Sunday round-up 7 April 2024

As is becoming traditional, some observations and recommendations from the past week, on this Feast of the Blessed Notker the Stammerer

I had an encouraging message from a reader who said they found these round-ups (rounds-up?) useful and entertaining, and it only takes one, so I’m going to press on with them for the time being. Any (constructive) feedback is welcome on what you might want more or less of, or anything I could add to make everyone’s life a little more entertaining and pleasant. Fans of linguistics may wish to observe that today is National Schwa Day, only the second iteration of this holiday, the Feast of the Blessed Notker the Stammerer, commemorating the 9th/10th-century Alamannia-born Benedictine composer and scholar, and the emetic Girl, Me Too Day, of which I will say nothing more.

Vastly more seriously, 7 April is Genocide against the Tutsi Memorial Day in Rwanda, which begins a week of official mourning, and, under the auspices of the United Nations, International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda. I was 16 when the Rwandan genocide took place, and it remains a particular horrifying and shocking episode to recall; partly, I suppose, because there is a feeling that it could have been prevented; partly because it only lasted around 100 days, between 7 April and 15 July; and partly because, although the overall numbers, while dreadful, do not score in a grim genocide “top trumps”—the most widely accepted estimates range between 500,000 and 800,000 Tutsi killed—it was a genocide of unimaginable brutality, many of its victims being shot at close range of hacked to death with machetes. In addition, an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 women were raped as part of the campaign of terror. The current president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, with whom the UK has had very close dealings recently over the UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership, has been implicated by some in the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana, whose death was one of the triggers of the genocide; equally, the defeat of the Rwandan government’s military by Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front brought the genocide to an end. He is a difficult man to assess with absolute certainty.

Factoids

1. Two of the most influential British television crime dramas, Z-Cars (1962-78) and The Sweeney (1975-78), were created by a pair of Scottish brothers, Troy and Ian Kennedy Martin. Troy also wrote the script for The Italian Job (1969) and Ferrari (2023), and was responsible for Redcaps (1965-66) and one of the greatest pieces of television drama ever, the outstanding Edge of Darkness (1985) starring Bob Peck, Joanne Whalley, Joe Don Baker and Charles Kay: if you haven’t seen it, you really, really need to. Ian worked on Redcaps and wrote for the 1980s standard Juliet Bravo (1980-85) and The Chinese Detective (1981-82), which has aged less well than some of his other offerings.

2. The Sweeney, which really launched the careers of John Thaw and Dennis Waterman, has created an iconic image of 1970s British policing as gritty, morally ambiguous and steeped in machismo, and gave rise to some truly marvellous lines like “Get yer trousers on, you’re nicked”, “I am utterly and abjectly pissed-off” and—perhaps my favourite—“We’re The Sweeney, son, and we haven’t had any dinner”. DI Jack Regan, like John Thaw who played him, was originally from Manchester, while DS George Carter, like Dennis Waterman, was from south London.

3. The unit depicted in The Sweeney was the Metropolitan Police’s Flying Squad, so-called because they operated across the London police area rather than within divisional boundaries. They were—but you knew this already—nicknamed “the Sweeney” because Cockney rhyming slang for the Flying Squad was “Sweeney Todd”, after the Victorian “demon barber of Fleet Street”, shortened to “the Sweeney”. Todd first appeared in a penny-dreadful serial in 1846-47, The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance.

4. Each episode of The Sweeney was written to exacting guidelines, according to s history of Euston Films: “Each show will have an overall screen time (minus titles) of 48 minutes 40 seconds. Each film will open with a teaser of up to 3 minutes, which will be followed by the opening titles. The story will be played across three acts, each being no more than 19 minutes and no fewer than 8 minutes in length. Regan will appear in every episode, Carter in approximately 10 out of 13 episodes. In addition to these main characters, scripts should be based around three major speaking parts, with up to ten minor speaking parts.”

