The allegiance offered by local chieftains yesterday proves fragile, and the Dublin army diviedes again:

The sixteenth we geave streight commandment to the Viscount Barry’s sonne, the Viscount Roche, Sir Cormac Mac Teige Mac Donough, O’Keeffe, O’Kallaghan, and Mac Auley, that they should have alle their force and keriages to the est of the contrie to interrupt the passage of the traytours, to and fro the mountayns till our retorne, which they observed not, to the gret hindrance of the service, and their own trouble as your Lordship shall hereafter perceive.

We then parted companie, my Lord of Ormonde taking his course, with his force, over the mountayn of Slievelogher, one waie into the wylde mountainous contrie of Desmond, leving most of the keriagcs in the care of Mac Donough, as well to limit the traytours and their goodes, which now fled thyther, as also to bring with him the Erle of Clancartie, and the rest of the Lds of Desmond, of whom we stode much in doubt: and my Lord Justice, on whom I waited, marched towards Kerrye, through Mac Donough’s contrie by his Castel of Kanturk, where the Lord Justice was met by Mac Donough’s wife, a perty (pretty) comelye woman, sister to the now Countesse of Desmond, by another, who spake good English and entertayned the Lord Justice the best waye she could, and camped that night at a place called Glanossyran (qn. Glaushcroon) adjoining to a faire river and grete wood.

Once again the Grey party goes west and the Ormond party south. The Countess of Desmond was a fascinating character in her own right, born a Butler but from a different branch to the Earls of Ormond, who lived to 95. Anne Chambers’ biography unfortunately doesn’t identify which sister was married to Owen McDonagh McCarthy of Duhallow.

It is interesting that White notes that “Mac Donough’s wife” spoke English well, which implies that the expedition has so far been successfully carried out using Irish, which presumably everyone except the Lord Justice spoke. She is the first woman to appear in this account, but not the last.

The expedition continues south:

The fifteenth, the Viscount Roche, David Barry, sone and heire to the Viscount Barry (his father being sicke) Mc Donough, O’Keeffe, and O’Kallaghan came to us with certain horsemenne and footmenne to whom we gave order that all the keriaghes (carriages) of the country should draw near our campe, as we wished to refresh us with vittaile (victuals) for our journey, promising that they should not be otherwise touched, and yet they durst not trust us, but fledde afar off. We removed and camped altogether that night in Mac Donough’s countrey called Dowally (Duhallow) by a river called the Brodewater, which falleth into the sea by Youghal. The contrie from east to west is xxiii miles longe, and xii miles brode, consisting of goodlie woodes faire rivers, and good arable land and pasture. In it there are of pety lords, under McDonough, O’Keefe, O’Kallaghan, and McAwlev, with whose powers and his own, he is able to make 400 footmen, xii horse, and 100 gallowglasse, and although that his country standeth on the hyther syde of the mountain of Slievelougher, yet the Earl of Clancarthy doth challenge (i.e. claim dominion over) him and his underlings, because they were originally some of the Mac Carthies.

The expedition is now halfway from Limerick to Cork overland, and various local chieftains have decided to profess support for the Dublin forces.

NB that although the Earl’s title is generally reported today as “Earl of Clancare”, White has him as “Earl of Clancarthy” or “Clancarty” which was the title later taken by the Trench family.

From today’s Telegraph.

If regulations were followed, the Grenfell Tower inferno should have been impossible

GEOFF WILKINSON • 14 JUNE 2017 • 9:56PM

I am a building inspector and fire engineer with 30 years’ experience. I’ve overseen numerous projects across London, including new builds and refurbishments, making sure buildings comply with the proper regulations, and post-occupation fire risk assessments. Given my experience, I was shocked by the blaze which engulfed Grenfell Tower in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

At this point in time it’s very hard to tell precisely what went wrong. We don’t know where the fire started and we don’t know how it spread. What we can say for sure is how the building should have performed – and that it definitely did not perform that way. If regulations were followed, what happened at Grenfell Tower should never have been possible, and there are very big question which need to be answered. There are already suggestions that proper planning procedures were not followed.

