This is my review of IYUTtech Hair Styler Professional Hot Round Brush and Hair Curling Wand Styling and Massage Tool (Black).
Compact for travel but does take longer to heat up than I expected – then have to be careful not to scorch hair because too hot. I would prefer a styler which emits hot air, but could not find this feature in a heated travel brush.
3 Stars
This is my review of Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s by Anne Sebba.
Although much has been written about France under German occupation in the 1940s, “Les Parisiennes” takes a fresh angle on how women in particular were affected, describing the part they played in resistance, collaboration, or simply “getting on with life”.
The book is thoroughly researched with a six page “cast of characters” at the front, detailed notes on each chapter and an extensive bibliography at the end. However, I felt bludgeoned by the unrelenting spate of prose, since the basically chronological approach not only flits breathlessly between characters, but keeps digressing into a flood of often gossipy and gushing details or condensed potted biographies which seem of only marginal relevance.
Perhaps inevitably in view of the author’s interest in fashion, there is a clear preoccupation with the wealthy and glamorous who could afford to patronise the fashion houses which managed to flourish under Nazi rule. I suppose it is mildly interesting that gas mask holders were made into fashion items (but for how many women?) or that designer clothes had to be purchased under a “couture ration card” system with Balenciaga forced to close for exceeding the quota of seventy-five outfits (a year?) imposed to ration the amount of fabric used. It is made to sound like “a good thing” that of the 20,000 passes issued to attend fashion shows during the Occupation, only 200 were given to the wives of German officers, but weren’t the French women who attended to some extent collaborating? There is too much emphasis on people having a good time when for others basic food was in short supply and Jews were being dragged off by French police to the Vel d’Hiv (Vélodrome d’Hiver) en route for concentration camps. Also, can one really believe the example of so called “refugee-chic” in the tale of a woman fleeing from the fall of Paris who left her vehicle in search of petrol to remove the nail varnish which did not match the colour of her hat? Wouldn’t she have worried more about the smell and risk of catching fire?
The effect of this emphasis on celebrities and the privileged, is to trivialise events and create a sense of unease over being compromised oneself as a reader. In just one paragraph, we are told how “by the end of the forties”, the Marshall Plan had improved conditions, but not exactly how, except that a New Yorker journalist’s “Parisian friends had stopped griping about the black market (which they could presumably afford).. but are back to discussing passionately….the heady mysteries of La Grande Cuisine which, next to women, has always been their favourite topic of conversation”. The paragraph ends as follows. “Not only were the Parisians eating well again, but Wallis, Duchess of Windsor and her friends were buying jewels and couture clothes once more.”
If this book is best read by “dipping in and out”, there is the danger of missing some of the best passages, as in the chapter “Paris Returns” on the immediate aftermath of war, which actually includes some analysis, such as whether the death penalty was too harsh for the anti-semitic literary critic Brassilach (who gets very little mention elsewhere in the book, much less than Wallis Simpson). Simone De Beauvoir supported the punishment, perhaps swayed by De Gaulle’s view that “in literature as in everything, talent confers responsibility” but Anne Sebba points out with uncharacteristic tartness that De Beauvoir was also complicit, having claimed to be an anti-Nazi whilst eating well because her lover’s mother Jean-Paul Sartre took pains to obtain the best black-market foods. There is effective coverage on the practical problems of returning from the hell of the concentration camps and the guilt of those who came back alive: as a memoir recalled seventy years later, “”to survive it was necessary to destroy memory”. The author also considers the complicated relationship between the women who risked their lives in the resistance and were later rewarded as heroines, and those like the equally courageous Simone Veil who felt great bitterness over the lack of recognition of her suffering as a victim, deported to the camps.
Yet overall I was disappointed by the oppressive weight of excessive detail and too often superficial approach to a potentially fascinating subject matter – but the photographs are evocative.
3 Stars
This is my review of Happy End [DVD].
