Monthly Archives: January 2012

Decline and Fall: What I got from reading it

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It was at the end of August 2009, twenty-eight months ago, that I started to read Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and two weeks ago that I finished it. I thought then that I could read two chapters a week, and get through the lot in nine months. In fact, I found I needed the space of a weekend without visitors or travel to read and write up each chapter, so the 71 chapters took me 133 weeks (rather than the 36 I had optimistically first imagined). But such a rich diet is best digested slowly, morsel by delicious morsel, rather than trying to rush it. I strongly recommend a structured read-through of the entire work to anyone interested in history.

There are some things I would advise readers to do differently from me. I wish I had used the Bury edition, with its expanded footnotes, which is available online and in various hard copy formats, rather than sticking to the Penguin version, edited by David Womersley, with just the original text. I would also interleave a bit more with other reading – I have the Gibbon and Empire volume of essays sitting on the shelf waiting to be read, and I profited also from Gibbon's own Autobiography. I might even suggest splitting the longest chapters rather than religiously taking one a week: Chapter L, on Mahomet (sic) is 81 pages, and Chapter LI, on his successors, in 90 pages, full of intense detail.

I set this up as a separate LJ community, , more to give the project a framework outside my usual bookblogging than out of any hope that I would build up a cohort of regular readers. Indeed there were a few people who commented regularly at the beginnning and more sporadically as it went on; I don't blame them in the slightest for flagging. I do now wonder what I will do with the entries in the long term, as LJ does not feel like a reliable archive right now. Probably I will simply shift them to my website.

I structured each entry to start with striking quotes from each chapter, followed by a short summary, followed by any points arising from the text. I should of course have put the summary first, then the quotes, then the points arising. I don't make any apology for rambling into favourite topics of mine such as Balkan geography and astrology, rather than more generally interesting points; I'm not an academic specialist in this area and have no ambition to be, and it seemed important to record when my pleasure in reading was enhanced by the intersection of the text with subjects that I already knew something about.

So, what did I learn?

The two things that will linger with me from Decline and Fall are the superb quality of the writing and the fact that Gibbon doesn't really prove his own case. The writing speaks for itself; some of the best passages are long – the fall of Constantinople being the one which most recently springs to mind – and some of the greatest lines are very brief – for example, that Artaxerxes “was driven into exile and rebellion by royal ingratitude, the customary reward for superior merit.” It does sometimes drag a bit – I found the chapters around the fall of Rome rather tough going – but on form Gibbon is one of the best combiners of irony with substance that you will ever encounter.

However, his overall thesis is not especially clear and not especially well proven by his own account. Gibbon blames the decline and fall of the empire on decisions taken in the second century, after which Rome endured another 250 years and Constantinople more than a millennium; he blames Christianity, though his proof of this tends to degenerate into prejudice about monks and Papists; he extols liberty, but exactly what he means by liberty is never very clear; he argues that there is a straight decline from 410 to 1453, which means minimising Justinian’s achievements (while yet giving him five chapters) and blatantly ignoring the later Byzantine empire. The building blocks are solid, and some of them extremely well made, but the overall structure is impressive more because of its size and style rather than its function.

One should not take this too far. This book, published precisely in the interval of years between the American Declaration of Independence and the French revolution, represent the effort of one of the smartest brains of the time trying to get to grips with the greatest historical catastrophe that he knew of, while yet fearing that his world was getting worse rather than better. And he also hopes to communicate his understanding of the past, and its application to the chaos of the present, to those who like him who have visited Rome as secular pilgrims:

Of these pilgrims, and of every reader, the attention will be excited by a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind. The various causes and progressive effects are connected with many of the events most interesting in human annals: the artful policy of the Caesars, who long maintained the name and image of a free republic; the disorders of military despotism; the rise, establishment, and sects of Christianity; the foundation of Constantinople; the division of the monarchy; the invasion and settlements of the Barbarians of Germany and Scythia; the institutions of the civil law; the character and religion of Mahomet; the temporal sovereignty of the popes; the restoration and decay of the Western empire of Charlemagne; the crusades of the Latins in the East: the conquests of the Saracens and Turks; the ruin of the Greek empire; the state and revolutions of Rome in the middle age. The historian may applaud the importance and variety of his subject; but while he is conscious of his own imperfections, he must often accuse the deficiency of his materials. It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candour of the public.