Normally, British fire regulations assume that fires will start in one location only – and normally, this is completely reasonable. In a big tower block like Grenfell, each individual flat is a fire-tight box from which flames should not be able to escape, and a fire which starts in one tends to stay in it. That is why residents are usually advised to stay within their own rooms and wait for rescue. The fire service should arrive within ten minutes, ascend the building, and tackle the fire where it burns, while other residents sit quite happily in place.

This is also why we shouldn’t be disturbed by reports from Grenfell that there was no common alarm system installed. Most residential blocks don’t have common alarms, because they could trigger a mass panic in which everyone tries to evacuate via the same stairwell which the fire service are using to reach the fire. Unlike in a hotel, there are no fire trained fire wardens to safely direct such an evacuation. In the event that a fire grows too large, firefighters might sometimes decide to evacuate the floor immediately above. Otherwise, it’s better everyone stays where they are. That policy has worked several hundred times over the past few years without a problem.

What happened at Grenfell was something else entirely. Firefighters were on site six minutes after being called, which is within expectations. But it is extremely unusual for the fire to spread this far and with this speed and ferocity. Within half an hour or so it had travelled way beyond the first flat, making it very difficult for the fire services to control it. Even more worryingly, survivors have reported that stairwells and lobbies were choked with smoke, which should never happen: there are supposed to be means of clearing smoke from such areas. In those circumstances, “stay and hide” becomes obsolete.

And yet to me the fire spread still had a horrifying familiarity. This has happened before, and – if we are not careful – it may happen again.

In Knowsley Heights in Manchester in 1991, fire spread in a way no one had predicted via the decorative cladding on the outside of the building. These plastic or metal panels are installed to protect a building from weather or improve its appearance, but between them and the wall there is a cavity where rain can run down. In the event of a fire this acts like a chimney, drawing the hot air up through itself and making the flames burn brighter. In this way fire travelled all the way up from the base of the building to the very top.

Something similar happened in Irvine in 1999, after which new regulations were put out which limited the types of cladding which could be used. In particular, they mandated barriers at various points in the cavity, blocking off the “chimney” on all sides. And in 2014 Grenfell’s landlords decided to install exactly this kind of cladding in order to “improve its appearance” when viewed from the luxury flats nearby. The Guardian has reported that some panels used in modern cladding are only fire-proofed on the surface, behind which is up to 30cm of highly flammable polyurethane. If true, that is a major non-conformance with regulations. But even if not, were the proper firebreaks put in place behind the panels?

Once spread via cladding, the fire could have caught on curtains blowing through windows left open on a hot summer’s night. Again this is believed to have been a factor in the Lakanal House fire in 2009. That disaster occurred on a very similar night to this one.

Even if this proves to be correct, however, the building should still have been safe. For the fire to spread internally after that point it would still have to get through the fire door in the individual room, through another fire door at the front of the flat, and through yet more doors in the corridor outside. Clearly there has been a failure of multiple systems: for one to fail is perhaps understandable, but for so many to have failed all at once, in the modern era, is entirely unheard of.

The investigation will of course look into this. But another explanation may lie in reports, as yet unsubstantiated, that works were recently carried out to the gas main that runs vertically up the building. If the contractors carrying out those works did not replace the necessary fire protection after finishing, that would be an easy way for fire to spread. Anything that creates a path for fire can and will be used in that fashion. Even a drill-hole of four inches in diameter can be enough. And if there are combustible materials in ducts – plastic pipes, plastic wires – flames can creep rapidly through a building without the fire service even knowing.

The Lakanal House fire led to specific recommendations. All landlords were given clear, copious information on fire precautions and told to undertake regular risk assessments. People like me then go around the tower blocks checking for ducts that need to be blocked or cladding that needs to be fixed. The problem is that we never really know whether the works we recommend are actually carried out, or, if they were, how long they took. There is no easy way to check whether landlords have carried out their duty.

Worse, there is an ongoing issue around contractors who don’t understand what they need to do to ensure fire safety. Anyone who the landlord allows to alter or amend a building, in any way, shape or form, must be made aware of which walls are fire walls and which materials need to be replaced after they’re done. That, too, doesn’t always happen.

