Wed, 12:13: RT @tconnellyRTE: Some arresting detail from @MichaelAodhan, NI Retail Consortium, to HoC NI Affairs cttee: £2.6bn in agrifood produced in…
Wed, 12:56: Scottish nationalists’ love of North Sea oil sours https://t.co/0Wuyr4R0jq Article suggests this is a new development, but in fact renewable energy has been central to SNP policy for years.
Thu, 08:08: As Brexit pressure builds, EU red lines shine bright UK’s hardball tactics completely backfire, stimulating some EU voices to mutter that maybe no deal *is* better than a bad deal. https://t.co/tYuahyfrO9
Thu, 10:45: RT @davidallengreen: Wait until those who complain about Sainsbury’s depiction of a Christmas get-together hear about where the Magi came f…
Thu, 11:00: RT @bbcdoctorwho: London 1965! A very happy birthday to William Russell, who played one of the first ever companions, Ian Chesterton http…
19 November 1920: birth of Richard Shaw, who played Governor Lobos in The Space Museum (First Doctor, 1965), treacherous prisoner Cross in Frontier in Space (Third Doctor, 1973) and also Lakh, one of the imperviously helmeted Seers in Underworld (Fourth Doctor, 1978).
19 November 1924: birth of William Russell, who played Ian Chesterton from 1963 to 1965 and has done a number of Big Finish plays, including most recently an episode of Susan's War.
19 November 1945: birth of Morgan Deare, who played Hawk, the American who isn't played by Stubby Kaye, in Delta and the Bannermen (Seventh Doctor, 1987) and an old man at a bus stop in Rosa (Thirteenth Doctor, 2018).
19 November 1971: birth of Katherine Kelly who played Miss Quill, my favourite of the regular characters in Class (2016).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
19 November 1966: broadcast of third episode of The Power of the Daleks. The rebels capture Polly, and the Doctor and Ben erode Lesterson's trust in the Daleks.
19 November 1977: broadcast of fourth episode of Image of the Fendahl. The Doctor kills the Fendahleen with salt, blows up the cottage and drops the skull into a supernova.
19 November 2006: broadcast of Countrycide (Torchwood), the one with the cannibalistic villagers.
19 November 2007: broadcast of second episode of The Lost Boy (SJA), ending the first series of Sarah Jane Adventures. Luke defeats the Slitheen and K9 reappears to deal with Mr Smith.
19 November 2009: broadcast of first episode of The Gift (SJA). The Blathereen, hunting the Slitheen, give Rani the Rakweed which however starts to take over the world.
19 November 2016: broadcast of Detained (Class). Everyone except Miss Quill is stuck in the physics classroom, which gets marooned in space and time.
iii) historical event in canon
19 November 1863: Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address, as observed by the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara in The Chase (First Doctor, 1965).
Second paragraph of third essay ("Edax on Appetite"):
You must know, then, that I have been visited with a calamity ever since my birth. How shall I mention it without offending delicacy? Yet out it must. My sufferings, then, have all arisen from a most inordinate appetite——
Collection of Lamb's writings on literature etc, but I'm afraid I found my general lack of interest in the subject matter too profound to appreciate the occasional rhetorical flourishes of his writing and gave up sixty pages in. You can get it here.
This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next ought to be Tomb Travel, A Guide to Northern Ireland's Megalithic Monuments, but I can't find it and so will probably go to Our War: Ireland and the Great War, by John Horne.
Tue, 13:51: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged: One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. https://t.co/c1tBODKl6f
Tue, 17:11: A UK-EU deal is needed for Northern Ireland https://t.co/ehTt0fU8qS by @JulianBKing, former British Ambassador in Dublin, head of the Northern Ireland Office, and the last British Commissioner in Brussels.
Tue, 20:48: How the Electoral College Was Nearly Abolished in 1970 https://t.co/bcYg8kN7A5 Fascinating. Strom Thurmond killed off the initiative. (Would have had a runoff round if winners of popular vote had less than 40% of it.)
Tue, 22:37: RT @SOFIAtelescope: We detected water on the Moon’s sunlit surface. Understanding the Moon’s water helps piece together the history of…
18 November 1932: birth of Trevor Baxter, who played Professor Litefoot in The Talons of Weng-Chiang (Fourth Doctor, 1977) and reprised the role for Big Finish
18 November 1934: birth of Mitzi McKenzie, who played Mrs Martin in Colony in Space (Third Doctor, 1971) and Nancy in The Green Death (Third Doctor, 1973).
18 November 1948: birth of Paul Jerricho who played the Castellan in both Arc of Infinity (Fifth Doctor, 1983) and The Five Doctors (Fifth Doctor era, also 1983).
18 November 1953: birth of Alan Moore, acclaimed comics writer whose early work included five stories published in Doctor Who Weekly (as it then was) in 1980.
18 November 1961: birth of Steven Moffat, head writer and executive producer on Doctor Who for the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor eras, also for ClassThe Curse of Fatal Death (1999) and the Hugo-winning The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (Ninth Doctor, 2005), The Girl in the Fireplace (Tenth Doctor, 2006), Blink (Tenth Doctor, 2007) and The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang (Eleventh Doctor, 2010). He has the distinction of writing for the most number of Doctors on-screen than any other writer for the show, with a total of (at least) 8.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
18 November 1967: broadcast of second episode of The Ice Warriors. Varga captures Victoria and prepares to unfreeze his comrades.
18 November 1978: broadcast of fourth episode of The Stones of Blood. The Doctor evades the "justice" of the Megara and transforms the Great Seal of Diplos into the third segment of the Key to Time.
18 November 2005: broadcast of the first New Who Children in Need Special. The new Doctor tries to reassure Rose of his identity.
