Sunday round-up 23 March 2025

Bonne anniversaire to Michael Nyman, Chaka Khan and Sir Mo Farah, and 485 years ago the Dissolution of the Monasteries came to a quiet end in the west of Essex

Today is quite the collective birthday party. Jostling for seats around the table and fighting over the canapés are virologist and co-discoverer of HIV Dr Robert Gallo (88), director, screenwriter and double Palme d’Or winner Michael Haneke (83), composer, pianist and musicologist Michael Nyman (81), screenwriter and producer Alan Bleasdale (79), businessman, astronaut and motorsport entrepreneur Adrian Reynard (74), science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson (73), former CEO of ExxonMobil and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (73), singer-songwriter, “Queen of Funk” and soi-disant every woman Chaka Khan (72), designer and philanthropist Kenneth Cole (71), former Prime Minister of Portugal and President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso (69), stage and screen actress Amanda Plummer (68), former Deputy First Minister of Scotland Lord Stephen (65), most successful male rower in Olympic history Sir Steve Redgrave (63), singer-songwriter, producer and Blur frontman Damon Albarn (57), former England cricket captain Mike Atherton (57), Welsh boxing legend Joe Calzaghe (53), track cyclist and six-time Olympic champion Sir Chris Hoy (49), actress and producer Keri Russell (49), blogger and zeitgeist capturer Perez Hilton (48), long-distance runner and quadruple Olympic gold medal winner Sir Mo Farah (42), track cyclist and seven-times Olympic gold medallist Sir Jason Kenny (37), Goals House advisory board member and scoliosis sufferer Princess Eugenie of York (Mrs Jack Brooksbank) (35) and Formula 1 driver Alexander Albon (29).

Among those having Miss Otis-style regrets (madam) are former birthdays boys and girls are Henry VI’s queen Margaret of Anjou (1430), 17th Vice-President of the United States Schuyler Colfax (1823), Liberal MP, editor of John Bull and convicted fraudster Horatio Bottomley (1860), founding member of the German Workers’ Party, first publisher of Völkischer Beobachter and spiritual co-founder of Nazism Dietrich Eckart (1868), British-Armenian oil magnate and philanthropist Calouste Gulbenkian (1869), iconic director, producer and screenwriter Akira Kurosawa (1910), physicist, engineer and ideologically flexible designer of rockets Wernher von Braun (1912), patron of the Royal Ballet and Bamber Gascoigne’s great-aunt Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe (1915), land and water speed record holder, paranormal enthusiast and victim of Coniston Water’s conditions Donald Campbell (1921), inventor of Liquid Paper and mother of one of the Monkees Bette Nesmith Graham (1924), record-breaking middle-distance runner and neurologist Sir Roger Bannister (1929), beloved comedian and writer Barry Cryer (1935) and Cars frontman Ric Ocasek (1944).

Bare ruined choirs

Today in 1540 was the last day of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in England. Waltham Priory had been founded as a community of Augustinian canons in 1177 by King Henry II, part of his extensive process of penance for causing the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, in 1170. There had already been four successive churches on the site in Essex, the first dating back to the 7th century AD, and it had become a popular pilgrimage site in the 11th century. In 1060, Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex and Hereford, later King Harold II, had established a college of 12 secular canons under the authority of a dean and made generous financial provision for the community. Some of the canons were married—celibacy was by no means yet universal among secular priests at this stage—and this was used as one of the proofs of immorality which justified the King’s expulsion of the canons and their replacement with monastic clergy at its refoundation.

In 1184, Henry raised the convent to the status of an abbey and it grew to 24 canons under an abbot and a prior. The Abbey of Waltham Holy Cross, physically vast with one of the longest churches in England, was a wealthy establishment by this stage, having been granted substantial landholdings; by 1266 its properties were worth £21 17s. 3d. It was exempted from episcopal jurisdiction, being a Royal Peculiar subject only to the Crown, and the Abbot was entitled to sit in the House of Lords.

Henry VIII had been declared Supreme Head of the Church of England by the Act of Supremacy 1534, and in order to exercise this authority in financial terms, commissions were appointed to survey and assess the actual wealth of the church. The task was carried out with almost unbelievable speed, and by May 1535 commissioners had compiled the Valor Ecclesiasticus, record of ecclesiastical property, revenue and income in 22 volumes. Waltham Abbey’s net value was recorded as £900 4s. 3d., making it the wealthiest house in Essex and one of the wealthiest Augustinian communities in England.

