It’s Dark in London, ed. Oscar Zárate

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Second paragraph of third story (“The Known of Kensal Rising” by Josh Appignanesi – one of the prose pieces, most are in comics format):

“It’s all right, Dad,” I said. “You don’t have to take that tone with me. Just… tell me how you are.” We had stopped walking. There was a moment like a short folding in time. From beneath a furrowed brow, without making any sound, he said, “I’m just so fucking lonely.”

A collection of short pieces about London, of which the two standouts are “The Court” by Neil Gaiman and Warren Pleece, and “I Keep Coming Back” by Alan Moore and Oscar Zárate; most of the rest are little more than vignettes and some of them are a bit confused at that. Originally published in 1996, this 2012 edition has more material (though does not indicate what has been added).

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The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl, by Belle de Jour

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Second paragraph from ‘mars’ [=’March’] chapter, from the ‘A-Z of London sex work’ series of side-bars, discussing oil:

Aside from degrading barrier protection, it’s a rubbish lubricant in general. A man once suggested (whipping out a tub of Vaseline as he did so) attempting to fist me with a petrolatum-based aid. Are you joking? That stuff traps heat and makes it feel like someone’s deep-frying your labia.

This is a really funny and frank look at the high end of the London sex work market, by a scientist and feminist who ended up being played by Billie Piper on TV in her first major role after Doctor Who. I guess some readers will be disappointed to find that the sexual politics in the book is more prominent than the actual descriptions of the act, but if you want a provocative and witty read about sex and society, this is a very good place to start.

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The Angel Maker, by Stefan Brijs

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘You look very much like your father.’

A peculiarly awful book set in Belgium a few years ago, in a town near the Drielandenpunt where a new local doctor moves in with his triplet sons and a sinister unspoken history of discredited scientific experimentation. I thought that the book was trying to navigate the fuzzy boundary between mainstream Belgian literature and horror, and frankly got lost en route, going for shock rather than substance. I got it because I’m always on the lookout for books about Belgium that have made a minor hit in English, but this wasn’t worth it.

This was both the top unread non-genre fiction book on my shelf, and the top unread book acquired in 2014. Next on those lists respectively are Caprice and Rondo, by Dorothy Dunnett, and Corum, by Michael Moorcock.

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1688: A Global History, by John E. Wills

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Sir:
I do not know what sort of people you are. We are Frenchmen. We are among the savages. We would like very much to be among the Christians, such as we are. We know well that you are Spaniards. We do not know if you will attack us. We are very vexed to be among beasts like these who believe neither in God or in anything. Sirs, if you are willing to take to away you have only to send something in writing. Since we have little or nothing to do, as soon as we see the note we will come to you.

Sir, I am your very humble and obedient servant,
Jean l’Archeveque of Bayonne.

This is an interesting concept – looking at a single year and the political events of the entire world that happened in that year, casting the net as widely as possible to capture every continent. Of course in the home archipelago this is the year of the so-called Glorious Revolution, in which the Catholic James II of England and VII of Scotland was overthrown by a suspicious Protestant elite; in the eastern Mediterranean, the Venetians and Austrians were fighting the Ottomans; up north near St Petersburg, 1500 Old Believers burned to death rather than submit to Russian rule.

However, I confess I’m writing this up some months after I read it, and I remember very little about it. The best bit is an exploration of Japanese poetry and sexual customs of the period. There are also good bits about Australia, science and the Dutch East India Company. But it doesn’t hang together as one might have wished.

The problem with taking a snapshot like this is that you necessarily get a static rather than dynamic picture. Stories in history depend on capturing long-term trends to illustrate why particular moments are so important. If you have picked your moments for chronology rather than story, you throw away your advantage.

This was the non-fiction book which had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next in that list is Alexander the Corrector: The Tormented Genius Whose Cruden’s Concordance Unwrote the Bible, by Julia Keay; but I can’t find it, so I’ll go on to What Made Now in Northern Ireland, a book of essays edited by the late great Maurna Crozier.

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The Dancers At The End Of Time

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘Dear friends, you have doubtless already guess that this party has a theme. That theme, needless to say, is “Disaster”.’

This reached the top of my pile of unread sf books as recommended by you, without my realising that I had in fact read it in 2005. My review from then is posted below; nothing in the first 50 pages made me think I would change my mind this time (though there are two nice introductions by John Clute and bythe author himself), so I am moving on to something else. Next in that particular pile is The Past Through Tomorrow, by Robert A. Heinlein, which was already high up the list.

Originally posted by at May Books 1) The Dancers At The End Of Time

1) The Dancers At The End Of Time, by Michael Moorcock

Edition uniting An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands, and The End of All Songs. A bit of a one-joke book, this: hero from sexually liberated culture falls in love with woman from a much more repressed culture; this basic plot is the making of many stirring love stories, but here it is played for laughs, the repressed culture being late nineteenth-century London. The anarchic, pansexual, abundant society at the End of Time perhaps inspired Iain M. Banks a little, but Banks carries it off much better. Comic policemen and small furry (but vicious) aliens caper rather pointlessly through the timewarps, as do in-joke characters from Moorcock’s other books and from elsewhere. The end of the universe happens but doesn’t seem to make much difference.

