Spring forward! Sunday round-up 31 March 2024 (BST edition)

Summertime is here, in one sense, and with it, an hour earlier, some observations and recommendations from the past week

I have always slightly pooh-poohed seasonal affective disorder (SAD) on the grounds that, like many conditions nowadays, it is an example of pathologising a normal element of the human condition: we all prefer sunshine and bright mornings. That notwithstanding, God, I am glad to have a little more light further into the evenings this year. For various reasons, some of which I can’t identify, 2024 has felt like hard going so far, and I’m hoping that British summer time will kickstart the sense of wellbeing and optimism.

To those of you who observe, I hope Easter is proving everything you want and need. As for the rest of you, happy egg-laying bunny weekend.

Factoids

1. There is no extant copy of “the Schlieffen Plan”. You know the basics: Field Marshal Alfred Graf von Schlieffen was chief of the German Great General Staff from 1891 to 1906, and in the last years of his tenure, he devised a plan for Germany to deliver a short, devastating military blow to France which involved not a frontal assault across the Franco-German border but a sweep through the neutral Netherlands and Belgium to outflank French forces. In 1905, he wrote a memorandum called War against France, which encapsulates the theory and strategy we think of as the Schlieffen Plan, but, in line with German military practice, it was not a blueprint for operations. It rested on a number of assumptions about the reactions of other states, and did not shy away from that uncertainty. In addition, it was revised by Schlieffen’s successor, Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke (known as “Moltke the Younger” to distinguish him from his uncle; the Kaiser teasingly called him “Gloomy Julius”), who headed the Great General Staff from 1906 to 1914. Overall, the German theory of war was that the high command set out broad objectives, but couched flexibly, and generals understood that decisions would be taken further down the chain by commanders with a high degree of autonomy and self-confidence. So there was, in a sense, no “Schlieffen Plan”, more a broad strategy “owned” by the chief of the Great General Staff, but it was a high-level document rather than detailed dispositions and instructions.

2. Everyone knows that the word “bedlam”, to mean chaos and disorder, derives from the name of an asylum in London. You may even know that it was the Bethlem Royal Hospital, or rather it still is, as the institution continues, a psychiatric facility in Beckenham. Its role is now largely as a research centre for psychiatric medicine, though it has some patient services like the Anxiety Disorder Residential Unit and low and medium-security wards. It has come a long way since the insanitary and horrific lunatic asylum of the mid-18th century which charged the public a fee to view the patients, or inmates.

3. In fact the Bethlem Royal Hospital has come a long way geographically as well as clinically and ethically. It is a very old foundation: the Priory of the New Order of Our Lady of Bethlehem was founded in 1247 in Bishopsgate, in what is now the south-east corner of Liverpool Street station. It was the brainchild of an Italian cleric called Goffredo de Prefetti, at the time bishop-elect of Bethlehem, with property donated by aldermen from the City of London, but very little is known of the Bethlehemites for whom it was established. It served as an almshouse in its early days, in part collecting money for military operations in the Holy Land. The prior, canons and inmates were all required to wear a star, the badge of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, on their cloaks.

4. The hospital moved for the first time in the 17th century. In 1674, the Court of Governors lamented that “the Hospitall House of Bethlem is very olde, weake & ruinous and to[o] small and streight for keepeing the greater numb[e]r of lunaticks therein att p[re]sent”, so between 1675 and 1676, a new building designed by the City Surveyor, natural philosopher Robert Hooke, was constructed at Moorfields, just north of the boundary of the City and one of the largest open spaces in London. The new hospital was enormous, 500 feet wide and 40 feet deep with a surrounding wall which rose from eight to 14 feet in height.

5. Within not much more than a century, Hooke’s new hospital was falling apart. In 1810, the governors agreed an exchange with the City of London of their site for one in St George’s Fields, Southwark, 12 acres of swamp-like land in an overcrowded and industrialised south London area. Between 1812 and 1815 a new building arose to an austere neoclassical design by James Lewis: today the central portion is the Imperial War Museum. Finally, in 1930, the hospital relocated again to its current location on the site of Monks Orchard House.

6. Today is Easter Sunday, the day on which Christ rose from the dead, the third day of Easter following his crucifixion on Good Friday. This is the most important day in the liturgical year, and it was also, for mediaeval and early modern Christians, the one day (at least) on which they were expected to take Holy Communion. This duty had been laid down formally by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and reiterated in 1551 by the Council of Trent.

7. At that time, ordinary Roman Catholics would only receive Communion in one kind, that is, they would be given the bread, the body of Christ, but not the wine, His blood. Only the priests would take both parts of the ceremony. Theologically, however, this was not second-best: Christ was really present in both the bread and the wine, and there was nothing lacking in taking Communion in one kind.

8. Easter is a moveable feast rather than falling on a fixed date. The First Council of Nicaea in AD 325 stipulated that it should be observed on the same date everywhere, and should be independent of the Jewish liturgical calendar; the Venerable Bede, in the seventh century, fixed Easter to the Sunday falling in the seven-day period from the 14th to the 20th of its lunar month, according to an 84-year cycle. However, in the 1920s, Parliament decided to intervene in this complicated and confusing process, and the Easter Act 1928 determined that Easter Sunday should fall on the Sunday following the second Saturday in April.

