Sunday round-up 21 July 2024
Birthday greetings to Cat Stevens, Michael Connelly and Ross Kemp, and 99 years since the Scopes Monkey Trial plus Belgian National Day
Today there are cake, candles, cards and the bumps for former US diplomat John Negroponte (85), singer-songwriter Yusuf (a.k.a. Cat Stevens) (76), best-selling crime author Michael Connelly (68), actor and “hard man” avatar Ross Kemp (60), novelist Sarah Waters (58), actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg (53), actor John Hartnett (46), actor and brother-of-the-more-famous Rory Culkin (35) and Hammersmith-born actress Juno Temple (35).
In days gone by, it would have been fizzy wine time for our fourth prime minister the 1st Duke of Newcastle (1693), German author Hans Fallada (1893), literary legend and epigrammatic hard bastard Ernest Hemingway (1899), philosopher and media visionary Marshall McLuhan (1911), situation comedy stalwart and double entendre-friendly cat owner Mollie Sugden (1922), Canadian filmmaker Norman Jewison (1926) and polymathematical Cambridge Footlights legend Jonathan Miller (1934).
Ninety-nine years ago, in 1925, after deliberating for just nine minutes, a jury in Dayton, Tennessee, found a high school teacher called John T. Scopes guilty of violating the newly passed Butler Act which prevented public schools from questioning the Biblical story of the Creation or teaching the theory of evolution. What would be remembered as the Scopes Monkey Trial was stage-managed with the approval of both sides, and Scopes agreed to be prosecuted, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, to force a confrontation with the advocates of the new legislation. It was an astonishing clash of titans: acting on behalf of the State of Tennessee was William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), the Democratic nominee for the United States presidency in 1896, 1900 and 1908 and secretary of state from 1911 to 1913; representing Scopes was Chicago Democrat and campaigning attorney Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), a close ally of labour unions who had acted in several high-profile civil liberty trials. As it happened, Scopes could not recall if he ever had taught the theory of evolution, but his conviction and a $100 fine drew the battle lines for public debate. His conviction was overturned on a technicality by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1927. The restrictions on teaching evolution were eased by the National Defense Education Act of 1958, and the Butler Act was finally repealed in 1967. Scopes, who had been driven out of teaching after the trial, died in 1970.
It is 55 years since man walked on the moon. Neil Armstrong, formerly a pilot in the US Navy, stepped off the lunar module Eagle at 2.56 am UTC and announced “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. Nineteen minutes later he was joined by Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, a Korean combat veteran of the US Air Force, who described what he saw as “magnificent desolation”. Aldrin is now the only man alive from the Apollo 11 mission, and one of only four remaining who have ever walked on the lunar surface.
On this day last year, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie were released in cinemas. They became an unlikely double bill for audiences under the nickname “Barbenheimer”. I have only seen one of them. By chance (I hope by chance), it was the day that crooner extraordinaire Tony Bennett died at the age of 96.
Liturgically, it is the feast of St Barhadbesciabas, a 4th century martyr killed in Arbela (modern Erbil) in the Sassanid Empire. The church also commemorates St Praxedes, a Roman maiden who was martyred in around AD 165 (and whose sister, St Pudentiana, is remembered on 19 May) and St Arbogast, a 7th century missionary to the Franks and an early bishop of Strasbourg. Additionally it is the feast of St Victor of Marseille, beheaded in AD 290 for refusing to offer incense to a statue of Jupiter, who is the patron of an unlikely collection of cabinetmakers, millers, torture victims and sick children.
Belgium celebrates its national day, chosen in commemoration of the investiture of Leopold I as the first King of the Belgians in 1831. He was a man so cosmopolitan that an ardent Europhile would shudder in glee: youngest son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, he was commissioned into the Imperial Russian Army, moved to England, was granted British citizenship and married the only daughter of the Prince Regent (later George IV), and turned down the throne of Greece in 1830 because he thought it too precarious. Belgium seemed a safer option, and his candidacy was favoured because he had extensive dynastic and diplomatic ties and, backed by the British, was not in thrall to any continental power. He was also the uncle of Prince Albert, the Prince Consort.