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Whyte backs DUP shock: my input to the Northern Ireland Boundary Commission secondary consultation

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Dear Commissioners,

1. Thank you for your placing the results of your first round of consultation online for comment. I must say that reading through them has been an educational process and I have changed my mind on a couple of key issues as a result. Specifically, I am no longer convinced that removing a seat from Belfast is inevitable (I never felt that it was desirable).

2. Before I get into the detail, however, I must admit that my own zeal for engagement with this phase of your review has been somewhat diminished by the outcome of the June 2017 Westminster election. Simply put, I do not believe that there will be a parliamentary majority for your proposed changes (and those of your fellow Commissioners in England, Scotland and Wales) when push comes to shove. It is probable that all of the opposition parties will oppose changes which generally benefit the Conservative Party, and the DUP’s emphatic rejection of the abolition of Northern Ireland’s 18th seat surely commits them to vote against as well. So I fear that your excellent work will (for a second consecutive cycle) not produce a legislative result.

3. Nonetheless, it is always an interesting exercise to see how boundaries might and could be changed. By my calculation it is likely that even if it is decided that the next Review should be for a 650-seat House of Commons, Northern Ireland would still be entitled to only 17 seats on a pure electoral headcount (going by the figures from the June 2017 election), so your work this time will therefore be a dry run for the real thing in a few years’ time.

Preserving Four Seats in Belfast

4. As stated above, my views have been changed on the number of seats that should be allocated to the Belfast urban area. There are three main reasons for this:

5. First, I considered the pretty strict wording of the Commission’s mandate. Rule 5 (1) gives the following factors that the Boundary Commission “may” take into account (in fact this is the only guidance other than mathematics provided in the legislation, so that “may” is a bit more forceful than mere semantics would suggest):

  1. special geographical considerations, including in particular the size, shape and accessibility of a constituency;
  2. local government boundaries as they exist on the most recent ordinary council-election day before the review date;
  3. boundaries of existing constituencies
  4. any local ties that would be broken by changes in constituencies;
  5. the inconveniences attendant on such changes.

Rule 9 (3) d explains that in Northern Ireland, “local government boundaries” means the boundaries of wardslocal government districts are not mentioned.

6. It is therefore clear that the Commission should in general prioritise the grouping of wards already sharing a parliamentary constituency over the grouping of wards which are co-located in one of the (relatively new) local government districts. When the Commission decided (4.4 of its Provisional report) that the “Belfast constituencies should, taken together and as far as possible, match the borders of Belfast City Council”, it therefore misdirected itself.

7. This point applies also to the awful Upper Bann and Blackwater proposal, which is mistakenly based on the geographical clustering of wards without regard to existing constituency links.

8. Second, though perhaps more important, it is striking that local sentiment runs strongly in favour of keeping four seats in Belfast. Claire Hanna MLA, Paul Andrews, Jason Cantellaven, Albert Cooke and Dale Pankhurst all make this point in general terms. Michael and Shauna Dunlop object to the Four Winds (less than 4 miles from the city centre) being taken out of a Belfast constituency. Stephen Michael Orr makes the same objection with regard to Cairnshill. James Marshall makes the same objection with regard to Dunmurry. Antrim and Newtownabbey Council are understandably upset at the dissection of Glengormley. Personally, I grew up in South Belfast myself and am well aware of the strength of local identity; perhaps I have been subconsciously and unnecessarily over-correcting for my own strong feelings.

9. Third, I did not think that it was possible to construct convincing maps that would keep Belfast at four constituencies by annexing surrounding territory. I had not been able to make the figures work out myself, and I remembered being unimpressed by the proposals made by the SDLP last time around. But I think I have been proved wrong on this. The SDLP’s proposed map this time is a much more credible effort to keep Belfast at four constituencies, and the DUP map actually better still.

10. I therefore withdraw my endorsement of my own proposals for a three-seat Belfast submitted to you last year, though of course they remain on the record for you and others to analyse. My proposals for the West of Northern Ireland remain robust, I think.

The DUP map

11. Somewhat to my surprise, I find myself largely accepting the proposals made by the DUP as the best basis for further consideration in the East, if we are to start from the premises that 1) Belfast should if possible be kept to four seats and 2) there should be as little disruption to the southern constituencies as possible. The DUP and SDLP proposals are the only ones that

  1. preserve a four-seat Belfast,
  2. keep Fermanagh and South Tyrone largely as it is, and
  3. assign the Ards Peninsula to North Down.

12. The SDLP proposals, however, are visually less attractive and their numbers for South Belfast are still too small by 86 voters. It’s also worth noting that the DUP proposals move only 213,291 voters to new constituencies, fewer than the 238,845 moved by the SDLP proposals and much fewer than the 363,382 who are moved in the Commission’s Provisional Recommendations. This is surely significant considering Rule 5 (1) c. (The UUP proposals move even fewer voters to new constituencies – only 195,486 – but unfortunately start from a three-seat Belfast.)

13. The DUP proposals are not completely satisfactory – in particular, there are several quite geographically large wards in the hinterland of South Belfast – but I think overall they are the best that can be done for the city, and I have not been able to generate better alternatives (as mentioned above, the SDLP proposals are not as good). They certainly address all the specific objections mentioned above. I therefore endorse the DUP proposals for the four Belfast seats, giving electorates of 72,994 for East Belfast, 73,285 for North Belfast, 69,881 for South Belfast, and 73,732 for West Belfast.

