This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I’ve been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I’ve found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.
As previously noted, I started the month at my sister’s in Cluny, visiting a nearby castle where her daughter dressed up.
I had two business trips to London, on the second of which I met up with one of my favourite Moldovan politicians, who I had last seen when she was Foreign Minister; meantime she had been acting prime minister for six weeks in 2015.
Back home, little U got confirmed.
With the ongoing Brexit doomscrolling, I read only 15 books that month.
I’m in Belfast ready to comment on the election results as they come in tomorrow. I think John Taylor, now Lord Kilclooney, caught the mood of anticipation very well last week:
As an observer of NI elections since the first half of last century I have never known a more unpredictable election as the one on 5th May 2022. Gone are the days when the NI Election was so uninteresting that many were elected ‘unopposed!’
We’re seriously in the zone where it is generally considered likely that the DUP will come second to Sinn Féin in terms of votes and seats; and where it is questionable whether there will be more Unionists or more Nationalists in the new Assembly. The overall context is that polling predicts that both SF and the DUP will lose votes, but that the DUP will lose crucially more.
My one anecdote of the election comes from the parents of a friend from Sandy Row, a Loyalist area of central Belfast, who kindly gave me a lift from the airport last night. They told me that they had not seen a single canvasser from any party during the campaign. I have been critical of Unionists for reaching out only to their traditional voters and ignoring the potentially persuadable centre; but if traditionally Unionist voters are also being ignored, Unionism is in worse trouble than I realised. My friend’s father, once a regular DUP voter, was discreet about his voting intention today, but I noted that the only local candidate for whom he had a good word was Matthew O’Toole of the SDLP.
I want to throw one more set of data into the mix: who won the last seat, and who missed out, in each of the 18 constituencies in the 2017 election?
The interesting thing is that when you look at the Unionist/Nationalist marginals in 2017, Nationalists won almost all of them and there is not much left to pick up. The only two that are at all likely are Strangford, where the SDLP have been runners-up at every Assembly election since the Good Friday Agreement, and East Antrim, where SF start a bit farther off (but managed to win one out of six in 2011 and 2017). In both cases, the DUP look more vulnerable than the UUP, so a loss will affect the race for biggest party as well as the race for designations. Strangford and East Antrim are the two that I shall be watching most keenly tomorrow from that point of view.
2017 was a very good election for Nationalists – SF voters were motivated by Arlene Foster’s very ill-judged “crocodile” comments, and the SDLP, more by accident than design, did much better than the UUP out of their electoral alliance. The result was that in six seats where on previous electoral records one could have seen the glimmer of a chance of an extra Unionist seat, the last MLA elected was a Nationalist, some way ahead of the Unionist runner up. Those seats are West Belfast, Mid Ulster, West Tyrone, Newry and Armagh, Fermanagh and South Tyrone and Lagan Valley. To stem the tide, Unionism would need to look like it could make gains in several of them, and in a good year that should be possible; but this does not look like a good year.
The last seat in 2017 was contested between two Unionist candidates – in fact two DUP candidates in each case – in East Belfast, North Antrim and South Antrim. That tends to suggest that in those seats at least there is room for more slippage in the overall Unionist vote before a currently held seat is seriously at risk. The same is true on the other side where two Nationalist candidates were chasing hard for the second Nationalist quota in East Londonderry and Upper Bann, the SDLP winning in one case and SF in the other. In East Londonderry, it’s worth watching whether UUP transfers again help the SDLP over the line (or indeed whether they will be needed).
Within Unionism, the DUP is likely to be further eroded by Jim Allister and the TUV. Polls have them just at the level where they might make a breakthrough, or might be disappointed with just one or two gains. What gains they do make are likely to be directly from the DUP, further eroding their chance of being the largest party. Also on this point, watch Alex Easton, challenging his former DUP colleagues in North Down, Northern Ireland’s most volatile constituency.
I have not said much about the SDLP or UUP, because in this election they are really barometers for the dissatisfaction of the committed Nationalist or Unionist voter with SF or the DUP respectively. It seems fairly clear that SF will slip a bit less than the DUP because their narrative is a bit more coherent. There’s also the case of Fermanagh and South Tyrone where the SDLP were unlucky at an early stage of the 2017 count, and can hope for that luck to turn. But the UUP-SDLP transfers that made a difference in a couple of key seats last time may not be as readily available in 2022.
