Sunday round-up 10 November 2024
Candles and cake for Sir Tim Rice, Hugh Bonneville and Ruth Davidson, the feast of St Leo the Great and, above all, we honour the dead on this Remembrance Sunday
Before anything else, it is Remembrance Sunday. The military phase of the First World War was deemed under the terms of the Armistice to end at 11.00 am on 11 November 1918, and that day is now Remembrance Day in Commonwealth countries. The closest Sunday, today, is Remembrance Sunday on which services of commemoration are held, most famously at Sir Edwin Lutyens’s brilliant, iconic Cenotaph on Whitehall.
Returning to the regular features, jelly and unwanted presents for versatile character actor Albert Hall (87), Canadian-born Australian motor racing legend Allan Moffat (85), behemoth of lyrics Sir Tim Rice (80), director, screenwriter, producer and “Master of Disaster” Roland Emmerich (69), former Conservative Ribble Valley MP, Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons and friend of many a celebrity Nigel Evans (67), author, illustrator, screenwriter and we’re-not-talking-about-that-story Neil Gaiman (64), Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Church of England priest Rev. Baroness Sherlock (64), former world darts champion John “John Boy” Walton (63), all-purpose portrayer of aristocrats and historical figures, fine comic turn and foster father of Peruvian bears Hugh Bonneville (61), underrated and over-partied Northern Irish racing driver Eddie Irvine (59), director, producer and Grey’s Anatomy anchor Ellen Pompeo (55), former Scottish Conservative and Unionist leader Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links (46), Kingsman star Taron Egerton (35) and sweary Cocaine Bear child actor Christian Convery (15).
Celebrating up there, down there or nowhere at all, depending on your belief system, are Charles the Bold, last Duke of Burgundy (1433), priest, monk, theologian, writer, occasional antisemite, husband-of-a-nun and martyr to constipation Martin Luther (1483), “favourite” of Elizabeth I and failed coup d’état practitioner Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (1565), painter, illustrator, pug-owner and Chiswick lad William Hogarth (1697), Anglo-Irish poet and playwright Oliver Goldsmith (1728), legendary German dramatist and versifier Friedrich Schiller (1759), Irish republican, nationalist and leader of the 1916 Easter Rising Patrick Pearse (1879), Clapham-born screen legend Claude Rains (1889), starts-to-look-like-a-pattern commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer (1906), Russian engineer and rifle pioneer General Mikhail Kalashnikov (1919), one of the greatest actors of all time Richard Burton (1925), composer and conductor “Maestro” Ennio Morricone (1928), actor and needer of a bigger boat Roy Scheider (1932), Dorset-born prog rock legend Greg Lake (1947) and actress and singer Brittany Murphy (1977).
Today in 1674, Major Edmund Andros, the recently appointed Governor of the Province of New York, formally took possession on behalf of the English crown of the former Dutch territory of New Netherland. Under the provisions of the Treaty of Westminster, which had been signed on 19 February and had ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War, this colony, with a population of about 9,000 colonials, was ceded by the United Provinces of the Netherlands to England. It extended from the Delmarva Peninsula in what is now Delaware to Cape Cod and had first been settled in the 1610s under the aegis of the Dutch West India Company to exploit the North American fur trade. It had been lost to England in 1664 but recovered in 1673, then finally lost the following year. Andros arrived in Manhattan in the city of New Orange on 10 November and the Director of New Netherland, 30-year-old Anthonij Colve, acknowledged the transfer of sovereignty. He departed for Suriname, but left his carriage and horses for Andros as a courtesy. New Orange, which had been founded as New Amsterdam and rechristened New York City during the period of English control, reverted to that usage permanently. It was the end of the Dutch presence in North America.