14. The South Belfast number is below 71,031, the lower limit for England, Scotland and Wales (excluding the four island constituencies), but is above the 69,401 limit that applies to Northern Ireland under Rule 7. As I argued in my first submission, the Commission should not hesitate to use the flexibility that Parliament has given it in order to design seats that are suited to Northern Ireland’s unique geographical circumstances.

15. I have the following comments regarding the DUP proposals for elsewhere.

The Southeast

16. A couple of preliminary notes on views arising from the public consultation. I have not changed my mind on the merits of assigning the Ards Peninsula to the Bangor-based seat of North Down, and assigning Dundonald (and possibly the fringes of North Down and Ards District nearest Belfast) elsewhere. I see that the local MP, Lady Sylvia Hermon, agrees on that point, as do the Alliance Party, the DUP and the UUP.

17. On a neighbouring issue, I note also that former MP Margaret Ritchie, Claire Hanna MLA and William Bell all write in support of the Commission’s proposal to include Crossgar in South Down, which was also my position in my first submission (and is supported also by the Alliance Party, William Brown and David Whitehead) . Interestingly the SDLP, of which Ms Ritchie is a former leader and Ms Hanna a leading member, and councillor Joe Boyle (also of the SDLP) prefer for Crossgar to be included in Strangford, as do the DUP, David McWhinney, Michael Moriarty, and the UUP.

North Down and Ards

18. I endorse the DUP proposals, which, like my own, include the Ards Peninsula and moves the Loughview ward to East Belfast. They also move Cultra and Holywood to East Belfast, which makes sense given the overall picture of a four-seat BelfastHolywood is closer to the centre of Belfast than it is to Bangor. This would have an electorate of 70,529 (requiring the invocation of Rule 7).

19. I do not agree with the DUP proposal to change the name to North Down and ArdsNorth Down is descriptive and accurate enough.

Mid Down / Strangford

20. Because of the DUP’s expansion of Belfast, Strangford can go much further west than in my own proposals, and I endorse the DUP proposal, with the exception that Crossgar and Killyleagh should remain in South Down (per the discussion above) and Banbridge East should be added instead. This would have an electorate of 70,524 (requiring the invocation of Rule 7).

21. Given how far west the constituency now goes, Mid Down would be a much more appropriate name than Strangford.

South Down

22. The DUP proposals include Loughbrickland and Banbridge East, where my own original proposals instead had Drumaness, Ballynahinch, and Crossgar and Killyleagh in South Down. Here I would respect local opinion and keep Crossgar and Killyleagh in South Down; however I admit that the map overall will be much easier if South Down also includes Loughbrickland. (But I accept the DUP view that South Down should not include Ballynahinch, Banbridge East or Drumaness.) This would have an electorate of 74,104.

Newry and Armagh

23. The DUP proposals include Loughgall in this constituency rather than Tandragee (which my own proposals and the Boundary Commission’s Provisional Proposals have the other way round). On reflection, I agree with including Loughgall but not Tandragee, and this also meets the objection raised by Philip Agnew. It’s certainly the case that Tandragee is physically much closer to Craigavon than to Armagh. I therefore endorse the DUP proposals for this constituency, which would have an electorate of 75,635.

Upper Bann

24. This unfortunately ends up being the seat that is most squeezed by the system, though the DUP proposals are kinder to it than the Boundary Commission was. I have experimented with adding Derrytrasna and subtracting Banbridge East, to improve internal coherence, but unfortunately the numbers are against us and I reluctantly endorse the DUP proposals, giving an electorate of 69,711 (requiring the invocation of Rule 7).

25. This also satisfies Conor and Malachy Mulholland who felt that Aghagallon should be in a Lisburn-based seat rather than Upper Bann and Blackwater.

26. The DUP additionally propose splitting Derrytrasna along the M1, with the northern part going to Lagan Valley/South Antrim and the southern part staying in Upper Bann. I think that is worth exploring and would help with the numbers. As I said in my original proposal, the Commission should follow the example of its fellow Boundary Commissions across the water and feel free to split wards when necessary.

The West

Fermanagh and South Tyrone

27. It is really striking how badly the proposed constituency of Upper Bann and Blackwater has been received. Five community associations, the Bush Community Cultural Group,the Dungannon Regeneration Partnership, Granville Residents Association, the Moygashel Residents Association and the Simpson Grant Association all object to the splitting of Dungannon. The detailed proposals from the Alliance Party, Wiliam Brown, the DUP, David McWhinney, the SDLP, the Traditional Unionist Voice, the UUP, David Whitehead and myself all retain Dungannon in Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

28. I disagree with the DUP’s proposed addition of Trillick to the constituency; it’s not necessary for the numbers, and it’s a ward that looks to Omagh rather than Enniskillen.

29. Fermanagh and South Tyrone should be as in my own original proposals, with an electorate of 71,036, just within 5% of the UK quota with therefore no need to invoke Rule 7 (though as I have argued above, the Commission should not hesitate to invoke it where necessary).

30. If Fermanagh and South Tyrone is kept as it is, the effect will be that there is not enough space in it for several of the former Omagh district wards which the Commission proposed to include – Dromore, Drumquin, Fintona, Newtownsaville and probably Trillick, let alone the former Strabane wards of Castlederg, Glenderg and Newtown Stewart. This will satisfy the objections raised by Ryan McKinney and William Gordon Nabney to the Provisional Proposals.

