Sunday round-up 22 December 2024

James Burke, Ralph Fiennes and Ted Cruz are all celebrating birthdays today, as is the 70 mph speed limit on British motorways

Christmas is almost upon us, dear readers. May it be peaceful, at least, for you all, and bring you what you wish for.

Celebrating their natal day with only a short recovery period before the main event are historian, author and science broadcaster James Burke (88), actor and director Héctor Elizondo (88), former President of the World Bank and leading neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz (81), solar energy scientist, Chancellor of the University of Buckingham and long-suffering spouse Lady Archer of Weston-super-Mare (80), journalist and television anchor Diane Sawyer (79), Cheap Trick front man Richard Nielsen (76), actor Ralph (Twisleton-Wykeham-)Fiennes (62), Conservative Party Chief Whip Dame Rebecca Harris (57), Senator Ted Cruz of Texas (54), singer, model and actress Vanessa Paradis (52) and singer-songwriter and producer Meghan Trainor (31).

Among those who used to look forward to cake and presents but have now left us are Emperor Diocletian (AD 244), dramatist Jean Racine (1633), the last human Sikh Guru Gobind Singh (1666), former US Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winenr Frank B. Kellogg (1856), composer Giacomo Puccini (1858), immunologist Camille Guérin (1872), founder of the Futurist movement Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876), entertainment mogul, founder of the Rank Organisation and gift to rhyming slang Lord Rank (1888), actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft (1907), actress Patricia Hayes (1909), former First Lady of the United States Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson (1912), journalist and author Sir Peregrine Worsthorne (1923), musicians Maurice and Robin Gibb (1949) and Manic Street Preachers singer-songwriter and guitarist Richey Edwards (1967).

The Battle of the Bulge

Today in 1944, the last major German offensive in the West had been underway for nearly a week in the dense forests of the Ardennes in Belgium. The objective had been to seize the port of Antwerp in order to disrupt Allied supply lines, force the four Allied armies in the West apart and create favourable conditions for a possible negotiated peace. The Battle of the Bulge, codenamed Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein by the German high command, had caught the Allies by surprise when it began on 16 December, and, with overcast skies keeping aircraft on the ground, German units had made considerable progress.

On 20 December, the American 101st Airborne Division were isolated and surrounded at Bastogne by the German XLVII Panzer Corps under General Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz. The Americans, commanded by Brigadier-General Anthony McAuliffe, were outnumbered five to one and could not be resupplied from outside, and most of the 101st Airborne’s senior commanders were absent. But von Lüttwitz allowed his two armoured divisions, the Panzer Lehr Division and the 2nd Panzer Division, to move on and continue the assault elsewhere, entrusting the capture of Bastogne to just the 26th Volksgrenadier Division and a single armoured regiment, which narrowed the odds and have the defenders a breathing space.

Attacks at various parts of the perimeter were resisted overnight on 21/22 December, but the following day Lüttwitz decided to try to force the issue and sent his opposite number an ultimatum, inviting the US forces to surrender and threatening to bombard to city, including its civilian population, two hours after the message was delivered. The response was unequivocal.

To the German Commander,

NUTS!

The American Commander

The defenders continued to resist and American armoured units broke the siege on 26 December.

Speed doesn’t kill, but a sudden lack of it does

At noon on this day in 1965, a four-month trial began in which a speed limit of 70 miles per hour was imposed on all previously unrestricted roads, including motorways. It was part of a wider programme of restrictions: the year had been marked by a series of serious multiple crashes on motorways in foggy conditions, after which the Minister of Transport, Tom Fraser, had consulted with the police and the National Road Safety Advisory Council and concluded that the principal cause was drivers travelling too quickly for the prevailing conditions. The NRSAC recommended the introduction of a speed limit for 20 mph on stretches of motorway affected by fog and the trial of a general limit of 70 mph.

Before this point, Britain’s roads had been relatively free of strictures for motorists. The Road Traffic Act 1930 had abolished all speed limits for cars and motorcycles as of 1 January 1931. The former Lord Chancellor, Viscount Buckmaster, observed not long afterwards that “the existing speed limit was so universally disobeyed that its maintenance brought the law into contempt”. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the abolition of speed limits seemed to improve road safety, and between 1930 and 1935 fatalities in road traffic accidents fell from 7,305 to 6,502. This libertarian paradise was short-lived, as the Road Traffic Act 1934 introduced a speed limit of 30 mph in built-up areas, yet, again counter-intuitively, fatalities rose between 1935 and 1940 from 6,502 to 8,609. Outside these areas, however, roads remained unrestricted.