Guam is celebrating Liberation Day, though American troops only landed on the island on 21 July 1944, the battle to defeat the Japanese occupiers lasting until 10 August at a cost of more than 15,000 lives (overwhelmingly Japanese). Singapore marks Racial Harmony Day, when the Declaration of Racial Harmony is recited. If this is too much excitement, Americans mark National Junk Food Day (I am not clear what makes this day special), while for Australians it is National Lamington Day (nasty, Anzac biscuits are much nicer). It is also Leeds Pride 2024.
Factoids
If you have been frustrated by the mixed weather this summer, it could be worse. On 3 March 1876, between 11.00 and 12 noon, in a small area of Olympia Springs, Kentucky, it rained meat. Chunks of flesh from two inches by two inches to four inches by four inches were initially thought to be beef, but some brave souls who sampled the lumps said it tasted more like lamb or deer. A local hunter affirmed that it was bear meat. A doctor who examined some of the meat said it was lung tissue from a horse or a human infant, “the structure of the organ in these two cases being almost identical”, while further analysis identified two pieces of lung, three of muscle and two of cartilage. Locals came to the conclusion that the meat had been regurgitated by vultures and then fell from the sky, but there has never been a definitive explanation.
I wrote an essay this week about select committees in the new parliament, as well as penning an article for The Hill about political violence. These two things came together in my realisation that the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, dubbed by Peter Hennessy “the queen of the select committees”, is distinct in many ways but one is that two of its former chairman have been assassinated. Lord Frederick Cavendish, Liberal MP for the Northern West Riding of Yorkshire, chaired the committee from 1877 to 1880 and was appointed chief secretary for Ireland by William Gladstone in 1882. Within hours of arriving in Dublin, while walking through Phoenix Park to his official residence, he and his chief civil servant, Thomas Burke, were stabbed to death by members of the Irish National Invincibles, a radical nationalist group. Walter Guinness, Conservative MP for Bury St Edmunds and later created Lord Moyne, chaired PAC during 1924 and went on to hold several ministerial positions, in January 1944 becoming minister resident for the Middle East. That November he was shot dead along with his driver outside his home in Cairo by members of the Zionist terror group the Stern Gang.
It was frequently noted after the attempted shooting of Donald Trump that four of the United States’ 45 presidents have been assassinated: Lincoln (1865), Garfield (1881), McKinley (1901) and Kennedy (1963). Lincoln’s eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, was not with his father when he was shot in Ford’s Theatre but rushed from the White House to be with the dying president. Somewhat eerily, he was later an eyewitness to the assassination of James Garfield in Sixth Street Station in Washington DC (he was secretary of war in Garfield’s cabinet), and was inside the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, when William McKinley was fatally shot just outside. He is said to have refused a later presidential invitation lest it tempt fate: “No, I’m not going, and they’d better not ask me, because there is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present”.
At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Donald Trump ended months of speculation by naming Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate. If, as is looking more and more likely, Trump wins the presidential race in November, Vance will set a number of records: he will be the first millennial vice-president (born 1984), the first US Marine Corps veteran (he served 2003-07) and almost certainly the first best-selling author (of Hillbilly Elegy). He will be the fourth Ohioan, after Thomas Hendricks (March-November 1885), Charles Fairbanks (1905-09) and Charles Dawes (1925-29), and the second graduate of Yale Law School after Gerald Ford (1973-74). Of his 49 predecessors, 15 have gone on to be president, which are not brilliant odds.
During the Ardennes Offensive in 1944-45, Hitler’s last roll of the dice to score a victory against the Western Allies, one part of the German strategy was the deployment of Waffen-SS soldiers in British and American uniforms to try to capture key locations by surprise and generally start confusion in the Allied leadership. It worked, insofar as it generated an atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia, with Allied soldiers fearful of spies and saboteurs everywhere. At one point, General Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th US Army Group, was briefly detained by an American sentry who tested his identity by asking him the capital of Illinois. Bradley correctly answered Springfield, but the GI believed it was Chicago and that Bradley must therefore be an imposter. He at least had a moral victory, unlike his subordinate Bruce Clarke, who had only been promoted to brigadier general nine days before the offensive, and was held for a while by the military police because he mistakenly believed the Chicago Cubs played in the American League (they play in the National League).
