenties. Cecil endeavoured to acheive the match on the grounds of its importance dynastically- a relationship with the Earls of Oxford placed his family on a secure footing as important aristocrats. The marriage was a failure- Oxford repeatedly threatened to and did desert Anne- but Cecil strived hard to make it work. Even using his own powers of patronage to protect Oxford from the queen. His kinship made Oxford an important figure within Cecil's world. Elizabeth too was married to a noble family- marrying William Wentworth- again the son of a major peer, Lord Wentworth. Both Elizabeth and her husband died soon after the wedding- but the wedding substantiated for Cecil the connection with the Wentworths. Indeed Cecil himself was seen as an avenue by his own family for their rise- he was petitioned by his mother Jane Cecil for her relatives to receive preferrment at his hands. The classic politics of sixteenth century connection worked in the case of Cecil- perhaps most astonishingly in the fact that it was his son Robert Cecil who eventually succeeded him as Elizabeth's chief minister.

For all this structure to work, and Cecil required a massive income for example to generate the funds behind what Alford calls the most ambitious aristocratic building project in Elizabethan England (at Theobalds, a house that Cecil almost remodelled, at Cecil House which he too shaped and at Burleigh which he expanded), Cecil had to be a courtier. We often think of him as the classic minister- the shade in the background but that is a false perception. Cecil was a courtier par excellence- and his poise as a devoted public servant was in reality the skilful mask of an experienced courtier. His position at court and his closeness to the monarch was vital to his political career- as Alford comments the moment at which we can really see its importance is the first months of 1587, around the time when Mary Queen of Scots was executed.

Mary was tried for treason by a commission, in 1586, chaired by Burleigh, who reccomended that she die. Elizabeth sat for months upon that reccomendation, being petitioned by Parliament and her council to move. On 1st February 1587, Elizabeth handed over to her secretary Davison a signed warrant for Mary to be executed. Davision immediatly handed this to Cecil and fearing that she would change her mind, Cecil sent it to Mary's prison and she was indeed killed. Elizabeth was furious, she thought she had the time to change her mind- Davison was sent to the Tower for his pains, and Burleigh was in disgrace. Cecil spent 6 months at court being shunned by Elizabeth- she would not speak to him, she would not see him unless to scream abuse in his direction. From February to June, the monarch and her chief minister did not talk. Alford argues that relations between them were never the same again- but more impressively argues that Cecil was terrified of the impact that his disgrace had. Simply put he was out in the cold and that meant that all his preferrments and his power dried up- suddenly he was nothing.

For Cecil who took pride in being from a family who had served the crown for three generations this was terrible. It took away his ladder to success and also undermined his identity as a crown servant- what this episode demonstrates to us is how crucial that identity was to him. To see Cecil solely as a Protestant firebrand, whirling away from Elizabeth's conservatism, is to misunderstand the man. He was a very complicated character- part of him was a Protestant firebrand. But another part was a courtier who dreamed of founding a dynasty- Theobalds was supposed to strike awe into the hearts of those who visited it. It was supposed to be the seat of a new dynasty of royal advisors. Cecil's character was always complex- unlike say Henry Ireton or Oliver Cromwell, Cecil respected aristocratic honour alongside the Protestant reformation. He was William Cecil the Edwardian councillor, but we should never forget he was also Lord Burleigh, knight of the garter.

Dr Gracchi

I just thought I'd say that I've just passed my PhD viva- and got a doctorate from Cambridge University (bar a couple of typos that noone who reads this blog would be surprised to hear about)- anyway I'm meeting some guys up in Cambridge this evening but will be also meeting various people in the Cheshire Cheese on Saturday (its off Fleet Street) for a celebratory drinks- if anyone fancies coming along to drink the odd pint and enjoy life- then you are welcome!

