Sad to hear of the passing of the inventor of the Wombles.
Monthly Archives: December 2010
δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ
Despite the delivery problems, a respectable pile of parcels
After:
F surrounded by trophies (note new Pterry book in foreground)
U worships the diabolical Tweenies
And we’re going to try and take B for a walk in the snow this afternoon.
Happy Christmas to those who celebrate, a restful and enjoyable day to all.
Whoniversaries 25 December
25 December 1916: birth of Edward Burnham, who played Professor Watkins in The Invasion (1968) and Professor Kettlewell in Robot (1974-75).
25 December 1984: birth of Georgia Moffett, daughter of Peter “Fifth Doctor” Davison (whose real name is Moffett); she has played Jenny, the Doctor’s daughter, in The Doctor’s Daughter (2008), Cassie Rice in animated story Dreamland (2009), Tanya in Big Finish audio Red Dawn (2000) and Alice in Big Finish audio City of Spires (2010).
25 December 1988: death of Terence Dudley who directed Meglos (1980) and wrote Four to Doomsday (1982), Black Orchid (1982) and The King’s Demons (1983).
25 December 1999: death of Peter Jeffreys who played the unnamed Pilot in The Macra Terror (1967) and Count Grendel in The Androids of Tara (1978).
25 December 1965: broadcast of “The Feast of Steven”, seventh episode of the story we now call The Daleks’ Master Plan. The Doctor and Sara get arrested at a northern English police station, but Steven busts them out; they then get embroiled on the Hollywood set of a silent movie; and the Doctor wishes “a happy Christmas to all of you at home!”
25 December 2005: broadcast of The Christmas Invasion, first full Tenth Doctor story. As the regenerated Doctor arrives in London, the Sycorax invade, but are repelled.
25 December 2005: launch of interactive game Attack of the Graske on the BBC website.
25 December 2006: broadcast of The Runaway Bride, first appearance of Catherine Tate as Donna Noble. Her wedding turns out to be a front for the release of the Racnoss; the Doctor flushes the spiders down the plughole.
25 December 2007: broadcast of Voyage of the Damned, first appearance of Bernard Cribbins as Wilfred Mott, with Kylie Minogue guest starring as Astrid Peth. Max Capricorn has persuaded the captain of the Starship Titanic to crash into Buckingham Palace, but the Doctor prevents them, at the cost of Astrid’s life.
25 December 2008: broadcast of The Next Doctor. Back in 1851, the Doctor thwarts an invasion of England by Cybermen, with the help of Jackson Lake and Rosita Farisi.
25 December 2009: broadcast of The End of Time. The Master is resurrected; the Doctor returns to Earth via the Ood-Sphere and is captured by the Master in time to witness the transformation of the whole of humaity into duplicates of his arch-enemy.
25 December 2010: broadcast of The Christmas Carol.This makes 25 December, along with 1 January, one of only two dates in the year with seven broadcast Whoniversaries (and the only one where all of those Whoniversaries are actually Who rather than the spinoffs).
As well as those mentioned yesterday:
25 December 1883: setting of Attack of the Graske.
25 December 1951: The First Doctor, Ian, Susan and Barbara steal the Stone of Scone (in “Set in Stone” by Charles Auchterlonie and John Isles, from the 2005 anthology Short Trips: The History of Christmas).
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 12-25-2010
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Your chance to vote!
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On Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that one joke isn't really enough to sustain a parody mash-up novel over 300 pages."
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it not only found an elegant way of telling a Doctor Who story without the Doctor, it found a way of telling a new series Who story without rubbing our face in its themes.
List of runs of missing and surviving Doctor Who episodes
Young F researched this piece today and posted it elsewhere; he has given me permission to reproduce it here for reference.
I decided to make a list of the missing Doctor Who episodes – which are often known as being ‘lost in time’, aptly…
Statistics
There are currently 114 missing episodes from 28 serials, including 12 completely missing serials and 45 episodes from 12 serials for Hartnell and 63 episodes from 15 serials for Troughton and the 6-episode Shada – unless you want to count the 11 black and white Pertwee episodes from 3 serials, including one full serial only available in black and white, in which case there are 124 missing episodes from 31 serials including 13 completely missing serials. All of them have surviving footage except for Marco Polo/A Journey to Cathay, Mission to the Unknown and The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve/The Massacre, though you could argue that Marco Polo/A Journey to Cathay has footage as the Edge of Destruction/Inside the Spaceship/Beyond the Sun is completely intact…
00:45 in the video shows the only surviving footage we have of Marco Polo/A Journey to Cathay – which is actually from the Brink of Disaster (The Edge of Destruction/Inside the Spaceship/Beyond the Sun).