Well done, Mr Gibbon; well done.

Book I
Preface
Chapter I
Chapter II: Of the Union and Internal Prosperity of the Roman Empire in the Age of the Antonines
Chapter III: Of the Constitution of the Roman Empire in the Age of the Antonines
Chapter IV: The cruelty, follies and murder of Commodus [with added Pertinax]
Chapter V: mostly about Septimius Severus
Chapter VI: Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus; and taxation
Chapter VII: The Year of Six Emperors, and Philip the Arab
Chapter VIII: Of the state of Persia after the restoration of the monarchy by Artaxerxes
Chapter IX: The state of Germany till the invasion of the Barbarians
Chapter X: mostly about the Goths
Chapter XI: mostly about Aurelian
Chapter XII: Tacitus, Probus, Carus, and the rise of Diocletian
Chapter XIII: Diocletian
Chapter XIV: The Rise of Constantine
Chapter XV: Early Christianity
Chapter XVI: Early Christianity and the Emperors

Book II
Chapter XVII: Constantinople and Constantine’s system of government
Chapter XVIII: Constantine and his successors
Chapter XIX: Constantius, Gallus and Julian
Chapter XX: The conversion of Constantine and the establishment of Christianity
Chapter XXI: Heresy and paganism
Chapter XXII: The Rise of Julian the Apostate
Chapter XXIII: Julian and his Apostasy
Chapter XXIV: Julian’s Persian campaign, and his death
Chapter XXV: Jovian, Valentinian, Valens, Valentinian’s sons & the final division of the empire
Chapter XXVI: The Goths infiltrate

Book III
Chapter XXVII: Mostly about Theodosius
Chapter XXVIII: The Destruction of Paganism, and Worship of Relics and Saints by Christians
Chapter XXIX: The Sons of Theodosius; also Rufinus and Stilicho
Chapter XXX: The Goths are coming
Chapter XXXI: The Sack of Rome
Chapter XXXII: Arcadius, St John Chrysostom, and Theodosius II
Chapter XXXIII: The Vandals conquer Africa
Chapter XXXIV: Attila the Hun
Chapter XXXV: The End of Attila
Chapter XXXVI: The End of the Western Empire
Chapter XXXVII: Monks and Arians
Chapter XXXVIII: France, Spain and Britain
General Observations On The Fall Of The Roman Empire In The West

Book IV
Chapter XXXIX: Theodoric and Boethius
Chapter XL: Justinian, Part I
Chapter XLI: Justinian, Part II
Chapter XLII: Justinian, Part III
Chapter XLIII: Justinian, Part IV
Chapter XLIV: Justinian, Part V – his legal legacy
Chapter XLV: After Justinian’s death: The Lombards and Italy
Chapter XLVI: The Persians, the Avars and Heraclius
Chapter XLVII: Christianity in the East

Book V
Chapter XLVIII: Plan of last two volumes, and later Byzantine emperors
Chapter XLIX: Iconoclasm, Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire
Chapter L: Mahomet
Chapter LI: the successors of Mahomet
Chapter LII: The limits of the early caliphate
Chapter LIII: The Byzantine Empire in the Tenth Century
Chapter LIV: The Paulicians and the Reformation
Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, the Hungarians and the Russians
Chapter LVI: Italy and the Normans
Chapter LVII: The Turks

Book VI
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade
Chapter LIX: The Later Crusades
Chapter LX: The Fourth Crusade
Chapter LXI: The Latin Empire, the Crusades and the Courtenays
Chapter LXII: the East in the later thirteenth century
Chapter LXIII: The East in the early 14th century
Chapter LXIV: Genghis Khan, and the return of the Turks
Chapter LXV: Tamerlane / Timour, and the Turks again
Chapter LXVI: The Eastern Empire and the Popes
Chapter LXVII: The Beginning of the End
Chapter LXVIII: The Fall of Constantinople
Chapter LXIX: Rome, 1100-1300
Chapter LXX: Rome, 1300-1590
Chapter LXXI: The End

Vindication of some passages in the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters

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Interesting Links for 15-01-2012

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Interesting Links for 14-01-2012

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Interesting Links for 13-01-2012

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January Books 11) Doctor Who: The Daleks script), by Terry Nation

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Although of course nothing really matches the experience of sitting down and watching the story, there is a certain amount of fascination in following the words and the script as they were originally written. One appreciates just how much is brought to the show by the designer, director, producer and above all the actors, but at the same time the strengths of the script itself become clear. The seven episodes are actually all rather distinct from each other, and more self-contained than I had appreciated; the fake-out of the end of episode four is still rather striking; the Thals somehow come over as a bit more interesting on paper; one gets a sense that the vision in the writer’s mind was not quite the same as what appears on screen. I have only a couple of other script books but look forward to reading them both (this year I am reading my unread Old Who books in internal chronological sequence).