9. There was one hitch in this elegant simplicity. For the provisions of Easter Act 1928 to come into effect, both Houses must pass a resolution which would then trigger a commencement order by Order in Council. A draft of that order must be submitted to Parliament and “regard shall be had to any opinion officially expressed by any Church or other Christian body”. The order has never been made, and so, as it approaches its centenary on the statute book, the Easter Act 1928 has yet to come into force.

10. I am gently tending a long read on antisemitism in Britain, taking into account the broad historical view, but here (especially on Easter Sunday?) here is not the place for a long consideration of the issue. However, I read a striking statistic in an article from The Times of Israel about the role of Keith Joseph in what we think of as “Thatcherism”: in 1966, there were 38 Jewish Members of Parliament on the Labour side of the House of Commons, while there were only two Jewish Conservatives: Sir Keith Joseph (Leeds North East) and Sir Henry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid (Walsall South). Both were Old Harrovian Oxford-educated second baronets who had been mentioned in despatches during the Second World War. (For more political Judaica, see Joe Lieberman, below.)

I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television (Gore Vidal)

1. “Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods”: this hour-long portrait of a company of Ukrainian infantry, filmed by the soldiers themselves, is a horrifying but gripping insight into the nature of the conflict in Ukraine. It’s immediate and visceral, shocking in its rough brutality, but there is also a detachment too, a distancing from reality created by the “first-person views” of drones and their inherent arcade-game nature. This is modern warfare in Europe: driven by technology, but fought by men crouched in holes in the ground their great-grandfathers would have recognised in the Brusilov offensive. If you have any interest in international affairs, this is essential and compelling viewing.

2. “The Secret Army”: if you have any interest in the history of Ireland, this is simply unmissable. The story is almost incredible: in 1972, at the height of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA decided to allow an America writer, John Bowyer Bell, to film its members and activities at extraordinarily close quarters and to an extraordinary extent. Bell had been researching and writing about the history of Ireland and the Republican movement since the mid-1960s, and had written a ground-breaking study of the IRA, The Secret Army, in 1970. The film, candid beyond imagination, disappeared shortly after completion, but this year it was found and this documentary by BBC reporter Darragh MacIntyre is its story. An absorbing tale, and worth remembering that 1972, when the original film was made, was the bloodiest year of all the Troubles, with 479 people, including 130 British soldiers, killed and 4,876 injured.

3. “Joe Lieberman: Reflections on a Career in Public Office”: it was announced on Thursday that Joe Lieberman, senator for Connecticut from 1989 to 2013 and Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 2000 running with Al Gore, had died following complications from a fall. Looking back, Lieberman was an odd contradiction by today’s standards He took some very controversial positions: backed the long-shot Governor Howard Dean of Vermont for the Democratic nomination in 2004, broke with his party over Iraq in 2007 and campaigned for Republican John McCain for the presidency in 2008, then held his counsel in 2012 before supporting orthodox choices Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. In person, here interviewed by Bill Kristol, he is a calm, low-temperature presence, never raising his voice. A surprise choice as running mate by Gore, he was the first Jewish politician on a major party’s presidential ticket, which is extraordinary in some ways and unsurprising in others. Interesting, thoughtful, honest, dedicated man. Worth watching.

4. “Putin’s ISIS problem”: Times Radio’s coverage of foreign affairs is consistently excellent, and they’ve provided some of the best insights into the war in Ukraine and the state of Russia in general, from a first-rate roster of experts. This week, Manveen Rana talked to Mark Galeotti about the threat that Islamic State poses to Russia and Putin’s régime: given the understandable immediate focus on the war in Ukraine, we can forget that Russia has made a lot of adversaries over the years, especially in the Muslim populations to its south. The wars in Chechyna in 1994-96 and 1999-2009 were marked by extraordinary brutality which mixed with Islamic extremism to form a toxic cocktail; Russian security forces regularly and systematically carried out appalling crimes against humanity, and the corrosive legacy will have a very long existence. The idea, therefore, that last weekend’s terrorist attack in Moscow was carried out by Islamic State—Khorasan Province is not remotely implausible. This is a well-informed and elegant primer on the issue, and what the implications might be for Putin.

5. “The Rise of the Nazis—The Downfall”: BBC4 is repeating the excellent third series of the Rise of the Nazis cycle, dealing with the collapse of the Third Reich in the first months of 1945. Many will be familiar with the basic framework, but the documentary is brilliantly made, with a well-chosen cast of talking heads, and the disintegration of Adolf Hitler’s 1,000-year dream only 12 years after he came to power is a mesmerising story which captures almost every aspect of human nature. It’s easy to be stunned and disconcerted by the brutality, the enormity and the sheer waste of lives which the final months of the Second World War witnessed; between 1 January and 30 April 1945, the German armed forces lost 265,000 killed and more than a million missing or captured. That scale is dizzying at a time when it was clear even to many loyal members of the Nazi hierarchy that the war was lost. But the currency of life had been debased almost completely by the horrors of the preceding years, and for some there was no alternative. Grim, gripping, essential.

