Enter the Memory Palace

I have just begun reading Jonathan Spence's account of Matteo Ricci's life. Spence begins by outlining the medieval method of mnemonics- the science of memory. Ricci was interested in this and attempted to teach it in China. But I think it is interesting in its own right- as a means of considering the way that the medieval mind (if there was such a thing) approached the world. The idea was that instead of memorising a fact, you memorised an image associated with that fact. You created your own symbol for the thought and arranged that symbol in a pattern, an architectural pattern- a palace or street. Ricci said that you were better not to arrange your memories within a busy space but within a quiet one. There you could take a tour of your previous thoughts and recover your ideas. Take for example the student of history who faces a test about who were the Early Roman Emperors- asked the question who were the first four emperors of Rome, our student mentally enters her palace and turns to the room of Roman history. Immediatly as she enters she sees a frozen tortoise hanging in the basket of a fishing rod, and she can answer Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Caligula. Why? Because she has remembered that image- and thus has the initial letters of all the Roman Emperors- A Tortoise Caught Cold.

This system was patronised by many of the writers about rhetoric in the ancient world- Quintilian wrote about it. The medievals even thought that the greatest ancient speaker of them all Marcus Cicero had used the same method. The idea of memorising images, as a more powerful device than a word, was common within medieval culture. One Italian handbook for religious women told them to imagine the scenes of the bible, one by one, with the faces of their friends on top of those of the apostles and Christ. Ignatius Loyola was also a stern advocate of this kind of memory training- Loyola wanted his missionaries to keep in their minds the brutal image of the suffering Christ so that they too could endure the torments of life as a missionary, as a potential martyr to the faith. Images for Loyola would be so much more effective than words at reminding the missionary of his calling. Memory skills were much prized in the middle ages- indeed one of the marks of the new science was to, as Cornelius Agrippa or Francis Bacon did, despise the tricks of mnemonic masters as just that tricks, without reason. (Remember if you have read it my last article and Hobbes's suggestion that prudence was inferior to wisdom.)

Memory was a resevoir for bringing forwards images to the mind- for nourishing spiritual resources in the great battle between Satan and Christ that dominated the medieval mind. Such nourishment of course could be dangerous- peasants were prosecuted in Italy and France for remembering too well- such a perfect memory could only be devilish. And of course, others wondered about the radical potential of memory- to divert one's gaze away from scripture to the mystical rapture of one's own mental creations. But memory was still central- especially this kind of visible memory- and central in particular to the way that the Catholic Church envisioned religion. When we look at the grotesque carvings of hell in the works of Bosche and others, it is worth remembering that we are seeing what the Medieval Catholic Church wanted all humans to carry in their heads all the time- the image of the darkness that would inevitably welcome us all but for the grace of Christ and the defiance of his Church.

Phillip Pettit's Hobbes

Phillip Pettit, the Professor of Political Philosophy at Princeton, is one of the most formidable political thinkers around today. Pettit's latest book explores an innovative line of interpretation which suggests a real connection between Hobbes's thinking about science and the mind and his thinking about politics. What Pettit argues is that Hobbes did something truly innovative- that he changed the face of political philosophy in a much more fundamental way. He suggests that Hobbes's thinking came out of the collapse of the medieval picture of the world, a world ordered by divinity to its own purposes. After the scientific revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, that divinely ordered world seemed implausible- Descartes and his followers believed in a more mechanistic universe. Descartes however argued that the world was dualistic- mind and matter both existed in the world and were different substances. Hobbes disagreed- he thought that mind was matter and that there was no distinction between the two. How then did he come to explain the unique faculties of the human mind? Descartes couldn't without inventing a separate substance from matter- mind- Hobbes had a different view.

Hobbes argued that human minds were similar to the minds of animals. Both were mechanical, responding to motion in the outside world. Both minds reacted to things that stimulated them with desire and to those that did not with aversion. Minds learnt- Hobbes called this prudence from experience. So animals tended to adopt certain trails or hideouts to catch their prey- and human beings extended that faculty into the construction of histories and proverbs. Prudence Hobbes suggested was a part of knowledge- imperfect but useful- and it was shared by both human beings and animals. But human beings did something different- they had located a technology- Hobbes does not provide an account of how but he does provide an account of why this technology was so significant- that technology being words.

Words enabled human beings to do a number of things. Firstly it enabled them to construct universals- to pick out characteristics common to their observation and suggest that these things constituted identities. Human beings made the identity of objects. Furthermore they constructed abstractions from those identities- so seeing shapes in the world meant that humans devised perfect shapes, that did not exist, and labelled them square, triangle, circle and gave them definitions. Secondly language constructed personhood- it gave human beings the ability to impersonate and represent each other to each other. It gave them the ability to argue from their own perspective. Thirdly it gave them the ability to incorporate- to create corporations or groups of individuals- Hobbes uses the example of a mercantile company or indeed a state to suggest to us how this might happen. But words created a problem or rather two problems: they created competition between humans- what Rousseau called amour-propre, a self love based upon the destruction of others- and furthermore they created a concept of the future in people's minds, a future which might and probably, given natural animal equality, would be insecure- such insecurity would lead humans to take measures to protect themselves- measures that would lead to life for everyone being 'nasty, brutish and short'.

So what did Hobbes believe would get you out of such a difficult situation. Hobbes argued that there was no single person in a state of nature (a place without a state) who could end this situation- no one could force everyone else into a state nor will people in a state of nature be able to accept a state of equality, after all they would have no guarantee that others would accept the state of equality. The only method to get out of the state of nature would be the appointment by contract of a sovereign who was completely absolute. Any other authority would be unable to guarantee the security of people- because another authority- be it legal or parliamentary would not be a safeguard for the people but a competing authority that would create conflict, argument and strife. Hobbes suggested that such a sovereign would be limited rather by the fact that its authority was limited by the condition of the contract- i.e. that he managed to perpetuate a peaceful society. The sovereign's main activity though was to extend and deliver legislation: that took two basic forms. One was a constitutive form- the sovereign would define the meaning of property- create rights from persons over the world which could not be competed with because they would be backed by sovereign power. Furthermore the sovereign would enable people to trust each others' words, and form corporations themselves, because he would guarantee that free riders would be prosecuted and dealt with.

The last key question Pettit introduces is Hobbes's concept of liberty. Most theorists of his time would have argued that Hobbes's sovereign would have seriously impinged upon his subject's liberty. They saw liberty as the opposite of slavery: and would have argued that the subject in Hobbes's state was unable to make any decision because he would always live in fear of what the sovereign might do to him. Hobbes argued that this was a false view of liberty- as he defined liberty, redefined liberty, as the ability to do something- and argued that whatever views might influence you in doing something were irrelevant. So for example Hobbes argued that the fact that the sovereign could decide to execute you for having done something, still meant you were free to do it. Therefore Hobbes argues that the sovereign that he has constructed does not impinge at all on your liberty but guarantees your security.

Pettit's argument about the construction of Hobbes's sovereign is fairly traditional and fits well with most other understandings on the subject. However his understanding of Hobbes's philosophy of language is very innovative and very interesting. Hobbes definitely spends a lot of time in most of his philosophical tracts- particularly his last one Leviathan- in discussing language. In Behemoth, his argument about the civil war's origins in England, he suggested that the English civil war owed much of its origins to the careless use of language by university professors. It is definitely a strand of thinking within Hobbes's thought- and though I have not investigated Pettit's work on the texts I find his theory plausible.

Where I do worry though is that Pettit treats Hobbes's philosophy as a monolithic enterprise. Hobbes wrote three books- the Elements of Law, De Cive, Leviathan- and a number of more minor treatises like the Dialogue between the Philosopher and the Common Lawyer and Behemoth. Pettit quotes mainly from the major works- but he does treat them as though they all had the same argument- which I'm not so sure is entirely accurate. He refers to Professor Skinner's argument that Hobbes's view on liberty changed but does not refute the argument that Professor Skinner makes. I do not mean to suggest that Professor Skinner is entirely right: but Hobbes made different choices in the set up of his works, published several works about the same subject over a decade (and then nothing afterwards apart from translations of previously published works- the Latin Leviathan!) and that suggests to me that his argument evolved rather than stayed exactly the same. However I have not investigated it and cannot prove that. Furthermore Pettit, like most of the rest of the literature about Hobbes, concentrates on the non-religious elements of Hobbes's thought- Hobbes though spent plenty of time examining and rejecting the claims of particular churches in politics and it would have been interesting to hear more about the strategies with which he undermined their use of the Bible.

However despite those minor caveats, this is a really interesting piece of work. Its a fine introduction to Hobbes which has a provocative theme and deserves to be read widely. It deserves to be read both because Pettit's interpretation and his argument are interesting, but more because of Hobbes's continuing relevance to the world in which we live. Hobbes is one of the thinkers who best articulated some of the problems of modernity- this new understanding of Hobbes through his anthropology of language merely supports that fundamental insight. Reexamining Hobbes has provided generations of political thinkers from Rousseau onwards with nourishment and his thinking, especially about liberty, underlies much of what people think about today. (A little recognised irony is that the begetter of the libertarian idea of liberty was himself a pronounced absolutist.) Hobbes may be wrong, but he is wrong in provocative and interesting way- and Pettit's take on Hobbes is one of the most fascinating around. In short this is an exciting argument about one of the indispensable philosophers- and it deserves a wide audience.