Mr Secretary Cecil

Government is supposed to be a matter of unity- we all know that governments in the Western world are never unified, they are to quote Yes Minister a loose federation of warring tribes, and that politicians retain the pretence of unity even whilst hating each other in private. Just before he died, Manny Shinwell asked Ernie Bevin whether Herbert Morrison, another Labour politician, was his own worst enemy, the ailing Bevin's famous response 'Not while I'm alive he ain't'. The surly tone of the foreign secretary's words could have been echoed by many politicians down the years- but far more often politicians find themselves yoked together with ties of mutual respect sitting awkwardly with fierce disagreement about politics. This happens in democracies of course- but also in dictatorships and monarchies. Nowhere less did it happen than in Elizabethan England- at the heart of Elizabeth's government, her ministers violently disagreed with each other and most importantly with the monarch. The key figure in all these disagreements was the Secretary of State William Cecil.

Cecil was appointed in 1558 to become Elizabeth's secretary of state- essentially her eyes and ears throughout government. He read every piece of paper that crossed her desk and filtered out much of it that he did not wish her to see. Cecil had two objectives as Elizabeth's first minister. The first objective was to cement to the Reformation within England- in 1558-9 Cecil put together a strategy which repealed all the Catholic legislation of Mary (Elizabeth's predecessor, and half sister) and recreated the Church of England. In doing this Cecil worked against both Parliament and his mistress- he found ways to manipulate the vote in the Marian House of Lords and pushed for a more radical religious policy through his allies in the Commons- most notably a name that shall reappear here Thomas Norton. Secondly Cecil desired that the queen marry and produce an heir. Cecil saw the world in 1559 as resting on a thread- should Elizabeth die her half cousin, Mary Stuart, the Queen of Scotland and France would replace her on the English throne. Without an heir the life of the realm stood imperilled should Elizabeth die. The modern historical imagination lauds the virgin queen- had she died though before Mary, she would have plunged England into catholic rule again, like her half sister's reign, the reign of Elizabeth would be a footnote on England's Catholic history. Cecil understood this- and attempted again through Parliament to get Elizabeth to marry- in the 1562 and 1566 sessions, Elizabeth was confronted by bills drafted by her secretary (she did not know this) that questioned her private life and challenged her to find a husband and produce an heir- a Protestant succession.

In doing this Cecil made use of Parliament. Effectively by the 1560s Cecil had begun to craft a constitutional doctrine that placed Parliament at the centre of Elizabethan politics. He argued essentially that should Elizabeth die the people represented in Parliament should rebel against a Catholic heir. Anticipating the Bond of Association of 1585, Cecil believed that Mary's succession would be so disastrous as to prompt civil war. Anticipating the Glorious Revolution, Cecil argued that it was up to Parliament to guarentee the Protestant succession and find a candidate who could be trusted on religion. Alford doesn't mention this- but this whole strategy makes me wonder whether Cecil was as against Lady Jane Grey as he publically professed to be. Cecil manipulated both Elizabeth and the public against Mary Stuart- there can be no doubt that when Mary fled Scotland in 1567, Cecil was involved in producing a set of forgeries- the Casket Letters- which suggested that Mary had killed her second husband Lord Darnley at Kirk o'Field. Cecil's skilful manipulation left Elizabeth in no position to talk to Mary, the murderess, despite the fact that tempramentally Elizabeth believed in the trade unionism of monarchs and the importance of legitimacy more than in the Protestant global reformation. Elizabeth because of the Casket Letters, was unable to support Mary's restoration in Scotland and therefore left Scotland in the Protestant world.

For Cecil this was a triumph- from the 1560s onwards he had desired that Britain be united under the faith of Protestantism. From the 1560s Cecil had had a British strategy. I used to ask students at Cambridge to assess in essays whether they believed that Britain was a Protestant concept- whether one could be British and Catholic- for William Cecil the answer was obvious, he sought to forge a nation united under the faith of the living God. He sought to wield nationalism as an answer to the might of Spain and France. From the first days of Elizabeth's reign, Cecil saw the world as a battleground between Popery and Protestantism, between Babylon and Jerusalem. His Queen did not see things the same way- and Cecil came close on several occasions to resignation when she refused to bend her policy to his will- but equally he subverted her wishes, fed her false information and used the House of Commons as an instrument to wage a propaganda war against his own sovereign. Historians used to see the Elizabethan age as the beggining of the revolt of Parliament against the monarchy- but like in the age of Henry VIII, in truth Parliament gained power as it was used by figures within the court. Henry had used it to cement the English Reformation- Cecil used it to put pressure on the queen to protect that reformation.