List of missing episodes
4-episode run of original versions of episodes that survive through An Unearthly Child/100,000 BC/The Tribe of Gum.
Original version of The Dead Planet (part 1 of The Daleks/The Dead Planet/The Mutants) missing: At some point after recording somebody found out that a technical problem had caused backstage voices to be heard on the tape. In early December 1963 it was remounted with a different costume for Susan. The only surviving bit is the cliffhanger – again, not from the original but from episode 2, The Survivors.
8-episode run of original versions of episodes that survive from The Survivors (The Daleks/The Mutants/The Dead Planet) to The Brink of Disaster (The Edge of Destruction/Inside the Spaceship/Beyond the Sun), unless you insist on saying that The Dead Planet survives. If so, it’s a complete run of 13 surviving episodes.
6-episode run of missing episodes through Marco Polo/A Journey to Cathay.
19-episode run of surviving episodes from The Sea of Death (The Keys of Marinus/The Sea of Death) to A Change of Identity (The Reign of Terror/The French Revolution).
The Tyrant of France and A Bargain of Necessity from The Reign of Terror/The French Revolution are missing.
23-episode run of surviving episodes between Prisoners of Conciergerie (The Reign of Terror/The French Revolution) and The Lion (The Crusade/The Lionheart/The Crusaders).
Alternating between lost-surviving-lost, we have The Knight of Jaffa, The Wheel of Fortune and The Warlords from The Crusade/The Lionheart/The Crusaders.
14-episode run of surviving episodes from The Space Museum (The Space Museum) to Checkmate (The Time Meddler) and thus for the rest of Season Two.
10-episode run of lost episodes at the start of Season Three running from Four Hundred Dawns (Galaxy Four) to The Nightmare Begins (The Daleks’ Master Plan). Yes, I’m counting Four Hundred Dawns as missing. Even though there’s an 8-minute piece of footage in it, that doesn’t mean it’s complete.
Alternating between surviving-missing-surviving, we have most of the rest of The Daleks’ Master Plan: Day of Armageddon, Devil’s Planet to The Traitors, Counter Plot, Coronas of the Sun to Golden Death and Escape Switch.
6-episode run of lost episodes from The Abandoned Planet (The Daleks’ Master Plan) to Bell of Doom (The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve/The Massacre).
4-episode run of surviving episodes through The Ark.
3-episode run of lost episodes through The Celestial Toymaker from The Celestial Toyroom to The Dancing Floor.
5-episode run of surviving episodes from The Final Test (The Celestial Toymaker) to the last episode with its own title, The OK Corral (The Gunfighters).
4-episode run of missing episodes through The Savages.
4-episode run of surviving episodes at the end of Season Three through The War Machines.
4-episode run of missing episodes at the start of Season Four through The Smugglers.
3-episode run of surviving episodes through The Tenth Planet from episodes 1-3.
13-episode run of missing episodes through the Doctor boundary from The Tenth Planet #4 to The Underwater Menace #2.
After episode 3 of The Underwater Menace (which survives), we have a 2-episode run of missing episodes from The Underwater Menace #4 to The Moonbase #1.
Alternating between surviving-lost-surviving, we have the rest of the Moonbase.
4-episode run of missing episodes through The Macra Terror.
Alternating between surviving-missing-surviving, we have the first three episodes of The Faceless Ones.
4-episode run of missing episodes from The Faceless Ones #4 to The Evil of the Daleks #1.
After the surviving second episode of The Evil of the Daleks, we have a 5-episode run of missing episodes through the rest of The Evil of the Daleks.
4-episode run of surviving episodes through The Tomb of the Cybermen.
After the missing first and surviving second episodes of The Abominable Snowmen, we have a 4-episode run of missing episodes through the rest of The Abominable Snowmen.
After the surviving first and the lost second and third episodes of The Ice Warriors, we have a 3-episode run of surviving episodes through the rest of The Ice Warriors.
After the missing first and second and the surviving third episodes of The Enemy of the World, we have a 3-episode run of missing episodes through the rest of The Enemy of the World.