Why are there homosexuals?

Homosexuality should not exist. That is not a political or moral statement- but a statement derived from evolutionary theory. Evolution rewards reproduction. Most human traits contribute to reproductive success ultimately or are neutral to it. But homosexuality does not contribute to reproduction because a pair of men or a pair of women cannot have children independently of scientific aid. We know that homosexuality is an ancient part of human beings- we know that it goes on in the animal kingdom. We also know that it is partly genetic. Why therefore has this behaviour, which should have died out in a generation, survived all the way to the present day?

There was an interesting article in Psychology Today about just this issue. The author Robert Kunzig presents a kalaidescope of factors. The most interesting is what Kunzig suggests about two particular traits which happen before the birth of a male homosexual. The first is genetic. This is really interesting, what I was arguing above was based around the survival of a particular individual's genes- but of course that is a failure to understand evolution, what I should have been talking about was the survival of genes down the generation. Take that angle and suddenly the homosexuality question becomes easier. An Italian study reveals that the mothers and aunts of homosexual boys have more children than the base population, they have more sexual encounters and more partners. Essentially the same genetic factor that makes homosexuals in men, makes women more fecund and hence reproduce themselves more- sometimes they produce an evolutionary dead end- a homosexual boy- but to offset that they produce more children.

Another factor though is present in the research- which is equally interesting and that has to do with the womb. As a non-scientist I often think you get your clump of genetic material- and you get your baby at the other end and there is no change between the two. The only factors which decide a child's character are its genes and the way that its nurture in the world shapes the genetic impact. That misses a step. One of the interesting things about homosexuality is what happens in the womb. Kunzig suggests based on research that the number of elder biological brothers (whether they are present in childhood or not) influences whether he is homosexual by up to a third. It isn't the presence of brothers in childhood- non-biological brothers from a different womb don't matter but biologic brothers who are not around in childhood do- but that they come out of the same womb. The Biologists believe that this is because of the way that a woman's womb reacts to a male child- she produces antibodies and an immune response which affects the foetus's brain and feminises it. That immune response is stronger with every male child born. The argument is interesting- and implies another cost benefit association for the woman because women with more powerful immune systems end up with more homosexual sons- her health is offset against producing a son who will not reproduce.

These are not the answers- and it is important to realise that for the majority of human history, many homosexuals have reproduced. It is only very recently that homosexuals have been able to live as homosexuals instead of unhappily existing in a heterosexual relationship or living in the closet. The fact that my original model is wrong- that homosexuals do sometimes produce children is something else to throw into the mix. Basically it substantiates the idea that there is something advantageous for his parents in having a homosexual son- particularly as we have seen for his mother. These aren't the full answers- but they are interesting as they explain in part what to me has always been a problem- why does evolution produce an individual who does not wish to reproduce? The answer seems to lie in the fact that the rest of his family reproduce more, and that his mother is healthier and is reacting to his older brothers. This does not explain all homosexuality- but it explains some and further research will illuminate the topic even more.

Brandreth on Politics

Entertaining and great fun- I just found these Brandreth rules of politics- its well worth listening too- Brandreth was an MP and he tells stories about how people become MPs and how they fall down the ladder of politics as well. It involves people from all parties and his advice is 'schmooze em on the way up, you'll need them on the way down'- its funny and a real insight.

Savage Grace

'Each man kills the thing he loves' said Oscar Wilde, 'they fuck you up, your mum and dad' said Phillip Larkin, Savage Grace combines the two lessons into one very powerful point. It is a film about the impact of parents on children, sexuality on life and wealth on everything. It takes as its focus the family of Anthony Baekeland and narrates the story of his mother and father and Anthony himself. Often we are told the story through the voice of Anthony, but the central focus is on the family unit- closenit and terrifying in its intense relationships. When Larkin said that they fuck you up, he possibly didn't mean it as literally as we see it here. We see a father steal his son's girlfriend. A mother seduce her own son. A mother and her homosexual lover, Sam, have a threesome with her son. This is hardly the model of an all American family- indeed what might normally pass as sexual excess- dominating anal heterosexual sex- seems here to be the epitome of normality. But do not be convinced that the sex is the headline about this film- in reality the sex is mundane and boring: you get the sense of being at Caligula's court, as everything is permitted and available, it is all boring.

No the centre of this film is the way that these characters- Anthony, his mother Barbara and his father Brooks come together in a fatal fashion- culminating in a famous murder (at the time in 1972- yes this is a true story). The characters are irredeemably boring- I cannot convey how boring they are save by inviting you to read this article from one of the participants in the story, Sam Green (the supposed inhabitor of Barbara and Tony's bed). The article is filled with the kind of self obsessive name dropping that characterises the world of these characters- of all the paraphenalia of the dull shininess of celebrity. The article is amazing in the way that it deepens the unattractiveness of the character you are reading about- a vapid social butterfly- but that is indeed the nature of the characters in the film, they are all vapid social butterflies. People who love to tell you how they call Greta Garbo Mrs G, or to dine with princes. Without the ability or knowledge to do anything- Brooks Baekeland is an adventurer who seems to do nothing- Barbara is a painter who doesn't paint- and Tony merely picks up his guitar when he grows up in a lugubrious way. At one point, the younger Tony asks Barbara what his parents do- she says that they are lucky and can afford to do nothing- their vapidness is a consequence of their idleness and a standing advert for employment if ever I saw one (getting up at seven the next morning didn't seem so bad having seen this film).

Idleness and celebrity chatter apart what strikes you immediatly about this film is the vicious nastiness of the characters. We open with the two Baekelands gathering to go to a party- Brooks hates it, Barbara loves it- their exchanges are barbed. You might think that that is as barbed as it gets but oh no! At the party Brooks confesses to Barbara that for ten million he would go home with the first person he met in a club, promptly she gets into the first car she sees on the street and sleeps with the young man inside it. This viciousness is combined with the sense of a smothering environment- the young man isn't even safe in the bath from his mother's entrances! Young Tony is homosexual or has those tendencies- he does at one point date a girl, who his father promptly steals- but he is homosexual. For both his parents this proves an opportunity to unleash their viciousness- not here the viciousness of the barbed comment, but the viciousness of stupid incomprehension. Both of them try to cure the young boy- and as they do he slowly drifts into angry silence. An angry silence made only worse as his parents' marriage splits- and his mother begins losing her mental cohesion. A terrible crime follows.

The skill of this director does not rest in making a nice film or one that is easy to watch. In places this film is good because its boring- because it demonstrates that this life is incredibly boring- shorn of all the things which make life worth living, love, successful striving towards a genuine goal, interests, real friendship. One character says to another at one point that Brooks thinks everything is shit- how right she is, reduced to a world of silver and gold- even those things feel like shit and the director gets that across. Despite the sex, this is not an erotic film. Despite the wealth, this is not a film that makes you envy luxury. Despite the celebrity this is an antidote to X Factor. Julianne Moore does a great job as Barbara, Stephen Dillane is condescendingly and arrogantly perfect as Brooks- but a special mention must go to Eddie Redmayne playing Tony who does brilliantly at portraying him, he gets him from the irritating to the pathetic in a wonderful character arc. It would have been interesting to see more of Elena Anaya's Blanca (Brooks's and then Tony's girlfriend) because she seems one of the few 'normal' characters on view who actually cares about the family- understanding her might have led to understanding what attractions these despicable people had.

The end of this film is truly shocking. The director and his actors have done a good job- but I did not enjoy watching this. There were no glimmers of light- these lives were depressing, boring and horrible- and watching them unravel is the same. Dark films are at their best when they make you care about their characters- this was like watching the demons suffer in the last circles of hell.

The Quiet American: Don't believe the unreliable narrator

Graham Greene's novel about the French war in Vietnam is often seen as a great anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Colonialist tract aiming straight, and presciently, at the disaster of US policy in Indo-China twenty years after the book is set. Such an interpretation is an error. The novel is narrated by a British journalist dispatched by his paper to IndoChina. The journalist is a character by the name of Fowler. He spends most of his time with two other characters- and the novel is an intricate game- political and sexual- between these three characters. One is an American attache at the embassy- secretly the inspirer of political movements in Vietnam- Pyle. The third is the woman that both Pyle and Fowler, in their own ways, love- Phuong- a Vietnamese who depends totally on the two Western men for her livelihood and who appears throughout as passive rather than active.

The impression that Fowler wants to create is of two stereotypes. He is the old, cautious European- bred in cynicism and self contempt. He knows the follies of the world, understands no theories work and is tolerant of the East and its differences from the West. Pyle on the other hand is an ignorant American blunderer. Quick out of university, straight from his ivy league classes to real world politics, Pyle blunders around so fixed on his current books that he can't see what is front of his eyes. Pyle is a classic theorist in a world of human beings- where nothing fits into his boxes but his own aspirations. Pyle ruins Vietnam in Fowler's view because he fits it into his American anger with the suffering of the non-democratic masses. Fowler is dispassionate- he is not as he says 'engage'.