Cecil of course did not always succeed. He found in the Queen an opponent of comparable skill. Elizabeth was an amazing manager of men- she like Cecil had survived her sister's reign. She had passed within a hair's breadth of death in the Tower. She understood that naming an heir would be the end of her own reign- it would create an interest within the state that would be hard to control. The Queen preferred inactivity to activity- she knew the weakness of her throne and ultimately the weakness of her position. She also was a more conservative religious figure than Cecil- far more atuned to the evangelicism of her step mother Catherine Parr than the militant Protestantism of Edward VI's reign. Elizabeth came under repeated pressure from her councillers- men like Edmund Grindall (Bishop of London then Archbishop of Canterbury) and managed to frustrate them. She lost battles like that over Mary but Cecil was often reduced to frustration by his mistress's refusal to see the world as he saw it.

Perhaps in truth, to understand Cecil its worth listening to the man himself. He wrote to Sir Robert Cecil, his son, in 1596 that

You see I am a mixture of divinity and policy, preferring in policy Her Majesty afore all others on the earth and in divinity the King of Heaven above all, betwixt alpha and omega

The history of Cecil's career at the top of Elizabethan politics, is the history of his attempts to manipulate his queen to as to make his two loyalties the same. The preservation of the Protestant interest in Britain was the chief aim, Elizabeth the chief instrument and ultimately Parliament, the courts, information before him and even the threat of resignation the ways that he manipulated his monarch into supporting his policies. The great partnership was one filled with strife where two of the cleverest individuals of their age battled for their entire lives to twist each other's great talents to the service of legitimacy and international Protestantism. Mr Secretary Cecil was one of them- the Queen the other.

William Cecil

William Cecil is one of the most underrated Elizabethan figures. Played by Richard Attenborough in the film Elizabeth as a fussy irrelevance, Cecil's reputation is as the man in the shadows- less glamorous than Leicester or Essex or any of the queen's favourites, less insidious than the spy master Sir Francis Walsingham- noone really knows what to make of Cecil. And yet he was one of the great figures of the age- perhaps greater than any other beyond Elizabeth herself- he dominated politics from 1558 until his death in 1598 and his son took over that dominance. Reading his biography, published recently and written by Stephen Alford (I have to acknowledge an interest here, Dr Alford taught me paleography at Cambridge) what strikes me is Cecil's importance and his talent. Particularly interesting is his early, pre-Elizabethan career- had Cecil died in 1558 before taking on Elizabeth's government, he would still be an important figure in English history.

Cecil was a very intelligent man- he was educated at St John's, Cambridge in the 1530s and thrived in the atmosphere of classical scholarship that St John's promoted. The college at that point was at the heart of the English renaissance- leading efforts for instance to pronounce Greek in a more classical way. St John's furnished Cecil with a love of scholarship- he was linked to many of the great scholarly figures of his generation- Roger Ascham, John Cheke, Sir Thomas Smith- and others. What strikes you immediatly as a distinction between today and the past- that Cecil came to London with an already established political ambition, but that his education at St John's was directly connected to that. Scholarship and politics were closely tied together- instead of held separate as they are today. Cecil studied law at the Middle Temple- which taught him precision and a mastery of detail- but it seems to me that St John's lay at the heart of his personality- he was ultimately a scholar-politician- and enjoyed bringing dons from Cambridge up to London to discuss political issues of the day and come to conclusions about them.