The centre ground will provide yet more interesting dynamics for the election. Of the 18 last elected MLAs in 2017, none were Alliance (or People before Profit). Two were the two Green Party MLAs in South Belfast and North Down, both of them elected well ahead of Unionist runners-up, so it’s a reasonable assumption that all of the centre ground seats held in 2017 will survive into 2022. In addition, People Before Profit are snapping at Unionist heels in Foyle. And most interesting of all, Alliance came closer than I for one expected to depriving Nationalists of a seat in both North Belfast and South Down. I can imagine a situation where Nationalists gain in, say, Strangford, but lose a couple of seats unexpectedly elsewhere, leaving the two sides on level pegging.
On a slightly different note, I have trawled Twitter and other sources, including an excellent series of posts on Slugger O’Tooler by Michael Hehir, to calibrate expectations of gains and losses in today’s vote. You will note how few potential Nationalist to Unionist shifts are listed.
Encouraging, but as expected (failing to gain these seats is a poor result)
Disappointing, but as expected (retaining these seats is a major triumph)
Alliance gain North Belfast from SF Alliance gain South Down from SDLP Alliance gain South Belfast from Greens or DUP Alliance gain East Antrim from DUP or UUP SDLP gain Fermanagh S Tyrone from SF Ind U gains North Down from DUP
SF lose North Belfast to Alliance SF lose Fermanagh S Tyrone to SDLP DUP lose Strangford to Alliance, TUV or SDLP DUP lose North Down to Ind U SDLP lose South Down to Alliance UUP lose East Antrim to Alliance or TUV
A good day
A bad day
Alliance gain Lagan Valley from SDLP Alliance or TUV gain Strangford from DUP Alliance gain Upper Bann from SDLP or DUP UUP gain Newry and Armagh from SF or DUP TUV gain East Antrim from DUP or UUP PBP gain Foyle from DUP or SF
SF lose West Tyrone to UUP or Alliance DUP lose East Antrim to TUV or Alliance DUP lose East Belfast to Green DUP lose Foyle to PBP or UUP SDLP lose Lagan Valley to Alliance SDLP lose Upper Bann to Alliance or SF Greens lose South Belfast to Alliance
An exceptionally good day
An exceptionally bad day
SDLP gain Strangford from DUP Alliance gain North Down from Greens SDLP gain West Belfast from SF UUP gain West Tyrone from SF UUP gain North Belfast from DUP Greens gain East Belfast from DUP
SF lose West Belfast to SDLP SF lose Newry and Armagh to UUP DUP lose North Belfast to Alliance or UUP DUP lose North Antrim to Alliance or TUV DUP lose South Antrim to TUV or UUP DUP lose Upper Bann to UUP or Alliance Greens lose North Down to Alliance
Extraordinary
Catastrophic
Anything else
Anything else
I don’t often agree with John Taylor, Lord Kilclooney, quoted at the top of this post. But he has 30 more years of observing and participating in Northern Ireland elections than I do, and won his first one before I was born (and I’ve just turned 55). So I take his sentiment seriously in this case, and I rather agree with it. It’s going to be an interesting day tomorrow.
And according to the current BBC schedule you can watch me at the following times:
Edited to add: With 4.25 million registered voters for Scotland’s local government elections today, and 1.37 million in Northern Ireland for the Assembly, is this the biggest ever set of elections on the same day using the Single Transferable Vote in UK history? I have considered the Irish local government elections of 1920, and the simultaneous elections for the House of Commons of Northern Ireland and the Second Dáil / House of Commons of Southern Ireland in 1921, but I think that the total Irish electorate then was less than the sum of Northern Ireland and Scotland today. Not to mention the large numbers of uncontested seats, and the questionable extent to which those could be described as “UK” elections!
‘Stir your stumps, breakfast’s up.’ Bill grinned down at her.
Another very good installment in the series of Doctor Who spinoff stories featuring the earlier career of Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart – in this case re-introducing his father, who falls out of a timewarp into 1970 having been missing since the second world war. I think this is tremendously effective as a gimmick – certainly I still have dreams of long-dead relatives turning up out of nowhere with no particularly good explanation of what they have been doing for the last few decades. There’s bad humans and not-as-bad aliens involved, and quite a decent sense of place for the desolate farmlands and coastline of East Anglia. Another good ‘un. You can get it here.