On this date in 1871, a legendary encounter took place in Ujiji, by the shore of Lake Tanganyika in present-day Tanzania. The Scottish missionary and explorer Dr David Livingstone, who had dedicated himself to locating the source of the River Nile, had set out from Zanzibar in January 1866 but then lost contact with the outside world and effectively disappeared. In 1869, a Welsh-born veteran of both sides in the American Civil War who had subsequently taken up journalism, Henry Morton Stanley, was engaged by The New York Herald to search for Livingstone. He travelled to Zanzibar in March 1871 then struck inland with an expedition of 111, many of whom died or deserted during the 700-mile journey through tropical forests. On 10 November, Livingstone’s servant, Susi, shouted “An Englishman coming! I see him!” Stanley would later relate that he had greeted the explorer with the words “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” but this is almost certainly a post hoc embellishment. Had he really uttered the phrase, it would have been somewhat unnecessary: Livingstone was almost certainly the only other white man for hundreds of miles. Unfortunately Stanley had torn the relevant pages out of his diary, but a legend was born.
Today in 1969, an educational children’s television programme consisting of live action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry was broadcast for the first time on America’s National Educational Television network. Produced by the Children’s Television Workshop in hour-long episodes, it was called Sesame Street. Now shown on Max (previously HBO Max), it recently began its 55th season.
Forty-nine years ago, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, “Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination”. It most controversial provision was that it “Determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. The resolution was passed by 72 votes to 35, with 32 abstentions, but Israel and the United States expressed bitter opposition to the provision on Zionism. Israel’s permanent representative, Chaim Herzog, later President of Israel, told the General Assembly:
For us, the Jewish people, this resolution based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance, is devoid of any moral or legal value. For us, the Jewish people, this is no more than a piece of paper and we shall treat it as such.
With that, he tore a copy of the resolution in half. His American counterpart, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, had already condemned the text, warning that “the United Nations is about to make anti-Semitism international law”. When he came to address the General Assembly, he was thunderous and visibly angry.
[The United States] does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act… A great evil has been loosed upon the world.
Resolution 3379’s reference to Zionism was revoked on 16 December 1991 by Resolution 46/86, a condition for Israel agreeing to participate in the Madrid Conference on the Middle East peace process.
For no particular reason, I haven’t generally enumerated death anniversaries in these round-ups, but today is such a stirringly eclectic collection that I feel obliged to pick out a few: poet Arthur Rimbaud (1891), Turkey’s founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1938, see below), countercultural icon Ken Kesey (2001), Hollywood legend Jack Palance (2006), pugnacious and self-consciously masculine novelist and man of letters Norman Mailer (2007) and astonishingly prolific producer Dino De Laurentiis (2010). There’s a dinner party to conjure with.
A reasonable haul on the hagiographical front, marking the feasts of St Leo the Great (AD 400-AD 461), Pope and Doctor of the Church who dissuaded Attila the Hun from invading Italy and was the first pope to be buried in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome; St Monitor (d. c. AD 490), Bishop of Orléans; St Grellan, 5th century AD Irish holy man who is now protector of the Kelly clan; St Elaeth, mysterious 6th century AD northern British king who retired, as many do, to Anglesey; St Áed mac Bricc (d AD 589), Irish bishop and patron of headache sufferers; St Justus (d. AD 627-31), missionary and fourth Archbishop of Canterbury; St Baudolini (AD 700-AD 740), Italian hermit and animal-lover; St Adelin of Séez (d. AD 910), Benedictine monk and bishop; and St Andrea Avellino (1521-1608), leading Theatine and patron saint of Naples, Sicily and Badolato, invoked against sudden death (how?).
In Turkey, it is the Day of Remembrance of Atatürk, commemorating the death in 1938 of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the country’s first president (1923-38). A silence is observed at 9.05 am, the time at which Atatürk died. It is also World Keratoconus Day, to show solidarity with those who suffer from this thinning of the cornea, and under the aegis of the United Nations it is World Science Day for Peace and Development. The United States Marine Corps celebrates its birthday with a ball and a ceremonial cake-cutting, the Continental Marines having been established on 10 November 1775.