After the surviving first episode of The Web of Fear, we have a 13-episode run of missing episodes from The Web of Fear #2 to The Wheel in Space #2.
After the surviving third and missing fourth and fifth episodes of The Wheel in Space, we have an 11-episode run of original versions of episodes that survive from The Wheel in Space #6 to The Mind Robber #5.
The original versions of The Invasion #1 and #4 are missing, but they have been animated for DVD. So if you want originals, you’ll have a 2-episode run of survivors between them and a 14-episode run of survivors after them from The Invasion #5 to The Seeds of Death #6. But if you don’t care about originality and absolutely insist on counting The Invasion #1 and #4, we’ve got a 27-episode run of survivors from The Wheel in Space #6 to The Seeds of Death #6.
After the missing first and surviving second episodes of The Space Pirates, we have a 3-episode run of missing episodes for the rest of The Space Pirates. After that, everything survives. Except…
List of black and white-only episodes from the Pertwee era
Yeah, there are some Pertwee episodes that are only available in black and white. So if you count the colour versions of those as missing, we’ve got a longer list!
22-episode run of surviving episodes over the Doctor boundary from The War Games #1 to The Ambassadors of Death #1.
3-episode run of black and white episodes through The Ambassadors of Death from episodes 2 to 4.
After the coloured The Ambassadors of Death #5 and 6 and the black and white The Ambassadors of Death #7, we have an 11-episode run of colour episodes from Inferno #1 to Terror of the Autons #4.
6-episode run of black and white episodes through The Mind of Evil.
We have a 61-episode run through Seasons 8-11 from The Claws of Axos #1 to The Time Warrior #4.
After Invasion of the Dinosaurs #1, everything is available in colour – except 60% of the 6-episode Shada, which has no complete episodes but might just appear on DVD – probably the same way as it did when it appeared on VHS in 1992 with Tom Baker narrating the bits that weren’t filmed.
Phew – that took so long I had to save it as a draft halfway through! Combine the facts that it’s such a long list and I am going to bed after possibly wrapping a few Christmas presents and e-mailing this to my dad for him to put in his blog, I can’t just read it all through in one go and I don’t feel like doing that right now, but you can mention spelling mistakes (I do not spell colour wrong. That’s how you spell it in the English that I speak – aka English English) and things I did extremely weirdly in the comments.
He is his father’s son, obviously!
December Books 11) The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper
I was dismayed to realise last weekend that this is in fact the second book of Cooper’s famous Dark Is Rising sequence, not the first; but the majority of my friends on LiveJournal, Facebook and Twitter reassured me that if anything it’s better to start here rather than with the first volume, Over Sea Under Stone.
Well, it turned out to be pretty appropriate to be reading a novel set around Christmas time with unprecedentedly heavy snowfall. Eleven-year-old Will, the seventh son of a seventh son, discovers that he bears ancient powers, and is one of the Old Ones who are trying to prevent the Dark from, er, Rising. I think it’s a great exposition of the desire that most children (and many adults) have of being the secret hero, tying in the magical otherworld with Will’s family life (which is itself disrupted by events). I liked it a lot and will now look out for the other volumes. (And will see if my own eleven-year-old can be persuaded to take an interest.)
December Books 10) Vanderdeken’s Children, by Christopher Bulis
An intriguing tale of two space-faring civilisations who find themselves contesting possession of a Big Dumb Object, in this case a ship that appears to fade into another universe, with the Eighth Doctor and Sam arriving and getting mixed up in it. There’s some good sfnal stuff about time paradoxes, though I was a bit sorry that Sam’s character appeared to have lost all the development of the last couple of volumes in the series. Nice Doctory characterisation though, and generally clear writing.
It starts today
The kids were supposed to go to school today, even though it is Christmas Eve. But the roads were slippery enough yesterday evening, and more snow has fallen overnight, our back garden showing that the total depth is about 30cm:
U’s school bus decided not to run, and although F’s school is only 4km away we decided that the trip isn’t worth it (he is still coughing nastily). So Christmas starts here. I doubt very much that we will get any more postal deliveries today, so we’ll be a bit short on actual presents tomorrow, but at least I have started marinading the boar.
And it will go on through next week, as the presents trickle in and visitors arrive – rarely posting LJ-ers
And Doctor Who is on tomorrow!