West Tyrone/Sperrin/West Tyrone and Sperrin

31. The DUP’s proposal to include the Ballykelly, Dungiven, Feeney and Magilligan wards makes this clumsy and ragged at the northern edge. I stand by my original proposal to include instead the wards of Donaghmore, Oaklands and Pomeroy, and Trillick as noted above, and also to include Claudy in the Foyle constituency. This gives an electorate of 73,583. (My original submission says 73,102 for some reason.) The name Sperrin fits this seat much better than West Tyrone.

Foyle

32. As noted above, I would change the DUP and Commission proposals by including Claudy in this constituency. It looks much more to Derry than to Coleraine or Limavady. This gives an electorate of 73,934.

Glenshane / Mid Ulster

33. Again, I stand by my original proposal (even though I was not particularly happy with it), which like the DUP’s would add Garvagh and Kilrea to the boundaries proposed by the Commission, but would also add Dungiven, Feeney and Altahullion, while removing Donaghmore, Oaklands and Pomeroy to the West Tyrone/Sperrins constituency. This has an electorate of 70,967 (requiring the invocation of Rule 7).

34. To improve the map, Altahullion could be split with the area south of and including the townlands of Ardinarive and Straw retained in Glenshane and the remainder allocated to the northern coastal constituency. This is unlikely to pull the numbers below 69,401.

County Antrim

East Londonderry and North Antrim / Causeway Coast and Glens / Dalriada

35. The DUP’s proposal to include the Ballycastle area in the northern coastal constituency, rather than Clogh Mills and Rasharkin, is better than mine and I accept it. However at the western end, I remain convinced that my original proposal is better – the seat should include the two coastal wards of Ballykelly and Greysteel, and should not include (most of) Altahullion. This would have an electorate of 76,915.

36. I would further advocate splitting Altahullion by including its territory north of and including the townland of Leeke in the northern coastal seat. This would probably bring a few hundred more voters in, but I think that is unlikely to breach the 78,507 limit.

37. Since the new boundaries map reasonably closely to those of the new district of Causeway Coast and Glens, I recommend that the constituency should also have the name Causeway Coast and Glens.

Bannside / West Antrim / Mid Antrim

38. As noted above, the DUP proposals move Clogh Mills and Rasharkin to this seat, and given the adjustments that must be made elsewhere I accept this. This seat has an electorate of 77,030. Mid Antrim would be a much better name for this seat than West Antrim or Bannside.

East Antrim

39. Given the proposed expansion of North Belfast into Newtownabbey, the DUP proposals are pretty sensible and give an electorate of 75,014.

South Antrim/Lagan Valley

40. Again somewhat reluctantly, I endorse the DUP proposal for “Lagan Valley”, with an electorate of 72,614. However the boundaries now wander so far from the historical Lagan Valley and have shifted northwards to such an extent that I propose making this the successor to South Antrim in name.

41. The DUP propose splitting Derrytrasna along the M1, with the northern part going to Lagan Valley/South Antrim and the southern part to Upper BannConclusion

42. The “crowd-sourcing” element of the Commission’s methodology is worthy of praise. Even when individual commentators are far from the consensus, their thoughts are worth considering.

43. The likelihood that this must all be done again in five years, possibly for a different number of constituencies, is pretty draining. It would be much better for Assembly constituencies at least to be more tightly tied to the local government districts than to Westminster constituencies.

44. I know I say this every time, but it remains true: the redrawing of constituency boundaries is a matter of painful adjustment not only for political parties (in my view, regrettable enough considering the other demands that are placed on them) but also to civil society and for the democratic process as a whole. I am sure that the Commission are mindful of this; I hope that others reading these words are similarly mindful.

Nicholas Whyte
2 October 2017

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Sunday Reading

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Current
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (a chapter a month)

Last books finished
The Red Leaguers, by Shan F. Bullock
The Famished Road, by Ben Okri
Peoplewatching, by Desmond Morris
Space Helmet for a Cow, vol 2, by Paul Kirkley

Next books
The Dancers at the End of Time, by Michael Moorcock
Alexander the Corrector: The Tormented Genius Whose Cruden's Concordance Unwrote the Bible, by Julia Keay
Short Trips: Christmas Around the World, ed. Xanna Eve Chown

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September Books

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Non-fiction: 4 (YTD 38)
Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
A Short Guide to Irish Science Fiction, by Jack Fennell
Peoplewatching, by Desmond Morris
Space Helmet for a Cow, vol 2, by Paul Kirkley
588160F5-A3A7-4DE9-AFE3-EAFDB626D071.jpeg 109D4B8C-DF0C-49BA-A7F1-7090809CAF62.jpeg 003288C3-9BA2-4B94-8180-52DF4253F122.jpeg 2F7952BD-C7DE-499B-8BA0-323C0ECA4285.jpeg

sf (non-Who): 4 (YTD 60)
Synners, by Pat Cadigan
Press Cuttings, by George Bernard Shaw
The Red Leaguers, by Shan F. Bullock
The Famished Road, by Ben Okri
IMG_1062.JPG 25D6150C-B598-4A34-A7A2-7DCA754236FC.jpeg 644BA976-61E4-4C82-B672-A837FD736566.jpeg

Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 42)
How The Doctor Changed My Life, ed. Simon Guerrier
Life During Wartime, ed. Paul Cornell
Diamond Dogs, by Mike Tucker
6009FBCB-0EF6-450D-B092-878DC0900D59.jpeg5DE51B90-446A-499D-9020-84514B93D203.jpeg 1785942697.01._SX175_SY250_SCLZZZZZZZ_[1].jpg

Comics: 4 (YTD 21)
Antarès, Épisode 2, by Leo
Onthuld, by Kristof Spaey and Bart Vaessens
Antarès, Épisode 3, by Leo
Antarès, Épisode 4, by Leo
8A9E44A3-1763-47BD-8640-9A9FB9FF690D.jpeg 2017-09-16 18.24.38.png 8627C0CD-D8E1-49A1-B6EF-D96400486666.jpeg 3A112BCA-5A9C-43F4-9EF2-E846DF6E6CE5.jpeg

3,600 pages (YTD 44,000)
1/15 (YTD 48/178) by women (Cadigan)
1/15 (YTD 16/178) by PoC (Okri)

Reread: 0 (YTD 8)

Reading now
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (a chapter a month)

Coming soon (perhaps):
The Dancers at the End of Time, by Michael Moorcock
Alexander the Corrector: The Tormented Genius Whose Cruden's Concordance Unwrote the Bible, by Julia Keay
The Past Through Tomorrow, by Robert A. Heinlein
Caprice and Rondo, by Dorothy Dunnett
The Last Castle, by Jack Vance
Thorns, by Robert Silverberg
A Man of Parts, by David Lodge
A Crocodile in the Fernery: An A-Z of Animals in the Garden, by Twigs Way
Wild Life, by Molly Gloss
Virginia Woolf, by Hermione Lee
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl
Dear Old Dead, by Jane Haddam
Corum: The Prince in the Scarlet Robe, by Michael Moorcock
Wolf in White Van, by John Darnielle
Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: Notes on Science Fiction and Culture in the Year of Angry Dogs, by Philip Sandifer
Everfair, by Nisi Shawl
The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses, by Kevin Birmingham
The World of Yesterday, by Stefan Zweig
Brave New Worlds: Dystopian Stories, ed. John Joseph Adams
The Autumnlands, Vol. 1: Tooth and Claw, by Kurt Busiek
The Fall of Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis
Short Trips: Christmas Around the World, ed. Xanna Eve Chown
The Big Hunt, by Lance Parkin
Plague City, by Jonathan Morris

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Broadway Melody (1929)

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I was a bit surprised by the number of people who pushed back against my plan to watch all the winners of the Oscar for Best Picture from beginning to the present day. Sure, I take the point that the Oscars have not always got it right. I also take the much more serious point that they are heavily slanted towards Hollywood with very little input from the world outside the United States (and certain gaps within it). If I wanted to watch the 90 or 100 best movies ever, there are a large number of potentially better sources to go to than the list of Oscar winners.

And yet, it’s always going to be a bit arbitrary, isn’t it? And I have to be honest and say that my interest isn’t (or isn’t only) in the potential of cinema as a medium. I am also interested in the history of culture in the Anglosphere, and in the Oscars as a political process. Any set of Best Films that I choose to pursue is going to be someone else’s choice; I choose the Academy Awards, not because I expect them all to be good but because I expect them to be interesting.

So, having got my throat-clearing out of the way, on with The Broadway Melody, which won the Academy Award for Outstanding Picture presented in 1930. There were seven awards in total that year, and every one went to a different film, the first and last time that has ever happened; this also means that The Broadway Melody was the first of three films to win Best Picture (or equivalent) and no other award on the night. For context I will note that the other films in contention that year were Alibi, In Old Arizona, The Hollywood Revue (which featured the first performance of “Singin’ In the Rain”) and The Patriot. None of the other Outstanding Picture nominees places higher than 30th on IMDB’s ranking of the 1929 films. The IMDB rates The Broadway Melody as the second most popular feature film of 1929 after Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail (which was presumably too British to get nominated for the Academy Awards) or possibly third after Pandora’s Box (presumably too German). I have not seen, or even heard of, any of the above.

The Broadway Melody was apparently the first real musical film, with both a plot and songs that made sense in the context of that plot, taking advantage of the brand new talkie technology. Apparently it was also the first to use sound dubbing and had a brief colour segment (which does not survive); more on that later. So my expectations are somewhat shaped by nine decades of subsequent Hollywood musicals, of which the most recent one I have seen is Les Miserables, or maybe The LEGO Movie. Even so, it holds up pretty well – sometimes ground-breaking stuff loses because of subsequent treading on that ground, but this is not one of those cases.

As before I’ll run through the bits that struck me in reverse order of favourability.

Whiteness: This is a film set in the musical world of New York. Not a single black face to be seen, not even among hotel attendants.

Comic disability: A character with a speech impediment which is awfully funny.

Plot and script: Boy is engaged to girl; boy meets girl’s pretty young sister and instant spark ensues; pretty young sister allows herself to be distracted by a cad but ends up with boy. Meanwhile they are all on stage, or trying to get there, apart from the cad who picks up stage girls as a hobby. Characters all speak in grating Twenties slang which must have sounded cool at the time. There are no particularly memorable lines.