If Cecil's scholarship was astounding at the time, then politicians picked up on it. Cecil was an aide to the Lord Protector under Edward VI, Somerset and after Somerset's fall became secretary to the Council of State. I think the other thing which might astound people- is the degree to which Edward's short reign was really a crucial part of English history. Henry VIII's religious reformation had been about authority- the Pope was discharged from his responsibilities- but despite the intentions of Henry's advisors (Cromwell and Cranmer in particular) what Henry desired and to some extent acheived was a Catholic church with him not the Pope as the senior figure. The crucial leglislation for Henry was the Act in Restraint of Appeals which affirmed that this land of England was an empire. Edward though twisted this political change to become a reformation- he gave his protestant advisors including Cecil their head- allowing them to redesign the prayer book twice (1549 and 1552) and furthermore creating an ideological ministry of Protestants. It was that ministry that Cecil sought to recreate in the age of Elizabeth- and for those who shaped the eventually successful Elizabethan reformation, the reformation of her half brother was their starting point. However much Elizabeth sought to be her father- in religion the influence of her brother remained central to her administration's view of the English church- and that means the view of the English church which dominated the next five centuries. (Even her clash with Cecil over whether 1549 was the point to start at or his 1552 can be seen as an argument that has raged in the Anglican Church ever since- a clash about which stage in Edward's reign, which moment of perfect refomation, you hold to). Mr Secretary Cecil lay at the heart of this- being a colleague and friend of the great figures of this reformation- Archbishop Cranmer, the Duke of Northumberland, the Duke of Somerset, Edward himself and other more minor figures like Sir Anthony Cooke his relative and his colleagues from Cambridge- the golden generation of St John's.

But Cecil's experience as a politician under Edward and his Catholic sister Mary also prepared the politician for the experience of being Elizabeth's chief servant. As Edward died, constitutional crisis gripped England. Edward desired that his heretic sister- a servant to the Babylon of Rome- should be excluded from the succession and replaced by Lady Jane Grey. His councillers sat in a difficult position- either way they jumped they risked being found guilty of treason. Cecil sat on the fence- Edward's actions technically were illegal as Henry VIII's will, confirmed by Parliament, superceded any act which Edward might make without Parliamentary sanction- hence anyone who agreed with Edward would be committing treason against an earlier act made by the supreme political organ of England- the King in Parliament. Cecil hedged his bets. He signed the new succession memorandum as a witness and prepared to flee to Mary- he managed just to survive. His actions over the next five years demonstrated the same skills- unlike Cranmer burnt at the stake in 1555, Cecil did not desire martyrdom. Rather he operated on the borderline between treason and quiet subservience- quietly he prepared ties with Elizabeth, quietly he sponsored opposition presses on his own land but he would also publically conform, leading an embassy to bring Cardinal Pole back to England in 1554 and even being appointed Pole's steward in Wimbledon.

The period of Cecil's enforced retirement demonstrates something else about his character. This was a man who could not do anything but work. He found retirement frustrating. He ended up obsessed with the details of household management. At one point, he even started weighing his servants and drawing up statistical tables of their average weight- as Alford commented at a recent paper given in Cambridge, there can be no doubt- William Cecil needed something to do. He communicated with Elizabeth via being appointed her steward- his lands ran concomittantly with the lands that she had been given by that central document of English history, Henry VIII's will. Consequently the Protestant Princess could send agents to meet her brother's protestant cabinet minister, despite the fact that they were both being spied on by the jealous Mary. Elizabeth and Cecil finally met in the year of Mary's death. We know this only because one of Cecil's servants made notes on his master's journeys by barge along the Thames. All the rest of the documents to do with the meeting were destroyed- we may guess that they discussed more than estate management. These two principles- Cecil's workaholic nature and his concern for secrecy came together to create the Mr Secretary Cecil, the ablest of Elizabeth's servants and the bulwark of her monarchy.