Factoids
This week saw Guy Fawkes Night on 5 November, of course. Until 1859, its celebration was mandated by law under the Observance of 5th November Act 1605, the preamble of which noted that “many malignant and devilish Papists, Jesuits, and Seminary Priests, much envying and fearing, conspired most horribly, when the King’s most excellent Majesty, the Queen, the Prince, and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, should have been assembled in the Upper House of Parliament” with the intention “suddenly to have blown up the said whole House with Gunpowder: An Invention so inhuman, barbarous and cruel, as the like was never before heard of”. That’s pretty clear, then.
The idea of legislating for commemoration became popular. The Observance of 29th May Act 1660 mandated the marking of Oak Apple Day, on which the monarchy was restored in 1660, and the observance was extended to Ireland by the Observance of 29th May Act 1662.
Guy Fawkes Night is not noticeably celebrated at St Peter’s School in York, an independent and now co-educational school founded in AD 627 (which is a mind-bendingly long time ago). Among its alumni are not only St Alcuin, Frank Pick, C. Northcote Parkinson, Christopher Hill, John Healey and Greg Wise, but, significantly, brothers Jack and Kit Wright who were later co-conspirators with another old boy, Guy, or Guido, Fawkes. So it’s a bit awkward.
When the monarchy was restored in May 1660, a new parliament was summoned, the first action of which was to pass the Parliament Act 1660. This formally dissolved the so-called “Long Parliament” which had assembled in 1640, and declared that the two houses then sitting, the House of Commons and House of Lords, were the two chambers of Parliament notwithstanding they had not properly been summoned by the King. It also provided for Parliament to be dissolved by the sovereign as had previously been the custom. The act remained in force until it was repealed on 1 January 1970 under the provisions of the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1969.
Today is Remembrance Sunday, with the usual ceremonies being performed at the Cenotaph on Whitehall. The first Cenotaph (the word means “empty tomb”, from the ancient Greek κενός and τάφος) was constructed from wood and plaster and was unveiled quickly, on 18 July 1919, in time for a victory parade the following day: 15,000 soldiers and 1,500 officers took part, including Admiral of the Fleet Sir David Beatty, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet; Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief Home Forces; General John Pershing, Commander-in-Chief, American Expeditionary Forces; and Marshal of France Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Allied Commander. Lutyens, having designed the monument, was not invited. On 11 November 1919, the first anniversary of the Armistice, a crowd of 6,000 gathered at the Cenotaph to remember the dead, and wreathes were laid by the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, and the President of the French Republic, Raymond Poincaré.
The popularity of that first commemoration encouraged the authorities to stage another event on 11 November 1920. Under huge public pressure, the cabinet agreed that Lutyens’s temporary monument should be rebuilt in stone, and the Cenotaph as we know it today was constructed by Holland, Hannen and Cubitts. It was unveiled by George V on Remembrance Day 1920, and designated as the official monument to all British and Empire dead who had been killed in the First World War. A 35-foot pylon of Portland stone, it bears a carved laurel wreath under the date MCM/XIX and the simple inscription THE GLORIOUS DEAD. There is something extraordinarily democratic and levelling about that legend: it commemorates the most recently recruited private soldier on the same terms as Field Marshal Earl Kitchener, the most senior officer to be killed during the war.
There are 18 parliamentary constituencies within the county of Essex, of which 10 are Conservative, five are Labour, two are Reform UK and one is Liberal Democrat. But Essex is more than punching its weight: its MPs include two party leaders (Kemi Badenoch, North West Essex, and Nigel Farage, Clacton), three other shadow cabinet members (Alex Burghart, Brentwood and Ongar; Dame Rebecca Harris, Castle Point; and Dame Priti Patel, Witham), another Opposition frontbench spokesman (Mark Francois, Rayleigh and Wickford), a Liberal Democrat spokesman (Marie Goldman, Chelmsford), a former Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary (James Cleverly, Braintree) and Conservative Party Chairman (Richard Holden, Billericay) and an incumbent and a former select committee chair (Sir Bernard Jenkin, Harwich and North Essex, and Sir John Whittingdale, Maldon). An eminent county delegation.
