Author Archives: fromtheheartofeurope

The Mark of the Maker: A Portrait of Helen Waddell, by Monica Blackett

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter (from a letter by Helen Waddell):

It’s wet, and the candle is blowing at the open window and there is a corncrake out in the dark. And I have felt human again for the first time. My mother died last Friday in her sleep. I found her, in the chair.
[actually it was her stepmother]

This was the first biography of Helen Waddell, published in 1973, eight years after her death. It doesn’t go into the same depth as Felicitas Corrigan’s excellent book, but it really scores by simply letting Helen Waddell’s voice speak for herself, with many extracts from her letters conveying her emotions (mostly, but not only, joy in the act of literature), and with a concentration on her home life – in particular Blackett singles out the demands of keeping a decaying house in London as one of the big distractions from Waddell’s creative work, but also refers often to the deep roots that Waddell felt in County Down and at her sister’s home, Kilmacrew near Banbridge. There’s a lot of name-dropping, but it is made up for by the enthusiasm.

Blackett herself appears occasionally in the narrative, but always in the third person, as recipient of several of Waddell’s letters. This is laudably modest; I am sure that she had some stories of her own to tell as well. She was the sister of Sir Basil Blackett, also a friend of Helen Waddell’s, and lived from 1888 to 1976; she married James Lamplugh Brooksbank in 1912 (divorced in 1942) and they had three children, one of whom died as recently as 2018.

One weird point of trivia. On 9 July 1943 Helen Waddell had lunch at the Savoy with General de Gaulle and a large group including also Lord Sempill; she comments in a letter written that day that Lady Sempill was the daughter of Sir John Lavery, who I personally always thought of as an Irish painter until I discovered in the Kelvingrove last month that the Scots think he was one of theirs. But actually it was Sempill’s first wife who was Lavery’s daughter, and she had died in 1935, eight years earlier; Cecilia Dunbar-Kilburn, who he married as his second wife in 1941, was a sculptor in her own right. Perhaps Helen Waddell just got confused in the family details; it can happen.

This is a mostly cheerful and pretty intense book about someone whoi think is interesting but you may not care very much about, but if you want to give it a try, you can get it here.

This was both the shortest unread book that I had acquired in 2018, and the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on those piles are Church and State in Tudor Ireland, by Robert Dudley Edwards, and Helen Waddell Reassessed: New Readings, edited by Jennifer FitzGerald.

The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, by Kamala Harris

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

She [Harris’ mother] would be the first to point out the practical considerations that it was a smart investment. But it was so much more than that. It was about her earning a full slice of the American Dream.

This was Harris’s manifesto for her unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign, which of course ended with her being selected as Vice-President by Joe Biden, after the book had been published (the cover blurb of my 2021 printing has been updated). It’s an interesting contrast with Trump’s Great Again, which I read back in 2017, in the sense that The Truths We Hold is far better written, more coherent, and more convincing in terms of actual execution of policy ideas.

Harris frames her story as swinging between the details of her upbringing by a single immigrant mother, and her rise up the California legal profession to the point where she became attorney-general and then senator. It’s a very convincing book, looking at the big problems facing the USA – opiate addiction, health care, national security, economic insecurity – and also giving examples of her own ability to cut through the system and get things done.

I must say that I found it very encouraging. One of my disappointments with the Biden presidency (as with the new Starmer premiership in the UK) has been the feeling that there isn’t a core vision other than not screwing up as badly as the previous guys. Harris wants to transform society, and sees government as a means of effecting positive change. She has no time for culture wars and just wants to get on with doing things. It’s consistent with the picture we got from Tuesday night’s debate. I’m aware that her record is not beyond question, but I’m very reassured by the overall picture. You can get it here.

Incidentally, some trivia from my Presidential spouses page. The oldest President or Vice-President at the time of their first marriage is none other than Kamala Harris, who married Doug Emhoff two months before her 50th birthday (beating Grover Cleveland, who married 21-year-old Frances Folsom eleven weeks after his 49th birthday, just over a year after he became President for the first time). The oldest person to marry a President or Vice-President as their own first marriage was Melania Trump, who married Donald nine months after her 34th birthday (she beats Bess Truman, 34 and four months old when she married Harry). The President / Vice-President to have lived longest after the death of their first spouse is Joe Biden, whose wife Neilia died in a car crash in December 1972. (Biden of course has remarried. Martin Van Buren and Thomas Jefferson both lived as widowers for over 43 years without remarrying. Like Biden, both served as Vice-President and then President.)

This year’s vice-presidential candidates, J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, both married within a couple of months of their 30th birthdays, and both married women two years younger than them; neither of these points is staistically unusual. If elected, Vance will be the third youngest Vice-President on inauguration day, and Walz the twelfth oldest. Here’s hoping.

Set in 2025 #2: 334, by Thomas M. Disch

Posted on by

When I first read this, exactly ten years ago, I wrote:

I must say that it wasn’t a brilliant choice of holiday novel; the disjointed narrative failed to engage me, and I felt that the stories never quite concentrated sufficiently on either near-future world-building or interesting characterisation. It was interesting that Disch correctly saw the politics of reproduction as being so prominent in the twenty-first century, although the detail has turned out rather differently.

My concentration was at a low ebb in August 2014 because of my role at that year’s Worldcon, and I think that I was unfair. It’s not actually a novel; it’s a group of six short pieces, with a shared setting and some shared characters, all set in and around 334 East 11th Street in New York, so I was demanding more coherence than necessary. Within each story, the characterization makes sense. And I’ll get to the world building.

I have come back to it as one of the relatively small number of books set in 2025, looking at next year as science fiction saw it. Actually only one and a half of the six shorter pieces that make up the book is explicitly set in 2025, and the longest piece (which shares the title “334”) has 43 sections, all dated to the years 2021, 2024 and 2026, so none of them in 2025. I missed that when I did my 2021 and 2024 write ups.

It’s interesting that the politics of reproductive health is one of the themes of the book. The 2020s of Disch’s world are over-populated and subject to government regulation, particularly in deciding who gets to have children. The first story is about a young man whose social rating is too low to allow him to become a parent, and his efforts to overcome that. Another is about a couple who do qualify for children, and decide that the male partner will be the one who actually becomes pregnant.

Otherwise, it’s a typical late 60’s / early 70’s story, set in a rather grim dehumanising dystopian society, where advances in technology haven’t brought much improvement for most people and the smart people exploit the cracks in the system. Somewhat depressing. You can get it here.

Set in 2025:
Television: The Outer Limits: The Duplicate Man (1964)
Film: Endgame (Bronx lotta finale) (1983); Future Hunters (1986); Futuresport (1998); Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision (2003)
Novels: 334 (1972); Titan (1979); The Running Man (1982); The Lake at the End of the World (1988); Tom Clancy’s Net Force Explorers: Virtual Vandals (1998); A Friend of the Earth (2000); The Peshawar Lancers (2002)
Comics: The Nikopol Trilogy: The Woman Trap (1986); Superman & Batman: Generations III #2: Doomsday Minus One (2003)

Tuesday reading

Posted on by

Current
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It, by Janina Ramirez
The Spellcoats, by Diana Wynne Jones
Doctor Who: Space Babies, by Alison Rumfitt
Political, Electoral and Spatial Systems, by R. J. Johnston

Last books finished
Truss at 10: How Not To Be Prime Minister, by Anthony Seldon with Jonathan Meakin
Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse
Grave Matter, by Justin Richards
A Crack in Everything, by Ruth Frances Long

Next books
Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol, by Graeme Curry
Church and State in Tudor Ireland: A History of Penal Laws Against Irish Catholics, 1543-1603, by Robert Dudley Edwards
Glory, by NoViolet Bulawayo

Persians: The Age of the Great Kings, by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

It was rare for him to be home in the Persian heartlands of his youth. In the last two decades he had spent most of his time on horseback in far-flung places acquiring lucrative territory. But, for now, Cyrus was pleased to be at Pasargadae. Spring was the right time to be there and he was delighted to see how, over the years, his fine garden had matured with tall cypress trees running in straight avenues alongside bubbling streams which passed through endless stone water channels and little pools. Flowerbeds burst with the colour of exotic flora imported from each part of the empire, and every now and then Cyrus saw the red hash of a rooster’s coxcomb as the haughty bird strutted through the garden, its feathers shimmering black-blue-gold. Cyrus had a dozen cockerels, an unexpected gift of the Indian ambassador. Bas-bas they were called in Persian. They were angry and aggressive and Cyrus was shown by the ambassador how, in India, they were trained and used for sport. Consequently, he and his best friends wagered fortunes on cock-fights. But this particular cockerel did not fight. He was allowed to wander the gardens of Pasargadae and service the fat brown hens who gave Cyrus eggs on a daily basis – a new phenomenon for a society that knew only the seasonal hatchings of geese, swans, and ducks. His chickens were precious birds and Cyrus entrusted them to the safe keeping of their own warden, the Master of the bas-bas.

This book is about the Persian empire of the Achaemenids, starting with Cyrus II in the sixth century BCE, with the explicit intention of redressing history’s bias towards the Greeks whose side of the story has become the standard account.

I regret to say that I gave up on it before finishing the second chapter. I found the style too novelistic – how on earth can a historian tell us what was going through Cyrus’ mind at crucial stages, or give us details of what he was wearing on a particular day? This might have been excusable if the writing was sourced through footnotes or even GRRRRR endnotes, but there are none apart from a list of further reading.

Very disappointing; I had been looking forward to a proper analysis of a part of history I don’t know much about, but this ain’t it. You can get it here.

Preventable: How a Pandemic Changed the World & How to Stop the Next One, by Devi Sridhar

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

The government [of South Korea] seemed to do the impossible, which was to ‘crunch the curve’, rather than just flatten it, and to do it without a lockdown. This model would go on to influence other countries across the world that had to make rapid decisions on what to do, and could follow a tried and tested East Asian 2020 playbook.

A book about public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, written in late 2021 so at the point that things were dying down, though still in the heat of the moment. The author is professor of global public health in Edinburgh, and was also one of the key advisors to Nicola Sturgeon during the pandemic.

The book carefully but passionately looks at the responses of many different governments to the pandemic, singling out South Korea and New Zealand for praise. She is very critical of the US and UK responses, or rather of the leadership of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, neither of whom took the crisis seriously early enough to mitigate huge damage to their respective societies. In both cases she also sees a failure to look at what other countries were doing successfully, and learn from them. She has little time for the UK’s SAGE group of experts who were, in her view, fighting the wrong war.