But that mask does slip and Greene lets us see that Fowler's world is not entirely accurate. For a start Fowler does not describe himself well- he is engage- he is involved deeply with Vietnam and his dispassionate stance conceals a real passion, fear and love for the people of the land. Furthermore his stance of dispassionate inquiry leads him to exagerrate the distinctions between Europe and the East. We see this most vividly in his treatment of Phuong. Whereas Pyle's ambition of taking her to America- an ambition by the way that is sketched out most by Fowler and not by Pyle- is unrealistic- Fowler's view that she should become his concubine with little security when he next falls in love (as he has a habit of doing) is more disrespectful. He uses his difference from her to create the illusion that it doesn't matter that he has made her a discardable mistress. He exaggerates the degree to which she is purely passive and he objectifies her as an embodiment of her nation- rather than as a person. Chinua Achebe's wonderful line that Conrad sought to make Africa the drama of a white man's soul is applicable to Fowler's attitude to the East.

As soon as we see that we should reevaluate Fowler, we also begin to reevaluate Pyle. There is truth in Fowler's view of Pyle- there is truth in Fowler's assertion that Pyle is a nice man with no empathy or understanding of the world he lives in. And yet Pyle is willing to offer that world a respect that Fowler will not offer it- precisely because Pyle beleives that the Vietnamese are Americans struggling to be free (even though they aren't) he accords them the respect of thinking them capable of freedom- a freedom that Fowler sees as Western. This contrast is a contrast between different forms of orientalism. The one which sees the East as just 'us' but waiting to be freed by 'us' and the other which sees it as so different that slavery is a natural condition. Both perspectives are possibly natural within the arena that Pyle and Fowler live in- an expatriate community of diplomats and journalists that have little contact with the outside world especially the indigenous world, save for its prostitutes and its politicians.

Greene's novel therefore far from being an exploration of the differences between Europe and America is really an exploration of the way that two common western attitudes to the East fail to understand the reality of a country like Indo China or Vietnam. Greene wants us to see that both Fowler and Pyle share an orientalism that makes the East part of a western argument about how different it is, just as they make Phuong an emblem in their strife with each other. Orientalism ties into sexism in a lethal combination that reminds one that whenever you read a book, it is vital not to trust the author.

Jumping Karra

One of my favourite bloggers on the internet is Ashok Karra- his website has just moved from blogger to here- I cannot recommend what he writes enough, its detailed, thoughtful and interesting- even when you disagree with it, you have to take it into account.

The Plot against Pepys

Between 1679 and 1681 the diarist Samuel Pepys, serving as a member of Charles II's naval administration, was threatened with execution for transmitting secret plans to France. The reasons for Pepys's narrow brush with death lie in the tangles of Charles II's court and its relationship to Parliament. A recent book by James and Ben Long has attempted to tell the story of Pepys's moment of danger. They tell the tale well- its a pretty simple one. Pepys was arrested and taken from the House of Commons down the Thames to the Tower after a Whig inspired prosecution: he survived the experience by discrediting his accuser a Colonel John Scott using information from Scott's disreputable past in the Netherlands and in New England. Pepys was saved because of his own abilities and contacts within the world of restoration Europe. The Longs manage as far as I can tell to tell a straightforward story well- but I think there are points which we can bring out of their narrative and which are more interesting than the bare bones of what they say.

Firstly they convey well the insecurity of 17th Century political life. They get what is central to the reign of Charles II, which is that his father Charles I mounted the scaffold and was executed in 1649. The ghost of that scaffold lay behind the King at every point through his long reign- it haunted his successors as well and to some extent attitudes to the civil war lay at the heart of politics right into the 18th Century and beyond. As part of that civil war, Pepys a servant of the crown would know, that other servants of the crown had met a grisly end- Strafford and Laud executed by Parliament. In the late seventies that danger constantly present became uniquely severe- a fantasist Titus Oates accused several prominent men in the English government of being Catholics and sympathisers with a Popish plot that aimed to place Charles's Catholic brother James, Duke of York on the throne. James had to leave England. As an associate of James Pepys was vulnerable and he knew about the trials of other prominent Catholics and allies of York which ended in slaughter and death. Politics was an insecure and dangerous game- where treason was always ready as a charge against opponents.

The Popish plot was stoked up by the second of the great forces that we see present in this set of occurances and that is that this late seventeenth century period was the first great age of party. The Tory party stood for anglicanism and the crown, the Whigs for the low church and Parliament. That is a gross simplification- but it will have to do for the moment. Its worth remembering that Tory originally meant Irish Catholic rebel and Whig meant Presbyterian rebel. The point I want to capture here though is less the ideologies of the parties- which are incredibly complicated to both understand and locate- but the violence of the passion between them. Between about 1679 and 1715 the parties held office successively and frequently made use of the London mob. Shaftesbury called it into action during the Popish plot, the Tories used it to great effect in the Sachravell case of the 1710s. The roots of this emotion were religious- religion more than politics fuelled the rage of the parties. When someone like Pepys was under attack, they were under attack as someone helping to fuel the rise of modern Babylon.

The third thing I think that is worth understanding from this story is that both Pepys and his accuser attest to the incredible mobility of seventeenth century society. Their careers are completely at odds with the impression that the past is an age in which people did not move. Scott was a bright man from America- who almost conned his way into becoming a senior figure in Massachussets and Long Island politics. After that he attempted various schemes on the margins of French and Dutch politics- always an opportunist, he comes out of the Long's account as a man with incredible charm and a man who believed his own lies. His career collapsed when early in the 1670s the Duke of York's agents managed to connect the dots. Pepys also managed to connect the dots- through his own network of geographically wide contacts. Pepys through the admiralty was connected to Netherlands, to France and to America. But furthermore Pepys too had risen from a fairly humble background. That is not to say that seventeenth century society was incredibly mobile- of course it wasn't- but there was mobility and to say that a society is not as mobile as today's is not to imply that it was completely static.

Those three points are not historical points of genius- but they are crucial to any understanding of this period. The Longs do manage to get to them but there isn't much more than that and their story- they could have got more out of their material- particularly about Scott who in my view is an even more interesting character in some ways than Pepys. But that apart, its worth recalling these points because without understanding the ferocity of party anger and its religious nature, the insecurity of politics and the curious mixture of a static and dynamic society that the seventeenth century was, it is very difficult to get to what the century was about and why people thought they thought and hence did what they did. In order to get deeper, you need to get deeper into the minds of those who lived through the period and the conditions in which they lived but these three insights carry the Longs and ourselves quite a long way.

Leila

Leila is an Iranian film about a human dilemma: how to live with infertility? Leila and her husband cannot have a child as Leila is infertile. The story concerns their battle with Leila's condition and their love. It concerns the way that these two young people relate to each other and their nobility in doing that is astonishing. Both of them seek to become a sacrafice for the other: Leila tries to get her husband to remarry, her husband tells her that he will not have children unless those children are hers. In short left to themselves these two strongly in love would live happily childless: but that is not the situation, that alternative is not open to them because of family and social pressures around them.

The film opens and closes with the same scene: a table laid with Iranian pudding and a large crowd of both sexes gathered around it. That pressure bears down on the pair throughout the film: they never have a moment's privacy and their feelings are ambushed by the self righteous relatives who surround them. In particular there is his mother. She constantly pressures Leila into forcing her husband to find a wife who can supply a child. She constantly reminds Leila that the virtue of women is in having sons to follow them. It is not a healthy perspective on life: and it is one created by the fact that through her son, she obtains the status that she cannot obtain any other way. This talented woman therefore drives her son's marriage to destruction through intimidating his bride because this is the way that she can maintain her role in society, her status.

Its a sad slight movie: there are some wonderful shots within it. But the major impression I left with was the tragedy of social pressure and the way that it forced Leila to leave her husband. At the end of the film Leila takes refuge in muteness: she retreats into the stronghold of herself, driven there by a society that values women by their wombs and relies on family pressure to suffocate the individual.

The Virgin Spring

You saw it
God you saw it
The death of an innocent child and my vengeance
You allowed it to happen
I don't understand you
I don't understand you
And yet still I ask you for forgiveness

These words lie at the heart of the Virgin Spring and constitute its theme. The events of the film are horrific- they begin with rape and end with the murder of several men and a child. There are acts of petty maliciousness and great crimes- but at the centre of the film lies the question of where guilt for those crimes, for that maliciousness lies. Is it more guilty to will or to commit a crime? Is it more guilty to love too much or love not at all? Those questions dominate this modern retelling of Job: and they are set against a vision of Sweden in transition between the pagan and the Christian, between Odin and Christ.

This paragraph contains some spoilers- for which I apologise. Karin, a young pretty girl, is adored by her parents and she is incredibly wealthy. Her foster sister however is not so fortunate and lives in a world of resentment. Her parents are torn apart by their attitude to her- by whether they spoil her or are jealous of her secretly. The entire household is Christian save for the foster sister- Karin and the other girl then go out to deliver candles to the church across the forest. On the way they are divided from each other. Karin is kidnapped by wandering herdsmen raped and murdered. Those herdsmen then come to take shelter with her father- and give her mother Karin's clothes as a thanks giving present- and vengeance is taken.