18 November 2011: broadcast of another Children in Need special minisode. All the Eleventh Doctor’s clothes come off!
18 November 2013: Yet another Children in Need special previews the 50th anniversary.
18 November 2018: broadcast of Kerblam! The Doctor and friends intervene to save capitalism, or something like that.
I had one of the strangest days ever at work on 11 December 2008, when I had not one but two presidents of unrecognised states in my office at different times. (They did not and still do not recognise each other, so I had to juggle schedules carefully.) Sadly, neither is in office any more; Mehmet Ali Talat lost his re-election bid in 2010, and Mohamed Abdelaziz died a couple of years ago.
I put a lot of energy into following the fall of the Belgian government the following week. All forgotten now. I joined Twitter, and my first Tweet was a link to my review of Terry Pratchett's Nation.
I was in London in the first week of the month, but otherwise in Belgium. Christmas seems to have been just us, with a bit of a rabbit theme.
I read only 16 books in December, the end of an epic year where my 371 books was a record that still stands.
4,100 pages (total 89,400)
2/16 by women (total 49/371)
None by PoC (total 6/371)
Again, I'm going to be nice and single out four good books here:
The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, which is my book of the year for 2008; you can get it here.
As You Like It, a Shakespeare play I had not previously encountered; you can get it here.
Nation, by Terry Pratchett: "the perfect world is a journey, not a place"; you can get it here.
The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo, by Joe Sacco, a tremendous evocation of a tragic time and place; you can get it here.
2008 books roundup
The 371 books I read in 2008 remain my record for a single year – boosted by easily digestible Doctor Who novelisations and fairly brief Shakespeare plays. I did a roundup at the time, but am now reformatting to my current system (and reclassifying a few books as well).
Doctor Who: 172 (46% – biggest of any year)
Best of 2008: Two of the First Doctor novelisations, the very first one, Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, which you can get here, and Donald Cotton's Doctor Who – The Romans, which you can get here.
Best original fiction: All-Consuming Fire, by Andy Lane, in which the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Benny encounter Sherlock Holmes and the Great Old Ones. You can get it here.
Best non-fiction: Who Goes There, by Nick Griffiths, exploring the locations of Doctor Who filming around England and Wales; you can get it here.
The one you haven't heard of: Time and Relative, by Kim Newman, a novella set on Earth in 1963 before the Doctor and his granddaughter meet Ian and Barbara. At a cost, you can get it here.
The one to avoid: Doctor Who – The Twin Dilemma, a dreadful adaptation of a dreadful story. You can get it here.
Non-fiction: 70 (19%, a tad below average)
Best of 2008: Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girlyou can get it here.
Runner-up: The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi; you can get it here.
The one you haven't heard of: Brussels Versus the Beltway: Advocacy in the United States and the European Union, by Christine Mahoney, a great explanation of the world of my work; you can get it here.
Worst of 2007: J.R.R.Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth, by Daniel Grotta, a poor effort. You can get it here.
SF (other than Doctor Who): 54 (15%, lowest of any year – squeezed out by Doctor Who books)
At the top, it's difficult to choose between Romeo and Juliet (which you can get here), A Midsummer Night's Dream (here) and As You Like It (here) as my favourite Shakespeare of the year; also enjoyed the two rather less well known scripts I read, Improbable Frequency (about Schrodinger in Ireland, here) and The Office (here).
However I really bounced off both The Taming of the Shrew (here) and Love's Labour's Lost (here).
Comics 6 (2%, a record low)
Best of 2008: The Fixer (here), as noted above, and Jessica Jones vol 4 (here).
The one you haven't heard of: Macedonia, written by Harvey Pekar, Heather Roberson, art by Ed Piskor; you can get it here.
The one to avoid: Tales of Human Waste, by Warren Ellis; you can get it here.
My book of the year 2008, as noted above, was Anne Frank's Diary, which I have also writen about here and here. If you haven't yet read it, you should. And as mentioned twice above, you can get it here.
Mon, 12:56: The Distinguished Medieval Penis Investigators https://t.co/l2ZranpU4n In fourteenth-century England, one of the only ways a woman could get a divorce was if her husband was impotent. But first, she had to prove it in court.
Mon, 23:16: RT @alexwilcock: OTD 1969: #Clangers Flying The beginning of something quite, quite wonderful. Only fascinated glimpses as a boy; always a…
Tue, 09:10: RT @HarrocknRoll: @nwbrux “One wonders why anyone would go to the trouble of forging Belgian francs in Scotland (or indeed anywhere at all)…
17 November 1979: broadcast of fourth episode of The Creature from the Pit. The wolf weeds kill Adrasta; Erato eats the wolf weeds; the Doctor prevents Chloris from being destroyed.
17 November 2008: broadcast of first episode of The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith. The Trickster persuades Sarah to prevent her parents' deaths.
A few weeks ago I bit the bullet and sent a DNA sample off to Ancestry.com, having already done so for 23andMe a while back. The fact that it ties the DNA into the genealogy side of things makes for a snowstorm of new distant relatives of whom I have never heard. Most of them were people who were well enough off in their time and place for official records to be kept of their birth, marriage, offspring and death, but otherwise unremarkable. But I’ve come up with a lovely connection, my third cousin three times removed (ie his great-great-grandparents were also my great-grandmother’s great-great-grandparents) and his daughter, my fourth cousin twice removed: Howard Gardiner Cushing and Lily Cushing
Howard was born in 1869 in Boston, to a wealthy family – his paternal grandfather had made a fortune in Chinese opium smuggling. (I am related to his mother, not his father.) He had the usual elite Groton and Harvard education, but then went to Paris to study art under Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. I have found only one portrait of him – a phtograph of him posing with vine leaves in his hair, taken around 1885 when he would have been a teenager. It’s in the Isabella Stewart Gardiner musem in Boston (I assume that she was a relative).
He came back, made a career of his art, and in 1903 married Ethel Emerson Cochrane, who was also from Boston (the ceremony was in Trinity Church). She is the subject of a lot of his best work.
Some of the paintings feature Ethel with a child. Going by the dates, it is probably their oldest, Olivia, who died in 1908 three months after her third birthday.