At the same time, she deals efficiently with the myth that the lockdowns caused more harm than good – the fact is that Sweden, which tried the lockdown-lite approach, eventually had to do the same as all other European countries. The real problem was a lack of clear strategy and failure to mobilise resources properly (oddly enough borne out by recent comments from Dominic Cummings). She also deals briefly with the ‘lab leak’ theory of the virus’s origin, noting that the DNA evidence is against it.

She also writes about the sheer nastiness of some of the media commentary and the personal attacks on her on social media. It all takes a toll, and I don’t think that the government advisers during the flu pandemic of 1919 faced the same problems.

It’s a humane and approachable book, and you can get it here.

The best known books set in each country: France

Posted on by

See here for methodology, though now I am restricting the table to books actually set in the territory of today’s French Republic.

TitleAuthorGoodreads
raters		LibraryThing
owners
A Tale of Two CitiesCharles Dickens961,98837,439
All the Light We Cannot SeeAnthony Doerr 1,739,16419,400
The Count of Monte CristoAlexandre Dumas934,92926,139
Les MisérablesVictor Hugo807,66026,774
The NightingaleKristin Hannah 1,489,53910,328
Madame BovaryGustave Flaubert342,49626,697
Perfume: The Story of a MurdererPatrick Süskind485,93218,443
The Three MusketeersAlexandre Dumas330,38521,755

I only had to disqualify three books this time – The Da Vinci Code (more than half of it is set in the UK), The Little Prince (none of it is set in France) and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (on a quick glance, less than half seems to be set in France).

When I did this in 2015, A Tale of Two Cities also topped the poll of books more than half of which were actually set in France (though also beaten by two of the disqualified books).

I am struck that two novels published in the last ten years have soared into the top ranks – All the Light We Cannot See (2014) and The Nightingale (2015). I may give both of them a try.

Next up: Thailand. (Possibly should have been done sooner – I am finding some big discrepancies in different population tables.)

Asia: India | China | Indonesia | Pakistan | Bangladesh (revised) | Russia | Japan | Philippines (revised) | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Thailand | Myanmar | South Korea | Iraq | Afghanistan | Yemen | Uzbekistan | Malaysia | Saudi Arabia | Nepal | North Korea | Syria | Sri Lanka | Taiwan | Kazakhstan | Cambodia | Jordan | UAE | Tajikistan | Israel
Americas: USA | Brazil (revised) | Mexico | Colombia | Argentina | Canada | Peru | Venezuela | Chile | Guatemala | Ecuador | Bolivia | Haiti | Dominican Republic | Honduras | Cuba
Africa: Nigeria | Ethiopia (revised) | Egypt | DR Congo | Tanzania | South Africa | Kenya | Sudan | Uganda | Algeria | Morocco | Angola | Mozambique | Ghana | Madagascar | Côte d’Ivoire | Cameroon | Niger | Mali | Burkina Faso | Malawi | Zambia | Chad | Somalia | Senegal | Zimbabwe | Guinea | Benin | Rwanda | Burundi | Tunisia | South Sudan | Togo | Sierra Leone
Europe: Russia | Türkiye | Germany | France | UK | Italy | Spain | Poland | Ukraine | Romania | Netherlands | Belgium | Sweden | Czechia | Azerbaijan | Portugal | Greece | Hungary | Austria | Switzerland | Belarus
Oceania: Australia | Papua New Guinea

The 2024 Consultative Vote on Two New Hugo Categories

Posted on by

The report below is published in our personal capacity  by Nicholas Whyte, WSFS Division Head, and Rosemary Parks, Consultative Vote Administrator. It does not reflect any official position by Glasgow 2024: A Worldcon For Our Futures, the 2024 Worldcon.

Introduction

Suggestions that significant WSFS decisions could be taken by a vote of WSFS members, rather than at the Business Meeting, have been circulating for some years. The Business Meeting tends to absorb much time and energy from Worldcon participants for the sake of debate which can often seem technical and inward-looking. A direct consultation with membership has the potential appeal of directness and clarity.

We began considering the merits of a trial consultative vote on any Business Passed On from the 2023 Business Meeting after a September 2022 discussion on File 770. We assumed confidently that the Business Meeting at the Chengdu Worldcon would give us some material that we could work with; in fact no fewer than twelve constitutional amendments were passed in 2023, for ratification in Glasgow in 2024. 

We felt that most of these were unsuitable for a trial of the consultative vote concept. We decided to concentrate on changes to the Hugo rules. The four Hugo Award rule changes passed by Chengdu included two minor technical fixes, and more substantially an amendment to the Best Fancast category, and the proposal to introduce two new Independent Film Hugo categories. We selected the last of these as likely to generate the most interest, and secured the agreement of the proposers to the idea of making it the subject of the consultative vote trial.

Although the Independent Film proposal would have created two new Hugo categories, it was a single proposal and we treated it as a single measure.  

Implementation

We decided to run the vote between the close of Hugo final ballot voting on Saturday 20 July and the start of the convention on Thursday 8 August. The number of WSFS members of the convention would then be at its maximum, and the WSFS Division leadership would (in theory!) be relatively clear of other distractions.  We settled on Monday 22 July to Monday 5 August, to allow members two full weeks with two full weekends for the vote.

Initially we planned that the consultative vote, given that it was a trial, would take place purely online, though we changed our minds on this once it became clear that it was not technically difficult to provide a paper ballot to print out and mail. In the event, just one paper ballot was received.

Just before we opened the consultative vote, a large number of WSFS memberships were found by the Hugo administrators to have been fraudulently acquired, and the votes cast by 377 memberships for the Hugo Awards were disallowed. None of the memberships in question attempted to participate in the consultative vote. If they had, we would have disallowed their votes.

We are extremely grateful to Chris Rose for creating a module within the NomNom system to enable the consultative vote to take place. A technical glitch meant that we were unable to open the vote on Monday 22 July as planned, and instead it was launched on Thursday 25 July, exactly two weeks before the opening of Glasgow 2024. Initial interest was strong, with more than 550 votes recorded in the first twenty-four hours. A reminder was sent out about fourteen hours before the vote closed, and another 400 voted in that final period. The overall response demonstrates a high level of member interest. 1,260 members voted in total: 533 (42.3%) in favour, and 727 (57.7%) against.

In order to create a fair and comprehensive ballot, we sought statements for and against the proposed Independent Film categories from, respectively, Tony Xia and Louis Savy, who had made the original proposal, and Olav Rokne and Amanda Wakaruk, who had blogged robustly against it. With the overall appearance of the ballot in mind, we held both sides to a 200 word limit, without sight of each others’ arguments. We are very grateful to all four contributors for producing a balancing pair of statements, which reflected considerable thought. For the record, the two statements were as follows:

Statement in Favour:

In the spirit of the fan community, we believe the respected Hugo Awards should ratify the two new dramatic presentation categories. While the literary awards cover a broad range of works from independent and self-published creators, the Dramatic Presentation awards (film and TV) primarily recognize major studios. This overlooks fan creations and smaller independent films that contribute significantly to the genre. 

Recognising independent films is crucial, as myriad high-quality productions have emerged thanks in part, to new technology and film education, bringing diversity and energy to science fiction moving image. These creators deserve visibility alongside independent fanbased writers, podcasts, and magazines and so on. 

Highlighting independent works would introduce both the voting community and a wider audience to material they might not otherwise encounter. Additionally, this recognition could foster greater engagement, with filmmakers likely embracing the Hugo Awards and promoting them within their community. Independent filmmakers are also more likely to respond enthusiastically to nominations and attend WorldCons, unlike the often-detached approach of major studios. 

Adopting these categories will not only honour the innovation of independent creators but also broaden the Hugo Awards’ legacy, ensuring a vibrant, inclusive future for science fiction film. 

(Louis Savy and Tony Xia)

Statement Against 

There are three main reasons to reject this proposal: lack of clarity, lack of availability, and lack of necessity. 

Firstly, what counts as ‘Independent Cinema’? The proposal states: “The films should not be funded by a major studio or distribution label/platform/streamer,” but fails to state what this means. Do A24 or Lionsgate count as major studios? This lack of clarity about what “major” means would be a significant challenge for Hugo administrators and nominators. 

Secondly, are these movies available to nominators? Many independent movies are only available at festivals, or in a handful of cinemas. They are unavailable to most Hugo voters until it’s too late to nominate them. 

Finally, is this category actually necessary? Last year’s winner Everything Everywhere All At Once was produced by the independent IAC Films, and won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Independent Film. If these types of movies are already being shortlisted and winning Hugo awards, a new category is not necessary. If anything, adding the categories might serve to ghettoize instead of celebrate this important area of film-making. 

In summary, this  proposal’s administration would be problematic, features works that would be unavailable to Hugo voters, and for which there is fundamentally no need. 

(Olav Rokne and Amanda Wakaruk) 

When the proposed constitutional amendment came before the Business Meeting, nobody could be found to speak in its favour, though two people spoke against it, and it was heavily defeated after seven minutes of discussion. The Chair of the Business Meeting informed attendees of the result of the consultative vote at the beginning of the debate.

Feedback on the consultative vote

Buzz online indicated the WSFS community anticipated the vote and were invested in its outcome.  The initial December announcement that the Consultative Vote was in the works generated positive comments on BlueSky: “I’m very pleased to see that this experiment will be run,” and, “This is pretty exciting and potentially important for SFFH fans! Glasgow Worldcon is holding a consultative ONLINE vote…Feels like a positive step, in that it’s at least something to try and widen engagement.”

While the vote was open there was quite a lot of activity.  This comment appeared on an online forum: “whether you favor or oppose the proposal, I hope #WSFSmembers will take part in this online advisory vote, which will facilitate more worldwide participation and may help lead the way to more inclusive WSFS Business decision-making in future.” 

The vote inspired a blog post, which included the following: “…adding an online voting component absolutely seems appropriate to me. Participation in this nonbinding vote will help bring that future possibility closer…On a personal note, I’ll certainly be participating in this vote. I’d been planning to attend the Glasgow Worldcon this summer, and participate in the business meetings [sic]…Now I’m [unsure], but at least my opinion will be seen online.”