Acting: This is a mixed bag. Bessie Love is really really good as the older of the two sisters, who eventually accepts with fairly good grace that her man has fallen for her sibling. I was really surprised that I had never heard of her before. (Also striking that this is two films out of two where I felt the female lead was by far the strongest of the performers.) Anita Page as the younger sister has a really rocky start – in her first couple of scenes I wondered if she was even awake – but livens up considerably as it goes on. Unfortunately she can’t dance, mostly but not completely disguised by cunning direction. Charles King as the chap they both love is a good singer and plausible heart-throb. Kenneth Thomson as the cad is a bit flat.

Music: With the exception of “Love Boat”, whose words I simply couldn’t make out, the songs are an excellent combination of talents by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed. (And one by Willard Robison). The title number is ridiculously catchy.

 

Several references suggest that the same song is used again in Singin’ in the Rain, but as far as I can tell the music for that film’s amazing “Broadway Melody” dance sequence is quite different. Singin’ in the Rain does however recycle a lot of the Brown and Freed tunes (as noted above, the title song was used in another 1930 film) and perhaps the best is You Were Meant For Me. (Edited to add: As pointed out in comments, Gene Kelly does sing the “Broadway Melody” 75 minutes into Singin’ in the Rain, but it’s really a case of blink and you miss it, as I did.)

Cinematography: After Wings, I thought this was another well-made and beautifully shot film. The opening sequence, set in the office of Mr Zanfield (a thinly disguised Ziegfield) is particularly good with different groups of musicians in different corners rehearsing:

 

The stage shows are well done, but in particular the director pulls off the feat of reminding us that there are human beings involved with putting on these spectacles, without breaking the mood created.

The Wedding of the Painted Doll: This deserves its own note, as the high point of the film. Apparently this stage sequence was originally filmed and shown in Technicolor, unlike the rest of the film which was monochrome. It must have been spectacular; sadly most of the original colour sequence has been lost. Also apparently when they had to remount it, rather than pay the orchestra to play the music again live, they played back the previous recording, thus originating the practice of soundtrack dubbing. I can’t find an embeddable link but here’s Turner Classic Movies’ presentation, with subtitles:

Apart from the excellent choreography, I think it has a fascinating hint of subversion. The song is in fact in a minor key, rather than celebratory. The lyrics are about people being pushed into marriage by the expectations of society, without much hope for success. It’s a very downbeat note in the story, which casts the rest of it in quite a different light.

Anyway, that’s two films in a row which were more enjoyable than I had expected; rather encouraging for the long term prospects of this project.

Next up is a film I have actually seen before, on TV when I was a teenager: All Quiet on the Western Front.

Winners of the Oscar for Best Picture

1920s: Wings (1927-28) | The Broadway Melody (1928-29)
1930s: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929-30) | Cimarron (1930-31) | Grand Hotel (1931-32) | Cavalcade (1932-33) | It Happened One Night (1934) | Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, and books) | The Great Ziegfeld (1936) | The Life of Emile Zola (1937) | You Can’t Take It with You (1938) | Gone with the Wind (1939, and book)
1940s: Rebecca (1940) | How Green Was My Valley (1941) | Mrs. Miniver (1942) | Casablanca (1943) | Going My Way (1944) | The Lost Weekend (1945) | The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) | Hamlet (1948) | All the King’s Men (1949)
1950s: All About Eve (1950) | An American in Paris (1951) | The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) | From Here to Eternity (1953) | On The Waterfront (1954, and book) | Marty (1955) | Around the World in 80 Days (1956) | The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Gigi (1958) | Ben-Hur (1959)
1960s: The Apartment (1960) | West Side Story (1961) | Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Tom Jones (1963) | My Fair Lady (1964) | The Sound of Music (1965) | A Man for All Seasons (1966) | In the Heat of the Night (1967) | Oliver! (1968) | Midnight Cowboy (1969)
1970s: Patton (1970) | The French Connection (1971) | The Godfather (1972) | The Sting (1973) | The Godfather, Part II (1974) | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | Rocky (1976) | Annie Hall (1977) | The Deer Hunter (1978) | Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
1980s: Ordinary People (1980) | Chariots of Fire (1981) | Gandhi (1982) | Terms of Endearment (1983) | Amadeus (1984) | Out of Africa (1985) | Platoon (1986) | The Last Emperor (1987) | Rain Man (1988) | Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
1990s: Dances With Wolves (1990) | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | Unforgiven (1992) | Schindler’s List (1993) | Forrest Gump (1994) | Braveheart (1995) | The English Patient (1996) | Titanic (1997) | Shakespeare in Love (1998) | American Beauty (1999)
21st century: Gladiator (2000) | A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Chicago (2002) | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | Million Dollar Baby (2004, and book) | Crash (2005) | The Departed (2006) | No Country for Old Men (2007) | Slumdog Millionaire (2008) | The Hurt Locker (2009)
2010s: The King’s Speech (2010) | The Artist (2011) | Argo (2012) | 12 Years a Slave (2013) | Birdman (2014) | Spotlight (2015) | Moonlight (2016) | The Shape of Water (2017) | Green Book (2018) | Parasite (2019)
2020s: Nomadland (2020) | CODA (2021) | Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) | Oppenheimer (2023)

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Warriors, ed. George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

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Second paragraph of third story (“Triumph”, by Robin Hobb):

The dust-laden wind was drying his bared eyes, and his vision was dwindling. Tears, the tears of his body rather than the tears of his heart, ran unchecked down his cheeks. The severed muscles that had once worked his eyelids twitched in helpless reflex; they could not moisten his eyeballs and renew his vision. Just as well; there was little out there he wished to see.