His portrait of his friend and patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was sold at auction a few years ago; the art world is coy about prices, but I see a note on one site that the reserve was $5000-$7000, and on another that it made 50% more than the reserve.
One evening in 1916, Ethel went out to Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s for the evening, Howard staying home because he had not been feeling well for several days. When she came home, Ethel slipped in quietly so as not to disturb him, and then found him dead in his bed in the morning. He was only 47, and their three surviving children were all under ten. Their house in New York, where they had lived since 1910, is still standing. The largest collection of his work is held at the Newport Art Museum in Rhode Island, which had a major exhibition about him last year.; the Cushings’ holiday home, The Ledges, is near Newport (and still in the family).
As I mentioned, there were three surviving children. Ethel married again to a stockbroker; the older son, also Howard Gardiner Cushing, followed his stepfather and also became a stockbroker; the younger son, Alexander, was a lawyer who founded the Squaw Valley ski resort in California; and Lily followed her father and became an artist.
Here she is in 1939, admiring the newly acquired Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, at the Museum of Modern Art on New York. She is the young woman on the left, partially concealed behind John Hay Whitney, then the Museum’s President; the older man next to them is a former Presdient of the museum, A. Conger Goodyear; pointing to the picture is another former President of the museum, and future Governor of New York and Vice-President of the United States, Nelson Rockefeller; the older woman with the hat is identified as Jeannie Sheppard; the other man is Edsel Ford, son of Henry Ford and head of the family firm; the woman on the right is art collector Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson.
We have another photograph of her in 1942, at the age of 33, taken by Horst P. Horst.
From the same year, a less flattering portrait by her friend Walt Kuhn:
And another photo by Toni Frissell with her daughters, dated 1960, but I think it must be from a few years earlier judging by the apparent ages – her daughters, both for the second of her three marriages, were born in 1933 and 1937; she’s seated on the left and was born in 1909. The older daughter, another Lily, married Antony West, the son of Rebecca West and H.G. Wells; she died only last January. The younger daughter, Alexandra, married the historian Arthur Schlesinger.
Never mind other people’s portrayals: here is her own self-portrait (date given is 1952, but that is surely wrong; she looks younger than 43).
She painted interesting if discreetly faint nudes:
Her clothed women are striking as well.
She was happy to go commercial: here’s her 1949 portrait of opera singer Patrice Munsel for Avon Cosmetics:
Here’s her extraordinary “Mrs Onassis”.
And her landscapes and streetscapes are sort-of wistful.
Lily’s middle name was Dulany, in honour of our mutual ancestor Walter Dulany (1723-1773) of Annapolis, Maryland, whose wife was a Delaware girl, Mary “Molly” Grafton (1727-1812); their home is now the US Naval Academy. The Cushings are descended through their oldest son, another Walter (1757-1807), and his only son Grafton (1794-1863) whose daughter Olivia (1839-1906) married Robert Maynard Cushing (1836-1907). (So Howard Gardiner Cushing lost his parents and his oldest child in quick succession.)
I’m descended from the older Walter’s daughter Catherine “Kitty” (1764-1830); she married Horatio Sharp Belt (1746-1796), whose son Richard Grafton Belt, a homeopathic doctor (well dodgy) was the father of my great-great-grandmother Fanny. Any artistic genes were not really passed on to me, and quite likely came from elsewhere.
And just to add one more connection: William Temple Emmet, Lily’s second husband and the father of her daughters, was descended from Thomas Addis Emmet and was also the grandfather of a good friend of mine, who I’ve known since 2008 without realising that we had a (weak) family link as well.
Sun, 12:56: RT @RaoulRuparel: Ahead of a crucial week in Brexit talks, issue of level playing field (beyond state aid) has become a major obstacle to a…
Sun, 15:15: RT @AndrewPRLevi: @nwbrux Great review. Thanks. Robert’s a rare, genuinely (rather than merely aspiringly) thoughtful career diplomat. He u…
Sun, 17:24: RT @SPazosVidal: “The problem with academic analysts is that they are not practitioners; and the problem with practitioners is that they ar…
Sun, 17:26: RT @stephenkinsella: @nwbrux The Origins of You is well worth your time, it’s got facts galore from the Dunedin studies.
Sun, 19:57: RT @MrBeamJockey: @nwbrux Sometimes editors will encourage an author to include a more famous person into a book, to make it a bit more sal…
Sun, 21:44: RT @tconnellyRTE: Here’s an update ahead of the Brexit negotiations resuming in Brussels:
Mon, 06:52: RT @CiolosDacian: Exceptional preliminary results from the Republic of Moldova: @sandumaiamd is set to become the next President, in a reco…
Mon, 06:54: RT @DionisCenusa: 53. This is the end. Sandu is ahead with 100k. 97% of the ballots is done. Sandu is the president of Moldova. Thank you f…
Mon, 10:45: RT @ChelseaClinton: There are Trump supporters outside my parents’ house shouting through megaphones “Lock Her Up,” and I just keep thinkin…
Mon, 11:06: RT @Tom_deWaal: Maia Sandu’s election as #Moldova‘s president is good news for pro-Europeans, as is Dodon’s concession (take note, Trump) b…
16 November 1931: birth of Kenneth Watson, who played Craddock in Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (Cushing movie, 1966) and engineer Duggan in The Wheel in Space (Second Doctor, 1968).
16 November 1956: birth of Karl Zwicky, who directed several episodes of the Australian K9 (2010).
16 November 1967: birth of Alexa Havins, who played CIA analyst Esther Drummond in Torchwood: Miracle Day (2008).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
16 November 1963: broadcast of the first ever trailer for Doctor Who, a week before the first episode.
16 November 1969: broadcast of third episode of The Invasion. Vaughn takes the Doctor and Jamie to meet Professor Watkins; they escape, and Jamie has an encounter with a sinister cocoon.
16 November 1987: broadcast of third episode of Delta and the Bannermen. The Chimeron child is growing and Billy opts to become one too; the Americans and the Doctor defeat the Bannermen.