23 January 1795 saw what is believed to be a unique event in military history, the capture of warships by cavalry. The French 8th Hussar Regiment, supported by the voltigeur company of the 15th Infantry Regiment, came upon a fleet of 14 Dutch warships frozen at anchor in the Nieuwediep just east of Den Helder. Lieutenant-Colonel Louis Lahure, in command of the hussars, took his men stealthily across the ice, the horses’ hooves wrapped in cloth to muffle any sound, and surprised the Dutch sailors. The French officers boarded the ships and negotiated with their opponents to obtain a guarantee that the fleet would remain at anchor while the political situation resolved: a few days earlier, French troops had entered Amsterdam, William V, Prince of Orange, last stadtholder of the United Provinces, had fled to Britain and the pro-French Batavian Republic was proclaimed. The neutralisation of the fleet at Den Helder underlined the French victory.
The family of Orange-Nassau regained control of the Netherlands in 1813, when the last stadtholder’s son, also William, became Sovereign Prince, then King in 1815. The royal family went into exile after the German invasion in 1940, and Princess Juliana, the only child of Queen Wilhelmina, settled in Ottawa while the government-in-exile remained in London. She had two daughters with her husband Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, Beatrix (born 1938) and Irene (born 1939), but by 1942 was pregnant again. The sex of the child was not known but if it was a boy it would have become third in line to the throne. However, being born in Canada, then a dominion of the British Empire, would have given it dual nationality, making it a British subject under the principle of jus soli, or “law of the soil”. Dutch nationality by contrast operated the rule of jus sanguinis, or “law of blood”. The solution was that the governor-general of Canada, the Earl of Athlone, issued a proclamation on 26 December 1942 whereby “any place in Canada within which Her Royal Highness the Princess Juliana of the Netherlands may be confined shall, for the period of the lying-in and the actual occupation for such purpose, be extraterritorial”. This meant the maternity ward of Ottawa Civic Hospital was, briefly, not subject to Canadian law, and the child, Margriet, derived her nationality solely from her parents under the terms of Dutch nationality law, allowing her to remain in the line of succession.
The Earl of Athlone, who was governor general of Canada from 1940 to 1946, was not, despite his title, the scion of an ancient Anglo-Irish family. He was born His Serene Highness Prince Alexander of Teck, the fourth child of Francis, Duke of Teck, and Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, granddaughter of George III and first cousin of Queen Victoria. His elder sister, Princess Mary of Teck, would in 1893 marry the Duke of York, later George V. The following year, Prince Alexander was commissioned into the 7th Queen’s Own Hussars and served with distinction in the Second Matabele War and the Second Boer War. By the beginning of the First World War, he had risen to brevet lieutenant colonel and was commanding officer of the 2nd Life Guards. The prime minister, H.H. Asquith, is said to have nominated the 40-year-old prince as the next governor general of Canada in 1914, but he was called up for active service instead, seeing action in France and Flanders. The war stoked anti-German sentiment, and in 1917 Prince Alexander’s brother-in-law, King George V, renamed the royal family as the House of Windsor and renounced all German titles and styles for himself and his relatives. For a few months this left him formally styled “Sir Alexander Cambridge” until in November he was created Earl of Athlone and Viscount Trematon. He had been offered the senior title of marquess, given his royal status, but declined on the grounds that it sounded insufficiently British. Hence a German prince born to an Austrian father came to hold a title derived from a town on the River Shannon, on the border of Roscommon and Westmeath.
There were others affected by the 1917 proclamation to eschew German princely and aristocratic titles. Prince Louis of Battenberg had married Queen Victoria’s granddaughter Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine and enjoyed an outstanding career in the Royal Navy, becoming first sea lord in 1912 but he was forced out by anti-German feeling towards the end of 1914. In 1917, he renounced his German titles, adopted the surname Mountbatten and was created Marquess of Milford Haven, Earl of Medina and Viscount Alderney. Like Athlone, he declined a higher grade of peerage: George V offered to make him a duke but he felt unable to afford the lifestyle that demanded (the same reason given by the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury to Queen Victoria in 1886 and 1892). Prince Alexander of Battenberg, son of Victoria’s daughter Princess Beatrice, was created Marquess of Carisbrooke, Earl of Berkhamsted and Viscount Launceston. And Athlone’s elder brother, Adolphus, Duke of Teck, became Marquess of Cambridge, Earl of Eltham and Viscount Northallerton. Of all of these peerage creations, only one survives: George, 4th Marquess of Milford Haven, is head of the Mountbatten family and second cousin to the current king.
