Publications: Scope Book Review

The June 2009 issue of the online film studies journal Scope contains my review of What Have They Built You to Do: The Manchurian Candidate and Cold War America by Matthew Frye Jacobson and Gaspar González. It’s a bit longer than my usual reviews, but I do tend to go on a bit when it comes to Cold War film studies.

The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger

I seem to be on a roll with the Canto imprint reviews, though I think this is the last of the ones in my current queue.

The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger

Traditions, to coin a simile, are rather like onions: if you make a deliberate effort to keep peeling away their numerous layers, you will be left with very little by the time you finish. Fortunately, most people are not overly concerned with peeling away the layers of traditions as long as those traditions seem relatively plausible or promote a favourable history or worldview. As a result, one common means of rapidly strengthening a shaky claim to legitimacy or solidifying a sense of group identity is to actively promote ‘traditions’ that have been developed or invented in the quite recent past. On occasion, these traditions develop into something quite different than their original inventors expected. In The Invention of Tradition, Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm and postcolonial African historian Terence Ranger have brought together a collection of essays about how and why different traditions are invented, what purposes these traditions have and continue to serve, and what societies can gain by taking a closer look at the origins of the traditions they cherish so highly.

The contributions in this volume take different approaches to studying the invention of tradition. Some of the essays, like Hugh Trevor-Roper’s history of Scottish Highland traditions or Prys Morgan’s account of the nineteenth-century Welsh nationalist movement, explode the myths of the supposedly ancient origins of certain traditions such as tartan kilts and eisteddfods. Both authors link the Welsh and Scottish traditions with the Romantic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, showing how groups of enthusiastic and enterprising individuals all but invented certain ceremonies and trappings out of whole cloth — quite literally, in the case of kilts. Other articles focus more on the process through which certain traditions were invented, describing how cross-cultural misunderstandings about existing traditions (such as the durbar gatherings held by India’s Mughal rulers) led to the creation of entirely new ceremonies designed to provide a sense of continuity between the old ruling classes and the new colonial ruling classes. The books also includes contributions on the effects of invented traditions, such as David Cannadine’s essay describing changing public attitudes towards the British monarchy in response to invented royal traditions like the formal Coronation ceremony and the sale of commemorative objects for royal weddings, births, and jubilees. There is quite a lot to ponder in these essays, and the authors provide plenty of sources for further exploration and follow-up.

The Invention of Tradition, for all its depth, is an undeniably Anglo-centric book. With the exception of Eric Hobsbawm’s contribution on the invention of national traditions in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Europe, all of the essays focus on either domestic (Scotland, Wales) or colonial (India, Africa) traditions of the United Kingdom. It is difficult to say whether the book would have been ‘improved’ with a little more variety in its subject matter, or whether the more narrow focus is preferable because it allows the different essays to overlap and reinforce each other. Regardless, the collected essays in The Invention of Tradition provide an informative and thought-provoking assessment of how traditions are made and perpetuated, and how they often take on lives of their own.

English as a Global Language by David Crystal

Cambridge University Press’s Canto imprint has published paperback editions of many excellent works, including several books reviewed on this blog. British linguist David Crystal has been writing and commenting on the English language for many years; two of his books, The Stories of English (2004) and The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot and Left (2006), have shown up in previous To Bed With a Trollope reviews. English as a Global Language was written several years before these books — it was first published in 1997 — and focuses on a much narrow scope.

English as a Global Language by David Crystal

The spread of English as a language has prompted much handwringing from most anyone who cares to comment on the matter, whether in support of a still more global role for English or in concern about the effects that the widespread use of English has had on other languages. In the preface to English as a Global Language, David Crystal states that this idea for this book came about as a project for U.S. English, an organisation that campaigns to make English the official language of the United States. The organisation was interested in a short, factual (and politically unbiased) account of how English came to be such a commonly used language, and because Crystal could not find a book that suited this request he decided to research and write one himself. The book, as he puts it, poses and addresses the following three questions: (1) What makes a world language?; (2) Why is English the leading candidate? and (3) Will it continue to hold this position? Rather than immediately coming down on any particular side of the current debate over the promise (or threat) of English as a global language, Crystal chooses to present an overview of the debate, showing its origins and flashpoints, and expresses a few thoughts on the possible futures of English as it is spoken and written worldwide.