The government proceeded very cautiously. After the end of the four-month trial which had begun in 1965, Fraser’s successor as Minister of Transport, Barbara Castle, extended it for a further two months, because there was still no conclusive evidence that it was reducing the number of fatalities. It was then extended again to September 1967. Despite the temporary restrictions, 1966 saw the highest ever number of fatalities on the roads in peacetime, with 7,985 people dying.

In July 1967, Castle—who did not drive—decided that the 70 mph speed limit should be made permanent, the government’s Road Research Laboratory suggesting that it was having a beneficial effect on safety. It was a controversial decision, welcomed by the Automobile Association and, up to a point, by the Royal Automobile Club, though the latter had pressed for more flexibility on motorways. The Shadow Minister of Transport, Peter Walker, prayed against the 70 miles per hour Speed Limit (England) Order 1967 which Castle had laid in July, seeking a debate on the measure in the House of Commons, and questioned the evidentiary basis of Castle’s decision. He did not oppose a speed limit in principle but argued that the research had been inadequate. It was in vain. 70 mph it was to be, and 70 mph it remains 57 years later.

Sole brother

Twenty-three years ago today, on board American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to Miami International Airport in Florida, passengers began to complain of a smoky smell shortly after the meal service. A flight attendant, Hermis Moutardier, found a 28-year-old British passenger, Richard Reid, sitting alone in a window seat, trying to light a match. Moutardier reminded him that smoking was not permitted on the flight, and Reid promised to stop lighting matches.

A few minutes later, she returned to find Reid leaning over in his seat. She could not initially attract his attention, but after she asked what he was doing, he grabbed her, revealing one shoe from which a fuse extended, and a lit match. He had concealed triacetone triperoxide (TATP), an explosive often used in home-made bombs, in his shoe but was unable to light the fuse because his perspiration had made the TATP too damp to ignite.

Moutardier screamed for help, and another attendant who arrived, Cristina Jones, attempted to subdue Reid but he fought her off and bit her thumb. Eventually Reid, who was six-foot-four, was tackled by the flight attendants and some passengers, and immobilised using plastic handcuffs, seatbelt extensions and headphone cords, and a doctor administered diazepam from the aircraft’s flight kit. The Boeing 767-300ER diverted to the nearest major suitable landing facility, Boston’s Logan International Airport, and was escorted in to its final approach by two United States Air Force F-15 Eagle fighters.

Reid was arrested, and the authorities found nearly 10 ounces of TATP and another explosive, pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), in the hollowed-out soles of his shoes. If he had been able to cause a detonation, the resulting explosion would have blown a substantial hole in the aircraft’s fuselage and probably caused it to crash. In January 2002, Reid was charged with nine separate terrorism offences (one was subsequently dismissed) and in October he pleaded guilty to the remaining eight. William Young, Chief Judge of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, sentenced Reid to three consecutive life sentences and 110 years in prison without possibility of parole, the maximum allowable, and fined him $2 million.

At his sentencing, Reid declared that he was in league with al-Qa’eda and was an enemy of the United States, adding that he was a soldier of God under the command of Osama bin Laden. Judge Young responded:

You are not an enemy combatant, you are a terrorist… you are not a soldier in any army, you are a terrorist. To call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. You see that flag, Mr Reid? That is the flag of the United States of America. That flag will be here long after you are forgotten.

Reid is currently serving his sentence at United States Penitentiary Florence Administrative Maximum Facility in Fremont County, Colorado, which houses the most dangerous prisoners in the federal system and those who need most careful monitoring. Fellow inmates include the former imam of Finsbury Park Mosque, Abu Hamza al-Masri, Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Mahmud Abouhalima who was one of the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Richard Reid in 51 years old. Sometimes we still have to remove our shoes in airport security.

Give me that old-time religion

A strangely quiet festal day but perhaps the church is saving its energy for Christmas. Today marks the feast of St Eimhin, 6th century AD abbot and bishop of Ros-mic-Truin, who was born in Munster as one of four brothers who would all become saints, St Corbmac, St Culain and St Diarmuid, and may or may not have written the life of St Patrick; of St Ernan (d AD 640), the nephew of St Columba, who was a monk of Druim-Tomma in Donegal and performed missionary work among the Picts; of St Hunger (d AD 866), a Benedictine monk who rose to be Bishop of Utrecht and was much troubled by Viking raids; and (except for readers in the United States) of St Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917), a Lombardy-born nun who founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to care for orphans and foundlings, emigrated to the United States and is the patron saint of missionaries.