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Jamuary Books 8) The Unwritten vol 3: Dead Man’s Knock, by Mike Carey

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Another excellent volume in this excellent series, taking the frenzy surrounding the publication of the final Harry Potter books and giving it a new twist of darkness. The background narrative of one of the characters is audaciously presented as a choose-your-own-adventure book (I admit I was mapping out the possible paths on the back of an envelope). This volume did not seem as rich in literary allusion as previous ones, but perhaps I missed it; in any case the plot seems to have jumped into a more coherent track, which is fine.

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Interesting Links for 11-01-2012

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Interesting Links for 09-01-2012

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The Hexford Invasion

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On the whole, the BBC audio series by Paul Magrs with Tom Baker reprising his Fourth Doctor have not really grabbed me. But I felt that The Hexford Invasion, the fourth of the Serpent Crest series, was a significant improvement, largely because the excellent Susan Jameson is given her head as the Doctor’s housekeeper / companion Mrs Wibbsey. She was rather callously left behind to do the dishes at the end of the last episode; now she must suddenly deal with Mike Yates and UNIT, showing up with a scruffy but authoritative little man who calls himself the Doctor but is nothing like “her” Doctor. Magrs, and even more so Jameson, superbly capture the fannish feeling of confuion and loss when the Doctor one knew best is replaced by someone else (especially if your favourite Doctor is Tom Baker) and though the plot is as absurd as usual the three main cast are all brilliant. David Troughton doesn’t sound hugely like his father (I thought he was more Pat-ish in Titus Andronicus), but we are left in some doubt as to whether his character really is the Second Doctor, and anyway he is up to his usual standards. And the Tom Baker / Susan Jameson chemistry has never been better. I hope that the final episode in this sequence matches this.

(PS: William Hartnell’s 104th birthday today!)

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January Books 7) Out of Nowhere, by Gerald Whelan

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One of the sff books set in Ireland that has been on my list for many years and which I got off Bookmooch back in the days when Bookmooch actually worked. It starts as a fairly standard tale of alien intrusion into our world (northwestern Ireland in this case) and the two young people who find themselves caught up in it, complete with stock scene of bellicose American general wanting to nuke the problem. But the author’s reluctance to give proper names to most of the settings and incidental characters made it feel a bit unmoored, and the twist at the end as the viewpoint character discovers his own place in the scheme of things was not executed or explained terribly elegantly. Not a terrible book but not one I’ll be recommending either.

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What if the 2012 presidential election goes to the House?

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Back in 2004 I had a look at the maths around the application of the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution, in case neither Presidential candidate (Bush jr and Kerry on that occasion) managed to clear 270 votes in the Electoral College. As you know, Bob, in that case the delegation of each state in the House of Representatives gets to cast a single block vote for the election of the President, and repeats this until one candidate gets a majority (ie 26 of the 50).

The maths in 2004 were bad for Kerry (as was much else). By my reckoning the Democrats would have needed to be 7.2% ahead of the Republicans in the US-wide vote for Kerry to have a chance of catching the 26th state, whereas Bush was still on 26 even if the Republicans were 5.4% behind in national support.

This year things look more even. At present the Democrats control only 15 congressional delegations – Rhode Island, Hawaii, Vermont, Maryland, California, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Delaware, Maine, Oregon, North Carolina, New Jersey, New Mexico and Iowa – with Minnesota evenly divided and the Republicans ahead in the other 34. That's with a Republican lead in the 2010 elections of 51.4% to 44.8% for the Democrats. But a lot of the crucial Republican seats were won by wafer-thin majorities in what was probably a better election than they will have this year: on a swing of less than 1% the Democrats would gain the swing seats in Illinois, Washington, West Virginia, Nevada, and the fifth seat of eight in Minnesota. If the swing is between 2.65% and 3%, the Republicans lose South Dakota, Colorado and Missouri to the Democrats, and the delegations of New Hampshire and Mississippi become evenly divided. NB that the Republicans could still be ahead in the popular vote by a margin of up to 1.3% in this case, but unable to get a majority of state delegations in the House.