English as a Global Language’s brief introduction to the concept of a ‘global language’ opens with a simple statement: the spread of language is directly linked to the political (and accompanying military and economic) power of those who speak a particular language. Different spoken and written languages have taken it in turn to become dominant in certain spheres of influence, such as Greek in the days of Alexander the Great, Latin from Roman times through the Renaissance, and Russian in many Eastern European countries during the Cold War. One only need look at the most commonly taught second languages in primary and secondary schools to gain an idea of what languages might be contending for dominance in a particular area at any given time. Crystal takes this introduction a step further by providing a basic history of the spread of the English language around the world, hand in hand with the British Empire, and includes a lengthy table of countries to show where English is spoken as either a first or second language. He also gives short histories of areas of international communication in which English plays a dominant role, such as the very basic, standardised English that air and maritime traffic controllers use to issue instructions and warnings to airplanes in flight and ships at sea; the prevalence of English translations on road signs and maps; and, of course, the vastness of the English-languages offerings available on the Internet. However, he points out that there is no particular linguistic reason why English should remain the global language — and that as the language evolves and gains more native and second-language speakers, the ‘global’ English that eventually may be spoken by people around the world may bear little resemblance to the English we hear today, requiring even native English speakers to be ‘bilingual’ in their own mother tongue.

Readers who might accuse Crystal of taking the easy way out by seemingly refusing to engage in the ongoing debate will be cheered to know that this book is by no means his only contribution to the discussion of the problems of English as a global language. His book Language Death (2002), also available under the Canto imprint, is far more urgent in its call for countries (and even individuals) to be proactive and think on a long-term basis about the kinds of language policies and programmes that are worth supporting in the name of maintaining linguistic diversity. English as a Global Language merely attempts to establish a base point for future discussion; it is by no means the only book that one should read to gain a better understanding of the complexities of English’s place in an international setting.

(Other works about English-language policies and language death reviewed on To Bed With a Trollope include Robert Phillipson’s English-Only Europe? and Mark Abley’s Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages.)

ADMIN: Diaries and Memoirs Collection Page

In an effort to keep myself organised, I’ve added a new page to this blog that contains information on my collection of British political diaries and memoirs. Most of them, clearly, are from elected politicians, but I also have an interest in writings by civil servants or diplomatic officials.

I’ve been building this collection for the past few years, trying to acquire good condition volumes and the occasional signed or first edition copy. Like most collections, it’s very much a work in progress. I do have limits on how much I am willing to spend on individual acquisitions — recently, I passed up an absolutely beautiful signed first edition of Jim Callaghan’s Time and Chance because the price was a little too dear. With a little luck and persistence, though, I hope to build a fine little library in which I can take pride.

Publications: ‘Downing Street’s Favourite Soap Opera’

One of the things that’s been keeping me occupied of late has been the publication process for an article that is in press with Contemporary British History. ‘Downing Street’s Favourite Soap Opera: Evaluating the Impact and Influence of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister‘ was born out of my (perhaps excessive) love for that particular 1980s satirical sitcom, and I’m beyond thrilled that it’ll be in print in the September 2009 issue of CBH.

I’ve sent in the appropriate copyright forms and am waiting for the page proofs, which should be ready in about a fortnight. I’m used to editing the page proofs of other people’s articles (I do it for a living, after all), but marking up my own will be an interesting challenge. I may ask a co-worker to skim through it just in case I’ve missed something in my zillionth read-through.

Of course, this whole process has reminded me of two other papers that are sitting on my hard-drive, silently nagging me to stop ignoring them and polish them up enough to submit elsewhere. One needs a more in-depth literature review; one needs to be ripped to shreds and pieced back together in a better and more logical format. But that’s a post for another time.

A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

Yes, still horribly backlogged in both my review posts and my non-review posts. Here’s a nice chewy review for the moment; when I have a few spare minutes to clean up another post or two, I hope to have more to talk about.