In future posts we will see how Cecil's career developed- but I hope this gives an idea of why William Cecil was no bumbling fool, but one of the greatest politicians of his age and furthermore how far the Elizabethan world was connected to the Edwardian world before it. How far the Church of England, established by the acts of 1558, was the creation of Edwardian civil servants desirous of completing a reformation that they saw as beginning with Henry VIII but being perfected in the reign of Edward by Cranmer in the prayerbooks of 1549 and 1552. That was not Elizabeth's view- but it was the view of her chief minister.

Mongol

During the 13th century, the name of Genghis Khan spread like wildfire throughout the world, the conqueror of Khorasan and the mongol steppe, the fear of both China and Europe, he brought destruction to almost every part of Eurasia and founded an empire that at its maximum extent subdued both China and Europe. The problem with Genghis Khan though is how little not how much we know about the man- his history is preserved in the chronicles of those he conquered and in the secret history of the Mongols- but almost nowhere else. The reputation of his hordes and the pyramids of skulls that they left behind remain the most tangible memorial to his presence. That and now this film, directed by a Russian director and made in Kazackhstan, whose impact is clearly designed to imprint a legend upon the world- as Matt argues here, this is a film not so much about the man but about the myth.

As Vino right notes though, myths have a political content- as well as a mythological one- and its worth examining what myth we are presented with here as we come to a judgement upon the film. Genghis Khan is a figure around whom a great deal of myth has accumulated- there are many for example in China who see the figure of the great Khan as the leader who actually vanquished Western Armies and held for a time Russia in thrall. The twentieth century has seen efforts by various nationalities to 'claim' Genghis- the Chinese, Japanese and Mongolians have all made attempts to try and annex Genghis. Those who were subjugated by him saw him in another light- there is good reason to think that he was a brutal tyrant- perhaps the most murderous tyrant until the twentieth century, whose massacres were tactical but also bloody and who slaughtered in his thousands and his tens of thousands- if not more. Genghis Khan's reputation deserves to be as low as possibly any tyrant's reputation can be- a foolish relativism might seek to excuse his rampage, but it would be unworthy of us to deny that he wreaked havoc on the sedentary world of his day and the fears that many felt were genuine and justified.

Coming with that attitude to this film, I was amazed and not in a good way. Because this is not a film about the growth of a tyrant- it is a film about the hero Genghis Khan. We see his suffering and his conquest of Mongolia but we see none of his brutality. This is a film about a great man- and the fact for instance that we was locked up for seven years means in the language of the film, that it was acceptable to eliminate a city and the people who lived within it. This is the kind of film Thomas Carlyle would have been proud of: the best artistic representations of war convey the experience of armies from top to bottom. One thinks of War and Peace, or even of The Siege, but this is not about that at all- who cares how many Mongol soldiers perish, so long as Genghis and his family are reunited. The focus of the film is awry- its not so much that the story is wrong as that its heart, its purpose is in the wrong place. The little people are forgotten so that the greater can be remembered. In particular for instance it gets the world of war completely wrong: whereas war is about accident and fortune, this story is about inspired leadership from a great man.

Perhaps this is most evident in the way that the story is told. We begin the story with Genghis at 10, we end the story with Genghis at 30. The historical accuracy of what lies between is dodgy at best. But lets ignore that. Basically what we have is the tale of Genghis's rise to become warlord of all the Mongols- the film basically stops once he takes that crown. Though in reality its even shorter- the last half hour deals with his rise to the leadership of the Mongols- the main body of the film concerns his earlier attempts to lead a war band, his marriage, his relationship with his blood brother and his eventual fall into slavery. That is about it. The driving force in this story is the perception that Genghis is a man of destiny, unjustly treated, and yet he never seems to do anything particularly glorious and the reparations he inflicts for his unjust treatment are to destroy the lives of everyone around him. The tension therefore is maintained by the romance between Genghis and his wife, and the fellow feeling between him and his 'brother'. Unfortunately the film is about as romantic as cold soup and the relationship with his blood brother undermined by portentious piety. The real issue here is that for a film that is ostensibly about character- there are no characters to get familiar with or to care about. Who gives a damn about Genghis and his wife, lets watch them conquer the world- but the film doesn't cover that.

