Sunday round-up 26 May 2024
Birthday greetings to Stevie Nicks and Jeremy Corbyn, as we mark the feast of St Augustine of Canterbury and the birth of Middle East oil
Today’s gallimaufry of birthday boys and girls includes rock legend and definitely-not-a-witch Stevie Nicks (76), former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (75), politician-turned-railway-enthusiast Michael Portillo (71), novelist Alan Hollinghurst (70), poet laureate Simon Armitage (61), English rose and Liberal scion Helena Bonham Carter (58), South African runner and shoe sceptic Zola Budd (58), co-creator of South Park Matt Stone (53), singer, songwriter and producer Lauryn Hill (49) and ubiquitous Salfordian Jason Manford (43).
Also born on this day but no longer with us—in some cases by quite a way—are the 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650), one of England’s greatest generals, allegedly light-fingered consort of George V Queen Mary (1867), singer Al Jolson (1886), improbable Lancashire superstar George Formby (1904) and Hollywood legend John Wayne (1907).
On this day in 1868, the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in the United States Senate came to an end with his acquittal by one vote. The House of Representatives had adopted 11 articles of impeachment relating to violation of the Tenure of Office Act of 1867 and other abuses of presidential power which it deemed to amount to “high crimes and misdemeanours”. Chief justice of the US Supreme Court Salmon P. Chase presided over the trial in a senate that then consisted of 54 members, and senators found the president guilty on three articles by 35 to 19; but a two-thirds majority, 36 votes, was needed to convict. After the first three votes, the trial was adjourned sine die, and Johnson served the rest of his term until 4 March 1869, though largely without influence. He was the first president to be impeached, but was followed by Bill Clinton in 1998 and Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021. All were acquitted.
In 1908, the first commercially viable oil strike in the Middle East was made at Masjed Soleyman in Persia by geologist George Bernard Reynolds, working for the Glasgow-based Burmah Oil Company. Within a year, it had created a subsidiary called the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) to exploit the new-found well and by 1911 a pipeline ran from Masjed Soleyman to a refinery at Abadan on the Persian Gulf. For half a century it would be the biggest oil refinery in the world. By 1954, APOC’s successor was renamed British Petroleum, now the seventh-largest oil and gas company in the world (and the UK’s second-largest after Shell).
The last Ford Model T was made in 1927. It had been in production for 19 years and cost $290, and 15,007,003 had been manufactured. It was the most sold car in history until overtaken by the Volkswagen Beetle in 1972.
In the liturgical calendar, it is the feast of St Augustine of Canterbury for Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox Christians (Roman Catholics have to wait until tomorrow). The 6th century monk, probably Italian, was chosen by Pope Gregory the Great in AD 595 to become the “Apostle to the English”, converting King Æthelberht of Kent to Christianity and becoming the first archbishop of Canterbury. He created the framework of the English Church before dying in AD 604, and had been expected to move his metropolitan see from Canterbury to London, which, 1,420 years later, has yet to happen.
We also commemorate St Quadratus of Athens, who extolled the virtues of Christianity to the Emperor Hadrian on his visit to the Peloponnese in AD 124 or 125 and is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox church as one of the Seventy Apostles mentioned in the Gospel of Luke.
It is also World Redhead Day, World Lindy Hop Day and, for Australians, the National Day of Healing to commemorate the Stolen Generations, children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent forcibly removed from their parents by the government and church missions.
Factoids
Helena Bonham Carter, who celebrates her birthday today, is related to an improbable number of peers. Her paternal great-grandfather was the Liberal prime minister H.H. Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, whose daughter Violet (Helena’s grandmother) became Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury in 1964. Her uncle was Liberal MP and peer Lord Bonham-Carter, whose daughter Jane, Helena’s cousin, is Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury, partner of Lord Razzall. Her uncle by marriage was Liberal leader Lord Grimond, and her great-uncle was Lord Asquith of Bishopstone.
There is a story of reasonable but vague provenance that H.H. Asquith’s second wife, the sharp-tongued Margot Tennant, encountered actress Jean Harlow at a party. The Hollywood star repeatedly mispronounced Margot’s name with a hard final ‘t’ until she could take it no more and corrected her: “No, no, the ‘t’ in my name is silent, as in ‘Harlow’.” I’ll give you a minute.
If one follows traditional historiography and regards Robert Walpole as the first prime minister, there have been 57 PMs (54 men and three women). Of those, it is perhaps not surprising that the vast majority, 46, were born in England, while seven were born in Scotland and two in what was then the Kingdom of Ireland. The other two were born overseas: Andrew Bonar Law was born in the Colony of New Brunswick in 1858 (nine years before Canada confederated), while Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born in Manhattan in 1964. No prime minister has been born in Wales; the almost manically Welsh David Lloyd George was born in Manchester to Welsh parents and moved to Wales when he was one.