A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

In the early 1940s, British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell was living in the United States, attempting to find a job and attempting to hold his fast-dissolving third marriage together. He had lost several previous teaching posts, some because of financial difficulties at the scholarly institutions to which he had applied and some because he had fallen out with his employers, and the war made it all but impossible for him to try to return to England. Public protests against his controversial writings on sex and marriage had prevented him from taking an appointment at the College of the City of New York, and he was only saved from complete financial collapse by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which offered him a post teaching the history of philosophy. Very short on cash, and struggling to keep both his personal and professional lives afloat, he compiled his Barnes Foundation lectures into a single comprehensive survey of the history of Western philosophy and published them in 1945 under the straightforward title A History of Western Philosophy. Russell’s history became an unexpected best-seller, saved him from complete financial ruin, and provided an steady income stream upon which he would depend for the rest of his life. Indeed, the book was a strong contributor to the body of literature for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1950 — and today, outside of the philosophical and mathematical communities, is possibly second only to Why I Am Not a Christian as the work for which Russell is best known today.

Russell divides his History of Western Philosophy into three parts, focusing on ancient (Greek and Roman) philosophy up through the third century CE, Catholic philosophy (which also includes bits about Jewish and Islamic philosophy) of the Church Fathers through St Thomas Aquinas and up to the Renaissance, and modern philosophy from the 1500s through the early 20th century and Russell’s own works. The first two parts receive much more attention than the final part, mainly because Russell’s attempts to show the founding principles and evoluation of various philosophical schools of thought require him to delve deeply into the works of the most influential ancient philosophers, particularly Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle. Russell makes very little pretense of being objective in his comments; it is more than clear which philosophers he likes and which he dislikes. Aristotle’s Ethics, for example, have an ‘emotional poverty’ that ‘will be useful to comfortable men of weak passions’ — he acknowledges the work’s effect and influence on future generations of philosophers, but dismisses the work itself (and, for that matter, much of Aristotle’s other work). In contrast, he has high praise for Spinoza as both a person and a philosopher — in Russell’s words, Spinoza is ‘the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers’ — and the loving descriptions and generous assessments carry through the description of the man’s life and personality and into his work. Comments such as these make for alternately interesting and frustrating reading matter, all the way through the nearly 900-page book covering nearly three millennia of philosophic history.

In his autobiography, Russell defended his approach to the History of Western Philosophy by stating that ‘a man without bias cannot write interesting history’. Yet one conclusion which appears to be nearly universal among reviewers (including this reviewer) is that the History of Western Philosophy reveals far more about Russell’s own biases, prejudices, and personal philosophies than it does about those of any individual philosopher or philosophic tradition he surveys. He is prone to making authorial comments that may raise a few eyebrows, such as his remarks on Jewish history during the time of the Maccabees: ‘In enduring and resisting persecution the Jews of this time showed immense heroism, although in defence of things that do not strike us as important, such as circumcision and the wickedness of eating pork’ (316). In another digression, Russell’s strong belief in the need for a world government creeps into his discussion of Thomas Hobbes’ writings on the government: ‘Every argument that [Hobbes] adduces in favour of government…is valid in favour of international government. So long as national States exist and fight each other, only inefficiency can preserve the human race. To improve the fighting quality of separate States without having any means of preventing war is the road to universal destruction’ (557). In this light, the conclusions drawn in A History of Western Philosophy makes a good deal more sense after having read Russell’s massive Autobiography — at least, having more information about Russell’s background and circumstances may reduce the general frustration of reading the book and attempting to accept the author’s often peculiar conclusions at face value. As a history of Western philosophy, there are better works available…but as a reflection and even a microcosm of Bertrand Russell’s own political philosophies, this is one instance in which the book shows far more than it tells.

Samuel Johnson: The Struggle by Jeffrey Meyers

A few years ago, I received a copy of the unabridged Life of Samuel Johnson, and never actually managed to read more than a few dozen pages of it. (The unabridged version’s not the easiest size to carry around and read on a train, for one thing.) When I happened to come across this book in the local library, it prompted me to have another go at Boswell’s biographical magnum opus…which will be the subject of a book review itself, once I finish it.