One often hears of the minutes if not hours of film discarded on the cutting room floor to extract the essence of what the director aims to convey. In this case, it is as if Michael Haneke has perversely challenged us to make sense of a film largely constructed from the shots which would normally be edited out. We hear about a character taking an overdose, crashing a car, even dying, but rarely witness these dramatic incidents. Often we do not realise that we have seen a significant event until its effect becomes apparent later. The scenes of glacial slowness, require great concentration, not only because they are mostly in French with subtitles, but also because one is continually trying not to miss the vital piece of action which may in fact not occur in a situation where basically not much is happening.
Despite its bleak theme, which appears to be the director’s stock in trade, the ironically-titled “Happy Ending” is leavened by moments of dark humour and has the ingredients for a gripping and moving psychological study of how we may damage each other. It involves the Calais–based Laurent family, their wealth made from the construction industry and other businesses, who all follow the bourgeois conventions of polite society in public, but seem incapable of real warmth, natural affection and normal emotion in private. They live out their dysfunctional relationships against the background of the impoverished black migrants who haunt the port town.
We initially experience their formal bourgeois life from the viewpoint of the approaching teen-age Eve Laurent who receives a somewhat reluctant welcome when she comes to stay in the extended family home with her father Edward, after her mother, his ex-wife, takes a lethal overdose of antidepressants. Eve appears outwardly to be an innocent, sensitive young girl, but from the outset there are signs of a troubling darker side to her character, leading one to speculate to what extent she may have been damaged by her self-absorbed parents’ neglect, or possibly inherited some of the family’s less appealing personality traits.
There is a cast to raise expectations high, with Jean-Louis Trintignant in the role of patriarch sinking into senility, from which he seeks to escape through suicide – unless he can find someone prepared to put him out of his misery– and Isabelle Huppert as his ambitious daughter Anne who is romantically involved with her British lawyer, played by Toby Jones. Anne’s important business deals are undermined by a serious accident on a building site for which her son Pierre may be to blame. Rejecting his mother’s love and her plans for him to take over the business, are his drunken outbursts due more to his sense of inadequacy than to a genuine anger over his family’s lack of concern for the poor as anything other than a source of cheap domestic labour?
For me the film does not work partly because it is like a single-phrase tune. As indicated already, the work is so fragmented, with long shots and overlong, disjointed, initially incomprehensible scenes and sociopathic characters, that I rarely felt engaged, was often frankly bored, only continuing to watch in the forlorn hope of an effective denouement which I never expected to occur.
3 Stars
This is my review of Howards End – TV Mini Series [DVD] [2017].
In what was to prove the end of an idyllic period for the leisured English middle classes just before the outbreak of World War One, E M Forster captures the tensions and lack of “meeting of minds” between the intellectual Schlegels, idealistic within their cocoon of unconscious privilege, who live comfortably on inherited money, and the much wealthier, pragmatic, materialistic Wilcoxes who have built a fortune “in trade” and have no compunction about “keeping the workers in their place”. Through a chance meeting of the Schlegel siblings with the bookish, music-loving clerk Leonard Bast, Forster explores the class divide of the early 1900s. Apart from his prickly dignity and the sense of obligation to the lover who is holding him back, we are never shown exactly what is going on in Leonard’s mind, although perhaps it is more effective for us only to see him from the viewpoint of the Schlegel sisters, keen to help him but not knowing how.
Some reviewers have dismissed this serialisation as a picture post card/chocolate box dumbing down primarily intended as a BBC export which will also boost the tourist trade. I admit that the sunlit green English countryside, vistas of grassy expanses above white Dorset cliffs against a backdrop of cloudless blue skies and calm blue seas are at times almost implausibly idyllic, together with an improbably clean white-stuccoed London, for the wealthy at least. Likewise, the exquisite attention to Edwardian detail is fascinating, although the clothes are in general too evidently well-fitting and brand new to be quite convincing. I also found unnecessary and slightly irritating the “political correctness” of a multi-racial cast which does not reflect accurately either Forster’s book or the reality of the society he was portraying.