Unlike Hero, what it also doesn't do is pursue any deeper questions about tyranny or law. It doesn't seek to argue for Genghis's tyranny, it merely bathes us in lukewarm hero worship and leaves it at that. There is some lukewarm paganism- we get a couple of mentions of the sky god thrown in for fun- one wonders what a real polytheist would have made of the dismal slow motion wolf who strolls about at will through the groves of temples. One wonders why we get no sacrafice, no indication of any real religion, one wonders why we get no idea about the empire that Genghis maintained, no idea about his cruelty or his character. This is a blank sheet of paper- and its a blank which continues for over two hours. There is some fantastic photography- particularly of central Asia and it makes me even more certain that I want to go there at some point. But this is a poor poor effort- it is neither a historical film, nor does it do anything with teh myth. It is just a film which lauds a great man, who lets not forget slaughtered human beings in cold blood- as though someone were to make a film about the Bosnian conflict, lauding the Serbian army, without mentioning Srebrenica.

This is a poor effort, the greatness of the landscape conceals the poverty of the thought.

Kadare's The Siege

Ismail Kadare's novel The Siege is a fantastically observed book: it is a study of a siege of an unidentified Albanian town by the Ottomans in the fifteenth century, just before the fall of Constantinople. Kadare tells the story of the siege from both inside the fortress, with what appears as a translation of brief extracts of a chronicler's account, and through following a series of characters- the Pasha, astrologer, poet, quartermaster general, engineer- outside the fort, attempting to conquer it. Thus the book is like a series of musical movements, with each long Muslim wail of frustration being answered by a Christian interlude, just as over the walls the cross confronts the crescent and the Turk confronts the Balkan. Like a spectre haunting the field is Skanderberg, the medieval Albanian hero, who at this time formed a guerrilla resistance against the Turks and of course even farther off but no less important, the magical palace of the Porte is yet another character- whose vicious luxury dominates the thoughts of all the Turkish commanders.

The book draws further back even from this. Kadare, as the afterword informs us, meant the novel as a kind of analysis of resistance- to the pressure of foreign nations on Maoist Albania in the sixties and I detect in this, as in many of his other works about the Ottoman empire that this work is a way for Kadare to express his concerns about the totalitarian present, within a portrait of the imperial past. The atmosphere of the camp outside the town is well drawn, particularly the way that everything tends to viciousness. The Pasha's viciousness is predicated upon his own uncertain position- like a politburo minister in his uncertainty he lashes out at those below. But those below learn that viciousness is that which the system demands and brutally destroy others whose mistakes doom them to death. As the stakes are raised, so is human brutality. There is not much heroism here- what Kadare shows is that dire situations lead not so much to great deeds as to dire deeds, as human beings find that they can only be preserved, or only seek satiety in their scared condition, by brutal torture and spectacle. The best way to cure war weariness, the Pasha resignedly meditates, is to find a scapegoat and give the troops some blood.
Dire situations dominate the book- but the dread permeates inside and outside the walls. Everyone on either side plays a deadly game and knows that they probably won't survive- one thing that Kadare really captures is that in war human life is cheap. But something else he gets is that the dread is a separating device. There is no real clash of civilisations here- the crescent and the cross are irrelevant to the fears of death and pain that dominate the soldier's lives- but both sides think there is a clash of civilisations because both sides are dominated by dread. Dread of what the other side might do, dread of what might happen should they lose, dread of the future and guilt for the past. The protagonists have no idea that the fear that grips the stomach of a young Christian and Muslim are the same: perhaps this is most aptly symbolised when a rumour swells in the Turkish camp that the Christians have attacked during the night- so such thing has happened- but the Turks start attacking each other, running in chaos from a nameless darkness that consumes them. This nameless darkness is what they fight throughout the film- people who are reduced to caricatures and to generalisations- the problem of war is that the Christians and Muslims fear each other in the same ways, but it still happens.