Mais ce noir n’a rien de sinistre. C’est seulement la couleur de l’encre. L’adolescent Georges Remi est d’abord un garçon qui dessine : dans ses cahiers, dans ses livres de classe ou sur des bouts de papier dont beaucoup ont été pieusement conservés par ses camarades de Saint-Boniface. Un manuel d’économie politique, une édition scolaire de David Copperfield, tout est bon pour griffonner une petite scène ou esquisser des visages. Il semble d’ailleurs que le jeune Remi ait joui d’une solide réputation au sein du collège.
But this blackness has nothing sinister about it—it is, simply, the color of ink. The teenage Georges Remi was, more than anything else, a boy who drew—in his notebooks, in his textbooks, and on scraps of paper, many of which have been piously preserved by his Saint-Boniface classmates. A manual of political economy, a scholastic edition of David Copperfield: anything was a place to sketch a little scene or a face or two. And young Remi, it seems, built a solid reputation for himself within his high school.
Like all good Belgian comics fans, I’m fascinated by the adventures of Tintin and by their creator. This is a really interesting biographical study, by a writer who met Hergé an interviewed him a couple of times, and has now lived long enough to absorb the mass of critical commentary on Hergé’s work that has emerged over the decades.
I learned a lot from it. In particular, I learned that it’s very difficult to navigate exactly how close Hergé came to collaboration with the occupying Germans during the war. He was not brave, and he was close to some of the leading Rexists, in particular Léon Degrelle. On the other hand, he mostly resisted pressure to produce pro-German propaganda, and he never put anyone else in danger; and an exhaustive investigation from the trigger-happy Belgian authorities after the war found in the end that he had no case to answer. Still, it is not a part of his career that he was proud of in later years.
Tintin was very bad for his creator’s health. Once he had rebranded and re-established himself after the war, Hergé’s arrangements with younger artistic collaborators were frankly exploitative; all of their work for him appeared under his name, though in fairness the pressure he put on them to get it exactly the way he wanted it was also part of the process. On several occasions Hergé’s own mental health broke down and the serialisation of the latest Tintin story simply stopped for weeks or months until he felt well enough to resume. But he was so dominant in the Belgian market, and selling so well, that he could get away with both mistreating his juniors and disappearing for long stretches.
Peeters is also very good at looking into the background of each book, and he’s disarming frank about the inescapable fact that the early and late Tintin stories are really not very good. I’ve written before about the early adventures in the Soviet Union, the Congo and America, and the unfinished story of Alph-Art. But it’s good to be reminded that there is a run of genius from Cigars of the Pharaoh to The Castafiore Emerald, and that I’ve yet to reread some of my childhood favourites.
The English version is well translated by Tina A. Kover, though one sometimes senses the French-language flourishes trying to get past her guard. You can get it here (and the original here).
I had incorrectly filed this as an unread comic, but read it anyway when it came to the top of that pile. Next up there will be the Hugo finalists.
It was a relic of growing up with Sylvia. Donna’s mother had never been particularly understanding over incidents such as spilled drinks or broken plates, and Donna found it a lot easier to deflect blame than to deal with several weeks of passive-aggressive comments. That instinct still kicked in sometimes.
As usual from Jacqueline Rayner, a very solid Doctor Who novel, this time taking the Tenth Doctor and Donna – who I think are a New Who writer’s dream team – to what appears to be the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round table, with resonances of Malory, White, Bradley and the stage musical Camelot. There is of course an explanation for it all involving vast non-human intelligences from beyond time (this becomes clear fairly early), but it’s all nicely done and supplies a couple of good twists and challenges to the Doctor’s own authority. Recommended. You can get it here.
This is the first in my series of posts about Oscar-winning films since I switched this blog to its new home; so an awful l0t of faffing with internal linked to make it all work a bit more nicely.
No Country for Old Men won the Oscar for Best Picture of 2007 and three others, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, which both went to the Coen brothers, and Best Supporting Actor which went to Javier Bardem. The other films up for Best Picture were Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton and There Will Be Blood, none of which I have seen. The Hugo that year went to Stardust (the Nebula effectively skipped that year due to their weird nominations cycle).