We shouldn’t overstate the danger. There are literally thousands of blocks like this across the UK and there are probably several hundred fires which start in them every year. These fires usually don’t spread and are dealt with in exactly the expected fashion; more people probably die in fires in two- or three-storey houses than in tower blocks.

Nevertheless, the standard of safety across London is highly variable. Some landlords are right on top of it, and act on issues that are reported within a matter of hours. Others don’t give fire safety the priority that it requires.

What’s frustrating is that we are all familiar with going into a toilet block and seeing a register on the wall to show that someone has gone round to check it is clean. There’s no such process for fire safety. Perhaps we need to make landlords post evidence of regular risk assessments in communal areas so residents can see exactly what has been checked and what hasn’t. Or perhaps we need to give fire brigades the resources to conduct building inspections themselves, as they did back in the 1970s. Nowadays, buildings are effectively self-certified.

Whether regulations and recommendations were followed in this case will come out in the wash. But indications on the council’s website indicate the building was approved on a “building notice”. This type of fast track planning application saves the need to submit detailed proposals and plans to the building inspector and relies on the experience of the inspector to recognise and approve the works by eye. This type of application is wholly inappropriate for large complex buildings and should only be used on small, simple domestic buildings.

Nobody can turn around after Knowsley, Irvine and Lakanal and say they didn’t know there were risks. The guidance was there, the instructions were clear, and we knew the problem. The question is now whether we will do anything about it.

[Geoff Wilkinson is the managing director of Wilkinson Construction Consultants]

A very short entry today.

The fourteenth my Lord Justice moved from Askettyn towards Aherlow, through the grete wood, where he founde some cattel, and camped that night within a mile, one of another.

“Aherlow” can’t be right here, as it is south-east of Limerick and this half of the expedition had gone west. There is a place called Ahalin which is in the right direction for the two armies to rendezvous.

The second day of the journey is reported movement – White was with the other half of the army at Askeaton all day.

The thirteenth my Lorde Ormonde marched from Kylmallocke, over Slieve-Ghyr, by the waie of the Viscount Roche’s countrie, and camped that night three myles beyond Buttevant, at a place called Lysgrifyn in Ownybaragh, a territory belonging to the Viscount Barry, having with him of his own force, 120 horsemenne, 100 Irish footmen. 210 shott on horse back, and 3 bands of English footmenne, whereof were Captain St. George Bowser (a painful serviceable gentleman), Captain Makworth, and Captain Dowdall, with a great number of caradg (carriages) which do greatly slow his service.

Not clear which of the peaks in the Ballyhoura Mountains is Slieve Ghyr (and not at all clear why they didn’t take the slightly longer but surely easier route now taken by the railway near Charleville).

Sir George Bowser and Captain Dowdall were soldiers who pop up in other records of the time. Captain Mackworth, along with Walter Raleigh, was to achieve notoriety at Smerwick later that year and was subsequently killed horribly by the O’Connors of Offaly.

In June 1580, my ancestor Sir Nicholas White set off as part of an expedition from Dublin to pacify what is now County Limerick and County Kerry in the wake of the Second Desmond Rebellion. He wrote an account of the expedition which was published in 1872. Since it’s the exact anniversary of the expedition over the next few weeks, I’m posting the relevant excerpts daily. The first includes the covering letter to Lord Burghley.

Lymericke, July 22, A.D. 1580.

MY singular good Lord, — I do here send your Lordship a diary of our late journey in Munster, from our first setting forth from Lymericke until our return thyther agayn ; and whence, from my last letter of the last of Maie, I promised to send your Lordshippe a booke of all the houses, castells, and landes belonging to the Earldom of Desmond, and such as be in rebellion with him. It may please your Lordship to understand, that I cannot as yet perform the same for want of good information.

The twelfth of June we set oute of Lymericke, with the whole armie, the Lord Justice taking his way to Askettyn (Askeaton) and the Erle of Ormond to Kylmallocke.

Comment: They had presumably arrived in Limerick by sea from Dublin, the land journey being blocked by Desmond’s forces. The expedition is a penetration of hostile territory from a friendly port. Both Askeaton and Kilmallock had been abandoned shortly before by the Desmond forces. The Dublin/Ormonde army was clearly sufficiently numerous to divide their forces, Ormond going south and Grey west.