Pessimism shrouds this book. Ultimately the task of the historian here, and we have one, is to be a panygerist. To sing of the glories of soldiers and to sing of the wonders of warfare, when he can't fight and furthermore knows that those glories are illusions, the stories fakes and the wonders tawdry. The sultan was assacinated not by a Christian agent but by his own men. Expeditions to dispoil lead to mass rapes and the life of the army is about sitting in the dry season waiting to run out of food. War is not a matter of heroism here but a matter of technique- of dry technique, waiting till the enemy runs out of water, of food or of lives to throw into the meat mixer. Waiting for autumn- waiting for God.

If so then Kadare in this novel achieves a rare thing- he writes a novel which is anti-historical. As you'll be aware, I consider history to be the discovery of distance and difference- what Kadare does is to reduce distance and difference and pay attention to the bleak reality of life as opposed to its gilded frippery. Something he gets entirely right is the distinction between what happened and what is left- between fact and fiction. But there is more here- this novel is a political act- this is an attempt to do what has largely died out in the liberal west, perhaps because it is the art of tyranny, allegory. The allegorical structure is like a never unfolding Russian doll, meaning after meaning can be tracked through its layers and you can never stop. What Kadare invites us to do here is to understand the perpetual notion of human suffering- the way it will never stop and can never be assuaged. The way that brutality of politics is that politics is the place where personalities no longer matter- where your life is a statistic and your death a passing reference. History too deals in such matters- but imparts through romance a gilding- Kadare does not want us to concentrate on the gilding but to concentrate on the way that politics munches and destroys. The way that the wave after wave of soldiers going over the top of the wall are brilliant and glorious from far off, but near to become a wave of young men pitched on pikes, rolling in the moat with arrows in their sides and blasted through with shot and shell. Their deaths create our meta realities- but those realities are still outside reality- death is death and war results in death. The personal is political because the political results in personal tragedy.

There is a sadness, a desperation to Kadare's writing- some of these scenes will stay with me for a long time- they are easy to read and difficult to forget- just like the deaths on the fortress wall were easy to discard, difficult to explain.

King of Kong: For a Fistful of Quarters

King of Kong: For a Fistful of Quarters is the kind of film that makes me slightly queasy. It protrays the professional world of Donkey Kong playing, where various people compete to score records in the game. In particular it highlights two men- Billy Mitchell, a sauce manufacturer, and Steve Weibe a failed engineer and later science teacher- and their rivalry over the world record. Billy set it in 1982 and according to the film struggled by fair means, or foul, to make sure that his rival was unable to get a better score and that he would remain the King of Kong. In doing this he was assisted by Walter Day, the Head of the association which keeps the scores and by other friends and acquaintances. This account has been queried by Mitchell but it is the narrative of the film and whether true or not, it provides the architecture around which the film is judged. Not being familiar with Donkey Kong circles, I can't really comment on its truth- though I do think that the film's copious interview footage in particular does not portray those who it vilifies in a good light.

But lets move away from those questions for a moment, because in reality this isn't so much a film about the contest though that provides its dramatic coherence, as a film about obsession. We all have our obsessions in life- some of them like music and art are respectable, some are more geeky. Mastery of Donkey Kong is not normally combined with social adeptness and definitely this film provides you with evidence to go along with that thesis. Nobody in this film finds interraction with other people easy- you get the sense that the crowds of overweight, hairy and pale men don't interract well with the outside world. What you also get is a strong sense that they care too much about what they do- they beleive that for some reason it might just change the world- much like some bloggers do, they think that their every insignificant action matters, when actually its as important as a group of people going to a pub and enjoying a pint.