No Country for Old Men is the top 2007 film on one IMDB ranking and second to Cleaner on the other. I saw very few films from that year, which was at the time that we were having the worst difficulties with our oldest daughter. The ones I have seen are Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Stardust, Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Zemeckis Beowulf, and 2 Days in Paris; we have Persepolis on the shelf but haven’t watched it yet (I love the books though). Here’s a trailer.
I usually start these reviews by looking at the cast’s other roles in previous Oscar, Hugo or Nebula winners, or in Doctor Who, but despite the big names on the list I didn’t find any. I have, however, had a close personal encounter with Javier Bardem, when I helped him set up the showing of his film “Sons of the Clouds” in the European Parliament; for a fleeting moment I appear in the crowd welcoming him.
It’s a film about an opportunist chap in Texas who tries to get away with a vast amount of stolen cash from a drugs shoot-out, and the nasty guy who comes after him, and the sheriff trying to catch up with them both. Frankly, it did not appeal to me; I think I admired it a bit without really liking it much. To go through my usual list:
Almost all the speaking characters are white men. Lots of Mexicans get killed without a chance to do anything much. Chigurh, Bardem’s character, is the epitome of evil and is coded as definitely foreign and probably not-quite-white. The law enforcers never do anything wrong. I found it quite shockingly racist. A separate but related issue: I was also left very unclear about Chigurh’s means and motivation.
I also did not care for the fetishisation of violence in the movie, the camera lingering over mutilated bodies and emphasising the brutal effects of the gunfire. For people who like that sort if thing it must be almost pornographic. It does not work for me.
A couple of women come into the story as spouses but have zero agency, though I always like seeing Kelly McDonald, a very long way from Edinburgh here.
I will say that the music is good, that all of the cast (especially Bardem) deliver good performances of their unpleasant and unconvincing characters, and that the landscape and atmosphere of Texas are very effectively evoked (which is impressive given that most of the film was made in New Mexico and Nevada).
But I’m afraid I’m putting this way down my list, just outside my bottom ten, between two flawed winners from a few years before, American Beauty (which is just that bit skeevier) and A Beautiful Mind (which is trying just a little harder to be pleasant).
As usual I tracked down the book and read it. The second paragraph of third chapter (in italics in the original, not sure how it will come through here) is:
This other thing I dont know. People will ask me about it ever so often. I cant say as I would rule it out altogether. It aint somethin I would like to have to see again. To witness. The ones that really ought to be on death row will never make it. I believe that. You remember certain things about a thing like that. People didnt know what to wear. There was one or two come dressed in black, which I suppose was all right. Some of the men come just in their shirtsleeves and that kindly bothered me. I aint sure I could tell you why.
This is one of the most faithful adaptations of book to screen that I have come across, and given that the book was originally written as a screenplay, it’s not very surprising. There are a few minimal changes, of which the most drastic is that a cute teenage hitch-hiker in the book (a female character with potential) disappears from the film. However the racism of the viewpoint characters is even less leavened in the book. You can get it here.
So, that’s another ten years of Oscars in the bag; only fifteen more to go. Since this time last year I was writing about the 1992 winner, and I’ve just covered the 2007 winner, I should wind this project up around this time next year, a bit more than five and a half years after I started in September 2017. I will skip Hugo and Nebula winners which I have written up in the last few years.
My totally definitive, authoritative and final ranking of the first 80 winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture (or equivalent) is as follows:
This has not been the best decade, with half of the last ten winners in my bottom quartile, though I did like three of them enough to put them in my top 20%.
Seven of the most recent ten were set in the United States of America, two of them in Los Angeles (Crash and much of Million Dollar Baby) and a third elsewhere in California (American Beauty), with none in New York, which had traditionally been the main setting for US-based plots in Oscar-winning films – the closest we get is Princeton, in A Beautiful Mind. The other three were set in Tudor England, Ancient Rome and Middle-Earth.
No Country for Old Men is the only one of the last ten based on a novel. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King is based on a third of a novel, Million Dollar Baby on a short story, The Departed is a remake of an earlier film, Chicago is based on a musical, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind on factual books, and the other four were original screenplays. Again this is very different from the previous seven decades, in which novels predominated as source material, bolstered by written fiction, apart from the outbreak of musicals in the 1960s (and one of those was based on a novel).
Next up is Slumdog Millionaire, but before that, Stardust and WALL-E. And it’s Hugo season so I am taking the past winners more slowly.