Thomas Cromwell by this stage was the King’s Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Master of the Rolls, Master of the King’s Jewel House, Clerk of the Hanaper and, most significantly in this context, Visitor-General of the Monasteries and Vicar General, which gave him administrative authority over the church greater even than that of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and in the summer of 1535 he initiated a programme of visitations of monastic houses.

The idea of investigating monasteries with a view to reforming them where necessary and even closing some houses was not new, and there had been several waves of reform in England over previous centuries. By this stage, the fundamental theological role of monasticism, to offer prayers for the souls of the dead, had not yet formally been repudiated by the Church of England, although it was increasingly controversial. Cromwell almost certainly did not believe in intercessory prayer, while the King almost certainly did, but it was not yet an explicit plan to sweep the religious houses away. They were certainly numerous: England had nearly 900 abbeys, priories, friaries and nunneries comprising a population of 12,000 religious: 4,000 monks, 3,000 canons, 3,000 friars and 2,000 nuns. Given that the country’s adult male population is estimated to have been around 500,000, this meant one adult man in every fifty was in religious orders.

There was an obvious financial prize. The religious houses owned between a sixth and a quarter of all the land in England and, while the smallest communities could be very poor, the largest were fabulously wealthy and powerful. The Valor Ecclesiasticus had given the King and Cromwell a detailed record of how much property the church owned and the income it received, and both could see the benefits of simply expropriating such enormous wealth. But at first the visitations inquired into spiritual and moral standards, efficiency and general orderliness. Cromwell’s commissioners understood the game that was to be played and eagerly relayed tales of scandal and immorality, broken vows and neglected duties and a staid, decaying system. It was probably a harsh but not fanciful depiction of English monasticism: any laxity was reported in the worst possible light, but it does not seem that purely fictitious allegations were widespread.

In April 1536, the King gave Royal Assent to the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535, which dissolved communities with estates and income worth under £200 a year, in which “manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living is daily used and committed”, and granted their property to the Crown. The men and women who had lived in the smaller houses were to be sent to larger establishments or given financial compensation of they chose to leave the religious life. Formally, this was still a process of reform and improvement, though the notion that small religious houses were necessarily corrupt, lax and worldly while larger ones were ipso facto observant, diligent and godly is questionable. Waltham Abbey was therefore far too wealthy to be affected by the provisions of the act.

The act led to the suppression of around 360 religious houses, and there was often considerable opposition to the closure of lynchpins of local economies and providers of charity and education. This first wave of suppressions was one of the factors which provoked the Pilgrimage of Grace in October 1536, a rebellion which began in Yorkshire but quickly spread to Cumberland, Northumberland, Durham and northern Lancashire. The uprising was defeated relatively quickly but it was a bad scare for the Tudor monarchy, probably the greatest purely internal threat the dynasty would face between 1485 and 1603, and it tainted monastic communities with a suggestion of treason; in the wake of the uprising, seven abbots and 38 monks were among those executed.

Monasteries were now encouraged to surrender voluntarily to the Crown, and many religious, realising the potential consequences of resisting what was now the government’s clear intention, chose to seek the generous terms offered. In June 1539, Parliament passed a second Suppression of Religious Houses Act, this time providing for the straightforward closure of the remaining 552 monasteries. The Abbot of Waltham, Robert Fuller, who had been elected in 1526, had been paying regular bribes to Cromwell for the survival of the house, giving him £50 in 1535 alone, and for a time it meant that Waltham remained unmolested and unaffected by the unfolding process of the dissolution. But it could not last forever.

January and February 1540 saw a flurry of suppressions as abbeys and priories finally surrendered to the Crown: Bolton, Cranborne, Dunstable, Egglestone, Shap, Thetford, Pontefract, Shrewsbury, Worcester, Whitby. Benedictines, Cluniacs, Augustinians, Praemonstratensians and Cistercians all left their convents. By 23 March, Waltham was the only house left. Abbot Fuller presided over a community of 17 canons, three of whom had come from Leez Priory and one from Little Dunmow Priory at their suppression in 1536. They went quietly and were rewarded, with all being granted pensions for life the following day.

The first monastic community in England was probably at Glastonbury, with some evidence dating back to the 5th century AD. That had blossomed over the space of a millennium into the 900 houses of the late mediaeval church. The period from the Suppression of Religious Houses 1535 being given Royal Assent and the dissolution of the very last monastery at Waltham Abbey was just under four years.