His birthplace makes Johnson the only prime minister so far who could perhaps, in theory, one day run for president of the United States, as one of the eligibility criteria for that office under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution is being a “natural-born citizen” of the United States. However, the term is not defined in the Constitution and has been subject to debate. The current consensus is that it includes, with some exceptions, those born in the United States, and English common law, in the context of which the Constitution was framed, generally holds that anyone born in a territory is “natural-born”, irrespective of their parents’ nationality. There have been various challenges to the eligibility of presidential candidates, most famously Barack Obama, about whom a conspiracy theory grew up that he had been born in Kenya rather than Hawaii and was therefore ineligible. In addition, 2008 Republican candidate Senator John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, a US concession which existed from 1903 to 1979; Senator Barry Goldwater, the GOP candidate in 1964, was born in Arizona Territory in 1909, three years before Arizona achieved statehood; and Senator Ted Cruz, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in 2016, was born in Canada and so was a dual Canadian/American citizen at birth.
Returning to prime ministers, Rishi Sunak, a Hindu, is the first premier to practise a non-Christian faith. Benjamin Disraeli was born Jewish but baptised into the Church of England at the age of 12 after his father had quarrelled with the Bevis Marks Synagogue. In addition, four or five prime ministers have explicitly identified as atheist or non-religious while in office: David Lloyd George was educated at an Anglican school but lost his faith in his youth, though, in the words of one biographer, he “remained a chapel-goer and connoisseur of good preaching all his life”; Neville Chamberlain was raised a Unitarian but in adulthood described himself as a “reverent agnostic”; Clement Attlee’s family was Church of England but he said he was “incapable of religious feeling”, believing in “the ethics of Christianity” but not “the mumbo-jumbo”; James Callaghan, raised a Baptist, was claimed by some to have become an atheist when he was a trades union official in the 1930s (though his son disputes this); and Liz Truss said shortly before she became prime minister “I share the values of the Christian faith and the Church of England, but I’m not a regular practising religious person”.
Andrew Bonar Law was only prime minister from October 1922 to May 1923, resigning while suffering from terminal throat cancer. He died five months later and was the first prime minister to be cremated. When his ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey, H.H. Asquith (see above) remarked unkindly how fitting it was that “the unknown prime minister” should be buried by the tomb of the Unknown Warrior.
If Sir Keir Starmer wins the general election and becomes prime minister, he will sit in the new House of Commons with two former premiers, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. That is relatively unusual, but five prime ministers have shared the green benches with three predecessors: Stanley Baldwin in 1923 (Asquith, Lloyd George, Law); Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 (Asquith, Lloyd George, Baldwin); Neville Chamberlain in 1937 (Lloyd George, MacDonald, Baldwin); Margaret Thatcher in 1979-83 (Heath, Wilson, Callaghan); and Rishi Sunak on 2022-23 (May, Johnson, Truss). The last time there were no former prime ministers in the House was during Theresa May’s premiership from 2016 to 2019.
Saltwood Castle, near Hythe in Kent, is famous (if I can perhaps stretch the meaning of that word) as the home of maverick Conservative MP Alan Clark, who died in 1999. It was bought in 1953 by his father, art historian and gallery supremo Lord Clark, but in the late 19th and early 20th century had been owned by the family of Conservative cabinet minister and editor of The Daily Telegraph Bill Deedes, who grew up there. Centuries before, however, in December 1170, it was reputedly the meeting place of the four knights who acted on Henry II’s intemperate exclamation, “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and promoted in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born clerk!” They went to Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December and, as vespers were being celebrated that evening, hacked the archbishop, Thomas Becket, to death by the exit from the quire to the cloisters.
Parliament was prorogued on Friday, bringing to an end the last session and finalising all parliamentary business. It will be formally dissolved on Thursday 30 May, allowing for the election of a new parliament of Thursday 4 July. This happens by means of a proclamation issued in the name of the sovereign at a meeting of the Privy Council, with the Great Seal being affixed. It will be the first dissolution proclamation issued by a king since 5 October 1951, when George VI dissolved the 1950 Parliament after only 19 months.
Arguably the general election of October 1951, which saw Winston Churchill return as prime minister aged 76, was the last to be materially affected by the sovereign. George VI was due to embark on a tour of the Commonwealth at the beginning of 1952, and was anxious that the ailing Labour government, with a majority of only five, might fall while he was out of the country. Accordingly, the prime minister, Clement Attlee, called an election before the King’s scheduled trip, and lost. In the end, the King was too ill to undertake the tour, sending Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh in his stead. He died on 6 February 1952, while the couple were in Kenya.
My father hated radio and could not wait for television to be invented so he could hate that too (Peter De Vries)
“John Betjeman: The Last Laugh”: this instalment from the BBC’s Reputations series was shown this week as it is 40 years since the poet laureate died. Betjeman was a strange man, with a kind, generous, twinkling public persona and a complex and sometimes selfish private life. He must have a strong claim to be the most popular British poet of the post-war era, notwithstanding Auden, Heaney, Hughes and Larkin, and his work is certainly distinctive. He perfected a very English style which sought grace and beauty in the quotidian and humdrum, and it is infused with a spirit of enormous warmth and affection. In Westminster Abbey (1940) is a little jewel of a poem, sharply satirical but not pitiless, while also being lyrical and graceful. It feels like it should be read by Joyce Grenfell… This is a real treat: on Parkinson in February 1973, Maggie Smith and Kenneth Williams read Death in Leamington to Betjeman himself, who is obviously deeply moved. Was there ever a more English phrase than “the tea things”?
“Ian Rankin Investigates: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”: Sir Ian Rankin is hot property at the moment, with the release of a “reboot” of Rebus on BBC1 (which I reviewed here for CulturAll) and the impending publication of the 25th Rebus novel, Midnight & Blue, in October. I like Rankin a great deal, and one of his many attractive features is his knowledge of and respect for the canon of Scottish literature—he began writing a doctoral thesis on the novels of Dame Muriel Spark before becoming a full-time author. This documentary, first shown back in 2007, is a fascinating analysis of one of the great Scottish novels, Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 Gothic masterpiece The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. As Will Self notes in the film, it is a book many people think they have read—I have, but many years ago—and it is, for all its 141-page slightness, an extraordinarily textured work. It represents duality on a number of levels, not least the division between the public and the private (a Victorian obsession), the relationship between Scottishness and Britishness and the divided nature of Edinburgh, its mediaeval Old Town and the smart Georgian New Town. (Incidentally, “Jekyll” is pronounced “jeek-all”, not “jeck-all”, and the echo of “hide and seek” in “Jekyll and Hyde” is no accident.)
“The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp”: last week I recommended Made in England, Martin Scorsese’s new documentary about the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. This week the BBC screened perhaps their masterpiece, 1943’s romantic drama The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Borrowing the character of the reactionary army officer from David Low’s cartoons in The Evening Standard, they transformed him into Major-General Clive Wynne-Candy, played with exquisite nuance by Roger Livesey. We begin by finding the elderly Wynne-Candy as a senior commander in the Home Guard during the Second World War, before tumbling back to his youth in which he wins the Victoria Cross during the Boer War and finds himself fighting a duel with a young German officer, Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook). The film then traces the progression of their friendship and the sadnesses of Wynne-Candy’s romantic life: both men fall in love with Edith Hunter, a nurse who treats them after their duel, but it is Theo who marries her. Candy then meets and marries another nurse, Barbara Wynne, who reminds him of Edith. The last pivotal female character is Angela “Johnny” Cannon, Wynne-Candy’s driver in the Second World War. Brilliantly, Powell and Pressburger had all three female roles played by the outstanding Glaswegian actress Deborah Kerr. The film is very far from a rousing piece of jingoism, and it was almost banned by the War Office and the Ministry of Information. Even after their objections were withdrawn, Churchill, who hated it, initially imposed an export ban, and it was not released in the United States until 1945, and then in a heavily edited version. But it is a profoundly thought-provoking and moving work, sublimely human, and in 1995 Anthony Lane of The New Yorker argued that it “may be the greatest English film ever made, not least because it looks so closely at the incurable condition of being English”. It’s certainly a strong contender.
“Yes, Prime Minister: Power to the People”: with politics engulfing the airwaves it was a soothing relief to step back more than 35 years to the second series of Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay’s exquisite Whitehall satire Yes, Prime Minister. You can marvel anew at how inch-perfect the performances are: Paul Eddington as the vainglorious yet cunning and not unsympathetic Jim Hacker, Nigel Hawthorne as the mandarin’s mandarin, Sir Humphrey Appleby, and Derek Fowlds as Hacker’s earnest but slyly witty principal private secretary, Bernard Woolley. This episode manages to squeeze half an hour of intelligent and perceptive comedy out of a proposal to reform local government, which is no mean feat. The degree to which Yes, Prime Minister reflects or reflected reality can be exaggerated, and I had a colleague in the House of Commons who hated it and believed it had caused enormous damage to the perception of politics and the civil service. The truth is that like all great satire it magnifies what already exists and uses it to tell us something fundamental; it’s clever and thoughtful and brilliantly informed, but Lynn and Jay also remembered to make it funny.
