Sunday round-up 5 January 2025
Birthday wishes to Hollywood stalwart Robert Duvall, as well as Diane Keaton and Bradley Cooper, on what is (arguably) the Twelfth Day of Christmas
Welcome, then, dear readers to the year 2025 (still looks odd and inauthentically futuristic when written down but we will make the best of it, I’m sure). We are, I fear, somewhat short on recommendations for film and television this week, for the simple reason that I have watched very little.
The year’s first batch of birthday boys and girls include Czech-born Austrian pianist and writer Alfred Brendel (94), actor and director Robert Duvall (94), former King of Spain Juan Carlos I (87), journalist and talk show host Charlie Rose (83), actress and director Diane Keaton (79), former Attorney-General for England and Wales Lord Goldsmith (75), guitarist, songwriter and co-founder of Blondie Chris Stein (75), former United States Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet (72), President of the Federal Republic of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier (69), singer-songwriter Iris DeMent (64), footballer, actor and ubiquitous hard man Vinnie Jones (60), singer, actor, director and real-name-is-Brian Marilyn Manson (56), actor and producer Bradley Cooper (50), actress January Jones (47), actress Mandip Gill (37) and actress, singer-songwriter, model and Chiswick native Suki Waterhouse (33).
The stale cake and flat champagne belongs to the now-departed Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan the Magnificent (1592), inventor of the disposable safety razor blade and yes-that’s-his-real-name King Camp Gillette (1855), former Mayor of Cologne and first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Konrad Adenauer (1876), writer Stella Gibbons (1902), actor and director George Reeves (1914), Academy Award winner and first wife of Ronald Reagan Jane Wyman (1917), executed former President and Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928), former Vice-President of the United States Walter Mondale (1928) and novelist, critic and philosopher Umberto Eco (1932).
Pour discourager les autres
On this day in 1757, a 41-year-old former domestic servant from Arras, Robert-François Damiens, attempted to kill the King of France, Louis XV. At 4.00 pm, as the King was getting into his carriage at Versailles, Damiens rushed past the royal bodyguards and stabbed Louis with a penknife. The King’s thick winter clothing meant the blade only slightly pierced his chest but the subsequent bleeding made him think he was mortally wounded and he called for a confessor; he also begged the Queen for forgiveness for his numerous affairs.
Damiens made no attempt to escape and was apprehended immediately. There is a general consensus that he was mentally unstable, but the trigger for his crime seems to have been the decision by the church hierarchy to deny the sacraments to adherents of the Jansenist sect, for which he ultimately blamed the King. So much, at least, was pieced together when he was interrogated.
As a would-be regicide, Damiens was condemned by the Parlement of Paris to be drawn and quartered by horses at the Place de Grève in front of the Hôtel de Ville. On the day of execution, 28 March 1757, he was led from his cell and first subjected to the compression and crushing of his legs in so-called “boots”, then tortured with red-hot pincers. The hand with which he had wielded the knife was burned with sulphur, and then molten wax, molten lead and boiling oil were poured into his wounds. At that point, he was handed over to the royal executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson, who cut off Damiens’ penis and testicles then attached his limbs to four horses in order to dismember him. As a finale, his torso was burned at the stake and the ashes scattered in the wind. Some accounts suggest Damiens was still alive when his last limb was detached.
It was the last use of the brutal (and theatrical) method of execution for regicides (the previous attempt on a French monarch’s life had been in 1610). In any event, the monarchy did not have much longer to endure in France with the advent of the Revolution in 1789, only 32 years later. Ironically enough, Louis XVI was executed for high treason in 1793 by the same Charles-Henri Sanson who had overseen Damiens’ killing.
An unhappy prequel
Today in 1919, a group of far-right political activists met in the Fürstenfelder Hof in Munich and founded the German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or DAP). Despite its superficially left-wing name and its origins in the Free Workers’ Committee for a Good Peace (Freien Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden), it was a fundamentally nationalist group with fiercely antisemitic instincts. The DAP’s first chairman was a 34-year-old machine-fitter and locksmith, Anton Drexler, who had been disenchanted by Germany’s defeat in the First World War (in which he had been deemed physically unfit for service). He had enthusiastically promoted the corrosive Dolchstoßlegende, the “stab-in-the-back” theory that blamed civilians, financiers and, especially, Jews for betraying Germany’s valiant armed forces and bringing about the 1918 armistice.