5. Changing tack completely… with a general election looming, we think of our electoral system (whether you think it should be reformed or not) in very simple terms. The country is divided up into 650 areas of roughly equal population, with a few strictures, and within those constituencies, it’s one person, one vote and the candidate with the biggest number of votes is the winner. But it was not always just that straightforward, and within living memory. Until the February 1950 general election, some constituencies returned two MPs, elected by plurality block voting; these were gradually phased out with the majority of the last to go being in north-west England, for some reason: Blackburn, Bolton, Brighton, Derby, the City of London, Norwich, Oldham, Preston, Southampton, Stockport, Sunderland, Dundee, Antrim, Down and Fermanagh and Tyrone.

6. There was one other form of constituency which also survived until 1950, the university constituencies. These were not physical areas but consisted of the graduates of the university in question, and they represented a double franchise: a graduate had an ordinary constituency vote in his or her place of residence, but in addition had a vote for a Member of Parliament to represent the university. By the time the seats were abolished in 1950, there were only the following seats: Cambridge University (two MPs), Combined English Universities (two MPs), Oxford University (two MPs), London University, the University of Wales, Combined Scottish Universities (three MPs) and Queen’s University Belfast, a total of 12 Members of Parliament. They were elected by single transferable vote.

7. 1950 was not quite the end for university representation. From 1921 to 1969, the Northern Ireland House of Commons included four MPs elected by graduates of Queen’s University Belfast with an additional vote. Meanwhile, in Ireland, six members of the 60-strong upper house of the Oireachtas, Seanad Éireann, are elected by university graduates, three by graduates and undergraduate scholars of Dublin University (which means Trinity College Dublin, and, from 1975 to 1998, graduates of Dublin Institute of Technology) and three by graduates of the National University of Ireland.

8. We’re all probably vaguely aware of Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization based in Lyon that facilitates international co-operation on policing and crime. It celebrated its centenary last September and is the sort of body that most people agree should exist in some form or another. But Interpol has its fair share of cupboard-based skeletons. It’s been run by all sorts of eminent law enforcement officials and jurists in the past, but there’s a seven-year run of presidents it would probably rather not commemorate in foot-high letters: SS-Oberführer Otto Steinhäusl (1938-40), SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (1940-42), SS-Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe (1942-43) and SS-Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1943-45). Yes, following the Anschluß with Austria in 1938, Interpol, then based in Vienna, was controlled by Nazi Germany and from 1942 was co-located with the Gestapo at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8 in Berlin. Awkward. (To be fair, Interpol does not now recognise its four Nazi presidents as legitimate heads of the organisation.)

9. The United Kingdom has had 17 prime ministers since the end of the Second World War. Of those, no fewer than seven were or are not known by their “real” first names: Robert Anthony Eden, Maurice Harold Macmillan, James Harold Wilson, Leonard James Callaghan, James Gordon Brown, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and Mary Elizabeth Truss. Rishi Sunak is the only one of those to have no middle name, though John Major’s, Roy, was given to him when he was christened but does not appear on his birth certificate. Four of the list—Heath, Blair, Cameron and Johnson—have two middle names, while two—Spencer-Churchill and Douglas-Home—are double-barrelled.

10. Churchill, as a national icon, sometimes seems to exist outside normal metrics like class but he was extremely posh, the grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough and born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. The family name is Spencer-Churchill, and has been by royal licence since 1817, but Winston’s father, Lord Randolph, dropped the “Spencer” and so Winston continued to observe that style. He is, however, generally recorded in full as Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, for example on his gravestone at St Martin’s Church in Bladon, Oxfordshire.

Nothing is really real unless it happens on television (Ray Bradbury)

1. “Timeshift: The History of the Pub”: even though I gave up drinking more than five years ago, I still love pubs. At their best, they are homes away from home, better than homes—more hospitable and much less effort than being in your own house, and a defined social space where you can engage with bare acquaintances or your very closest friends. Of course there are bad pubs, but there are bad books, bad pasta dishes and bad hats. This BBC documentary, narrated matily by Arthur Smith, is an affectionate but deceptively acute examination of the role of the public house in our society. We are continually told that “the British pub” is dying, and closures are running at a high rate, but, as I wrote in CapX last November, that’s partly our own fault. Top quote: “the Germans call beer ‘liquid bread’”.