However, there would still remain a hill to climb for the Democrats, who in this scenario would hold only 23 state delegations. The next four states to shift – Arizona, Wisconsin, Arkansas and Idaho – would all move from Republican majority to evenly split. Once you hit a 5.05% swing, though – which would mean a Democrat lead nationwide of 3.5% – the Republicans also lose South Carolina and the Democrats pick up Wisconsin, North Dakota and Indiana for their 26th state. (Pennsylvania is not far behind, requiring a 5.1% swing to shift from red to blue.) So the Democrats are disadvantaged, in that they need a larger nationwide vote lead than the Republicans to reach 26 states, but not as badly as was the case in 2004.

These figures are of course not merely speculative but actually wrong. The congressional districts are all being redrawn for this year's election anyway, and eighteen of the fifty states are gaining or losing Representatives. The Washington Post has a good guide to this process, listing each state as to which party controls the redistricting process and what the anticipated outcome is. This will shift the bar overall to the disadvantage of the Democrats, who will lose North Carolina and possibly New Jersey to the Republicans, while the Republicans will lose Illinois (which was very marginal anyway) to the Democrats. The result is probably that the Democrats must be ahead, or nearly so, in the popular vote before the Republicans lose their 26th congressional delegation, and may need a lead of 4% before the 26th state goes blue. Congressional elections are a complex phenomenon, with all the dynamics around incumbency and local issues, and even if the boundaries were not being changed, the detail of the above analysis would be far from 100% accurate in a real-world scenario. But I think it gives a feel for the big picture of what might happen.

The electoral college is, of course, much more likely to produce a clear result than the Twelfth Amendment procedure would, and has only once failed to deliver a majority for a single presidential candidate since 1800. In the unlikely event that the Twelfth Amendment did come into play, it would be pretty nasty, I suspect; much nastier than in 1825 which was bad enough. We would almost certainly be in the grey area where the result of the popular vote was very narrow rather than clear, and a handful of evenly divided state delegations held the balance of power. The fate of the election could rest on the decision of a single Representative from Mississippi, Arizona, Arkansas or Idaho to break with his or her party and vote for the other candidate. Fills you with confidence, doesn't it?

Obviously in such a case, purely idealistic considerations would be the sole preoccupation of the House, and there would be no prospect of political favours being offered by either candidate to any politician who might find themselves in that position; nor would there be any chance of such offers being accepted. Obviously.

(Little remembered fact – the Electoral College succeeded in choosing a Vice-President, without choosing his boss, in 1824; but failed to do so in 1836, the only occasion when the Senate alone chose the Veep under the Twelfth Amendment. But as the 1836 winning presidential candidate's running-mate was only a vote short, the Senate had little hesitation in selecting him. I imagine that in the scenario above the Senate would choose the running-mate of whichever candidate was selected by the House, with grumbling and possibly even high drama but a certain inevitability.)

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Interesting Links for 06-01-2012

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January Books 6) At The Mountains of Madness, by H.P. Lovecraft, adapted by I.N.J. Culbard

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A late Christmas present which I had been very much hoping for, this takes Lovecraft’s classic novella and puts it into a stark graphic novel adaptation, beautifully suited to the tale. The original story is a masterpiece of horror, ratcheting up the tension and dread with each sentence; Culbard’s adaptation must play with the text a little, but keeps many of the best lines. The drawing style is generally restrained, which makes the one or two moments of horrific revelation (particularly the gruesome fate of the advance party and the first sight of the hidden city) all the more effective. Dyer’s increasingly horror is conveyed very economically with subtle changes to the shading of his face, especially the bags under his eyes.

The graphic medium does mean a certain attenuation of atmosphere. In Lovecraft’s text, we are taken into Dyer’s mind, and he admits that he is a slightly unreliable narrator, partly unhinged by the horrors he has witnessed. As a drawn character, even as the narrator, he becomes someone who we readers watch along with the other members of the expedition (and the monsters); he may still be the central character, but his perspective is no longer as privileged as it is in the original text, and that’s probably unavoidable. (Dave Sim, for all his many faults, actually had some great moments in Cerebus where we could appreciate the points of view of particular characters, but I think that needs a different kind of story-telling than is really possible here.)