Current
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (a chapter a month)
Dune, by Frank Herbert
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J. K. Rowling

Last books finished
Warriors ed. George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois
The Broken Road, by Patrick Leigh Fermor
Joyride, by Guy Adams
Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure, by Artemis Cooper
Europe In The Sixteenth Century by H. G. Koenigsberger and George L. Mosse
Walking the Woods and the Water, by Nick Hunt
The Stone House, by A.K. Benedict
Annihilation, by Jeff VandeMeer

Next books
De Mexicaan met twee hoofden by Joann Sfar
De piraten van de Zilveren Kattenklauw by Geronimo Stilton
A Woman of the Iron People, by Eleanor Arnason

Second section of third chapter:

Original Latin:
Tu mihi nunc causas infandaque proelia, Clio,
Pande virum; tibi enim superum data, virgo, facultas
Nosse animos rerumque vias. cur talia passus
Arma, quid hospitiis iunctas concurrere dextras
Iuppiter? unde tubae nocturnaque movit Erinys?

J.H. Mozley translation for the Loeb edition, 1934 (prose):
Do thou, Clio, now unfold the causes that drove the heroes to affrays unspeakable;
since to thee, O Muse, has been vouchsafed the power to know the hearts of the gods
and the ways by which things come to be. Wherefore did Jove suffer such violence,
why that hands once locked in friendship should meet in strife? Wherefore was the
clarion heard, and wherefore did Erinys trouble the night?

1999 translation by David R. Slavitt (verse):
O Clio, my muse, speak now through me to disclose the sad
and all but unspeakable denouement. You know the hearts
and minds of the gods and can fathom their strange behavior toward men.
How could Jove have allowed these heroes’ hands that had clasped
in amity then to be raised against one another in battle?
Where in the score does it say that a clarion’s blast must resound,
and why should the Erinys trouble the peace of this tranquil city?

The story of Jason and the Argonauts is very well known even today, thanks mainly to the 1963 film with its famous Ray Harryhausen animations:

The most famous classical treatment of the story is the Ἀργοναυτικά by Apollonius of Rhodes, written in the third century BC in Greek. The other two classical versions are the so-called Orphic Argonautica, also in Greek and written seven or eight centuries later, and this Latin version, written between 70 and 90 AD during the reigns of Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. It’s very much under the shadow of Virgil and Ovid, with lots of battle scenes and references to the mythology in which it is embedded; after a rather slow start it really kicks off with the introduction of Medea, here a very young woman who none the less is skilled in magic and poison, and her betrayal of her homeland to Jason.

I must admit I found the Mozley translation for the Loeb Classicsc almost impenetrable. Slavitt’s more recent effort is much more readable, though he rather overeggs the pudding sometimes – note that in the extract above, the two words “Unde tubae[?]” become the entire line “Where in the score does it say that a clarion’s blast must resound[?]”. The Barich translation sounds promising, and maybe I’ll look at it in future. It’s crying out for a graphic novel interpretation, though possibly would need a bit of trimming.

My reason for reading it is this. In 1565, the London Stationer’s Register records the publication of “The Story of Jaſon, how he gotte the golden flece, and how he did begyle Media, out of Laten into Englische by Nycholas Whyte”. It is generally supposed that the translator was my ancestor Nicholas White, then in the early days of his political career; unfortunately no copy is known to survive. It would have been a serious effort – the Loeb edition, in both Latin and English, is almost 450 pages, and the Slavitt translation, in English only, is 165 pages. It was certainly the first printed version of the legend in English. It would also have been one of the earliest works of verse in English by an Irish writer.

It’s obviously very speculative to try and guess what attracted White to this poem above all others. Like many classical works, it had been recovered less than a century before, the first four and a half chapters found mouldering in St-Gallen in 1416 and printed in Bologna in 1474. White must have been working from one of the more complete early sixteenth-century editions, either the Bologna 1519 or the Aldine Venice 1523 edition (local pride made me hope that he might have been working from the 1565 Antwerp edition, but I don’t think there is enough time for him to get an English translation out in the same year.)