None of this bothers me unduly, since the production seems true to the spirit of the novel, retaining the original dialogue, so that it sometimes seems stilted but is often sharp and expressive. Howard’s End itself appearing in the form of a rambling, characterful red brick dwelling surrounded by greenery and approached by a lane with magnificent overarching trees. The acting is excellent, although Michael Macfadyen seems too young a forty-something in the role of the patriarch Mr. Wilcox who falls for Margaret Schlegel, the serious-minded elder sister who has devoted herself to her orphaned siblings to the point of risking becoming an old maid. Not surprising then that she seeks “a real man” in the form of Mr Wilcox, even though the two are clearly fundamentally different in their attitude to life. The main characters, at least on the “middle class” side, are well developed. Margaret’s younger sister Helen, impetuous with a hint of instability, plays the role of the character prepared to challenge the system, but unequipped to cope unaided when “it comes to the crunch”.. Brother Tibby provides a further contrast as the hypochondriac, wimpish bookworm cosseted by his sisters, who do not seem to resent the fact that, being the male child, he is the one to go Oxford.
The story proceeds at a slow, almost dreamlike pace, but with moments of humour and a sense of real connection between the characters. The dramatic build up in the final episode seems too rapid, and somewhat disjointed, although this may reflect the structure of the original novel. It seems to me that the story is an intriguing family drama, without providing much profound insight, but I would need to reread the novel to decide whether the short-coming lies with Forster of the film-makers.
Although everyone may be a little wiser at the end, the wry truth remains that in any crisis the poor and the underdogs will tend to be the ones who lose out, but hints of the approaching war suggest that the idyll of Howard’s End may not last.
4 Stars
This is my review of The Florida Project [DVD].
Lively, precocious Moonee runs wild with her small group of friends around the cheap motels where they all live encircled by fast roads, wasteland, the garish colours of grotesque orange- and witch-shaped cafes, not to mention a noisy helicopter pad, all on the fringes of the Florida Walt Disney fantasy land. It is an ugly, urbanised, artificial but sun-drenched world, with occasional flashes of natural beauty in a sunset, or a group of birds.
As the children’s freewheeling mischief leads to more risky escapades, one fears for their safety. Moonee’s immature young mother Halley, foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, often high on drugs, more than a little crazy as she swings between uninhibited self-expression and violent outbursts when thwarted, also arouses concerns for Moonee’s future. As Hailey resorts to petty crime to pay her rent, it is clear that the little girl’s carefree world cannot last much longer.
This film conveys a child’s sense of joy in living, curiosity over every new experience, the ability to be happy with very little. One can see that Moonee risks being ruined by a lack of boundaries, frequently insufferable, noisy, mouthy, defiant and destructive, yet also with a strong sense of justice, loyal and generous to friends, acutely aware of the world around her although often unable to make sense of it. The moments of bonding with the free-spirited Halley who is more like a big sister than a mother are quite moving. Although clearly “unfit” to be a parent, Halley loves her daughter – too immature and self-absorbed to see how she is neglecting Moonee, she does not appear to consider giving the child up as a solution to ease her penniless state, but rather, being a child at heart herself, she knows how to create on a shoestring (or by stolen means) the magical experiences Moonee will never forget like making wishes outdoors at midnight as fireworks explode over Disney World.
The acting is generally excellent, from the children, Halley’s long-suffering friend and some of the real-life police and social workers in the cast, to William Dafoe in the role of the harassed caretaker who develops a soft spot for the appealing child and feckless young mother. The performance in this role by Bria Vinaite, the much-tatooed free-spirited first-time actress,who certainly looks the part, is a little too frenetic and exaggerated at times, which began to grate on me. Although it is sometimes hard to grasp the American drawl, some amusing one-liners come through clearly and it is generally pretty clear what is going on, except I did not understand that the gaudy wristbands Hallee was trying to sell were valuable passes to Disney World. The pace drags somewhat with repetitive scenes in the middle, although this may be intentional to reflect the reality of a child’s life. Despite building up in the end to a dramatic climax with a director who knows when to stop – if a little fancifully -, the film would have benefitted from sharper editing.
Recommended overall for its mix of humour and pathos in a realistic portrayal of children’s resilience, ability to survive and live joyfully against the odds.
4 Stars
This is my review of Love in a Cold Climate (Penguin Modern Classics) by Nancy Mitford.