Anyway, a must-have for anyone who is even a mild Lovecraft fan, or indeed for anyone who hasn’t yet tried him but is wondering what the fuss is about.

Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!

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January Books 5) Pawns of Peace: Evaluation of Norwegian peace efforts in Sri Lanka, 1997-2009

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This is a fascinating and brutal report commissioned by the Norwegian government on the Norwegian contribution to the failure of the Sri Lanka peace process, in which the government of Norway was the sole mediator between the goverment of Sri Lanka and the LTTE Tamil rebels. I learned a lot from it about the brutality of both sides during the war (the forty-page narrative section is probably the best summary of events you will find anywhere) but more importantly it is also very thought-provoking in its wider conclusions on peace-making.

One interesting conclusion is that to have one sole mediator, and for that mediator to be the government of a small and not very powerful state rather than an international organisation or an NGO, was unsustainable. It would have been much better to have had a diverse team of involved actors who might have had more ability to cajole or even coerce the parties; it would have been much better if the government had not allowed itself to be both overstretched and undermined, the inevitable risks in the role of a single mediator. The government of Norway chose to put itself in this awkward position, and chose not to extricate itself sooner, and the report points out the alternatives available and the consequences which resulted from those choices.

Second, there were only two brief windows of opportunity for actually resolving the conflict during the Norwegians’ mandate (in late 2001-early 2002, when a ceasefire was brokered, and in early 2005 immediately after the 26 December 2004 tsunami). On both occasions, the internal dynamics of the political situation allowed the situaton to slide back into violence, and while the report finds that the major responsibility for this lies with the parties, who were rarely negotiating in good faith and always negotiating at cross-purposes, still, a smarter and perhaps less modest mediation mission might not have let those opportunities slip.

As it was, the Norwegians remained impotently engaged well past the point when it was clear that a negotiated solution was impossible, and the report is clear that they should have terminated the mediation in 2006, thus making the extent of the crisis clear to the rest of the world, rather than hanging on until they were finally expelled in early 2009. There are words of praise for the individual and courageous efforts of the senior Norwegian officials involved and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, but basically the report concludes that the mediation could have been done better, if indeed it was worth doing at all.

Much credit to the Norwegian government for commissioning and publishing this important work. The authors, for the record, are Gunnar Sørbø, Jonathan Goodhand, Bart Klem, Ada. Elisabeth Nissen and Hilde Selbervik.

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January Books 4) Dealing with a post-BRIC Russia, by Ben Judah, Jana Kobzova and Nicu Popescu

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The European Council on Foreign Relations published this analysis of EU-Russia relations just before last year’s Russian elections. I found it very informative on how Russia has managed to crash out of the BRIC category (the other three being the rising economies of Brazil, India and China) to the point where the Putin machine has become exhausted, unable to deliver due to rampant corruption and a captive, stagnant economy, with the glory days of the 2008 military victory over Georgia forgotten and the far east being surrendered economically to Chinese domination. It is a compelling picture of a state in crisis and although the authors did not predict the remarkable outcome of the elections, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone who had read the booklet.

The authors are on less sure ground in proposing how the EU should react. The good news is that there is less divergence among member states than was the case a few years ago; now that the Poles less hostile to Russia and the Germans less complacent, they have converged around a pragmatic yet mildly principled centre of gravity. The ECFR trio propose some fairly sensible measures to crystallize this convergence, including anti-bribery measures, sanctions against the murderers of Sergei Magnitsky, but also a drastic easing of the visa regime for Russians visiting the EU.

Unfortunately it is not at all clear where the leadership for taking these sensible measures might come from. EU external policies are in crisis, with twelve out of twenty-seven foreign ministers demanding that the beleaguered Baroness Ashton up her game. This year’s EU presidencies are held by small countries whose governments are both deep in domestic crisis, and one of which is anyway notoriously pro-Russian. In any case EU leaders will be fully occupied with the new eurozone treaty for the next few months, whether or not they intend to sign it. So this is a set of good ideas which sadly have nobody caable of implementing them.