Ages since I read this, I have to admit, but looking back three stories stood out – two which both look at the Rome/Carthage conflicts from different perspectives, Robin Hobb’s “Triumph” and Steven Saylor’s “Eagle and the Rabbit”; and Carrie Vaughan’s “Girls from Avenger” about women pilots in the second world war. There were a load of other stories tying into series, some of which I know and some of which I don’t, but those made less of an impact on me.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2011. Next in that list is 1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, by Gavin Menzies.

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Lives of Girls and Women, by Alice Munro

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Is your mother going on the road much these days?’ they would ask me, and I would say no, oh no, she isn’t going out much anymore, but I knew they knew I lied. “Not much time for ironing,” they might continue compassionately, examining the sleeve of my blouse. “Not much time for ironing when she has to go out on the road.”

I’ve become a huge fan of Alice Munro’s short fiction over the last few years, and so I approached this, marketed as her only novel, with anticipation but also trepidation; would she be able to bring her particular genius to the longer form?

In fact, it turns out to be more of a sequence of linked short stories in the life of the same character than a novel per se – a format Munro also uses in The Beggar Maid – so we are on safe territory. Not that Munro’s writing is safe; her protagonist, Del Jordan, a gifted, geeky girl from a rural Ontario background, who knows she is looking for something more than is on offer in her home town but struggles against the oppression of conformity, is presumably autobiographical in large part. Having said that, almost all of the characters are drawn with sympathy and understanding, despite the gentle shades of alienation that suffuse Munro’s writing. I think that her short fiction tends to deliver more bang per wordcount, but this is still a good read.

This was both my top unread non-genre fiction book and the top book in that category recommended by you. Next in those lists respectively are The Angel Makers by Stefan Brijs (already read), and A Man of Parts by David Lodge.

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Austerity Britain, 1945-51, by David Kynaston

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Second paragraph of third chapter [context: it is May/June 1945]:

For Henry St John, working a few days later in Midsomer Norton, there was as ever only frustration — 'I tried in vain to buy some Ovaltine, this being the 11th successive shop at which I failed to get it, although it continues to be widely advertised' — but there was some compensation when, on the train back to Bristol, an American soldier gave him a Camel cigarette. The American influence, and indeed anything that smacked of the modern, did not play well with Ernest Loftus in Essex. `Mrs Williams [the French mistress] and I are taking joint action to stop our scholars attending Youth Clubs or, as I call them, Child Night Clubs,' noted Barking Abbey School's head in early June. 'So far as our type of school is concerned they are a menace. The world is sex-mad & they are the outcome of the sex-urge + the war + the cinema + evil books + a debased art & music + an uneducated parentage."

I read an greatly enjoyed the second book of this series a couple of years ago; I'm glad to say that the first is just as good, a detailed internal history of England (with a bit of Wales, less Scotland and no Northern Ireland) during basically the term of Attlee's Labour government. Kynaston's sympathy for the detail is tremendously engaging, and humanises a surprisingly alien place and time. There are some imporessive recurrent themes: rationing remained a constant reality (and of course enabled the black market to flourish), with most food remaining rationed until after the period covered in this book. Despite the Labour victory, government remained firmly in the hands of the civil service whose upper ranks shared a deep Establishment background – it was the 60s before anyone really challenged this. This was true also of the fledgling BBC, which did not even cover the 1950 World Cup (in which England was famously defeated by the Unites States). Some interesting people pop up again and again – Glenda Jackson and Pete Wyman, promising teenagers; the diarists both obscure (Henry St.John); and well-known (Molly Panter-Downs).

In contrast to the second book in the series, there is plenty of party politics here. The Labour Party, having won power (on the ideas framed by Michael Young, a figure I had forgotten about), successfully created the National Health Service and nationalised the coal mines, and crucially threw its lot in with Truman rather than Stalin. But I was unaware of the role that sudden death played in the politics of the day – Ellen Wilkinson, the Minister of Education, died in 1947, and Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary and the Lord Privy Seal, in 1951. (This just doesn't happen any more. The last British cabinet minister to die in office, of this writing, was Lord Williams of Mostyn in 2003; the last of the same weight as Wilkinson or Bevin was Anthony Crosland in 1977.)

The Labour government's reputation for competence was hit early on by an event for which it bore no responsibility and whose consequences it would have been very difficult for any government to mitigate: the exceptionally cold winter of 1946/47. Six weeks of very cold weather from late January to early March were followed by heavy rain, which added to the thaw to flood towns and countryside. The winter of 1962-63 was colder, but I guess that the country's infrastructure was better able to cope (and it was not immediately followed by heavy rain, as had happened in 1947). The bad weather hit industrial and agricultural productivity very hard, and certainly prolonged rationing and post-war hardship. Kynaston describes all of this vividly but unsentimentally, possibly the best passage of the book.

In summary, well worth reading. I'll look out for the third volume, and the others when they come out.

This bubbled to the top of my unread books from your recommendations of last year. next in that list is Guided by the Beauty of their Weapons, by Philip Sandifer.