Samuel Johnson: The Struggle by Jeffrey Meyers

When considering the life of 18th century English writer Samuel Johnson, it can be very difficult not to automatically associate his name with that of his most famous biographer, James Boswell. Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, published in 1791 (seven years after Johnson’s death), was innovative in its use of actual conversations between Boswell and Johnson, its incorporation of anecdotal evidence and commentary from others of Johnson’s acquaintance, and its animated, colloquial style that was a far cryfrom the traditionally reverent and respectful biography of the time. Yet Boswell was a careful editor, and even though his notes reveal that he himself was fascinated by the very intimate details of Johnson’s sexual appetites and deep emotional struggles, he suppressed many titillating details that for one reason or another he considered inappropriate to a public life of a well-known literary figure. Modern biographers of Samuel Johnson have sought to restore these details to present a more complete picture of their subject, and Jeffrey Meyers, one of the more recent Johnson biographers, has chosen to draw on older sources and newer scholarship to draft the life story of a long-suffering man, frequently ill and impoverished, prone both to frighteningly violent outbursts and to acts of surprising generosity, racked by fears for his own salvation and sanity, and successful more in spite of him failings than because of his powers. Indeed, Meyers’ approach to his subject is evident from his choice of a title alone: Samuel Johnson: The Struggle.

Meyers’ account of Johnson’s struggle focuses on both the physical and mental troubles that continually plagued Johnson’s life. Partially blind and deaf from his birth in 1709, a sickly child infected with scrofula (for which he was ‘touched’ by an elderly Queen Anne in the traditional attempt to cure the disease), Johnson also was subject to involuntary physical movements and facial tics that a modern observer likely would recognise as symptoms of Tourette’s syndrome. He spent much of his life alternating between bouts of extreme idleness and frenzied bursts of writing or other work, and berated himself for his slothful nature. Even Johnson’s closest friends and acquaintances seldom failed to comment on his slovenly appearance and frightful table manners. Meyers also goes into great detail on what many modern biographers suspect was Johnson’s darkest and most shame-ridden secret: an interest in flagellation as a means of sexual release. In short, Meyers does not spare his subject when it comes to Johnson’s failings — instead, he uses all of these woes to reinforce his belief in the extraordinary mental capacities that drove Johnson’s literary output, particularly in the legacy that he left the modern English language in his massive A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).

Samuel Johnson: The Struggle tries to avoid being merely another recollection of Johnson’s life, and Meyers works hard to balance sympathy for his subject with a more detached perspective. But for all of the information presented in the book, Meyers’ writing style can be wearying over the course of the biography’s 450-odd pages. Redundant or unnecessary descriptive adverbs slow down the pace of the writing, as does Meyers’ rather tiresome habit of inserting snippets of definitions from Johnson’s own dictionary when he wishes to emphasise a point. On multiple occasions, he refuses to let the text speak for itself; after presenting a statement or conversation or literary excerpt, he then rephrases it in his own words, repeating it more for the sake of repeating it than for shedding further light on the text or clarifying an unclear meaning. Meyers is also overly fond of comparing Johnson’s life circumstances to those of other noteworthy authors — in one of the more absurd comparisons, he mentions that both Johnson’s father (a bookseller) and William Shakespeare’s father (a glovemaker) certainly must have used leather in their trades. Yet to draw another comparison, in the end Meyers’ biography is rather like his subject — in that it manages to be successful in spite of itself. His focus is on Samuel Johnson’s struggle, and as a focus it works well enough to draw together all of the gossip and anecdotes, the competing biographies (Boswell’s was by no means the only ‘life of Johnson’ to be published within a few years of Johnson’s death) and contemporary literary criticism of Johnson’s works into a personal history of a deeply troubled but determined man.

The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton

I feel as if my recent book review posts have been tilting more towards fiction than non-fiction, which is well enough for posting but does not accurately represent the current state of my book review backlog. I’ll have more than a few non-fiction works coming up soon, to balance things out a little more.