Whoniversaries 24 December
24 December 1925: birth of Innes Lloyd, producer of Doctor Who from The Celestial Toymaker (1966) to The Enemy of the World (1967-68).
24 December 1941: birth of John Levene, who played Benton in various UNIT stories from 1968 to 1975.
24 December 1966: broadcast of second episode of The Highlanders. Polly and Kirsty capture Ffinch; the Doctor tricks solicitor Grey; but Ben, Jamie and the Laird are trapped on the slave ship.
24 December 2006: broadcast of Combat (Torchwood), the one with the fighting Weevils which was written by Noel “Mickey Smith” Clarke.
All of the Christmas specials actually begin on the 24th:
24-25 December 1851: setting of The Next Doctor (2008).
24 December 1869: setting of The Unquiet Dead (2005).
24-25 December 1968: setting of much of the action of Mark Gatiss’ 1992 novel Nightshade.
24-25 December 2006 (?): setting of The Christmas Invasion (2005).
24 December 2007 (?): setting of The Runaway Bride (2006).
24-25 December 2008 (?): setting of Voyage of the Damned (2007).
24-26 December 2009 (?): setting of The End of Time (2009-10).
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 12-24-2010
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Paul on the numinous.
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"For diplomats, a massive computer leak is not the kind of sunlight that chases away corrupt misbehavior; it’s more like some dreadful shift in the planetary atmosphere that causes ultraviolet light to peel their skin away."
Whoniversaries 23 December: Enemy of the World #1, Power of Kroll #1
broadcast anniversaries
23 December 1967: broadcast of first episode of The Enemy of the World. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria land on a near-future Australian beach, are attacked by gunmen, rescued by Astrid in her helicopter, and discover that the sinister Salamander is the Doctor’s double.
23 December 1978: broadcast of first episode of The Power of Kroll. In search of the fifth segment of the Key to Time, the Doctor and Romana land on the third moon of Delta Minor, where Romana is captured by the native Swampies and the Doctor by the protein miners.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 12-23-2010
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Paul gives his views on e-books and piracy
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Me old mate Peter Osborne writes about the Parades Commission in Fortnight magazine
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Why Peadar liked it when he was 15 and still likes it now.
The Demons of Red Lodge and Other Stories
This month’s main sequence Big Finish release, a set of four Fifth Doctor / Nyssa single-episode stories, each of which is independent (the last has very vague links to the first). They are all basically good single-shot tales, the second (“The Entropy Composition” by Rick Briggs) having been pulled from hundreds of submissions to an open request frm Big Finish;’ the standout is certainly the fourth, “Special Features” by John Dorney, which is set in a recording booth where the Doctor and other former cast members are recording a DVD commentary for a 1970s horror film, which will certainly appeal to those of us who love the DVD commentary tracks for, oh, any other 1970s shows.
This Sceptred Isle – Empire
In the gaps between Doctor Who audios for the last couple of months, I’ve been listening to “This Sceptred Isle – Empire”, a series of 90 short radio programmes about the history of the British Empire, narrated by Juliet Stevenson with additional voice work by Christopher Ecclestone, Anna Massey, Jack Davenport, and others, a sequel to the earlier This Sceptred Isle which dealt with the history of Britain in the same way.
I was a bit underwhelmed, to be honest. I suspect that the subject is too big to treat in this way; I had picked it up in the first place to listen to the bits about Ireland, which for the earlier period were fairly decent, but rather tailed off towards the end (Irish history apparently stopped in 1916), and the other ex-colonies I’ve dealt with professionally (Cyprus, Somaliland) were barely mentioned. The focus of the narrative was generally, though not always, on the effect that the colonies and colonised had on the British rather than the other way round. I was particularly frustrated by the sections about Warren Hastings, which lionised him as an innocent hero without making it terribly clear why he was anything more than a venal administrator set up by rivals in office politics who played hardball. Macaulay was much clearer (if more long-winded), but I missed really any Indian account of whether Hastings was any good.
There are also serious limitations to the straight narrative-with-actors style. Probably if I’d been listening to it at a rate of one instalment every day or so, rather than in bursts of several at a time, it might not have irritated me as much. But I’ve now started the more recent and excellent History Of The World In 100 Objects, and I’m stunned by how dull the format of Scepterd Isle is, in comparison. It would hardly have killed the producers to include, like, music, or even original sound tracks in the later period when they become available.