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Synners, by Pat Cadigan

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Sam hadn’t really expected anyone to bother her about the insulin pump hanging on her side. The most attention anyone had given it was to screen it for off-color blips, and the security guard at the Bay jumper hadn’t even done that. He’d just grinned at her, displayed his own pump, and said, ‘Pray for better tissue matching, eh, sister?’ Airport security was interested only in weapons and explosives, not unlicensed or bootlegged computer equipment. Besides, it really had been an insulin pump once, before she’d gone to work on it.

I have to admit that cyberpunk has never really been my thing, and I rather bounced off Synners (short for “synthesisers”, people who have allowed their brains to be surgically augmented with devices that allow them to interface directly with computers. It was written in 1991 so the tech has dated rather badly; and I found the proliferation of characters and scene setting, and the fact the the plot doesn’t really start until half way through, difficult to engage with. I’ve greatly enjoyed Pat Cadigan’s recent short fiction, but this didn’t work for me.

It obviously did work for the 1991 Clarke Award judges since they picked it ahead of Eternal Light by Paul J. McAuley (runner-up), The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons, Raft by Stephen Baxter, Subterranean Gallery by Richard Paul Russo and White Queen by Gwyneth Jones. As previously noted, White Queen was a joint winner of the first Tiptree Award that year, the second Hyperion book won the BSFA (for which Eternal Light was also shortlisted). Synners was on the Nebula shortlist (the winner was Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick; the Hugo went to Bujold’s Barrayar). I am not sure if I have read Raft; I am sure I haven’t read the McAuley or Russo. Next in my sequence of award winners is the Simmons, which I read years ago but have not written up.

Arthur C. Clarke Award winners:
The Handmaid’s Tale | The Sea and Summer | Unquenchable Fire | The Child Garden | Take Back Plenty | Synners | Body of Glass | Vurt | Fools | Fairyland | The Calcutta Chromosome | The Sparrow | Dreaming in Smoke | Distraction | Perdido Street Station | Bold as Love | The Separation | Quicksilver | Iron Council | Air | Nova Swing | Black Man | Song of Time | The City & the City | Zoo City | The Testament of Jessie Lamb | Dark Eden | Ancillary Justice | Station Eleven | Children of Time | The Underground Railroad | Dreams Before the Start of Time | Rosewater | The Old Drift | The Animals in that Country | Deep Wheel Orcadia | Venomous Lumpsucker | In Ascension | Annie Bot

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So, a couple of months ago I wrote a short article for a book edited by a chap I know, for free.

Now I discover that the book is for sale for €690. No, there is no missing decimal point. That’s the discount rate for early orders. The full price is €890.

Well, you won’t be getting my free labour again.

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Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe

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As originally published, Robinson Crusoe has no chapters. One later edition has the following as the second paragraph of the third chapter:

When I had passed this resolution about ten days longer, as I have said, I began to see that the land was inhabited; and in two or three places, as we sailed by, we saw people stand upon the shore to look at us; we could also perceive that they were quite black, and stark naked. I was once inclined to have gone on shore to them; but Xury was my better counsellor, and said to me, "No go, no go." However, I hauled in nearer the shore that I might talk to them, and I found they run along the shore by me a good way: I observed they had no weapons in their hands, except one, who had a long slender stick, which Xury said was a lance, and that they would throw, them a great way with good aim; so I kept at a distance, but talked with them by signs as well as I could; and particularly made signs for something to eat; they beckoned to me to stop my boat, and they would fetch me some meat. Upon this I lowered the top of my sail, and lay by, and two of them ran up into the country, and in less than half an hour came back, and brought with them two pieces of dry flesh and some corn, such as is the produce of their country; but we neither knew what the one nor the other was: however, we were willing to accept it, but how to come at it was our next dispute, for I was not for venturing on shore to them, and they were as much afraid of us: but they took a safe way for us all, for they brought it to the shore and laid it down, and went and stood a great way off till we fetched it on board, and then came close to us again.

OK, who remembers this?

Those of you who are not around my age or not from the same country as me may not be aware that during the UK school holidays in the early 1970s, the BBC would show episodes of a long long French dramatisation of Robinson Crusoe, rather vaguely following the plot of the book. It was all a bit above my five-year-old appreciation, but it meant that a generation who might have never read the book became familiar with the bare bones of the story. And it's a good story, after all – self-sufficiency in desperate circumstances strikes a chord with a lot of us. It's interesting that two of the three questions that OKCupid found are the best predictors of a relationship's long-term potential speak to this – "Have you ever traveled around another country alone?" and "Wouldn’t it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat?"

The book itself is a bit more rambling than I had remembered. The core part is Crusoe's isolation on the island, in my edition from the shipwreck on page 64 until he starts to rescue Friday on page 205, just about half of the book (text runs from page 18 to page 310). But the part with Crusoe and Friday alone together (mainly having religious debates, all of which Crusoe wins) is actually rather short – by page 231 they are rescuing other prisoners (creating what he himself calls a colony, with himself as king/governor) and Crusoe leaves the island on page 274 with thirty pages of international financial wrangling still to go.

Probably most readers completely forget about that last part, but Angus Ross in the introduction to my Penguin edition points out that the economics of the situation, even for the lengthy period without any actual money, are really important to Defoe; Crusoe is always counting up his resources and working out what he can do with them. It's only reasonable that there is a theoretical Robinson Crusoe economy with no trade and a single economic agent. The economics of the book have stood the test of time better than its theology.

This was the most popular book on my shelves that I had not reviewed online. Next in that list is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, bu Roald Dahl.

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