Another Essex MP was Speaker of the House of Commons during the Convention Parliament (April to December 1660) having been part of the delegation to Charles II in Breda in the Dutch Republic to invite him to take possession of the throne. Sir Harbottle Grimston, a Cambridge-educated barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, was the son of Sir Harbottle Grimston, 1st Baronet, MP for Harwich (1614, 1640-47) and Essex (1626-29, 1640). The second Sir Harbottle was recorder of Harwich and Colchester before being elected MP for Colchester (1640-48, 1660-85), Harwich (1647-48) and Essex (1656-58). Having been Speaker of the House of Commons, he was appointed Master of the Rolls in 1660, serving till 1685.
The re-election of Donald Trump as President of the United States this week means he will be the second president to serve two non-continuous terms, the first being Democrat Grover Cleveland (1885-89, 1893-97). Cleveland is (I think confusingly) officially recorded as the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, and Trump becomes the 45th and 47th. In addition, Democrat Martin van Buren (1837-41), denied a second term in office, later sought re-election to the White House for the Free Soil Party in 1848; the Whig Party’s last president, Millard Fillmore (1850-53), ran for the Native American Party (“Know Nothings”) in 1856; and former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09) contested the 1912 election as the candidate of the Progressive Party which he had founded after failing to oust William Howard Taft, his successor and the incumbent President, as the Republican nominee.
It would be understandable at the moment to look fondly on the presidential election of 1820: uniquely, excepting the inaugural presidency of George Washington, it was uncontested. President James Monroe, a Democratic-Republican from Virginia, was re-elected without facing an opponent when the Federalist Party was unable to agree on a candidate (though, oddly, it did field a nominee for Vice-President, former New Jersey Senator Richard Stockton). The Federalists still won almost 19 per cent of the popular vote but Monroe won the Electoral College with only one vote against him: William Plumer, a former governor and senator from New Hampshire, cast his vote in favour of the Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, who would succeed Monroe as President in 1820.
[Bonus factoid] Plumer displayed a whisper of clairvoyancy or good guesswork. While voting for Adams as President, he cast his ballot for the vice-presidency in favour of former Attorney-General Richard Rush, who in 1820 was serving as the United States Minister to the United Kingdom. In 1828, President Adams, now the candidate of the new National Republican Party, faced his own Vice-President, John Calhoun of the also-new Democratic Party. As a replacement running mate, Adams turned to his Secretary of the Treasury—Richard Rush.
“I do not think every home will have its own projecting machine, although the wealthier people will possess them, no doubt.” (Thomas Edison)
“Lucan”: it is 50 years since Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, disappeared after the murder of his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, and a brutal assault on his estranged wife Veronica, Countess of Lucan. She named her husband as the assailant and murderer, and the police issued a warrant for the peer’s arrest but, while his car was found abandoned and bloodstained at the East Sussex port of Newhaven, Lucan himself was never apprehended. An inquest the following June named him as Rivett’s killer, the High Court declared him legally dead in 1999 and in 2016 a death certificate was issued so that his son and heir, George Bingham, could inherit his titles. (The 8th Earl is not convinced his father was the killer.) It was of course a tragedy for Rivett’s family and friends, for Lady Lucan, whose mental health never recovered, and for her three children; but the public fascination with case has been enduring, not least because of the mystery of Lucan’s fate and the attached glamour of his reckless, aristocratic lifestyle. This three-party documentary, made by Rivett’s son Neil Berriman, is thorough and heartfelt, and there is still much to fascinate about the episode. But ultimately it is a rather sad story, of a profligate and sometimes unpleasant aristocrat, ill-matched with a wife struggling with mental ill health and a young nanny who was caught in the crossfire.