The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton

It began as a fairly routine sort of day for our hero, an unnamed young man working for British military intelligence. An important scientist, codenamed ‘Raven’, had left his house that morning and had not arrived at his workplace, and evidence seemed to suggest that Raven was the latest in a series of what appeared to be either kidnappings or defections. The mission was straightforward: take a certain plane to Lebanon, rendezvous with certain people who have certain weapons, and use the appropriate means to prevent Raven from being transported over the border into Syria in the dead of night. And the mission is successful, in the sense that Raven is brought back alive and in one piece. But why did the senior officer involved in the Lebanon raid apologise to Raven before bringing him back to London? And why are the Americans suddenly very interested in the case, and in our hero’s part in Raven’s rescue? The capture and return of Raven, it seems, are only a small part of a much larger conspiracy that our hero must unravel before he becomes the next person to leave his house in the morning and never return — and as he tells it, this conspiracy is the story behind the IPCRESS file.

The IPCRESS File was Len Deighton’s breakthrough thriller novel, published in 1962, and when compared to other espionage novels of the time it bridges the literary and stylistic gap between the Ian Fleming and John le Carré approaches to espionage fiction. The unnamed protagonist lives in a small flat in an unfashionable area of south London — where it takes 40 minutes to get a taxi, because the drivers don’t like going south of the Thames — and he takes a grim sort of pride in the fact that by education and temperament he is quite unlike the smooth-talking public-school chaps he frequently meets in his line of work. However, he has an appreciation for good food and drink, especially expensive coffees, and more than once his internal monologue despairs over the poor quality of the coffee served in his office and compares it with the kind he drinks at home. The flashy settings and sinister international plots that thrilled readers of the James Bond stories are replaced with the dimly lit Whitehall corridors and squabbles over unpaid travel vouchers more familiar to fans of George Smiley, but Deighton provides more than a few frantic chases, sinister tortures, and clever escapes from danger to keep the plot rumbling along. On the subject of the plot itself, Deighton’s writing style is Dickensian at times, particularly in the sense that he seems to takes the most pleasure in crafting interesting character types or evocative turns of phrase (such as a woman whose hairstyle has been ‘intimidated’ into place) at the expense of the greater plot. The final chapter is a massive and rather clunky information dump that even a slapdash mystery novelist might find overwhelming — the true meaning of ‘IPCRESS’, for instance, does not appear until about 20 pages before the end. The plot is there, but somehow it becomes almost secondary to the action and the lovingly descriptive passages, which may disappoint some readers who are used to more tightly crafted espionage writing. Nonetheless, Deighton’s work was one of the early examples of a plot centred on the battle between the spy-as-action-hero and the spy-as-bureaucrat, which makes it worth examining as a piece at the forefront of this particular trope.

Fans of the spy thriller genre may be more familiar with The IPCRESS File through the 1965 film of the same name, which stars Michael Caine as ‘Harry Palmer’, the name chosen for Deighton’s nameless man of action. The film provides a bit more backstory for Caine’s Harry Palmer, but it was Caine’s brisk performance in the film that truly made the role his own and provided him with his first starring role. Those who have seen the film but have never read the book might be interested to see the source material (and judge it on its own merits), while those who have never seen the book or the film will find The IPCRESS File a tortuous but quick read, as well as a classic text of mid-Cold War espionage fiction.

Commentary: SPADs

Reading the various articles and blog posts (such as Lord Tyler’s post in Lords of the Blog) about the Damian McBride affair, my mind keeps coming back to the use of the term ‘Spad’ (or ‘SpAd’, or however one chooses to write it) as an abbreviation of ’special adviser’. As both a political and trainspotting anorak, I have to say that I can’t read ‘Spad’ without thinking of the railway use of SPAD: Signal Passed At Danger.