Other comments included: “Let’s see if my no vote online counts for anything,” “Hopefully the Business Meeting follows the majority opinion here,” and, “… the level of drama should this vote and the business meeting disagree will likely be quite something.”  The social media reminders to vote in the final days were reposted multiple times.

A participant messaged us wishing that there had been an option to refer the matter for further consideration in addition to the straight yes / no options. It is a fair point that the existing mechanism for constitutional change does allow for the refinement of a proposed amendment in the course of ratification, by amending to have the effect of a “lesser change”, and it is difficult to envisage how this could operate in a member-wide vote.

An external commentator condemned the 2024 consultative vote as “a stunt to further the agenda of people who want to add online voting to the functionality of the Business Meeting”. This is incorrect, though it is a confusion we have noted elsewhere. Our intention was always to run a process separate from the Business Meeting, which does not have a mandate to manage consultative votes. (Though frankly we do not see what would be so bad about adding online voting to the Business Meeting.)

A separate proposal for popular ratification was put to the 2024 Business Meeting. It was referred to a committee on reform of the Business Meeting for further consideration, after a ten-minute debate.

Conclusion

We consider this trial to have been a successful proof of concept. The conduct of the vote was not a significant time or monetary cost for the convention. The 1,260 participants in the vote are a significant multiple of those who attended the Business Meeting in Glasgow (which may have peaked at around 150 in the room at any one time, though the full number of those who attended at one time or another will have been much greater). 

If such popular votes are included in the WSFS decision-making process in future, we have the following recommendations:

  1. The voting period should be short, and should be close to the time of the convention. More than 75% of all votes were cast in either the first 24 hours or the last 24 hours of the ballot being open. An extended voting period will not change that, and risks getting the process lost in the weeds. The process needs to be long enough to allow for paper ballots to be received, but no more than that.
  1. We are not convinced that all constitutional amendments are suitable for a popular vote. For instance, should the membership as a whole expect, or be expected, to have a meaningful view on whether or not Hugo administrators can establish a conversion ratio between word counts in English and another language, which was one of the amendments up for ratification this year? Perhaps there could be or should be a fast track for less controversial changes.
  1. Some considerable thought went into the crafting and presentation of the statements pro and contra the proposed changes. Our instinct is that the Constitution and rules should provide general guidance to the administrators of future votes in this regard, and avoid being over-prescriptive. Less controversial issues, if they are ever put to a membership ballot, may not need statements pro and contra to be published at all.
  1. Any future consultative vote mechanism should be part of the WSFS Division of the administering Worldcon, but run separately from the other WSFS areas of responsibility, ie the Business Meeting, the Hugos, and Site Selection. The organisational burden is not onerous, but it is significant enough to require extra human resources. That probably does not need to be hardwired into the Constitution, but it is our recommendation for good future practice.

Members are rightly demanding more transparency and participation in WSFS decision-making, and the suitability of the Business Meeting’s format has increasingly been a subject of discussion. Now, at least, we have some real data about how a popular vote might work.

Nicholas Whyte, WSFS Division Head
Rosemary Parks, Consultative Vote Administrator

Ljubljana and Bled

Posted on by

Anne and I spent last weekend in Ljubljana, in advance of my return to work on Monday after six weeks off – a return to work which was actually two days at the Bled Strategic Forum up in the mountains. I know Ljubljana fairly well, and have been there maybe half a dozen times starting in 1980 when I was 13, and most recently in 2014; it was Anne’s first time exploring the city.

Basics
Ljubljana hotel: B&B Park, just east of city centre, very comfortable, ecological, beehives on the roof, decent continental breakfast.
Friday dinner: Gostilna Sokol, Ljubljana, yummy traditional Slovenian fare, interesting frescos.
Saturday lunch: Oštarija Peglez’n, Bled, fish specialists, charming waiter.
Saturday dinner: Vodnikov Hram, Ljubljana, more traditional fare, dining area has Roman-era walls.
Sunday lunch: Rikša curry & wok, basic Asian.
Sunday dinner: Tokyo Piknik, more fancy Asian.

(Pronunciation: [ljuˈbljàːna] – the letter combination ‘lj’ is pronounced like the middle consonant cluster in ‘William’ if you say it quickly; there are three syllables, not four, so it’s lyoob-lyAA-na, not looby-anna.)

It was an interesting contrast with Prague, which we visited in January. Prague is a major European city, which has been home to significant figures in science and culture. Ljubljana is the capital of a small country which more or less had independence thrust upon it, and where to be honest not a lot has ever happened. All the major currents of Central European culture paused briefly, left some tide marks and then moved on.

I find it very interesting that the city has a memorial to the Unknown French Soldier, “tombé pour notre liberté”, “who fell for our freedom” during the Napoleonic wars, when Ljubljana became the capital of the Illyrian Provinces and Slovenian became an official language. There are not a lot of monuments of gratitude to bigger countries. (Though the French have another one in Belgrade.) I am struggling to think of another country where Napoleon is unambiguously regarded as a Good Thing. (I think France itself is somewhat ambiguous.)

Sous cette pierre
nous avons deposé
tes cendres
soldat sans nom
de l’armée
Napoleonienne
pour que tu
reposes
au milieu de nous
toi qui en allant
à la bataille
pour la gloire
de ton empereur
es tombé
pour notre
liberté

Under this stone we have placed your ashes, nameless soldier of the Napoleonic army, so that you may rest among us, you who, going into battle for the glory of your emperor, fell for our freedom.

Weirdly, the last King of France is buried in Slovenia. (Yes, I know, the guy who ruled France after him was also a king, but he took the title “King of the French” not “King of France”.)

Enough about France. If you dig deeper, there is a tension between the more Slovenian nationalist Catholic political tradition and the edgy lefty tradition which is a little Yugo-stalgic (though also rooted in the more complex Neue Slowenische Kunst movement). We went to two different places which sat firmly in one or the other tradition. On the Christian side, we went to the national shrine of Mary, Help of Christians at Brezje near Kranj. The last two Popes came here, and there is a statue of St John Paul II outside. It was not crowded on a summer Saturday, but it was set up to receive large crowds.

Poe St John Paul II

On the other side politically, the Museum of Contemporary Art was very close to our hotel, and featured a lot of reflections on society and conflict; I detected a certain level of comfort with the old Yugoslavia, while acknowledging that it has gone. This is Konstantin Zvezdochiotov’s installation, “Clock Tower”, reflecting on the conflicts of the 1990s.

And this is a satirical take on the rationing coupons issued in Serbia during the era of hyperinflation:

We also were fascinated by a documentary about the “Sunshine railway”, the north-south connection across Bosnia built in 1947 by young volunteers, who I later discovered had included Pierre Trudeau, Olof Palme and the historian E.P. Thompson. I have got hold of a collection of essays about it by Thompson, which I’ll write up here in due course. Here’s a trailer for the documentary.

Going back a lot further, we really enjoyed the Roman Trail through the remains of Emona, the Roman town on whose ruins the southern part of Ljubljana’s city centre is built. (NB that in Elizabeth Kostova’s dull vampire novel The Historian, she uses the name Emona for the present-day city, presumably so as not to frighten readers less familiar with foreign names.) The main tourist office knew nothing about the Roman Trail, but the City Museum was able to sort us out.

As well as fragments of wall and so on, there are two open air exhibits, one a town house with the usual traces of foundations:

And the other seems to be an early Christian place of worship, with a font for adult baptism, surrounded by a mosaic in which the names of the sponsors are commemorated so that we are still talking about them 1600 years later.

A section of the southern town wall still stands, adorned with a pyramid designed by Slovenia’s master architect Jože Plečnik.

My friend V took us up to the Alpine resort of Bled on the Saturday – I was spending Monday and Tuesday at the annual security conference there but this was a chance to look around properly with Anne.

We took a boat out to the island in the middle of the lake where there is an ancient church of the Assumption; apparently if you succeed in ringing the bell, your wish will be granted. V was gleeful about her success.

And we had lunch in a restaurant that was so nice that I went back to it for dinner after the big Bled conference finished on Tuesday, accompanied by two Serbian ladies and two former foreign ministers.

Just a few more random bits of Ljubljana city art to finish with. First, two fountains, “Narcissus” by Francisco Robba in the old City Hall, and “Core” by France Rotar, in Tabor Park next to the hotel.

Frescoes in the Sokol restaurant.

Wildlife – the Tivoli Fish on the east bank of the river, and one of the dragons on the Dragon bridge.

Anne in the City Hall. I have a photo somewhere that I took standing in roughly the same spot in 1985, when I was 18.

Recommended.

Redeemer, by C.E. Murphy

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“He hit her,” Rosie told the police, “and came after me. I had no choice.”

A cheerful tale of a young woman, working in a Detroit factory at the end of the second world war, who discovers that she is the chosen Redeemer capable of ridding the world (or at least America) of the demon enemies of humanity, one exorcism at a time. She must also deal with friends, potential lovers and family, and their expectations, in particular choosing between Boring But Handsome Guy and Smart But Weedy Guy. The book is the first in a series, so that last question is unresolved, but I know which side my money is on. Good fun anyway. You can get it here.

Top Books of 1974: Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein; and Carrie, by Stephen King

Posted on by

Third poem from Where the Sidewalk Ends:

MAGIC 

Sandra’s seen a leprechaun, 
Eddie touched a troll, 
Laurie danced with witches once, 
Charlie found some goblins’ gold. 
Donald heard a mermaid sing, 
Susy spied an elf,  
But all the magic I have known 
I’ve had to make myself.

(unusually, this poem doesn’t have an accompanying illustration.)

I was really surprised to find that this is the top book of 1974 among Goodreads users, by a very long way (almost twice as many users as second-placed Carrie) because I had never heard of either book or author. It’s an immensely popular short collection of a hundred or so poems, aimed perhaps at the 10-ish age range. I suspect that the use of the word “sidewalk” in the title has made it less appealing to the many countries where that is simply not a word that is used, including where I grew up.

I quite like the title poem despite the peculiar terminology for ‘pavement’. I found most of the other poems much less impressive, more often just framing a smart phrase than digging very deeply into life and experience. I did like the illustrations. I’m struck that Goodreads reviewers, even though so many of them like the book, tend to say that Silverstein’s other collection, A Light in the Attic, is better. Anyway, you can get it here.