2. “Scoop”: everyone remembers “Prince Andrew and the Epstein Scandal”, Newsnight’s 2019 interview with the Duke of York, conducted with forensic skill and increasing disbelief by Emily Maitlis. This Netflix film, telling the story of the interview and how it came about, is based on the book of (almost) the same name by producer Sam McAlister (full disclosure: I know Sam a little bit and think she’s amazing). The bare bones of the story are remarkable enough, with “just a standard shooting weekend” and an inability to sweat due to “adrenaline overdose” during the Falklands War, but there are some stand-out performances too, notably the divine Gillian Anderson as Maitlis, Billie Piper as McAlister and a remarkable Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew. A feast.

3. “Mary Queen of Scots”: this 2018 blockbuster made it to the BBC this week but many of you will no doubt have seen it. It garnered mixed reviews when it was released, and certainly benefits from being seen on the big screen, given its lush, sumptuous cinematography, but I’m unabashed in my defence of it. Set aside the fact that it’s based on a book by my old St Andrews tutor and Tudor history legend John Guy, I think it’s a fabulous retelling of the tale of Scotland’s first queen regnant. Margot Robbie is on fighting form as Elizabeth I, Jack Lowden is first-rate as the gruesome-but-handsome Lord Darnley and David Tennant sports a preposterous beard as Protestant reformer John Knox, but Saoirse Ronan is simply outstanding as Mary. She captures the degree to which, even if only for a short time, the queen kept her monarchy going by sheer charisma and force of personality, all instinct to Elizabeth’s careful calculation. And the execution scene is genuinely breathtaking as Mary’s outer layers are ripped away to show her blood-red dress, the colour of martyrdom, beneath. En ma Fin gît mon Commencement.

4. “Compliance in the Wild: Christian Hunt”: I plugged this podcast on Twitter/X and I have no compunction in doing so again, because it’s one of my business partners and good friends, Mark Heywood, interviewing my other business partner and another good friend, Christian Hunt, about the latter’s series of behavioural science insights, Compliance in the Wild. Mark’s podcast series, Behind the Spine, began in the early days of the Covid-10 pandemic and I was, and am, very pleased to have been part of the team which got it going: we had some amazing successes early on with guests like Rory Sutherland, Dame Evelyn Glennie and Vincent Cardinal Nichols which gave us real momentum. The whole project has grown enormously and Mark is now in series nine, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Listen to this and enjoy it, then browse the back catalogue and you’ll find some fascinating conversations.

5. “The recklessness of William Wragg”: I wouldn’t normally put myself in these compilations, but on Saturday I talked to Matthew Wright of LBC about the cybersecurity scandal surrounding William Wragg, outgoing Conservative MP for Hazel Grove. I was asked on following an article I wrote the previous day for The Spectator. Wragg has acted stupidly, recklessly and selfishly, but he will be gone from public life soon. This kind of furore was bound to happen, and I explained that the parliamentary authorities can only do so much: ultimately, MPs (and peers) have to be responsible for their own cybersecurity.

Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it (Sylvia Plath)

1. “Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt”: this slim but thoughtful volume by Alec Ryrie, who read for a masters at the University of St Andrews Reformation Studies Institute a few years ahead of me, is a brilliant and subtle examination of the birth and growth of atheism in the Christian West. His principal argument is that “unbelief” began earlier than we usually imagine, in the mediaeval period, but that, like all belief systems, it began as an emotional state which later had a superstructure of philosophical rigour built around it, not the other way round. So, Ryrie proposes, “pioneering” atheist thinkers like Spinoza, Hume and Rousseau were not creating a new movement but rather responding to something, perhaps shapeless and inchoate, which already existed. Ryrie himself is an Anglican—indeed a licensed Reader in the Church of England—and lays his cards on the table, but this, and his academic credentials, give him a strong grounding to tackle the initially countercultural notion that there was, or is, no god. A thought-provoking and elegant treasure of a book.