Use the Force, Ron

The extent to which issues like nuclear proliferation, ballistic missiles and missile defence have been in the news over the past couple of years or so makes me almost nostalgic for a childhood still in the dying days of SALT and mutually assured destruction. I suppose we can thank Vladimir Putin, an 80s retro figure if ever there was one, for that trend. Appropriately enough, on this day in 1983, President Ronald Reagan appeared on television to deliver an Address to the Nation on Defense and National Security. He wanted to explain the defence budget he had submitted to Congress, calling it “part of a careful, long-term plan to make America strong again after too many years of neglect and mistakes”.

While I have said in the past that our current metric for defence spending of a percentage of gross domestic product is a useful shorthand and an easily understandable yardstick for those who devote little attention to politics, and continue to think that, Reagan made an important corrective observation.

Let me say what the defense debate is not about. It is not about spending arithmetic. I know that in the last few weeks you’ve been bombarded with numbers and percentages. Some say we need only a 5-percent increase in defense spending. The so-called alternate budget backed by liberals in the House of Representatives would lower the figure to 2 to 3 percent, cutting our defense spending by $163 billion over the next 5 years. The trouble with all these numbers is that they tell us little about the kind of defense program America needs or the benefits and security and freedom that our defense effort buys for us.

It is a fair point. Towards the end of his speech, talking about nuclear weapons, deterrence and arms control agreements, he made a seemingly small and mild-sounding announcement couched in humdrum language.

Tonight, consistent with our obligations of the ABM treaty and recognizing the need for closer consultation with our allies, I’m taking an important first step. I am directing a comprehensive and intensive effort to define a long-term research and development program to begin to achieve our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles.

Reagan was referring to what would become known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or, more pithily, “Star Wars”. The idea was to develop the ability to intercept ballistic missiles and render them unless, thereby effectively bringing the nuclear age to an end—for those who possessed such a capability.

On 6 January 1984, therefore, Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 119, which formally established the Strategic Defense Initiative and placed it under the control of the Department of Defense. It was to “place principal emphasis on technologies involving nonnuclear kill concepts”, although existing research programmes “utilizing nuclear devices should continue as a hedge against a Soviet ABM breakout”. In March, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger appointed Lieutenant General James A. Abrahamson USAF as Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), then a month later signed the body’s first charter.

Abrahamson was trained in aeronautical engineering and in the early 1960s had worked on Project Vela which used satellites to try to detect covert testing of nuclear weapons, especially after the agreeing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963. He had then trained as an astronaut for the US Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory Program, but it was cancelled in June 1969 before he could go into space. In 1981 he became Associate Administrator of NASA’s Space Transportation System, otherwise known as the Space Shuttle.

Overseeing the SDIO, Abrahamson would have a high degree of autonomy to pursue research, and reported directly to the Secretary of Defense. SDIO was arranged into five areas of work: surveillance, acquisition, tracking and kill assessment (SATKA); Directed Energy Weapons Technology (DEW); Kinetic Energy Weapons Technology (KEW); Systems Concept/Battle Management (SC/BM); and Survivability, Lethality, and Key Technologies (SLKT). The driving force behind SDI was to exploit the United States’ advantages in technology and provide a shield against Soviet nuclear missiles, but doing so within the boundaries of defensive, non-nuclear weapons.

What particularly caught the public eye and resonated with the times was the potential of directed energy weapons, using the focused energy of lasers or microwaves to destroy an incoming warhead without the use of a solid projectile. The image of lasers being fired in space to intercept nuclear warheads was dramatically futuristic and had strong echoes of the James Bond film Moonraker, released in 1979. However, development was slow, and a review commissioned by the SDIO from the American Physical Society concluded in 1986 that none of the potential technologies was anywhere near a state of sufficient maturity to act as the basis for a viable defence. It noted:

We estimate that all existing candidates for directed energy weapons (DEWs) require two or more orders of magnitude, (powers of 10) improvements in power output and beam quality before they may be seriously considered for application in ballistic missile defense systems.

Given this setback, and with costs spiralling and bad publicity accumulating, Abrahamson switched the SDIO’s focus to a simpler system relying on ground-based missiles. The collapse of first the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union suggested to many commentators that a more likely threat than an overwhelming ballistic missile strike by Moscow was a smaller scale attack from one of a broader range of potential adversaries. In 1993, the Clinton administration recast the SDIO as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

Forty-two years on from Reagan’s speech, it feels like we are coming full circle. Annie Jacobsen’s compelling but terrifying Nuclear War: A Scenario draws on exhaustive research over years to describe what a nuclear strike against the United States might be like; missile defence is one of the most pressing priorities for Europe’s armed forces; and the UK is developing the DragonFire laser directed energy weapon (LDEW) system to counteract aerial targets with precision and at low cost. Perhaps we are finally moving towards the sort of capabilities which Reagan imagined when he spoke to the American people more than four decades ago. Better late than never.

Could you put in a good word?

For all your intercessory needs, today is the feast of SS Victorian, Frumentius and Companions (d AD 484), tortured and put to death in Hadrumentum in North Africa by the Vandals for refusing to convert to Arianism; of St Gwinear (6th century AD), an Irish martyr converted by St Patrick who travelled with seven (or possibly 777) companions on a mission to Cornwall where King Teudar had them thrown into a pit of reptiles; of St Ottone Frangipane (1040-1127), a Roman knight who became a Benedictine monk after escaping from imprisonment and ended his days as a hermit near the Church of San Pietro dei Reclusiis in Ariano Irpino; of St Toribio Alfonso de Mogrovejo (1538-1606), an aristocrat from Valladolid who was a distinguished canon law professor at Salamanca, Oviedo and Coimbra before being appointed Grand Inquisitor for Granada by Philip II and then, reluctantly, ordained and nominated Archbishop of Lima in 1578/79, spending more than 25 years diligently administering his huge Peruvian archdiocese; and of St Joseph Oriol (1650-1702), known as “the Thaumaturgus of Barcelona”, a Spanish priest eager for martyrdom who fell sick before he could undertake missionary work but was reputed to be able to heal the blind, the lame, the deaf and mute and, somewhat implausibly, the dying.

Bolivia is marking the Day of the Sea (Día del Mar), commemorating the country’s loss to Chile of its Departamento del Litoral during the 1879-83 War of the Pacific since when it has been landlocked. It is also Pakistan Day, celebrating the day in 1956 when a new constitution saw the Dominion of Pakistan become the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the world’s first Islamic republic. Azerbaijan sees the Day of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, and it is also World Meteorological Day, celebrating the work of the World Meteorological Organization, an agency of the United Nations.

Factoids

1. In 1997, the first President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, fulfilled a long-held scheme to transfer the capital city away from Almaty, a settlement dating back to the Bronze Age which had been the Kazakh administrative centre since 1929. He moved it instead to Akmola, founded in 1830 as Akmoly, renamed Akmolinsk in 1832 then Tselinograd in 1961 before being dubbed Akmola in 1991. Six months after the transfer, in May 1998, it was again renamed as Astana, which means “capital city” (descriptive if uninspired) in Kazakh. Shortly after President Nazarbayev stepped down, today in 2019 Astana was again renamed Nur-Sultan in his honour, before his successor, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, signed a constitutional amendment in 2022 to restore the capital city’s name to Astana. It holds the Guinness World Record for the capital with most name changes in modern times.

2. Bolivia became landlocked as a result of the War of the Pacific of 1879-83, losing its coastal territory to Chile (see above). It is not the only country to have transformed from a partly littoral nation to one wholly cut off from the sea (there are 44 landlocked nations, up from 30 in 1990). The State of Eritrea formally separated from Ethiopia in May 1993 after a 30-year war of independence and stripped Ethiopia of its coastline and access to the Red Sea. In June 2006, Montenegro, previously part of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, declared independence; although it is tiny, at 5,360 square miles, it sits on the coast of the Adriatic Sea and resulted in the Republic of Serbia becoming landlocked. The Republic of South Sudan, established in July 2011, is landlocked country which separated from a littoral one.

3. CS gas, a lachrymatory agent of which the active component is 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile (C₁₀H₅ClN₂) was first synthesised in 1928 by scientists Professor Ben Corson and Roger Stoughton, working at Middlebury College in Vermont and investigating the reaction between carbonyl compounds and malononitrile. Its name derives from the initial letters of their surnames. It is best known for its use in riot control and was frequently deployed by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British Army in the first few years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It has very rarely been used by police in Great Britain, the most notable instance being at 2.15 am on 6 July 1981 when officers of Merseyside Police fired 25-30 GS gas canisters to disperse a crowd during the riots in Toxteth. The Metropolitan Police, having conducted a review of the widespread public disorder in August 2011, considered but rejected making more ready provision for its use, though it is acknowledged to be non-lethal and its use by police would not be illegal. Curiously, the use of CS gas against combatants in warfare is prohibited, under the terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention. The logic is that allowing the use of CS gas, although it is non-lethal, might encourage escalation and resorting to more deadly agents.

4. From August 1999 to September 2001, the leaders of the three major parties at Westminster had all been their parties’ youngest MPs when first elected. Prime Minister Tony Blair had only just turned 30 when he became MP for Sedgefield in 1983, Leader of the Opposition William Hague was not quite 28 when he won the Richmond by-election in 1989 and Charles Kennedy, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, was not only the youngest SDP or Alliance MP but the Baby of the House when he won Ross, Cromarty and Skye at the 1983 general election, aged 23.

5. Charles Kennedy was a talented and successful debater when he was an undergraduate at the University of Glasgow from 1978 to 1982 and was President of the Glasgow University Union in 1980-81. He won the Observer Mace debating competition (now the John Smith Memorial Mace), a tournament for student debaters from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland established in 1954 by journalist Kenneth Harris. Kennedy’s 1982 victory, partnered by Clark McGinn, makes him the second most recent winner to go on to be a Member of Parliament after John Nicolson (1983, Glasgow University Union); before him winners included Bob Marshall-Andrews and Lord Hunt of Wirral (1965, University of Bristol), Donald Dewar (1963, Glasgow University Union), the now-eponymous John Smith (1962, Glasgow University Union), Lord Russell-Johnston (1961, University of Edinburgh) and J. Dickson Mabon (1955, Glasgow University Union). More recent winners include Sally Rooney (2013, Trinity College Dublin Historical Society) and Alex Massie (1997, Trinity College Dublin Philosophical Society).

6. The ongoing war of words between Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and his now-former colleague Rupert Lowe led to me to think about Great Yarmouth, the constituency Lowe represents. Although its history is not quite continuous, Great Yarmouth has sent MPs to the House of Commons since the Model Parliament of 1295. They have included Nicholas Fastolf (1309, 1314), thought to be the ancestor of Sir John Fastolf on whom Shakespeare modelled Falstaff, and his nephew High Fastolf (1361-77); Sir John Paston (1478), pursuer of a claim to the lands of Sir John Fastolf; Sir Thomas More (1504); Sir Edward Bacon (1576-81), son of Lord Keeper of the Great Seal Sir Nicholas Bacon; Miles Corbet (1640-53), a signatory of Charles I’s death warrant; Horatio Townshend (1715-22), later Governor of the Bank of England; Horatio Walpole (1722-34), ambassador and brother of the first Prime Minister, and his son Richard Walpole (1768-84); Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Jervis (1784-90), victor of the Battle of Cape St Vincent and First Lord of the Admiralty; and erstwhile Lord Chancellor Sir Brandon Lewis (2010-24).

7. Today is the anniversary of the first meeting in 1888 of the Football League, now the English Football League, the world’s oldest professional association football league. Ironically, given traditional rivalries and football-connected activities, the founder of the Football League, William McGregor, was a Scot and a teetotaller. A draper from Perthshire, he moved to Aston, then a suburb of Birmingham, to establish his own drapery business and became involved with local football team Calthorpe FC. He was later a director of Aston Villa and attempted to start a baseball league in the UK, serving as Honorary Treasurer of the Baseball Association of Great Britain and Ireland. He was President of Birmingham Baseball Club, an offshoot of Aston Villa, which won the 1890 National League of Baseball of Great Britain. Since it is (so far) the only national baseball championship played in Britain, they are technically the reigning champions.

8. As any fule kno, the Duchy of Lancaster is an estate held by the monarch worth around £650 million, which provides a yearly income separate from the Sovereign Grant of about £24 million. It also exercises some powers and ceremonial duties of the Crown in respect of the historic county of Lancashire, comprising the current ceremonial counties of Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside, and the Furness area of Cumbria. There is a Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, currently Pat McFadden MP, who is usually a cabinet minister. The duchy became attached to the Crown in 1413, when Henry of Monmouth, Prince of Wales, who had been created Duke of Lancaster in 1399, ascended to the throne as Henry V. However, it does not follow that the King is also Duke of Lancaster. In 1905, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Sir William Walrond, wrote to the King’s Private Secretary Lord Knollys expressing the view that the title of Duke of Lancaster, quite separate from the estates of the Duchy of Lancaster, rightfully belonged to the descendants of John of Gaunt; this was reiterated by another Chancellor, Charles Hobhouse, in the early 1910s after consultation with the Attorney General to the Duchy of Lancaster, Sir Robert McCall, telling George V it was “extremely unlikely” that he was in fact the Duke of Lancaster.

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favour you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.” (Dorothy Parker)

1. “Wild Mountain Thyme—stirring ballad has become a folk-music fixture”: Charles Morris in The Financial Times relates the history and many iterations of the folk song Wild Mountain Thyme, originally a musical setting by Robert Archibald Smith of the early 19th century poem The Braes of Balquhidder by Robert Tannahill. It was revived and modified by Belfast musician Francis McPeake in the late 1940s, first recorded by his son, also Francis, in 1952 and rapidly established itself in the modern folk canon: Pete Seeger and Judy Collins both performed it, as did the Byrds and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, then a couple. It is now almost ubiqitous, with transcendentally beautiful and grimly awful interpretations, but that, surely, is in itself a sign of greatness. I’m told the 2020 Emily Blunt/Jamie Dornan film of the same name is God-awful, or, as The Irish Times put it, “What in the name of holy bejaysus is this cowpat?”

2. “Bricks and mortarboards”: I have visited Cork only once, many years ago for a work conference and saw very little of it, so this enlightening piece in The Critic by Charles Saumarez Smith, whose writing I have recommended before, was wholly new to me. While there are parts of, say, Dublin and Belfast which have beautiful and grand buildings, if you asked me to think about vernacular Irish architecture I’m afraid I would draw a blank, so it was fascinating to read about Shane de Blacam’s designs at what is now Munster Technological University but was then Cork Regional Technical College. He created austere neoclassical brick buildings, heavily influenced by Louis Kahn under whom he had held a Fulbright scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania; it shows de Blacam, in Saumarez Smith’s words, as “an architect who makes a virtue of the laconic, who believes in devoting careful thought to every aspect of building, and has inspired a younger generation of Irish architects in their love of materials”.

3. “Interest rates, mankind’s greatest invention”: from what could have been dry and impenetrable source material, the financial writer and historian Edward Chancellor has produced a well-argued paean to interest rates in Engelsberg Ideas. Arguing against the very notion of monetary policy as simplistic and ineffective, he describes the range of ways in which interest rates affect the economy and traces them back to the earliest days of mankind’s commercial activity in Bronze Age Mesopotamia (the Sumerian word for interest is mas, signifying the offspring of a sheep or goat and therefore the product of a financial transaction). Interest rates should be determined by market forces, he argues elegantly, which would require the end of a fiat money system, but it would reflect the myriad ways in which they influence (and enable) economic activity.

4. “A dismal scorecard after two months of the Musk-Trump administration”: George Will spares no criticism in evaluating Donald Trump’s second presidential term so far in The Washington Post. He deprecates “a remarkably high ratio of theatrical action to substantial achievement” and warns of increasing rather than diminishing “fiscal incontinence”, while fiercely criticising the Republican-controlled Congress for abdicating its responsibilities and surrendering to presidential will. The degree to which Trump as captured the Republican Party and made it a personality cult in which advancement depends on loyalty tests is both astounding and depressing, but the pass was sold some years ago. The GOP embraced Trump for pragmatic, even cynical political reasons and cannot now disavow him.

5. “The ten most overrated albums in pop history”: a bracingly direct and opinionated Substack article by the late music journalist Neil Kulkarni bursts the bubble on unworthy “classics” like Primal Scream’s Screamadelica and The Score by the Fugees. I agree with most of his takes, though that hardly matters, but it is a bravura assault on ten sacred cows undertaken with relish and swearing. He loathes the Who’s “grubby be-denimmed pomposity and sanctimoniousness” and sums them up as “a band that have always left me cold. Shit then. Shit now.” Tell us what you really think, Neil.

“I plan on continuing to explore all the possibilities of technology, and then finally film and television and movies. Embrace it.” (MC Hammer)

1. “Saint Patrick: Born in Britain, Made in Ireland”: it was, of course, St Patrick’s Day this week. As is often reflected in the section of these round-ups about the festal calendar, there are many saints about whom he know extraordinarily little, and, while the Apostle of Ireland is one of the heavyweights of the company of heaven, what we know about him as a real person is relatively limited. It is agreed he was born in the fifth century AD somewhere in Britain, but where is unclear: perhaps it was somewhere in Cumbria, perhaps in Scotland, perhaps in Wales. He was kidnapped by Irish pirates and taken to Ireland where he was a captive for some years, then escaped and returned to Britain, then went back to Ireland as a missionary. This documentary starts with St Patrick’s writings and picks apart some of the legends around him, as well as setting him in the wider context of the Christianity of the age. A very enjoyable primer to the patron saint of Ireland (and Nigeria and Montserrat).

2. “Just Another Saturday”: 50 years ago this month, Sir Billy Connolly made his television debut in an acting role in this episode of the BBC’s long-running Play for Today drama anthology. Written by Peter McDougall and directed by John Mackenzie (who went on to make The Long Good Friday), Just Another Saturday is the story of 16-year-old John, played by Jon Morrison, a young Orange Order member in Glasgow looking forward to the annual march in which he will lead his lodge’s band. His initial excitement turns to disillusionment and horror as the day is beset by drunkenness, hooliganism and sectarian violence. It is a pitiless depiction of religious bigotry and hatred in the west of Scotland—still by no means a thing of the past—but McDougall’s script also captures exquisitely the black humour and heavily veiled bonds of affection of Glasgow’s working-class culture. Very powerful stuff and a reminder of how good television drama, especially BBC television drama, could be in that period.

3. “Triggernometry: Rory Sutherland”: another appearance by Ogilvy Group Vice-Chairman Rory Sutherland and I’m not even sorry. Here he joins Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster on their right-wing, anti-woke, self-professedly free speech-supporting podcast Triggernometry and they discuss a range of subjects including social activism by private enterprise, the current media landscape, the condition and prospects of the Democratic Party and the role and status of marketing. I am still not quite sure what to make of Kisin and Foster: they can be interesting and provocative, but by the same token predictable and simplistic, and I have a nagging doubt that they think they are more intellectual and iconoclastic than they really are. But it still provides a good platform for Rory, and it is interesting to watch the way his natural geniality allowing him to correct or undermine some of his hosts’ assumptions without them seeming even to notice the challenge.

4. “Michael Wolff: A Charlie Rose Global Conversation”: Michael Wolff is a combative and controversial journalist who has not always been absolutely scrupulous about the accuracy and reliability of his sources, but he has produced four successful and engrossing books about Donald Trump’s political career: Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (2018), Siege: Trump Under Fire (2019), Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency (2021) and All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America (2025). Debates over the veracity of every rumour and accusation will be perpetual, but most commentators seem to agree that Wolff has been dogged and extensive in seeking out sources and that the broad picture he paints of Trump as President—wild, unfocused, chaotic, suspicious, impulsive, surrounded by plots and conspiracies—represents reality. Here he speaks at length to veteran interviewer Charlie Rose who is rebuilding a public profile after allegations of sexual misconduct in 2017-18 saw CBS, Bloomberg and PBS sever their relationships with him. Hugely valuable insights to help us understand where the United States is going and why.

5. “The Tucker Carlson Show: Steve Witkoff”: this is not a recommendation in the sense that I enjoyed it or think readers will do so but you probably should watch it. Tucker Carlson has pretty much immolated any lingering shreds of credibility he had as a journalist or commentator and is deep into the world of MAGA, conspiracies and shilling for strongmen, but he retains influence and that, like it or not, means he matters. Here he interviews attorney and property magnate Steve Witkoff whom President Trump has appointed as Special Envoy to the Middle East and who was also been drafted in to the negotiations with Russia over the war in Ukraine. The world view Witkoff demonstrates is staggeringly simplistic, partial and often fundamentally misinformed; he describes Vladimir Putin in generally positive terms (“I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy, he’s super smart”) while occasionally sniping at Volodymyr Zelenskyy; speaks warmly of the government of Qatar and is silent on its links to the Muslim Brotherhood while chiding Egypt for its relationship with the same organisation; and draws an outrageous parallel between Russia’s argument that NATO membership of its neighbours is a threat to its security and Israel’s very valid hostility to the presence of Hamas in adjacent territories. Perhaps most striking is the recurring and lavish praise of President Trump both as a statesman and an individual, a reminder of the degree to which participation in a personality cult is now a sine qua non for senior positions in American politics. Revolting and chilling but necessary to know.

I must go in…

… as Emily Dickinson said just before she died, for the fog is rising. Let us try to get through another week. TTFN.