By telling you the story, I have not told you anything. Bergman's filming gives this a depth that the mere tale does not have. Ang Lee, whose film career started by being inspired from the Virgin Spring, says that the crucial thing about the film is its silences, its serenity. I would agree. It is the serenity of Karin's attitude as she rides through the forest to her doom that makes her doom so shatteringly shocking. Her parents are serene in their faith. The sense that this is a retelling of Job is compounded by this fact: for of course in the biblical account Job too was serene and the Devil tested him by vanquishing that serenity. So too here, you could describe the events of this film in terms of serenity being challenged by illfortune-God testing faith by exposing it to all the hardness of the world. Karin is all her mother has- and she is murdered- can her mother be faithful still?

Can any of us be faithful after that? Can any of us find faith in the century in which Auschwitz, Belsen and Dachau have happened? I once heard Rowan Williams asked by John Humphries how people prayed in Auschwitz- what they expected and whether their faith was diminished by the fact that no aid came. God saw it- God watched it- and God let it happen. Should we let something of that sort happen- we would be guilty of it- that is definitely Karin's foster sister's attitude, she lets the rape happen, she doesn't fling a stone in her hand at the rapists and hence she is guilty of it. Is God any less guilty? That question proceeds out of anguish of course- but anguish and our sentiments towards anguish are the root of all morality psychologically. We suffer in sympathy with Karin's parents who suffer in sympathy with their defiled daughter, does God and if so why does he not intervene? If Karin's foster sister 'saw it and willed it to happen' then so did the almighty who might have stopped it and knew it must happen.

The tragedy is not something that is repairable. Running through this film is the sense of the fragility of human life. At one point one of the villains hands the mother her daughter's cloak and says 'skilfull hands like yours will know how to make it whole again' but of course nothing can make Karin whole again. Nothing can make her a virgin again. Nothing can make her alive again. Her foster sister envies that perfection- the sexual perfection in particular (she is pregnant with an anonymous man's child)- and points out early on that one infraction would lose that perfection. Virginity like life is easily lost and can never be recovered and in a society like medieval Sweden that is important. But what is the key to this is not the nature of the loss but that all human losses are really small deaths- we cannot do anything to repair them. We work and labour hard to make things work but they are destroyed, swept away in an instant and never return.

Religion should comfort us in this situation reminding us that there are eternal things. But again does it? Religion should supply us with an answer, with a fortitude to help us through these things. But as soon as his daughter is dead, the father's behaviour becomes pagan- in his rage he is a Beserker not a saint and kills rather than forgives. Furthermore the consolation does not arrive- for both mother and father the consolation is not what religion brings- their daughter's death is painful, it cuts to the quick and will never be assuaged. Rather it provides- and we come back to the quotation at the beggining of the passage a language to describe their feelings- a language to describe their guilt for what has happened. God is a device for them to appeal to a principle of kindness in the harsh northern skies and frosty winters- God is a device to find some kindness in a bleak and barren world. But when the world becomes bleak and barren itself, all there is is to beleive without hope of God's existance or his kindness- all there is is fealty without the knowledge of any aid arriving- like a squadron on the outer reaches of an empire, overrun and almost to die, these characters stand imploring hope from the capital, dying without it but with the word of Rome upon their lips.

The problem for these soldiers is that ultimately they are not sure whether it is their fault that their daughter has died. It might possibly be- they have been selfish in their love for her, neglecting others- or is it the fault of the murderers and the rapists who did the deed or of the foster sister who willed the deed. Bergman leaves us in no doubt that all of these people are culpable, but provides us with reasons to understand why all of them (the parents, one of the rapists a small boy and the foster sister) are in a certain sense to be understood and pitied. Amongst the rapists, two are mere villains- evil men who are totally to blame- but one a boy cannot be held accountable for the actions of the other two particularly as they violently threaten him- and tries furthermore to bury Karin. The problem is dual- the two rapists are undeniably expressions of pure evil (in one exchange with Karin their language mirrors that of the wolf to red riding hood) but how should we cope with that in our world- what resources do we have to understand and deal with evil- can we forgive and if not, are we thrown back to the Old Testament where an eye meets an eye and a life a life?

The promise of the New Testament was an emancipatory one- it excuses us from revenge and calls us to forgiveness- even of pure evil, we must so Christ says turn the other cheek. But how should we? And how guilty are we when we do not? How far do we perpetuate a realm of violence when we do not? Furthermore the demands of religion are just as exacting under the Gospel- how should we love God more than man? Are we called upon to rejoice in Karin's death as part of the unfolding providence that governs the world? Are her parents being told by the omnipotent that they cared too much for their daughter and need to cleave to him instead of spoiling her? Is a jealous God, a good God? Job answered all these questions- this film reopens them. How far are we guilty of a crime just by thinking of it- in Mark to be guilty of adultery is to look upon a woman with lust in your eyes- so is the foster sister guilty of rape? She feels herself so to be. The film does not offer answers at all- and perhaps some of those questions are not capable of answering- but they are dark questions which go to the heart of the human condition.

Bergman stands with Bresson as one of the great directors about religion in the 20th Century and perhaps this film more than the Seventh Seal or than his faith trilogy is his triumph in that sense. It portrays religion as an answer to anguish, a comfort in the dark. But it also questions how far religion can be a comforter. In dedicating their future lives to the construction of a church how far are the two parents diminished by their daughter's death, the foster child arguably is the only one who comes out of the film more whole as she is purged of her jealousy- they are purged of their love and reminded that all human things die- they are forced to take Augustine's advice to never love humans too much as humans fail at the end and fall. Is this the message of a loving God- that only he deserves our love? Bergman captures all of this because his camera is so deeply sympathetic- we see this tragedy and dilemma unfold before our eyes- he points his camera at people's backs, allowing the characters privacy, he gives us silence to think and feel.

Religion emerges from this film as a mode of being and coping- the questions it answers dive to the deepest anxieties of humanity, both philosophical and emotional- but ultimately religion is a way for people to cope. At the end of the tale the father resolves to build a church on the spot that Karin was raped and murdered, and songs of harmony ripple through as Karin's body, its smile seraphic is washed- but nothing can quite expunge from my mind the agony of the rape and murder or the anguish of the parents.

What happened in 1399?

In 1399 Henry Boilingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, landed in England to reclaim his lands, confiscated by the crown on the death of his father John of Gaunt, the previous Duke, and to re-establish the rights of the peerage against the crown. Henry landed with very few followers- but amongst them was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Arundel the former Chancellor of England- and he had notable supporters in the nobility of the north of England. Both the Neville Earl of Westmorland and the Percies rallied to his standard. The regent of England, the King's uncle Edmund Langley Duke of York surrendered, the King himself, Richard II was in Ireland and brought his army back to Wales. Attempting to march them north to his own palitinate of Cheshire, Richard lost most of his forces to desertion and in the end was easily captured. Henry was crowned King of England- and Richard was sent to Pontefract Castle, the bloody retirement home of English royalty, where his grandfather Edward II had been murdered and Richard too died a year later in mysterious circumstances. Henry IV was King of England and the Lancastrian dynasty had begun. The story seems simple enough- and yet it reflects wider historical realities both within its own time and about the English crown's position in English history.

Why did Richard II fall? English history is punctuated by the fall of Kings- 1215, 1258, 1327, 1399, 1461, 1485, 1649, 1688 and 1776 are dates that punctuate English history (and yes in 1776 the American revolution was a phenomenon created within the English crown). We will pass on to why the English crown was so unstable. But the reasons for 1399 lie in the situation of the 14th Century: just because a crown has historically been unstable or a regime has does not explain why it is now unstable. Indeed England proves this: after 1688 with the exceptions of the Jacobite rebellion and hte American civil war, the English state has been remarkably stable. To the extent that patriotic English men have boasted of its stability- something that seems in the early modern and medieval era quite laughable. 1399 arose therefore out of the peculiar circumstances of Richard II's reign. I have outlined below Richard's view of the English monarchy- it is worth turning for a moment to the view of those that opposed Richard, to Henry of Lancaster, the Percies and Nevilles.

Henry knew when he came to England in 1399 about two characters- both called Thomas. One was his predecessor as Duke of Lancaster- the other was his uncle Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. Henry's aim when he returned to England was to restore the nobility to its rights. Lancaster and Gloucester too had aimed for this purpose. The rights of the English nobility were the rights to counsel Kings, the rights to participate in law making, the rights to their land before the law and the right to non-arbitrary government. The content of that prescription was vague- but the idea of it existed and was important. Henry's rebellion fits into a pattern of medieval rebellion that spread through continental Europe and the British Isles- rebellion became a way of protecting local jurisdiction and protesting. This ran from what E.P. Thompson called the moral economy- ie riots say to reduce the price of bread in Preston in 1791 all the way to the Pilgrimage of Grace to protest against the Change of religion in the 1530s. Richard had faced down two such protests before- the Peasants Revolt of 1381 and the baronial revolt of 1386-7.