It is still possible, of course, to create hereditary peerages. It has been done for royal princes in recent years, and they are a special case, but the most recent non-royal creations were all recommended by Margaret Thatcher: in 1983, she appointed her deputy William Whitelaw leader of the House of Lords and made him a viscount, and created the retired speaker of the House of Commons, George Thomas, Viscount Tonypandy. Then in February 1984, she made the 90-year-old former prime minister Harold Macmillan 1st Earl of Stockton. It had previously been convention that former prime ministers were offered earldoms and most accepted: Anthony Eden became Earl of Avon in 1961, Clement Attlee became Earl Attlee in 1955, David Lloyd George was created Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor in 1945, Stanley Baldwin was created Earl Baldwin of Bewdley in 1937, H.H. Asquith became Earl of Oxford and Asquith in 1925, A.J. Balfour was ennobled as Earl of Balfour in 1922. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, of course, had given up an earldom in order to become prime minister and returned to the House of Lords as a plain life peer, Lord Home of the Hirsel. Of Thatcher’s three creations, two were bound to die out, as Thomas was childless and Whitelaw had only daughters. But Macmillan’s grandson, Alexander, 2nd Earl of Stockton, still bears the title, and his heir, Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden, is the former model and fashion designer Dan Macmillan.
“Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms” (Alan Coren)
“Daley: Olympic Superstar”: I recently posted a note on Substack asking people for five people (or things, more generally) which had been household names in their childhoods but would probably have little to no traction in the public consciousness now. (I nominated Alastair Burnet, P.W. Botha, Geoff Capes, Frank Muir and Norman St John Stevas.) It may be that Daley Thompson falls into that category. This BBC documentary about the Olympian who won gold in the decathlon in 1980 and 1984 unpicked a great deal about a man who was a byword for sporting prowess in the 1980s: along with Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett, Steve Cram, Linford Christie, Fatima Whitbread and Colin Jackson, he was part of a blossoming of British talent in track and field that saw athletes become genuine national celebrities. I don’t think many people knew quite how complex and dark a character Thompson was, and how hard a life he’d led, which makes this all the more fascinating.
“Sleuths, Spies and Sorcerers: Andrew Marr’s Paperback Heroes: Spies”: as it happened, the creative writing group I attend this month had looked at espionage fiction, so a repeat of the third episode of this 2016 series was fortuitous and enjoyable. Andrew Marr has his critics, partly for his thinly veiled left-leaning politics and partly for his sometimes-florid and emphatic style, and I accept both of those things, but there’s an unquenchable enthusiasm about him that I find admirable and endearing. He throws himself into his various documentary works wholeheartedly, and let’s face it, you can’t tell the story of British spy literature badly: Le Queux, Buchan, Maugham, Ambler, Greene, Fleming, Deighton, le Carré, Forsyth. It’s a genre I love, and at its best—Deighton and le Carré certainly fall into this category—should transcend genre and be regarded as some of the best British writing since the Second World War of any kind. Marr’s hour-long romp tells you little new, but reminds you of the basics at a terrific clip.
“The Sandbaggers”: mentioned several times at the writing group was this ITV drama which only ran for three seasons between 1978 and 1980, and has become a kind of cult classic. It features Roy Marsden as director of operations (D/Ops) of the Secret Intelligence Service, giving his most sardonic, driven and dry performance, with a first-rate cast including Ray Lonnen, Richard Vernon, Jerome Willis and Elizabeth Bennett. Like the television adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, it captures perfectly the shabby drabness of Britain in the 1970s, the sense of national and economic decline and the pervasive weariness of a governing class which found itself governing less and less, and less and less well. The real joy of The Sandbaggers is that it makes no concessions to its audience: it’s complex, nuanced and heavy with dialogue, and it works brilliantly. If you have never seen it, you should. This is how television should be, intelligent and testing as well as entertaining.
“Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of my Voice”: last night BBC2 showed this absorbing 2019 portrait of the American singer who turned 78 last week. In 2011, Ronstadt retired from performing following a diagnosis of what was initially thought to be Parkinson’s disease but turned out to be progressive supranuclear palsy, a neurodegenerative condition. I’ve long thought that mainstream British music listeners don’t really get country music, the tradition in which Ronstadt is grounded, and as a result don’t quite grasp its overwhelming size, reach and influence. Be in no doubt: she has won 11 Grammys, three American Music Awards and an Emmy over a 45-year period, is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and has released 24 studio albums and 15 compilation or greatest hits albums. The Eagles were her backing band, for God’s sake. Most of all she was blessed with a voice of exceptional beauty, clarity and expression. She released two albums with fellow country legends Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, Trio (1987) and Trio II (1999), and if this performance doesn’t strike a chord you may be clinically dead.