So, all in all, not really recommended listening.
Most commented posts of the last year
The 32 posts on this journal since my last tally which got more than 15 comments (I’ve lowered the bar – last time, 42 posts had more than 20 comments, this time it was only 14, which no doubt reflects the general migration to Twitter and Facebook and perhaps my own less obsessive blogging this year). Top 17 in bold, top 8 and top 4 in larger fonts.
22 December: Email scam – fake message from my cousin seeking £2000 immediately (21 comments)
30 December: Books unread – my poll of books to read in 2010 (28 comments)
1 January 2010: 2009 books poll – have you read what I read last year? (17 comments)
9 January: I guess you could call this the NATO meme – a bit silly really (16 comments)
16 January: ‘Completist’ authors poll – which of these folks have you read? (24 comments)
14 February: A book I am unlikely to read – Blackout, by Connie Willis (16 comments)
21 February: Cooking 1) Boiling – how do you do rice? (15 comments)
28 February: February Books 17) A Short History of Fantasy, by Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James – discussion of book, BSFA voting, and availability of other nominees (17 comments)
7 March: State of me – health whinge (20 comments, thank you all!)
7 March: Descendants – more on the most recent common ancestor, looking at the offspring of Victoria and Albert (19 comments)
19 April: Victory of the Daleks – latest Doctor Who episode (20 comments)
29 April: Linkspam for 29-4-2010 –
15 May: So, that coalition then – discussion mostly about the House of Lords (15 comments)
4 June: Questions meme – I still owe people questions from this one, sorry (16 comments)
7 June – How to pronounce van Gogh – Doctor Who encounters the Dutch language (15 comments)
8 June – Address book backup – actually I went for none of the above (16 comments)
6 July: 600 seats – redrawing the seats in Northern Ireland (60 comments)
17 July: Statistically improbable phrases – identifying books via Amazon (19 comments)
8 August: Tonight’s the night (Sherlock) – when will you watch it? (19 comments)
10 August: Blackberry v Android (v iPhone) – seeking the wisdom of my f-list (54 comments)
13 August: August Books 10) A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge – general discussion (23 comments)
7 September: Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-9-2010 – mathematical discussion (38 comments)
6 September: Android brick – my customer dissatisfaction, still not completely assuaged (15 comments)
12 September: Drama (locked post) – sick child (16 comments)
17 September: Favourite series of books – early post in a meme which I did not complete (15 comments)
24 September: Ian Sales’ list of British sf masterworks – didn’t include many women (24 comments)
10 October: Author bites back – Paul Magrs objects to a review (21 comments)
7 November: What happened to the Doctor Who companions? – one of my favourite posts of the year (15 comments)
2 December: TAFF (locked post) – I didn’t go for it in the end (15 comments)
8 December: Which are the best novels by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman? – poll and discussion (22 comments)
17 December: Bizarre incident – road rage (22 supportive comments, thank you all)
Thanks to everyone who reads and comments.
Whoniversaries 22 December: Time Warrior #2, Horns of Nimon #1
broadcast anniversaries
22 December 1973: broadcast of second episode of The Time Warrior. Sarah is rescued by Boba Fett Hal, while the Doctor is captured by Irongron and Linx.
22 December 1979: broadcast of first episode of The Horns of Nimon. The Tardis collides with a ship full of sacrifices from the planet Skonnos.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 12-22-2010
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I'm in good company!
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The UK, as most of us know, is a net contributor to the EU budget. Therefore it’s understandable that people in this country want to learn more about how we benefit from our collective contribution. On this website you can find out how the EU helps with:
* Moving around Europe freely and safely* Giving UK consumers a fair deal* Making our food and environment safer* Fighting crime and policing borders
No eclipse this morning…
…too cloudy, and someone has put all this white stuff outside:
The path Anne cleared down the drive yesterday is all but invisible!
Whoniversaries 21 December
21 December 1915: birth of James Cairncross, who played Lemaitre in The Reign of Terror (1964) and Beta in The Krotons (1968-69).
21 December 1991: death of Colin Douglas who played Donald Bruce in The Enemy of the World (1967-68) and Reuben in Horror of Fang Rock (1977).
21 December 1998: death of Roger Avon, who played Saphadin in The Crusade (1965), Daxtar in The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965) and Wells in the film Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966).