In this case, as I commented in Lords of the Blog, the trainspotting term seems surprisingly apt to describe this situation. A whole series of extended metaphors could be employed about special advisers ‘misjudging the braking distance’ — or more wicked ones that might refer to ministers or civil servants as ‘dim or dark signals’. But again, as with automatic signals, signals can be passed at danger if drivers receive explicit clearance from a signal operator (a minister, perhaps?). I wonder, would it be worth looking to the new rules and technology established by the railways after the 1999 Ladbroke Grove crash for even a hint of guidance on how to proceed with a suitable code for the SPADs in Westminster and Whitehall?

Or perhaps I’ll just go back to my line diagrams and/or book reviews, and leave the political commentary to my fellow anoraks.

On the Shortness of Life by Seneca

Although this review was written after those of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and William Hazlitt’s On the Pleasure of Hating, this volume happens to be the first book (chronologically speaking) in Penguin’s Great Ideas series.

On the Shortness of Life by Seneca (Penguin Great Ideas Series)

The amount of solid historical information on the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 5 BCE – 65 CE) is relatively thin, and most of what is known about him comes from his own writings and from scattered (and not always impartial) sources. What is certainly known is that he came from a distinguished family, and followed in his rhetorician father’s footsteps by getting involved in the turbulent political scene of the Roman Empire in the first century CE. Although his everyday life was caught up in the intrigue and violence that surrounded the affairs of emperors Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, Seneca’s thoughts and writings focused primarily on the contemplative life and bear out his devotion to the ideals of Stoic philosophy. Yet even after he had left public life, the continuing drama of the imperial family was never far away, and eventually Seneca fell victim to rumours that he had been part of a plot to assassinate Emperor Nero. He was ordered to commit suicide, which he did through the traditional method of opening veins to die of exsanguination. Although his personal reputation suffered somewhat from continuing rumours and criticism after his death, many of his writings have survived, including the three essays selected for On the Shortness of Life.

The Great Ideas selection of Seneca’s works contains three essays: De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life), Ad Helviam matrem, De consolatione (Consolation to Helvia), and De Tranquillitate Animi (On Tranquility of Mind). The first, an essay written to his friend Paulinus, dwells on the sad condition of those who have little or no idea of how to live their lives, and waste their days and hours in meaningless frivolities or in frenzied and often fruitless activity. Contrary to those who fret about the shortness of a man’s time on earth, Seneca declares that ‘life is long if you know how to use it’, and recommends that Paulinus use his time well by turning to the writers of philosophers to learn more about how to live and die without fears or regrets. Continuing in this vein, the second essay is in the form of a letter addressed to his mother Helvia, providing her with consolation at the news that he would be sent into exile (written when he was banished at the behest of Emperor Claudius in 42 CE). Seneca takes an unconventional approach to dealing with the expectation of his mother’s grief: he informs her, with extensive biographical detail, of all of the sorrows and losses of her life, from the loss of her mother in childbirth to the deaths of her grandchildren and her husband, and then urges her to conquer this new grief as she has conquered others in the past — with patience and reason, neither distracting herself with trivialities or spending her time moaning and weeping over something that cannot be changed. The final essay, in the form of a exchange between Seneca and his friend Serenus, presents the latter as a ‘patient’ seeking a remedy for the frequent distractions of life that trouble his thoughts. Seneca, in keeping with Stoic philosophy, prescribes moderation in all things as physic for an unquiet mind, and cautions his friend that he will have to actively choose that path of moderation, and not be dissuaded from it by the course of events, whether good or ill. In all three selections, Seneca displays the characteristics beliefs of his chosen philosophy: the embrace of reason and harmony with nature, an acceptance of suffering in life and an attempt to learn from those sufferings, and the importance of finding peace within oneself both in life and in death.

On the Shortness of Life is a fine introduction to Seneca’s writings, translated in a very readable style by classical scholar C.D.N. Costa. The only real flaw in this edition is that the texts presented, however straightforward and enjoyable to read in their own right, tend to lack context without even a brief introduction. A simple one- or two-page preface to introduce Seneca as a historical and literary figure and possibly even provide some background information on the three texts included in the book would have greatly improved the edition as a whole. Even so, this first volume is a decent start to the Great Ideas series, and may best be read in conjunction with the later Stoic Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.