In India, it is National Mathematics Day, commemorating the birth in 1887 of renowned mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan and celebrated in schools and universities across the country. In Zimbabwe, it is Unity Day, which marks the anniversary of the Unity Accord between political parties ZANU-PF and PF-ZAPU in 1987, led by Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo respectively.

Factoids

1. Bobby Farrell was initially the only male member of Boney M., the R&B group assembled by German record producer Frank Farian (real name Franz Reuther). He was a disc jockey and dancer but never actually sang on the group’s records, the male vocals being performed in the studio by Farian himself. Farrell left the group in 1981 after disagreements with Farian, eventually dying of heart failure, aged 61, in 2010. He died in St Petersburg on 30 December, the same date and location as mystic and faith healer Grigori Rasputin in 1916, the inspiration for Boney M.’s 1978 hit single “Rasputin”. Lover of the Russian queen, there was a cat that really was gone…

2. It is little remembered now, but there was once a Swedish colonial presence in North America. In 1626, the South Sweden Company was formed with a mandate to establish settlements in the New World and encourage transatlantic trade. The first expedition left Gothenburg in 1637 under the leadership of a Walloon merchant called Peter Minuit, previously Governor of New Netherland, the Dutch colony on the east coast of America. On 29 March 1638, the fleet laid anchor at the Minquas Kill near the River Delaware, at what is now known as Swedes’ Landing, establishing a colony which was named (somewhat unimaginatively) New Sweden. Its administrative centre was Fort Christina, built at the confluence of the Christina River and the Brandywine Creek, with Minuit becoming the first Governor. The Dutch resisted this incursion into what they regarded as their zone of interest, and in 1655, Peter Stuyvesant, the Director General of New Netherland, conquered the Swedish colony, Fort Christina surrendering on 15 September. New Sweden had lasted for only 17 years, and never numbered more than about 400 people, although the Dutch allowed the Swedish settlers to retain considerable autonomy in terms of militia, religion, court and lands.

3. Writing “Xmas” instead of “Christmas” is often deprecated as a sloppy or informal modernism, but its roots are very old. “X” was used as a scribal abbreviation for “Christ” in the Middle Ages, not as an English letter x but as a Greek capital letter chi, the first letter of Χριστός (Khristos) or Christ. An edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle from around 1100 refers to “Xp̄es mæsse”, while a letter from King Edward VI in 1551 contains the variant “X’temmas”. In 1753, a letter from Rev George Woodward, parson of East Hendred in Berkshire, mentions “Xmas”, and the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote to his friend Richard Southey on 31 December 1801 “On Xmas day I breakfasted with Davy, with the intention of dining with you, but I returned very unwell…” So don’t feel constrained: you are neither diminishing the Christian basis of Christmas nor succumbing to a sloppy latter-day shorthand, but emulating mediaeval scribes and making life easier for yourself.

4. The civil service has been subject to a lot of criticism recently (much of it richly deserved), but it was a civil servant who commissioned the first commercial Christmas cards. Henry Cole started his career in 1823 as a clerk to Francis Palgrave, working for the Records Commission, becoming a sub-commissioner himself, and in 1838 he was appointed one of four senior assistant keepers of the newly established Public Record Office at the Rolls Chapel on Chancery Lane. In 1843, he commissioned artist John Callcott Horsley to design a greetings card for Christmas, and the result was a depiction of a family having dinner over the legend “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you”. Cole went on to be chief administrator of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, chaired by the Prince Consort, and was knighted in 1875.

5. The role of the Three Wise Men in the Nativity has been embellished considerably over the centuries. In the Gospel of St Matthew, the only biblical reference to them, they are merely described as “wise men from the east” who are guided to Bethlehem by a star; when they find the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus in the famous manger, “they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh”. It was later assumed in Western Christianity that there were three wise men because they presented three gifts, though in the Eastern Church, they often number up to 12. The original Greek description of them is μάγοι, magoi or wise men (hence they are often referred to as the Magi), which derives from a word used of the priestly class of Zoroastrianism, who were known for their study of the stars. Consequently some biblical translations call them “astrologers”, but by the third century AD at the latest they were often described as kings, partly in reference to prophecies in the Old Testament that the Messiah would be worshipped by kings. An eighth century chronicle, the Excerpta Latina Barbari, names the Magi as Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, though the names may have much older origins. All of this is the accretion of various traditions, however. All the Bible says is that an unnumbered group of “wise men” came from “the east”.