16 November 1988: broadcast of third episode of The Happiness Patrol. The Doctor and Earl bring the blues back, and Helen A is defeated.
16 November 2007: broadcast of Time Crash. The Tenth Doctor and Fifth Doctor meet when their Tardises crash.
16 November 2010: broadcast of second episode of Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith, ending the fourth series of Sarah Jane Adventures. This was the last episode to be broadcast during Elizabeth Sladen's lifetime. I have to say I found something in my eye at the end of it.
16 November 2012: broadcast of minisode The Great Detective, a prequel for that year's Christmas episode The Snowmen.
iii) date specified in-universe
16 November 1982: the date given by impostor Adam as his date of birth in the Adam episode of Torchwood (2008).
Gandhi won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1982, and also seven others, Best Director (Richard Attenborough), Best Actor (Ben Kingsley in the title role), Best Original Screenplay (John Briley), Best Art Direction (beating Blade Runner, that year’s Hugo winner), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Editing. So far only Gigi (9), West Side Story (10) and Ben-Hur (11) have won more. Blade Runner was also nominated for Best Visual Effects, but lost to E.T.
The other films up for Best Picture were E.T. and Tootsie, which I have seen, and Missing and The Verdict, which I haven’t. IMDB users rank it 5th of the year on one list but only 22nd on the other. Apart from Blade Runner, the other films from that year that I have seen are Wrath of Khan, The Wall, Fanny and Alexander, Airplane II, The Year of Living Dangerously, Fitzcarraldo, Night Shift, The Draughtsman’s Contract and Who Dares Wins. Apart from the last, these are all films I very much enjoyed, or maybe that’s just my uncritical fifteen-year-old self. Here’s a contemporary trailer for the US market, leading with future President Bartlett.
This is the fifth or sixth biopic to win Best Picture (after The Great Ziegfeld, The Life of Emile Zola, Lawrence of Arabia, Patton and maybe A Man for All Seasons which was adapted from a stage play). It was two in a row for British directors and a largely British cast, though as it turned out this was a blip rather than a trend. I saw it in the cinema when it first came out, and felt that it held up very well. I had been prepared for it by hearing the BBC radio play, No Ordinary Light, also about the life of Gandhi, by Hallam Tennyson and starring Sam Dastor.
I won’t list the actors who appeared in Gandhi as well as in earlier Oscar-winning or Hugo-winning films, let alone Doctor Who; there are just so many of them. Basically every moderately well-known British actor aged between 40 and 70 seems to have been transported to India to play one or other clueless imperialist. Three have reappeared from last year’s Chariots of Fire – John Gielgud, Ian Charleson and Richard Griffiths. Three also appeared in the only other Oscar-winning film set (partly) in India, Around the World in Eighty Days – Gielgud again, Trevor Howard and John Mills (though all three are only in the London bits of the earlier film).
No fewer than nineteen of the cast also appeared in Doctor Who, chronologically from Ron Howard, an extra in a crowd scene here and also in The Ark (1966), to Colin Farrell who plays a clerk here and was in this year’s Who story Orphan 55. Shane Rimmer was in Doctor Who and Dr Strangelove. John Savident was in Doctor Who and A Clockwork Orange. Jack McKenzie and John Ratzenberger were in The Empire Strikes Back. John Boxer was in Bridge on the River Kwai.
So for my photo comparisons this time, I’m going to switch fandoms to Secret Army. Bernard Hepton, star of the show as Albert Foiret, turns up here as the GOC, and Terrence Hardiman, who plays doomed Luftwaffe Major Reinhardt in the third series, makes a brief appearance here as Ramsay MacDonald.
Well. This is a film about a famous man, and the women get a look-in only in so far as they are important in his life; plus it has to be said that while the real-life Gandhi was very firm for his time on the emancipation of women, the film is rather less so. It easily clears the first leg of the Bechdel test, but I am not sure that we ever see two named women having a conversation, and if they do I am sure that it’s about the central character. Rohini Hattangadi, aged 27, is tremendously convincing as Kasturba Gandhi from young mother to old age, but doesn’t get a lot to say.
However, it’s undeniable that just four years after the unapologetically racist The Deer Hunter won the Oscar for Best Picture, here we have a film which is unambiguously about racism, oppression, and the ultimate defeat of white supremacy. I guess that many viewers were able to explain it away as a movie about things happening to other people in other countries. For myself, watching it in Belfast in 1982, there were strong local resonances: discriminatory legislation, hunger strikes, British soldiers firing indiscriminately into a crowd. (Also, Lord Mountbatten.) The Amritsar sequence is possibly the most effective seven minutes of the film.
The film generally looks brilliant. With the full support of both Columbia Pictures and the Indian government, one should hope so too. The 300,000 extras in the funeral scene are the largest number ever assembled for a film.
And it’s a convincing portrait of a remarkable man. It errs of course on the side of Gandhi’s saintliness (more on that below), and cannot conceal the fact that having spearheaded the cause of Indian independence, he was left behind by political developments on the ground; his answer to tensions between Hindus and Muslims was to refuse to eat until they stopped fighting, which did not work as a long-term solution. Still, he was much more often right than wrong. Ben Kingsley (born Krishna Pandit Bhanji) truly inhabits the role; occasionally you can see Ben Kingsley looking at you out of Gandhi’s face, rather than the other way round, if you see what I mean.
Anyway. The film is a bit hagiographic, and a bit long, and a bit male, so even though it looks great and its heart is (mostly) in the right place, I’m not putting it right at the top of my list but about a fifth of the way down, between West Side Story and The Best Years of Our Lives.
Next up: Return of the Jedi and Terms of Endearment, in that order.
The Oscar for Best Original Screenplay was not completely fairly awarded this year, as the screenplay was not particularly original. The film is pretty strongly based on Louis Fischer‘s 1950 biography of Gandhi, the second paragraph of whose third chapter is:
In an out-of-doors group picture of the 1890 Vegetarians’ Conference at Portsmouth, Gandhi was wearing a white tie, hard white cuffs and a white dress handkerchief in his front pocket. His hair is neatly dressed. He used to spend ten minutes every morning combing and brushing it.