If we are to understand why Lancaster was forced to depose Richard, we need to understand what happened to that second revolt. In the late 1380s, Richard was criticised for promoting favourites, governing poorly, neglecting the nobility and neglecting legal rights. He was forced to execute his leading advisors, appoint nobles to his council and bring in policies they agreed to. One of the leaders in this movement was the King's uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. And the King's uncles, Gloucester, John of Gaunt and York became the governing council assisted by Arundel. By the late 1390s, the King decided to take revenge, despite giving at the time commitments that he never would, upon Gloucester and those that had followed him. Gloucester was murdered in private in Calais, as were his associates where they resided. Richard asserted his own power and destroyed that of those who resisted- part of that was his decision to exile Boilingbroke in 1398 and deprive him of his inheritance when Gaunt died in 1399. The point was that Richard had made it impossible for anyone to trust his word, and that he governed arbitrarily thus making rebellion neccessary. As soon as rebellion became neccessary, Richard needed curbing because the participants would otherwise suffer. In 1399 the lord who rebelled came swiftly to the conclusion that the only curb that could promise security was abdication and hence Richard fell and Henry took the crown. The Lancastrian constitutional revolution boiled down to the notion that the King had left the Kingdom and thus that Parliament awarded that crown and kingdom to the next in line- in a sense it was a similar situation to that which arose in 1688.

But that still throws up the question, why did this happen and keep happening? Richard's untrustworthiness arose out of his personality- like Charles I, Richard beleived that an oath that restricted his monarchical power was not an oath that could bind him. But why ultimately did that matter so much? The reason it mattered was that the English crown held vast powers. Richard was one of the wealthiest Kings ever to rule- in absolute terms adjusted for inflation, the wealthiest monarch in England by a long way. Furthermore he had control over an incredibly extensive and powerful machinery of law and justice- he could use that machinery to create real problems for those that he disliked. With Parliament at his back, the King had an emmense ability to control and adjudicate over the realm. Parliament was used by the Lords- the merciless Parliament condemned many of Richard's favourites to death in the late 80s- but it could also be used by Richard as a court to back his royal authority. Gloucester and the rest were attainted by Parliament under its speaker Sir John Bushy, the King in Parliament as John Selden later said was incredibly powerful and could authorise anything.

Richard's power meant that no lord could survive his anger for long. Henry knew that. He knew that his uncle had been destroyed by Richard's anger, slowly simmering over the years. The lesson was not lost on later rebellious commanders either- Oliver Cromwell knew it and very like Boilingbroke came to the conclusion that the King must die in order that he could survive his own revolution. In 1688 the appeal to William was born out of fear of James- to put chains around a king and stop him doing what he wished was impossible. Hence there could be no division between person and policy- though Sir Thomas More intended in 1526 to create one through the immunity for those debating in Parliament- a queen like Elizabeth and master tactician (the reason why Elizabeth survived was that she knew how and when to give in) used her power to constrain MPs who spoke against her. Kings of England survived when they turned this massive state outwards- like Henry V in France- an example that Henry VIII was keen to emulate. The central fact about the English crown was that its power made its bearer a vulnerable agent- restricting supremacy was not easy- and so the way to rebellion led straight to regicide.

Richard's doom was his inability to roll as Elizabeth did with the punches administered by the gentry and nobility. Ultimately the fact that he used his power to destroy those who had opposed him, nursed his grudges and seemed untrustworthy meant that opposition was not a realistic option. As soon as you doubted, you were in danger, if you went as far as to rebel, your head was forfeit- even if you won, should the crown recover, you would die. And so you have the situation where there is no answer save to seize the crown for yourself. This is one reason that England has had few local rebellions- as Patrick Wormald commented the last rebellion to seek to split England was in 1065 by Earl Tostig of Northumbria- the point is that the power of the English crown and the universal application of law, mean that there were no local privileges or powerbases to hide behind. Continental observors marvelled at the rebelliousness of the English, Richard II knew it well too- but the real lesson of 1399 was that that rebelliousness was a consequence of the power of the crown. Opposition was so dangerous that the only way to save one's head could be to commit regicide.

When Henry of Lancaster landed in 1399, we have no knowledge of whether he immediatly desired the crown, but it must have become evident quite quickly that in order to survive he had to get it.

Gordon Banks

Gordon Banks is always underrated when it comes to talking about the best British players- which is perhaps a good reason why in his position there seems to be a relative dearth at the moment. Banks was the goalkeeper in the 66 side that won the world cup: he was crucial as this save above makes clear to England's challenge in 1970 and had he not been injured in the quarter final against West Germany then England might have retained the Jules Rimet Trophy. I don't say this merely to redeem Banks's reputation- far greater scribes than I have attempted to in the past- nor to say anything about who were the best British players though the unassuming keeper from Stoke must stand beside such luminaries as Duncan Edwards, Bobby Charlton, Billy Meredith and the far earlier Scottish stars who brought passing to England or the later ones that were the core of the Liverpool teams who seemed to treat the European Cup as though it was their posession in the late seventies and early eighties. What I mean to do here is just briefly survey another article.

Up there with Banks, should be placed Peter Shilton. When I started watching football- the 1990 world cup- Shilton's career was ending. Shilton retired after the tournament from international football and though he played on for clubs, his glory days had faded. Shilton for sheer longevity- he was Banks's teammate in the sixties and played into the late nineties, was capped most times for England of any player- and for his success in Europe with Nottingham Forest and in the 1990 World Cup is amost equally eminent as Banks. Two things though instantly strike me about an article Shilton wrote about Banks for the Guardian and they remind me I think of how similar football and sport in general is to any other part of life.

Shilton joined Leicester as Banks was leaving- but he seems to have learnt from him incredibly. Watching Banks must have been crucial for the young keeper and Shilton leaves us in no doubt that it was. We often in football and in life come across the puzzle of centres of excellence- ie people coming out of a good area with good training- well Shilton gives us a simple answer- it is observation stupid! Observation creates a culture within a club- and it creates a means to better onesself. The second thing that instantly strikes me is not that Banks worked hard- but that he never beleived that the ball couldn't be saved- even if it was heading wide, he would try and save it. Shilton thinks that is why he pulled off so many great saves- because he did not believe that they were impossible. In a sense if admiring and hence learning from others is a humble characteristic- then this is a delusional one- but it is a neccessary delusion. When Banks saves from Pele above, he shouldn't, noone else could or had- but he did because he ignored the probabilities and made the effort. The distinction between Banks and the rest was the delusion- it is this which footballers mean when they talk about belief but it is not belief, it is delusion and delusion is key.

It is always interesting to read one great talk about another- but I think what is so interesting about what Shilton writes is that it isn't bland and is much more thoughtful than a standard think piece. He has provided us with reasons both for his own development and that of Banks- and whilst neither is sufficient, I judge that both reasons were neccessary to the two goalkeepers becoming greats.

Richard II and Edward the Confessor

In 1395 Richard II invaded Ireland. As he marched through Ireland, he marched under his own insignia but also under that of Edward the Confessor (r. 1042-65). Richard was obsessed by the Confessor- the last Saxon king of England to hold his realm together for a substantial period of time, Edward had acquired the reputation in the Middle Ages of a saintly celibate King. The title of the English kings after him depended upon him: William of Normandy had claimed that Edward's personal nomination had given him the English crown and Norman chroniclers from William of Jumierges onwards substantiated that claim in their histories. Edward thus was not merely seen as the last Saxon King, but more appropriately as the father of the Norman and hence Plantagenet Line which culminated with Richard himself. Edward's reputation in the Middle Ages though was not merely as the great saintly King, father of the nation, but also of the father of the nation's laws. As early as the reign of Henry I, the barons of England petitioned that the laws of King Edward be enforced- such intentions lay behind much of the agitation surrounding Magna Carta and as Corrine Westbrook and John Pocock have shown endured into the seventeenth century. The barons at Runnymede, the Diggers in Surrey made the same claim- that if only England could recall its original legal status under the Saxon monarch, all would be well. Of course neither of them knew the truth- for a start the whole idea of a national law depended on the legal reforms envisaged by William I at the oath of Salisbury and enacted by Henry II- neither did they agree- the baronial constitution and the Digger's millenary vision are about as far from each other as one could get: William Walwyn called Magna Carta a 'mess of potage', the average aristocrat of Walwyn's day thought the Leveller was a traitor, an anarchist and a heretic.

The image of Edward's laws was incredibly powerful- and is something that I want to return to in more detail at a later date. But the image of Edward and the model of Kingship that he provided was equally powerful and is perhaps less appreciated. Lets return to Richard II. Why did he raise that banner at that moment? Richard did not particularly care for law- he had an uneasy relationship with his Parliaments and disdained the advice of his magnates- many of whom, the appellant lords, Arundel, Warwick and Gloucester, became heroes of those that would restrict the rights of the crown. Rather Richard saw himself as the successor to Edward in his saintliness. For Richard- the two Edwards- the Confessor and the Martyr (an English king Edward had been assacinated in the 8th century by the Vikings and was canonized shortly afterwards) represented a vision of Kingship very much in accordance with his own. Richard saw himself as various documents attest as a direct representative of God on earth. The end of the 14th Century saw an upswing in millenarian agitation- there were rumours of an Anglo-French alliance to reunify the battered Christian body (split at this point between two Popes one in Avignon and one in Rome) and turn it against the Turks who were rampaging through Southern Europe. Major members of Richard's court believed in this: John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, toyed throughout his life with going on a crusade- one of his sons, Sir John Beaufort actually did and was defeated in 1395 at the battle of Nicopolis, another Henry IV (king after Richard) dreamt as much as Richard of taking on the Turk and reclaiming Jerusalem. Famously Henry was told that he would die in Jerusalem- but fell into eternal night in the chamber of the House of Commons and not in that of the holy sepulchre. Richard shared that sense of the religious nature of kingship. Look at the engravings and art made about him in his reign, if you look for instance at the Wilton Diptych- a piece of art that has bemused and confused historians for generations (and I cannot clarify that confusion at all)- but the clear emphasis is on catholicism and its relationship to the young king. Pamphleteers and chroniclers from Froissart in France to the most jaundyced of his opponents also bear testament to the King's determination to make himself into a saintly ruler. The image of King Edward returned. Richard wanted also to canonize others of his ancestors- he pressed the Pope that his great grandfather Edward II should be canonized and he paid attention to prophesies which told him for instance that an English king would conquer Ireland and then retake the Holy Land.