Second section of Part 3 of Carrie:

From the national AP ticker, Friday, June 5, 1979:

CHAMBERLAIN, MAINE (AP)

STATE OFFICIALS SAY THAT THE DEATH TOLL IN CHAMBERLAIN STANDS AT 409, WITH 49 STILL LISTED AS MISSING. INVESTIGATION CONCERNING CARIETTA WHITE AND THE SO-CALLED ‘TK’ PHENOMENA CONTINUES AMID PERSISTENT RUMOURS THAT AN AUTOPSY ON THE WHITE GIRL HAS UNCOVERED CERTAIN UNUSUAL FORMATIONS IN THE CEREBRUM AND CEREBELLUM OF THE BRAIN. THIS STATE’S GOVERNOR HAS APPOINTED A BLUE-RIBBON COMMITTEE TO STUDY THE ENTIRE TRAGEDY. ENDS. FINAL JUNE 5 030 N AP

As with A Passage to India, I think I had seen the film of Carrie many years ago but I certainly had not previously read the book. It’s every bit as good as I expected, with the horror gradually mounting, and the sense that this is the reflection of ordinary teenage meanness and bullying. The tick-tock switching between official reports and documents, and omniscient third-person narrator, also keeps you on your toes and maintains the momentum. This despite the fact that we are told that hundreds of people will die as early as a third of the way through the book.

The other thing that struck me is that Carrie is set in the future. Though published in 1974 (and presumably written in 1973), the action is firmly dated May 1979, with flashbacks to her parents’ relationship in the 1960s and flashforwards to the various official reports on what Carrie did. There is a sense of “it can happen here…” It’s also mercifully short, compared to some of King’s other work.

Of course, in 1974 the idea that a teenager would engage in the mass murder of their fellow students was outlandish fantasy. Columbine was still 25 years in the future. It’s actually within living memory that school shootings were not a thing that happened very often, even in the USA. Wikipedia tells me that 17 people have been killed in American school-related shootings so far this year including four yesterday, compared to 14 in the whole of the 1950s. Carrie unwittingly told us what was coming.

Anyway, you can get it here.

1974 was a good year for sff classics; the fourth book by my ranking is The Forever War and the fifth The Dispossessed. Between them and Carrie, in third place, is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (which actually tops the LibraryThing scale).

Comparing Electoral Systems, by David M. Farrell

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

In terms of the three main features of electoral systems introduced in the previous chapter, the main point of distinction between the majoritarian systems and FPTP is over the ‘electoral formula’; there are also some differences over ‘ballot structure’. The electoral formula distinction may appear quite simple, but it is seen as crucial by the proponents of majoritarian systems. Instead of requiring only a plurality of votes (i.e. more votes than any of the other candidates but not necessarily an overall majority) in order to win the seat, a candidate must get an overall majority (i.e. at least 50 per cent plus one), hence the title ‘majoritarian’ systems.

A survey of electoral systems published in 1997; I very vaguely know the author, whose father was a colleague of my father’s, and I know several of his cousins rather better.

This is basically a survey of electoral systems in the sense of formulae for translating votes cast into seats won, and goes through first-past-the-post, second ballots, alternative vote, list systems, additional member systems and finally the Single Transferable Vote, which is of course the best system of them all (surely an uncontroversial conclusion).

It’s thorough and informative, though I regret that there is not more Eastern Europe in it – by 1997, many of the new democracies were in their second or third electoral cycle and could have supplied useful data. Nowadays we have seen stable multi-party systems emerge in many parts of the world, and also electoral innovation even in the UK.

I see that a third edition of the book is coming out in November, at an eye-watering price; you can still get the 1997 edition here.

Next and last of my lost-but-found books on elections purchased in 2016 is Political, Electoral and Spatial Systems, by the late great Ron Johnston.

The Lost Puzzler, by Eyal Kless

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

There, a group of five men clustered around a crackling bonfire, next to a poorly built wooden cabin. Behind them stood a high wall built to block people from accidentally falling down the vast drop into the lower levels of the city. The wall had a human-sized hole in it. These were the smugglers I was looking for. Now I only had to find out how fast they would drop me.

Another carefully and richly constructed secondary world, but not interesting enough to carry me past the first fifty pages. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2019 and not by H.G. Wells. Next on that pile is What Might Have Been: The Story of a Social War, by Ernest Bramah.

Tuesday reading

Posted on by

Current
A Crack in Everything, by Ruth Frances Long
Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse

Last books finished
The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, by Kamala Harris
The Mark of the Maker: A Portrait of Helen Waddell, by Monica Blackett
All Change, by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Titan, by John Varley
South: The Illustrated Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition 1914-1917, by Ernest Shackleton
The Sapling: Roots, by George Mann et al

Next books
Grave Matter, by Justin Richards
Political, Electoral and Spatial Systems, by R. J. Johnston
The Spellcoats, by Diana Wynne Jones

Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, by Mariana Mazzucato

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

This link between theory and practice is exactly what the great economist John Maynard Keynes meant when he said: ‘Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.’1 Below, I debunk five of the most common myths about government and explain why they’re problematic for a mission-oriented approach to changing capitalism.
1​John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (London: Macmillan, 1936), p. 383.

This is a rather uplifting book, about how it’s entirely possible to get governments to lead grand projects, also involving the private sector and civil society – if only they want to do it. It’s not based on messianic vision or pure idealism – the author has advised on major state and EU initiatives on how to implement things like the Green Deal. Her central point here is that creating a more just and greener society is entirely possible, as long as it is made a core mission of government and approached as an Apollo-style project.

It would also be instructive to read her analysis of why this doesn’t often happen in real life – in particular, I’m looking with some concern at the managerial approach of the new Starmer government in the UK, and wondering how transformational this can ever really be – but it’s reassuring that a senior practitioner believes that it actually can be done if the political will is there. As Margaret Mead said… (…well, you know what she said). It’s also mercifully short.

You can get Mission Economy here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2021; next on that pile is How I Learned To Understand the World, by the late great Hans Rosling.

Set in 2025 #1: The Duplicate Man

Posted on by

The end of the year is approaching all too quickly, and I’m pulling together a list of science fiction set in 2025 and published or released more than twenty years before that. The list for 2025 isn’t a particularly long one, but it starts with The Duplicate Man, an episode of The Outer Limits broadcast in December 1964.

The story is based pretty closely on a 1951 story by Clifford D. Simak, published in Galaxy Magazine as “Goodnight, Mr James”, but retitled “The Night of the Puudly” as the title story of one of his collections, and most recently republished in an anthology last year.

The title character has illegally smuggled an alien onto Earth, which then escapes; he creates a short-lived clone duplicate of himself to hunt it down and kill it, and then the two versions of Mr James are confronted with each other. I didn’t really understand why he needed to create a duplicate of himself to do the hunting, either in the story or in the TV adaptation. It would surely have been better to hire a hit-man or hit-woman. There’s a tremendous analysis of the episode here.

It’s not stated anywhere in the script (or in the original story) that the setting is 2025, but it seems to be fairly well established lore among Outer Limits fans, so I guess it must have been a detail in the plot summary sent out to published TV listings in 1964. We are told that the early period of space exploration was in the 1980s and 1990s, 30 years before, which fits a setting in the 2020s. The establishing scene is in a museum which was founded in 2011.

So what does this story tell us about 2025? 2025 in The Duplicate Man differs from 1964 in that humans have been exploring alien planets and bringing back aliens since the 1980s; there are video phones with rotary dials; there are futuristic-looking guns, cars and houses; and there is cloning, though that word isn’t used. However, relations between the sexes don’t seem to have moved on much – all the scientist characters are men, and the women are Mrs James, a government agency receptionist, and some tourists in the space museum at the beginning. (Having said that, there are no women at all in the original Simak story.)

One point to come back to – in both the Simak story and the TV version, the urgency of getting rid of the alien is driven by the fact that it is about to reproduce, and unleash dozens (Simak) or hundreds (TV script) of killer offspring on our planet. Reproductive politics will come up again as we look at other authors’ takes on 2025…

And one last thing – the monster mask in the TV series got recycled for the Star Trek pilot episode, The Cage, in which it is briefly seen imprisoned next to Captain Pike, with a few more feathers.

August 2024 Books

Posted on by

Non-fiction 14 (YTD 55)
Memoirs of Mrs Margaret Leeson
The Sky at Night Book of the Moon, by Maggie Aderin-Pocock
Peg Plunkett: Memoirs of a Whore, by Julie Peakman (did not finish)
Why Politicians Lie About Trade, by Dmitry Grozoubinski
Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650, by Clodagh Tait
The Edge of Destruction, by Simon Guerrier
Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life, by Samantha Ellis
Imagining Ireland’s Independence, by Jason K. Knick
Comparing Electoral Systems, by David M. Farrell
Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, by Mariana Mazzucato
Preventable, by Devi Sridhar
Persians, by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (did not finish)
The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris
The Mark of the Maker: A Portrait of Helen Waddell, by Monica Blackett

Non-genre 5 (YTD 23)
Companion Piece, by Ali Smith
The Boxcar Children, by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Lydia, by Paula Goode (did not finish)
A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster
All Change, by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Poetry 1 (YTD 4)
Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein

SF 7 (YTD 61)
Darkening Skies, by Juliet E. McKenna
Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez
The Wonderful Visit, by H. G. Wells
The Lost Puzzler, by Eyal Kless (did not finish)
Carrie, by Stephen King
Redeemer, by C.E. Murphy
334, by Thomas M. Disch

Doctor Who 3 (YTD 23)
Warmonger, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who: Kerblam!, by Pete McTighe
Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction, by Nigel Robinson

Comics 1 (YTD 21)
The Sapling: Growth, by Rob Williams et al

7,400 pages (YTD 45,500)
16/31 (YTD 87/188) by non-male writers (Leeson/Plunkett, Aderin-Pocock, Peakman, Tait, Ellis, Mazzucato, Sridhar, Harris, Blackett, Smith, Chandler Warner, Goode, Howard, McKenna, Enriquez, Murphy)
3/31 (YTD 26/188) by a non-white writer (Aderin-Pocock, Sridhar, Harris)
3/31 rereads (334, Warmonger, Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction)
300 books currently tagged unread, up only 1 from last month despite Worldcon, down 59 from August 2023.