Written soon after Gandhi’s death, it is largely positive but does not gloss over some of the negative aspects of Gandhi’s beliefs and behaviour. He was a terrible parent to his sons, emotionally distant and borderline abusive. He was also an anti-vaxxer who believed that all illness could be healed by meditation and diet. As noted above, he lost touch with his own political movement towards the end. One also has to wonder what Kasturba really thought; we don’t hear much from her between their marriage as horny young teenagers to her death sixty years later.
However, Fischer as a journalist does very well at explaining the situation of both South Africa and colonial India to the general reader, and making it clear just how important Gandhi was to the political developments of both. In particular, he stresses Gandhi’s commitment to non-violence even more than the film does. And I think it’s fair to say that without a Gandhi-like figure, India would certainly have become independent, probably somewhat sooner, but at a much greater cost of lives lost in conflict.
I was also interested to learn that Gandhi’s family were always political – his grandfather served as prime minister of Porbandar, the small state where he was born, and his father was successively prime minister there and in three other states, Rajkot, Wandaner and Bikaner. The book does get a little unmoored at the end when Fischer appears in his own narrative and gives us verbatim notes of his (many, long) conversations with Gandhi, but in general I found it readable enough.
Sat, 13:50: For those of you looking for a nice excursion not too far from Brussels, now that most things are closed, let me recommend the outdoor exhibition of sculptures by Jean-Michel Folon at @abbayedevillers in Villers-La Ville. Get there before 4pm, any day up to 21 February. https://t.co/uTUPOFdR8C
Sat, 17:11: RT @sarahkmarr: It is time! to bring us together for a hauntological, folk-horror look at the Stonehenge tunnel. I hope you enjoy it: RT if…
Sun, 10:45: Why Negotiations Failed – The Armenian Mirror-Spectator https://t.co/EStDx7H7KO An Armenian perspective, but a realistic one, from the week before the ceasefire.
15 November 1910: birth of Geoffey Toone, who played Temmosus in Doctor Who and the Daleks (Cushing Doctor, 1965) and Hepesh in The Curse of Peladon (Third Doctor, 1972).
15 November 1926: birth of Richard Steele, who played Commandant Gorton in The War Games (Second Doctor, 1969), Sergeant Hart in Doctor Who and the Silurians (Third Doctor, 1970)
15 November 1933: birth of Donald Pickering, who played prosecutor Eyesen in The Keys of Marinus (First Doctor, 1964), Blade and his alien double in The Faceless Ones (Second Doctor, 1967), and Lakertyan leader Beyus in Time and the Rani (Seventh Doctor, 1987).
15 November 2016: death of Ken Grieve, who directed Destiny of the Daleks (Fourth Doctor, 1979).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
15 November 1975: broadcast of fourth episode of The Pyramids of Mars. The Doctor is forced to transfer Scarman to Mars, where he destroys the Eye of Horus, liberating Sutekh. But the Doctor manages to trap Sutekh in a time tunnel, destroying him and the priory.
15 November 1980: broadcast of fourth episode of Full Circle. The Doctor helps the Starliner to leave Alzareus, and Adric stows away on the Tardis.
15 November 1986: broadcast of third episode of Terror of the Vervoids (ToaTL #11). The Vervoids are gradually killing off passengers and crew; Bruchner sets the ship's controls for a black hole to destroy them all.
15 November 1989: broadcast of fourth episode of The Curse of Fenric. The Ancient One arises to challenge the Doctor; Ace realises that Audrey's baby is her mother; and the Doctor challenges Ace's faith in him to release the Ancient One who then kills Fenric.
streage but true: The four episodes of The Pyramids of Mars, Full Circle and The Curse of Fenric were all broadcast on the same four dates in 1975, 1980 and 1989.
15 November 2009: broadcast of The Waters of Mars. The Doctor lands at Bowie Base One on Mars, on the day he knows it will be destroyed; he tries to change the history of the day, but is thwarted by Adelaide.
15 November 2010: broadcast of first episode of Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith (SJA). Sarah believes that she has dementia. Can her replacement be trusted?
iii) date specified in canon
15 November 1966 (some sources have 1964): birth of Perpugilliam "Peri" Brown.
A couple of months ago, Anne and I went to the Fondation Folon in La Hulpe to see the art of Jean-Michel Folon on display. Like all other indoor cultural attractions, the Fondation is closed at the moment; but if you're in central Belgium and you feel like sampling his work, you can see a number of his sculptures on display at Villers Abbey, no reservation necessary, last admission at 4pm, get there before 21 February.
The biggest of the installations is the Alley of Thoughts, eight sculptures from the late 1990s, set up in the nave of the ruined Abbey church.
In the south transept you'll find Folon's Everyman as a guardian angel.
In the gardens he is carrying fish.
There are real fish too.
Like all of us, he's ready for a journey.
But what's in his case? The journey itself?
Or the destination? (Note the birds flying out of the suitcase towards me.)
This was Folon's final sculpture.
Even without Folon, the abbey is tremendously atmospheric.
It's only 45 minutes by car from Brussels, and for a bonus you can take a short detour to the Pierre-Qui-Tourne at Court-Saint-Étienne. Well worth a trip in these darker times.
Fri, 12:31: RT @FrancisWheen: A good moment to recommend that everyone should read the eye-opening, jaw-dropping chapter about the Yorkshire Ripper in…
Fri, 16:05: How Zoom calls revived my social anxiety https://t.co/ebfxmpxHVo @semcbain: “If you are instinctively shy or self-conscious, a video call is a uniquely awkward way to communicate.”
Fri, 16:43: Speaking at @EPC_eu, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (former UK ambassador to both the EU and the US) firmly predicts a united Ireland as a result of Brexit.