Nancy Mitford applied a sharp wit and first-hand experience of eccentric aristocrats to this well-known parody of upper class life. Palmed off on upper class aunts and uncles who have “relieved” her “divorced parents of the boredom and the burden of bringing up a child”, narrator Fanny recalls the quirky conversations and unperceived bubble of inter-war privilege in which they float She is preoccupied with the lovely Polly, daughter of the caricature of an earl, Lord Montdore, who, in his ageing ineffectiveness “might just as well have been made of wonderful old cardboard, and his wife, whose “worldly greed and snobbishness, her terrible relentless rudeness..formed the subject of many a legendary tale”. Expected to make a great marriage, Polly’s total lack of interest in any eligible suitors puzzles Fanny and drives Lady Montdore to despair which turns to rage when she discovers the true object of her daughter’s affection.
Many readers still appear to find this book highly entertaining, a harmless piece of escapism, although it is likely to seem dated to younger readers. Opinions will differ as to what is most amusing in Fanny’s inexhaustible gushing flow. I laughed over the ludicrous digression into “the Chubb Fuddler”. “He came. He walked along the river bank, and sowed upon its waters some magic seed, which soon bore magic fruit, for up to the surface, flapping swooning, fainting, choking, thoroughly and undoubtedly fuddled, came hundreds upon hundreds of chubb, The entire male population of the village… fell upon the fish….and the contents were taken off to be used as manure for cottage gardens or chubb pie, according to taste”.
There is a gossipy bitchiness which I disliked, such as the description of Lady Montdore’s curtsies which “owing to the solid quality of her frame, did not recall the graceful movement of wheat before the wind” as she “scrambled down like a camel, rising again backside foremost like a cow, a strange performance….her knees crackled like revolver shots but her smile was heavenly”. Descriptions of the formal socialising are quite tedious as it may well have been in reality, as when, for instance, everyone waits for the guests of honour at a dinner party, “a very grand Sir and Ma’am indeed” ,which can only be trite code for royalty.
In the current climate of concern over sexual harassment, some passages may reflect Nancy Mitford’s times, but arouse a sense of unease: it seems to be common knowledge that Polly’s uncle, “the Lecherous Lecturer” preys on his young female relatives, but everyone turns a blind eye. Nancy’s precocious cousin Jassy says, “The fascinating thing was that after the lecture he gave us a foretaste of sex, think what a thrill. He took Linda up on to the roof and did all sorts of blissful things to her, at least, she could easily see how it would be blissful with anybody except the lecturer. And I got some great sexy pinches as he passed the nursery landing.”
Many of the characters seem to be caricatures of the author’s relatives and acquaintances, living in a world of froth, with no real emotion beneath brittle, articulate facades as they drift to an abrupt, contrived and somewhat unsatisfactory ending.. The most extreme example of this is the male heir to Lord Montdore’s Hampton property, the Canadian Cedric, who hales from Nova Scotia –clearly Nancy Mitford’s idea of the back of beyond, who turns out to be a highly manipulative, flamboyant gay, apparently modelled on the famously decadent socialite Stephen Tennant, one of the “Bright Young Things” along with the Mitford sisters.
Obliged to finish this for a book group, I was resentful over the time diverted from a more worthwhile read. In yet another case of truth being better than fiction, I would have preferred an intriguing biography of the Mitfords and their circle.
3 Stars
This is my review of Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017 by Ian Black.
This is a timely explanation of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the centenary year of the infamous glib Balfour Declaration in which the foreign secretary of what was then a major imperial power casually and irresponsibly promised the clearly irreconcilable goals of both establishing Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people and protecting from adverse resultant effects the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine and Jews living in any other country.
With chapters defined by time periods from the arrival of the first Jewish settlers fleeing Russian pogroms in 1882, Ian Black presents the facts systematically up to the impasse with continual outbursts of violence in 2017, with “much of the world” favouring an independent state for the Palestinian people “alongside a secure and recognised Israel”, the conundrum being that this can only be accepted widely within the 1967 borders all but erased by decades of “illegal” Israeli settlements.