6. Are you dreaming of a “White Christmas”? In the United Kingdom, the official definition is when a snowflake falls on the roof of the Met Office in London at any point during the 24 hours of 25 December, but the odds are heavily against it: in the 20th century, the UK only recorded seven official “White” Christmases.

7. This year’s official Christmas Number 1 is, for the second year in a row, Last Christmas by Wham! When it was first released in 1984, it peaked at Number 2, behind Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?, but subsequently entered the charts more than a dozen more times. Its legendary video is the last time Wham! lead singer George Michael was filmed without a beard.

8. Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life, starring James Stewart and Donna Reed, is one of the greatest of all Christmas films (obviously the greatest of all is The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) and I will not be taking questions at this time), though it received a mixed critical reception on release in December 1946 and did not perform well commercially. The Federal Bureau of Investigation took a particularly dim view: in August 1947, the FBI’s Los Angeles field office filed a report on eight new films which had been scrutinised for “subversive content”, based on three categories of “common devices used to turn non-political pictures into carriers of political propaganda”. It’s A Wonderful Life was judged to fulfil two categories. Lionel Barrymore’s portrayal of local businessman Henry F. Potter as a miserly, Scrooge-like figure was judged to be “a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers”, a “common trick used by Communists”. Furthermore, the plot was a “subtle attempt to magnify the problems of the so-called ‘common man’ in society”. In the end, the FBI seems to have decided that the film was not an immediate threat to American values and society, and no action was taken against it or its makers.

9. Mariah Carey may not be remembered as one of the greatest songwriters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, but All I Want For Christmas Is You, written with Walter Afanasieff in August 1994, is a genuinely brilliant and enduring addition to the season’s musical canon. It took them 15 minutes to compose.

10. It is famous that Christmas was banned by the Puritans during Oliver Cromwell’s rule in Britain. It is broadly true but it took place in stages. In 1640, the Parliament of Scotland passed the Yule Vacance Act which cancelled “the foirsaid Yule vacance and all observation thairof in tymecomeing”, while in January 1642 the English Parliament passed an ordinance which set aside the last Wednesday of every month as a day of fasting, prayer and reflection which in December 1644 coincided with Christmas Day. The next year Parliament approved a Directory for Public Worship to replace the Book of Common Prayer, and this instructed that feasts like Christmas and Easter were no longer to be specially marked. In June 1647, Parliament passed an Ordinance for the abolition of Holy Days and the establishment of Days of Recreation in lieu of them, which banned Christmas celebrations (among others) outright, and imposed fines for non-compliance. A more punitive system of fines was introduced in 1652. All of these measures were repealed by the Restoration Parliament in 1660, but Oliver Cromwell’s personal involvement in them was peripheral: he was not even present in Parliament when the 1647 ordinance was passed, and there is no record of his opinion in any direction of the celebration of Christmas.

“Human beings need stories, and we’re looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it’s television… whatever form, people are hungry for stories.” (Paul Auster)

1. “Conclave”: based on Robert Harris’s 2016 novel, directed by Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front) and written by Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Wolf Hall), this effective and lavish thriller follows the events from the death of a pope through the conclave and the election by the cardinals of his successor. On one level, given my various interests, this could hardly fail: an outstanding cast featuring birthday boy Ralph Fiennes (see above), Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini all bring their A-game to a well-written, taut, sumptuously shot and predictably arch and campy adventure of swishing robes and sideways glances. A conclave is an inspired setting for a thriller, literally a locked room. Most people will enjoy this for these reasons, and that’s fine. It is, however, not only a liberal fantasy, which is fine, but a simplistic, patronising and incoherent one, intellectually an utter mess. So… take it as you find it. I 80 per cent loved it.

2. “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: The Christmas Episode”: I know virtually no-one seemed to like Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up to The West Wing, and I don’t know why because it’s snappily written, well plotted and has brilliant turns from Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford, Amanda Peet, Sarah Paulson, Timothy Busfield, Steven Weber and others, but that’s in the past. This Christmas episode from December 2006 is profoundly dear to me for a lot of reasons, but it’s also a really good, heartwarming, funny way to mark the season. Just watch it already.