Fri, 18:55: RT @Peston: I know Dominic Cummings is supposedly staying till new year. But this rather looks like him having cleared his desk https://t.c…
Fri, 19:21: RT @gerrylynch: @nwbrux @epc_eu The NI economy is to be firmly oriented towards the Republic. People will be more likely to go to work meet…
Fri, 21:11: RT @DecKelleher: Sure. But remember the geopolitics issue was weaponised in 2017/18 in effort to split EU and marginalise Irish concerns ab…
Fri, 21:33: Hilarious. “Dom is going to have to face up to the fact that after spending years writing millions of words in his blogs, he has achieved nothing in government,” said one ministerial adviser. https://t.co/N63KvKVuba
Sat, 09:30: Whoniversaries 14 November: Paul McGann, Planet of Giants #3, Night of the Doctor, Sleep No More https://t.co/ocjLBUOzDT
Sat, 10:05: Prince Charles has now outlived all UK/GB rulers except George II, Edward VIII*, George III, Victoria and his mother. (Oh, Richard Cromwell*.) Also Scottish kings Edward Balliol*, Malcolm II, Robert II of Scotland and (probably) William I the Lion. * abdicated.
Sat, 10:45: RT @pmdfoster: The #Brexit talks enter yet another weekend with no obvious signs of progress in sight – what’s going on? Will the #Cummings…
14 November 1959: birth of Paul McGann, who played the Eighth Doctor in Doctor Who – The Movie (1996) and The Night of the Doctor (2013) – see below.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
14 November 1964: broadcast of “Crisis”, third episode of the story we now call Planet of Giants. Barbara is poisoned; the Doctor starts a fire to draw attention to what is going on; and all ends well.
14 November 2013: release of The Night of the Doctor. Took me by surprise!
14 November 2015: broadcast of Sleep No More. The Le Verrier space station fell silent only a day ago. No-one really knows what happened. However, some footage of the attempted rescue mission was found. The station appears empty, except for two nosy time travellers: the Doctor and Clara.
14 November 2021: broadcast of Once, Upon Time. Atropos has fallen, once again. The Doctor has thrown herself into a time storm in a desperate bid to save her friends. As Time itself comes apart, she finds much more than she bargained for.
I picked this off the bookshop shelves ages back, and have now got around to reading it. It's a graphic novel about Marie, growing up in England in the 1960s, Catholic family and school, but herself determined to live her own life and to love who she wants. And the story then goes through to the 1990s when things are different in some ways and the same in others, through sadness and happiness. I generally liked it, but was a bit surprised that Marie didn't especially seem to have learned much or developed much over the decades. Still, it's the kind of book you could give to gently educate. You can get it here.
Thu, 13:11: RT @stephenkb: Unpopular opinion, but I don’t think the government’s comms strategy was actually that bad. The reason why the government’s…
Thu, 15:46: RT @Tom_deWaal: @LaurenceBroers on the new Karabakh deal: “Robust agreements depend ultimately not on the scale, or longevity, of a peaceke…
13 November 1966: broadcast of "The Nightmare Begins", first episode of the story we now know as The Daleks' Master Plan. First appearance of Nicholas Courtney, as Bret Vyon who captures the Tardis after Brian Cant's character is killed on the planet Kembel. Meanwhile Mavic Chen, the Guardian of the Solar System, announces that he is going on holiday. In fact, he is in alliance with the Daleks.
13 November 1977: broadcast of third episode of The Deadly Assassin. The Doctor and Chancellor Goth battle through the nightmarish world of the Matrix, one of the most memorable of Who episodes.
13 November 2003: webcast of first episode of Scream of the Shalka starring Richard E. Grant as the other Ninth Doctor. The Tardis lands in the English town of Lannet, where peculiar volcanic eruptions are taking place and he meets Alison the barmaid.
13 November 2009: broadcast of second part of Mona Lisa's Revenge. Mona Lisa attempts to unleash The Abomination upon the world, but is thwarted by Sarah's gang with the assistance of K9.
Current Ash: A Secret History, by Mary Gentle Mahatma Gandhi: His Life and Times, by Louis Fischer Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake SS-GB, by Len Deighton The Inside of the Cup, by the other Winston S. Churchill The Daleks’ Master Plan, adapted by Rick Lundeen
Last books finished The Nth Doctor, by Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier The Official Doctor Who Annual 2021, by Paul Lang Borderline, by Mishell Baker Selected Prose, by Charles Lamb (did not finish)
Next books Painless, by Rich Larson After Me Comes the Flood, by Sarah Perry
As previously noted, I’m journalling every ten days while the current situation persists. We’re slowly turning the corner: today, for the first time since mid-September, both the numbers in hospital and the numbers in intensive care decreased from the previous day. It is taking longer to flatten the curve than in the spring, except in one respect – deaths seem to have peaked on 6 November. So I’m definitely not expecting any return to the office before December, but hopeful that it may not be too far into the month before we can go back.
The first is at the hamlet of Beaurieux in the commune of Court-Saint-Etienne. We parked just off the motorway and had a decent walk to get there – it’s several hundred metres up a sunken laneway. We had actually been there before, in 2011; it has been distinctly smartened up now.
The nearby Ferme de Beaurieux is being restored at public expense; there is a rather glorious millwheel.
Next on my list was the similarly named La Roche qui Tourne in Velaine-sur-Sambre, in the commune of Sambreville. It’s relatively well signposted – to get to it you have to walk across fields and then into a wood. As with La Pierre qui Tourne in Court-St-Etienne, there is no evidence of it actually turning – it’s pretty damn massive.
Finally, La Grosse Pierre at Perwez is, despite the name the smallest of the three. It is also pleasingly presented, with a young oak tree (I think) providing shade.
These menhirs are fundamentally mysterious. We know that they are there; we know that people delibertaly put them there; we don’t really know why.