Perhaps because journalist author Ian Black is now a university senior fellow, he has felt the need for an academic approach, presenting minute detail backed by sources. The book is therefore very informative and often gripping because the facts are so telling, but it is heavy going at times by reason of the plethora of Arab and Israeli names, organisations, and italicised terms. All this gives a strong sense of authenticity and objectivity, but I could have done with glossaries of the above, plus a time-line of key events for quick reference and a few more maps embedded at various points to clarify various incidents – particularly since the index is of limited use in “checking back” on points .
Black leaves it to the reader to form her or his own judgements. In the welter of detail, certain themes recur: the weakening effects of poor leadership, corruption and divisions within Palestinian resistance; Arafat’s Fatah versus the more militant Hamas, with the West Bank Palestinian Authority at times co-operating with the Israeli defence forces to track down Hamas terrorists, their fanaticism often fuelled from an upbringing in the grim Gaza Strip. Similarly, a lack of cohesion between neighbouring Arab countries has prevented an effective response to the iron determination of the Israelis to obtain their ends with ruthless risk-taking in hunting down proactive opponents. The vicious cycle of Israeli intrusive security checks and time-wasting controls on movement in the occupied territories and inexorable defiant construction of new settlements is the inevitable response to the acts of violence by a democratically-supported Hamas and Hizbullah.
It is unclear that the conflict could have been averted completely, but the so-called Great Powers were slow to grasp the problem, with France and Britain more concerned over carving up the Middle East, and a general lack of understanding and respect for Arab culture. Sympathy with the Jews or a sense of guilt over the Holocaust made it hard for influential powers to take a firm line with the Israelis assuming they wished to do so. Even Obama, who was probably the US President keenest to obtain more justice for the Palestinians, was unsuccessful in making progress, and in view of the outcome of recent intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq one has to ask whether military action to enforce a fair settlement would have made matters even worse.
Even an already well-informed reader will find something new of interest. I was shocked by the “Olympian disdain” or arrogance with which Balfour told Curzon that “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad,…. is of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”. Although I was surprised by how little Black writes about the great wall of separation – up to thirty feet of concrete in height and often constructed to fit round new illegal settlements, I had not realised that many of the latter are accessed by new roads and tunnels for use by Israelis only, reinforced the growing situation of an apartheid between western-style modern settlements in West Bank territory, highly subsidised to increase their attractiveness, and the squalid and deprived Arab communities which few Israelis get to experience firsthand. The Gaza Strip is described as an “open-air prison” where ironically some welcome the recent Israeli siege as a “blessing in disguise” which has boosted a billion dollar annual trade ranging from looted rocket launchers to wedding dresses passing through tunnels from Eqypt – a “blockade-busting” lifeline which sustains the rule by Hamas.
I was struck by the argument that it may now be too late to achieve a two state solution, since Netanyahu’s laws, edicts and funding of new settlements, often cunningly clustered to fragment Palestinian territory or occupy the more fertile land needed for economic viability, have increased the reality of “one state for two peoples, first and second class”. Yet a single state presents many practical problems: not only would Israel lose its distinctiveness and raison d’être as the Jewish nation state, but high birthrates could lead to a clear Arab majority within two decades, with the risk of “endless civil war” over say, the distribution of land or the “right to return” for those on both sides. So, at the end of a fascinating read one is left with a sense of anger over injustice, and despair over future prospects.
4 Stars
This is my review of Lonely Planet New Zealand’s South Island Road Trips (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet,Brett Atkinson,Sarah Bennett,Peter Dragicevich,Lee Slater.
Designed to whet the appetite with plentiful photos in colour and clear maps to provide some easily-grasped “on a plate” itineraries for those who for whatever reason want a trip planned for them, this contrasts with the “usual formula” for “Lonely Planet” guides: tremendously detailed, largely black-and-white with few illustrations, for serious-minded independent travellers who probably already have a plan of where they want to go.