21 December 1963: broadcast of “The Dead Planet”, first episode of the story we now call The Daleks. The Doctor, Ian, Susan and Barbara land on a strange world with a petrified forest and an abandoned city. But what is it that terrifies Barbara at the end?????
21 December 1965: first performance of the stage play Curse of the Daleks, by David Whitaker and Terry Nation.
21 December 1968: broadcast of eighth episode of The Invasion. Tobias Vaughn changes sides and helps defeat the Cybermen, though he too is killed.
21 December 1988: broadcast of second episode of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. Ace is captured by the clowns; the Doctor is forced to perform for the circus.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 12-21-2010
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Lunar eclipse tonight. Presumably the usual sacrifices to dark, forbidden gods will bring the moon back.
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by my friend Daniel Serwer, who knew Holbrooke all too well.
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The end of the Red Sea Shark.
Gibbon Chapter XXXVII: Monks and Arians
It’s a chapter in two halves, the first being Gibbon’s account of the history of monasticism up to the fifth century, and the second about the conversion to Catholicism / Orthodoxy of the various Barbarian peoples who had previously practised Arianism, of which the most dramatic incidents take place in the Vandal kingdom of north Africa. This has been so far the least exciting of the three volumes I’ve read, Gibbon somehow trudging through various inept rulers and barbarians, even the chapters describing the fall of Rome not exactly fizzing with energy. But now with the end in sight and with a thematic subject on which he is passionate, it somehow catches fire. See also notes on the Comma Johanneum, Ulphilas, proof that Christianity is right, the persecution of the Jews in Spain, and poor editing.
Whoniversaries 20 December: Jacqueline Pearce, Eddie Robson, Timewyrm: Revelation
20 December 1943: birth of Jacqueline Pearce, who played Chessene in The Two Doctors (1985), Prime Miniister Sherilyn Harper in Big Finish audio The Fearmonger (2000), Admiral Mettna in the webcast Death Comes to Time (2001-02) and of course Servalan in Blake’s 7.
20 December 1978: birth of Eddie Robson, author of many Big Finish audios and various short stories.
This is the first day since 24 October with no broadcast anniversaries, and the last such day in the calendar year.
20 December 1992: St Christopher’s Church in Cheldon Bonniface is transported to the Moon, as recounted in Paul Cornell’s 1991 novel Timewyrm: Revelation.
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 12-20-2010
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Andrew Rilstone forensically dissents and demolishes the attacks on 'Political Correctness' (UK version at least). It always baffled me why conservatives were so keen on attacking politeness.
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Alex reckons that today's terrorists are Desperate, Incompetent, Converts, Kids, Harmless, Economically insignificant, Aimless, Disconnected, and Suicidal.
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The best of Five Thirty-Eight.
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That La Clinton should want her State Department slaves to play secret agents on the poor old UN donkey – the beast that forever clip-clops on stage to mop up America's failed policies in the Middle East, this decrepit skyscraper on the East River packed with enough asbestos to kill a nation of peacekeepers, this bureaucratic shambles with its pathetic Secretary-General whose English is still in need of vast improvement – shows what an utterly worthless institution the US State Department has become.
They were supposed to spy on the encryption details of delegates, credit card transactions, even frequent flyer cards. But who would want to read the nonsense that the UN's overpaid staff write, or how much they spend on lunch at Nobu's with the Nicaraguan consul, or who paid for whose mistress to fly to Havana on the shavings of his UN flights?
And why spy on the UN when they are the most leak-prone organisation on the globe?
December Books 9) The I.R.A., by Tim Pat Coogan
The first edition of this book was published in 1969, and the pre-1969 text takes up slightly more than half of my fourth edition from 1994. This earlier core is an excellent historical analysis of a paramilitary movement which had at one point been central to Irish politics and had steadily been moved more and more to the fringes, as decade after decade crucial members of the leadership either defected to democratic politics or died (often through violence). Coogan has got deeply into his subject and assembled names, dates, numbers (though I can’t quite believe that the I.R.A. still had 30,000 members by the late 1920s – they would surely have had more of an impact if that were the case) and has a detailed picture of who the I.R.A. were and also why it didn’t really matter that much in the context of how politics developed in the Irish Free State, and eventually the Republic of Ireland.
Unfortunately the book is probably more often bought and read for the second half, the post-1969 story, which has several very serious flaws.