Since the development of writing, we have made it easier to interpret our public remembrances. Just a few hundred metres from La Grosse Pierre is a small memorial to a crashed Allied plane from the second world war; most of the crew were killed, but the survivors were picked up by the “Comet” resistance group and survived camping in the woods until the liberation, just like in Secret Army. (Click to embiggen.)
From here we went on to Huy, where I hoped to find some vestiges of Patrick Sarsfield. Sarsfield was the glamorous general of King James II of England (and VII of Scotland) who suffered fatal injuries at the Battle of Neerwinden in 1693, and died and was buried at Huy. His wife Honora Burke, who he had married in 1689 when she was 15 and was pregnant with their second child when he died, was the (much) younger sister of my 5x great-grandfather, the 9th Earl of Clanricarde.
I had seen references to a plaque commemorating Sarsfield on the walls of the ruined Church of St Martin in Huy. Alas, the sign there now has no reference to him.
There clearly was a plaque there previously, because there is photographic evidence, and you can see that it was on the wall immediately above the current plaque.
More locally, yesterday was Armistice Day, and a public holiday. Our town hall has set up and outside exhibition about local experience of the Second World War; I went and had a look.
A lot of it was stuff I already knew, or that was not so surprising; but I had not heard of Sister (Leen) Baggen, who rescued twenty Jewish children from an orphanage in Leuven and found them cover at the house of Dr Lemaire near the railway station.
It is tastefully done, and there were a fair number of local people there too, though the usual 11 November ceremony had been cancelled for obvious reasons.
Wed, 13:04: RT @OlyaOliker: Active fighting in and around Nagorno-Karabakh appears to be over, with Russian peacekeepers deploying and Armenian forces…
Wed, 15:31: RT @Tom_deWaal: Moscow played a brilliant game to win the deal to stop the new #Karabakh conflict and get its peacekeepers on the ground. B…
Wed, 16:05: RT @NasriAtallah: Remember when Trump tried to buy Greenland? That was weird. Also, that was only a year ago.
Wed, 16:19: RT @hypnojoo: Great intro to one of the most excellent #britishcomics here – Misty! To find out even more about this amazing girls’ mystery…
Wed, 17:11: Biden’s 36 years in the Senate give him more Capitol Hill experience than all presidents since and including Ford (1974-77), combined. Ford served 25 years in the House; GHW Bush 4 in the House; Obama less than 4 in the Senate; none of the others was ever elected to Congress.
Wed, 22:04: RT @Tom_deWaal: And here I am summarizing the new #Karabakh deal in the @nytimes. Very good that it halts violence, thousands of IDPs can g…
Thu, 09:01: RT @lisaocarroll: Here’s the letter from Peter McSwinney just cited by Newsnight telling HMRC that Brexit customs system not ready and trad…
Thu, 10:17: RT @p_zalewski: Meanwhile, Turkmenistan’s president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has just unveiled a gisnt statue of his favorite dog https:/…
12 November 1964: publication of Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks by David Whitaker, the first and still the best novelisation of any of the televised stories. Hunt it down if you can – any self-respecting fan should have a copy.
12 November 1966: broadcast of second episode of The Power of the Daleks. Despite the Doctor's best efforts, Lesterson revives one of the metal monsters, which harshly declares itself to be the humans' "ser-vant".
12 November 1977: broadcast of third episode of Image of the Fendahl. Much chasing around the priory, culminating in the summoning of the Fendahleen by Stael and his followers.
12 November 2006: broadcast of Small Worlds (Torchwood), the one with the creepy fairies and people coughing up rose petals.
12 November 2007: broadcast of first episode of The Lost Boy (SJA). Luke apparently is really the son of Jay and Heidi; Mr Smith is really a Xylok; Jay and Heidi are really Slitheen. (Do try to keep up.)
12 November 2008: broadcast of first episode of Mona Lisa's Revenge (SJA). The Mona Lisa comes alive and captures Sarah Jane. (I told you, do try to keep up.)
By great good chance I happened to be in New York during the first week of November 2008, so I was able to witness at first hand the jubilation around Obama's first election as President. It's a nice coincidence for this month to come up now in my schedule of posts about previous years' reading, as we watch Trump's inability to cope with the reality of defeat. McCain has a lot more class.
We also had a lovely weekend in Cambridge, marred however by the car breaking down on the Brussels ring road just as we were nearing home at 3.30 am.
Literally the following day, I went on one of my regular visits to Cyprus. I filmed a few streetscape shots of the northern part of Nicosia, with the intention of sharing them with work colleagues, but in the end was not satisfied with either the sound or the picture quality. Still, for posterity, here they are.
With transatlantic and Cyprus travels, I read 32 books in November 2008.
9,200 pages (YTD 85,300)
8/32 by women (YTD 47/355)
none by PoC (YTD 355)
I'm going to single out four good ones this month:
Who Goes There (Travels through Strangest Britain, in Search of the Doctor), by Nick Griffiths – a great book about looking for famous Doctor Who locations in England and Wales, while dealing with real life as well. You can get it here.
The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett, a lovely little novella about Queen Elizabeth II suddenly deciding to start reading, and the viciously negative reactions of her advisers to her new habit. You can get it here.
Science Fiction Hall of Fame: The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Time, edited by Robert Silverberg, one of those classic collections, assembling the top sf stories published before 1965 as voted for by the membership of SFWA in the late 1960s. You can get it here.
Alias vol 4: The Secret Origins of Jessica Jones, by Brian Michael Bendis and others; so many pages here where Bendis and the artists achieve statements that couldn't be made in any other medium – the schooldays flashback, Jessica's first encounter with other superheroes, and the unspoken parts of her conversations with her friends and lovers. You can get it here.
Tue, 12:56: RT @marktigheST: This is the explosive letter from the Chief Justice sent to fellow Supreme Court Judge Seamus Woulfe on November 5 saying…
Tue, 16:05: Hacking Europe’s elections – international law may have an answer https://t.co/fRENRxR6X7 Fighting back against external influence – by law.