2. “Meet the little-known Jewish man behind Britain’s Thatcherist revolution”: this is new to me rather than new, an article from The Times of Israel in January 2018, and it is less surprising, I think, to a British audience than to one outside the United Kingdom. But it is an interesting read, because Sir Keith Joseph—he was always “Sir Keith”, having inherited his father’s baronetcy at the age of 26 in 1944—was undoubtedly an intellectual lynchpin of Thatcherism (I’ve never seen the usage “Thatcherist” rather than “Thatcherite”, I admit) and a huge support to Thatcher in her early years. He provided one of the key tenets of the Thatcher revolution when he said, “It was only in April 1974 that I was converted to Conservatism. (I had thought I was a Conservative but now I see that I was not really one at all.)” But it is not too cynical to acknowledge that Thatcher, who undoubtedly held Joseph in enormous affection, could also afford to be generous in her tributes, because he was never a serious rival. Joseph was not a leader of men, far too uncertain of his own mind, and he could be seen physically to shudder with discomfort when he had to confront unpalatable intellectual truths (though confront them he would). He fit the mythology perfectly as a kind of Merlin or Gandalf figure, though I would argue that neither he nor Thatcher would have been where they were, ideologically, had it not been for Enoch Powell. But that’s for another day.

3. “Sock fury”: this is in one sense an unremarkable but elegant and enjoyable piece from Stephen Fry’s Substack, though that is reason enough to read it. His playful and supple use of language is always a joy to savour and there are profound insights in this essay about the human condition. But, as I explained in some way a couple of years ago, Fry’s influence on me and on the way I think, speak and write has been enormous, greater, probably, than that of anyone I don’t know in person. Reading this article reminded me a dozen times, with crackles of pleasure and surprise, why he has delighted me for at least 35 years (when A Bit of Fry and Laurie first appeared on BBC2) and with an absolute intensity for coming up for 30 years, when I first listened to, rather than read, The Liar, in the car driving up to Oxford.

4. “Modi’s Messenger to the World”: a very useful and revealing profile in Foreign Policy of S. Jaishankar, India’s minister of external affairs since 2019. He is only the second career diplomat to be given political charge of Indian foreign policy, so his CV is hugely impressive in his field: ambassador to China 2009-13, ambassador to the United States 2013-15 and then foreign secretary (the professional head of the Ministry of External Affairs, equivalent to our permanent secretary) from 2015 to 2018. He was briefly president of global corporate affairs at Tata Sons (2018-19) before Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, tempted him into the political arena, and a few weeks after being appointed external affairs minister he was elected to the Rajya Sabha as a BJP representative for Gujarat. Perhaps surprisingly, given his diplomatic background, Jaishankar has emerged as an energetic and pugnacious exponent of India’s national interests, “confident, assertive, proudly Hindu, and unabashedly nationalist”. I’m learning as much about India as I can, because I think if we look beyond immediate circumstances, India is going to be a more significant global player than China, having overtaken it as the world’s most populous nation last spring. China’s demographic indicators are terrible and India’s are promising, and India, while it is not faultless, is a functioning democracy. In a couple of weeks, it will start the process of holding the world’s biggest general election, running from 19 April to 1 June, polling an electorate of around 960 million to elect 543 members of the Lok Sabha. The scale and logistics are truly extraordinary.

5. “Do Voters Care About Policy Even A Little?”: this fascinating piece in The Atlantic by staff writer Rogé Karma is on the face of it a lament that Joe Biden has introduced a policy—allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs—which is hugely popular, saves voters money and has very minimal disadvantages, and yet the president is gaining no credit for it. But it does more than that. Partly, it highlights the yawning gulf between the whole world of healthcare provision here and in the United States, making it almost impossible meaningfully to compare the two. Karma notes that Americans pay three times as much for prescription drugs as Canadians and Europeans do. Something else worth remembering: much is made of the fact that patients no longer have to pay for prescriptions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but in England, while there is a formal charge of £9.65 per item, there are so many exemptions that 95 per cent of prescriptions are issued free. More broadly than that, and this genuinely concerns me, the article gives the sense that many people don’t engage with political reporting or come to it with a remotely open mind, to the extent that they can come away from a news item utterly misinformed but secure in (and often enraged by) their mistaken belief.

Right, that’s enough of that

You made it! You’re free! Off you go, and Godspeed.