Reading now
Titan, by John Varley
South: The Illustrated Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition 1914-1917, by Ernest Shackleton
A Crack in Everything, by Ruth Frances Long

Coming soon (perhaps)
The Sapling: Roots, by George Mann et al
Grave Matter, by Justin Richards
Doctor Who: Space Babies, by Alison Rumfitt
Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol, by Graeme Curry
The Happiness Patrol, by Mike Stack
Political, Electoral and Spatial Systems, by R. J. Johnston
Church and State in Tudor Ireland: A History of Penal Laws Against Irish Catholics, 1543-1603, by Robert Dudley Edwards
Helen Waddell Reassessed: New Readings, ed. Jennifer FitzGerald
Yes Taoiseach: Irish Politics From Behind Closed Doors, by Frank Dunlop
Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse
The Spellcoats, by Diana Wynne Jones
Glory, by NoViolet Bulawayo
Hard to Be a God, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Desdemona and the Deep, by C. S. E. Cooney
“They Will Dream in the Garden” by Gabriela Damián Miravete
The Hanging Tree, by Ben Aaronovitch
Monica, by Daniel Clowes
Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett
The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins
Forever Peace, by Joe Haldeman
Bellatrix, Tome 1, by Leo
The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, by Serhii Plokhy
Marriage, by H.G. Wells
How I Learned to Understand the World, by Hans Rosling
What Might Have Been, by Ernest Bramah
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently, by Steve Silberman

Top Books of 1924: The Boxcar Children, by Gertrude Chandler Warner; and A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster

Posted on by

This may seem like an odd pairing of books, and in fact I have to admit that it is an odd pairing of books. But these are the top books of 1924 among Goodreads and LibraryThing users respectively. (Third is We, by Evgeny Zamyatin.)

The second paragraph of the third chapter of The Boxcar Children is:

“What shall we do? Where shall we go?” thought Jessie.

I had never heard of this book before starting this exercise. It is a short children’s novel about four siblings (and their dog) whose parents have died and who take up residence in an abandoned railway boxcar. The local doctor takes an interest in them and there is a happy ending. A bit improbable – surely even in 1924 there were government authorities looking out for orphaned children – but very wholesome.

It is the first in a series of, wait for it, over 160 novels, still being published, where the children mostly solve mysteries during the school holidays, which are hugely popular across the pond. I understand that the children have not aged much since 1924. I found it a naïve and hopeful tale. A novel written today about four homeless siblings would be a lot grittier, even if aimed at the same 7-10 age range. You can get it here.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of A Passage to India is:

“I want to see it too, and I only wish we could. Apparently the Turtons will arrange something for next Tuesday.”

I remember seeing the 1984 film starring Judy Davis and Peggy Ashcroft, possibly in the course of a week I spent at the English public school Downside. To be honest the only bit of it that I remember is the climax of the trial scene, when Judy Davis’s character recants her testimony. I also remember how strange it was to watch such an imperial film in such an imperial setting. Downside itself seemed spiritually rather unhealthy – this was of course decades before the sexual abuse scandals emerged.

I started off rather liking the book, which clearly critiques the British presence in India and sees its imminent end, twenty-five years before it actually happened. The portrayal of the snobbish and racist Anglo-Indian community is clearly based on close observation. But the more he got into writing about Indians, the more the book slipped into Orientalism, and the final section, set around a festival in an Indian-ruled state, seemed to me much less humane than the earlier part of the book. Also, of course, I am spoiled by decades of reading Indian (and Pakistani and Bangladeshi) writers about India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh), rather than white people’s commentary.

This also poisons the portrayal of the relationship between the English and Indian male protagonists, which again is based on Forster’s personal experience, of deep friendship with Syed Ross Masood, but ends up not very satisfactory to either the fictional characters or the reader.

Anyway, you can get it here.

I was surprised to discover that the title of the book is taken from a Walt Whitman poem, “Passage to India”, which is actually not about India at all but compares the opening of the Suez Canal with the manly expansion of American power across the continent. I thought it was the usual doggerel from Whitman – “The gigantic dredging machines” “Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God” “Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?” – but when I said so on social media it turned out that he still has his fans. Judge for yourself.

The three top books of 1924 – The Boxcar Children, A Passage to India and We – could not be much more different from each other; a happy kids’ book, a grumpy reportage on colonialism, and a dystopian vision of the future. (Compare 1923 when I had two murder mysteries and mystic poetry.)

The Wonderful Visit, by H.G. Wells

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Now, the Vicar of Siddermorton had two rivals in his scientific pursuits; Gully of Sidderton, who had actually seen the glare, and who it was sent the drawing to Nature, and Borland the natural history dealer, who kept the marine laboratory at Portburdock. Borland, the Vicar thought, should have stuck to his copepods, but instead he kept a taxidermist, and took advantage of his littoral position to pick up rare sea birds. It was evident to anyone who knew anything of collecting that both these men would be scouring the country after the strange visitant, before twenty-four hours were out.

Wells’ second novel, published just after The Time Machine and just before The Island of Dr Moreau, but much less well known. The Reverend Hilyer, vicar of Siddermorton, shoots what he thinks is a strange bird, but it turns out to be an angel fallen to Earth, whose wing has been badly damaged by the clergyman. Lots of fish-out-of-water humour as the angel attempts to get to grips with Victorian society, and of course society reckons it is too good for the stranger; the local landowner accuses the angel (with reason) of being a socialist, and disaster ensues, with the vicar’s comely maidservant turning out to be the only one worthy of redemption. It’s a short book, and the satire is a bit obvious in places and rather dated as well. You can get it here.

You can also get, via the Internet Archive, a 2008 BBC radio dramatisation of the novel, script by Stephen Gallagher (of Doctor Who and other fame) and with the vicar played by Bernard Cribbins. At least for now, that’s available with a bunch of other Wells dramatisations here.

Next up on my Wells pile: Marriage.

Imagining Ireland’s Independence: The Debates over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, by Jason K. Knirck

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

There were a number of factors leading each side to consider a truce in the summer of 1921. For the British, the behavior of the Auxiliaries and the Black and Tans was generating substantial negative publicity, made worse by the government’s apparent sanction of such actions by the end of 1920. In addition, the British had been unwilling to unleash a full-scale war in Ireland and were leery of doing so without exploring alternative solutions. The British had been fighting the Anglo-Irish “war” with police and local security forces rather than with full-strength divisions of the British Army. With difficulties in Egypt and India, among other places, Britain could not afford to station too many regular troops in Ireland. Given that Britain was deeply in debt from the Great War, and Lloyd George’s coalition government was already having difficulty redeeming its promise to build “homes fit for heroes” after the war, Britain also did not have the financial wherewithal to launch a full military campaign in Ireland. The political will was lacking, too. Despite the presence of Tories in the cabinet – Lloyd George was the Liberal prime minister of a largely Tory cabinet, a holdover from the wartime coalition – there was a sense that the British public, as well as the Liberal and Labour parties, would not keep quiet about a full military campaign in Ireland, given that the relatively small-scale hostilities undertaken by the security forces were already causing unease.² In addition, Lloyd George correctly surmised that a settlement could be reached that was closer in practical terms to the offer of Home Rule already on the table than it was to the self-proclaimed Irish Republic.
² Arthur Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland: Dáil Éireann 1919-21 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1993), 225.

This is a short and detailed book about the debates in Dáil Eireann in December 1921 and January 1922 about the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and about the political situation which led to it. Having fairly recently read Charles Townshend’s The Republic, which covers much of the same ground, I felt that Knirck’s general political account of the events of the War of Independence, which forms the first third or so of the book, isn’t as good as Townshend’s; but when he gets into the detail, first of the Treaty negotiations and then of the Dáil debates, he is much more solid (Townshend is running out of steam at that point).

On the Treaty, Knirck devotes considerable space to trying to work out what de Valera was actually up to, and comes to the conclusion that he wanted the negotiations in London to fail so that he could leap in with an improved proposal and save the day. Given the relative inexperience and weaker position of the Irish delegation, this would have been such a bold assumption by de Valera that I found it difficult to believe, but Knick marshals his evidence convincingly.

On the Dáil debates, the heart of the book, Knirck goes through the whole thing in fascinated detail, looking at the backgrounds of the members of the Second Dáil (who were all elected unopposed in May 1920), tracking those who moved from hard-liner to pro-Treaty and from dove to anti-Treaty, and tracing the procedural issues and the rhetorical style of the debates, which did become personalised at several points. I found this a much more attractive way of approaching the concept of the Republic than Townshend’s ideological analysis; looking at what people actually did and said is, after all, a fundamentally sound approach.

One important point that he makes is that both wings of the Sinn Fein leadership, and indeed the rank and file, were desperate to maintain a united movement until well past the moment when this was no longer feasible (which was probably when the plenipotentiaries signed in London). This led both sides into tactical and strategic mistakes. For us, looking back on over a century of division along lines established by the Treaty, it can be difficult to appreciate that serious leaders thought they could still avoid it as late as early January 1922. Hindsight gives you 20/20 vision.

Knirck’s most fundamental point is that most of the Irish political leadership in 1921 were politically inexperienced, and the debates reveal a new style of politics coming into being, but not quite there yet. They got outplayed by Lloyd George in London, and then by themselves in Dublin. Having seen other revolutionary situations elsewhere, I must say that it rings true. Whether or not you agree, his analysis of the primary sources – the Treaty debates themselves – is compelling. You can get it here.

Tuesday reading

Posted on by

Current
All Change, by Elizabeth Jane Howard
The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris
The Mark of the Maker: A Portrait of Helen Waddell, by Monica Blackett
Titan, by John Varley

Last books finished
Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, by Mariana Mazzucato
The Lost Puzzler, by Eyal Kless (did not finish)
Carrie, by Stephen King
Redeemer, by C.E. Murphy
Preventable, by Devi Sridhar
334, by Thomas M. Disch
Persians, by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (did not finish)

Next books
The Sapling: Roots, by I.N.J. Culbard et al
A Crack in Everything, by Ruth Frances Long
Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse

Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life, by Samantha Ellis

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

There’s so little definite information about Tabby [Tabitha Ackroyd, the Brontës’ housekeeper] that in At Home With the Brontës, Ann Dinsdale wrote, ‘it’s almost as if her life didn’t begin until she walked through the door of Haworth Parsonage’. She was almost certainly born in Haworth, and brought up there, and was in her fifties when she came to work for the Brontës. At least one brother (a woolcomber like their father) and a sister, Susannah, still lived in the village. [Ellen] Nussey said she was ‘faithful’, ‘trustworthy’, ‘very quaint in appearance’ and (ironically, given how much Nussey liked to bang on about the Brontës) discreet. When questioned about the family she worked for, Tabby was ‘invincible and impenetrable’. And when asked, in the village, if the children ‘were not fearfully larn’d’, she left in a huff but told Anne and her siblings, because she knew it would make them laugh.