Richard's elevation of the Confessor into a saint- and a saint who would support his particular model of sacral Kingship should be seen in the context of the instability of the English crown. Of Richard's predecessors, only Richard I (r. 1189-99), Henry III (r. 1216-72) and Edward II (r. 1307-27) succeeded to the crown without having to battle or dispose of other claimants. Richard would remember that the reigns of Henry II, John, Henry III and Edward II had all seen civil war take place in England. For Frenchmen living at the time England was a nation of traitors- a nation where monarchy was unsuccessful. Furthermore Richard had to face his powerful uncles- Lancaster, Gloucester, York- who dominated the politics of his reign and many of whom had greater credentials for the role than Richard himself. Turning his eyes back to English history, meant recreating a monarchy for him that made sense- as a connection between God and the people, between the sacred and the secular. For Richard then it was natural to turn to the saint King Edward- who had afteral combined both devotion and rule in the same person. Furthermore Edward ressembled Richard in other ways- in his childlessness for example. By 1395, the widowed Richard had decided to marry a five year old Princess of France- children were not on the agenda!

It is pretty easy to see why Richard looked to Edward but it also reminds us of the way that 1066 was and was not a division within English history. The crown owed much of its powers to the way that William of Normandy, William I, had interpreted the act of conquest- he had essentially by the Oath of Salisbury bound all tenants in England to owe fealty to the crown and not their tenant in chief (as Dr. Garnett's research makes clear). But he had done something else- he had based his title on the nomination of his predecessor as king of England, Edward the Confessor. Doomsday Book contained two dates- the date on which King Edward was alive and dead and the date of the survey- and that fixed the Norman claim to be that England had passed, by nomination from the Confessor to the Conqueror. That point meant that the Normans were bound to Anglo Saxon England- and that as the royal title depended upon the events of 1066 so did arguments in favour and against the crown. In the seventeenth century, Sir Edward Coke argued that there had been no conquest, as did Sir Matthew Hale- Gerald Winstanley effectively suggested that William was not the heir of Edward. In the reign of Richard II, we see Richard go back to the beggining of his dynasty and fix his eye upon the sainted King and suggest that he was attempting to recreate that era. Norman fixation with Edward as the legitimator of their dynasty had turned into a Plantagenet quest for models of royalty to fortify the crown in an age of uncertainty.

The reasons that Richard looked back to Edward arise out of the pattern of English history- and the crucial place of 1066 within that history- and out of the particular circumstances of his time. By going back to Edward he sought to create a model of sacred Kingship that he hoped could strengthen the crown and provide the springboard to English armies doing God's work in the Holy Land.

The Edge of Doom

This is a fascinating Radio Program- just what the BBC do best- about the moment in September 1983 when the world almost ended through nuclear war. Its worth listening- just to realise quite how scary the cold war was- and how little both sides understood the other and furthermore how that misunderstanding might well have propelled the world into utter catastrophe.

A Man for all Seasons

A Man for all seasons was made in the 1960s about events which took place in the 1530s. It is of course highly inaccurate. It concerns the life of Sir Thomas More, a formidable lawyer and politician who briefly rose to become Chancellor of England in the 1530s before being executed by Henry VIII for high treason later in that decade. More was one of the leading opponents of Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn and his creation of the Church of England and eventually was executed for his opposition. The film takes a positive view of More and traduces other characters of the period- Thomas Cromwell for example and Richard Rich- More afterall burnt those who disagreed with him at the stake, Cromwell and Rich were not as self serving as they seem here, nor was Archbishop Cranmer, but historical inaccuracy is seldom important within a movie. The spell of 90 minutes cannot capture the intensity or the incompleteness of historical time- no more than it can recreate the intimate texture of a novel. As with the adaptation of a book, the adaptation of history is the use of history by the director to fit his or her template. The intelligence of the film maker creates his or her own history of a period: and the real questions that can be asked are not about accuracy (inaccuracy is guaranteed) but about the degree to which the director is historically aware and the degree to which the film makes an interesting point. Both of these concerns I think are reflected in a Man for all Seasons however imperfectly and make it, though bad history, a good historical film.

Thomas More’s life took place against a wide European debate about what a wise man ought to do at court. Should the wise man abstain and cultivate his wisdom in academic leisure? Or should he attempt to councel princes to abandon their fleshy desires and turn their minds to the improvement of the public good? Would such councel be listened to if proffered and would association with a prince end up with the wise man, the philosopher, being corrupted by such association? These ideas of course were not new in the 16^th Century: Aristotle had argued that politics is the appropriate area for men to exert themselves though he too had given credit to the life of leisured contemplation in his Politics. Thomas More himself was aware of the subject: in his own Utopia the subject is a matter of dispute between a character called More and the sailor Raphael Hythloday who argues that there is no such thing as a prince willing to listen to a wise man. This dilemma is referred to openly at the beginning of a Man for all Seasons when More is asked by a young potential protégée, Richard Rich, what he Rich should do. More tells him that the court will offer him only corruption and that Rich should go into teaching and content himself with a private life, where only his friends, his students and his God will know him.

That dialogue runs straight through the Man for all Seasons. This is a film about a central issue in the sixteenth century, what to do when you are in a court? Various characters in the film operate by various strategies. Thomas Cromwell is a psychopathic killer, enjoying the freedom granted by having the King’s ear to mow down anyone in his path. Richard Rich is in the film a man afflicted by his ambitious desires, if the only way to do that is to perjure himself, then he will sweat with pangs of conscience but he will swear. The Duke of Norfolk is a third case: Norfolk goes along with Cromwell because he has things in life and fears that they will be taken away from him should he not. Norfolk like Rich is a courtier from a human emotion, only in his case it seems not to be ambition. Norfolk is at court because he is a coward. We know he really agrees with More, furthermore we know that he does not like the proceedings against More and even at More’s show trial right at the end of the film, Norfolk sympathises. But crucially sympathise is all he does: because do more than sympathise and his life is forfeit. And then of course, fourthly there is Sir Thomas himself. He eventually abandons his own life for the sake of something higher: as he says to the witnesses of his execution, ‘I die his Majesty’s good servant, but God’s first’.

The film is most interested in unpacking More’s motivation for his lonely steadfast stance. We are told that he could have escaped from the axe. We are shown that he could have escaped and that many wished, as far as I can see every character bar Cromwell in the film, wishes that he would escape. So why did he do it? The first answer is that he did it out of his religious faith: and the film argues that he did say that that was why he did it. Schofield, playing More, pronounces speech after speech stating that it was faithfulness towards God that kept him constant. And yet again, we are reduced to asking the question what made More special. What was it that kept him firm to his promise when everyone else fell back? In all eras, at all times, there are men and women who seem to keep faith with an idea despite the rack and the torture chamber, despite the axe and the noose. Rather than being interested in the specific idea or sixteenth century context, the film makers are interested in the universal quality of steadfastness for an idea.

Why does More stay faithful to this idea? He tells us that an oath is ‘words we say to God’, that ‘when a man takes an oath, he is holding his own self in his own hands like water and if he opens his fingers then he needn’t hope to find himself again’. He does suggest that man’s natural business lies in escaping, but his argument is that this is an oath that he cannot take. He cannot stand up and say without betraying the essence of himself and his relationship with his creator that Henry VIII is supreme Head of the Church of England and Anne Boleyn his rightful wife. It is in part a theological question and Roger Bolt the writer leaves us in no doubt that More’s argument is theological: God has put him into this situation to test him and he will pass the test. If history forces him to be a hero and a saint, then that is what he would rather be than stand at the gates of heaven and say that he broke his vows of love to Christ. But Bolt’s twentieth century sensibility adds to this an existential angle- identity is what More talks about all the time. It is not merely hell he worries about but what he is, the fibre of his body he says to Norfolk is bound up in this moment. And should he forget that fibre, should he decide to recant, then he would lose what made him himself. Henry VIII here represents not just a threat to an immortal soul’s chance of heavenly glory, but to the soul’s chance of being itself. Tyranny threatens not merely the temporal or heavenly existence of the individual but the individual as an entity.