“America Decides: US Presidential Election”: you may not wish to go back and rewatch coverage of this week’s election but I list Channel 4’s coverage simply because it was one of the oddest things I have seen. Early guest Boris Johnson was at his bounciest, reality-redefining peak, doggedly promoting his under-selling memoirs Unleashed, to such an extent that he was removed from the panel. Before his exit, he found himself sitting next to adult entertainment star Stormy Daniels, or she found herself sitting next to him, and her baffled, sceptical distaste was clear to see. Hosts Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Emily Maitlis cycled through a deeply weird roster of guests including former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, disgraced but unabashed New York Representative George Santos, actor Brian Cox, artist and broadcaster Sir Grayson Perry, celebrity offspring Martin Luther King III, Liberal ex-Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull, newly installed Spectator editor Michael Gove and former Foreign Secretary David Miliband; Jeremy Vine leaped about with lurid graphics. Guru-Murthy and Maitlis veered into partisan commentary from time to time, while a number of guests just repeated their appropriate party lines, with a sore lack of analysis and insight. Covering a foreign election, even one in the United States, is challenging; but Channel 4’s iteration was dislocatingly strange to watch.
“Secrets of Statecraft: John Bew Applies History to Foreign Policy-Making”: historian Andrew Roberts (now Lord Roberts of Belgravia) has the mildest of tendencies to wander close to over-seriousness but he is an excellent and eminent writer and scholar, and the bi-monthly Secrets of Statecraft podcast series he hosts for Stanford University’s Hoover Institution is always informative, thoughtful and interesting. Recently he interviewed the historian Professor John Bew, a scholar of politics and international affairs, who has written well-regarded biographies of Lord Castlereagh and Clement Attlee as well as an impressive analysis of the often-cited but imperfectly understood doctrine of realpolitik. In 2019, Bew was appointed foreign policy adviser to Boris Johnson in Downing Street, although not a professed Conservative Party supporter or member, and, exceptionally, remained in that post until this year’s general election having served under Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak as well. Bew was the guiding hand behind the 2021 Integrated Review of UK foreign, defence and security policy and its 2023 so-called “refresh”. He talks engagingly with Roberts about the application of history and historical inquiry to the development of foreign policy and his observations on the contemporary global situation.
“Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance”: regular readers will know that I often return, in terms of my political identity as a Tory, to Enoch Powell’s definition as “a person who regards authority as immanent in institutions”. That manifests itself in particular, and in combination with my lifelong fascination with and reverence for the military, at this time of year and the communal acts of remembrance of those who died in war. There is something about the British tradition of remembrance—sombre, quiet, dignified, hallowed by usage—which speaks to me with extraordinary and vital power. The Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph is impossibly moving, but so too is its Saturday counterpart, organised by the Royal British Legion. The first event in the Royal Albert Hall was held on Sunday 11 November 1923 and saw the world première of John Foulds’s A World Requiem, written as a memorial to the dead of all nations; the order of service these days is eclectic but this year included Sir Tom Jones, Jack Savoretti, Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha and Samantha Barks, as well as the ever-dependable Central Band of the Royal Air Force and the Bands of HM Royal Marines. My composure buckles within the first bars of Gustav Holst’s setting of excerpts of Sir Cecil Spring Rice’s poem Urbs Dei/The Two Father Lands to his own music, creating the majestic I Vow To Thee, My Country.
“Firing Line: The Economics and Politics of Race—Thomas Sowell”: I could watch William F. Buckley Jr deploy his verbal dexterity, wildly swooping diction and snatches of crushing contempt endlessly, but I draw attention to this episode, recorded on 3 November 1983, for a reason. Kemi Badenoch, the recently elected leader of the Conservative Party, is more interested in ideas and political philosophy than any leading politician I can think of for many years, and she has talked about how much she was influenced by the American economist and political theorist Thomas Sowell, in particular by his 2000 primer-cum-manifesto Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy. If you are not familiar with Sowell, YouTube groans with examples of his work; although he recently turned 94, he is still active and frequently appears for the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he has been a senior fellow since 1980. Whether you agree with his views or not, Sowell is a remarkable man, who was born in segregated North Carolina, grew up in poverty in Harlem, was forced to drop out of Stuyvesant High School because of financial and familial difficulties, then served in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War, took night classes at the historically black Howard University and then gained admission to Harvard in his 20s. Sowell is direct and straightforward, and his impatience for sloppy thinking and special pleading is impossible to hide, but he is a vigorous and enlivening speaker and thinker who is worth at least listening to.