One immediate point of attraction (for both White and me) is that Ireland is actually mentioned twice. In both cases (Chapter 2, line 34, and Chapter 3 line 730) it’s a reference to the far west of the world, sunset in the first case and night in the second. (There is some dispute about whether “Hiberi” or “Hiberas” actually does mean Ireland rather than, say, Iberia, but both Mozley and Slavitt think it does.) I am not aware of a single other mention of Ireland in Latin literature. (The Orphic Argonautica, written centuries later, actually has the Argonauts coming back home by way of Ireland; but it is in Greek.) I think that would automatically make it an appealing subject for a young-ish Irish scholar (White would have been in his late 30s when translating it).

Beyond that, I think there are interesting themes that resonate with White’s life. It’s tempting to read the theme of the military expedition to the eastern edge of the continent in context of the Elizabethan drive to control Ireland on the western edge. The sympathetic treatment of Medea’s struggle between her birth identity and her adoption of Jason’s family identity would have echoes for anyone whose life straddled two cultures. And not least, her expertise with poisons would have been interesting to a translator whose father died in a mass poisoning.

Once I finally get around to writing in more detail about Nicholas White, I’ll reserve a bit more time for getting into this subject as well – there has been a lot of recent scholarship. The poem ends abruptly (most scholars think it was unfinished, but I am not so sure) with Jason attempting to comfort Medea who now doubts that she has made the right choice. Of course she hasn’t; they have both been manipulated by the gods from start to finish, but neither of them really knows it.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

After graduating from Asher, they went their separate ways and lost touch. Bruce played baseball for two years at a junior college, then quit when his knees finally gave out. Ron’s career had not fared much better. Each had notched one divorce; neither knew the other had been married. Neither was surprised to learn that the other had continued a fondness for the nightlife.

I had thought this was one of Grisham’s famously tightly paced thrillers (of which I have read, I think, precisely one), and was surprised therefore to find that it is a true story – the account of the wrongful convictions for rape and murder of two Oklahoma men, and the fight to prove their innocence.

To be honest, for anyone who’s paid much attention to the operations of the United States’ legal system, there much to be shocked about here but sadly little to be surprised about. Public pressure is for conviction of convenient suspects rather than for justice. Small town courts are very under-resourced, particularly for defendants without means to pay for their own counsel. Rules were repeatedly broken by many people who were supposedly paid to enforce them. One of the unjustly sentenced defendants came within days of execution. Both served eleven years for a crime that they did not commit. Williamson, broken in mind and body by the trial and the long time he spent in solitary confinement waiting to die, lived only another few years after his release. Of course, no compensation was paid.

Grisham is making the point to white readers that this could happen to them too, or to their friends or relatives. Black readers will hardly need to be told.

It’s a grim story, and at least it has been told.

This reached the top of two piles simultaneously – the most popular book on the unread shelves that I acquired in 2016, and (as I thought, but incorrectly) the most popular non-genre fiction book on the unread shelves, when in fact it was non-fiction. (NB that I made the reverse error with The Parrot’s Theorem.) The next book in each of those piles respectively are Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women.

Third photograph:

This is just a collection of quirky photographs of informal aspects of life in Brussels (mainly), some of which are obviously intended as solutions to particular problems, but mostly just included because they caught the photographer's eye (mostly taken by German Brussels resident David Helbich). The focus is not on human beings but on the material stuff we sometimes grab as a temporary fix.

To be honest it's not really my thing, but there were a couple that did jump out to me. There is something richly symbolic about the door-within-a-door at the entrance to the Constitutional Court:

And we have all had that staircase-to-nowhere feeling now and then:

Most of the pictures are available on the website.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

The first major turning point in a year [1536] that was to be replete with turning points was greeted with sadness by some and with much rejoicing by others, particularly Queen Anne. On 7 January, Katherine of Aragon died at Kimbolton, having endured five years of exile. Separated from the court and forbidden to see her daughter, the former queen’s lonely death ended a life marked by unhappiness and grief.