More preserves his self, not by speaking, but by utter and absolute silence. His refusal to speak is a refusal to define himself by categories that the outside world employs- at one point he even tells his judges that the outside world must judge him as it wishes, but his silence proves that any of their surmises could be correct. More’s silence is a refusal to be defined- but its also a withdrawal from the world of the court where words of course are used to charm, flatter and deceive about one’s own purposes. More refuses to do that, words for him are tools to reveal himself and as they are used for courtly ends, they fail a man’s inner personality. What matters to More is not that ‘I believe it’ but that ‘I believe it’, such integrity in the world of a court leads to his resignation and eventually his execution. The perfect courtier, Thomas Cromwell, knows that he cannot be believed for his word is worthless, a product of expediency in the battles of the court for power and ultimately possession. Silence is of course an apt way to proceed- the court demands answers, the court demands flattery, laughter in the appropriate places. To be silent is to reserve one’s personality, is to declare one’s individuality and to declare the solitude of one’s own personality. That is why the film shows More’s silence to aggravate the servants of tyranny. When More asks for liberty as ‘I do none harm, I say none harm, I think none harm and if this be not enough to keep a man alive, then in good faith I long not to live’ he defines a liberal creed, as opposed to tyranny which demands men speak and perform acts in pursuit of a policy. All More asserts is the liberty to retire, Cromwell and the court argue that no man can retire and that all of life is political and ultimately punishable.

It is a modern theme, but explored using a historical story and furthermore running out of historical themes. The conflict between courtliness and honesty, between Kings of heaven and Kings of earth was a real one in the sixteenth century. The film may not be historically accurate but it captures the pressure of being at court, and the dangers of iconoclasm very well. As a meditation though, it is imbued with modern ideas and modern analysis. It is about the way that More’s resistance to tyranny is an existential resistance, a resistance based around the individual’s integrity to himself. The assertion in the film goes further than anyone in the sixteenth century would have gone, the film asserts that only under a liberal regime is it possible to retain one’s individuality. Only under the law is it possible to retain one’s extra legal personality. Curiously, the argument here is that only under a liberal regime is it possible for an honest man to serve in politics because he has the liberty to abstain from supporting his state, even at the moment of highest drama. Silence is a privilege maintained by liberal governments. Ultimately under liberalism, the vultures- Cromwell, Wolsey, Rich, Norfolk will all survive- but More will not lose his life, merely his career. For More, there can be no disconnect between the private personality and the public one- one cannot sublimate the former to the latter unless with silence, and that is of course something that no tyrant will ever allow.

It is though a problem that even the opportunist feels: on his death bed we see Wolsey tell Norfolk, ‘If I had served God one half so well as I had served my King, God would not have left me here to die in this place’- Wolsey doesn’t mean the place that he dies, he means the place of dishonour that he dies within. The contrast to More’s death which he meets with serenity and the assurance that he is to go to a better place is the contrast between two victims of tyranny- the one victim who bent to the will of his King, the other who did not. The victim who bent dies though with the knowledge that he became an instrument and was discarded when the life was sucked from him. That is the fate of the courtier under tyranny: a fate that the film’s Thomas More avoids with his silence and his execution.

Tovarisch! I am not dead!

Garri Urban died in 2004, he should have died several times before. His life was extraordinary- captured by both the Nazis and the Soviets, he went through unspeakable torture, lost his first love to the Gulag, worked for Nikita Kruschev and died in suburban Britain, a doctor, one son Newsnight's diplomatic editor, the other a respected film maker. If anything can sum up the transition of the 20th Century, its awful middle and its benign end in the West, then it is the life of this man. Like so many for Garri Urban the moment of truth was the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Empire and the ending of the second world war on the continent of Europe- not as many people think an event which happened in 1945 but one that happened in 1991 with the fall of the monstrous communist tyranny (one that may be stretching out its dead hands, the siloviki, in Russia oncemore but that is another article!). In 1992 Urban decided to go back and find his file and find out why he had been arrested and what had happened- or at least that's the story that he told his son- and that's the story his son filmed to make what I saw last night at the British Film Institute.

But of course, that is not what happened. This film is about two journeys- one which takes us through the Soviet Union- the Ukraine, Moscow, Tashkent and back again and again and again- the second journey goes into the past and is conducted on film by the director Stuart Urban. The first journey supplies the structure of the film and reminds us that in the ex-Soviet Union it is still the practice to boil one's political opponents alive, to lose documents and to hide the past. The journey into the past though is more fascinating. Garri Urban was born in 1916 in the Ukraine. As a young man, he was a pugnacious womaniser, fearless and intelligent. At one point accosted by a Ukrainian mafiosi and told that the girl he was dating was not worth piss, he knocked the gangster to the ground, took out his penis and lubricated the astonished thug's face- unsurprisingly the next morning he had to flee town. But the story brings out what Garri Urban was and to an extent what he was till the day he died- a sonofabitch to use the American expression who would not give at all to anyone, no matter what.

Fleeing the Germans in the 30s he came to Russia. Then in 1940 he was captured attempting to escape from Russia, swimming across the border to Rumania. He was shot- jumped into the freezing water- they dragged his body out and a KGB agent stooped to find out whether he was dead. Garri Urban shouted 'Tovarisch (Comrade) I am not dead', punched the guy in the face and attempted to get back to the crossing- he was captured and brought to the local KGB headquarters and put in the Gulag. But incredibly he managed to escape- somehow getting hold of a KGB uniform and taking the train to Moscow- where he became a man about town and seduced the editor, model and photographer in Moscow's only fashion magazine- Noka Kapranova. But once again he was captured- tortured horribly- and placed inside the Gulag. He managed to end up though, promoted as a medical supervisor in a whole area of the Ukraine and then he escaped by dressing up as a German POW and fleeing to the allies- to freedom and to Austria in 1946. His family were all shot in the Holocaust- by the Ukrainians before the Germans arrived and in the case of his sister, after they had left. One brother survived- whose story is equally incredible- for his brother escaped the Germans and fought in the Jewish resistance to the Holocaust before leaving to become a commando in the Isreali Defence Forces, fighting the Palestinians.

Back to Garri, his journey into the past is a journey into ambiguity. He never is granted his file completely- and the Russian officer who refuses to hand it over says to his son that there are secrets about Garri in that file that would make his hair stand on end. Indeed the remnant of the file is eventually destroyed in uncertain circumstances- perhaps by Garri himself. There are various loose ends. In 1946 as she waited at a post office, Noka was given a letter from Garri by a woman telling her that he had escaped to the West and was fine- the letter was definitely from Garri but who knows how it got there. His brother implies there is another story here- perhaps a story that Garri under the hideous tortures of the KGB actually worked for the organisation briefly. There are other parts of the story which are just unknowable- how did Garri know the private number of Karimov, the Uzbek President, and why did he hate Kruschev so much as to wish the Soviet leader was kicked even in hell. The scars of torture remain on the frame of this old Jewish man- he was hideously treated- tied for hours to blocks of ice, broken and blasted. The woman he loved was taken from his life- and he never saw her again- he remarried but she did not. There is a tragedy here- moral, personal and private- that we can never guess at. Suffering- both in terms of promise betrayed, the life of a lie and tears- which is unimaginable in these days of plenty.

The most incredible moments in this film are the reunions- both of Garri and his brother and of Garri and Noka. The first we only hear discussed- but we don't need to see it- there is so much emotion in it. So much emotion in the way the two talk of each other that you get the sense of a really strong family love. When Garri talks about what happened to his mother- she died before the war- he tells her gravestone that in the Jewish cemetry over her body, thousands of Jews were massacred by the Nazis. Garri and Noka's meeting is equally emotional- this time it is the desperation of the Communist era that is at the heart of the matter. And then there is a last reunion where Garri goes back to the village in which his parents lived and finds people who knew them- people who we know and he knows may have killed them. Its again an amazing piece of cinema- because the history of Eastern Europeans and Jews is not a happy one and beneath the bonhomie there is definitely an edge about that and an emotion about the fact that these are Garri's people, this is his home. His forgiveness for them is a refutation of the cosmopolitan Jew beloved of Nazi and Soviet propaganda.

And yet, and yet I do not think we should leave the film with a message of hopelessness. For the film has a different purpose. Ultimately Noka says it better than anyone- its better to survive and to love, than to die and to hate. These two old people are truly indomitable. They have been warped and possibly betrayed themselves- but tovarisch they survived, they were alive to see the empires that wrecked their lives disappear like Ozymandias into the desert sand of history. In that sense the miracle of their lives is not that so much was lost but that so much survived- its a miracle of much more- a miracle that Europe survived the nightmare of this century- the cost though was dramatic and terrible. It cost Garri Urban his past- both in the sense that he was tortured and treated horrifically and in the sense that so much of it was bound in the ambiguity of what he had to do, which we will never know, in order to survive.