I came late to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but it is absolutely my favourite book by any of the Brontë sisters (my top book of the year for 2012), and picked this up in hope of understanding more. (And then didn’t read it for six years.)

It’s difficult to write a biography of someone who is known as the most obscure of a group of three, most of whose papers and letters were destroyed; and yet we do have a lot to go on, from the remaining records of her life and most of all from her novels. (A taxi driver admits sheepishly to Ellis during her research that he could not name three novels by Anne Brontë. She reassures him that Anne only wrote two.)

The book makes a strong case (which I already agreed with anyway) that Anne was the best and greatest of the sisters. Charlotte and Emily’s heroines are unhealthily fascinated by broody and frankly abusive men. Helen, the eponymous tenant of Wildfell Hall, suffers in a bad marriage, gets out and moves on. I have not read Agnes Grey but clearly I need to correct that omission.

Ellis takes the approach of looking at individuals who were close to Anne Brontë and devoting a chapter to each. She is not a fan of Charlotte, but as a loyal Loughbricklander I was very glad to read a clean bill of health for the sisters’ father Patrick. (I should that Claire Harman, reviewing the book in the Guardian, found it unbalanced especially with regard to Charlotte and also skipping over Anne’s religious faith.)

It’s a book not only about Anne Brontë’s life, but about the process of researching that life; and about Ellis’s own progression from proud singleton at the beginning to entranced lover at the end. Sometimes when researchers put themselves into the story it becomes very intrusive and distracting; here Ellis uses her own emotional experiences to illuminate the themes of Anne Brontë’s writing, and it works.

She also put me onto an Eleventh Doctor comic where the sisters (or at least their avatars) make an appearance. I shall report back on that one in due course.

Despite Claire Harman’s caveats, I enjoyed it a lot and you can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2018. Next on that pile is A Crack in Everything, by Ruth Frances Long.

Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Intento salir en silencio para no despertar a su padre, pero se sorprendio cuando lo encontro despierto, serio pero tranquilo, saliendo de la cocina con una taza de to en la mano. La casa, como siempre, no estaba iluminada por luz electrica: solamente el televisor encendido en el living, vacio salvo por el sillon de pana, amarillo, muy grande, casi una cama. Cuando Juan vio a Gaspar se le acerco y encendio un pequefio velador que estaba sobre el piso. Tenia un cigarrillo en la otra mano.He tried to leave the house quietly so he wouldn’t wake his father, but was surprised to see him already awake, serious but serene, coming from the kitchen with a cup of tea. As always, there were no electric lights on in the house, only the TV in the living room, which was unfurnished but for the yellow corduroy sofa that was so big it was practically a bed. When Juan saw Gaspar, he went over to him and switched on a small lamp on the floor. His other hand held a cigarette.
translation by Megan MacDowell

This was the longest of the books submitted for last year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award, and also one of the easiest to rule out; it is a fantasy novel with no trace of science fiction in it. I put it aside, knowing that I would come back to it at some point; but in the meantime I saw a lot of very negative reviews online, and suspected that I might not last 100 pages into the 725 of the English translation.

Well, I was pleasantly surprised. The book is about a boy whose relatives are involved with a black magic cult operating between Argentina and Europe, set during the alternation between military dictatorship and democracy; there are of course dark and intricate family relationships, murky happenings and a cute but doomed dog. It does go on rather a long time, but I found it engaging and page-turning. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2022. Next on that pile is The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, by Serhii Plokhy.

The best known books set in each country: Germany

Posted on by

See here for methodology, though now I am restricting the table to books actually set in the territory of today’s Federal Republic of Germany.

TitleAuthorGoodreads
raters		LibraryThing
owners
The Book ThiefMarkus Zusak 2,627,76445,832
The ReaderBernhard Schlink215,03913,555
SteppenwolfHermann Hesse190,85013,764
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s BerlinErik Larson 205,3017,847
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi GermanyWilliam L. Shirer136,3948,045
Stones from the River Ursula Hegi95,7884,705
Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family Thomas Mann31,2395,775
Every Man Dies AloneHans Fallada33,1743,664

When I did this exercise in 2015, the result was the same, with The Book Thief top and The Reader second. The only other one of the top eight that I have read is Buddenbrooks.

I had to disqualify a lot of books here because less than half, sometimes none of the book at all, is set in the right country, even though LibraryThing and Goodreads users tagged them with the tag “Germany”. From the top, the disqualified were Slaughterhouse-Five (also set in Belgium, Luxembourg, the USA and the planet Tralfamadore); The Diary of Anne Frank (entirely set in the Netherlands); Night, by Elie Wiesel (mainly set in today’s Poland, also in today’s Romania); All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr (more than half set in France); Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse (set in a fictional India and Nepal); The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka (entirely set in Czechia); The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (entirely set in today’s Poland); All Quiet on the Western Front (mostly set in France); Perfume, by Patrick Süskind (entirely set in France); The Magic Mountain (set in Switzerland); and The Tin Drum (mostly set in today’s Poland again).

Next up: France, but I will skip next weekend so it will be on 8 September.

Asia: India | China | Indonesia | Pakistan | Bangladesh (revised) | Russia | Japan | Philippines (revised) | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Thailand | Myanmar | South Korea | Iraq | Afghanistan | Yemen | Uzbekistan | Malaysia | Saudi Arabia | Nepal | North Korea | Syria | Sri Lanka | Taiwan | Kazakhstan | Cambodia | Jordan | UAE | Tajikistan | Israel
Americas: USA | Brazil (revised) | Mexico | Colombia | Argentina | Canada | Peru | Venezuela | Chile | Guatemala | Ecuador | Bolivia | Haiti | Dominican Republic | Honduras | Cuba
Africa: Nigeria | Ethiopia (revised) | Egypt | DR Congo | Tanzania | South Africa | Kenya | Sudan | Uganda | Algeria | Morocco | Angola | Mozambique | Ghana | Madagascar | Côte d’Ivoire | Cameroon | Niger | Mali | Burkina Faso | Malawi | Zambia | Chad | Somalia | Senegal | Zimbabwe | Guinea | Benin | Rwanda | Burundi | Tunisia | South Sudan | Togo | Sierra Leone
Europe: Russia | Türkiye | Germany | France | UK | Italy | Spain | Poland | Ukraine | Romania | Netherlands | Belgium | Sweden | Czechia | Azerbaijan | Portugal | Greece | Hungary | Austria | Switzerland | Belarus
Oceania: Australia | Papua New Guinea

Lydia, by Paula Gooder

Posted on by

Second paragraph of Chapter 3:

‘Tertius!’ She had intended a whisper but it came out as a hiss.

Second paragraph of the notes to Chapter 3:

A ROMAN ATRIUM
During the Roman Empire, and in the houses of the wealthy, the atrium was the reception room of the house. They were light, airy spaces, lit by the compluvium: a hole in the roof that was designed to let rainwater into the impluvium, a marble lined pool below. The householder would often sit on the opposite side of the impluvium, facing the vestibule or hallway, and hence the guests who entered the house. Although in the period of the Roman republic the atrium was often a family room, by the time of the empire it was a much more formal reception area, with family rooms located towards the back of the house. Even non-citizens like Lydia would have been accustomed to treating the space in this way.

This is basically New Testament fan-fiction, linking a woman mentioned in Acts with a passage from Philippians and telling a story about St Paul. There are 212 pages of plot and 106 pages of notes, which gives you an idea of the writer’s priorities and how seriously she has taken it. I lasted until the first miracle and then couldn’t manage any more. You can get it here.

The Administrator’s Tale, third time around: part two

Posted on by

(continued from here)

And so, I went to Worldcon in Glasgow. I read with envy of people who were able to attend lots of panels, go to signings and spend long hours hanging out with their mates; because I was doing two jobs in Glasgow, I had even less time than usual. (Also, I forgot to fill out the programme participation form, which is probably just as well.) Lots of good friends were there who I barely said hello to, or simply did not see at all. I think next time I may just announce that there will be a specific evening and a specific bar where I hang out. I did this on the Thursday night for the WSFS team, though not all were able to attend, and by the end a few extras had joined.

WSFS meetup photo from Arthur Liu (who is sitting beside me). The Site Selection team, Thomas and Naveed, are behind me; left is my deputy, Kathryn Duval, and at the far right Business Meeting deputy presiding officer Warren Buff. This was late in the evening and a number of the team had already peeled off.

As will be visible from the above, I injected a bit of light relief, at least for me, for much of the convention by donning a pair of elf ears which I had bought at Eastercon. This made me feel generally happy. When people asked why I was wearing them, I replied that I was cosplaying the Hugo Administrator. (One of the people I said this to turned out to be Suzan Palumbo, the administrator of the Ignyte Awards.)

I was not the only person to have the idea.

It was also very nice to catch up again with Yan Ru, who I had met in Chengdu. I got a badge made for her.

Photo by Paul Cornell

I did manage to attend a couple of panels, one on the likely winners of the Best Novel, Best Series and Best Graphic Story categories (which of course I already knew), and also I was pleased to top and tail Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer’s Guest of Honour presentation. Best of all, I got to the two main musical events, a pre-convention organ recital at the Kelvingrove and the orchestral concert on the Friday night.

Before I get to the Hugos, I must say something about the Business Meeting. First off, the work load on the top table (and to a much lesser extent those of us supporting them) was extreme. This was the longest agenda, and the longest Business Meeting, on record, thanks not only to the reckoning from Chengdu, but also a bunch of other items that some people felt compelled to add to the agenda. I am amazed that Jesi Lipp got us through it, and even finished slightly ahead of time. But it meant that the meeting lasted from 10 to 3 every day, rather than the usual 10 to 1.

The Business Meeting team; photo by Olav Rokne.

I was content with most of the decisions made at the meeting. Good things: an apology to those disqualified without justification by Chengdu was approved; the ban on virtual participation which was sneaked through last year was reversed; the proposal to restrict Site Selection voting rights to People Like Us was rejected; so was the Best Independent Film proposal (more on that when I write about the consultative vote which we trialled before the convention).