Drexler’s deputy was a young journalist, Karl Harrer. Like Drexler, he had been influenced and encouraged by the Thule Society, a nationalist and occultist group obsessed with the origins of the Aryan race which wove racial superiority into antisemitism and anti-Communism. The other founding members of the DAP were poet, playwright and journalist Dietrich Eckart, who had adapted Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt into a five-act antisemitic parable, and Gottfried Feder, a civil engineer who claimed to be a self-taught economist.
The DAP was very far from a mass movement: there were 10 members present at a meeting in May 1919, and 38 at a later gathering in August. In January 1920, the party issued membership credentials to its 55th member (though he was listed as 555th, as the party had started with the membership number 501 to make itself seem larger than it was): he was an intelligence agent of the Reichswehr, the armed forces of the new German republic, and was tasked with monitoring the DAP as a potentially disruptive or subversive influence. Although he found the party disorganised and ineffective, he enjoyed the political discussions which took place, especially Drexler’s espousal of nationalism, antisemitism and vehement opposition to both capitalism and Marxism. As a result, he ended up no longer an informant but a recruit, although his army superiors were content for him to become a party member. His name was Adolf Hitler.
Hitler quickly became the DAP’s most prominent and persuasive speaker, and early in 1920 Drexler appointed him head of propaganda. On 24 February 1920, the party held its biggest ever meeting when 2,000 people gathered at the Staatliches Hofbräuhaus, a beer hall in Munich. At the same time, it was slightly rebranded to broaden its appeal to both the left and right, and became the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ): the Nazi Party.
Lord and saints preserve us
The festal year opens relatively gently. Today is the feast of St Telesphorus (2nd century AD), an anchorite monk who was Pope from AD 126 to AD 137 and began the convention on celebrating Easter on a Sunday; of St Simeon Stylites (AD 390 -AD 459), a Syrian Christian who spent 36 years living on a small platform at the top of a pillar (style in Greek) near Aleppo in a quest for ever-greater solitude and asceticism, occasionally preaching to those who gathered around the pillar; of St John Neumann (1811-60), a Bohemian-born immigrant who became Bishop of Philadelphia and is the only US male citizen to be canonised; and of St Charles of Mount Argus (1821-93), a Dutch priest of the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ who ministered in England and then Ireland and displayed an ability to heal the sick.
For some Christian denominations which begin counting the Twelve Days of Christmas on Christmas Day, it is also Twelfth Night. This applies to the Church of England, for which it “refers to the night before Epiphany, the day when the nativity story tells us that the wise men visited the infant Jesus”, and to Lutheran churches.
In the United States, today is National Bird Day, promoted by the Avian Welfare Coalition to protect the wellbeing of birds.
Factoids
Viscount Goderich is one of the lesser known prime ministers, not least because he only held office for 144 days, from August 1827 to January 1828; only his immediate predecessor George Canning (119 days) and our very own Liz Truss (49 days) have had shorter tenures. He is also one of those politicians who drifts through the historical record under different guises, spending 21 years in the House of Commons as Frederick Robinson and being promoted in the peerage as 1st Earl of Ripon after only six years as a viscount. One historian noted that he had been “a Pittite, a Tory, a Canningite, a Whig, a Stanleyite, a Conservative, and a Peelite. Between 1818 and 1846 he was a member of every government except Wellington’s and Melbourne’s.” He was, like, most recently, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, a former Prime Minister who served under his successors, as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies (1830-33), Lord Privy Seal (1833-34), President of the Board of Trade (1841-43) and President of the Board of Control (1843-46). He holds one genuinely unique distinction, however: he is the only person whose entire time as Prime Minister came when Parliament was not sitting. It had risen on 29 June 1827, nearly two months before Goderich succeeded Canning, and returned on 29 January 1828, just over a week after he resigned and King George IV invited the Duke of Wellington to form a government.
Plymouth Navy Strength Gin is 57 per cent alcohol by volume because the Royal Navy required it to be sufficiently strong that, if it were to leak into the gunpowder with which it was stored in warships, it would not make the powder unusable. At 57 per cent it is flammable and would therefore ignite with the gunpowder. After the Second World War, the Plymouth Gin Distillery—now owned by Pernod Ricard—provided “commissioning kits” to new Royal Navy vessels, wooden chests containing Navy Strength gin, tonic, bitters, glasses and a “glug glug jug” for mixing drinks.
Pernod Ricard owns eight brands of gin. Apart from Plymouth, the group also manufactures Beefeater Gin, Malfy Gin, Monkey 47 Schwarzwald Dry Gin, Seagram’s Gin, Cork Dry, Ungava and KI NO BI.