Friendship and the Internet

The internet is decidedly a rum thing. It is not just that it facilitates communication over hundreds of miles, between cultures and continents that have never communicated on this level before- or disseminates news so fast that I can beat a BBC correspondent to knowing something and know it seconds after it has happened on the other side of the world- but that it has done things to human communication that other media (with the limited exception of the telephone) could never do. It has given us not a new dimension to our personalities but a new dimension to the way that we communicate. I am writing this- and I know there are about fifty of you, maybe more, maybe less, who are reading it- you could be in Salisbury, Cirencester, Saratoga or Swaziland- I have no idea- all I know is that you are reading it and we are communicating. That's rum. It is something that would not have happened twenty years ago- I couldn't phone fifty people- I might meet fifty people in a day but they would all be in my office, probably live quite near to me and probably have quite similar backgrounds and interests (ie they have turned up in the same place as me at some point in their life). Now though- you are all reading me and I have the same relationship to you in some ways that a film star had to their audience- I know you are there, I have no idea who you are.

Even if I do know who you are the change is still there and still interesting. There are some people who I know read this blog. There are some who I know read it avidly- there are some who I have emailed, discussed issues with, chatted with via the medium of Mr Google and yet have never ever seen in my life. There are some who after having chatted to on the internet- I have met- but most of the people I know through this blog, I wouldn't know if I walked past them on the street. That is an interesting thing to think about- and it is something I want to spend some time working out- because I think that my social interraction with people I know through the internet is different and similar to that with people I do not know through the internet.

Let us start with the basics of a friendship developed over the internet. How do I know you- and how do you know me? We know each other through the written word. We have no idea of what each other looks like or sounds like. That is odd. We all work by looks in every day life. We all think x looks a bit shifty, y looks open minded- and we all rely on physical signals- picking your nose demonstrates that you do not understand modern manners, smelling of sweat demonstrates that you do not understand modern sanitation and so on. We all do it- and those signals are only used because they are useful. If you are incredibly smelly, it could be because its a hot day- but it also could be because you have not bathed for a month. The same thing goes for the way that people speak- if I drone on, its probably because I don't enjoy what I'm talking about which is a good signal that noone else in their right mind would- excitement denotes the fact that someone else might be excited. Conversations are more difficult without those little signals- the sarcastic incline of the head, the joky insult, the moment at which you are close to breaking point and sound angry- those are all impossible on the web- Google chat has as many smillies as you could imagine but cannot cover all of the uses of the human head in the permutations of the 100 or so keys on a standard computer keyboard.

So relationships formed over the internet are bound to be less communicative- they are also bound to take less time. I went out on Friday evening with a friend- and spent around 4 hours solidly chatting with her. I would never spend four hours chatting with someone on Gchat. The longest I have spent must run to half an hour. My longest ever phone conversation runs to three hours. Just think though that in the three hours phone conversation I have the tone of my interlocutor's voice as well as their words, in the four hours with someone in resturants, cafes etc I have their tone and their manner, on the screen I have nothing- potentially the odd smiley and the delay as they write their words which could be down to a computer fault, them getting a cup of tea or just pure irritation with what I last wrote. Its even worse if I am not using a chat program but communicating through the comments on a blog- who knows what reaction I'm getting and how considered it is and how I ought to understand it- and who has ever taken more than 2 minutes over a response to a blog article. Quite simply friendships online are friendships based on so much less in terms of communication. They are based on sentences rather than conversations.

That does not mean that friendship online is impossible. I personally prefer to meet people that I like offline- I then get to understand them better- but some you can't. This article was in response to someone I consider a friend, Ashok, who wrote an article over at his place on a similar theme. But I'd say its more difficult to be friends online than off. Real life friendship and internet friendship are the same beast- fundementally those who think that real life and the internet are completely separate are living in a deluded make believe world- what is different about them is the extent of the communication. When we talk online we do not have the clues that we normally rely on- the reason we rely on those clues is because they are generally useful. There is nothing wrong with having internet friends- but they are harder to understand simply because the keyboard is not as subtle an instrument as the human face.

Not looking forward to Hurricane Georgina

An interesting piece of research was just published in the Journal, Judgement and Decision Making. The authors, Jesse Chandler, Tiffany Griffin and Nicholas Sorenson of the University of Michigan came to some rather startling conclusions. Having analysed the register of Red Cross donations in a county in the midwest United States, they found that there was an increased incidence of donations if the person concerned shared an initial with the name of the disaster. Donations from people whose names began with the letter 'K' jumped 31% after Hurricane Katrina, similarly after Hurricane Mitch, donations from people whose names began with M jumped 30%. This is interesting. The researchers are unable, being good scientists to suggest why this might be so- but according to them it harmonises with many other studies done for example on the way that individuals look at historical characters- apparantly studies have found that those whose names begin with R tend to look favourably on Rasputin!

It is interesting- if not just statistical noise and researchers insist that it isn't because it exposes the irrational roots of human behaviour. Lets take an example, I decide to donate to a hurricane- Hurricane Georgina, whose impact was disastrous within the United Kingdom this year. I might think that my donation proceeded from a rational calculation- to relieve suffering- and that my choice of disaster was informed by the fact that those people were people who deserved caring for. But actually that is not the whole story. My bias towards the letter- which Georgina shares with Gracchi- may have influenced my decision- I unlike Matt Sinclair might not have been predisposed to donate to Hurricane Martha. Lots of human decisions are like this- and not all of them involve letters- but one of the interesting things I think about the current state of play in cognitive science is how much more we are learning about the irrational roots of human behaviour. Letters, numbers- we enthuse them all with character- and use them as signs. I don't think anyone quite understands why we do this- but we do- there are names as everyone I am sure recognises in their own life that just sound nice and names which do not. I am well disposed to people called Lucy and hate Agathas. This isn't based on empirical research- I don't know any Agathas- and though I know lots of nice Lucys I had the prejudice before I met them.

In a sense we have been playing this game for a long time. The 18th and 19th Century were filled with great and interesting theories about why we like what we like. Karl Marx's argument about class in part is an argument about culture- or at least became so in the hands of his 20th Century interpreters. Names for instance are very vulnerable to the fashions of class- the preponderence of Ernies as bus drivers or train drivers in the 1930s (and even in Harry Potter novels) has a lot to do with the fact that noone calls their kid Ernie today! But there are more individual things as well- the bias towards letters may be one- which we use to group the world and understand it. In truth the world were we to try to understand it rationally from the word go would just be too confusing- there is too much that is new and radically different- and so we use categories to understand it. Some of those may be rational categories- like for instance the fact that I tend not to like mustard, hence all mustard sauces are forbidden no matter how enticing. Some of them though come from deep in the psyche- I'm sure sexual preference for example influences our behaviour in ways that we are not aware of- equally I'm sure memories of our parents suppressed in our psyches do. These things of course Freud and Jung and their disciples attempted in the 20th Century to get at and still do.

So the simple suggestion that the first letter of our name influences our attitude to the news shouldn't surprise but it should remind us. Know then thyself says the poet- if only we could is the response of the learned modern! And now I'm off to donate to something beggining with G...

Youth

Youth is a short story by Joseph Conrad, the subject is not difficult to guess. Captain Charles Marlow, a frequent character in Conrad's stories, makes his first appearance in Youth telling the story of his journey to Bangkok as a young seaman in the 1890s. For most critics the most important thing about the short story is that Marlow, the narrator of the Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, makes his first appearance in the story. But actually this is a more significant piece of work than those critics would have you believe. Youth is a simpler piece of work and so often neglected but it has the merits of being both exciting and interesting, and mixing in a flavour of the difference between human generations as well as the flavour of life at sea.

The story is about the voyage of the vessel Judea from England to Bangkok. Its a comically bad voyage- the Judea is an old vessel which seems to break and splutter at the merest indication of hard weather or hard times. They fail to leave England, they fail to get to Bangkok with the vessel intact and the cargo provided for. The captain, Beard and his first mate, are both good seamen who reasons of luck have never in their long careers commanded before- Marlow describes himself as a stripling between two grandfathers. The point though is that their bad luck continues: through no fault of their own they end up on a vessel which is less than sea worthy and which creaks rather than sails. Of course the ironic touch is that for the young Marlow this is an incredible voyage- to the 'East'- it is romantic and character forming. Marlow is tested throughout by wind, wave and the crew and passes the tests with flying colours- he grows before our eyes. The book is also subtlely a celebration of the British merchant marine at the end of the nineteenth century- far more than any other Conrad I have read it argues for those hardy seamen from Liverpool- having said that it is an old man's nostalgic reminiscence of his prime- and we must always read this as Marlow's attitudes not Conrad's- Marlow recalls his crew as an embodiment of British pluck: does Conrad?

I suppose that is what is most interesting about the story- because it is ultimately a reflection on youth as it looks from old age- in that sense it has a lot in common with Ikiru where the hero beleives it is a girl's youth and not her zest which keeps her passionate. So too in this story the romance and the crew's character are portraits from age. They are dramatisations of memory- a memory no doubt scarred by many less exciting and less comical episodes- some of which Conrad was to introduce us to later on in his fiction. Marlow makes his entrance onto the stage therefore of British literature not as an embodiment of slashbuckling youth, but as an embodiment of fond old age- swigging from a bottle (we are constantly reminded of the bottle being passed round as he tells his story) whilst telling his friends of high deeds and comical mishap. In that sense the unlucky captain is both comical and tragic: he is comical because nothing he can do will ever assuage his failure, but he is tragic because no less than Marlow he is the representative of old men who have lost their opportunities, made their choices and sit around the fire at night telling stories of their own youth.