First, from the narrative point of view, Coogan skips over the 1969 split between the Provos and the Stickies with indecent haste and almost no detail, in stark contrast to the chapter and verse he gave for the divisions between the ‘mainstream’ I.R.A. and other micro-groups in the previous four or five decades. It means that the subsequent description of the activities of the Provisionals and the Officials is almost without context of why they became two separate organisations. There are other gaps, but this is the most serious one and it is pretty huge.
Second, from the analytical point of view, Coogan has the Dublin journalist’s tin ear for Northern politics. He makes little of the differing agendas of the British Government, the mainstream Unionists, and the Loyalist paramilitaries. The 1974 power-sharing executive and Brian Faulkner are barely mentioned. In the short paragraph on the 1982 Assembly, almost every detail is wrong apart from the name of the body and the year in which it was elected. This persistent indifference to accuracy on such points may well reflect the interests of his subject matter and core readership as well as his own preferences, but it means that the casual reader expecting to find guidance on the wider Northern Irish political situation here will be not only disappointed but misled.
Third, from the organisational point of view, the claim on the back cover that the fourth edition has been ‘completely updated and revised’ is simply incorrect. While the earlier material is clearly the work of a historical thinker presenting his material in a careful structure, the successively bolted-on chapters for the later editions are poorly organised and sometimes repetitious, with no pause for global reflection.
Fourth, from the moral point of view, the missing element – for those of us who are not in Coogan’s core audience, the readership in the Republic, who may be more likely to have an instinctive understanding of this issue – is any serious analysis of how and why opinion in the Twenty-Six Counties swung both against and in favour of the Republican agenda over the years. I remember vividly both the H-Block demonstrations of 1981, and the post-Warrington demonstrations of 1993. Coogan gives many other examples of popular support for Irish prisoners but deep popular disapproval of the barbarous acts that they have committed, going back over the decades. I’d love to read some decent unpacking of how and why the plain people of Ireland have been able to discriminate between men and method in this way, and am disappointed that Coogan, well-placed to do so, has not provided it.
Having said all that, there are some other interesting points in the second half. I hadn’t realised that Greek Cypriots were so closely involved with the arming of the Provos – not only as middle-men for Arab suppliers (as is to be expected given the geography and geopolitics) but, Coogan suggests, directly as well. More recently, Coogan’s analysis of the correspondence between the I.R.A. and the British government in the early 1990s is detailed and useful, though unfortunately lacks a balancing perspective from the British side (not that there is likely much that could be added, but the gap is there). More tellingly than perhaps intended, his profile of Gerry Adams betrays hypnotised fascination with his subject rather than any real unpacking of said subject’s political agenda.
Anyway. There are many better books than this about Irish history since 1969 (and in fairness Coogan may have written one or two of them himself). But the first half is an excellent micro-study of a dangerous fringe movement. And I’m grateful to him also for quoting one of my own father’s best lines, regarding a small rabid Catholic movement of the 1950s: “Perhaps it was only a lunatic fringe, but it was still of interest as a symptom. One can learn something of the tendencies in a society by observing on which particular fringe of it the lunatics break out.”
Ooogh – flu and dental
So I have woken up this morning and feel somewhat better, at least ready to do on-line Christmas shopping (late) and write a promised guest blog piece (not quite as late) and think about cooking (will do boar as usual). But I’m still taking it easy.
The dental appointment on Friday was for the final stage of fixing the lower molar that I blogged about back in May. The story since then was extraction by a specialist surgeon, emergency cleaning-up on Easter Sunday (we delayed Easter eggs to Monday as a result), titanium screw implant, two unsuccessful goes at fitting a crown and finally plugging the gap successfully on Friday (also asking the dentist to check for bruising from being hit in the mouth, but she gave me the all clear on that score). So that particular problem is now sorted.
Unfortunately that’s not yet all for my teeth. When I was in Moldova last month, just before I took this picture, I managed to break another tooth, this time the left upper molar beside the ones that gave me so much trouble last year; biting on a piece of bread – which seemed to me chewy as bread of that part of the world often is, but not excessively so – I felt something move that shouldn’t move, and realised I had a problem.
Having a dental emergency in a country where you don’t speak the language(s) is not the most reassuring situation to be in, but I got my hotel to sort me out – and full marks to them, if you’re ever in Chişinău I do recommend the VisPas Hotel for many other reasons quite apart from their ability to deal with their guests’ dental emergencies. I literally had to go straight to the dentist from my meeting with the acting Foreign Minister, and was driven there direct from the ministry by a senior official (who fortunately also is a long-standing friend).
The dentist was as good as I could have wished for; they all spoke Russian rather than Romanian (as many do in Chişinău) but got the admin guy to translate for me (my Russian is pretty vestigial and oddly enough was not honed for this situation). They detached the broken bit of tooth, cleaned it up a bit and did an X-Ray, and then charged me 80 Moldovan lei for the whole lot. That would be US$6.50, UK£4.20, or €5; I would certainly have paid five or ten times that amount in Belgium, and I shudder to think what it would cost in the US. Not surprisingly, my pocket map of Chişinău has no fewer than five advertisements for dental clinics servicing foreigners who prefer to fork out for flying to Moldova and getting their teeth done there rather than spend the same money or more for the same service at home. (Will provide details to anyone who is interested – Chişinău is perfectly safe, to the extent that everyone in the central park downtown is surfing the free WiFi on their laptops, and has a very good local medical tradition, though not the easiest place in the world to get to from Western Europe let alone the US; I would also guess that the clinics advertising on the tourist map speak better English than the guys who fixed me up.)
Anyway, I still have only half a tooth up above, my Belgian dentist (who, to add complexity, is actually French) feeling it better to wait until the lower molar was sorted before starting upstairs. But at least it’s not uncomfortable, as the other dental problems over the last couple of years have been. So I am hoping against hope that the end of this tedious saga is in sight.
At least my mysteriously infected finger has returned to normal size and (almost) normal colour, after a week of antibiotics.
Whoniversaries 19 December
19 December 1915: birth of Simon Lack, who played Kettering in The Mind of Evil (1971) and Zadek in The Androids of Tara (1978).
19 December 1923: birth of Elwyn Jones, who co-wrote The Highlanders (1966-67).
19 December 1961: birth of Matthew Waterhouse, who played the Fourth and Fifth Doctor companion Adric from 1980 to 1982.
19 December 2009: death of Donald Pickering, who played Eyesen in The Keys of Marinus (1964), Blade in The Faceless Ones (1967) and Beyus in Time and the Rani (1987).
19 December 1964: broadcast of “The Waking Ally”, fifth episode of the story we now call The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Jenny and Barbara are betrayed by the women in the woods and captured by the Daleks; Ian manages to break into the mine but hides in the missile which is headed for the earth’s core; Susan and David kiss.
Reading Cooper
Just picked up my unread copy of The Dark Is Rising and realised that it is in fact the second book in the series. (Yeah, I know, only forty years late discovering that.) How important is it to have read Over Sea, Under Stone before starting The Dark is Rising?
Whoniversaries 18 December: Master Plan #6, Shalka #6, the Sky Gypsy disappears
None that I noted.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
18 December 1965: broadcast of “Coronas of the Sun”, sixth episode of the story we now call The Daleks’ Master Plan. The Doctor, Steven and Sara give Chen a fake tarranium core; and land somewhere with a really poisonous atmosphere.
18 December 2003: webcast of sixth episode of Scream of the Shalka. The Doctor blows up the Shalka with Alison’s help. (And there’s a rather peculiar bit with the Master, but watch and judge for yourself.)
18 December 1953: disappearance of the Sky Gypsy flying from Dublin to Cardiff (see yesterday’s Torchwood anniversary).
Delicious LiveJournal Links for 12-18-2010
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Yahoo maybe not closing Delicious but selling it
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“In all my travels I have battled against evil, against power mad conspirators. I should have stayed here! Power mad conspirators! Daleks, Sontarans. Cybermen! They're still in the nursery compared to us!”
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Damn. How will I do daily linkspams now?
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Yes, this explains it.
Road rage update
Went to Leuven police station after work (they were a bit surprised to see me, since I don’t live or work in their direct catchment area, but my local police station at home closes inconveniently early for this kind of thing and the ones in Brussels are not handy for my office) and spent an hour giving them a statement, which I believe will have included enough details for them to call round and talk to my interlocutor of this morning, which I hope will have a salutary effect. As a commenter to my previous post said, it’s unlikely it will come to much more than that in the end, but my civic duty is done and I will sleep easy tonight.