Trigger warning: abuse

Of the six wives of Henry VIII, Katherine Howard is probably the most obscure; basically we remember that she was executed for much the same reason as her cousin Anne Boleyn, ie alleged adultery, and then we move on. Josephine Wilkinson has shone a light on the sorry tale of this young woman, beheaded while still a teenager after less than two years as queen of England. There is a surprising amount of documentation – the evidence against her was obviously carefully assembled and preserved, to allow posterity to make its own judgement.

It’s pretty clear from the evidence that she was an abuse victim who was then framed. At 13 she was repeatedly groped in bed by her music teacher, Henry Mannox. At 15 she was moved to her grandmother’s household where she was seduced by one of the secretaries, Francis Dereham; they started to call each other “husband” and “wife”, which was to prove (literally) fatal. At 17, in the royal household, she began a flirtatious relationship with her distant cousin Thomas Culpeper, who was a favourite of the king’s. This was then turned upside down after a few months when the king himself took an interest in her, having spotted her as one of the attendants of Anne of Cleves during that very brief marriage.

But, even married to the king, Catherine couldn’t stay away from Culpeper, and her lady-in-waiting Lady Rochford (whose husband, Catherine’s cousin George Boleyn, had been executed along with his sister Anne) facilitated the continuing contact. It’s not even clear that the relationship with Culpeper ever became physical, but it is pretty clear that she was very emotionally committed to him.

This all amounted to high treason, by the standards of the time. Catherine’s relationship with Dereham, looked at from some angles, amounted to a marriage which would have made her subsequent marriage to Henry VIII invalid. Culpeper had also a political role, which made his privileged access to the queen a matter of state security (and he and Katherine were foolishly indiscreet, whatever else they may or may not have done).

When Henry found out that his teenage bride was not as virginal as he had imagined (and in a court with many watching eyes, where jealousy could literally kill, he was always going to find out) the end came quickly. Catherine was arrested on 1 November 1541 and stripped of her queenship on 23 November. Dereham and Culpeper were tried on 1 December and executed on 10 December, Culpeper beheaded and Dereham hanged, drawn and quartered. (Mannox, the music teacher, escaped without punishment because groping 13-year-old girls was not a crime.) Parliament voted for Catherine’s execution on 7 February and it was carried out six days later. Lady Rochford was beheaded the same morning, almost six years after her husband had met the same fate for his alleged incest with Anne Boleyn.

Josephine Wilkinson has put all of this together very well, but I missed a few things. The documentation obviously does survive, but I’d have liked to know how and where. I’d also have liked to know a bit more about the political and religious context of the accusations, though of course the human drama is compelling enough on its own.

It can’t have been much fun being a young woman in Tudor times, even at the highest levels of society. Elizabeth I, ten years younger, was also abused as a teenager, by her stepfather. Katherine had little choice in her relations with older men, never expected that she would be in a position where this would become an issue of life and death, and she had absolutely no protection when it did (those accused of high treason had no access to legal counsel, or indeed any other form of help).

The most vivid image we have of Katherine is that the night before her execution, she asked to have the headsman’s block brought to her cell, so that she could practice positioning herself confidently for the next morning. Having been robbed of control for most of her life, she wanted at least to have some control of the manner of her end. It’s a tremendously sad image.

Current
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (a chapter a month)
Europe In The Sixteenth Century by H. G. Koenigsberger and George L. Mosse
The Broken Road, by Patrick Leigh Fermor
Warriors ed. George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

Last books finished
Katherine Howard: The Tragic Story of Henry VIII’s Fifth Queen, by Josephine Wilkinson
Belgian solutions 1, by David Helbich
The Voyage of the Argo: The Argonautica of Gaius Valerius Flaccus, translated by David R. Slavitt
The Case for Impeachment, by Allan J. Lichtman
Short Trips: Defining Patterns, ed. Ian Farrington
Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America, by Donald J. Trump
The Infernal Nexus, by Dave Stone

Next books
Dune by Frank Herbert
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J. K. Rowling
De Mexicaan met twee hoofden by Joann Sfar

An old friend from my Alliance Party days, Mervyn Jones, died suddenly last week. He was 66.

When I saw the news (via a mutual friend on Twitter), I stared at the computer screen for a few minutes, as you do, and then wrote down a couple of memories of him for my Facebook readers, particularly those who knew him.