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Interesting Links for 05-01-2012

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January Books 3) The History of Christianity (A Lion Handbook), ed. Tim Dowley

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I read this while finishing Gibbon, who is of course far superior, and in anticipation of tackling Diarmuid McCullagh’s much more impressive-looking survey later this year. It’s an assembly of short and very short essays, aimed at evangelical Anglicans in the UK, originally published in 1977 and revised in 1990. The one thing I really did learn from it was the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, which I now realise was a hugely important step towards American independence in religious culture, leading to the political reality. But there was a lot that set my teeth on edge: the irritating point-scoring about which denominations performed well against Fascism, the total complacency about missionary activity. Apparently the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was founded in 1701 by “devout Anglican clergymen, shocked at the prevalence of Presbyterianism and vice in the American colonies.” Well, as a lapsed Papist, I don’t have a dog in that fight. An amusing misprint has the pre-Reformation Church troubled by “sexual immortality”, that extra letter converting the description from cliché to erotic surrealism. The closing chapters touch rather superficially on the ordination of women. Homosexuality is not mentioned at all.

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January Books 1) The Sharing Knife: Horizon, by Lois McMaster Bujold

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The end of the four-volume Sharing Knife series, in which the romance / action plot, of mutual suspicions between two human cultures, equally threatened by an ‘orrible supernatural menace, resolves in entirely satisfactory manner, with much character-building wisdom being imparted to the foolish younger relatives. But I found myself a bit dissatisfied with Bujold’s use of the very rich background she has developed, for three reasons: first, the story got way further into the technical details of her world’s magical system than I was interested in; second, my niggling concern about the uniqueness of Dag and Fawn’s mixed marriage was actually exacerbated when it becomes clear in this book that it isn’t unique at all (which disintegrates some of the framing description in the earlier volumes); and third, I got the lingering feeling that the entire story is to an extent an attempt to positively reframe the history of interaction between white settlers and Native Americans (note that the Lakewalkers are magical and basically a warrior culture) – I am not saying that this is a necessary reading of the series, but I would have been more comfortable if some way of deprecating that interpretation had made it into the text.

Anyway, even problematic Bujold is entertaining enough, but I’m not sure how strongly I recommend the series as a whole.

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Interesting Links for 04-01-2012

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Interesting Links for 03-01-2012

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Interesting Links for 02-01-2012

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Kiro Gligorov

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Condolences to my Macedonian friends on the sad but not hugely surprising news that Kiro Gligorov, the first president of independent Macedonia, has died at the age of 94. He had a remarkable political career, beginning as a rising star among Tito’s Partisans during the Second World War, serving as Yugoslav finance minister in the 1960s, and as speaker of the Yugoslav federal parliament in the 1970s before emerging from retirement at the age of 74 to become President of Macedonia, in its first multi-party elections, in 1991 and then steering it to independence that year rather more peacefully than Slovenia, Croatia or Bosnia were able to manage. He retired in 1999, his job complete.

I saw Gligorov speaking at conferences several times, but only got talking to him once. He would always speak in Macedonian, through an interpreter, if making a public address, though in fact he was fluent in English and several other languages. As the result of an assassination attempt in 1995 he had a cavity practically the size of a golf ball in his forehead; he lost an eye in that bomb attack but otherwise appeared to have recovered pretty well.

My one conversation with Gligorov was shortly after the fall of Milošević, when I was fortunate enough to end up at the same table as him at a conference dinner (in the significantly named Herzegovina restaurant in Copenhagen). One of us asked Gligorov what his own most recent contact with Milošević had been. He told us that he had called the presidential office in Belgrade, in what turned out to be Milošević’s last month in power, to express his concern about the mysterious disappearance of Ivan Stambolić, Milošević’s predecessor as President of Serbia and a friend of Gligorov’s. He left a message with a secretary, expecting to hear nothing more, and was surprised to get a direct call from Milošević a few minutes later. “But all he wanted to talk about was the trouble he was having with Djukanović [then president of Montenegro].” Of course we now know what we only suspected then, that Stambolić had been kidnapped, killed and buried by the police on Milošević’s orders.

Vladimir Gligorov, Kiro Gligorov’s son, is a well-known economist based in Vienna; we used to see each other quite a lot on the Balkan conference circuit where, though he does not particularly identify himself as a Macedonian, he combines the Macedonian traits of pessimism and wit. One of his lines that I find applicable in many circumstances is his warning that “The European Union should realise that it is cheaper to keep its promises than to break them.” Anyway, my thoughts are with him and the rest of his father’s extensive circle, in Macedonia and elsewhere.

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