Less good: although the amendment clarifying the definition of Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist is largely my own wording, I am concerned that many fan artists are unhappy with it. I hope that it can be improved between now and Seattle. The one winner this year that particularly attracted sniping was Best Fan Artist, which indicates that the status quo still needs improvement.

A lot of the really serious stuff was kicked to various committees which will report next year. I got voted onto the committee which will investigate what actually happened at Chengdu. I was also appointed to another committee which will look at the administration of the Hugos more broadly, including the possibility of external audit. Other committees will consider the Business Meeting itself, and Hugo software.

I think that those who love the Business Meeting need to realise that less is more; that making it a smaller burden and less of a time sink for Worldcon members will improve its popularity. The fact that we successfully got through all of the business in 20 hours should be set against the fact that there was far too much business in the first place. This won’t be changed by passing new rules; a cultural shift is needed.

Unfortunately a number of people caught COVID at the convention. I did not, and the two people I spent most time with who did catch it had been wearing masks most of the time (at the Business Meeting). Masks, of course, are better at protecting other people from you than vice versa. I saw somewhere that the rate of infection at Glasgow was not very different to that at the 2021 Worldcon in DC, which had a much more vigorous masking policy. There are no easy answers.

Back to the Hugos. Much of one’s time as Administrator (and team) is spent getting material objects to the right place at the right time. We were fortunate in that the lair where we assembled the Hugos was just backstage of the Armadillo, but we had to assemble rocket, base and plaque and also do the other bits, like pins and certificates. The ceremony and receptions were handled (and handled well) by the Events division rather than by us.

The Hugo wrangling team, Laura, Kathryn, Scott, me and Bridget; photo by Olav Rokne

During the rehearsal, Vince Doherty had the excellent idea that I could bring the first Hugo ever awarded, by Isaac Asimov to Forrest J. Ackerman as #1 Fan Personality in 1953, onto the stage as part of my speech, and I must admit that for me that was the high point of the convention – feeling a direct connection with the previous 70 Hugo ceremonies.

Not sure who took this one, but obviously it wasn’t me. Probably Olav again.

That Hugo trophy, voted in good faith by the Worldcon voters of 1953, started a democratic process of appreciation of fan and professional activity that continues to this day. Controversy was there from the beginning – Ackerman rejected his Hugo and wanted it instead to go to British fan Ken Slater, who kept it for decades and eventually passed it back to Ackerman. John Scalzi summarized it in a witty introduction to the ceremony.

Forrest J. Ackerman rejecting the first ever Hugo, presented by Isaac Asimov, lurking behind him. Ackerman was a creep, who rejected the award on the evening but later repossessed it, and Asimov was worse. Not sure who took the photo.

At the end of the evening, putting Emily Tesh’s award for Best Novel away, I realised that I could get a nice shot of the oldest and most recent Hugo trophies beside each other on the shelf.

The latest Hugo on the left, the earliest on the right. You can see that the latter has acquired a large quasi-cubical wooden base since 1953. It has also lost a fin.

But I am getting ahead of myself. The ceremony had its regrettable glitches, notably when a pre-recorded video failed to play, and when it turned out that the Chinese titles and names in the slides had somehow been mangled beyond recognition. It also turned out that one set of plaques had three errors, including misspelling the word “Worldcon”. Despite those problems, the atmosphere in the room was hugely positive, almost redemptive. There’s a lovely piece about it here. I seem to have voted for only two of the winners myself, but that is par for the course, and I certainly don’t begrudge the other 18 their awards.

Hugo trophies waiting to be awarded. Photo by Laura Martins

The Hugo team, in the wings of the stage, were uniquely poorly placed to hear the speeches made by the winners. It was not until much later that I caught up with Emily Tesh’s well-chosen final words:

I wrote Some Desperate Glory imagining, if you like, a “bad end.” […] I love a bad end. I imagined the worst possible outcome of what humanity could become, some of the worst of our species: cruelty, brutality, hatred of outsiders and love of power. Tonight, I’d like you all to join me in imagining instead the best, which is something science fiction can do and has always done. And through and because of that power of imagination, I ask you to act in whatever way you can and whatever way is right for you to support the victims of violence and warfare around the world, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan and in many other places. To support the victims of cruelty and intolerance close to home, including here in the islands where that solidarity is dearly needed right now, especially for the victims of the recent racist riots, and for those targeted by the transphobia of some parts of the UK media. I wrote humanity’s bad end, and I call upon you all, with perfect faith, to prove me wrong.

And that brought us to the after-party, which I must say I enjoyed a lot – indeed the pre and post Hugo receptions seemed to me to work better, as a combination, than at any other Worldcon I have been to (the 2017 and 2023 after-parties were awesome, but the pre-ceremony receptions not as good as Glasgow).

Hugo wrangling team rejoices. Photo by Paul Weimer.

We of the Hugo wrangling team spent Monday packing Hugo trophies ready for shipping, and more than a week later we are still gathering addresses for the finalist pins and certificates, and arranging for extra trophies for those who have requested them. But I enjoyed it all immensely, and the person to thank most for that is Esther MacCallum-Stewart, the Chair.

I took an extra day in Glasgow to unwind and to attend the committee farewell dinner, which I had never managed to do before at a Worldcon. I used my extra day profitably, visiting the Kelvingrove in the morning for a proper look around – my word, there is so much there:

And in the afternoon I went to see the Govan Stones, relics of the religious centre of the ancient realm of Strathclyde; a couple of the Glaswegians who I spoke to at dinner had never heard of these amazing 9th to 11th century monuments, a stone’s throw from the Armadillo (if you throw the stone across the river very vigorously).

The Sarcophagus of St Constantine
The hogback grave stones
The Jordanhill Cross (a stump) and the Sun Stane

Next year, unusually, the Hugo team will be much the same as this year. I will be the Hugo administrator again; Cassidy, who was deputy Hugo administrator this year, will be WSFS Division Head; Kathryn Duval will repeat her role as Deputy Division Head; and my deputy as Hugo administrator will be Esther MacCallum-Stewart. Hopefully we will avoid the pitfalls of 2024, and make different mistakes instead.

Kathryn and me in 2017
Kathryn and me in 2024

See you in Seattle, perhaps?

The Edge of Destruction, by Simon Guerrier (and David Whitaker, and Nigel Robinson)

Posted on by

When I first watched this story in 2006, I wrote:

This must be one of the few pre-Davison stories that I had neither seen on TV nor read in novelisation form. It’s a two-parter, from immediately after the first Dalek story, featuring only the four members of the Tardis crew – the first Doctor, his grand-daughter Susan, and the teachers Ian and Barbara. There is a fifth character, not played by an actor, but I’ll get to that.

This was very very brave. The production team had run out of money, and had to do an entire story with no guest actors and no sets beyond what had already been made. The two episodes had two different directors, one of whom had never directed a television drama before. It could have been a disaster.

In fact it is very good. I would even have said excellent, were it not for the bathos of the minor technical problem with the Tardis which turns out to be at the core of the plot. But apart from that – and one or two minor slips from Hartnell, though he keeps it together for the big set-piece speeches – I was surprised by just how good it is.

I also watched the DVD documentary, which is entertaining and enlightening, and also actually slightly longer than either of the episodes. Meta-text, isn’t that the concept I’m looking for?

When I rewatched it in 2009, I wrote rather more briefly:

The Edge of Destruction is a two-episode filler with a great beginning and middle but a less good resolution. The weirdness on the Tardis screen, the clock faces and the odd behaviour of the crew are all nicely done, but the broken spring is rather banal and unmagical. However, what really makes the story memorable is the humanising of the Doctor and the repairing of his relationship with Barbara.

Rewatching it now, it seems rather staged, but staged rather well. These are four believable characters in an unbelievable situation, and the story efficiently works it through to the end.

I also read the novelisation back in 2008, and wrote then:

Robinson has taken a two-episode story and padded it out with some interesting new material of Ian and Barbara exploring the depths of the Tardis. Unfortunately, Robinson’s own prose style is thunderously bad in places. For completists only.

The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

In the darkness, the rhythmic in-out in-out breathing of the life support system seemed even more eerily alive. Ian shuddered, but resisted the urge to share his fears with the Doctor who would only delight in ridiculing his irrational notions.

I think I was a little unfair in my first reading. Robinson is not a fluid writer, but I’ve certainly read much worse, including much worse Doctor Who books. You cn get it here (for a price).

Simon Guerrier’s Black Archive on The Edge of Destruction is one of the shortest in the series, clocking in at a mere 108 pages. The story is a short one, but James Cooray Smith got 73 pages out of the 6 minutes of Night of the Doctor, and at that rate this volume would have been about the length of The Lord of the Rings.

It starts with an introduction, which makes a bold assertion:

I’ve a theory about you, the reader of this book. I think you:

  • Have seen the 2013 drama An Adventure in Space and Time.
  • Can identify moments in it that aren’t quite what happened.
  • Understand why such dramatic licence was necessary.

I feel seen. It is as if I had had dinner with the author at Gallifrey One this year. Oh, wait…

The introduction further looks at the paucity of archive sources on the story, and makes the important point that he will refer to it in the book as “Series C” to distinguish between it and the first episode, whose title is “The Edge of Destruction”.

The first chapter, “Part One – On the Edge” looks in detail at what we know about the commissioning, writing and recording of the story, deflating a couple of the myths that have circulated about it in fannish circles.

The second chapter, “Part Two – Beyond the Brink” proposes Guerrier’s first five theories about the story: 1) that it is weird by design of the cast and producers, 2) that the show-runners had decided already to make it a show about alien beings; 3) that the TARDIS manipulating the minds of the crew is a metaphor for TV affecting its audience; 4) that the scientific basis of the story is relatively sound; and 5) that the story was written with a view to reinforcing the continuation of Doctor Who as a show.