This is really sad news.

My activist days are long behind me now, but I’ll always remember Mervyn for a particular act of kindness in the mid-1990s; he brought me as his guest to a civic dinner in Belfast City Hall, and spent the evening filling me in on his life experience and his personal philosophy – contrarian, sceptical and decent. He was one of the quiet heroes of Belfast politics then, and I guess since.

It seems somehow an appropriate commentary on his devotion to his political role that colleagues realised something must be wrong when he unexpectedly missed last night’s City Council meeting.

I last spoke to him only a few weeks ago when, generous as ever, he helped me out with a relatively minor but crucial communications problem, expecting nothing but my thanks in return.

They don’t make many like him, and now there is one less. My thoughts are with his family. (Mervyn would not really have appreciated anyone’s prayers.)

Rather to my surprise, most of this appeared as part of a newspaper story yesterday, bracketed with the party leader’s own tribute to Mervyn.

There is a part of me that is annoyed that the journalist who wrote the piece did not contact me to check if it was OK to use my words. (For the record, the editor of the newspaper apologised to me when I contacted her to complain, and of course I accept her apology.)

On the other hand, the primary audience who I really wanted to reach were Mervyn’s loved ones. I don’t know them, and they don’t know me. So they won’t have seen my Facebook post, but they will have seen the newspaper piece. And if giving them some comfort and reassurance that Mervyn’s influence for good had spread more widely than they perhaps realised, comes at the cost of me being very slightly miffed about how the information reached them, it’s a price I am willing to pay; their feelings are what really matter in this case.

But it’s also a reminder that in these days, anything you put online (or indeed may have put online years ago) can be considered fair game by a journalist in a hurry.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Unaware of the care the Count had taken in the composition of his letter, which had been preceded by intense family debate, and not allowing for the fact that the Count was writing in a foreign language, Whitfield considered the letter pompous, lacking in warmth and disappointing. He had held out his hand in friendship. In return the Count sought to place in his own hands control over the pace of the reconciliation he sought. But on rereading the letter he considered there were perhaps two positive aspects. The remarks about the pursuit of peace in Europe and the defence of their respective interests being to the mutual advantage of both countries would surely please Lord Clarendon, anxious to keep Prussia neutral in the present conflict with Russia. Furthermore, the Count's announcement that he and his wife intended to appoint an English governess for their children not only signalled an inclination to follow a prevailing Victorian social fashion; it also might provide an opportunity for him to suggest a suitable woman of modest dress, good deportment and impeccable reputation, should such a person come to his or his wife's attention. If so, that in turn might provide him with an expedient means to observe the von Deppe family at closer quarters.

This was another birthday present, a signed copy given to me by the author's wife. It's the third in a series of novels about the relationship over centuries between two aristocratic families, one British, one German. The plot covers a pretty vast sweep of years, from 1853 to 1918, with a dramatis personæ of multiple generations on each side, occasionally with recurring or at least very similar names for different characters, which is entirely realistic but can be a bit confusing.

It's very humane and understanding of the human condition on both sides; the fact is that there was not much to choose between Germany and England in terms of social progress in the late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries, and I think the treatment of the two families – both subject to their internal stresses – is fair. There is a pretty good plotline with a governess's daughter whose real parentage eventually comes to light. There are lots of nicely done romantic turning points for the intermingling generations.

The big problem with the book is that it covers 65 years in less than 300 pages, so we skip from turning point to turning point (each of which is vividly told) without much time to pause for breath. The author admits in the afterword that he wrote it in only seven months, I think it would have been a better book at 50% longer and twice the time taken. Also, it suffers from being the third book in the series, with unspoken events from the mid-eighteenth century shadowing a lot of the action – I am sure I would have enjoyed it more if I had read the first two. I did wonder how realistic it is that family secrets from decades before should remain a potential cause for concern about scandal a century or so later, but since I don't know what those family secrets are I suppose I can't really judge.

Anyway, it's an engaging read and I may indeed look out for the earlier books to satisfy my curiosity about the back-story.