“The Earl of Stockton speaks”: as I mentioned above, in 1984, Harold Macmillan was created Earl of Stockton and returned to Parliament after 20 years. He was 90 when he was ennobled, and almost blind, but he revelled in his new platform and was a brilliant speaker. His maiden speech was just before the regular broadcasting of the proceedings of the House of Lords began, but it is well worth reading; in January 1985 he was back in the fray in a debate on social and economic policy. A few weeks short of his 91st birthday, this is a dazzling theatrical performance which summed up Supermac. The old man is witty, light-hearted, wide-ranging but dagger-sharp, knowing where every word and phrase will land and exactly what effect they will have. He couldn’t read notes, so had to speak from memory, but then, he had a lot of experience. You can read the transcript here.
“Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers” (Isaac Asimov)
“The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator”: when an assassin tried to murder Donald Trump last weekend, you could see a lot of commentators, who loathe the 45th president of the United States and everything he stands for, trying to balance genuine shock and abhorrence against undiminished disdain for the Trump project. Some pulled their punches, but David Frum, writing in The Atlantic, did not. Let me be clear: Frum did not wish for Trump’s murder, calling the events of last weekend “a horror and an outrage”, but this stark, angry list of accusations refuses to ameliorate its tone: “now the bloodshed that Trump has done so much to incite against others has touched him as well”. It is an uncomfortable read, because Frum is blunter than most of us would be, but equally the individual charges are not easy to dispute. “The gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.”
“Could anyone be trusted in Tudor and Stuart England?”: a hugely enjoyable review by Iona McLaren in The Spectator of Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration by Professor Nadine Akkerman and Dr Pete Langman. The early days of espionage under Elizabeth I and her secretary of state and spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham are becoming more well known but this volume has the additional benefit of dwelling on some of the practical aspects of spying. An enthusiastic assessment of what looks like a fascinating study.
“It wasn’t me”: a fascinating tale from David Aaronovitch’s Substack, Notes from the Underground, of a throwaway, obviously satirical tweet: “If I was Biden I’d hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to US security. #SCOTUS”. This remark was made at the beginning of the month, after the United States Supreme Court delivered its judgement on presidential immunity in Trump vs. United States, but of course took on a new complexion a fortnight later when Thomas Crooks attempted to assassinate Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Aaronovitch takes it in reasonably good part, but it is shocking both how many people genuinely believe he was encouraging violence and, equally, how many people were happy to operate in cynical bad faith to exploit a political advantage. It’s sadly reflective of some of the madder fringes of our public discourse.
“The Greater London Project”: I was very wary and doubtful about our capital when I moved here 20 years ago, having spent most of the preceding decade in St Andrews (pop. 14,000), but now would find it hard to live anywhere else. Not everyone agrees, there are many things wrong with London and much that can and must improve, but the optimism and enthusiasm of this new project were hugely refreshing. Joe Hill is the policy director of think tank Reform, and Sam Bowman is head of publishing at Stripe (having worked at the Adam Smith Institute and regulatory consultancy Fingleton), and they are clearly fired up with curiosity and ideas about how to make London better. A really cheering and inspiring read.
“Ringo Starr”: this emphatic and punchy celebration of Sir Ringo Starr by Sean Egan in The Critic makes, I think, a persuasive case that the drummer in probably the most famous band in history has nonetheless been underestimated for decades, almost seen as a lucky man riding on the coattails of genius. You can underestimate the Beatles or (just about) overestimate them but it’s impossible to deny the enormous impact on popular music and culture they wielded in a lifespan of less than a decade. Egan suggests he is “the most underrated musician of all time”, and he may have a point.
Great is the art of beginning…
… as Longfellow said, but greater is the art of ending. Faraþ ge gesunde.
William Jennings Bryan was Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1915. In relation to Leopold I of Belgium, I'm surprised you didn't mention that he had been married to Princess Charlotte, only (legitimate) child of the Prince Regent (the future George IV) which made her second in line to the British Throne. Unfortunately, she died in childbirth along with their child approximately 18 months after their marriage. This unfortunate event resulted in George III's other sons flocking to Germany to seek out eligible Princesses in hopes of begetting an heir.