Journalism is what we need to make democracy work (Walter Cronkite)

1. “The Moscow terror attack is Putin’s 9/11”: as I’ve said before, Owen Matthews is one of the best people writing on Russia at the moment (though also hat-tip to Mark Galeotti, as mentioned above). This article in The Spectator exposes the gaping weaknesses in Vladimir Putin’s régime, yet there is no sense of optimism or impending change. Despots rarely leave quietly, and it looks like Putin will cling to power with his blood-stained fingertips.

2. “The John Bew profile: I’m not even sure that he is a Conservative”: in terms of inverse proportion of fame to influence, Professor John Bew must be one of Whitehall’s highest performers. Shortly after Boris Johnson became prime minister in the summer of 2019, Bew joined the Number 10 Policy Unit as foreign affairs adviser and has remained in Downing Street ever since, now working with his third premier. He led the team which drafted Global Britain in a competitive age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy in 2021 and the Integrated Review Refresh 2023, two of the most ambitious policy reviews of recent years. (When the Integrated Review was published three years ago, I interviewed former RUSI director Professor Michael Clarke about it for the Pivot Point podcast.) Bew is a very well regarded historian who has written biographies of Lord Castlereagh and Clement Attlee as well as a history of realpolitik, and as an academic stepping into policy-making he is cut from cloth more familiar in Washington DC than London. It is not coincidental that in 2013/14 he held the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the John W. Kluge Center in the Library of Congress. But Bew is an elusive, or at least enigmatic figure. His father, Lord Bew, whom I know very slightly, followed a similar path from Queen’s University Belfast to advising Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble and then in 2007 to the House of Lords, since when he has chaired first the Committee on Standards in Public Life and then the House of Lords Appointment Committee. This insightful profile of Bew Junior in The House Magazine by Sienna Rodgers and Sophie Church attempts to flesh out our picture of him.

3. “Alchemy: The Magic of Original Thinking in a World of Mind-Numbing Conformity”: some of you will know I’m an unapologetic, indeed evangelical, member of the Rory Sutherland fan club. The Ogilvy UK vice-chairman is simply one of the most imaginative, creative and constructive thinkers I’ve ever met, with a vanishingly rare combination of lightness of touch and indefatigable intellectual curiosity, and he’s also a properly nice human being. YouTube is well stocked with his media content, but this 2019 book is a superb volume. Its original subtitle was “The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense”, and one of Rory’s many coinages is that the opposite of a good idea is often another good idea. (Another is “A flower is just a weed with a marketing budget”.) His argument in Alchemy is that economics and business try to make decisions on a rational basis, failing to take into account that human beings don’t. His explanation of the staggering success of Red Bull illustrates the point perfectly. It’s a book which is a pleasure to read but will genuinely change—I’d say improve—the way you look at the world and everything in it.

4. “Life aboard a nuclear submarine as the US responds to threats around the globe”: I have an unshakeable affection for Vanity Fair: partly because it was one of the berths of the late, great Christopher Hitchens, surely the best polemicist in the English language since the Second World War; partly because I think Radhika Jones, the editor-in-chief is just wonderful; and partly because it is a rare publication which can go from what stars were wearing at the Oscars to a chewy long read about nuclear submarines without missing a beat. For this piece, journalist Adam Ciralsky, who was a CIA lawyer in his younger days, was given permission to live on board the USS Wyoming, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, while it was on patrol. The world he uncovers and the people he speaks to are absolutely engrossing, and, because it’s Vanity Fair, there’s some first-rate photography too.

5. “Gigantic Ships Are a Danger—and a Lifeline”: this Foreign Policy piece by Elisabeth Braw of the Atlantic Council is an invaluable insight into the sheer scale of the shipping industry, in the wake of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore this week. The bridge was struck by a Singapore-flagged cargo ship, MV Dali, 985 feet long and weighing 95,000 tons empty, but, as Braw points out, the size of the Dali is not world-beating. Last year, MSC Irina came into service, flying the flag of Liberia, and is 1,312 feet long and can carry nearly 25,000 standard shipping containers to MV Dali’s capacity of just under 10,000. I was struck by a sense of headlong technical progression, ships growing bigger and bigger, with crews dwindling as technology takes over many of their duties, but these ever-bigger vessels need larger, deeper ports, wider canals and higher bridges. Despite the ongoing crisis in the Red Sea, many industrialised nations still ignore the central role of maritime commerce to our economies, and shipping seems often to be the preserve of trade specialists or ship-spotters (if such a thing exists). When do container ships become too large? Unmanageably unwieldy? Or too valuable as targets for terrorism or enemy state action? Will we recognise that point when we get to it, and how will we respond? A very thought-provoking article.

Onwards, ever onwards

I hope these recommendations are useful or interesting for some of you. Feedback is always (often, sometimes) welcome. Enjoy the rest of the Easter weekend, whether for religious or other reasons.