“The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
“Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Centre of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe—and Started the Protestant Reformation”: as it is Martin Luther’s birthday (see above), I am both obligated and delighted to recommend this 2016 study of the Protestant reformer by Andrew Pettegree, my doctoral supervisor. Andrew’s real passion is the history of books and print, and he argues that Luther, within four or five years of publishing his first work in 1516, made himself the best-selling author in the world, a massively influential thinker and transformed the printing industry and the market for theology. I have never found Luther a sympathetic figure, personally or ideologically, but his importance is impossible to exaggerate, and the power of what Andrew calls “Brand Luther” was one of the biggest factors in deciding the history of Europe in the 16th century.
“An Instance of the Fingerpost”: I was put in mind of Iain Pears’s brilliant 1997 historical novel by this Substack article by Mathew Lyons. The story of Anne Greene, who was hanged in Oxford in December 1650 but survived, recovered and was eventually pardoned, inspired the character of Sarah Blundy in Pears’s book, but the author mixes painstakingly researched fact with strong religious and fantastical elements. My dear friend Julia gave me this novel when I was bedridden with some plague as an undergraduate, and, knowing nothing about the author or the subject, I plunged headlong into it and was captivated. It is in one sense a murder mystery related from four perspectives, taking place in 1663 in Oxford, but it is easier simply to say it’s a dazzling achievement of narrative fiction which you should read and I hope you’ll enjoy.
“Life Moves Pretty Fast: The lessons we learned from 80s movies (and why we don’t learn them from movies any more)”: I read this delightful study of 1980s cinema classics by Hadley Freeman in a few days and it was both a nostalgic delight and a witty, affectionate but also insightful meditation on society and film. If you’re the right generation to have adored films like Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and if you’re well disposed towards Hadley Freeman, I honestly cannot see why you wouldn’t enjoy this.
“Africa needs free trade, not reparations”: Harrison Griffiths of the Institute of Economic Affairs penned this trenchant, optimistic, open-handed defence of free trade in CapX, arguing that the completion of an African Continental Free Trade Area could lift 100 million people out of poverty by the mid-2030s. Intra-continental trade represents 69 per cent of exports in Europe, and 59 per cent in Asia, but only 15 per cent in Africa. Bringing to fruition the free trade area to which 55 of Africa’s 56 countries have already subscribed, and which 48 have ratified, would remove cumbersome and damaging trade barriers, and would allow strong economic growth to come from within Africa at the most efficient level. A welcome reminder, especially as the Conservative Party begins its putative revival, of the importance of ideas and the transformational effect of the market, or, as Griffiths puts it, “just how much good free trade can do”.
“Trump’s tariff obsession is worse than before”: in The Financial Times, Alan Beattie provides a straightforward, necessary and brick-by-brick destructive critique of Donald Trump’s approach to international trade. The fundamental fact on which this rests is that, if you will forgive the vernacular, Trump knows fuck-all about how the global economy works. He threatens 60 per cent tariffs on trade with China but a blanket 10 or even 20 per cent on all of America’s trading partners, because he has a childlike belief that a trade deficit is inherently bad or damaging, and representative of some lack of nation-state virility. In fact, Beattie argues, his desire to drive down net imports will “make a desolation and call it peace”. Trumponomics, if such a word exists, is a doctrine of moronic logic, a global penis-measuring competition underpinned by a comprehension of reality which reveals ignorance and inadequacy. Donald Trump has been outstandingly successful in marketing his cartoon vision of economic strength, but the long-term effects, if he is true to his word, will be devastating.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old…
… to quote Robert Laurence Binyon. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.
The glorious dead.