3. “Connections—James Burke”: another birthday boy, the great James Burke, and a very short clip from the end of episode 8 of his brilliant 1978 BBC series Connections, but this has been, I think with some reason, described as the greatest shot in television. Certainly there was no option of a second take.

“I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on until I am.” (Jane Austen)

1. “Our 12 new town proposals”: from the Yes and Grow Substack of Ben Hopkinson, Head of Research at infrastructure advocacy body Britain Remade, this identified 12 sites around the country which the government’s New Towns Taskforce could recommend for development. It takes into account house prices compared to build cost, rail connectivity, opportunities to mirror a town, space for over 10,000 new homes and the avoidance of national landscapes, flood plains and sites of special scientific interest. Some of the finer detail may overwhelm all but the most avid or specialist reader, but it is reassuringly solid work and there is a bracing sense of optimism and breadth of scope about it. We are in a time crying out for boldness and ambition underpinned by painstaking research and data, and this is a heartening read.

2. “Harry Potter and the Big State”: more seasonally whimsical, this light-hearted essay from Stephen Webb’s Wallenstein’s Camp Substack examines J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books and tries to delineate the size and shape of the governance of the wizarding world, from the Ministry of Magic to St Mungo’s Hospital. I am very far from a devotee of Potter: I read the first three books as they were published in the late 1990s out of curiosity for this sudden literary phenomenon, and found them enjoyable and workmanlike children’s entertainment. When tehn fourth novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released in 2000 and was twice the length of its predecessor at 636 pages, I decided that my curiosity had been satisfied and I have had no urge to return to them, but I wish Rowling all the best. You don’t need to be a Potter obsessive to enjoy Webb’s article: it is nicely judged as a kind of extensio ad absurdum and manages to strain the central conceit without ever going too far.

3. “CapX’s books of 2024”: I include this collection of recommendations, reviews and recollections not because I was asked to contribute, though I was happy to do so, but because I found that the staff at CapX, the online platform of the Centre forPolicy Studies, and my fellow contributors revealed a pleasing and unpredictable diversity of books, fiction and non-fiction. You may have read most, some or none of them, but hopefully you will find something of interest.

4. “Scrapping Latin in state schools will impoverish us all”: the Latin Excellence Programme, delivered by the Centre for Latin Excellence, was announced in July 2021 to provide teaching and resources for pupils in non-selective state schools. It began in September 2022 but last week the Department for Education wrote to schools informing them the funding for the programme would cease in February. This will affect several thousand pupils in 40 schools, including 1,000 at key stage four about to take their GCSE Latin examinations. Whether you think teaching Latin is valuable or not—I emphatically do, and wrote a defence of the classics in January 2023—two facts are beyond dispute: the cost saving of axeing this £4 million scheme is minute in Whitehall terms, and to end it in the middle of the school year can be other than disruptive to pupils. In The Daily Telegraph, Dr Lola Salem, a lecturer in music at Oriel College, Oxford, and always a sharp and thought-provoking voice, argues in favour of Latin as a subject (“It demands discipline and rewards perseverance. It connects the individual student to a broader cultural and intellectual tradition.”). More than that, she proposes that treating subjects like Latin, classical music and the arts as peripheral and undeserving of public funding simply increases the extent to which they are the preserve of the wealthy and privileged. It is a profoundly unegalitarian action, and it is short-sighted and mean-spirited.

5. “A church service with the Chaldeans of West Acton”: in The Spectator, the delightful and perpetually curious Christopher Howse relates a visit to Mass at the country’s only Chaldean Catholic church, the Holy Family Catholic Church in West Acton, cared for by Father Andrawis Toma. The Chaldean Church is in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church but used the East Syriac Rite and its liturgy is in Syriac, a form of Aramaic. Its origins lie in Iraq, where at the turn of the millennium there were two million or so Chaldean worshippers. After the invasion in 2003, Islamic State and various militias drove 90 per cent of them into exile. Worldwide there are only around 600,000 members of this denomination, which traces its lineage back to the very earliest days of Christianity. You don’t have to be a Christian, or have any religious faith, to understand the significance of this ancient worship or the feel that its loss would be enormously sad.

What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people…

… asked Kerouac, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.

Merry Christmas.