Third section in full:

Dutch original:
Het is alsof je op een pad loopt dat zo oneffen is en zo veel valkuilen heeft, dat je blik zich versmalt tot de plek vlak voor je voeten en je verder niets meer waarneemt, alleen die ene plek, zodat je niet in een gat stapt of over een losse steen struikelt. Onze blik versmalt, onze geest versmalt, onze aandacht is alleen nog maar gericht op het hier en nu, op de volgende stap. We zien niet meer wat er om ons heen gebeurt, maar we vrezen het ergste vanwege de schaduwen die we nog niet in onze ooghoeken zien opdoemen.

French translation:
C'est comme de marcher sur un sentier tellement inégal et tellement truffé d'embûches que le regard se concentre sur l'espace situé juste devant nos pieds et que nous ne percevons plus rien d'autre, seulement ce petit espace, de façon à ne pas tomber dans un trou ou à ne pas trébucher sur une pierre descellée. Notre champ visuel se restreint, notre esprit se rétrécit, notre attention n'est plus focalisée que sur l'ici et le maintenant, sur le pas suivant. Nous ne voyons plus ce qui se passe autour de nous, main nous craignons le pire à cause des ombres que nous voyons tout juste poindre du coin de l'œil.

My English translation:
It is as if you are walking on a path that is so uneven, and has so many pitfalls, that you concentrate on the spot just in front of you and you don't notice anything else, just that one place, so you do not step into a hole or stumble over a loose stone. Our view narrows, our mind narrows, our attention is only focused on the here and now, on the next step. We do not see what is happening around us, but we fear the worst because of the shadows that we have not yet glimpsed [French: that we just glimpse] in the corners of our eyes.

Frans Timmermans, a former Dutch foreign minister, is the First Vice-President of the European Commission, and one of his staff kindly gave me a signed copy of the French translation of this pamphlet for my birthday. In fact my Dutch is still better than my French, so I bought the original text off Amazon and read it instead, cross-checking with the French where I wasn't completely sure of it. (For example, in the paragraph quoted above I think the Dutch original of the last sentence is less well expressed than the French translation.)

Timmermans is one of the unsung heroes of the current EU setup – he is capable of emotional yet coherent speeches, and also works as a political fixer behind the scenes – notably, he negotiated the migration deal between the EU and Turkey, which most commentators said could never be agreed, and then that it would never last once it had been agreed (it has). Of course, because he is not as flamboyant as his boss and generally handles complex issues competently, he is barely noticed in the British media, which is solely interested in negative coverage of the EU. Yet he is the second most important person in the European Commission, and the highest ranking EU official from the political Left now that Martin Schulz has returned to Germany.

The pamphlet has one of those titles which cannot easily be translated into English. "Broederschap" fairly obviously equates to "fraternité"; but the English words "brotherhood" and "fraternity" are not synonyms, and are both freighted with very different connotations. The "fraternité" of the title is a direct reference to "Liberté, égalité, fraternité", France's national motto, whose Dutch stock translation is "Vrijheid, gelijkheid en broederschap"; it's telling that when we refer to it in English, we tend to stick to the French original.

The sub-title is different in Dutch and French. The Dutch original is perhaps best translated as "A call for connection", but "verbondenheid" also has connotations of commitment, of the state of being connected as well as the act of connecting, which can't easily be summed up in English. The French subtitle could be translated "Renewing our links" but that misses both the imperative mood of the verb, and the fact that "retisser" literally means "to reweave". If I were to advise on the eventual English translation, I think I'd recommend "Fraternal values: (re)connecting", which is far from the literal meaning of the Dutch or French titles but I think closer to the intended message.

And what is that message? Writing at the end of 2015, in the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks, Timmemans argues forcefully for a revival of fraternité/broederschap or perhaps "solidarity", as a guiding pricple of politics; he points to the risks of growing anti-Semitism, and of divisions in society exploited by the far right; of the difference between migrants and refigees, but the obligation to show humamity to both; of the difference between borders and walls, between identity and barriers; and he calls for an active engaged citizenship on the basis of shared values. "Jammeren helpt niet." "Rien ne sert de se plaindre". "Whining achieves nothing." It's a pretty clear manifesto, delivered directly from both heart and brain, and I found a lot to agree with.

I wonder if anyone will bother translating it into English?