This date, 5 January, is a perilous one for former Labour home secretaries. It marked the death of Lord Jenkins of Hillhead (1965-67, 1974-76) in 2003 and his successor and fellow Welshman Lord Merlyn-Rees (1976-79) in 2006. In addition, today in 1771 saw the death of the 4th Duke of Bedford, who was Secretary of State for the Southern Department, the forerunner of the Home Office, from 1748 to 1751. He was not, however, Welsh.
Two more Labour home secretaries were Englishmen representing Welsh constituencies: Sir Frank Soskice, Lord Stow Hill (1964-65) was MP for Newport, while Lord Callaghan of Cardiff (1967-70) was MP for Cardiff South, Cardiff South East and Cardiff South and Penarth. So too were the Liberals Sir George Cornewall Lewis (1859-61), who represented Radnor, and Reginald McKenna (1911-15), MP for North Monmouthshire. Fellow Liberal Henry Bruce, Lord Aberdare (1868-73), although MP for Renfrewshire, had previously sat for Merthyr Tydfil, and was actually Welsh.
Three Conservative home secretaries were Welshmen sitting for English constituencies: Gwilym Lloyd-George, Viscount Tenby (1954-57), having represented Pembrokeshire, was MP for Newcastle-upon-Tyne North by the time he was Home Secretary; Lord Baker of Dorking (1990-92) was MP for Mole Valley (and previously Acton and St Marylebone); while Lord Howard of Lympne (1993-97) was MP for Folkestone and Hythe.
On the subject of home secretaries, it is often believed that Grant Shapps served the shortest tenure in that office, from 19 to 25 October 2022 in the final week of Liz Truss’s fleeting premiership. In fact the 3rd Earl Temple was both Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary in William Pitt the Younger’s first ministry in 1783, accepting the seals of office on 19 December, but he returned them both four days later, on 23 December.
Temple’s father, George Grenville, was Prime Minister from 1763 to1765, as was the earl’s younger brother, William Grenville (1806-07). Another brother, Thomas Grenville, was President of the Board of Control (1806) and First Lord of the Admiralty (1806-07). The uncle from whom he inherited the title, the 2nd Earl Temple, was First Lord of the Admiralty (1756-57) then Lord Privy Seal (1757-61), while his aunt, Hester Grenville, married William Pitt the Elder, Prime Minister from 1766 to 1768, and became Countess of Chatham.
“I love escaping into film, because everyday life I find quite troublesome. So any excuse to go into a cinema and say goodbye to the world for a couple of hours… is great.” (Alison Goldfrapp)
“Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World”: the Napoleonic War-era novels of Patrick O’Brian have a devoted following, and their bravura tales of action and adventure were always ripe for cinematic adaptation. This 2003 film co-written, directed and produced by Australian icon Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli, Witness, Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show) starred Academy Award winner Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany, both delivering fine performances as Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, and more than recouped its budget. But critics were ambivalent, and the film had cost a daunting $150 million to make, and Weir later remarked “I think that while it did well...ish at the box office, it didn’t generate that monstrous, rapid income that provokes a sequel”. That is (I think) a pity, as Master and Commander is a well-constructed adventure which delivers derring-do but presents a much more intelligent and thoughtful narrative too, and feels like an authentic portrayal of life at sea in the age of sail and shot. One to watch with ample supplies of Navy strength Plymouth gin and a fluttering White Ensign.
“The Man Who Would Be King”: director John Huston had wanted to make this film, an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s 1888 novella, since the 1950s, but it would not reach cinemas until 1975, by which time his health was beginning to fail and he would make only a handful more films. He had originally intended it to star his friends Humphrey Bogart (who died in 1957) and Clark Gable (who died in 1960); in the end it was Michael Caine and Sean Connery, both in glorious middle-aged pomp, who played the British Army ex-sergeants Peachy Carnehan and Danny Dravot. The two men set off from India to Kafiristan, in the southern Hindu Kush, at first to offer their services to the local ruler, but the local population take Dravot to be a god and he sets himself up as king. The pair intend to loot the former ruler’s treasury and escape but are exposed: Dravot is killed and Carnehan left for dead. Like much of Kipling’s work, it is easy to dismiss The Man Who Would Be King as imperialist nostalgia, but it is far more sophisticated than that, and reflects Kipling’s deep love for and knowledge of south Asia. Gene Siskel in The Chicago Tribune called it “a genuinely witty and literate adventure story”, which Steven Spielberg cited as an inspiration for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Enormous fun.