Tue, 18:47: UK was never serious about respecting commitments given to Dublin and EU on Ireland, if I understand @AndrewPRLevi correctly. Makes sense, I must admit. https://t.co/DoQYMGccNE
Wed, 10:45: The UK Has Seen More Deaths From COVID-19 Than the Whole of Africa. Here Are 6 Reasons Why. https://t.co/xahCcebK3B Younger population, more used to epidemics, warmer climate; and we don’t have the full numbers. https://t.co/45ezMiRcLn
Wed, 11:15: NAMING OF PARTS, by Henry Reed To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday, We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning, We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day, To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens, 1/7
I considered commemorating the births of Stubby Kaye (1918) and June Whitfield (1925) but since neither appeared in more than one Doctor Who story – respectively Delta and the Bannermen (Seventh Doctor, 1987) and The End of Time I (Tenth Doctor, 2009) – I decided I wouldn't mention them.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
11 November 1967: broadcast of first episode of The Ice Warriors. Britannica base, fighting a new Ice Age enveloping Britain (and the whole planet) finds a frozen humanoid and three people arriving from the Tardis, all of whom are intrigued by future fashion.
11 November 1978: broadcast of third episode of The Stones of Blood. The Doctor finds the hyperspace ship and is confronted by the Megara; Amelia and K9 have to deal with the Ogri.
11 November 2018: broadcast of Demons of the Punjab. The Tardis crew get caught up in Yazmin's family history and the 1947 Partition of India.
iii) date specified in canon
11 November 1913: the Doctor defeats the Family of Blood, as seen in, er, The Family of Blood (2007).
John and I have discussed the situation in Breckenridge and decided to keep going until we have to stop.
I'd read this many years ago, of course, and what seemed to me like deep philosophical insights in my early twenties now seem like charmingly enough told philosophy lectures framed as a road trip. (Coincidentally, I've just been on a short road trip with my own son today. Pictures to come.) It's mostly a good read; I think it's still kind of grounding and helpful.
The difference between reading it now and reading it in the 1980s is that there is a whole host of internet fandom around the book that you can browse, including (in several places) photographs from the 1968 trip on which the story is based. Here's a particularly lovely one of the author and Chris on the famous bike (which itself is now in the Smithsonian).
There are some references which are darker than the author first intended. I was struck by the description of the Church of the Minorites:
But the print, Feininger’s “Church of the Minorites,” had an appeal to him that was irrelevant to the art in that its subject, a kind of Gothic cathedral, created from semiabstract lines and planes and colors and shades, seemed to reflect his mind’s vision of the Church of Reason and that was why he’d put it here.
It is indeed quite a striking image:
But the sad fact is that by 1968, it was more than twenty years too late to see it in real life; the Barfüßerkirche in Erfurt was reduced to a shell by Allied bombs in 1944. I think Pirsig would have loved to use that metaphor if he's been aware of it, so I guess he just didn't know.
Mon, 12:37: Good stuff from @NathalieTocci. “It would be a terrible mistake for Europeans to believe that President Trump was an aberration, and that the good old days of the transatlantic relationship are back.” https://t.co/u1copfJHTf
Mon, 13:05: RT @cstross: @CER_Grant @nwbrux @CER_EU Flawed analysis in the >12 month term; a key disruptive technology is unaccounted for. (The price o…
Mon, 13:05: RT @cstross: @CER_Grant @nwbrux @CER_EU The consequence of a global shift to solar within 20 years is going to be a change to the ground ru…
Mon, 13:39: RT @TotalSeasons: Thanks for asking, but our current receptionist pulled off one hell of a booking this week so we’re going to stick with h…
Mon, 16:05: RT @renay: It’s a good interview and she’s on point: I hope the moderates can take the criticism and fold it in to making changes, but I wo…
Mon, 20:19: RT @RobotArchie: My takeaways from this 1) Joe Biden is the first person to figure out how to handle Trump. Don’t respond. Leave the spotl…
Mon, 22:12: RT @simoncoveney: It’s for UK Parl to legislate as it sees fit. But understand, if UK passes law designed to break International Law, WI &…
Tue, 00:43: RT @Tom_deWaal: Breaking news. And suddenly here it is (in Russian only so far) a Moscow-enforced peace on Azerbaijani terms. Armenian forc…
Tue, 02:22: RT @ryanmofarrell: Quick map of what parts of #Artsakh/#Karabakh Armenians keep (yellow), what’s already militarily seized & kept by Azerba…
10 November 1936: birth of Terence Lodge, who played the unfortunate Medok in The Macra Terror (Second Doctor, 1967), reluctant coup-ist Orum in Carnival of Monsters (Third Doctor, 1973) and the hapless Moss in Planet of the Spiders (Third Doctor, 1974),
10 November 1960: birth of Neil Gaiman, who wrote Hugo-winning The Doctor's Wife (Eleventh Doctor, 2011) and also Nightmare in Silver (Eleventh Doctor, 2013); and a few other things, I understand.
10 November 1989: death of Clyde Pollitt, who played a Time Lord (the Chancellor) in The War Games (Second Doctor, 1969) and The Three Doctors (Third Doctor, 1973).
10 November 1991: death of Tutte Lemkow, who played Kuiju in Marco Polo (First Doctor, 1964), Ibrahim in The Crusade (First Doctor, 1965), and Cyclops in The Myth Makers (also First Doctor, 1965). The first of these is lost but the other two survive. He also choreographed the dancing scenes in The Celestial Toymaker (1966).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
10 November 1979: broadcast of third episode of The Creature from the Pit. In a memorable scene, the Doctor talks to the Creature, and the egg device comes alive.
10 November 2008: broadcast of second episode of The Mark of the Berserker (SJA). Maria, in a welcome (but, alas, final) cameo, tells Luke, Clyde and Rani the secret of the pendant. Clyde retrieves it and tells his father to catch himself on.
iii) date specified in canon
10 November 1913: the Family of Blood arrives in England, as seen in Human Nature (2007).