“The Rest Is Politics US: What A Second Trump Presidency Would Look Like”: I’m enjoying this addition to the stable of Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger Podcasts (in fairness, James Marriott in The Times does not). I think Katty Kay, formerly of BBC North America, and Anthony Scaramucci, investment banker and briefly Donald Trump’s White House director of communications, make a lively and entertaining combination and obviously like each other. I’ve interacted with the Mooch once or twice and found him friendly, agreeably self-deprecating and, I suspect, much sharper and wiser than he allows people to think. Maybe this isn’t everyone’s tasse de thé but I find it a digestible and informative 40-minute dive into the current agenda of US politics and very much a worthwhile addition to the roster of information sources as the presidential election looms.
The truth is not a matter of opinion—it’s what the evidence shows (Carl Bernstein)
“Keir Starmer’s Choice”: there is a sense that we still don’t know all that much about Sir Keir Starmer despite four years as leader of the Labour Party, or else what we do know is superficial. This profile for American online conservative journal Compact by Dan Hitchens (son of Peter) is critical and pulls no punches, but is not, in my view, unfair. Other opinions are available. Nevertheless, worth reading for one perspective on the UK’s likely 58th prime minister (and Labour’s seventh), and an enjoyably bravura piece of writing. His characterisation of Starmer as “a legal bureaucrat with a five-star CV whose metallic monotone gives the impression that you might accidentally connect to him via Bluetooth” is cutting but telling, but he also allows that “Wisdom is knowing your limits. Leadership is about listening. Starmer seems to have been an effective boss of the Crown Prosecution Service.”
“How I Define Broad Framing”: this recent article from Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Global Throughlines Substack is an excellent demonstration of why I like his work and his approach so much. He sets out the difference between vertical and horizontal thinkers, emphasising the value of each, but “broad framing” is very much the bailiwick of the horizontal thinker, what he calls “taking the 30,000-foot view of things”. That idea of interconnected themes, seeing parallels which may not initially be obvious and reaching unexpected but innovative and productive conclusions is what excites me about politics and thinking, and what I think, modesty aside, I do quite well. He also champions the approach which General David Petraeus adopted in Iraq, what he calls “the tell me how this ends school of thought”; it’s also a device George Will, one of my favourite US columnists, returns to frequently in the context of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet during the Second World War, who, when asked to plan the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, undertook to do so but asked his superiors “And then what?” Both questions demonstrate the importance of knowing with great clarity what you want to achieve, which is vital in so many disciplines. It was one of the great failures of the NATO mission in Afghanistan, as I wrote last summer.
“New 9/11 Evidence Points to Deep Saudi Complicity”: essential reading in The Atlantic by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon which details the intimate links between al-Qa’eda and elements of the Saudi Arabian state. By failing to understand or admit these links, the authors argue, the United States fundamentally miscast its response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, and therefore, as they put it starkly, “the global War on Terror was based on a mistake”. The article details the way officials in Saudi Arabia supported and aided the terrorists and how the Bush administration placed the responsibility for this support on Iraq rather than Saudi Arabia. As a result, based on faulty analysis, the US “subordinated almost all our other foreign-policy goals to our counterterrorism efforts—a practice that undermined American efforts to support democracy and human rights abroad”. We are still feeling the effects.
“The Man Who Would Help Trump Upend the Global Economy”: Foreign Policy has published a profile by Edward Alden of Robert Lighthizer, who was US trade representative from 2017 to 2021 and is now being tipped as a potential secretary of the Treasury if Donald Trump wins the presidency in November. It describes how Lighthizer transformed American trade policy to a protectionist, nationalist stance, introducing tariffs on a number of sectors, and if given control of economic policy would direct the US to “pursuing its own narrow economic interests” rather than “being a stabilizing force in the global economy”. But Alden also shows that protectionism is not just an “America First” mantra but gaining influence across the political spectrum. Sobering reading.
“Swearing Is Good For You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language”: this bracing study of bad language by Dr Emma Byrne was released in 2017 and I saw her give a talk about it at the late and lamented Hospital Club in Covent Garden in 2019. It’s partly a celebration of swearing, which I love, but also examines the source and nature of transgressive language and the way in which it works differently from other linguistic functions and can have therapeutic effects. Absorbing, persuasive and very funny.
Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance…
… good-bye is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future, as Steinbeck says in The Winter of Our Discontent. Until next week.
I love the way this blog sends me off opening new tabs on 'famous' people I don't know. I never get tired of learning new things, so Sunday mornings have become a real pleasure. Thank you.