The breezy style is mildly irritating: Queenstown is introduced as “a small town with a big attitude” which “goes for gold with an utterly sublime setting” on Lake Wakatipu, “ripe for rubbernecking, so keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel”. There are some useful street maps (once you get there!) of, for instance Te Anau or Central Nelson, snippets of good advice e.g. on leaving Te Anau by 8.00 to avoid heavy coach traffic to Milford Sound.. Yet the structure seems quite repetitive and therefore wasteful of space: introducing the four road trips, featuring main South Island highlights (Milford Sound, Kaikoura for whale-watching and Queenstown, then main cities, Queenstown again and Christchurch), then outlining each trip, finally covering each one in more detail but still quite skimpy as regards suggested activities and places to stay.
I question the rationale for the choice of road trips:
1. Sunshine Coast 4-7 day circular drive in vicinity of Picton, Nelson and Abel Tasman National Park on north coast
2. Kaikoura Coast 3-4 days linear route between Picton and Christchurch
3. Southern Alps Circuit 12-14 days circular drive from Christchurch via Arthur’s Pass, Fox Glacier, Queenstown with detour to Mount Cook
4. Milford Sound Majesty 3 – 4 days linear return trip from Christchurch via Te Anau to Milford Sound for boat trip
I do not recall reading this in the book, but starting from Christchurch, these four trips could be combined into a grand 4 week tour of the South Island.
I don’t understand why a few more features were not flagged up with a fuller index, and the inclusion of more itineraries e.g. to cover Dunedin and the Catlins Conservation Area in the south, or the Punakaiki Pancake Rocks on the west coast.
The guide in general seems over-simplified, fragmented and less informative than it could have been in the space provided.
2 Stars
This is my review of Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck.
In the original German of “Gehen, ging, gegangen” the title conveys more effectively the pathos and irony of rootless migrants having to learn the niceties of German grammar in a society putting them under pressure to move on, preferably to a place where ironically their German will not be required.
Living alone since his wife’s death, clinging to routine but at a loss in the recent retirement from his long-held post as a professor in Berlin, introspective Richard becomes aware of the growing number of African migrants squatting in the city. When some are evicted from a square, he obtains permission to interview them, reading several books on refugees to help him devise the questions.. What seems at first like an academic’s automatic response of viewing them as a topic for study, soon grows into a sense of empathy with the refugees, which it seems to be the author’s prime aim to arouse in readers as well.
As Richard’s life becomes more enmeshed with those of the migrants, he realises that actions which cost him little can transform lives. In return, puzzled by his decision never to have children, some refugees reciprocate by including him in the strong sense of friendship and community which is all they have. Richard rails against the rigid bureaucracy: the crazy world in which the refugees are not permitted to work, even in areas of skilled work where there is a labour shortage, and therefore doomed to become a burden to society, the motivation which led them to escape their past life sinking into apathy or boiling into rage.
Jenny Erpenbeck is keen to show the arbitrary nature of the boundaries which divide us. For a boy who has grown up in the Sahara, the borders drawn by Europeans are “perfectly straight lines” with no relevance. During his family’s wartime flight from Silesia to resettle in Germany, Richard himself was only saved from being permanently separated from his mother by the kindness of a vigilant Russian soldier. “What would have become of the infant if the train had pulled out of the station two minutes earlier?” He then lived for decades on the communist side of the Berlin Wall, so that post-unification, he still gets lost on trips to the still unfamiliar west side.
In a key passage, which also highlights the translator’s skills, Richard muses how to him and his friends, “the sense that all existing order is vulnerable to reversal..has always seemed perfectly natural, maybe because of their postwar childhoods, or else it was witnessing the fragility of the Socialist system under which they’d live most of their lives and that collapsed within a matter of weeks”. Have “long years of peacetime” made politicians believe that we have reached an “end of history” status quo which has to be protected from change by violence? Has growing up in “untroubled circumstances” distanced ordinary people so far from the suffering of those in war-torn lands that they are afflicted with a sort of “emotional anemia”? Must living in peace – so fervently wished for throughout human history and yet enjoyed in only a few parts of the world – inevitably result in refusing to share it with those seeking refuge, defending it instead so aggressively that it almost looks like war?”
The author has drawn on the experiences of real-life refugees, although one cannot know to what extent she has altered them. In what often seems quite a disjointed approach, it is hard to keep the refugees in mind as distinct characters and engage with them. The text also gets bogged down at times in over-detailed explanations of the various, probably no longer applicable, regulations imposed. I wondered at times if the book would have been more effective if written as a straightforward account and analysis of actual events. As it is, the novel gives scope for artistic licence, creating the stream of consciousness in Richard’s head, leavening the grimness with wry humour and occasional diversions into magic realism. At times, Richard recedes as a character, but the book clearly begins and ends with him, understanding and developing himself more as an individual through his encounters with the refugees.
This is an original book full of insights, which repays a second reading to absorb all the ideas. However, although in many ways profound, it is also quite subjective, conveniently ignoring “other sides of the question”, such as the long-term implications of very high levels of unrestrained migration, and the need to grasp the nettle of managing it in some way.
4 Stars
This is my review of Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee: Winner of the Orwell Prize by John Bew.
This prize-winning biography achieves the challenging task of marshalling a mountain of research into an absorbing analytical account of the man who presided over the first majority Labour government in the UK. Criticised, like the Blair period, for failing to seize the opportunity for radical change, Attlee’s pragmatic approach in fact changed a good deal: introduction of the NHS together with national insurance and welfare systems, the more controversial nationalisation of essential industries, and overseas, the dismantling of the British Empire to be replaced by a Commonwealth, with India one of the first to gain an independence, sadly marred by bloodshed.
Clement Attlee was a man of contrasts. Public-school and Oxford educated, he traded a career in law for charity work with deprived boys in London’s East End, which led him to join the nascent Labour Party as a means of creating a fairer society. Mocked as an “invisible man”, likened to a rabbit or one of the “three blind mice”, even called “the Arch-Mediocrity” by the sharp-tongued Bevan, Attlee proved a courageous officer in the First World War, and quietly tenacious, chipped away patiently at problems in civilian life, prompting Churchill to describe him as a “lion-hearted limpet”. Although often painfully shy when thrust into the limelight, lacking in ego and refusing to promote himself so that a retirement speech and media interview on his life would be remembered mainly for their brevity, he was in fact at ease with himself, and so able to establish a rapport with both a mineworker’s union leader and King George VI. Ironically, the man who hated pomposity ended up accepting a hereditary earldom. Although it was feared he would be a liability in general elections, with his reedy voice and mechanical delivery of speeches, his authenticity proved popular with the general public, who liked his values, but not his continual reminders of the need to be “good citizens” and restrict consumption so that Britain could meet its obligations. Having been brought up to revere the British Empire, he was one of the first to call for the granting of Independence to India, and was keen to accept “Red China” as a legitimate power before America was prepared to do so. Despite his vision of achieving a lasting peace through an effective United Nations, with an end to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, in the end he resorted to their development in order to protect the country against the threat of Communism. Very questionably, this was done covertly, to avert a violent outcry from the Labour left wing.
The history of the Labour movement which forms the background to this fascinating biography reminds us of how many of its current dilemmas are far from new. It is impossible to avoid making parallels with today as one reads about Attlee under attack from the left wing intellectuals in his party for his failure to attack the establishment, or criticised more widely for accepting huge loans from the US because of the crippling strings attached, or feeling obliged to enter into a costly war the country could not afford because of the need to show solidarity with the US over Korea. Likewise, there was his refusal to cooperate with west European states over the Schumann Plan to share coal and steel (forerunner of the EU) because he judged it incompatible with freedom to plan the UK economy. Another example was his inability to protect the Palestinians, as promised in the Balfour Agreement, because of a powerful US support for Jewish migration to the homeland of Israel.
With the current all-pervading media hype and obsession with celebrity, it would seem even less likely than before for such a man as Attlee to gain and retain power for so long. He may have been a Victorian at heart, puzzled by his grandchildren’s addiction to television, yet his unassuming dedication, based on a thoughtful vision of the world developed through years of observation, reading and reflection, still evokes admiration after half a century, and a regret that we do not have more politicians with his mix of altruistic vision, determination yet moderation.
5 Stars
Antenna Reviews 