That's what intrigued me about this film- in reality it provides two explanations for a marginal activity and what's quite interesting is that it provides one positive model of how a minor activity can help someone, and another model of how it can harm someone. Lets take Steve Wiebe for a start. Steve according to the film was made unemployed, has had no real success in life- despite that he seems to have acquired two kids and a wife- but he has no real attainments and no self confidence. Being good at Donkey Kong became for him a way to rebuild his life- to reconstruct his identity and gave him confidence to move in his actual life to becoming a science teacher and therefore to a better respect for himself and for others. I know people who have used blogs in that way- as a ladder out of depression and uncertainty. For Steve Donkey Kong is his ladder.

Turn to Billy Mitchell, or the film's Billy Mitchell, and we find a different creature. Because so many of the gamers, like Billy, use the games to hide from the world and set up their egos against it. Billy is a self important loser in this film- there is no other way to describe him- constantly talking as though Donkey Kong were not irritating blobs moving on a screen but a life and death matter. In truth he has lost touch with reality. And in that sense he is similar to dozens of other guys that we see interviewed throughout the film- they have lost touch with reality. They believe that success in Donkey Kong is worth more than anything else- they construct castles built on the air of illusion and seem inable to see quite how comic and stupid they seem to anyone outside their universe. In a sense the Steve Weibes are the other side of the Billy Mitchells- in that both sets of people are constructing their identity through using the insiginificant game- but though you might think that you would be wrong. To construct something out of insignificance and then to go out into the world and actually do something is very different from retreating into insignificance and spending your life as a champion Donkey Kong player.

King of Kong is an immensely funny film- the joke is in the subtitle- but its a joke with a serious point. Let trivia- whether it be stamp collecting or games- turn from a support into a purpose and you have lost your way in life. If it aids you to construct a real life, so be it- but if it becomes more important than a real life- than real relationships- and starts to make you self important in illusion, then beware- there lies the path to Billy Mitchell and human disaster.

I loved every frame of this film- but as I said felt queasy- the reason is that I fear how far I am myself Billy Mitchell!

A glory of Miles Davis

Radio 3 is one of the great institutions of England- this evening I was listening to a great program on Miles Davis. They were discussing Davis's Carnegie Hall concerts in 1962. One anecdote though interested me in a more than musical sense- amongst my many failings is that I do not understand music as much as I should- and that was that it was often incredibly difficult to get Davis to record anything. The point was not that Davis abjured publicity- if your profession is playing instruments in front of people, you can't be shy! But that his concentration was on the music and not on the crowd around him, or notionally around him at their gramophones and in their houses.

Its an interesting thing- and I suppose constitutes a really important question that we often lose sight of. There are a hierarchy of pleasures. Davis felt them in the right way- music first and then publicity. Others today seem to feel them in another way round- with publicity and fame overtaking the pleasure of making music- the far end from Davis is populated by someone like Paris Hilton whose interest in music is purely notional. The question that we have to think about is whether its worth assigning a value to what someone feels as the keener pleasure: is a civil servant's joy in his job as praiseworthy if he enjoys analytical argument, working for the public or the money and security. Its probable that he will enjoy all three- but the hierarchy that he sets between them tells you a lot about his priorities in life.

And that really is the point here- the reason why we can condemn Hilton and exalt Davis is not merely their respective musical skills but also their sense of what is important in life. Fame is ultimately something that whilst attractive is meaningless and fuels competition and a desire for further acquisition. It is in that sense very similar to money- it is a good which is emulative- I know I am famous if I am more known than x, I know I am rich if I am richer than my friends (the great example of that principle recently was Alex on the apprentice who said he was successful because he was more successful than those he knew!) The point is that emulation is a natural and productive desire- but it is hard to think of it as a morally good desire. Contrast that to a passion for something- when I am passionate about something I seek out those who are also passionate and, though partly I wish to be known as 'the' expert, partly also I want to have someone to share my love. As love is a good, and it drives the passion- for history, cars, wine, football, dresses or jazz- and makes the passion an instrument to the creation of friendship so is the pursuit of the passion a good. That is why ultimately the musician who cares more for the music or as much for the music as s/he cares for the fame, is preferable to the musician who cares more for the fame than for the tunes.