“It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.” (Jack Kerouac)
“Jimmy Carter was the president who made Ronald Reagan necessary”: in The Washington Post, the venerable George F. Will, who was a columnist for the newspaper when James Earl Carter Jr was still Governor of Georgia, offers a stern but not cruel corrective to the hagiographical tributes which have been paid to the 39th President of the United States after his death on 29 December at the age of 100. Will grants that the darkness and deceit of the latter days of the Nixon presidency, which hung over Gerald Ford’s time in the White House, created the conditions for Carter to pose as a clean-cut, upright and honest outsider, not a creature of the Washington Beltway. However, much of his righteous pose was a confection, and he hectored America, telling voters “all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America”. What was wrong, he thought, was self-indulgence and materialism. But that contagious gloom and self-doubt in its turn opened the way for his defeat after only a single term by Ronald Reagan, the great “Happy Warrior” of his age. A neat and necessary skewering.
“Truss at 10: How Not to be Prime Minister”: Sir Anthony Seldon, serial headmaster and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, has established himself as the semi-official chronicler of the office of Prime Minister, with a general history and individual volumes on the premierships of Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. But Liz Truss presented an unusual challenge, as she lasted a fleeting 49 days in 10 Downing Street and has become a byword for catastrophic failure. In this unexpectedly gripping book, Seldon painstakingly traces her ascent to front-runner, leadership campaign and conduct as head of government. He takes as a framework an article he wrote for The New Statesman on 31 August 2022 entitled “Why Liz Truss will fail”, and examines key areas in which the Prime Minister has to get things right. Almost universally, Truss did not, and in many ways, because of her personality and approach, could never have done so. We know Truss’s premiership was a catastrophe, but it is absolutely worth reading Seldon’s analysis to understand why.
“The nihilism of newcomers”: in another thoughtful essay for The Critic, Chris Bayliss argues that there has been a shift in some kinds of terrorism in recent years from that motivated by a political grievance or objective, however outlandish or revolting, to relatively low-tech, lone-wolf attacks which are “the ultimate expression of contempt and resentment for a society they do not understand, and feel no connection to”. This, he argues, is the result of the true failure of cultural and societal integration for large numbers of immigrants and their families and descendants, particularly “individuals who arrived or whose parents arrived in Britain largely for want of anywhere else in the world to be, and for whom Britain exists as a form of purgatory”. This is by no means an anti-immigration diatribe: rather, Bayliss suggests that too many people have effectively been abandoned without a society around them, nothing into which they might integrate, their interaction with the state limited to the Home Office and the Department for Work and Pensions. A cause for concern and deep thought.
“Not worth its salt: Wingmans reviewed”: I’m sure I’m not the only person who likes a briskly critical and negative review when written with style, wit and brio, and the excellent Tanya Gold in The Spectator delivers exactly that in her slightly baffled account of visiting Wingmans on Old Compton Street in Soho. I confess that I’ve never seen the attraction of chicken wings: simply looking at a chicken would not make me think that the wings were the most obvious part to consume, and they seem often to end up as little more than delivery systems for batter and sauce, which does make you wonder what the point is. Even so, Gold is splendidly, articulately and almost forensically dismissive of the outlets charms. If you still feel the attraction, fine: but you have been warned.
“‘That is Maganomics’: where Trump is taking America on trade”: Gillian Tett’s weekend essay for The Financial Times examines the trade policies championed by advisers to Donald Trump like Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, trying to tease out a coherent narrative under their chief’s confused and confusing nativist, childlike braggadoccio. She is in no doubt about the scale of the revolution proposed, the rejection of decades of free trade and open markets, and of the Bretton Woods post-war economic settlement. Equally she is clear about the potential flaws and pitfalls of the populist, nationalist approach Trump is overseeing, as well as the divisions within the MAGA movement (most recently visible over visas). Trump himself espouses nothing more than playground impulses, favouring whatever he crudely sees as measures of strength. But the retreat of the United States from world markets and the erection of tariffs and other barriers to trade run great risks of severe economic harm to the country itself. I don’t see this ending well.
The sweetest two words are “next time”…
… as the great Puerto Rican golfer Chi-Chi Rodríguez said, the sourest word is “if”. So I shall content myself with the hope that you will be reading next time, until when, stay safe and happy, if you can.