The third chapter’s title is “Part Three – Inside the Spaceship”. Its second paragraph is:

The camera script for ‘The Edge of Destruction’ suggests that David Whitaker intended to exploit and adapt this existing space, but not to add an extra room to the TARDIS. Although Scene 2 is headed ‘Int. The Girls’ Bedroom’, stage directions immediately after this say, ‘Susan now has a medical box open on the table in the living quarters’, so the bedroom was intended to be part of that pre-existing space. Stage directions continue that, ‘If possible one of the circular wall pieces should be open as if it is a cupboard.’ Then, in Scene 6, Ian also ‘goes to one of the walls. He presses a switch and three of the circular wall pieces descend and a wall bed is revealed.’ The implication is that Whitaker envisaged the living quarters – even the whole TARDIS control room – as a kind of bedsit: a single space with multiple functions. (He had form in this; on 30 September 1963 he agreed to rework the scripts of The Daleks to combine sets wherever practical to reduce their overall number1.)
1 Christopher Barry, ‘Special effects in connexion with Dr Who 2nd story’, 30 September 1963, WAC T5/648/1 General B.

Here Guerrier proposes another five theories: 6) it’s the last time for a while that we see much of the inside of the TARDIS; 7) the roundels are meant to convey the thickness and robustness of the walls and door; 8) the crew were meant to have assigned positions for take-off; 9) the TARDIS is lusting for the heat of the Sun; and 10) if the TARDIS had changed shape, the protruding lock would have been a constant feature.

A brief conclusion argues that the oddness of the story is its virtue.

This is my favourite kind of Black Archive, taking a story which is not one of my all time favourites but finding sufficient points of interest in it to make me think more about the story itself, the art of story-telling on television, and Doctor Who. You can get it here.

Version 1.0.0

The Black Archives
1st Doctor: The Daleks (82) | The Edge of Destruction (67) | Marco Polo (18) | The Aztecs (71) | The Dalek Invasion of Earth (30) | The Romans (32) | The Myth Makers (65) | The Massacre (2) | The Ark (81)
2nd Doctor: The Underwater Menace (40) | The Evil of the Daleks (11) | The Mind Robber (7)
3rd Doctor: Doctor Who and the Silurians (39) | The Ambassadors of Death (3) | The Dæmons (26) | Carnival of Monsters (16) | The Time Warrior (24) | Invasion of the Dinosaurs (55)
4th Doctor: Pyramids of Mars (12) | The Hand of Fear (53) | The Deadly Assassin (45) | The Face of Evil (27) | The Robots of Death (43) | Talons of Weng-Chiang (58) | Horror of Fang Rock (33) | Image of the Fendahl (5) | The Sun Makers (60) | The Stones of Blood (47) | Full Circle (15) | Warriors’ Gate (31) | Logopolis (76)
5th Doctor: Castrovalva (77) | Kinda (62) | Black Orchid (8) | Earthshock (51) | Mawdryn Undead (80) | The Awakening (46)
6th Doctor: Vengeance on Varos (41) | Timelash (35) | The Mysterious Planet (79) | The Ultimate Foe (14)
7th Doctor: Paradise Towers (61) | The Happiness Patrol (68) | Silver Nemesis (75) | The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (66) | Battlefield (34) | The Curse of Fenric (23) | Ghost Light (6)
8th Doctor: The Movie (25) | The Night of the Doctor (49)
Other Doctor: Scream of the Shalka (10)
9th Doctor: Rose (1) | Dalek (54)
10th Doctor: The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (17) | Love & Monsters (28) | Human Nature / The Family of Blood (13) | The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords (38) | Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead (72) | Midnight (69)
11th Doctor: The Eleventh Hour (19) | Vincent and the Doctor (57) | The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang (44) | A Christmas Carol (74) | The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon (29) | The God Complex (9) | The Rings of Akhaten (42) | Day of the Doctor (50)
12th Doctor: Listen (36) | Kill the Moon (59) | Under the Lake / Before the Flood (73) | The Girl Who Died (64) | Dark Water / Death in Heaven (4) | Face the Raven (20) | Heaven Sent (21) | Hell Bent (22)
13th Doctor: Arachnids in the UK (48) | Kerblam! (37) | The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos (52) | The Haunting of Villa Diodati (56) | Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children (70) | Flux (63)
15th Doctor: The Devil’s Chord (78)

Archbishop Treanor’s funeral, and Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650, by Clodagh Tait

Posted on by

I attended a big Irish funeral earlier this week. Archbishop Noël Treanor, the Vatican’s diplomatic representative to the EU, died suddenly on 11 August and was buried in St Peter’s cathedral in Belfast, where he had previously been the bishop for many years, last Tuesday. I happen to be in Norn Iron at present and attended, sitting between a retired South Belfast community worker, and the mum of two of the choristers.

I knew Noël from his current and previous roles in Brussels, and we’d had a really excellent lunch at his residence on 12 July (an auspicious date!), my last working day in the office until September. We discussed many things, including ironically enough the Pope’s health (“I saw him just a few weeks ago; our appointment was at 8.30 am and it was his fourth meeting that morning; his mobility may not be great but he’s as sharp mentally as ever and he’ll stay around at least until the Synod has concluded in October”) and the church blessing of same-sex relationships (Noël surprised me by saying, without any prodding from me, that he agreed with the Pope’s positive approach). I looked forward to continuing the conversation on my return to work next month, but, alas, it is not to be.

The funeral was a massive affair, with a full cathedral including dozens of bishops and well over a hundred priests. (“I’ve never seen so many priests!” gasped the lady beside me. “I didn’t realise there were that many left!” I replied. Noël, who was 73, would have been roughly in the middle of the age range of the clergy attending, and younger than most of the bishops.) It ended with Noël being laid to rest in the chapel where two of his predecessors already lie (Patrick Walsh, his immediate predecessor, died only last December). The current bishop, Alan McGuckian, led the service, apart from the committal at the very end which was led by Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister. The ceremony stuck closely to the liturgy that I know so well, but with a lot more ecclesiastical chanting than I am used to (and that’s a fine thing). It was a respectfully and carefully designed occasion; I left feeling that my friendship with Noël, which was warm but not deep, had been given decent closure, and I am sure that everyone in the congregation who knew him felt the same.

Funerary rituals have been around since the dawn of humanity, but it is surprisingly difficult to track down the historical details of death as a cultural phenomenon. Clodagh Tait has tackled Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650 in this short monograph. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:

The period of time between a person’s physical demise and the disposal of their corpse is worth close examination, for in the glimpses of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century people addressing the fact of the corpse in their midst we can also see them dealing with some of those rather more complicated questions raised by that corpse’s presence among them. The rituals and processes involved are difficult to reconstruct. At this stage the corpse usually was in the hands of family and friends, the focus of procedures which, because they were to contemporaries too ordinary to be documented or remarked upon, let alone explained, become all but invisible when the historian attempts to look at them in any depth.

This is a very dense book, looking in depth at what is known about attitudes to death and the dead in Ireland in the early modern period. Tait is frank about the shortcomings of the source material – the surviving written evidence is mainly about the rich rather than the poor, about English speakers rather than Irish speakers, about adults rather than children. But there is enough to pull together a fascinating cultural and ritual landscape, of corpses and graves being relocated for political reasons, of which relatives you are buried with, of how the afterlife is imagined at a time when Protestants and Catholics were being offered very different future fates.

The struggle over the religious jurisdiction of death would in itself have been enough for a whole book, but it would not have been as good; by leading in with the nuts and bolts of the deathbed, the funeral rites and the monuments, Tait establishes a framework of universal human experience, with an Irish historical hue, in which the denominational squabbles then take place. Many of the old cultural practices around death are lost forever, thanks to industrialisation and modernisation, but enough survives to give us a really interesting glimpse of a society both familiar and alien. You can get it here.

This was the shortest unread book that I acquired in 2018. Next on that pile is The Mark of the Maker: A Portrait of Helen Waddell, by Monica Blackett.

Why Politicians Lie About Trade, by Dmitry Grozoubinski

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

This book exists in large part because trade policy, where selling across borders meets government policy, procedure and regulations, is ludicrously vulnerable to rhetorical handwaving. It can feel, intuitively, like something which just should not be that hard. Fill a container, ship it, maybe pay some taxes at the border, and bing bang boom little Tyler has the new Lego pieces your bare feet will be stepping on in the dark for the next decade.

Grozoubinski, a former Australian trade negotiator, gained prominence during the online Brexit wars as one of the few sensible commentators on international trade. He was particularly good at deflating British government and pro-government chest-beating statements about how they were going to biff the Europeans and ensure future prosperity by better trade with the rest of the world. (You may recall a particularly amusing example when Liz Truss, then trade minister, announced to the media that she was going to give her Australian counterpart a severe finger-wagging, and very soon after Boris Johnson, then prime minister, sat down with the Australian and conceded pretty much everything the Aussies were looking for.)

This book is only tangentially about Brexit and more about the general nuts and bolts of trade negotiations, and perhaps more importantly, how trade negotiation is talked about by political leaders. Grozoubinski regretfully makes the case that the complexity of the subject disincentivises clarity, and politicians therefore are incentivised to downplay the details (or, if you like, “lie”) because i) it’s complicated, ii) they need to disguise their own lack of understanding and iii) it is tempting to claim quick and visible wins when you know that disproving such claims will be tedious and detailed (“if you’re explaining, you’re losing”).

It’s not only government politicians who lie about this. I vividly remember the TTIP wars, when imaginary threats to the NHS and other public services in the EU through the proposed dispute settlement mechanism of the draft treaty were used to undermine a treaty which would have ensured shared regulatory standards on both sides of the Atlantic and locked those in for much of the rest of the world. Some of the people making those arguments probably believed them, but some must have known that they were false. Grozoubinski takes us painstakingly through why any big treaty negotiation is going to look much the same. He explains the reasons for the relative opacity of the process (though by the standards of many international discussions, they are crystal clear), while admitting that a bit more transparency might make the process as a whole an easier public sell.

It’s lucid and self-deprecating, and well worth a read. I’m glad to say that I got an autographed copy in Brussels in June directly from the author. You can get it here.

Tuesday reading

Posted on by

A good week.

Current
Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, by Mariana Mazzucato
Carrie, by Stephen King

Last books finished
The Boxcar Children, by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein
Why Politicians Lie About Trade, by Dmitry Grozoubinski 
Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650, by Clodagh Tait
Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction, by Nigel Robinson
The Edge of Destruction, by Simon Guerrier
Lydia, by Paula Goode (did not finish)
Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez
Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life, by Samantha Ellis
Imagining Ireland’s Independence, by Jason K. Knick
The Wonderful Visit, by H. G. Wells
A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster
Comparing Electoral Systems, by David M. Farrell

Next books
Redeemer, by C.E. Murphy
The Lost Puzzler, by Eyal Kless
Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse